The History of Rome. Book III

by Theodor Mommsen

  Reforms in the Military Service

  Of a kindred character was the proposal, which Cato made in the senate, to remedy the decline of the burgess-cavalry by the institution of four hundred new equestrian stalls[57]. The exchequer cannot have wanted means for the purpose; but the proposal appears to have been thwarted by the exclusive spirit of the nobility and their endeavour to remove from the burgess-cavalry those who were troopers merely and not knights. On the other hand, the serious emergencies of the war, which even induced the Roman government to make an attempt - fortunately unsuccessful - to recruit their armies after the Oriental fashion from the slave-market[58], compelled them to modify the qualifications hitherto required for service in the burgess-army, viz. a minimum census of 11,000 asses (43 pounds), and free birth. Apart from the fact that they took up for service in the fleet the persons of free birth rated between 4000 asses (17 pounds) and 1500 asses(6 pounds) and all the freedmen, the minimum census for the legionary was reduced to 4000 asses (17 pounds); and, in case of need, both those who were bound to serve in the fleet and the free-born rated between 1500 asses (6 pounds) and 375 asses (1 pound 10 shillings) were enrolled in the burgess-infantry. These innovations, which belong presumably to the end of the preceding or beginning of the present epoch, doubtless did not originate in party efforts any more than did the Servian military reform; but they gave a material impulse to the democratic party, in so far as those who bore civic burdens necessarily claimed and eventually obtained equalization of civic rights. The poor and the freedmen began to be of some importance in the commonwealth from the time when they served it; and chiefly from this cause arose one of the most important constitutional changes of this epoch - the remodelling of the comitia centuriata, which most probably took place in the same year in which the war concerning Sicily terminated

  Reform of the Centuries

  According to the order of voting hitherto followed in the centuriate comitia, although the freeholders were no longer - as down to the reform of Appius Claudius[59] they had been - the sole voters, the wealthy had the preponderance. The equites, or in other words the patricio-plebeian nobility, voted first, then those of the highest rating, or in other words those who had exhibited to the censor an estate of at least 100,000 asses (420 pounds)[60]; and these two divisions, when they kept together, had derided every vote. The suffrage of those assessed under the four following classes had been of doubtful weight; that of those whose valuation remained below the standard of the lowest class, 11,000 asses (43 pounds), had been essentially illusory. According to the new arrangement the right of priority in voting was withdrawn from the equites, although they retained their separate divisions, and it was transferred to a voting division chosen from the first class by lot. The importance of that aristocratic right of prior voting cannot be estimated too highly, especially at an epoch in which practically the influence of the nobility on the burgesses at large was constantly on the increase. Even the patrician order proper were still at this epoch powerful enough to fill the second consulship and the second censorship, which stood open in law alike to patricians and plebeians, solely with men of their own body, the former up to the close of this period (till 582), the latter even for a generation longer (till 623); and in fact, at the most perilous moment which the Roman republic ever experienced - in the crisis after the battle of Cannae - they cancelled the quite legally conducted election of the officer who was in all respects the ablest - the plebeian Marcellus - to the consulship vacated by the death of the patrician Paullus, solely on account of his plebeianism. At the same time it is a significant token of the nature even of this reform that the right of precedence in voting was withdrawn only from the nobility, not from those of the highest rating; the right of prior voting withdrawn from the equestrian centuries passed not to a division chosen incidentally by lot from the whole burgesses, but exclusively to the first class. This as well as the five grades generally remained as they were; only the lower limit was probably shifted in such a way that the minimum census was, for the right of voting in the centuries as for service in the legion, reduced from 11,000 to 4000 asses. Besides, the formal retention of the earlier rates, while there was a general increase in the amount of men's means, involved of itself in some measure an extension of the suffrage in a democratic sense. The total number of the divisions remained likewise unchanged; but, while hitherto, as we have said, the 18 equestrian centuries and the 80 of the first class had, standing by themselves, the majority in the 193 voting centuries, in the reformed arrangement the votes of the first class were reduced to 70, with the result that under all circumstances at least the second grade came to vote. Still more important, and indeed the real central element of the reform, was the connection into which the new voting divisions were brought with the tribal arrangement. Formerly the centuries originated from the tribes on the footing, that whoever belonged to a tribe had to be enrolled by the censor in one of the centuries. From the time that the non-freehold burgesses had been enrolled in the tribes, they too came thus into the centuries, and, while they were restricted in the comitia tributai to the four urban divisions, they had in the comitia centuriata formally the same right with the freehold burgesses, although probably the censorial arbitrary prerogative intervened in the composition of the centuries, and granted to the burgesses enrolled in the rural tribes the preponderance also in the centuriate assembly. This preponderance was established by the reformed arrangement on the legal footing, that of the 70 centuries of the first class, two were assigned to each tribe and, accordingly, the non-freehold burgesses obtained only eight of them; in a similar way the preponderance must have been conceded also in the four other grades to the freehold burgesses. In a like spirit the previous equalization of the freedmen with the free-born in the right of voting was set aside at this time, and even the freehold freedmen were assigned to the four urban tribes. This was done in the year 534 by one of the most notable men of the party of reform, the censor Gaius Flaminius, and was then repeated and more stringently enforced fifty years later (585) by the censor Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, the father of the two authors of the Roman revolution. This reform of the centuries, which perhaps in its totality proceeded likewise from Flaminius, was the first important constitutional change which the new opposition wrung from the nobility, the first victory of the democracy proper. The pith of it consists partly in the restriction of the censorial arbitrary rule, partly in the restriction of the influence of the nobility on the one hand, and of the non-freeholders and the freedmen on the other, and so in the remodelling of the centuriate comitia according to the principle which already held good for the comitia of the tribes; a course which commended itself by the circumstance that elections, projects of law, criminal impeachments, and generally all affairs requiring the co-operation of the burgesses, were brought throughout to the comitia of the tribes and the more unwieldy centuries were but seldom called together, except where it was constitutionally necessary or at least usual, in order to elect the censors, consuls, and praetors, and in order to resolve upon an aggressive war.

  Thus this reform did not introduce a new principle into the constitution, but only brought into general application the principle that had long regulated the working of the practically more frequent and more important form of the burgess-assemblies. Its democratic, but by no means demagogic, tendency is clearly apparent in the position which it took up towards the proper supports of every really revolutionary party, the proletariate and the freedmen. For that reason the practical significance of this alteration in the order of voting regulating the primary assemblies must not be estimated too highly. The new law of election did not prevent, and perhaps did not even materially impede, the contemporary formation of a new politically privileged order. It is certainly not owing to the mere imperfection of tradition, defective as it undoubtedly is, that we are nowhere able to point to a practical influence exercised by this much-discussed reform on the course of political affairs. An intimate connection, we may add, subsist
ed between this reform, and the already-mentioned abolition of the Roman burgess-communities sine suffragio, which were gradually merged in the community of full burgesses. The levelling spirit of the party of progress suggested the abolition of distinctions within the middle class, while the chasm between burgesses and non-burgesses was at the same time widened and deepened.

  Results of the Efforts at Reform

  Reviewing what the reform party of this age aimed at and obtained, we find that it undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to check, and to a certain extent succeeded in checking, the spread of decay - more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the relaxation of the old strict and frugal habits - as well as the preponderating political influence of the new nobility. But we fail to discover any higher political aim. The discontent of the multitude and the moral indignation of the better classes found doubtless in this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression; but we do not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it. A certain want of thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour, and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little good for the sequel. Whether the disease could be remedied at all by human skill, remains fairly open to question; the Roman reformers of this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat inadequate and narrow-minded fashion.

  Demagogism

  But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the side of the burgesses, so it witnessed also the emergence of a demagogism that flattered the populace alongside of the respectable and useful party of opposition. Cato was already acquainted with men who made a trade of demagogism; who had a morbid propensity for speechifying, as others had for drinking or for sleeping; who hired listeners, if they could find no willing audience otherwise; and whom people heard as they heard the market-crier, without listening to their words or, in the event of needing help, entrusting themselves to their hands. In his caustic fashion the old man describes these fops formed after the model of the Greek talkers of the agora, dealing in jests and witticisms, singing and dancing, ready for anything; such an one was, in his opinion, good for nothing but to exhibit himself as harlequin in a procession and to bandy talk with the public - he would sell his talk or his silence for a bit of bread. In reality these demagogues were the worst enemies of reform. While the reformers insisted above all things and in every direction on moral amendment, demagogism preferred to insist on the limitation of the powers of the government and the extension of those of the burgesses.

  Abolition of the Dictatorship

  Under the former head the most important innovation was the practical abolition of the dictatorship. The crisis occasioned by Quintus Fabius and his popular opponents in 537[61] gave the death-blow to this all-along unpopular institution. Although the government once afterwards, in 538, under the immediate impression produced by the battle of Cannae, nominated a dictator invested with active command, it could not again venture to do so in more peaceful times. On several occasions subsequently (the last in 552), sometimes after a previous indication by the burgesses of the person to be nominated, a dictator was appointed for urban business; but the office, without being formally abolished, fell practically into desuetude. Through its abeyance the Roman constitutional system, so artificially constructed, lost a corrective which was very desirable with reference to its peculiar feature of collegiate magistrates[62]; and the government, which was vested with the sole power of creating a dictatorship or in other words of suspending the consuls, and ordinarily designated also the person who was to be nominated as dictator, lost one of its most important instruments. Its place was but very imperfectly supplied by the power - which the senate thenceforth claimed - of conferring in extraordinary emergencies, particularly on the sudden outbreak of revolt or war, a quasi-dictatorial power on the supreme magistrates for the time being, by instructing them "to take measures for the safety of the commonwealth at their discretion", and thus creating a state of things similar to the modern martial law.

  Election of Priests by the Community

  Along with this change the formal powers of the people in the nomination of magistrates as well as in questions of government, administration, and finance, received a hazardous extension. The priesthoods - particularly those politically most important, the colleges of men of lore - according to ancient custom filled up the vacancies in their own ranks, and nominated also their own presidents, where these corporations had presidents at all; and in fact, for such institutions destined to transmit the knowledge of divine things from generation to generation, the only form of election in keeping with their spirit was cooptation. It was therefore - although not of great political importance - significant of the incipient disorganization of the republican arrangements, that at this time (before 542), while election into the colleges themselves was left on its former footing, the designation of the presidents - the curiones and pontifices - from the ranks of those corporations was transferred from the colleges to the community. In this case, however, with a pious regard for forms that is genuinely Roman, in order to avoid any error, only a minority of the tribes, and therefore not the "people", completed the act of election.

  Interference of the Community in War and Administration Of greater importance was the growing interference of the burgesses in questions as to persons and things belonging to the sphere of military administration and external policy. To this head belong the transference of the nomination of the ordinary staff-officers from the general to the burgesses, which has been already mentioned[63]; the elections of the leaders of the opposition as commanders-in-chief against Hannibal[64]; the unconstitutional and irrational decree of the people in 537, which divided the supreme command between the unpopular generalissimo and his popular lieutenant who opposed him in the camp as well as at home[65]; the tribunician complaint laid before the burgesses, charging an officer like Marcellus with injudicious and dishonest management of the war (545), which even compelled him to come from the camp to the capital and there demonstrate his military capacity before the public; the still more scandalous attempts to refuse by decree of the burgesses to the victor of Pydna his triumph[66]; the investiture - suggested, it is true, by the senate - of a private man with extraordinary consular authority (544[67]); the dangerous threat of Scipio that, if the senate should refuse him the chief command in Africa, he would seek the sanction of the burgesses (549[68]); the attempt of a man half crazy with ambition to extort from the burgesses, against the will of the government, a declaration of war in every respect unwarranted against the Rhodians (587[69]); and the new constitutional axiom, that every state-treaty acquired validity only through the ratification of the people.

  Interference of the Community with the Finances

  This joint action of the burgesses in governing and in commanding was fraught in a high degree with peril. But still more dangerous was their interference with the finances of the state; not only because any attack on the oldest and most important right of the government - the exclusive administration of the public property - struck at the root of the power of the senate, but because the placing of the most important business of this nature - the distribution of the public domains - in the hands of the primary assemblies of the burgesses necessarily dug the grave of the republic. To allow the primary assembly to decree the transference of public property without limit to its own pocket is not only wrong, but is the beginning of the end; it demoralizes the best-disposed citizens, and gives to the proposer a power incompatible with a free commonwealth. Salutary as was the distribution of the public land, and doubly blameable as was the senate accordingly for omitting to cut off this most dangerous of all weapons of agitation by voluntarily distributing the occupied lands, yet Gaius Flaminius, when he came to the burgesses in 522 with the proposal to distribute the domains of Picen
um, undoubtedly injured the commonwealth more by the means than he benefited it by the end. Spurius Cassius had doubtless two hundred and fifty years earlier proposed the same thing[70]; but the two measures, closely as they coincided in the letter, were yet wholly different, inasmuch as Cassius submitted a matter affecting the community to that community while it was in vigour and self-governing, whereas Flaminius submitted a question of state to the primary assembly of a great empire.