Delphi Complete Works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 79)

by Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  [10.1] While he was thus speaking there was much praise from the assembly, some commending him for his loyalty and justice to his benefactors, others for his humanity and generosity to the poor, and still others for his moderation and democratic spirit towards those of humbler station; but all loved and admired him for being a lawful and just ruler. [2] The assembly having been dismissed, during the following days he ordered lists to be made of all the debtors who were unable to keep their pledges, with the amount each owed and the names of the creditors; and when this list had been delivered to him, he commanded tables to be placed in the Forum and in the presence of all the citizens counted out to the lenders the amount of the debts. [3] Having finished with this, he published a royal edict commanding that all those who were enjoying the use of the public lands and holding them for their own should quit possession within a certain specified time, and that those citizens who had no allotments of land should give in their names to him. He also drew up laws, in some cases renewing old laws that had been introduced by Romulus and Numa Pompilius and had fallen into abeyance, and establishing others himself. [4] While he was pursuing these measures, the patricians were growing indignant as they saw the power of the senate being overthrown, and they proceeded to a plan of action which was no longer the same as before, but the opposite. [5] For whereas at first they had determined to deprive him of his illegal power, to appoint interreges, and through them to choose one who should hold the office legally, they now thought they ought to acquiesce in the existing state of affairs and not to interfere at all. For it occurred to them that, if the senate attempted to place a man of its own choosing at the head of affairs, the people, when they came to give their votes, would oppose him; whereas, if they should leave the choice of the king to the people, all the curiae would elect Tullius and the result would be that he would seem to hold the office legally. They thought it better, therefore, to permit him to continue in the possession of the sovereignty by stealth and by deceiving the citizens rather than after persuading them and receiving it openly. [6] But none of their calculations availed them aught, so artfully did Tullius outmanoeuvre them and get possession of the royal power against their will. For having long before caused a report to be spread through the city that the patricians were plotting against him, he came into the Forum meanly dressed and with a dejected countenance, accompanied by his mother Ocrisia, Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquinius, and all the royal family. And when great crowds flocked together at so unexpected a sight, he called an assembly, and ascending the tribunal, addressed them much as follows:

  [11.1] “It is no longer the children of Tarquinius alone whom I see in danger of suffering some injury at the hands of their enemies, but I am already coming to fear for my own life, lest I receive a bitter requital for my justice. For the patricians are plotting against me and I have received information that some of them are conspiring to kill me, not because they can charge me with any crime, great or trivial, but because they resent the benefits I have conferred and am prepared to confer upon the people and feel that they are being treated unjustly. [2] The money-lenders, for their part, feel aggrieved because I did not permit the poor among you to be haled to prison by them because of their debts and to be deprived of their liberty. And those who misappropriate and hold what belongs to the state, finding themselves obliged to give up the land which you acquired with your blood, are as angry as if they were being deprived of their inheritances instead of merely restoring what belongs to others. Those, again, who have been exempt from war taxes resent being compelled to give in a valuation of their property and to pay taxes in property to those valuations. But the general complaint of them all is that they will have to accustom themselves to live according to written laws and impartially dispense justice to you and receive it from you, instead of abusing the poor, as they now do, as if they were so many purchased slaves. [3] And making common cause of these complaints, they have taken counsel and sworn to recall the exiles and to restore the kingdom to Marcius’ sons, against whom you passed a vote forbidding them the use of fire and water for having assassinated Tarquinius, your king, a worthy man and a lover of his country, and, after they had committed such an act of pollution, for having failed to appear for their trial and thus condemned themselves to exile. And if I had not received early information of these designs, they would, with the assistance of a foreign force, have brought back the exiles into the city in the dead of night. [4] You all know, of course, what would have been the consequence of this, even without my mentioning it — that the Marcii, with the support of the patricians, after getting control of affairs without any trouble, would first have seized me, as the guardian of the royal family and as the person who had pronounced sentence against them, and after that would have destroyed these children and all the other kinsmen and friends of Tarquinius; and, as they have much of the savage and the tyrant in their nature, they would have treated our wives, mothers and daughters and all the female sex like slaves. [5] If, therefore, it is your pleasure also, citizens, to recall the assassins and make them kings, to banish the sons of your benefactors and to deprive them of the kingdom their grandfather left them, we shall submit to our fate. But we all, together with our wives and children, make supplication to you by all the gods and lesser divinities who watch over the lives of men that, in return for the many benefits Tarquinius, the grandfather of these children, never ceased to confer upon you, and in return for the many services I myself, as far as I have been able, have done you, you will grant us this single boon — to declare your own sentiments. [6] For if you have come to believe that any others are more worthy than we of this honour, the children, with all the other relations of Tarquinius, shall withdraw, leaving the city to you. As for me, I shall take a more generous resolution in my own case For I have already lived long enough both for virtue and for glory, and if I am disappointed of your goodwill, which I have preferred to every other good thing, I could never bring myself to live in disgrace among any other people. Take the rods, then, and give them to the patricians, if you wish; I shall not trouble you with my presence.”

  [12.1] While he was speaking these words and seemed about to leave the tribunal, they all raised a tremendous clamour, and mingling tears with their entreaties, besought him to remain and to retain control of affairs, fearing no one. Thereupon some of his partisans, who had stationed themselves in different parts of the Forum, following his instructions, cried out, “Make him king,” and demanded that the curiae should be called together and a vote taken; and after these had set the example, the whole populace was promptly of the same opinion. [2] Tullius, seeing this, no longer let the occasion slip, but told them that he felt very grateful to them for remembering his services; and after promising to confer even more benefits if they should make him king, he appointed a day for the election, at which he ordered everybody to be present including those from the country. [3] When the people had assembled he called the curiae and took the vote of each curia separately. And upon being judged worthy of the kingship by all the curiae, he then accepted it from the populace, telling the senate to go hang; for he did not ask that body to ratify the decision of the people, as it was accustomed to do. After coming to the sovereignty in this manner, he introduced many reforms in the civil administration and also carried on a great and memorable war against the Tyrrhenians. But I shall first give an account of his administrative reforms.

  [13.1] Immediately upon receiving the sovereignty he divided the public lands among those of the Romans who served others for hire. Next he caused both the laws relating to private contracts and those concerning torts to be ratified by the curiae; these laws were about fifty in number, of which I need not make any mention at present. [2] He also added two hills to the city, those called the Viminal and the Esquiline, each of which has the size of a fairly large city. These he divided among such of the Romans as had no homes of their own, so that they might build houses there; and he himself fixed his habitation there, in the best part of the Esquiline Hil
l. [3] This king was the last who enlarged the circuit of the city, by adding these two hills to the other five, after he had first consulted the auspices, as the law directed, and performed the other religious rites. Farther than this the building of the city has not yet progressed, since the gods, they say, have not permitted it; but all the inhabited places round it, which are many and large, are unprotected and without walls, and very easy to be taken by any enemies who may come. [4] If anyone wishes to estimate the size of Rome by looking at these suburbs he will necessarily be misled for want of a definite clue by which to determine up to what point it is still the city and where it ceases to be the city; so closely is the city connected with the country, giving the beholder the impression of a city stretching out indefinitely. [5] But if one should wish to measure Rome by the wall, which, though hard to be discovered by reason of the buildings that surround it in many places, yet preserves in several parts of it some traces of its ancient structure, and to compare it with the circuit of the city of Athens, the circuit of Rome would not seem to him very much larger than the other. But for an account of the extent and beauty of the city of Rome, as it existed in my day, another occasion will be more suitable.

  [14.1] After Tullius had surrounded the seven hills with one wall, he divided the city into four regions, which he named after the hills, calling the first the Palatine, the second the Suburan, the third the Colline, and the fourth the Esquiline region; and by this means he made the city contain four tribes, whereas it previously had consisted of but three. [2] And he ordered that the citizens inhabiting each of the four regions should, like persons living in villages, neither take up another abode nor be enrolled elsewhere; and the levies of troops, the collection of taxes for military purposes, and the other services which every citizen was bound to offer to the commonwealth, he no longer based upon the three national tribes, as aforetime, but upon the four local tribes established by himself. And over each region he appointed commanders, like heads of tribes or villages, whom he ordered to know what house each man lived in. [3] After this he commanded that there should be erected in every street by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood chapels to heroes whose statues stood in front of the houses, and he made a law that sacrifices should be performed to them every year, each family contributing a honey-cake. He directed also that the persons attending and assisting those who performed the sacrifices at these shrines on behalf of the neighbourhood should not be free men, but slaves, the ministry of servants being looked upon as pleasing to the heroes. [4] This festival the Romans still continued to celebrate even in my day in the most solemn and sumptuous manner a few days after the Saturnalia, calling it the Compitalia, after the streets; for compiti, is their name for streets. And they still observe the ancient custom in connexion with those sacrifices, propitiating the heroes by the ministry of their servants, and during these days removing every badge of their servitude, in order that the slaves, being softened by this instance of humanity, which has something great and solemn about it, may make themselves more agreeable to their masters and be less sensible of the severity of their condition.

  [15.1] Tullius also divided the country as a whole into twenty-six parts, according to Fabius, who calls these divisions tribes also and, adding the four city tribes to them, says that there were thirty tribes in all under Tullius. But according to Vennonius he divided the country into thirty-one parts, so that with the four city tribes the number was rounded out to the thirty-five tribes that exist down to our day. However, Cato, who is more worthy of credence than either of these authors, does not specify the number of the parts into which the country was divided. [2] After Tullius, therefore, had divided the country into a certain number of parts, whatever that number was, he built places of refuge upon such lofty eminences as could afford ample security for the husbandmen, and called them by a Greek name, pagi or “hills.” Thither all the inhabitants fled from the fields whenever a raid was made by enemies, and generally passed the night there. [3] These places also had their governors, whose duty it was to know not only the names of all the husbandmen who belonged to the same district but also the lands which afforded them their livelihood. And whenever there was occasion to summon the countrymen to take arms or to collect the taxes that were assessed against each of them, these governors assembled the men together and collected the money. And in order that the number of these husbandmen might not be hard to ascertain, but might be easy to compute and be known at once, he ordered them to erect altars to the gods who presided over and were guardians of the district, and directed them to assemble every year and honour these gods with public sacrifices. This occasion also he made one of the most solemn festivals, calling it the Paganalia; and he drew up laws concerning these sacrifices, which the Romans still observe. [4] Towards the expense of this sacrifice and of this assemblage he ordered all those of the same district to contribute each of them a certain piece of money, the men paying one kind, the women another and the children a third kind. When these pieces of money were counted by those who presided over the sacrifices, the number of people, distinguished by their sex and age, became known. [5] And wishing also, as Lucius Piso writes in the first book of his Annals, to know the number of the inhabitants of the city, and of all who were born and died and arrived at the age of manhood, he prescribed the piece of money which their relations were to pay for each — into the treasury of Ilithiya (called by the Romans Juno Lucina) for those who were born, into that of the Venus of the Grove (called by them Libitina) for those who died, and into the treasury of Juventas for those who were arriving at manhood. By means of these pieces of money he would know every year both the number of all the inhabitants and which of them were of military age. [6] After he had made these regulations, he ordered all the Romans to register their names and give in a monetary valuation of their property, at the same time taking the oath required by law that they had given in a true valuation in good faith; they were also to set down the names of their fathers, with their own age and the names of their wives and children, and every man was to declare in what tribe of the city or in what district of the country he lived. If any failed to give in their valuation, the penalty he established was that their property should be forfeited and they themselves whipped and sold for slaves. This law continued in force among the Romans for a long time.

  [16.1] After all had given in their valuations, Tullius took the registers and the size of their estates, introduced the wisest of all measures, and one which has been the source of the greatest advantages to the Romans, as the results have shown. [2] The measure was this: He selected from the whole number of the citizens one part, consisting of those whose property was rated the highest and amounted to no less than one hundred minae. Of these he formed eighty centuries, whom he ordered to be armed with Argolic bucklers, with spears, brazen helmets, corslets, greaves and swords. Dividing these centuries into two groups, he made forty centuries of younger men, whom he appointed to take the field in time of war, and forty of older men, whose duty it was, when the youth went forth to war, to remain in the city and guard everything inside the walls. [3] This was the first class; in wars it occupied a position in the forefront of the whole army. Next, from those who were left he took another part whose rating was under ten thousand drachmae but not less than seventy-five minae. Of these he formed twenty centuries and ordered them to wear the same armour as those of the first class, except that he took from them the corslets, and instead of the bucklers gave them shields. Here also he distinguished between those who were over forty-five years old and those who were of military age, constituting ten centuries of the younger men, whose duty it was to serve their country in the field, and ten of the older, to whom he committed the defence of the walls. This was the second class; in engagements they were drawn up behind those fighting in the front ranks. [4] The third class he constituted out of those who were left, taking such as had a rating of less than seven thousand five hundred drachmae but not less than fifty minae. The armour of these he diminished
not only by taking away the corslets, as from the second class, but also the greaves. [5] He formed likewise twenty centuries of these, dividing them, like the former, according to their age and assigning ten centuries to the younger men and ten to the older. In battles the post and station of these centuries was in the third line from the front.

  Again taking from the remainder those whose property amounted to less than five thousand drachmae but was as much as twenty-five minae, he formed a fourth class. This he also divided into twenty centuries, ten of which he composed of such as were in the vigour of their age, and the other ten of those who were just past it, in the same manner as with the former classes. He ordered the arms of these to be shields, swords and spears, and their post in engagements to be in the last line. [2] The fifth class, consisting of those whose property was between twenty-five minae and twelve minae and a half, he divided into thirty centuries. These were also distinguished according to their age, fifteen of the centuries being composed of the older men and fifteen of the younger. These he armed with javelins and slings, and placed outside the line of battle. [3] He ordered four unarmed centuries to follow those that were armed, two of them consisting of armourers and carpenters and of those whose business it was to prepare everything that might be of use in time of war, and the other two of trumpeters and horn-blowers and such as sounded the various calls with any other instruments. The artisans were attached to the second class and divided according to their age, one of their centuries following the older centuries, and the other the younger centuries; [4] the trumpeters and horn-blowers were added to the fourth class, and one of their centuries also consisted of the older men and the other of the younger. Out of all the centuries the bravest men were chosen as centurions, and each of these commanders took care that his century should yield a ready obedience to orders.