Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/760

Rh 736 ROME [HISTORY, direct transmission from the founder of the city. They were, it is true, elected or created by a new assembly, by the army of freeholders voting by their classes and centuries (comitia centuriata), and to this body was given also the right of passing laws ; but nevertheless it was still by a vote of the 30 curies (lex curiata) that the supreme authority was formally conferred on the magistrates chosen by the centuries of freeholders, and both the choice of magistrates and the passing of laws still required the sanction of the patrician senators (patrum auctoritas). 1 Nor, lastly, were the legal prerogatives of the senate altered, although it is probable that before long plebeians were admitted to seats, if not to votes, and though its importance was gradually increased by the substitution of an annual magistracy for the life-long rule of a single king. But the abolition of the monarchy brought with it a change of the utmost importance in the actual working of the constitution. Though the distinction between patricians and plebeians was at least as old as the state itself, it is not until the establishment of the republic that it plays any part in the history of Rome. No sooner, however, was the overshadowing authority of the king removed than a struggle commenced between the two orders which lasted for more than two centuries. It was in no sense a struggle between a conquering and a con- quered class, or between an exclusive citizen body and an unenfranchised mass outside its pale. 2 Patricians and plebeians were equally citizens of Rome, sprung of the same race and speaking the same tongue. The former were the members of those ancient " gentes " which had possibly been once the " chiefly " families in the small communities which preceded the united state, and which claimed by hereditary right a privileged position in the community. Only patricians could sit in the council of patres, and hence probably the name given to their order. 3 To their representatives the supreme authority reverted on the death of the king ; the due transmission of the auspicia and the public worship of the state gods were their special care ; and to them alone were known the tra- ditional usages and forms which regulated the life of the people from day to day. To the " plebs " (the multitude, 7rAiJ#os) belonged all who were not members of some patrician gens, whether independent freemen or attached as " clients " 4 to one of the great houses. The plebeian was a citizen, with civil rights and a vote in the assembly of the curies, but he was excluded by ancient custom from all share in the higher honours of the state, and inter- marriage with a patrician was not recognized as a properly legal union. The revolution which expelled the Tarquins gave the patricians, who had mainly assisted in bringing it about, an overwhelming ascendency in the state. The plebs had indeed gained something. Not only is it probable that the strictness of the old tie of clientship had somewhat relaxed, and that the number of the "clientes " was smaller and their dependence on patrician patrons less complete, but the ranks of the plebs had, under the later kings, been swelled by the admission of conquered Latins, and the freeholders among these had with others been enrolled in the Servian tribes, classes, and centuries. The establish- ment of the republic invested this military levy of free- 1 The present writer has adopted the view of the " patrum auctori- tas" taken by Mommsen (Forsch., i.). Others identify it with the " lex curiata," or at least closely connect the two. 2 Here again the present writer has in the main followed Mommsen, as against Schwegler, Ihne, Zoller, and others. 8 Cf. "aedilis," "aedilicius," &c. ; Cic. DeRep., ii. 12; Livy, i. 8. For a full discussion of other views, see Soltau, 179 sq. ; Christensen, Hermes, ix. 196. 4 For the "clientela," see Mommsen (Forsch., i.) and Schwegler (i. 638). holders with political rights as an assembly, for by their votes the consuls were chosen and laws passed, and it was the plebeian freeholders who formed the main strength of the plebs in the struggle that followed. But these gains were greater in appearance than in reality. The plebeian freeholders commanded only a minority of votes in the comitia centuriata. In their choice of magistrates they were limited to the patrician candidates nominated by patrician presiding magistrates, and their choice required confirmation not only by the older and smaller assembly of the curias, in which the patricians and their clients pre- dominated, but also by the patrician patres. They could only vote on laws proposed by patrician consuls, and here again the subsequent sanction of the patres was necessary. The whole procedure of the comitia was in short absolutely in the hands of their patrician presidents, and liable to every sort of interruption and suspension from patrician pontiffs and augurs. But these political disabilities did not constitute the main grievance of the plebs in the early years of the re- public. What they fought for was protection for their lives and liberties, and the object of attack was the despotic authority of the patrician magistrates. The consuls wielded the full "imperium" of the kings, and against this "con- sular authority" the plebeian, though a citizen, had no protection and no appeal, and matters were only worse when for the two consuls was substituted in some emer- gency a single, all-powerful, irresponsible dictator. In Rome, as in Greece, the first efforts of the people were directed against the arbitrary powers of the executive magistrate. The history of this struggle between the orders opens with a concession made to the plebs by one of the consuls themselves, a concession possibly due to a desire to secure the allegiance of the plebeian freeholders, who formed the backbone of the army. In the very first year of the republic, according to the received chronology, P. Valerius Poplicola carried in the comitia centuriata his famous law of appeal. 5 It enacted that no magistrate, saving only a dictator, should execute a capital sentence upon any Roman citizen unless the sentence had been confirmed on appeal by the assembly of the centuries. But, though the " right of appeal " granted by this law was justly regarded in later times as the greatest safeguard of a Roman's liberties, it was by no means at first so effective a pro- tection as it afterwards became. For not only was the operation of the law limited to the bounds of the city, so that the consul in the field or on the march was left as absolute as before, but no security was provided for its observance even within the city by consuls resolved to disregard it. It was by their own efforts that the plebeians first The f obtained any real protection against magisterial despotism. secest The traditional accounts of the first secession are con- fused and contradictory, but its causes and results are tolerably clear. The seceders were the plebeian legionaries recently returned from a victorious campaign. Indignant at the delay of the promised reforms, they ignored the order given them to march afresh against Volsci and ^Equi, and instead entrenched themselves on a hill across the Anio, some three miles from Rome, and known afterwards as the Mons Sacer. The frightened patricians came to terms, and a solemn agreement (lex sacrata) 7 was con- cluded between the orders, by which it was provided that henceforth the plebeians should have annual magistrates of their own (tribuni plebis), members of their own order, who should be authorized to protect them against the 8 Livy, ii. 8, lex Valeria de provocation ; Cic. De Rep., ii. 31; cf. Livy, iii. 20. 6 Schwegler, ii. 226 sq. 7 Schwegler, ii. 251, note ; Livy, i. 33. tribui