SECESSION OF THE PLEBES. LAW OF DEBTORS. INSTITUTION OF THE TRIBUNATE.
Sallust, who, like Thucydides, had prefixed to his history of the times after Sylla, which, alas! is lost, a succinct review of the moral and political history of his nation, preserved to us by St. Augustine, tells us in it, that no longer than the fear of Tarquin lasted, had Rome been governed with fairness and justice; but that, as soon as that fear had been removed, the Patres[89] had ventured upon every sort of arbitrary deeds, and from the severity of the law of usury the Plebes was kept under a yoke of slavery. Livy says likewise, that the Plebes was oppressed, cui summa opera inservitum erat until the ruin of the Tarquins. Until then, salt, which belonged to the publicum, had been sold at a low price; customs had been abolished; the demesnes of the kings had been distributed among the Plebes; and the φιλάνθρωπα δίκαια of Servius Tullius were again enforced. Finally, the old account states that Brutus had filled up the senate, qui imminutus erat, with plebeians. As he was the Tribunus Celerum of the plebeians, and afterwards plebeian consul, he may without doubt have admitted plebeians into the senate, although not in such considerable numbers as is asserted. But this did not last. Plebeian senators cannot have continued to the time of the legislation of the decemvirs; but from what Sallust says, who in the speech of Macer displays an uncommon acquaintance with the old constitution,—and St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds, a man endowed with the clearest penetration, believed him,—that the patricians soli in imperio habitabant, it is evident, that, when tranquillity was restored, they again excluded the plebeians. There are analogous cases in all states, precisely because it is in human nature. Without doubt the banished royal family had left a considerable party behind them, as is wont to happen in all revolutions; or a new one arose, which attached itself to the cause of the refugees, as was the case in the Italian towns of the middle ages. We may think what we like of the battle on the Regillus; we may deem the cohort of the Roman emigrants in the army of the Latins as improbable as it really is; yet we may with certainty believe in the existence of an emigration from Rome in a mass, linked to the royal fugitives, and always keeping up a connexion with the friendly party in the city,—like the φυγάδες in Greece, and as in English history, at the time of the great rebellion when the Stuarts were abroad, the Irish Papists and the Scotch Presbyterians, who were overpowered, and partly driven out of the country by Cromwell, joined the old cavaliers then living away from their homes with the royal family. The same was the case in the French revolution. As long as Tarquin, a man of personal eminence, was living abroad, the patricians hesitated to carry their innovations to extremities; yet they may have annoyed the plebeians; they may have deprived them of the imperia; they may even have expelled them from the senate;—at least they certainly did not fill up the places of those who died, with plebeians. Whenever in Switzerland danger threatened from abroad, the aristocratical cantons were mild to their country districts; otherwise they were harsh and cruel. Immediately after the English revolution of 1688, the liberties of the dissenters were far greater than they were twelve or fifteen years afterwards. What the plebeians lost, cannot be particularized. That the Valerian law of appeal to the tribes had been done away with is not likely; but it was no longer regarded, since it could only be upheld by impeaching the consul who had infringed it, when his year of office was expired: this the plebeian magistrates no more dared to do. Yet the real oppression only began when the fear of the foreigner was taken away.
Whether the law of debt had been changed by Servius Tullius, and Tarquin had abrogated the Servian laws, but Valerius had restored them, is a question with regard to which Dionysius is not to be implicitly believed. Tarquin is said to have utterly destroyed the tablets on which it was inscribed, that he might quite blot it out from the memory of men. This looks very suspicious: they needed only to have been copied once, and all that was done would be of no avail. We may however conclude from that statement that they were not contained in the jus Papirianum: the Plebes would have restored them after the Secession, if they had been deprived of a right so expressly granted. In this case, therefore, one of the plebeian forgeries seems to lie before us.
The law of debt produced a revolution. Had the senate and the patricians understood how to act wisely, and divided the opposite party, a thing so easily done in free states, the patricians were superior to the plebeians, not indeed in numbers, but in many other respects. For the patricians had almost exclusively the clientship. Livy and Dionysius have many passages from which it is evident how numerous the clients were during the first centuries; that the patricians distributed the demesne in many little hides of land among them; and that they kept them entirely in their power. These clients were not in the tribes; but they were connected through their patrons with the curies: hereditary landed property they only possessed by the special permission of their masters, what we would now call a quit rent. Thus they were absolutely dependent on the patricians. But the plebeians consisted of altogether different elements, of Latin knights, rich men, and a host of quite poor people: they were either proprietors or day-labourers. These different elements might very easily have been divided; the principal men were ambitious of offices and of political consideration; the common people, on the contrary, did not care at all whether their chiefs were admissible to consular dignity or not, but so much the more did they for other things. In the absence of patriotism and justice, the patricians must have been able easily to sever the mass from the principal plebeians. But they were as covetous as they were ambitious, and thus pressed doubly upon the people. The whole of the demesne was in their occupation. Had they assigned small possessions to the poor, or given them a right of ownership, then they would have gained them over; and separated them from the rest. Yet as they had the money trade entirely in their own hands, they deemed themselves sufficiently secure. The money trade no doubt was so managed, that the banking business was transacted by foreigners or freedmen under the patronage of a patrician, as in Athens by Pasion, who was a Metic, and paid an Athenian for lending his name to the firm.[90] As in Athens the Trapezitæ, in medieval Italy the Lombards, in our days the Jews, all of whom have no real home, carry on the money trade. And thus the poor plebeian often applied for loans to his neighbour, yet more generally he was obliged to go to town, and to fetch the money from the Trapezitæ.
The expression persona in law is derived from the fact that a foreigner could not appear in court. It is a mask: another had to represent him. That the peregrinus afterwards could himself sue and be sued, and that a special prætor peregrinus was appointed, was not done on account of the vast amount of business, but for political reasons. The patricians themselves would not have possessed such great moneyed resources: yet the foreigners who came to Rome had to commit themselves to their patronage, the same as the clients, for which, of course, the patrician was paid a commission. Now and then perhaps the patricians may have done business on their own account. Taken in this point of view, it was not after all such a sordid usury as is generally presumed.
The patricians and plebeians had quite different civil rights, as they had come together out of different states: the twelve tables, besides settling the political groundwork, first introduced one uniform civil law. Among our (German) forefathers also, there was not a geographical, but a personal distinction of rights. In Italy, the homebred population down to the twelfth century had Roman, whilst the German had Lombard and Salic law; but when the old municipalities were abolished and the elements of society were in the process of amalgamation, people first began to issue their decrees in common, they weaned themselves more and more from the old native institutions, and thus by degrees arose the statute law of the Italian towns, such as every city possesses. The patricians had a liberal law of debt, the plebeians a strict one; they had it also among themselves, but to them it only became dangerous as far as it was between them and the patricians. As soon as it is possible to run into debt, the number of small proprietors decreases from century to century. If we compare the division of the land at Tivoli in the fifteenth century with the present one, we see that at that time there were fifty times more owners of the soil than there are now.
The general law of debt, as it is found in the East, among the Greeks, among the northern nations, as well as among the Romans, is this, that the borrower could pledge himself and his family for the debt. According to Plutarch, in his life of Solon, there were at Athens nearly a thousand bondmen for debt, who, if they were not able to pay, were sold to the foreigner. Among the Romans personal arrest existed in its sternest form. People either liquidated their debts by personal servitude, or else they alienated their property for a certain time, or in case of severe distress for life, or else they also sold themselves,—by which likewise the children, who were still in patria potestate, came per æs et libram into the mancipium of the buyer,—yet with the condition that they might be redeemed. This bondage lasted until they emancipated themselves again per æs et libram. Our personal arrest of insolvent debtors is the still remaining half of this ancient right, which ceases to have any meaning, owing to the other half having been done away with by milder manners. The German also could in olden times give up his freehold and his person to another, whose bondman he then became. In order to escape the addiction, the borrower could eventually sell his property as a security; yet he was bound in conscience to redeem it after a certain time. The Fides answered for it that the creditor also would not withhold from the debtor the opportunity of redeeming himself, even when his person and his family were concerned. For this reason the Fides was a goddess of such importance among the Romans: as under such strict forms of law, people would have utterly been ruined without her. If a debtor did not discharge his debt, he was forfeited to his creditor, being fiduciarius in his mancipium; yet the latter could not directly manum injicere, an addiction of the prætor being wanted for that purpose. He had to in jure vindicare him with the words, Hunc ego hominem meum esse aio ex jure Quiritium; and without doubt the five witnesses and the libripens, before whom the contract had been concluded, were to be present. The prætor then gave a respite; and if after its expiration payment was not made, and the debtor therefore was not able to prove the liberatio per æs et libram, the ὑπερήμενος was addicted to the creditor. In the old Attic law, it was just the same; yet Solon had without doubt abolished it, and introduced in its stead the Attic law of mortgage, from which the later Roman one is derived. For the equites in their important money transactions tried to evade the strict debtor’s law, by causing them to be managed by foreigners who were not subject to the Roman laws. Thence arose the laws concerning the chirographa and centesima, a discount business for so short a date was not done in Rome at all. The Addictus was termed nexus, because of his being nexu vinctus. Nexus, or nexum every transaction was originally called, which by traditio and by weighing out of money was done in the presence of witnesses, a thing afterwards usual only in fictitious sales, and then significative of a right of mortgage, by which in case of neglect of payment a definite right of property was secured to the creditor. Frequently also people were allowed to discharge their debt by work. An industrious workman might advantageously dispose of his labour in times when there was a great demand for it; if, for instance, a man, who had pledged himself, had a son who was still in his full strength; the father sold him to the creditor; and when the son had discharged the debt by his work, he became again free of the mancipium of his master. Yet the interest accumulated at such a usurious rate, that it became very difficult for a debtor who was poor to redeem himself; though, if he worked as a nexus, he at least paid the interest. During such a period of labour the master had full authority over him as over a slave. That those who thus worked in payment of debts were a numerous class, is expressly asserted by writers.
But there was yet another way in which bondage for debt arose. One might also become a debtor without contract; as for instance, by neglecting to pay a legacy, or should a tradesman work for me, and I do not pay him; and again, if I commit a crime, I am bound in Roman law to make amends to the injured party according to a fixed estimate, obligatio ex delicto. All these relations constitute a second class of liabilities, and in these cases there was addiction without nexus, as was laid down in the twelve tables. The prætor sentences the thief to give me double what he has stolen; and if the man does not pay it by the appointed day, he addicts him to me as a bondman for debt. In the same manner, if I sue any one for a purchase and he cannot deny the debt (æs confessum), I demand his addictio for a certain time. This was a vinculum fidei, an intimidation, so that the debtor, of course, strained every nerve to pay. To this only did the expression vinculum fidei refer, not to the nexum; as vindication was here allowed, and there was no question about the fulfilment of a contract. When a Roman was in nexu, having sold himself to another in the event of his not paying, as the Merchant of Venice did to Shylock, he had to pay the taxes on his freehold all the same, however heavily incumbered it might be; for nexo solutoque idem jus esto, was the law of the twelve tables. But quite different is the case of the addictus, who is the creditor’s own, and has no personal rights. Thus we have the solution of the enigma in the accounts given in our books, that debtors who had sold themselves (that is to say, nexi) served notwithstanding in the legions.[91] Livy does not enter into this subject, because he was not conscious of the difficulty: Dionysius indeed remarks it, but he is embarrassed by it.
In a certain measure, this system was just as necessary as our strict rules of exchange; yet its abuse was unavoidable, as the rich man is not always kind-hearted, but is often harsh, and will abide by the law in its utmost rigour. This idolizing of mammon reigned in Rome, and the tyranny of positive law was often very oppressive. Besides which, the right was all on one side. When a patrician got into difficulties, his kinsmen or dependants had to get him out of them; the plebeians were forced in most cases to borrow money from the patricians. Now the fate of an addicted plebeian was one in which there might be much variety. He might find a mild master who allowed him to buy his freedom by work, or else a hard one who would shut him up in the ergastulum, put him in chains, and treat him cruelly, that his friends might be obliged to pay for his release.
This was the state of these relations about the year 260. All at once an extraordinary general distress arose, like the one nearly a hundred years later, after the Gallic calamity. Before that time we find nothing at all resembling it. The reason for this must have been the war of Porsena, from which we may draw the inference that it ought to be placed much later than we find it in Livy. The distress caused commotions among the people, of the breaking out of which Livy’s account may be tolerably well founded. An old warrior, covered with scars, falls into the hands of his creditors, because his house had been burnt down and his property carried off; he escapes from the dungeon in which he has been most barbarously treated by his master, and shows himself in the market-place, starving, clothed in rags, and disfigured with stripes. This sight gives rise to a general uproar, and the Plebes renounce the rule of their tyrants. Livy’s account of the way in which the tumult spreads wider and wider is a model of beautiful writing, being taken from the very nature of man; yet its details do not contain any real tradition, but it is to be looked upon as an historical romance. When the senate and the consuls had now arrived at the terrible conviction that the commonalty could not be ruled when once it did not choose to obey, either the report was spread that the Volscians were at hand, or they actually advanced when they heard of the dissensions in Rome. The senate resolved upon raising an army. According to the original law, the senate had no authority by itself to declare war; but it brought the motion before the curies, and these had to give it their approval. According to Servius’ laws, the motion ought to have gone to the centuries also; but this was no more thought of; the annalists mention only the senate. The latter decreed that an army should be raised. As the burthen of the service on foot lay on the Plebes only, its juniores were summoned by tribes (nominatim citabantur); to answer to the summons was termed nomen dare; to refuse, nomen abnuere. This conscription remained unchanged in all essential points to the latest times of the republic. But when the Plebes refused to serve, it did not answer (non respondebat): such a silence is the most awful that can be. Since this now happened, the consuls knew not which way to turn. A loud outcry arose, that people would not be so foolish as to shed their blood for their tyrant-masters; that the whole gain of the war fell to the lot of the patricians; that the booty was shared among them, and that it passed into the publicum (the chest of the patricians), not into the ærarium; that the plebeian became poorer and poorer, and that he was obliged to pledge himself and his to the patrician, and to serve him as a bondman. Among the patricians a split began to show itself. Livy tells us, that the minores natu among the patres were foremost in the fray;—probably this ought to be the minores, who are the Luceres, as it is impossible to think of young patricians at that time as members of the senate, which in reality was a γερουσία. The consuls (A. 259) belonged to opposite parties; Appius Claudius representing the interest of the most furious oligarchs, Servilius being moderate. In the danger which was threatening, one could only succeed by mildness: every attempt to raise an army by force disgracefully failed. Servilius had himself authorized by the senate to arrange matters. He issued a proclamation calling upon all those who had been pledged for debt to present themselves, and he gave them security as long as they should be in the field, and for their children and dependants as well. Numbers now crowded to the standards, and with the army thus formed, Servilius went out to war, and returned victorious. He had promised to do his utmost with the senate to make them cancel the contracts for debt; but the senate did not grant any thing, and the army was dismissed. Appius Claudius undertook the jurisdiction, and, without paying any regard to the word of the consul, addicted all those who had been in the field to their creditors, or obliged them to enter into a nexum. The rest of the year was passed in the greatest commotion. The consuls who came next, A. Virginius and T. Vetusius (A. 260), were both of them men of moderate views;—a proof that the election lay still with the centuries, as the curies would have chosen the most violent oligarchs. Yet they were not able to do any thing either with the senate or their own order. It was again attempted to raise an army, and the difficulties were the same as before. The consuls were reproached with cowardice; others who wanted to strike terror into the people, had to think of saving their lives instead. Real danger there was only on market days; the Plebes consisting of peasants who lived in the country. In Italy tillage requires extraordinary care. The land must be weeded several times during summer; the Romans plough the fallow ground five, six, or seven times; they weed the fields, and weed them again, until the corn is grown about three inches high. It is incredible how much work this requires; the peasant therefore is busy the whole of the year, and has no time to go about idle. In the city there were usually only those plebeians who were townsmen. The patricians were therefore safe: they had strong men among them, and a great number of clients, whereas the plebeians in the four tribus urbanæ were certainly the minority. Thus the fact may also be accounted for, that the patricians were able to rule the plebeians even without regular troops. The houses (Geschlechter) also of the German towns had for a long time the commonalties in their power, although the latter were superior to them in numbers. Had the plebeians been a rabble, the patricians would all of them have been soon slain by them.
When the attempt proved again unsuccessful, some proposed to carry out the concessions of Servilius, and to abide by them; but Appius said, that the resistance ought to be put down, and a dictator therefore elected. It had been one of the objects of the institution of the dictatorship, to be enabled to evade the limitations placed upon the power of the consuls, not only by the appeal to the curies, but also by that to the tribes, which Valerius had established. Appius wanted the dictator to seize every one who refused to serve, and to have him put to death. This mad project could not but have caused the most dreadful commotion. The assembly passed an insane resolution, but the good genius of Rome guided them to choose as dictator the most moderate man, M. Valerius,—thus he is called by all the authorities, less correctly by Dionysius alone Manius Valerius, which is a mere figment, devised because Marcus was said to have been killed at the Regillus,—a clansman, or, according to our narratives, a brother of P. Valerius Poplicola. He renews the edict of Servilius, and, whilst the Volscians, Æquians, and Sabines were in arms, raises an army without difficulty. That it is stated to have consisted of ten legions, can only excite our smile. To each consul he gave a part of the army; he took one likewise himself, and returned victorious. He now demanded of the senate the fulfilment of his promises; and declared, that the law should not be departed from. Valerius resigned his dignity. Now there were still both of the consular armies, or at least one of them under arms, the return of which the patricians did not wish to allow; for as long as there was an army in the camp, its services might be commanded. Dionysius expressly tells us, that the consuls, owing to a Lex Valeria, held absolute sway, extending from one mile beyond Rome by virtue of their imperium, and that consequently they might punish by martial law anybody who was obnoxius to them, without needing the decision of a military tribunal. For this reason the senate did not wish to allow the army to return. This was an atrocious policy, since the army must some time or other be dismissed, and the whole safety therefore of the senate only rested in the conscientiousness of the Plebes, the oath being so sacred to the Romans. But the rebellion actually broke out in the camp, though with great moderation. It is related, that the soldiers had wished at first to slay the consul, that they might be relieved from their oath, which was only sworn to him personally. Yet they merely renounced their allegiance; made L. Sicinius Bellutus their leader; passed the Anio in arms; and encamped three or four miles from thence on a hill which was afterwards consecrated, and therefore called the mons sacer. Thus a whole population withdrew from the city, and there remained behind the patricians and their slaves, besides the wives and children of the emigrants. The patricians did not, however, seize upon these as hostages; whilst, on the other hand, the plebeians also practised no further hostility, but kept themselves from all devastation, and foraged in the neighbouring country only to supply their immediate wants. The patricians now acted like human beings. As long as their authority was not put in jeopardy, there was nothing which they dared not do, and so in every instance until the Lex Hortensia; yet their power once being broken, they became dispirited, and each new contest ends only in disgrace. They had thought that the plebeians would have no courage; they ever said among themselves, This time they will lay down their arms, one has only to overawe them. One feels giddy at the sight of madness like this; and yet, so long as the world lasts, it will ever be renewed. When the plebeians had raised their standard, the scales fell from their eyes. Within the town the Plebes had only two quarters,[92] the Aventine with the Vallis Murcia, and the Esquiline, both of them very strong, and provided with gates, certainly guarded by armed men. The plebeians might therefore have taken possession of Rome without any resistance, as their friends would have opened the gates to them. They would, however, have been obliged to take the other hills, all of which were fortified, and the forum by storm; which would have been their country’s ruin, since the other nations would not have kept quiet. The conduct of the Patres therefore appears mad, and it is inconceivable that the Plebes, when once in arms, did not go further: in Florence the Guelphs and Ghibelines fought against each other in the streets. A key to this seems to be found in the fact that the Latins were at peace, and that therefore with their help the senate was able to make head against the Plebes. It ought to be borne in mind that in confederate republics similarity of constitution has no influence whatever on the mutual support: democratically governed nations protect the governments of aristocratical ones. In the great insurrection of Lucerne and Berne, in the year 1657, the democratical cantons came to the assistance of the oligarchical governments against the peasants. This explains also how it was that the senate could hold out under such circumstances. There are allusions to it from the annals still extant in Dionysius. Appius says, that the Latins, if isopolity were granted them, would assist them against the Plebes.
According to Dionysius, the secession lasted four months, from August to December; and this he proves from the circumstance, that the tribune always entered upon their office on the 10th of December. There was likewise a tradition that on the Ides of September the dictator had knocked in the clavus, and that consequently about that time there had been no consuls at Rome. Yet the troubles are said to have broken out under the consuls Virginius and Vetusius; these consuls then, so Dionysius concludes, must have resigned their office at the end of August, and the insurrection have lasted four months. Had the succession of the tribunes never been interrupted at all, there would have been no difficulty whatever as to the same rule having applied to the time of their inauguration from the first, as that which was afterwards followed; but Dionysius overlooks the fact, that during the decemvirate the tribunate had ceased to exist, so that the tribunes hardly entered upon their office on the same day as before, but rather as soon as they were allowed to meet again. The consuls were inaugurated on the first of August, and it seems certain that the peace between the two orders was concluded by the new consuls Vetusius and Virginius. The secession cannot have lasted longer than about a fortnight: the city could not have held out in this condition; a famine would have broken out if the legions had occupied the fields. The rapidity of Livy’s narrative allows us to suppose a short duration only.
The patricians saw too late that they had driven matters to extremity, and that they must give way. They had to make very lowering concessions as to the form, and to send envoys. The list of the ten envoys which Dionysius gives, is certainly authentic, and taken from the libri augurales: forgery must have been carried on to a great extent if such statements were not genuine. The end of the secession is only explicable when we have a clear insight into the relations owing to which the ruling power could not only defend itself in the city, but also dispose of the confederates; for, these had sworn fealty to the Roman state, that is to say, to the senate and the Populus; so that numbers do not by any means turn the scale between the two orders. A peace was concluded in due form by fetiales, as between two free nations. The patricians sent ambassadors and conducted the negotiation, with great humiliation as to the formalities, yet with a prudence which is worthy of admiration. It was their aim to get off as cheaply as possible after the faults which they had made. They could only manage to retrieve matters, either by strengthening themselves from abroad with the aid of the allies, or by dividing the Plebes. For the latter purpose, two ways lay open to them. They might draw to their own side the chief plebeians, but in that case they would have lessened their own power; or they might separate the mass of the people from its leaders. The second was an infallible device. The plebeians were granted remission of debts for the insolvent debtors; the Addicti were freed, and the Nexum dissolved, without any general rule being made with regard to the law of debt: of course an amnesty also was stipulated. The remission of debts was no great loss for the creditors, as the interest had long outgrown the capital. A hundred and fifty years afterwards the rate of interest was lowered to ten per cent.; at that time it may have been about fifty per cent. A similar course was pursued by Sully.
A lasting result was the institution of the office of the Tribuni Plebis. These tribunes were no innovation in themselves. At the restoration of the tribunate after the second secession, the commonalty had twenty chiefs, viz. one for each tribe; among these two are invested with the power. The tribes in fact make up two decuries, and for each of these there is a chief; just as in the senate there were ten decuries, each of which had a primus, all of whom together constituted the board of the decem primi. Symmetrical arrangements every where recur in the old institutions, wherefore we may by induction from a known quantity arrive at the unknown. Thus, when we read that the first tribunes had been two, who made choice of three more to join them; it is certain that those two were the foremen of the existing twenty or twenty-one tribunes, who in a new state of things merely rose to a higher sphere of official functions. The difference without doubt was this, that the old tribunes were elected by the several tribes (as the phylarchs in the Greek states were by each phyle); the new ones, on the contrary, by the whole commonalty. C. Licinius and L. Albinius are mentioned as the two first tribunes; Sicinius, the general of the Plebes at the secession, is one of the three who were chosen in addition. The plebeians were not able to recover their good right which the Servian constitution had given them; they had to be content with defending themselves against oppression. Their magistracy was therefore auxilii ferendi gratia; the tribunes by an oath were declared inviolable (corpora sacrosancta), so that they might step in between the holders of power and those who were aggrieved and protect the latter. Before that, owing to the spirit of caste and the pride of office among the patricians, the tribune who impeached a consul, would have in vain incurred the peril of the prosecution, as there was another consul with equal pretensions, and all the patricians sided with him;—indeed the consul would have caused the tribune who appealed against him to the commonalty, to be arrested and chastised. Whoever henceforth laid hand on a tribune, was proscribed as an outlaw; and if the consul did not put the outlawry in force against him, the tribune might after the expiration of his period of office, summon him before the tribunal of the curies, or even perhaps of the tribes. The tribunes were perhaps scarcely a magistracy in the commonalty, certainly not in the state. Justus Lipsius, an ingenious and very learned man, with whom as a philologist I am not worthy to be compared, has by his authority, great as he is as a grammarian, done much mischief with regard to Roman antiquities. Whenever a magistracy, or a military arrangement is mentioned, he, and all those who follow in his wake, never distinguish between the different ages. A tribune at the end of the third century is by no means like a tribune of Cicero’s time. It is just the same in Roman topography; a clear-headed man like Sarti does not put all the buildings in Rome of the different ages side by side, as the common herd do. People fancied that the tribunes had the Veto, and likewise the self-same privilege which they got afterwards, of proposing resolutions; but the first tribunes are perhaps to be looked upon in no other light but that of an ambassador in a foreign state, who is to protect the subjects of his sovereign. The patricians had until now wielded their power without any check; the plebeians had no share in the administration: and therefore a magistracy became necessary which might come forward as protectors against public authorities as well as against individuals, whenever any members of their order had to complain of ill usage. Their houses were therefore open by day and night, and they were not allowed to absent themselves from the city: like a physician they were always to be in readiness to give help. This is a grand idea, quite peculiar to Rome; there is nothing analogous to it in Greek antiquity. Besides this the tribunes had the right of calling together their commonalty, and of making propositions;—yet there are very few traces indeed of this in the earlier times. The resolutions which the tribunes moved among the Plebes were mere bye-laws, rules at pleasure, plebiscita; whilst, on the other hand, those of the patricians were called leges. To this allusion is made in a passage of Livy, where the Etruscans say, that the Romans were now two peoples, each of them suis magistratibus, suis legibus, a notice of the importance of which Livy was entirely unconscious. He does not in general alter the materials which he finds; but he merely drops part of them. The plebiscita had as yet no authority whatever over the whole community; after more than twenty years they could only be considered as an opinion offered by an assembly of states, which might pass into a law (283). The only real magistracy among the plebeians were the ædiles, a name which among the Latins also was borne by the local magistrates. In all likelihood, these were judges in the disputes of the plebeians among themselves; whereas the tribunes were no judges in the earlier times, though perhaps there may have been an appeal to them from the ædiles. No change was probably made at that time in the civil law.
These prerogatives of the tribunes are still very insignificant and humble, being either merely negative, or else administrative in a narrow sphere, and least of all legislative. I do not believe that they had the right of moving any change of the civil law in favour of their own order. Strange to say, the election of the tribunes was now committed to the centuries, although it ought far more naturally to have remained with the tribes. From this also we see, how small the advantages were which the Plebes obtained by the first secession; for the patricians had great influence in the centuries by means of their clients: about ten years afterwards, they had formed, owing to this mode of election, a party among the tribunes. The statement that they were elected by the curies is a palpable falsehood; yet there is thus much of truth in it, that they were to be confirmed by the curies in order that no obnoxious people might be chosen; just as the curule magistrates were by the centuries. It is the same as when the English government claimed a veto in the election of the Irish [Roman Catholic] bishops. This relation, according to Livy, ceases already before the passing of the Publilian law. Piso thinks that before the Publilian law, by which the election was transferred to the tribes, there had been only two tribunes. I believe that the number five is of later date; yet I do not deem it likely that it should have first come in with the Publilian law: for as this number corresponds to the five classes, how should it have come into use, when it was no more the classes, but the tribes which had had to elect? It seems to me highly probable, that under the pretext of a fair compromise, the patricians still managed also to gain an advantage for themselves. I explain from this the perplexing circumstance that ten years later we find the curies in possession of the consular election instead of the centuries. The plebeians by concession only get the election to one office for the centuries; the other remains with the curies until the restoration of the consulship after the time of the decemvirs. Perhaps a grant of land was made besides, and very likely the promise was given to restore the old system of the ager publicus. The result of the secession was therefore by no means such a decided victory of the plebeians over the patricians, as is stated by our historians. A firm groundwork was indeed gained, which they afterwards knew how to make use of; yet the fruits were only to be reaped by dint of hard exertions.
The compromise between the two orders was now concluded in form like a peace, and also with sacrifice, by a senatus-consultum and a decree of the curies on the one side and by a resolution of the plebeians in arms on the other. They called down curses on themselves if they should do anything to break the vow; and yet the patricians did all they could to shake off the yoke. The deputies of the Plebes, and the Decem Primi of the senate, made an offering in common; order returned; things became better; yet, of course, the seeds of new commotions and agitations were still sown for a long time to come. I have called this settlement “a peace.” This word is used elsewhere on similar occasions: the Magna Charta in Lüttich, the union between the burghers and the commonalty, was likewise called la paix de Fexhe. In German there is for such an agreement the fine expression eine Richtung (a righting).
The Latins were now rewarded for what they had done for the senate, as Dionysius particularly mentions from the excellent record on which his narrative is based. They receive isopolity (jus municipii) in its first meaning by the treaty of Sp. Cassius, of which we have spoken before.