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

by Dionysius of Halicarnassus

  [18.1] This was the arrangement he made of the entire infantry, consisting of both the heavy-armed and light-armed troops. As for the cavalry, he chose them out of such as had the highest rating and were of distinguished birth, forming eighteen centuries of them, and added them to the first eighty centuries of the heavy-armed infantry; these centuries of cavalry were also commanded by persons of the greatest distinction. [2] The rest of the citizens, who had a rating of less than twelve minae and a half but were more numerous than those already mentioned, he put into a single century and exempted them from service in the army and from every sort of tax. Thus there were six divisions which the Romans call classes, by a slight change of the Greek word klêseis (for the verb which we Greeks pronounce in the imperative mood kalei, the Romans call cala, and the classes they anciently called caleses), [3] and the centuries included in these divisions amounted to one hundred and ninety-three. The first class contained ninety-eight centuries, counting the cavalry; the second, twenty-two, counting the artificers; the third, twenty; the fourth, again, contained twenty-two, counting the trumpeters and horn-blowers; the fifth, thirty; and the last of all, one century, consisting of the poor citizens.

  [19] In pursuance of this arrangement he levied troops according to the division of the centuries, and imposed taxes in proportion to the valuation of their possessions. For instance, whenever he had occasion to raise ten thousand men, or, if it should so happen, twenty thousand, he would divide that number among the hundred and ninety-three centuries and then order each century to furnish the number of men that fell to its share. As to the expenditures that would be needed for the provisioning of soldiers while on duty and for the various warlike supplies, he would first calculate how much money would be sufficient, and having in like manner divided that sum among the hundred and ninety-three centuries, he would order every man to pay his share towards it in proportion to his rating. [2] Thus it happened that those who had the largest possessions, being fewer in number but distributed into more centuries, were obliged to serve oftener and without any intermission, and to pay greater taxes than the rest; that those who had small and moderate possessions, being more numerous but distributed into fewer centuries, serve seldom and in rotation and paid small taxes, and that those whose possessions were not sufficient to maintain them were exempt from all burdens. [3] Tullius made none of these regulations without reason, but from the conviction that all men look upon their possessions as the prizes at stake in war and that it is for the sake of retaining these that they all endure its hardships; he thought it right, therefore, that those who had greater prizes at stake should suffer greater hardships, both with their persons and with their possessions, that those who had less at stake should be less burdened in respect to both, and that those who had no loss to fear should endure no hardships, but be exempt from taxes by reason of their poverty and from military service because they paid no tax. For at that time the Romans received no pay as soldiers from the public treasury but served at their own expense. [4] Accordingly, he did not think it right either that those should pay taxes who were so far from having wherewithal to pay them that they were in want of the necessities of daily life, or that such as contributed nothing to the public taxes should, like mercenary troops, be maintained in the field at the expense of others.

  [20.1] Having by this means laid upon the rich the whole burden of both the dangers and expenses and observing that they hand discontented, he contrived by another method to relieve their uneasiness and mitigate their resentment by granting to them an advantage which would make them complete masters of the commonwealth, while he excluded the poor from any part in the government; and he effected this without the plebeians noticing it. This advantage that he gave to the rich related to the assemblies, where the matters of greatest moment were ratified by the people. [2] I have already said before that by the ancient laws the people had control over the three most important and vital matters: they elected the magistrates, both civil and military; they sanctioned and repealed laws; and they declared war and made peace. In discussing and deciding these matters they voted by curiae, and citizens of the smallest means had an equal vote with those of the greatest; but as the rich were few in number, as may well be supposed, and the poor much more numerous, the latter carried everything by a majority of votes. [3] Tullius, observing this, transferred this preponderance of votes from the poor to the rich. For whenever he thought proper to have magistrates elected, a law considered, or war to be declared, he assembled the people by centuries instead of by curiae. And the first centuries that he called to express their opinion were those with the highest rating, consisting of the eighteen centuries of cavalry and the eighty centuries of infantry. [4] As these centuries amounted to three more than all the rest together, if they agreed they prevailed over the others and the matter was decided. But in case these were not all of the same mind, then he called the twenty-two centuries of the second class; and if the votes were still divided, he called the centuries of the third class, and, in the fourth place, those of the fourth class; and this he continued to do till ninety-seven centuries concurred in the same opinion. [5] And if after the calling of the fifth class this had not yet happened but the opinions of the hundred and ninety-two centuries were equally divided, he then called the last century, consisting of the mass of the citizens who were poor and for that reason exempt from all military service and taxes; and whichever side this century joined, that side carried the day. But this seldom happened and was next to impossible. Generally the question was determined by calling the first class, and it rarely went as far as the fourth; so that the fifth and the last were superfluous.

  [21.1] In establishing this political system, which gave so great an advantage to the rich, Tullius outwitted the people, as I said, without their noticing it and excluded the poor from any part in public affairs. For they all thought that they had an equal share in the government because every man was asked his opinion, each in his own century; but they were deceived in this, that the whole century, whether it consisted of a small or a very large number of citizens, had but one vote; and also in that the centuries which voted first, consisting of men of the highest rating, though they were more in number than all the rest, yet contained fewer citizens; but, above all, in that the poor, who were very numerous, had but one vote and were the last called. [2] When this had been brought about, the rich, though paying out large sums and exposed without intermission to the dangers of war, were less inclined to feel aggrieved now that they had obtained control of the most important matters and had taken the whole power out of the hands of those who were not performing the same services; and the poor, who had but the slightest share in the government, finding themselves exempt both from taxes and from military service, prudently and quietly submitted to this diminution of their power; and the commonwealth itself had the advantage of seeing the same persons who were to deliberate concerning its interests allotted the greatest share of the dangers and ready to do whatever required to be done. [3] This form of government was maintained by the Romans for many generations, but is altered in our times and changed to a more democratic form, some urgent needs having forced the change, which was effected, not by abolishing the centuries, but by no longer observing the strict ancient manner of calling them — a fact which I myself have noted, having often been present at the elections of their magistrates. But this is not the proper occasion to discuss these matters.

  [22.1] Thereupon Tullius, having completed the business of the census, commanded all the citizens to assemble in arms in the largest field before the city; and having drawn up the horse in their respective squadrons and the foot in their massed ranks, and placed the light-armed troops each in their own centuries, he performed an expiatory sacrifice for them with a bull, a ram and a boar. These victims he ordered to be led three times round the army and then sacrificed them to Mars, to whom that field is consecrated. [2] The Romans are to this day purified by this same expiatory sacrifice, after the completion of each
census, by those who are invested with the most sacred magistracy, and they call the purification a lustrum.

  The number of all the Romans who then gave in a valuation of their possessions was, as appears by the censors’ records, 84,700. [3] This king also took no small care to enlarge the body of citizens, hitting upon a method that had been overlooked by all the kings before him. For they, by receiving foreigners and bestowing upon them equal rights of citizenship without rejecting any, whatever their birth or condition, had indeed rendered the city populous; [4] but Tullius permitted even manumitted slaves to enjoy these same rights, unless they chose to return to their own countries. For he ordered these also to report the value of their property at the same time as all the other free men, and he distributed them among the four city tribes, in which the body of freedmen, however numerous, continued to be ranked even to my day; and he permitted them to share in all the privileges which were open to the rest of the plebeians.

  [23.1] The patricians being displeased and indignant at this, he called an assembly of the people and told them that he wondered at those who were displeased at his course, first, for thinking that free men differed from slaves by their very nature rather than by their condition, and, second, for not determining by men’s habits and character, rather than by the accidents of their fortune, those who were worthy of honours, particularly when they saw how unstable a thing good fortune is and how subject to sudden change, and how difficult it is for anyone, even of the most fortunate, to say how long it will remain with him. [2] He asked them also to consider how many states, both barbarian and Greek, had passed from slavery to freedom and how many from freedom to slavery. He called it great folly on their part if, after they had granted liberty to such of their slaves as deserved it, they envied them the rights of citizens; and he advised them, if they thought them bad men, not to make them free, and if good men, not to ignore them because they were foreigners. [3] He declared that they were doing an absurd and stupid thing, if, while permitting all strangers to share the rights of citizenship without distinguishing their condition or inquiring closely whether any of them had been manumitted or not, they regarded such as had been slaves among themselves as unworthy of this favour. And he said that, though they thought themselves wiser than other people, they did not even see what lay at their very feet and was to be observed every day and what was clear to the most ordinary men, namely, that not only the masters would take great care not to manumit any of their slaves rashly, for fear of granting the greatest of human blessings indiscriminately, but the slaves too would be more zealous to observe their masters faithfully when they knew that if they were thought worthy of liberty they should presently become citizens of a great and flourishing state and receive both these blessings from their masters. [4] He concluded by speaking of the advantage that would result from this policy, reminding those who understood such matters, and informing the ignorant, that to a state which aimed at supremacy and thought itself worthy of great things nothing was so essential as a large population, in order that it might be equal to carrying on all its wars with its own armed forces and might not exhaust itself as well as its wealth in hiring mercenary troops; and for this reason, he said, the former kings had granted citizenship to all foreigners. [5] But if they enacted this law also, great numbers of youths would be reared from those who were manumitted and the state would never lack for armed forces of its own, but would always have sufficient troops, even if it should be forced to make war against all the world. [6] And besides this advantage to the public, the richest men would privately receive many benefits if they permitted the freedmen to share in the government, since in the assemblies and in the voting and in their other acts as citizens they would receive their reward in the very situations in which they most needed it, and furthermore would be leaving the children of these freedmen as so many clients to their posterity. [7] These arguments of Tullius induced the patricians to permit this custom to be introduced into the commonwealth, and to this day it continues to be observed by the Romans as one of their sacred and unalterable usages.

  [24.1] Now that I have come to this part of my narrative, I think it necessary to give an account of the customs which at that time prevailed among the Romans with regard to slaves, in order that no one may accuse either the king who first undertook to make citizens of those who had been slaves, or the Romans who accepted the law, of recklessly abandoning their noble traditions. [2] The Romans acquired their slaves by the most just means; for they either purchased them from the state at an auction as part of the spoils, or the general permitted the soldiers to keep the prisoners they had taken together with the rest of the booty, or else they bought them of those who had obtained possession of them by these same means. [3] So that neither Tullius, who established this custom, nor those who received and maintained thought they were doing anything dishonourable or detrimental to the public interest, if those who had lost both their country and their liberty in war and had proved loyal to those who had enslaved them, or to those who had purchased them from these, had both those blessings restored to them by their masters. [4] Most of these slaves obtained their liberty as a free gift because of meritorious conduct, and this was the best kind of discharge from their masters; but a few paid a ransom raised by lawful and honest labour.

  This, however, is not the case in our day, but things have come to such a state of confusion and the noble traditions of the Roman commonwealth have become so debased and sullied, that some who have made a fortune by robbery, housebreaking, prostitution and every other base means, purchase their freedom with the money so acquired and straightway are Romans. [5] Others, who have been confidants and accomplices of their masters in poisonings, receive from them this favour as their reward. Some are freed in order that, when they have received the monthly allowance of corn given by the public or some other largesse distributed by the men in power to the poor among the citizens, they may bring it to those who granted them their freedom. And others owe their freedom to the levity of their masters and to their vain thirst for popularity. [6] I, at any rate, know of some who have allowed all their slaves to be freed after their death, in order that they might be called good men when they were dead and that many people might follow their biers wearing their liberty-caps; indeed, some of those taking part in these processions, as one might have heard from those who knew, have been malefactors just out of jail, who had committed crimes deserving of a thousand deaths. Most people, nevertheless, as they look upon these stains that can scarce be washed away from the city, are grieved and condemn the custom, looking upon it as unseemly that a dominant city which aspires to rule the whole world should make such men citizens.

  [7] One might justly condemn many other customs also which were wisely devised by the ancients but are shamefully abused by the men of to-day. Yet, for my part, I do not believe that this law ought to be abolished, lest as a result some greater evil should break out to the detriment of the public; but I do say that it ought to be amended, as far as possible, and that great reproaches and disgraces hard to be wiped out should not be permitted entrance into the body politic. [8] And I could wish that the censors, preferably, or, if that may not be, then the consuls, would take upon themselves the care of this matter, since it requires the control of some it magistracy, and that they would make inquiries about the persons who are freed each year — who they are and for what reason they have been freed and how — just as they inquire into the lives of the knights and senators; after which they should enroll in the tribes such of them as they find worthy to be citizens and allow them to remain in the city, but should expel from the city the foul and corrupt herd under the specious pretence of sending them out as a colony. These are the things, then, which as the subject required it, I thought it both necessary and just to say to those who censure the customs of the Romans.

  [25.1] Tullius showed himself a friend to the people, not only in these measures by which he seemed to lessen the authority of the senate and the power of the patrici
ans, but also in those by which he diminished the royal power, of half of which he deprived himself. [2] For whereas the kings before him had thought proper to have all causes brought before them and had determined all suits both private and public as they themselves thought fit, he, making a distinction between public and private suits, took cognizance himself of all crimes which affected the public, but in private cases appointed private persons to be judges, prescribing for them as norms and standards the laws which he himself had established.