Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/780

Rh 756 ROME [HISTORY. whole power and influence of the new nobility. 1 These " nobiles " are essentially distinct from the older and more legitimate patrician aristocracy. Every patrician was of course noble, but the majority of the " noble families " in >8. 146 were not patrician but plebeian. 2 The title had been gradually appropriated, since the opening of the magistra- cies, by those families whose members had held curule office, and had thereby acquired the "jus imaginum." It was thus in theory within the reach of any citizen who could win election even to the curule ajdileship, and, more- over, it carried with it no legal privileges whatsoever. Gradually, however, the ennobled plebeian families drew together, and combined with the older patrician gentes to form a distinct order. Office brought wealth and prestige, and both wealth and prestige were liberally employed in securing for this select circle a monopoly of political power, and excluding new men. 3 Already by the close 01 the period it is rare for any one but a noble to find his way into high office or into the senate. The senate and magistrates are the mouthpieces of this order, and are identified with it in policy and interest. Lastly, it must be allowed that both the senate and the nobility had to some extent justified their power by the use they made of it. It was their tenacity of purpose and devoted patriot- ism which had carried Rome through the dark days of the Hannibalic war. The heroes of the struggle with Carthage belonged to the leading families ; the disasters at the Trasimene Lake and at Cannse were associated with the blunders of popular favourites. eakness From the first however, there was an inherent weak- tha ness in this senatorial government. It had no sound con- rial stitutional basis, and with the removal of its accidental vern- supports it fell to the ground. Legally the senate had no 3nt. positive authority. It could merely advise the magistrate when asked to do so, and its decrees were strictly only suggestions to the magistrate, which he was at liberty to accept or reject as he chose. 4 It had it is true become customary for the magistrate not only to ask the senate's advice on all important points, but to follow it when given. But it was obvious that if this custom were weakened, and the magistrates chose to act independently, the senate was powerless. It might indeed anathematize 5 the re- fractory official, or hamper him if it could by setting in motion against him a colleague or the tribunes, but it could do no more, and these measures, though as a rule effective in the case of magistrates stationed in Rome, failed just where the senate's control was most needed and most difficult to maintain in its relations with the generals and governors of provinces abroad. The virtual independ- )8. ence of the proconsul was before 146 already exciting the jealousy of the senate and endangering its supremacy.** Nor again had the senate any legal hold over the assembly. Except in certain specified cases, it rested with the magis- trate to decide whether any question should be settled by a decree of the senate or a vote of the assembly. 7 If he 1 Moinxnsen, H. O., i. 782 sq. 2 E.g. , Livii, Sempronii, Ciecilii, Licinii, &c. 8 Livy, xxii. 34, " plebeios nobiles . . . contemiiere plebem, ex quo contemn! a patribus desierint, coepisse"; cf. Sail. , Jug. , 41, "paucorum arbitrio belli domique agitabatur penes eosdeni aerarium, provinciae, magistratus. " Mommsen, JR. G., i. 792, 793. The number of new families ennobled dwindles rapidly after 200 B.C. ; Willems, Le Senat de la RSpublique Romaine, i. 366 sq. (Paris, 1878). 4 The senators' whole duty is " seutentiam dicere. " The senator was asked " quid censes ?" the assembly " quid velitis jubeatis?" Cf. also the saving clause, "Si eis videretur" (sc. consulibus, &c.) in Seta., e.g., Cic., Phil., v. 19. 8 By declaring his action to be " contra rempublicam. " The force of this anathema varied with circumstances. It had no legal value. 6 Livy, xxxviii. 42, of Cn. Manlius Vulso in Asia, 189 B.C.; cf. also the position of the two Scipios. decided to make a proposal to the assembly, he was not bound except by custom to obtain the previous approval of the senate, and s the constitution set no limits to the power of the assembly to decide any question whatsoever that was laid before it. The right of the people to govern was still valid, and though it had long lain dormant any year might see a magistrate in office resolved on recalling the people to a larger share in the conduct of affairs by consulting them rather than the senate, and an assembly bent on the exercise of its lawful prerogatives. And from 167 at least, onwards, there were increasng indications that both the acquiescence of the people and the loyalty of the magistrates were failing. The absorb- ing excitement of the great wars had died away; the economic and social disturbance and distress which they produced were creating a growing feeling of discontent; and at the same time the senate provoked inquiries into its title to govern by its failure any longer to govern well. In the East there was growing confusion ; in the West a single native chieftain defied the power which had crushed Carthage. At home the senate was becoming more and more simply an organ of the nobility, and the nobility were becoming every year more exclusive, more selfish, and less capable and unanimous. 9 But if the senate was not to govern, the difficulty arose of finding an efficient substitute, and it was this difficulty that mainly determined the issue of the struggles which convulsed Rome from 133 to 49. As the event showed, 62 neither the assembly nor the numerous and disorganized magistracy were equal to the work ; the latter were gradu- ally pushed aside in favour of a more centralized authority, and the former became only the means by which this new authority was first encouraged in opposition to the. senate and finally established in a position of impregnable strength. The assembly which made Pompey and Ctesar found out too late that it could not unmake them. It is possible that these constitutional and administra- tive difficulties would not have proved so rapidly fatal to the republic had not its very foundations been sapped by the changes which followed more or less directly on the conquest of the world. These changes can only be glanced at here. Civic equality and solidarity were alike destroyed by the concentration of wealth in a few hands, the disappearance of the small independent freeholder, and the growing numbers of freedmen and clients. The Roman community became not only unmanageably large, but hopelessly divided by class distinctions and interests, and wide differences in habits of life and modes of thought. The old traditions, beliefs, and usages insepar- ably connected with the republican regime, and essential to its continuance, lost ground daily before the incoming flood of new fashions, intellectual and social, from Greece and the East. Before the republic fell, Roman society was already in structure, temper, and mind thoroughly unrepublican. The first systematic attack upon the senatorial govern- The ment is connected with the names of Tiberius and Gaius 0* Gracchus, and its immediate occasion was an attempt to deal with no less a danger than the threatened disappear- ance of the class to which of all others Rome owed most year by a Sctum., in another by a " lex " ; cf. Cic. De Rep., ii. 32 ; Phil., i. 2, of Antony as consul, "mutata omuia, uihil per senatum, omnia per populum." 8 There was no legal necessity, before Sulla's time, for getting the " senatus auctoritas " for a proposal to the assembly. 9 See generally Mommsen, R. G., i. bk. iii. cap. 6 ; Lange, Rom. Alterth., vol. ii. ; Ihne, v. cap. i. The first law against bribery at elections was passed in 181 B.C. (Livy, xl. 20), and against magisterial extortion in the provinces in 149 (Lex Calpurnia de pecuniis repe- tundis). The senators had special seats allotted to them in the theatre in 194 B.C.; Livy, xxxiv. 44, 54.
 * Hence the same things, e.g., founding of colonies, are done in one