Plebeian Upward Mobility
The ill-fated attempt to establish a concept of citizenship reserved for patricians naturally came under fire from those excluded from its family-based system. The plebeians were originally composed of immigrants who had no sense of ancestors or relatedness to citizen families. They were a heterogenous group that included the rural and urban poor, but also some wealthy, successful families that had achieved upward mobility.[190] These wealthier plebeians especially had political ambitions of their own and pushed to expand the limits of citizenship and open up public offices to their class. From the latter fifth century, Rome’s domestic politics was dominated by the “struggle of the orders,” a class conflict between patricians and plebeians, with the plebeians gradually obtaining increased rights and political power.
Even early in the Republic, offices were divided between patricians and plebeians, with patricians holding the priesthoods of the rex sacrorum, the three major flamens (i.e, priests assigned to Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus), and the office of interrex (who supervised the state during the five-day period when consular elections were being held). Plebeians held the plebeian tribunate and plebeian aedileship (responsible for regulating festivals, regulating markets and maintaining public buildings). But there was equal power sharing for other offices: curule aedile (responsible for different festivals), consul, and censor, as well as for some religious offices of lesser importance. In general, the patricians gradually declined as families died out, but they retained “great prestige and political prominence.”[191] Plebeians and patricians would at times pool political assets and run for the consulship together.
By the middle of the fourth century bc the Roman aristocracy consisted of both plebeian and patrician families. From 342 bc, it was the practice that one consul would be a patrician and the other a plebeian. By 172 bc, due to the decline of many patrician families and the extinction of some, there were often two plebeian consuls “and henceforth the earlier sharing of the consulship was abandoned.”[192] The rise of the plebeians continued into the late Republic. When Sulla became dictator around 82 bc, he reduced the power of the plebeian tribunes and restored the power of the comitia centuriata, but this led to intense controversy and was abandoned in 70 bc.
Upward Social Mobility of Incorporated Peoples
From the earliest period of the Republic, there are examples of the social fluidity of the Roman aristocracy. Appius Claudius came to Rome from Sabine territory in 509 bc and became a member of the patriciate. L. Fulvius Curvus, from Tusculum became consul 60 years after Rome conquered Tusculum in 381 bc. The consulships from 293–280 bc include six new clans, with two more by 264 bc; at least five of these were non-Roman in origin, and the Roman clans were plebeian.
Openness to foreigners can also be seen in that Latium, comprising the nearby towns with similar language and culture, had rights of commercium (could own property in other towns), connubium (marriage), and migrandi (migration). This set a precedent for later times, when other, non-Latin peoples would be incorporated into Roman society with partial citizenship (civitas sine suffragio). Such peoples might later be upgraded to full citizenship: e.g., the Sabines were upgraded from civitas sine suffragio to full citizenship in 268 bc. This openness to other peoples was “a key element in Rome’s later imperial success.”[193]
Instead of completely destroying the elites of conquered peoples, Rome often absorbed them, granting them at first partial, and later full, citizenship. The result was to bind “the diverse Italian peoples into a single nation.”[194] All conquered peoples were required to provide soldiers, allowing Rome to continuously engage in warfare. If a person from a conquered area moved to Rome, he could receive full citizenship. New tribes were continually created from conquered groups, with the total number reaching 31 in 332 bc.[195]
Those granted citizenship were assigned to a tribe and a century in the comitia centuriata, expanding the Roman population and ultimately Roman power. For example, when the Romans conquered the Etruscan city of Veii in 396 bc, they created four new tribes, with membership assigned by the Roman censor.
This process continued into the late Republic: the Social War of 90–88 bc resulted in full citizenship for non-Romans in central and southern Italy. Eventually citizenship began to be extended beyond Italy. “By the time of Julius Caesar’s assassination ... in 44 B.C. Italy had become Romanized, and the same process (albeit at a much slower pace) was already under way in the overseas provinces.”[196]
The openness of the Roman system can also be seen in the treatment of freed slaves. Freed slaves became Roman citizens and became clients of their former masters. Early on, slaves were closely related Latins captured in war and easily integrated, but the law was not changed even after slaves began coming predominantly from other cultures and ethnicities.
Whatever the origins of this practice, Rome never altered it. From the fourth century B.C. onwards, as Rome’s conquest of Italy and the Mediterranean produced a massive influx of slaves, Roman society was constantly receiving into its midst new citizens of foreign origin, through manumission. Such openness contributed to Rome’s later success as an imperial power capable of uniting diverse peoples into a workable social system.[197]
By 264 bc (the start of the First Punic War), there were three classes of Romans: (1) citizens in an area stretching across central Italy; (2) the states allied with Rome (Etruscans, etc.), run by “landed elites who had the same basic social, economic, and political interests and outlook as the Roman aristocracy”; (3) Latin colonies established throughout Italy.[198] All were part of the Roman military organization. Colonies and allies could run their own domestic affairs, but Rome controlled their foreign policy. Rome was thus said to be able to command 730,000 infantry and 72,700 cavalrymen when it entered the First Punic War—an impressive force indeed. Rome had become a world power and was on a collision course with Carthage.
Finally, it is important to realize that the openness of Roman society was not generally true of other Mediterranean city-states, Greece in particular.
Even though Roman society was very hierarchical and not at all democratic, it was far more open than the city-states of Greece. As a result, Rome succeeded in uniting the very diverse peoples of Italy into a single confederation, whereas the states of mainland Greece, although bound together by a common language and culture, never overcame the exclusionary nature of their institutions to form a lasting union. Greek unity was achieved only when imposed by the superior force of a foreign power such as Macedon or Rome. … This social and political receptivity was chiefly responsible for Rome’s lasting success as an imperial power.[199]
The Emperor Claudius (r. ad 41–54), as recorded by Tacitus, was well aware of this contrast between Greece and Rome, as seen in his comments in a debate about whether the Gauls, already citizens, would be eligible for one of the highest honors of Roman society—membership in the senate. Claudius emphasized the long history of non-Romans assuming position and power at Rome (including his own ancestors), as well as their contributions to Rome and their sense of devotion to Rome, claiming that the new peoples would assimilate and contribute to Roman society.
In my own ancestors, the eldest of whom, Clausus, a Sabine by extraction, was made simultaneously a citizen and the head of a patrician house, I find encouragement to employ the same policy in my administration, by transferring hither all true excellence, let it be found where it will. For I am not unaware that the Julii came to us from Alba, the Coruncanii from Camerium, the Porcii from Tusculum; that … members were drafted into the senate from Etruria, from Lucania, from the whole of Italy; and that finally Italy itself was extended to the Alps, in order that not individuals merely but countries and nationalities should form one body under the name of Romans. … What else proved fatal to Lacedaemon and Athens, in spite of their power in arms, but their policy of holding the conquered aloof as alien-born? But the sagacity of our own founder Romulus was such that several times he fought and naturali
zed a people in the course of the same day. … If you survey the whole of our wars, not one was finished within a shorter period than that against the Gauls: thenceforward there has been a continuous and loyal peace. Now that customs, culture, and the ties of marriage have blended them with ourselves, let them bring among us their gold and their riches instead of retaining them beyond the pale! … Plebeian magistrates followed the patrician; Latin, the plebeian; magistrates from the other races of Italy, the Latin.[200]
Claudius’s position won the day.
In the long run, welcoming foreigners resulted in Rome losing its ethnic homogeneity which likely contributed to a decline in the qualities that established and maintained Roman power as well as the increasing the social and political conflicts of the later Republic and the Empire. Tenney Frank reviewed the history of race-mixing at Rome by examining the likely origin of names on inscriptions, concluding that “it is probable that when [Juvenal and Tacitus] wrote [i.e., late first century–early second century A.D.] a very small percentage of the free plebeians on the streets of Rome could prove unmixed Italian descent. By far the larger part—perhaps ninety percent—had Oriental blood in their veins.”[201]
Tenney, writing in 1916 during the highwater mark of Darwinian social science (see Chapter 6), proposes several other causes of “‘race suicide,’ so freely gossiped about by writers of the empire.”[202] These include the many wars in which the soldiers were of free-born native stock (and therefore performing military duties while slaves were free to reproduce), as well as low fertility of the upper classes. The latter is truly remarkable:
By combining epigraphical and literary references, a fairly full history of the noble families can be procured, and this reveals a startling inability of such families to perpetuate themselves. We know, for instance, in Caesar’s day [mid-first century B.C.] of forty-five patricians, only one of whom is represented by posterity when Hadrian came to power [117 A. D.]. The Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii, Manlii, Valerii, and all the rest, with the exception of the Cornelii, have disappeared. Augustus and Claudius [early first century A.D.] raised twenty-five families to the patriciate, and all but six of them disappear before Nerva’s reign [96–98 A. D.]. Of the families of nearly four hundred senators recorded in 65 A.D. under Nero, all trace of a half is lost by Nerva’s day, a generation later.[203]
What lay behind and constantly reacted upon all such causes of Rome’s disintegration was, after all, to a considerable extent, the fact that the people who built Rome had given way to a different race. The lack of energy and enterprise, the failure of foresight and commonsense, the weakening of moral and political stamina, all were concomitant with the gradual diminution of the stock which, during the earlier days, had displayed these qualities. …
We may even admit that had the new races had time to amalgamate and attain a political consciousness, a more brilliant and versatile civilization might have come to birth. That, however, is not the question. It is apparent that at least the political and moral qualities which counted most in the building of the Italian federation, the army organization, the provincial administrative system of the Republic, were the qualities most needed in holding the empire together. And however brilliant the endowment of the new citizens, these qualities they lacked.[204]
A good sign of the population replacement—apparent in the United States in Tenney’s time and much more obvious today when so many monuments erected by the White majority (including statues of Christopher Columbus that had been erected in Italian neighborhoods[205]) are being torn down—was that there was an increasing number of shrines dedicated to foreign gods.
One after another of the emperors gained popularity with the rabble by erecting a shrine to some foreign Baal, or a statue to Isis in his chapel, in much the same way that our cities are lining their park drives with tributes to Garibaldi, Pulaski, and who knows what-vitch.[206]
Conclusion: Rome as a Failed Group
Evolutionary Strategy
The Roman variant of the Indo-European cultural pattern during the Republic may be viewed as a strategy incorporating several central facets:
the I-E military ethos—military prestige being the highest form of public aspiration, and aristocratic families competing intensely for military glory;
patron-client relationships binding together people from different social classes into relations of mutual obligation and reciprocity, a practice deriving from the Männerbünde groups characteristic of other I-E cultures;
non-despotic, aristocratic government, with separation of decision-making power and well-defined term limits;
permeability of the social classes, so that social mobility was possible for talented plebeians;
openness to incorporating new peoples into the power structure, without which Rome would not have been able to mount its powerful military campaigns.
Republican Rome was essentially a group of aristocratic clans competing for honor and glory by political maneuvering to achieve the consulship and thus be in command of military operations against neighboring groups. One might think of the Roman system as an urbanized version of the Männerbund system, with a given number of competing families at any particular time, all living within a delimited geographical area. Since consuls were selected by a military convocation, this formalized political system typically had a similar result as the Männerbund system: selection of the man most capable of leading the army—the man whose leadership would be most likely to produce victory and thus the material rewards of conquest. At the same time, by having two consuls with short terms, the system was designed to prevent the domination of one family (unlike the case with later European aristocracies), helping to ensure that military accomplishment rather than heredity would be critical for success. The system thus had the essential features of a free market. Over time, this free market in talent was expanded to include plebeians and members of conquered peoples being elected to the highest offices of the state. Upward (as well as downward) mobility were possible.
Rome was a slave-holding society, with chattel slavery becoming common in the fourth century bc; slaves were a major component of war booty. However, the common practice of freeing slaves who then could aspire to citizenship was another marker of the openness and social fluidity of Roman society.
More importantly, the military was never based on slavery, as in ancient Persia. Military success, in turn, was good for all social classes of citizens, not just the elites. For example, besides the booty deriving from successful campaigns, Roman citizens were often sent as colonists into conquered areas. In the period from 338–291 bc Rome established 16 colonies involving around 50,000 people, including both Romans and non-Romans “who obtained Latin status by being colonists.”[207] Forsythe reasonably suggests that the practice of colonization may have been a safety valve for poor, indebted Romans.
The result was that Roman power, unlike that of so many other ancient civilizations, was not based on despotism. Citizens of all social classes had a stake in the system; slaves could look forward to freedom; partial citizens could look forward to becoming full citizens and even being allowed, eventually, to rise to the senate.
Is the Roman strategy correctly considered a group evolutionary strategy aimed ultimately at enhancing the genetic legacy of those who practice it? I would suggest that it can be so considered so long as the incorporated peoples were closely related to the original founding stock. The first peoples incorporated into Rome were closely related cities in Latium. The upward mobility of these peoples gave Rome greater military manpower and a larger pool of political talent. By the time of Claudius’s speech, the question was incorporating other European-based groups. It could be considered analogous in today’s world to advocating a pan-European union with freedom of movement within it, but restricting it to people who are part of the European gene pool. If such a strategy were pursued today, it would bind together a White population of well over a billion into a formidable cooperative group. This would indeed constitute a grou
p evolutionary strategy to the extent it had the political will to keep other peoples out.
The problem, of course, comes from the fact that such a race-based policy is not the goal of current elites throughout the West, and we constantly hear arguments, similar to those used by Claudius, that such people contribute to the society. A race realist point of view would stress the genetic interests of Europeans first and foremost and the long-term danger to those interests for a group with relatively low fertility admitting millions of non-Europeans as citizens. It would also emphasize population differences in traits like IQ and assimilability (e.g., Muslims) and the costs of multiculturalism as leading to group conflict, lack of social cohesion, and unwillingness to contribute to public goods.
3
The Northern Hunter-Gatherer Cultural Legacy in Europe: Egalitarian Individualism
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A major thesis of this book is that two influential strands are necessary for understanding the central features of the peoples and cultures of Western Europe: an aristocratic warrior culture (termed “aristocratic individualism,” in which egalitarianism is limited to aristocratic peers and deriving ultimately from the Indo-Europeans), and the hunter-gatherer (h-g) strand (i.e., “egalitarian individualism,” deriving ultimately from primeval northern h-gs). This chapter provides an introduction to the latter of these two strands.
As noted in Chapter 1, h-g groups have contributed genetically to contemporary Europeans. This genetic influence is most apparent in the northwest of Europe, especially Scandinavia, with less evidence for h-g genetic influence in southern Europe. In this chapter I review the culture of northern h-gs, concluding that this group has had an important influence on contemporary European culture.
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 8