the addition of the two last tribes (the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth) the number of tribes was finally closed. This supposition was thought to be more than any other in accordance with the words of Livy, in which he explains the number of centuries in his time as being based upon the thirty-five tribes complete, and compares this arrangement with the old order of things. Nevertheless, though there is decidedly some weight in the argument derived from the loss of the second decade of Livy, it cannot but be considered strange that no other record of so radical a reform should have survived, and still more that we hear nothing whatever of a struggle for the reform which, one would think, must have lasted some time. This circumstance is not explained by the remark that this muchtalked-of reform appears to have had very little influence upon the inner life of the republic. The Romans were too conservative, too practical, and too rational to take the trouble merely for the sake of a theory or a whim to change the form of a venerable and tried institution. We must seek some other cause for the silence of all historians with regard to the reform of the centuries, and it seems that we have no alternative but to conclude that it is altogether a mistake to speak of the reform as if it had been effected by a single act of legislation.

CHAP.

I.

change

probably a

one.

We are, on the contrary, inclined to believe that the The forms of the Servian constitution did not remain unchanged from the time of its first establishment until gradual they were once for all remodelled, but that they underwent from time to time more or less important modifications; in fact, that they were periodically adapted, in the growth of the republic, to changing circumstances and requirements. These gradual modifications affected the figures of the census, which, as is universally admitted, must have been considerably raised in the course of time, and were not expressed in money until very late. They affected, further, the mode and manner of making the census, of determining and valuing the goods which were 1 Mommsen, Rom. Gesch. i. 823. 2 Mommsen, Röm. Gesch. i. 310. VOL. IV.

C

BOOK
VI.

Proportion

turies to

1

subject to it; they produced the increase of the number of centuries in the fifth class; and they affected the supplementary centuries of workmen and capite censi. It was the business of the censors to effect such changes, of course in accordance with principles recognised or enjoined by the senate, to cause them to be sanctioned by the religious solemnity of the Lustrum-i.e. to be indirectly approved by the people. The censors had, on the creation of new tribes, the task of incorporating them with the old ones, and of distributing the new and the old citizens among all the tribes in a manner required by the political wants of the state in general, by the organisation of the army, which was enlisted according to tribes, and by the order of the popular assemblies, comitia tributa as well as centuriata.2

All this is admitted and subject to no doubt. Now, the of the cen- circumstance that the later order of centuries did not agree the classes. with the order established by Servius is most easily explained by the hypothesis, firstly, that the Servian constitution was based upon the twenty tribes existing at

It seems established beyond doubt that the oldest plan of the numerical arrangement of the centuries was symmetrical, and that the eighty centuries of the first class, which contained all the patricians, were matched by eighty centuries of plebeians, distributed into four classes of twenty centuries each. The increase of the number of the centuries in the fifth class from twenty to thirty was a departure from this symmetry, caused, no doubt, by the necessities of war, which drew upon the most numerous class of citizens for a larger contingent of troops. See vol. i. p. 68, n. 1.

2 In drawing up the list of citizens, and thus periodically modifying the constituencies of the electoral districts, the censors were invested with all but absolute and irresponsible power, and acted in the manner in which king Servius himself was supposed to have acted. The formal right to do so was conferred upon them by a lex centuriata de potestate censoria. They were not called upon to justify their proceedings; no other magistrate was allowed to interfere with them by intercession or obnuntiation; in fact, they had full dictatorial power. Comp. Lange, Röm. Alterth. i. 670. Even after their retirement from office they were exempt from responsibility. Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht, ii. 1, 292. Their proceedings were not always very regular, nor could mistakes and arbitrary decisions be avoided. But these decisions were final, and must have been so, as otherwise the census could never have been completed in the proper time. So it could happen that strangers were wrongfully included in the list of citizens, like the father of Perperna, the consul of the year 130 B.C Valerius Max. iii. 4, 5.

that time,' whereas at the later period there were thirtyfive tribes; and secondly, that Servius had not allotted equal numbers of centuries to all classes, as was the case in the more democratic organisation of later times, but had made the centuries of the first class equal in number to the other four. The innovation, therefore, of which Livy and Dionysius speak, did not consist in an adaptation of the centuries to the tribes-for that had existed from the first but in a new apportioning of the centuries among the five classes. We are not informed of the precise rate of this apportioning. Dionysius says only that the new arrangement was of a more democratic nature. It is, therefore, not improbable that, as Pantagathus supposes, an equal number of centuries was allotted to every class. The number seventy suggested by Pantagathus is merely conjectural: it recommends itself only by its internal probability. With this degree of probability we must be satisfied; it would be waste of time were we to speculate further without any material proofs on the later organisation of the centuries.

CHAP.

I.

tradition

constitu

The organisation of the centuriate comitia, as we have Popular just shown, was for many ages in a state of perpetual tr change and development, like all other Roman institu- Servian tions. It was at no period looked upon as finally settled tion. in its ultimate form and unchangeable, but it was periodically adapted to the shifting conditions, to the growing wealth, numbers, and power of the people. But even in the oldest form known to us, the form ascribed to king Servius Tullius as its author, it has already reached a degree of maturity, of completeness and refinement of detail, which shows that it must have gone through a long period of development, and that the experience of many years must have worked to give it its shape. The common story of its origin is therefore utterly incredible. We cannot believe that it sprang complete and perfect from the head of a legislator; that this legislator was prevented 1 Not, as Livy, i. 43, evidently thinks, on four tribes. See above, p. 13, n. 2.

BOOK

VI.

Decay of the centuriate comitia.

from carrying it into practice; that his successor ruled independently of it; and that on his expulsion the Romans drew it forth from the public archive, and applied it to their wants in the emergency of a revolution. The whole story is fantastic and absurd. The scheme of the centuriate assemblies, without any doubt, grew slowly, gradually, and naturally out of the conditions and necessities of the time; and as it had not been called into existence by one act of legislation, so it was not reformed by another single act of legislation, but was kept in working order and repair, and was improved and enlarged by the wisdom of generation after generation.

Simultaneously with the gradual division and weakening of the power of the chief magistrates, and with the establishment of the tribuneship and the comitia tributa, the centuriate comitia lost ground. The greater part of the judicial power immediately passed over to the tribes. Although the right of inflicting capital punishment remained with the centuries, the so-called comitiatus maximus, yet the tribes judged all minor offences and exercised an effective control chiefly by fines, the infliction of capital punishment being from the first exceedingly With the establishment of the lower magistrates, from the ædiles downwards, the right of election also for these offices was vested in the tribes. All that now remained unimpaired in the hands of the centuries was the election of the consuls, censors and prætors, and their supreme right of deciding questions of war and peace.1

rare.

1 With regard to treaties of peace, it has been maintained by Rubino (Untersuchungen über röm. Verfassung, 1839, p. 258 ff) that the centuriate comitia never possessed the right of giving or withholding their sanction; that in the earlier periods down to the Samnite wars the magistrates and the senate were alone competent to conclude treaties of peace, though in declarations of war the people in their assemblies of centuries had to be consulted. It is true that in the earlier ages the concurrence of the centuries to such negotiation is not mentioned, and that the statement of Dionysius, iv. 20, who asserts their constitutional right, is not of great weight; but we must bear in mind that the narrative of the earlier wars is very short, that the consent of the people to the conclusion of peace, which released them from further services and burdens, was mostly a matter of course, and needed not to be specially mentioned, so that no inference can be drawn from the silence of the

CHAP.

I.

the exten

dominion.

If this right appears to be less prominent in later times than at first, this circumstance is explained by the extension of the Roman dominion. As long as the wars Effects of that had to be waged threatened the immediate vicinity sion of of the town, and extended no further than Latium, Roman Campania, Samnium, or Etruria, the people fully comprehended and took a lively interest in the policy pursued by the senate and the magistrates. But when the theatre of war was removed to countries beyond the sea, the questions which had to be decided were no longer within the reach of the popular comprehension, and the approval of the actions of the government by the comitia was so much a matter of course that only one case is mentioned of a declaration of war being negatived; but even this isolated opposition was soon overcome: the popular resolution was cancelled and the policy of the senate obtained the approbation of the people. In most cases the annalists no longer thought it worth while to mention the popular approval of the foreign policy of the senate, and nothing proves more clearly the complete establishment of the rule of the nobility and the entire absence of opposition on the part of the people than the circumstance that it was possible, nay, apparently easy, for the senate and the nobility to carry on, year after year, the bloody wars in Spain and Northern Italy, which were so oppressive for the people and lucrative only for those who governed. No opposition was offered, and scarcely an occasional murmur of discontent was heard among the ranks of the men in the centuriate assemblies who formally decreed the wars, and who in reality were obliged to wage those wars and pay for them with their blood.

meagre annals. It is therefore, after all, probable that the centuries, as they had to be consulted before war was declared, had also the corresponding right of approving the conclusion of peace.

At the beginning of the second Macedonian war, in 200 B.C. See vol. iii. p. 18. Liv. xxxi. 6, 3: Rogatio de bello Macedonico primis comitiis ab omnibus ferme centuriis antiquata est. After the consul had made a speech to explain and recommend the senatorial policy, the people were called upon to vote again, and, as Livy says, ch. 8, 1: In suffragium missi, uti rogarat, bellum iusserunt.