Roman politics

by Frank Frost Abbott

4. The Legislative and Executive Branches of Government

i. RESEMBLANCES BETWEEN ANCIENT AND MODERN

It may be convenient at the outset to compare some of the characteristics of the legislative branch of the Roman government with those of modern parliaments. The Roman method of legislating was very similar in its essential features to that followed by the states of this Union which freely use the initiative and referendum.[14] These two political devices come to us of course from Switzerland. One or both of them in their present form may be traced to Rousseau’s opposition to representative government and to his advocacy of the doctrine of popular sovereignty. But traces of the referendum may be found in certain Swiss cities long before Rousseau’s day, and the legislative principle which underlies it may possibly be an inheritance from Roman times, preserved through the Middle Ages in the independent Italian cities. Where the referendum prevails, an elected assembly, the Legislature in our states and the Greater Council in the Swiss cantons, is set over against the whole body of citizens, voting in this country in their home towns, or in Switzerland at some central point. Either legislative organization may initiate legislation, and in practice most proposals originate in the elected body, from which important or controversial matters are referred to the people. Popular action overrides that of the chosen body. The people may not amend a proposal, but must vote “Yes” or “No” upon it. This is an exact description of the relation of the Roman senate to the popular assembly under the Republic. The ancient system had the merits and defects which we see in its modern counterpart. The assembly of the people helped to preserve the rights of the democracy and gave expression to popular aspirations. The aristocratic body, being made up of experienced politicians and administrative officials, was better qualified to deal with technical questions and foreign affairs, and the relative importance of the two legislative organizations varied from one period to another according to the predominance of the one set of questions or the other. Naturally the problems arising out of long-continued wars increased the prestige of the Roman Senate, just as its exclusive right to approve treaties of peace with the Central European States has enhanced the authority of the American Senate at the expense of the Lower House. We noticed above that a few important matters were reserved to the Roman popular assembly. One of these was the declaration of an offensive war. Now in the last two or three years in casting about for some means to avert future wars, it has been proposed to take the right of declaring war from the Congress and to submit the question in each case to the people. This proposal has been made partly in the belief that the people who must bear the brunt of a war will lean toward peace. If we may draw an inference from the attitude of the Roman people, this conclusion is unfounded. Professor Tenney Frank in his Roman Imperialism has shown that the great war with Pyrrhus, the First Punic War, and perhaps the Jugurthine War were forced on Rome by the democracy against the desire and the judgment of the Senate. The Senate knew better than the people what sacrifices of blood and treasure such wars would mean.[15]

In one of the chapters of his book on Society and Politics in Ancient Rome the present writer has attempted a comparison between the Roman Senate and the Senate of the United States.[16] The Roman Senate was, and our Senate is, engaged in a struggle with the executive and with another legislative body more popular than itself for the control of the state. The life terms of Roman senators and the comparatively long terms of our own senators put them largely beyond the reach of popular sentiment, and give them a feeling of security in their positions. The long and honorable tradition of both bodies and their esprit de corps strengthen this sense of security. Roman senators showed for one another the same senatorial courtesy which has become a byword with us. An element of strength in both organizations is the absence, as a rule, of clôture. A measure submitted by an executive may easily be talked to death or amended so as to bear slight resemblance to the original proposal, if there is little or no limitation on debate. But two powers in particular, enjoyed by both bodies, would give any legislative organization an excellent means of controlling public policy and of directing the administration of public affairs. I mean the right to confirm important appointments and to be consulted in the settlement of foreign affairs. What a tremendous influence the Senate of the United States can exert through its right to participate in the management of foreign affairs we have seen illustrated within the last few years, and, as we have noticed in Chapter I, the Roman Senate held the same position of advantage. Just as our senators control in large measure the appointment to important offices, so the Roman Senate rewarded with lucrative posts in the provinces the politicians who supported its policies, and punished leaders like Caesar who opposed it, with provinces “of forests and marshes.” It may be added also that, as has been observed in Chapter I, the Roman Senate was made up of former administrative officials who were familiar from past experience with the questions which came before it, and the Romans did not have the two-party system, which strengthens the hands of a government in Anglo-Saxon countries. It is not strange, therefore, that in course of time the Roman Senate reduced the magistrate to the position of its minister, and that its policy became his policy. As in most modern countries, the members of the government attended the meetings of the legislative body and voted in it. It is interesting to bear the fact in mind that we have felt in the United States the unfortunate results which arise in the making of laws from the lack of close coöperation between the legislative and executive branches of our government, and it has been proposed lately to adopt the Roman practice to the extent of allowing members of the Cabinet to attend meetings of the Congress, without giving them the right to vote.

ii. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ANCIENT AND MODERN

We have been speaking of points of resemblance between the Roman Senate and the Senate of the United States. Some striking points of difference between its procedure and that of modern legislative chambers should be mentioned. A member of our Senate or House of Representatives, if he were summoned to a meeting of the Roman Senate, would be as astonished at the lack of parliamentary machinery, as was the Connecticut Yankee of Mark Twain’s story at the lack of labor-saving devices in the court of King Arthur. He would find no fixed order of business, no quorum ordinarily required, no committees to collect facts and make recommendations, motions not put in writing, and no minutes kept. He would be still more astounded to find three or four mutually exclusive motions before the house at the same time, from which the presiding officer was allowed to make his choice. Yet no legislative body has left behind it such a marvellous record of business-like achievement as the Roman Senate has. This fact may well lead us to ask the question whether the elaborate procedure and the complicated parliamentary rules which our legislative bodies follow are necessary for the expeditious transaction of business. This is not to say that the Roman method could be adopted out of hand today. That was a matter of growth, but it may at least suggest that it would be possible and wise for us to simplify our procedure. Many of the practices peculiar to the Roman Senate may be explained out of its history. Although it is the most famous legislative body known, in theory it was not a legislative body at all. It was in its origin only the Advisory Council, or consilium, of the chief magistrate. Its members were merely the experienced old men whose advice the king, and later the consul, sought. When he needed counsel he called them together, and asked their opinions, following naturally the order of age and eminence. In its outward forms the circumstances of its origin were never forgotten. The Senate never met unless the magistrate called it together. The business of the day was laid before it by the presiding officer. Its members were not expected to give their opinions until he asked them, and the presiding officer who was asking advice could naturally pick out the proposal which seemed to him wisest and ask the judgment on it of the other members, and it was the traditional practice to make these proposals orally.

Up to the time of Tiberius Gracchus, near the close of the second century before Christ, Rome was under a parliamentary government, not unlike the government of France or Italy in its essential characteristics. Under the constitution of 1875, for instance, the chief executive of France is brought under the control of the legislative body, just as the Roman Consul was made subject to the Senate. All his acts of every kind, to be valid, must be countersigned by one of his ministers, and it is always within the power of the Chamber of Deputies to overthrow a ministry. In the absence of the two-party system in Rome, and the consequent lack of a compact party organization to support the Government, the Roman system was also like that which is common on the Continent. Of course the Roman system was pure parliamentary government in a higher degree than is the system in vogue in any modern state, because the internal and external policy of Rome was not thought of as the policy of Catulus or Messalla, but as that of the Senate, whereas today, with a certain measure of propriety, we speak of the policy of a Briand or of a Giolitti.

Of course the most marked difference between the Roman Senate and modern legislative bodies lies in the fact that in the composition of the ancient body the representative principle was not recognized. It seems to us extraordinary that when, in her early career, Rome absorbed neighboring Latin towns, and when, at the conclusion of the Social War, she gave Roman citizenship to the cities of Italy, she did not authorize them to elect representatives to the Senate. Instead of doing so she required the people of these places to come to the city of Rome, if they wished to vote. In view of this fact it is often said that the Romans were not familiar with the representative system.[17] This conclusion is, however, incorrect. Traces of the system may be found among the Latins in the earliest times, in the sending of delegates from the several towns to the Latin Games. Twice later in the fifth and third centuries B.C., it was proposed in the Senate to allow Latins to elect a certain number of the members to that body. The constitution which the Italic State adopted in the Social War seems to have been based on the representative idea, and the system which Aemilius Paullus introduced into Macedonia in 168 B.C. was apparently a unicameral, representative government. The Romans then were not ignorant of the principle of representative government, but they did not adopt the system for Italy and the empire because, by doing so, Rome would have lost her exclusive rights, the balance of power would have passed from the Latins, and in course of time provincial members of the Senate would have outnumbered even the Italians. The lack of elected provincial representatives in the Senate was made up in some measure under the empire by the readiness which the emperor showed to listen to the requests and complaints of individuals and cities all over the world, and by the establishment of provincial assemblies, called Κοινά in the East and concilia in the West. When the Romans acquired Greece and Asia they found that neighboring cities in these two regions had already formed religious organizations or political federations. One of these organizations, the assembly of Asia, toward the close of the first century B.C. asked permission to establish the cult of Rome and Augustus. This request was granted, and within the next century provincial assemblies were introduced into most of the provinces of the East and West, primarily to conduct the services of the imperial cult and to celebrate games in honor of the deified emperor. But when the representatives of the several cities of a province met in their annual assembly, it was natural for them to discuss provincial affairs of general interest, and in particular to consider the conduct of the governor and the members of his staff. They never acquired the right to legislate for a province, but they exercised rather freely the right to call the attention of the governor and the emperor to conditions in the province, and in the late empire it seems to be clear from the Theodosian Code that they discussed questions of taxation, the public post, and cases of extortion by imperial officials. The members of these assemblies seem to have been true representatives of their respective cities, and not delegates with a mandate, and in one province, at least, Lycia, they were chosen by a system of proportionate representation. The Councils of the Church were the natural successors of the provincial assemblies. Like the assemblies they were concerned primarily with religious matters. The Provincial Council, meeting under the direction of the Metropolitan, was made up usually of the bishops of the province, but not infrequently we find presbyters, deacons, and laymen present, sent by their respective cities, and from the close of the fifth century, they, as well as the bishops, often vote. Marsiglio of Padua in the thirteenth century went so far as to assert that a General Council should be strictly representative of both clergy and laity, and that a province should have representatives according “to the number and quality” of its inhabitants, and in the following century Occam worked out a complete plan of representation for a Council. It has been suggested by Dunning in his History of Political Theories that Marsiglio may have based his proposal on the system which he found in some of the medieval Italian cities. If that hypothesis is correct, we have a double line of descent in the later period, at least, for the representative idea. It matters little that the political powers of the provincial assemblies were limited, or that the bishops were the controlling element in the Councils of the Church; the essential facts are that representative government was well known to the Romans and that the representative principle survived in the assemblies and in the Church Councils until the Renaissance came to give it new life.

Probably no society has ever invented so many safeguards against Caesarism as the Roman oligarchy did. As we have already noticed, a candidate for a magistracy must have reached a specified age: he must hold the offices in a fixed order, and an interval of time must elapse before he can be re-elected to the highest office. His term was a short one, and during it his actions were always subject to the veto of his colleague. Another check upon him was furnished by the recall. This very new political device is as old as the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus. It is an application of the doctrine of popular sovereignty in its extreme form, and grew out of earlier attempts to hold magistrates responsible for their conduct in office. The arguments which Gracchus used in support of his proposal to recall his colleague, Octavius, postulate the theory of popular sovereignty and sound surprisingly like the considerations which are urged by the supporters of the recall today. According to Plutarch, Gracchus said: “We esteem him to be legally chosen tribune who is elected only by the majority of votes; and is not therefore the same person much more lawfully degraded, when by the general consent of them all, they agree to depose him?” Perhaps we have not inherited the recall directly from antiquity, but our acceptance of the Roman doctrine of popular sovereignty has led logically to the development of the recall, as well as the initiative, and the referendum.

One of the characteristic features of a Roman magistracy was the right which an incumbent had to veto the action of a colleague; and the tribune had the right, which he freely exercised, to veto the action of any other official. In some respects the Romans used the veto power in a more practical way than we do. Our governors, presidents, and other chief executives may not interpose a veto until a measure has been adopted and laid before them for their signature. Often they are required to disapprove of long, important measures, which they would gladly see adopted, were it not for some slight defect. Under Roman practice a bill could be vetoed before action had been taken upon it, or a tribune would ask for a night’s delay before action should be taken. This arrangement gave proponents of a bill an opportunity to change the objectionable features of it. In recent years various timid excursions have been made into certain fields of political activity, in which Roman magistrates exercised their power freely. We try to influence the morals of people by exercising some supervision over the stage and over the public press; and in time of war the government has fixed the price of certain foods and attempted to provide for their proper distribution. What the censor’s office did in its palmy days to improve the morals of the people and to check extravagance and display has been discussed in the last chapter, and in the aedile’s office the Romans had a permanent Food Administration.

We have already observed that the political quality of the Romans which made for progress and stability at the same time more than did any other, was their ability to adapt old institutions to new conditions. In the practice of assigning a board of experts to an official we have an illustration of the way in which this result was accomplished. Probably no people in antiquity used experts so freely, and perhaps in modern times the practice is not so general as it was in Rome. A magistrate was elected directly by the people each year. He was better aware of the trend of popular sentiment than the average prime minister. He could confidently be expected to advocate progress or change. Attached to his office was a consilium, or body of expert advisers, who were familiar with precedent and usage and who would hold fast to the mos maiorum. In all departments of Roman public life such boards of advisers are to be found. The king, and later the consul, had the Senate as his consilium. The praetor, and, under the empire, the emperor had their consilia to assist them in the adjudication of cases, and in the field of the state religion the chief pontiff was advised by his board of pontiffs. The interaction of the forces which these two elements represented resulted in the gradual reform of old institutions, without too violent a break with law and tradition. We may regard the imperial bureaux which Hadrian brought to a state of perfection for the provinces as an extension of this system of government by experts.

The Roman theory of the relation of the state and the church runs through a cycle. The king was both chief executive and chief priest of the people. When the republic was established, priestly and political functions were dissociated, although all religious matters having a political significance were left to the magistrate. Julius Caesar in his dictatorship united in his person again the functions of the chief magistrate and chief pontiff, and this precedent was followed by all the emperors. The Emperor therefore held somewhat the same place in the state religion as the Czar did in Russia before the Revolution, and as the King does in England. This assumption of religious authority by the political ruler was the first step toward the recognition of the Divine Right of the Emperor; and the practice of paying divine honors to him, which, as we have noticed in Chapter I, was introduced from the Orient, fostered the development of the theory. In European countries the Roman practice of uniting the spiritual and temporal powers has survived in the form of a state religion or in the control of ecclesiastical affairs which most states have assumed in some measure. The United States, in enforcing a complete separation of State and Church, stands almost alone among the Great Powers in not accepting the Roman tradition.

One cannot bring to an end even a brief discussion of the influence which the executive and legislative branches of the Roman government have exerted on the political life of our own times without mentioning the remarkable revival which we have seen lately in Italian Fascismo, of the old Roman spirit and of certain Roman political institutions. In its purpose, its spirit, and its external form this movement revives pure Roman tradition. It began to attain its present great strength in the months immediately following the Armistice when there was a marked decline of national feeling and when disorder and class struggles were rife throughout Italy. It assumed the form of a great national movement when it broke the general strike of August 1, 1922, which threatened the orderly life of the whole nation. The Fascisti took this step after the government had failed to set the wheels of industry in motion again. The next step, the setting aside of parliamentary government and the assumption of the dictatorship by Signor Mussolini, the leader of the Fascisti, was inevitable. The whole course of events during the last six months of 1922 duplicates incidents common enough in early Roman history. Disorder arises throughout the peninsula or a great danger confronts the state. The ordinary methods of government are suspended, and a dictator is appointed to meet the emergency. The dictator in the olden time called the citizens to arms, just as Signor Mussolini assembled his one hundred and seventeen thousand armed followers at the Villa Borghese in the autumn of 1922. These men of today show the same spirit of unquestioning obedience to the state which characterized the Roman in olden time. One may well think himself back in the third century B. C., listening to the ancient Roman soldiers gathered before their dictator, when he reads the oath which the assembled Fascisti took in Rome on January 1, 1923: “I swear loyalty to Benito Mussolini, who governs the destinies of Italy. I swear devoted and absolute obedience to his government with uncontrolled conscience, which involves also the supreme sacrifice of life, the renunciation of all personal initiative, and the daily practice of iron discipline.” That this movement was directly inspired by Roman tradition is made plain by the symbols and forms which it takes. It gets its name from the fasces, or bundle of rods, which the lictor carried, as a symbol of the authority of the state, and the Fascista army is organized like the old Roman army into manipuli, centuriae, cohortes, and legiones.[18]

Who can say what this reawakening of the old Roman spirit may mean for Italy? It has already given rise to a new Risorgimento. It was the cause of Italy’s participation in the War and was the result of that War. Italy bore her part of the burden of the War with the other great Powers of Europe. She has freed herself from the economic domination of Germany and from the threat of Austrian invasion. Her “Unredeemed Lands” are restored to her. Her control of the Adriatic seems assured. Out of these achievements surged up the feeling of national independence and solidarity embodied in the Fascista organization, which numbers now several hundred thousand young men, and at the same time it was the Fasci or patriotic groups, which came into existence in the early years of the war, that made these achievements possible. The organization has set a bad precedent in its use of violent methods, and in establishing a military force outside the state. In its dealings with other peoples it may assert national ambitions too vigorously, but it bids fair to give expression to the national genius and to inspire Italy with a new life and vigor.