Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

The duties of the federate cities expressed in their name (socii, σύμμαχοι) were primarily the furnishing of requisitions whether in men or ships. The latter were demanded from the Greek cities of the coast, but Italy as a whole furnished the auxiliary land armies of Rome, the togati liable to the levy.[1442] Every state had to keep a register of its effective strength in accordance with a principle of assessment (formula).[1443] The general demands of Rome were specified in the treaties; the special levies required at any given time were dictated by the Senate and consuls.[1444]

Military requisitions necessarily involve pecuniary burdens. But these were all indirect. Each city had complete control of its own finances; no tribute was imposed by Rome, and the antithesis to the socius is the stipendiarius.[1445] This immunity was originally based on the theory of treaty relations; later, when the view had grown up that the tribute paid by the stipendiary states was the result of their precarious tenure as possessores, the Italians were held to be owners of their land. The jus Italicum of the Principate confers on any state to which it is granted quiritarian ownership, and, therefore, immunity from taxation on land.

Enjoyment of their own laws and control of their own courts were other symbols of the autonomy of the allies. Rome could not legislate for the Italian socii, and they were beyond the judicial authority of the Roman magistrate in Italy.

But the necessities of social and commercial intercourse rendered it advisable that the Italian allies—more especially the Latins—should be brought into close legal relations with Rome, and the acceptance by the latter of innumerable civil laws of the central state is attested by Cicero.[1446] The Italians are known to have been bound by a plebiscitum concerning loans[1447]—this, however, only made contracts of a certain kind between them and Romans invalid, and may not have demanded their consent; but their formal acceptance must have been required for the Didian law, which extended the sumptuary regulations of the lex Fannia to all the Italici.[1448] The “free” as well as the “federate” city has the right to accept or decline a legislative proposal put before it by the Roman government.[1449]

Closest of all to Rome were the Latins. As members of federate cities they were amongst the socii,[1450] and it is only as a class with special privileges that they are distinguished from the latter.[1451] Latinitas had, through the efforts of colonisation, long lost its geographical and ethnic significance. It was the name for a status often accepted by Roman citizens, which combined the anomalies of sovereignty and a partial Roman citizenship. The sovereign rights are those possessed by the socii, the civic privileges were originally those held by the municipia; but it is possible that on and after the foundation of Ariminum and the last twelve Latin colonies[1452] commercium alone was granted, conubium refused.[1453] The most distinctive privilege of the Latin had been the concession of facilities for acquiring Roman political rights. A Latin who migrated from his town and became a domiciled immigrant (incola) of Rome had retained his civic rights in private law, and gained a limited power of suffrage.[1454] He could even by complete expatriation (exilium) surrender his own civitas and attain the full Roman citizenship. But the conditions subsequently imposed on this right[1455] were evaded, immigration continued unchecked, and there was a danger of the depopulation of the districts from which the exiles came. This evil suggested the later method, which gave the Latins admission to the civitas. The holder of a magistracy in his native town was, by the mere fact of his position, to become a full citizen of Rome. It is improbable that this right replaced the right of exile possessed by already existing Latin towns, and the date of its origin is unknown; but it possibly accompanied the remodelling of Latin rights in 268 B.C., and is henceforth the typical privilege of the Latin colony.[1456] Another mode in which the individual Latin could acquire the Roman civitas was by conducting a successful prosecution under the Acilian and Servilian laws of extortion.[1457]

The freedom of the cities, whether Latin or Italian, seems to have won rigid respect from Rome and her magistrates. The burdens of military service were, indeed, unevenly distributed between the central city and her allies,[1458] while the spoils of war were mainly for the Roman. But it was a shock and a surprise when in 173 B.C. a consul made personal requisitions on the federate city of Praeneste.[1459] The lesson once learnt was only too faithfully followed, and the illegal demands of Roman officials were accompanied by acts of capricious violence.[1460] But the burden of service and the misuse of power were not the only motives urging the allies to seek the civitas of Rome; nor was it merely a sentimental desire to be invested with the Roman name. The citizenship had a positive value both as a protection and a source of gain. The protection against capital or corporal penalties tacitly accorded to Romans by provincial governors could not be claimed by the allies, and, although there is no evidence that Rome, in her final organisation of the Italian confederacy, continued her early policy of inhibiting commercium between the towns, yet citizenship had a commercial value. Ownership of land in the provinces was protected by the praetor and the proconsul, but only when it was held by a Roman. To the Roman trade with the barbarian was secure, to the Italian precarious; and everywhere he had to face the competition of the commercial companies of Roman knights. The grounds of interest coincided with those of sentiment in producing a demand which the progressive party amongst the Romans strove to meet. The first attempt was made through a law of the consul Flaccus in 125 B.C.,[1461] the second by one of C. Gracchus in 121, the latter law probably offering citizen rights to the Latins and Latin rights to the other allies.[1462] The final proposal of Livius Drusus in 91 was probably an unmodified extension of the civitas,[1463] and it was the failure of this measure that led to the Italian revolt. A new suggestion for a solution of the problem of the relations of Rome to Italy sprang from the organisation of the hostile states. A federal capital, Corfinium, now Italica, was created, and a provisional federation of eight states formed, one which was intended ultimately to embrace the whole of Italy. The Roman, or rather Italian, pattern was followed in the new constitution; it possessed two consuls, twelve praetors, and a senate of five hundred;[1464] but both the magistracies and the senate were of a federal type. The issue of the war was to determine whether Rome should remain the leading state or become a mere member of an Italian confederation, although the unlikelihood of the giant city’s settling down to this position may have appealed to some of the federal leaders.[1465] Unless a redistribution of territory and population had been effected, Rome would have been the Thebes of the league, and the fate of the Empire would have been in suspense, for a federal government’s capacity for imperial rule had yet to be tested. By timely concessions Rome saved her position as the head of the confederacy. By the lex Julia (90 B.C.) all the Italian states that had not revolted were offered the civitas,[1466] and this was followed by the lex Plautia Papiria (89 B.C.), which offered the civitas to the socii and incolae of the allied cities in revolt.[1467] These measures effected a considerable extension of the citizenship, but other means, of which we are ignorant, must have been adopted for the gradual incorporation of communities, many of which still remained for a considerable time in rebellion against Rome.[1468]

The work of incorporation immediately raised two problems. The first was the question of the voting rights of the new citizens. These rights were at first grudgingly accorded to prevent the new citizens swamping the old. The novi cives were enrolled in but eight of the existing tribes.[1469] But this compromise could not last long; redistribution became a party cry, and even the conservatives felt the damage done to their cause by a prolonged opposition to the Italian vote. The measure of Sulpicius (88 B.C.), which distributed the new citizens over all the tribes, was indeed repealed with his other laws; but its principle seems to have been adopted in a decree of the Senate of 84 B.C.,[1470] and the equality of the Roman and Italian vote was henceforth never questioned. The vote itself was not of the importance anticipated. It was, in the first place, rendered ineffective through lack of a system of representation. Even had such a system, planned on a small scale by Augustus,[1471] been realised, it is questionable whether it could have saved the Republic. The Empire had to be garrisoned by professional armies, and these could not be found in Italy. The military and the civil power would in any case have been opposed, and the conflict must have ended in a victory for the former. But, so far as the extension of the civitas did affect future politics, it was only to create a dualism between the Roman proletariate and the Italian country voters. They had different ideals and different leaders. But the former were on the spot, ready for any legislative work, and in the troubled politics that ushered in the monarchy it was they who supported those champions of freedom who replaced senatorial rule by a military despotism. The ideal of the Italian was quiescence; the scattered voters with no corporate organisation were more prone to look to persons than to causes; sometimes there was a wave of municipal enthusiasm, but many an Italian township recognised no leader but its Roman patron, and saw in his success at the polls the highest use to which they could put their suffrage.

The second great problem was that of the future administrative relations of Rome to these incorporated townships. The growth of the municipal idea was not a new one. Even as early as the beginning of the second century B.C. the possibility had been demonstrated of combining active internal independence with the possession of the full Roman civitas. Arpinum had received the full citizenship in 188 B.C., and its citizens vote henceforward in the Cornelian tribe;[1472] but its internal autonomy was not destroyed, for the town was still legislating for itself in 115 B.C.[1473] Meanwhile there are signs that a higher type of organisation was being given to Roman colonies; at least duovirs, who may be duoviri juri dicundo, are found at Puteoli in 105 B.C.[1474] This idea of some political and judicial independence being enjoyed by townships, which had become a part of Rome, was worked out on the grandest scale after the social war; but the turbulent times which followed were not suited to comprehensive municipal legislation, and it is not likely that a definite system, which adjusted local to central powers, was developed before the Augustan period. Something had however been done in Cicero’s time. Here and there we find a local constitution remodelled,[1475] and there is evidence that there was already some division of competence between the local magistrate and the praetor urbanus in civil jurisdiction—the defendant being in some cases compelled to give bail (vadimonium) to bring his case to Rome.[1476] This principle of a limitation of the power of the local courts is found fully developed in a lex Rubria which deals with the organisation of Cisalpine Gaul. This district had held an anomalous position from the time of the social war. Although still a province, its towns had been given Latin rights in 89 B.C.[1477] This was interpreted by the democratic party as a forecast of the citizenship, for Gallia Cisalpina was certainly enrolled in Rome by the revolutionary government of Cinna or his successors.[1478] The grant, however, was not approved at the Sullan restoration, and its validity was disputed until Caesar renewed the gift in 49 or 48 B.C.[1479] Two or three years earlier he had busied himself with the creation of an Italian organisation in the Gallic towns;[1480] but, even after his conferment of the citizenship, the incorporation of the district into Italy was not immediately accomplished. It remained technically a province until 42 B.C., when Octavianus gained the consent of the Senate to its “autonomy,”[1481] i.e. to its recognition as a group of Italian townships. It is doubtful whether the lex Rubria belongs to the epoch of the Julian or the Augustan organisation;[1482] but it is practically certain that it extends an already existing Italian system to the new district. The chief characteristic of the system is a division of power between the praetor at Rome and the magistrate in the municipal town. In the fragment of the law which we possess this division is manifested in two particulars. The right of declaring bankruptcy (missio in possessionem) is reserved for the praetor, although the provisional arrest of the debtor (duci jubere) may be ordered by the local magistrate. Again, in the action for the recovery of a loan and in those arising from some other obligations, all cases involving a sum over 15,000 sesterces must be remitted to Rome, the local magistrate having the right to enforce on the parties bail (vadimonium) for their appearance there.[1483] These fragmentary notices are an index to a principle which was doubtless fully elaborated in the Augustan legislation.