Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

CHAPTER VII
THE INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF ROME AND THE INCORPORATION OF ITALY

The peoples of Greece and Italy offer, amidst many general points of similarity, some striking differences in their conceptions of international relations. The pan-Hellenic sentiment, which created a shadowy law of nations, has no pan-Italic counterpart. Outside the Greek city-state there was but the sentiment of nationality to create rules for human conduct; but, for this very reason, the rules, when created, were of pan-Hellenic validity. In Italy we get narrower but closer groupings; its history is the history of leagues, and the inevitable result of this more concentrated life was a closeness of international ties between the federated members which stood in marked contrast to the vagueness of the relations between the isolated groups.

The ties of religion and of ethnic affinity, as expressed in an obvious similarity of institutions, were, in Italy as elsewhere, the strongest connecting forces between states; but in Italy they were but the first rude ligaments that gave place to a stronger political bond and that crumbled to pieces when the more enduring chain had been forged. The festival of the Alban Mount became to the Latins, as the sacred centre of Volsinii to the Etruscans, but the religious symbol of a lasting league. Beyond the limits of the league the national and religious sentiment was weak. There was no Delphi to direct the Italian peoples, and no Olympia at which they might meet.

This isolated grouping of the Italian peoples may have been partly due to the great mixture of the populations of Italy south of the Alps and south even of the Apennines; but the earliest Italian history reveals the fact that even the closely-related races of Latins, Umbrians, and Sabellians were not connected by much closer ties of an international character than those which bound each to the Etruscan, the Iapygian, the Gaul, and the Greek. It is true that with the progress of time something like an ethnic sentiment was created in the purely Italian group, with vast consequences to the history of the world. After the Umbrian power, which had once extended from sea to sea, had been weakened, on the left by the Etruscan, on the right by the Celt, Rome becomes the great frontier power, the bulwark of the group of blood-related nations against the foreign-speaking Tuscan and the Gaul whose kinship with herself she had forgotten; but the relation soon became political, and, therefore, more than international. That aggregation of vague human sentiments, which is called International Law, was not juristically stronger within the sphere of the blood-related than it was within the sphere of the Italian group of peoples.

Within this wider sphere of humanity, that was not yet “Italian,” there are traces of the observance by Rome of customs relating to the conduct of war and to negotiations for procuring peace—customs which by their very existence show that, though the early Roman employed the same word to designate the stranger and the enemy, a state of war was not considered as the permanent relation even between hostes; which prove, by their elaboration, the antiquity of some sense of international obligation, and which exhibit, by the constancy with which they were applied, the existence of reciprocal forms and duties owed by the hostile state to Rome. The functions of the Fetiales, the priestly ambassadors (oratores)[1386] who demand reparation, declare war and ratify a peace, seem never to have been confined to those peoples with whom Rome had treaty relations, but to have been extended to any nation which had not by specific acts waged war on Rome. Four of the priestly guild of Fetiales were appointed to seek redress. These elected one of their number to become their representative, to be for the time the “ratifying father of the Roman people” (pater patratus populi Romani). At the borders of the offending tribe the pater with many imprecations called Jupiter to witness that the grievance was established, the demand reasonable. Three times did he make the same appeal—to the first sojourner he met in the stranger’s territory, to the sentinel at the gate, and to the magistrate within the walls. Thirty days were allowed for the reply; on the first of these the standard was hoisted on the citadel of Rome, and the burgess army gathered for the threatening war. If an appeasing answer were not returned within these days of grace, the pater again set forth and launched a charred spear (the prehistoric weapon of hardened wood) into the territory of the offender, with words setting forth the menace of war.[1387] When the struggle was over it was he who struck the peace and the sacrificial victim with a flint-stone which symbolised the watchful Jupiter (Jupiter lapis).[1388] The sanctity of envoys, other than these priestly messengers, was as rigorously observed in the Italian as in the Greek world. A violent death on an embassy was a martyrdom deserving of immortality, and the ancient Rostra in the Comitium showed a group of statues erected to those who had met their fate in the cause of peace.[1389] The neutrality of ambassadors was exacted with equal care, and the disaster of the Allia might be looked on as a retribution for the impious precipitancy of the Fabii who, forgetting their sacred character, fought in the ranks of Clusium against the Celtic hordes.[1390]

In the agreements made by generals and envoys with a foreign people, the idea, common to most primitive minds, that it is the oath which makes the promise binding is strikingly present. We have already touched on the vast constitutional import of this conception in its connexion with the question, posed but never completely answered by the too patriotic jurists: “Who could take the oath on behalf of the Roman people?” But the theory which on the whole prevailed, that it could not be taken by a general in the field, not only nullified the promise so made and rendered it a mere agreement (sponsio), valid between citizens but not between strangers, but exposed the rash swearer to the extremest penalties. With a strange inconsistency of judgment it was held that the oath, which was no oath, laid the guilt of perjury on the conscience of the people, unless the man who had caused the people unwittingly to sin was offered up as an atoning sacrifice. Naked and bound, like the sacrificial human victim of prehistoric times prepared for the altar, the imperator was surrendered to the offended people. It is not surprising that the latter—whether Samnites, Spaniards, or Numidians[1391]—refused to take the worthless gift from the hands of the pater patratus, and preferred to continue the conflict with a people still convicted of sin. The individual oath to return, made by a prisoner of war released on parole, though binding on his soul alone and, as a religious obligation, not punishable by the civil arm, was enforced by the public conscience. One—others said more than one—of the Roman captives sent by Hannibal after Cannae to negotiate an exchange of prisoners declined to return on the negotiations falling through. The pretext was that they had revisited the camp of the conqueror after the oath had been taken. Tradition varied as to the punishment imposed by Rome; some spoke of a summary arrest and enforced return to the Phoenician camp, others of a degradation by the censor and of a public detestation that drove the perjurer to suicide.[1392]

Such are some of the isolated specimens that have been handed down to us of rules of international right which Rome thought due to every nation. But, apart from such universal duties, the Roman mind, with its simple dichotomy of the world into enemies (hostes)[1393] and friends (amici), recognised varying degrees of obligation as due to either class. The hostes were all states or individuals with whom Rome had no treaty relations. With these there was no presupposition even of constant diplomatic relations, and their absence was symbolised by the manner in which envoys from such states were received. The tradition of “speaking with one’s enemy in the gate” was rigorously preserved to the end of the Republic, and the Senate had to meet a messenger from the enemy outside the walls.[1394] The friends of Rome were those with whom she had any relations that approximated to a federative character. There might be no definite treaty, no specified interchange of obligations; but the vague term amicitia with kindred titles of affection was applied to the vaguest association as well as to the closest alliance with Rome; it was indifferently a symbol of the greatest independence or of the practical subjection of the contracting state. The members of the military symmachy in Italy could share this title with distant Carthage,[1395] and even the barbarous Aedui are “kinsmen and brothers” of the Roman people.[1396] Even in the case of these communities the perpetual representation of mutual interests by means of permanent ambassadors—an institution still in its infancy in the seventeenth century of our era—was naturally unknown; but their recognition as friends granted their envoys or representatives an entrance and an audience of the Senate within the walls.[1397]

Closer relations between Rome and her “friends” were generally conditioned by ethnic and their corresponding religious ties. But the foreign element in early Rome shows that this was not universally the case. The rape of the Sabine women in its least significance reveals the fact of the close tie of intermarriage between Rome and a non-Latin community; the first treaty with Carthage reveals commercial relations, which were accompanied by some form of international jurisdiction, with a Phoenician power.[1398]

The first, because the most universal, ties which attract our attention as based on treaty relations are those of commerce. Commercial treaties with the foreigner led, in the very infancy of Roman history, to the development both of common courts and of a common code.

In the later Republic and in the Empire we have frequent mention of a civil court which was believed to have had an international origin. Attempts have been made to assign to this court of recuperatores a purely Roman source;[1399] but its essential peculiarities—the large uneven number of jurors, three or five, when the ordinary civil courts knew but one; the rapidity and simplicity of the procedure; the formula framed by a magistrate and not taken from the legis actiones of the civil law—are best explained as survivals of a time when it was a mixed court of international jurisdiction.[1400] The two or four jurors probably represented the contracting states in equal proportions, the third or fifth may have been an arbitrator chosen from another community; the magistrate who gave the formula would have been an official of the town in which the mixed court sat.