A History of Rome to 565 A. D.

by Arthur E. R. Boak

III. The Plebeian Struggle for Political Equality

The causes of the struggle. Of greater moment in the early history of the republic than the development of the magistracy was the persistent effort made by the plebeians to secure for themselves admission to all the offices and privileges that at the beginning of the republic were monopolized by the patricians. Their demands were vigorously opposed by the latter, whose position was sustained by tradition, by their control of the organs of government, by individual and class prestige, and by the support of their numerous clients. But among the plebeians there was an ever increasing number whose fortunes ranked with those of the patricians and who refused to be excluded from the government. These furnished the leaders among the plebs. However, a factor of greater importance than the presence of this element in determining the final outcome of the struggle was the demand made upon the military resources of the state by the numerous foreign wars. The plebeian soldiers shared equally with the patricians in the dangers of the field, and equality of political rights could not long be withheld from them. As their services were essential to the state, the patrician senators were far[pg 53]sighted enough to make concessions to their demands whenever a refusal would have led to civil warfare. A great cause of discontent on the part of the plebs was the indebtedness of the poorer landholders, caused in great part by their enforced absence from their lands upon military service and the burden of the tributum or property tax levied for military purposes. Their condition was rendered the more intolerable because of the operation of the harsh debtor laws, which permitted the creditor to seize the person of the debtor and to sell him into slavery.

Evidence that discontent was rife at Rome may be found in the tradition of three unsuccessful attempts to set up a tyranny, that is, to seize power by unconstitutional means, made by Spurius Cassius (478), Spurius Maelius (431), and Marcus Manlius (376), patricians who figure in later tradition as popular champions.

The tribunes of the plebs (466 B. C.), and the assembly of the tribes. The first success won by the plebeians was in securing protection against unjust or oppressive acts on the part of the patrician magistrates. In 466, they forced the patricians to acquiesce in the appointment of four tribunes of the plebs, officers who had the right to extend protection to all who sought their aid, even against the magistrate in the exercise of his functions.[2] The tribunes received power to make effective use of this right from an oath taken by the plebeians that they would treat as accursed and put to death without trial any person who disregarded the tribune’s veto or violated the sanctity of his person. The character of the tribunate and the basis of its power reveal it as the result of a revolutionary movement and as existing in defiance of the patricians. The tribunes were elected in an assembly in which the voting units were tribes, and the number of the tribunes (four) suggests that this assembly was at first composed of the citizens of the four city regions or tribes, and that it was the city plebs who were responsible for the establishment of the tribunate. In this assembly we have the origin of the comitia tributa or Assembly of the Tribes.

The origin of these tribes is uncertain, but by the middle of the fifth century the Roman state was divided into twenty or twenty-one districts, each of which with the citizens resident therein constituted a tribus. Four of these were located in the city: the remainder were [pg 54]rural. In the preceding chapter we have seen how the number of the tribes was increased with the incorporation of conquered territory within the Roman state and its occupation by Roman colonists. The tribes were artificial divisions of the community, and served as a basis for the raising of the levy and the tributum.

Plebeian aediles. Associated with the tribunes as officers of the plebs were two aediles (aediles plebi). It has been conjectured that they were originally the curators of the temple of Ceres (established 492?), which was in a special sense a plebeian shrine. As we have seen they later became magistrates of the whole people.

The codification of the law. About the middle of the fifth century the plebeians secured the codification and publication of the law. Hitherto the law, which consisted essentially of customs and precedents, and was largely sacral in character, had been known only to the magistrates and to the priests, that is to members of the patrician order. At this time, two commissions of ten men each, working in successive years (444–2?) drew up these customs into a code, which, with subsequent additions, formed what was later called the Law of the XII Tables. This code was in no sense a constitution, but embodied provisions of both civil and criminal law, with rules for legal procedure and police regulations. Notable is the provision which guaranteed the right of appeal to the Assembly of the Centuries in capital cases.

Development of the tribunate and the comitia tributa. The years which saw the publication of the code mark an important stage in the struggle of the orders. Serious trouble arose between the patricians and the plebs under the second college of law-givers, and the difference was only settled by a treaty which restored the tribunate, that had been suspended when the decemvirs were first elected. Henceforth the number of tribunes was ten instead of four and their position and powers received legal recognition from the patricians. From this time on, too, the comitia tributa, now embracing all the tribes, the rural as well as the urban, was a regular institution of the state. The Assembly of the Tribes was originally, and perhaps always remained in theory, restricted to the plebeians. And it is improbable that the patricians ever sought to participate in it. At any rate, there is no adequate reason for believing in the existence of two assemblies of this sort, the one composed of both patricians and plebeians and the other of plebeians only.

The Assembly of the Tribes not only elected the plebeian tribunes and aediles, but soon chose the quaestors also. Furthermore, the patrician magistrates, finding this Assembly in many ways more convenient for the transaction of public business than the Assembly of the Centuries which met in the Campus Martius outside the pomerium and required more time to register its opinion because of the greater number of voting units, began to convene it to approve measures, which, if previously sanctioned by a decree of the Senate, became law. The tribunes likewise presented resolutions to the Assembly of the Tribes, and these, too, if sanctioned by the Senate, were binding on the whole community. Such laws were called plebiscites (plebi scita) in contrast with the leges passed by an assembly presided over by a magistrate with imperium. It became the ambition of the tribunes to obtain for their plebiscites the force of law without regard to the Senate’s approval.