CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL POWERS ACQUIRED BY THE PLEBEIANS.

WHILE war with the Volscians, Hernici, and Veientes supplied the Romans with military exercise, new disputes arose in the interior; first, on the right of the people to a share in conquered lands; and secondly, on the right of legislation which the plebeians, assembled by tribes, began on certain points to claim exclusively. The Agrarian law, the object of the first of these demands, has been investigated so thoroughly by Niebuhr, that the following simple statement can add little of value or novelty to the view which he has given of the subject.

The division of a demesne into three parts, one for the gods, one for the state, and a third for the citizens, was, in ancient times, no uncommon measure. In Rome it was of immemorial usage, and is ascribed, like other things of the kind, to Romulus. In the earliest divisions of land, one portion appears to have been obtained in absolute property by the patricians, nor does there seem to have been any prohibition against the enlargement of this portion by purchase. The usufruct of another part of the public domain was held by the king and patricians, jointly or severally, and usufructuary became, in fact, permanent possession, on the payment of a trifling quit-rent, or, rather, tithe. This tenure was greatly more advantageous than the ordinary modes of farming land, and it was matter of complaint that these prescriptive occupants dispensed themselves even from paying the dues annexed to their tenure. The occasion of every extension of Roman territory was seized by the patrician gentes to swell their acquisitions, while allotments of conquered lands to plebeians, in full property, were rarely and were grudgingly made. On the expulsion of Tarquin, indeed, his domain was divided among the people; but the subsequent losses of territory under the republic dispossessed many of their allotments. Fresh conquests were not speedily made, but the patricians first attempted to meet the public distress by establishing colonies. This was, however, not so much an allocation of territories conquered and secured as of strips of frontier, thrown for defence on the colonists to whom they were allotted, and consequently was viewed as no relief by the plebeians who, while they were mocked with these illusory advantages, saw in the hands of patricians the more secure and inland public domains. The people were thus tricked out of the profits of their toilsome campaigns. The tribunes, however, were not the first to signalise the abuse. A patrician and a consu! took the lead in bringing it under discussion.

U. C

Spurius Cassius had been thrice consul. He had already, at an early period, proposed to return to the people the purchase money of the grain which had been imported from Sicily during a scarcity. He now proposed to divide a part of the public landed estates." 267. It would be difficult to form any decision with regard to the character of Cassius from the records of his transaction which have come down to us. What is certain, however, is, that his motion occasioned dangerous disorders, not only during his consulship, but to the end of the republic, during the whole of which period these disturbances form one of the main features of Roman history. The senate, embittered against a consul who seemed to betray so scandalously the interests of his order, exerted itself to ruin him with the people, succeeded in throwing suspicion on the motives of the proposal, and even affected willingness, and absolutely passed a decree, to give the people a share in the conquered territory. The people distrusted the consul, whose ambition was notorious, and abandoned him to the vengeance of his order.

After the fate of Cassius,t no one dreamed of putting the senate's decree, with regard to the public lands, into execution, until the tribunes at length began to take up the matter in good earnest. They did not, however, it seems, immediately bring the patrician authorities who were to blame for this neglect, before the popular tribunals. It was not till the terminatiou of the war with Veii and the Sabines, that the tribune Genucius advanced the proposition that all the consuls since Sp. Cassius must be made answerable to the people for the subsequent oblivion of the promised division of lands. However, he did not persist in going so far back, but contented himself with bringing to trial Furius and Manlius, the consuls of the foregoing year (280 u. c.,) who had terminated the war with the Veians, and closed a forty years' truce. The patricians took all possible pains to save their most esteemed and deserving colleagues from the slur of a public trial. They even had recourse to the most humiliating supplications; unless, indeed, Livy, as usual, has transferred to the earliest times what was wont to occur in his own days on similar ocasions. Nothing would do! The people were assembled, the trial came on, when, at this critical moment, the death of the defender of popular rights was announced, and the comitia rose again as a matter of course.

This incident, however, only made matters worse, as the affair must

* Wachsmuth, 324.

+ Sp. Cassius is said to have been sentenced by his own father, according to the ancient family law, cognita domi causa. On the other hand, Livy states, "Invenio apud quosdam, idque propius fidem est, a quæstoribus K. Fabio et L. Valerio diem dictam perduellionis, damnatumque populi judicio, dirutas publice ædes."

Furius et Manlius sordidati circumeunt non plebem magis quam juniores patrum-hi non publica, sed in privato seducta a plurium conscientia consilia habuere, nec auctor quamvis audaci facinori deerat.

§ Igitur die judicii cum plebs in foro erecta expectatione staret, mirari primo, quod non descenderet tribunus, tandem qui obversati vestibulo tribuni fuerant, nuntiant domi mortuum esse.

inevitably, sooner or later, again come under discussion. Publilius Volero, a plebeian captain (qui ordines duxerat,) on being shortly after summoned to serve in the ranks as a common soldier, refused, and, when compulsion was attempted, appealed to the people, and was instantly taken under their protection. The senate was induced to yield by the more prudent of the patricians, and Velero was chosen by the people for their tribune of the following year. During his U.C. tribuneship he made the proposal to withdraw the election of tri282. bunes of the people from the influence of wealth, and from that of the nobles, with their pretended science of sacred rites and usages. The tribunes, like the regular authorities, had been formerly elected in the assemblies of the centuries, which could only be convoked in pursuance of a decree of the senate, and in which rank and riches had the preponderence. These assemblies were presided over by some person in authority, and stood in need of the auspices and auguries, which entirely depended on the senate. They must, moreover, be confirmed by the assemblies of the curiae, which were wholly patrician, or, at least, stood wholly under patrician influence.

Publilius Volero proposed that the defenders of the people should be chosen in the assemblies of tribes, where votes were decided by numbers; where no auspices and no confirmation by the curia were required; where, lastly, a tribune presided. The question was momentous: it was the first step to all the subsequent changes introduced in the aristocratic parts of the constitution. In the first year Volero could not carry through his project. He was, however, again elected for the following year; which would not have happened, had not the rich plebeians of the first class for once felt an identity of interests with the multitude. The consuls of the following year were of different dispositions. Appius, at the head of the haughty nobility, would have used force; but Quinctius led his colleague away, and conceded what could not be refused much longer. Four generations passed, however, before the consul Publilius procured the delegation to assemblies of the tribes, and, by consequence, to votes by the head, of the power of making valid laws on all subjects proposed to them. Meanwhile the confirmation of the decrees of the centurial assemblies by the curiæ became a mere form, as did the curial meetings themselves, the thirty lictors only being brought together to represent the curiæ. It was rare for aught of early institution to sink into entire disuse in Rome. If the substance vanished, the shadow was retained, and the curiæ kept the privilege of confirming long after the right of electing the consuls had shifted to the centuries. All political changes made by the Romans were directed to some proximate and definite object, and nothing was wholly done away with, unless inconsistent with that object.

The plebeians having in this manner possessed themselves of some of the most important political privileges, next sought to remove the last restrictions on their rights, which had existed from the earliest times, and had hitherto retarded the developement of that Roman state, to which was reserved the empire of the world.

* Beaufort.

In order to obliterate in Rome the last traces of the Etruscan system of castes and priestly government, the plebeians must be made to participate in the knowledge of those legal mysteries, which had hitherto been communicated only to the patrician families by means of oral tradition and of ceremonial archieves, while they were purposely kept inaccessible to the body of the people. The exorbitant power of the consuls, as supreme judges must disappear:* the prohibition of marriage between patricians and plebians must be taken off. To this end a new legislation was requisite, and the tribune, Terrentillus Arsa, U. C. made the first advances to it, taking advantage of the absence of 292. both consuls. The affair was, however, delayed by the city prefect, through the intervention of the other tribunes, till the return of the consuls, whose presence put a stop to it for the moment. In U. C. the following year, however, the whole college of tribunes re293, newed the rogation, which was strenuously resisted by the noble Cincinnatus, the very model of a Roman of the old stock, as well as by his son Caso Quinctius. Legal and illegal means were resorted to; recourse was had to the Sibylline books; warnings against distur bance were promulgated on divine authority; a war was begun against the qui an Volsci. All in vain. Quinctus was brought to trial; the entreaties of his father, those of the patricians and his own were unavailing, and he thought it more advisable to forfeit his recognisances, and save himself by flight, than to await his sentence. Cincinnatus was impoverished, being obliged to indemnify those who had stood as sureties for his son; yet the nobility still resisted the repeatedly re-elected tribunes. The latter, however, carried the augmentation of their number to ten; and at length the nomination of a commission, with extraordinary legislative powers.† Every other power, even that of the tribunes, thereupon ceased, and unlimited authority, till the establishment of new laws, was delegated to ten men, to be elected, according to the proposal of the tribunes, as well as from among plebeians as patricians; but who were chosen, after some discussion, exclusively from the latter class.

It is evident, that an union of the several classes of Romans, which had hitherto stood apart from each other, in some measure, as castes, was the real scope and end of the new legislation. The remains of that legislation are, however, so insignificant, and their interpretation so difficult, that even Niebuhr confesses they would give us little instruction in civil or criminal jurisprudence. It may be enough, therefore, to mention, that the distinction between clients, as vassals, or hirelings

*According to Livy, Terentillus Arsa particularly directed his attacks against the consuls:-"Quippe duos pro uno acceptos immoderata infinita protestate; qui soluti atque effrenati ipsi omnes metus legum omniaque supplicia verterent in plebem. Quæ ne æterna illis licentia sit, legem se promulgaturum, ut quinque viri crentur legibus de imperio consulari scribendis."

+ Livy, who in this is followed by Niebuhr, says, that each decemvir held the presidency for twelve days, had twelve lictors for his suite, and exercised judicial supremacy:-" Placet creari decemviros sine provocatione, et ne quis eo anno alius magistratus esset. Admiscerenturnd plebeii controversia aliquamdiu fuit, postremo concessum patribus modo, ne lex Icilia de Aventino aliæque sacrata leges abrogarentur."

of the patricians, and the rest of the plebeians, thenceforth vanished, that patronage became a mere protection and defence of humble dependents by the rich and the powerful; and that the centuries, not as yet the tribes, recognised as alone having penal jurisdiction over burghers.

In the first year of their office, these decemvirs behaved so admirably, that their administration gave general satisfaction; and they brought their legislative duties nearly to a close; but declared that a sixth of the requisite laws was still wanting (or two of the twelve tables on which the laws were afterwards engraved ;)* and by consequence, that a further prolongation of this extraordinary regimen was necessary. The patrician, Appius Claudius, who took the leading part in the whole affair, was nominated president at the election of the new decemvirs. He acted in concert with the plebeians, by receiving votes for plebeian candidates, and for himself, likewise, though it had been declared contrary to law that any functionary should be re-elected immediately after holding office. By dint of intrigue, Appius was, however, re-elected, and along with him nine others, half of whom were patricians, half plebeians.

This new commission soon showed itself very different from the first. Each of the decemvirs had twelve lictors; and the latter bore in their bundle of staves the formidable axe, the sign of judgment on life and death, which the consuls, since the time of Valerius Publicola, had been obliged to lay down during residence in the city. It was now in vain to think of appeal from one ruler to another, though that appeal alone had rendered tolerable the want of tribunes during the first year of the new government. Even in this year the sway of the decemvirs had already become tyrannical; and in the beginning of the next, not a word more was said of the resignation of their office. The second year's decemviral government was entirely without legal foundation; yet the senate, which they found themselves obliged to convoke on occasion of an inroad of the qui and Sabines, acknowledged their authority. The circumstances under which that body was convoked were the following. The decemvirs had received an application for aid from Tusculum; and, as they durst not presume so far on their own authortly as to levy an army, they were obliged to call the senate together. On its meeting, the first question raised was the right by which it had been convoked for in strictness the decemvirs were but private persons, and as such could have no right to convoke the senate or to collect its votes. However, only two of its number insisted on the point of form, and the decemvirs kept possession of their dignity. Accordingly, they sent out an army, which was every where defeated, and procured the murder of Siccius, the only man who had vindicated the honor of the Roman arms by deeds of personal valor, which the chronicles have strained to the verge of the fabulous.

Hardly was this murder accomplished, when Appius Claudius perpetrated a still more scandalous deed in the town than that which had

* Duas adhuc deesse tabulas, is the singular phrase of Livy, as if the requisite number of tables could have been settled so precisely beforehand. Had the mystical Etruscan number any weight in the calculation?