CHAPTER III.

CLASS STRUGGLES IN THE REPUBLIC, 510-367 B.C.

I. CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD.

308. The First Century and a Half of the Republic was a period of stern internal conflict between patricians and plebeians. Torn and distracted by the struggle, Rome made little gain externally, and indeed, until toward the close of the epoch, lost much territory she had held under the kings.

The peculiar mark of the long internal struggle was the absence of extreme violence. Compared with the vehement class conflicts in Greek cities, with their frequent bloody revolutions and counter-revolutions, the contest in Rome was carried on "with a calmness, deliberation, and steadiness that corresponded to the firm, persevering, sober, practical Roman character"; and when the victory of the plebs was once won, the result was correspondingly complete and permanent.

II. THE POSITION OF THE CLASSES AFTER 510 B.C.

The overthrow of

309. Rome becomes a Patrician Oligarchy. the kings was in no sense a democratic movement. It left Rome an oligarchy, and depressed the plebs. The later kings had leaned upon the lower orders. In consequence, they had sought to strengthen the plebeians by grants of public land, by securing them justice, and possibly by aiding them in the development of political power. The aristocratic revolutionists may have bought popular support at first by some superficial concessions,' but the plebeians soon found themselves the losers by the change, politically and economically.

1 Livy says that plebeians were admitted to the senate to fill the vacancies created by the tyrants. Mommsen adopts this view, and speaks as if they

310. Political Loss to the Plebs. No direct attack was made upon their political rights, it is true; but none was needed. The plebeians could control only a small minority of votes in the assembly of the centuries, they could hold no office, and they had no way even to get a desired measure considered. They could vote at best only upon laws proposed by patrician magistrates, and they could help elect only patrician officers who had been nominated by other patricians. The patrician senate, too, had a final veto upon any election or vote of the mixed centuries, and, in the last resort, the patrician consuls could always fall back upon the patrician augurs to prevent a possible plebeian victory by an appeal to religious superstition. Thus the immediate political loss to the plebs was very real, though it was wholly indirect. So far as the multitude were concerned, the selfish despotism of a jealous class had taken the place of the enlightened despotism of a paternal king.

311. Loss of Standing at Law. - A like result followed in cases at law. The kings had found it to their interest to see justice done the plebs, but now law became again exclusively a patrician possession, guarded by religion. It was unwritten, and to the plebs almost unknown; and it was easy, therefore, in any dispute with a plebeian, for a patrician, before patrician judges, to take shameful advantage of its intricacies and "fictions."

312. Economic Loss and Danger to the Plebs. The proof as to economic conditions is not so clear; but it appears probable that the victorious patricians, with their tremendous political advantages, sought to reduce the mass of free but poor plebeians to economic slavery to bring them back again to the position of clients dependent upon patrician patrons.1 The

continued to sit there, but Ihne successfully controverts any such theory (History, I. 136-138, and, better, Early Rome, 127–130).

1 Coulanges, 387-389.

savage laws regarding debt1 offered opportunity. The plebeians were more liable than formerly to fall into the clutches of the law, because the patricians now robbed them of their part in the public grazing lands, and because of the greater peril from hostile invasion to which Roman farmers were exposed for a time after the expulsion of the kings.

a. When Rome conquered a hostile city, even if she did not destroy it, she took away a half or a third of its territory. The kings sometimes settled colonies of landless plebeians upon this land (cf. Athenian cleruchies); sometimes part of the plow land was divided between the soldiers who had won it; but the greater portion of such new territory became a common pasture ground. It belonged to the state, and a small tax was paid for the right to graze cattle upon it.

Strictly, even then only the patricians had the right to its use, but the kings had extended the privilege to the plebs also. The patricians now resumed their exclusive right, and so reduced to painful straits the poorer plebeians who had eked out a scanty income from their small farms by such aid. To make matters worse, the patrician officers ceased to collect the grazing tax. Thus the public land was enjoyed by the patricians as private property, without purchase or tax, while, as a result, the tax on plebeian farms had to be increased, to supply the deficiency in the treasury. At the same time, the sending out of colonies of landless plebeians was stopped, partly because little land was won now for a long time, and partly because the patricians insisted upon keeping for themselves any that was secured.2

b. The conditions of warfare also bore more heavily upon the small farmer than upon the great landlord. He was called away frequently to battle; he had no servants to till his fields in his absence; and his possessions were more exposed to hostile forays than were the more strongly fortified holdings of his greater neighbor. Thus he might return to find his crops ruined by delay or his homestead in ashes, and he could no longer apply to the king-the patron of the plebs-for the old assistance.

1 Where there were several creditors they could cut up the body of the debtor if they chose. This provision was found even in the Twelve Tables (§ 321), and perhaps gave the suggestion for Shylock's vengeance in the Merchant of Venice. This interpretation of the passage in the Twelve Tables is disputed, however, by some recent scholars.

2 An excellent brief treatment of the public land is given in Tighe, 82-88. See, too, Mommsen, I. 343-346.

Thus, more

313. The Result: a Contest between the Orders. and more the plebeians were forced to borrow tax money from patrician money lenders or to get advances of seed corn and cattle from a neighboring patrician landlord. The debtor's land and person were both mortgaged for payment; and, on failure to pay, the patrician courts gave the creditor possession. The plebeian debtor became a client, or serf; or, if he refused to accept this result, he was cast into a dungeon, loaded with chains, and torn with stripes.

Against this condition the plebeians rose in a struggle that filled a century and a half, and they came soon to claim not only economic, but also social and political equality: that is, their share in public lands; right of intermarriage with patricians, and an equal knowledge of laws; and eligibility to all offices, even religious offices of political value. It is roughly correct to say that the first fifty years went to a struggle for economic security; but that, finding this ineffectual, the plebeians devoted themselves for the next hundred years to securing political rights.1

III. STEPS IN THE STRUGGLE.

A. THE TRIBUNES OF THE PLEBS.

314. The First Secession of the Plebs. In ten chapters Livy gives a graphic story of the first clash between the orders.2

The plebs, driven to despair, refuse to serve in a war against the Volscians, until the consul wins them over by freeing all debtors from prison. But when the army returns victorious, the other consul refuses

1 Two views exist as to the original uprising. The older and more common one holds that the plebeians revolted to escape being enslaved for debt almost as a class. The latter holds that in so simple a society so much debt was impossible, and that the plebeians rose to secure protection against the arbitrary despotism of patrician magistrates in individual cases. See Mommsen (I. 345-346) for the first view; Ihne presents the second idea (Early Rome, 129, 141, 142, and History, I. 147-149).

2 Dionysius gives it in sixty-eight longer chapters. There is a good abstract in Ihne, I. 144-149, and a longer one in Lewis, II. 73-84.

to recognize his colleague's acts; he arrests the debtors again, and enforces the law with merciless cruelty. On a renewal of the war, the betrayed plebs again decline to fight; but finally Manius Valerius (of the great "Valerian house that loved the people well") is made dictator, and him they trust. Victory again follows; but Valerius is unable to get the consent of the senate to his proposed changes in the law. So the plebeian army, still in array outside the gates, rises in revolt and marches away to a hill across the Anio, some three miles from Rome, where, they declare, they will build a Rome of their own. This would have meant the conquest of both the old and new cities by neighboring foes; so a compromise is patched up, and the plebs return from the "Sacred Mount."

315. The Tribunes and their Veto, 493 B.C.-The letter of the law was not changed, but the plebeians had secured means to prevent its execution in any given case. Two plebeian tribunes, it was agreed, should be chosen each year; the person of these officers was declared inviolable, and a curse was invoked upon the man who should interfere with their acts. For the protection of their class, they were given a portion of the old consular veto; that is, they could absolutely stop any magistrate in any executive act, and so prevent the arrest or punishment of any individual plebeian. But this veto could be exercised only within the city and by the tribunes in person.1 Hence a tribune's door was left always unlocked, so that a plebeian in trouble might have instant access.

316. Subsequent Growth of the Tribuneship. In consequence of later disturbances, the number of tribunes was increased to five, and finally to ten, so as to afford more efficient protection in all needful cases. Their power also grew, until they came to forbid not only executive acts, but likewise the putting of a vote in the centuries or in the senate, so that they could bring the whole government to a standstill.

"Absolute prohibition was in the most stern and abrupt fashion opposed to absolute command; and the quarrel was settled (?) by recognizing and regulating the discord."-MOMMSEN, I. 354, 355.

1 It is notable that this arrangement was not established by law but by a treaty between the two orders, as if they had been separate states. (See Ihne, Early Rome, 142, 143.)