Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/762

Rh 738 ROME HISTORY. of 449 clearly involved more than a restoration of the old form of government. The Valerio-Horatian laws, besides reaffirming the right of appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes, improved the position of the plebeian assemblies by enacting that " plebiscita " passed in them, and, as seems probable, approved by the patres, should be binding on patricians as well as plebeians. 1 By this law the tribunes obtained a recognized initiative in legislation. Hence- forth the desired reforms were introduced and carried by tribunes in what were now styled " comitia tributa," and, if sanctioned by the patres, became laws of the state. From this period, too, must be dated the legalization at any rate of the tribune's right to impeach any citizen before the assembly of the tribes. 2 Henceforward there is no question of the tribune's right to propose to the plebs to impose a fine, or of the validity of the sentence when passed. The efficiency of these new weapons of attack was amply proved by the subsequent course of the struggle. Only a few years after the Valerio-Horatian legislation came the lex Canuleia (445 B.C.), by which mixed marriages between patricians and plebeians were declared lawful, and the social exclusiveness of the patriciate broken down. In the same year with this measure, and like it in the interests primarily of the wealthier plebeians, a vigorous attack commenced on the patrician monopoly of the consulate, and round this stronghold of patrician ascendency the conflict raged until the passing of the Licinian laws in 367. The original proposal of Canuleius in 445 that the people should be allowed to elect a plebeian consul was evaded by a com- promise. The senate resolved that for the next year, in the stead of consuls, six military tribunes with consular powers should be elected, 3 and that the new office should be open to patricians and plebeians alike. The consulship was thus for the time saved from pollution, as the patri- cians phrased it, but the growing strength of the plebs is shown by the fact that in fifty years out of the seventy- 10-388. eight between 444 and 366 they succeeded in obtaining the election of consular tribunes rather than of consuls. A good omen for their ultimata success was a victory they won in connexion with the inferior office of the qucestorship. Down to the time of the decemvirate the quaestors had 07. been nominated by the consuls, but in 447 their appoint- ment was transferred to the plebeian " comitia tributa," 33. and in 421 the first plebeian was elected to the office. 4 Despite, however, these discouragements, the patricians fought on. Each year they strove to secure the creation of consuls rather than consular tribunes, and failing this strained every nerve to secure for their own order at least a majority among the latter. Even the institution of 19. the censorship (435), though rendered desirable by the increasing importance and complexity of the census, was, it is probable, due in part to their desire to discount before- hand the threatened loss of the consulship by diminish- ing its powers. 5 Other causes, too, helped to protract the struggle. Between the wealthier plebeians, who were ambitious of high office, and the poorer, whose minds were set rather on allotments of land, there was a division of interest of which the patricians were not slow to take 1 Livy, iii. 56, "quum veluti in controverso jure esset, tenerenturne patres plebiscitis legem comitiis centuriatis tulere, ut quod tributim plebs jussisset populum teneret, qua lege tribuniciis rogationibus telum acerrimum datum est. " What were the precise conditions under which a " plebiscitum " became law, and what was the exact effect of the lex Publilia of 339 and the lex Hortensia of 287, can only be conjectured. One of the two last can hardly have been more than a reaffirmation of a previous law. 2 After the decemvirate, the tribunes no longer pronounce capital sentences. They propose fines, which are confirmed by the comitia tributa. Livy, iv. 7 ; cf. Mommsen, Staalsrecht, ii. 165. 4 Livy, iv. 43 ; Moramsen, StaatsrecM, ii. 497. 5 Mommsen, ib., 304. advantage, and to this must be added the pressure of war. The death struggle with Veii and the sack of Rome by the Gauls absorbed for the time all the energies of the community. In 377, however, two of the tribunes, 377. C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius, came forward with pro- posals which united all sections of the plebs in their support. Their proposals were as follows : 6 ' (1) that con- suls and not consular tribunes be elected ; (2) that one consul at least should be a plebeian ; (3) that the priestly college, which had the charge of the Sibylline books, should consist of ten members instead of two, and that of these half should be plebeians ; (4) that no single citizen should hold in occupation more than 500 acres of the common lands, or pasture upon them more than 100 head of cattle and 500 sheep ; (5) that all landowners should employ a certain amount of free as well as slave labour on their estates ; (6) that interest already paid on debts should be deducted from the principal, and the remainder paid off in three years. The three last proposals were obviously intended to meet the demands of the poorer plebeians, and to secure their support for the first half of the scheme. Ten years of bitter conflict followed, but at last, in 367 B.C., the Licinian rogations became law, and one of their authors, L. Sextius, was created the first plebeian consul. For the moment it was some consolation to the patricians that they not only succeeded in detaching from the consul- ship the administration of civil law, which was entrusted to a separate officer, " praetor urbanus, " to be elected by the comitia of the centuries, with an understanding apparently that he should be a patrician, but also obtained the institution of two additional rcdiles ("aedilescurules"), who were in like manner to be members of their own order. 7 With the opening of the consulship, however, the issue of the long contest was virtually decided, and the next eighty years witnessed a rapid succession of plebeian victories. Now that a plebeian consul might preside at the elections, Openi the main difficulty in the way of the nomination and of election of plebeian candidates was removed. The pro- ^ posed patrician monopoly of the new curule aedileship was almost instantly abandoned. In 356 the first plebeian 39 was made dictator, in 350 the censorship, and in 337 the 40 prsetorship were filled for the first time by plebeians, and lastly, in 300, by the lex Ogulnia, even the sacred 45 colleges of the pontiffs and augurs, the old strongholds of patrician supremacy, were thrown open to the plebs. 8 The patricians lost also the control they had exercised so long over the action of the people in assembly. The " patrum auctoritas," the sanction given or refused by the patrician senators to laws and to elections, had hitherto been a powerful weapon in their hands. But in 339 a 41 law of Q. Publilius Philo, a plebeian dictator, enacted that this sanction should be given beforehand to all laws ; 9 laws> and by a lex Maenia, carried apparently some fifty years later, the same rule was extended to elections. Hencefor- ward the "patrum auctoritas" sank into a meaningless form, though as such it still survived in the time of Livy. A second Publilian law affirmed afresh the validity of "plebiscita," i.e., of measures carried in the plebeian comitia tributa. Apparently, however, their validity was Lex still left subject to some conditions, for in 287 a lex tensi Hortensia, carried by another plebeian dictator, was 4 ^7. found necessary finally to settle the question. 10 From 287 onwards it is certain that measures passed by the plebs, voting by their tribes, had the full force of laws without Livy, vi. 35, 42 ; Appian, D. C., i. 8. 7 Livy, vi. 42. 8 Livy, vii. 17, 22 ; viii. 15; ix. 6. 9 Livy, viii. 12, "ut . . . ante initum suffragium patres auctores fierent," cf. Livy, i. 17. For the "lex Maenia," see Cic., Brut., 14; Soltau, 112. 10 Plin., N. //., xvi. 10 ; Gell., xv. 27 ; Gaius, i. 3, "plebiscita lege Hortensia non minus valere quam leges."