Niebuhr's lectures on Roman history, Vol. 1 (of 3)

by Barthold Georg Niebuhr

Yet the tribunes went further: as the laws also affected political rights, the lawgivers had likewise to reform the constitution. By the Publilian Rogations, a life had been awakened in the nation which was not in harmony with the ruling power: a new state of things was necessarily to spring up from it; but against this new state of things the old was arrayed in opposition. The most violent resistance was made to this law, and the patricians had recourse to the same outrages of which they had formerly been guilty. In this Cæso Quinctius, a son of Cincinnatus, particularly distinguished himself. He repeated all the intrigues of Appius Claudius, and at the head of the young men of his order and of the clients, he again prevented the plebeians by force from voting. Against this, either at that time, or a year before, a law had been passed, the lex Junia, which is inconceivably dated by Dionysius[102] thirty years earlier (262). By virtue of it, any one who molested the tribunes in the discharge of their duty was guilty of high treason against the commonalty. He had to find bail for an amount to be fixed by the tribunes (the usual number was ten sureties, for three thousand asses each), and if he did not attend to receive sentence, the sureties and their goods were forfeited to the commonalty. When the trial began, the charge was brought against him, that with a gang of young patricians he had caused the death of a plebeian by ill usage. Thus the Pentalides ran about in Mitylene with clubs, and ill used the plebeians there; as late as during the minority of Louis XIV. similar scenes took place in Paris, where people would not go out into the streets unarmed, as they were afraid of being attacked; in the times of Queen Anne, there was also in London a band of young men of rank, called Mohocks, who infested the streets in disguise; under King William, Lord Bolingbroke belonged to such a crew, as we see from Swift’s correspondence. The charge raised such a feeling of exasperation against Cæso Quinctius, that he left the city. It is now stated that his father was ruined in consequence, the tribunes having cruelly exacted the whole amount of the bail from him. This is impossible; for the tribunes could only come upon the securities. If these chose to come upon the father, a sponsio must have preceded; and even then, a man of so distinguished a house could not possibly have been bereft of rights which belonged to the very meanest of his order, but he might have called upon his clansmen and clients to indemnify him. The story is a fiction, like so many others which go a step beyond the truth. These embellishments might have been made skilfully so as to deceive us; but luckily we cannot be mistaken in this case.

Cincinnatus is one of those characters which have a very great name in tradition, but of which the notices in history are scanty, and nearly worthless. He occurs afterwards as a consul, and on that occasion nothing more of any consequence is recorded. Striking facts are told of him only in the Æquian war. There is a prestige of wealth and also of poverty about him: the latter shines forth especially in a rhetorical age, when no one has a mind to be poor, and it seems so much the more inconceivable if a great man is poor. We may leave the old account as it is; but the enthusiasm which has arisen from it, is only foisted into history. Perizonius has remarked, that the same story as that of Cincinnatus was told of the dictator Atilius Serranus (te sulco Serrane serentem), and therefore is quite apocryphal. He thinks that in all likelihood it was made from the name (Serranus from serere), which was certainly older than the dictator Serranus. The story of Cincinnatus is preserved in a poem on his dictatorship.

A Roman army under the consul Minucius was surrounded on the Algidus by the Æquians; the senate, as is stated, then sent a deputation to Cincinnatus, which found him ploughing his little farm of four jugera beyond the river; he is said to have received the invitation of the senate, and to have obeyed it with a bleeding heart, since he had still the fate of his son before his mind. He then chose a brave but poor patrician, L. Tarquitius, as his Master of the Horse; and gave orders that all who were able to bear arms should present themselves, and that each should bring with him twelve palisades, and provisions for five days. In the night they accordingly set out, arrived on the following morning, and formed the army in a line around the Æquian camp. The consul broke through from within, and the Æquians, themselves enclosed by a palisaded ditch, were obliged to surrender.

The whole story is quite as much a day dream, as any tale to be found in the “Book of Heroes.” If the Roman army was in the middle, and round it an Æquian one, and round that again another line of Romans, the latter must have occupied a circuit of at least a league; so that the Æquians could have broken through without any difficulty. Yet I will not assert that this dictatorship of Cincinnatus is not historical at all; although it is strange that afterwards a similar account occurs at the siege of Ardea, and the same Clœlius Gracchus as a general in it. Cincinnatus now exerts his power, to have Volscius, who had deposed as a witness against Cæso Quinctius, banished; probably by the curies, as the centuries had not as yet any judicial authority. At that time, Cæso Quinctius was no more alive: it is likely that he had already perished the year before on the following occasion, in which the spirit of the age shows itself in its true light. When he had expatriated himself, the tribunes remarked symptoms of a conspiracy among the patrician youth, and had information that Cæso was in the town. Moreover it is said that the city was surprised from the Carmental gate, which was open, by a host of patrician clients, headed by the Sabine Appius Herdonius who had come down the river in boats. But such an enlistment of four thousand men must have been known at Rome, as there was peace with the Sabines, and although the gate was to have been open on account of a consecration, yet it surely was guarded by double sentries; the enemy could not possibly have passed the Field of Mars unheeded, and have occupied the Capitoline hill; the Clivus at all events was closed. There must therefore have been treason here. In the night people were awakened by the cry, that the enemy had got hold of the Capitol; all who did not join the enemy were slain; the slaves were called upon to unite with them. This of course excited the greatest alarm and general misgiving. The plebeians thought that it was a stratagem of the patricians, and that they had set on their clients to take possession of the Capitol, as a means of intimidating the plebeians; that the consuls would, as in a tumult, require them to be sworn unconditionally, and would then avail themselves of the oath to lead them to a place beyond the reach of the tribunician authority, and demand of them the renunciation of their rights. The tribunes therefore said that they could not allow the commonalty to take up arms, before the laws were adopted. We may believe, notwithstanding, that the government was altogether guiltless. It seems certain, that there was a conspiracy, in which Cæso Quinctius had a share, and that they had promised to make Appius Herdonius king. There may have been here besides a conspiracy of the Gentes Minores; for one still finds a great division between them and the Majores. When it was seen how matters stood, the tribunes consented that the commonalty should take the military oath; and under the command of the consul, the Capitol was stormed. Luckily there seems to have been an armistice with the Æquians; yet such a state of affairs was always dangerous, for one could not reckon indeed with any safety that the truce would last. The consul Valerius, the son of Poplicola, the very one who is said to have been killed at the Regillus, was among the slain; the Capitol was taken by assault; of those who were in it, the slaves were crucified, and the freemen were executed. Cæso Quinctius may have been also among the latter; and for this his father now took a revenge, pardonable indeed, yet at all events ungenerous, in banishing Volscius, the prosecutor of his son. The tribunes of the people are stated to have vetoed this charge; a remarkable instance of their power, which at that time was very great already: perhaps they only took the accused under their protection, not allowing him to be brought by force before the tribunal; the expression patricios coire non passi sunt, is first used in later times. There were disputes about this trial for one or two years; for Cincinnatus as consul, or as dictator (very likely the latter), would not resign his office before Volscius was condemned. Volscius went into exile. His cognomen Fictor is one of those instances in which either the name arose from the tale, or the tale from the name, being probably from fingere; so that the fact that the plebeian M. Volscius Fictor had been condemned, gave rise to the story that he had borne false witness.

It is evident, that Cincinnatus has been preposterously idolized by posterity. Twenty years after this event, we see him, quite in the interest of a faction, shedding the innocent blood of Mælius.

After the war of 296, the history takes a different turn. Concerning the causes of this change we find no special notice; yet the combination of several circumstances leaves no doubt but that an alliance of peace and friendship was then concluded with the Volscians of Ecetræ, of which the condition was to restore Antium to the Volscians; so that this town now takes that character which it preserved for a hundred and twenty years, until after the Latin war. For, from that time the Volscians no longer appear every year on the Algidus; only the Æquians are enemies still, but indeed enemies of no consequence. The Antiates and Ecetrans from henceforth take a share in the festivals on the Alban Mount, the Feriæ Latinæ. This is referred to the days of Tarquin the Proud; but in that age Antium was not yet Volscian. Before the year 290, the census amounted to 104,000; after the plague, we find this number reduced not more than an eighth, although one fourth of the senate had been swept away, which is owing to the Volscians having been admitted to the right of municipium. Citizens they were not; the census therefore did not comprise the Roman citizens only. Yet the story of Coriolanus in particular is a proof of this compromise. Coriolanus is said to have made it a condition to the Romans, to give back the places which they had taken from the Volscians, and to receive the Volscians as isopolites. Both of these things were done: Antium is restored, the isopolity granted. Either to this tradition has been transferred whatever is historically related of the great Volscian war, or the story of Coriolanus is the catastrophe of this struggle which brings on the peace; that is to say, Coriolanus is really commander and mediator in this war.

That his history is not in its proper place, is manifest. The law against those who should disturb the popular assembly could not certainly have been made before the Publilian Rogations. If the Volscians had advanced to the gates of Rome as early as we find it stated in our books, there would not have been left any demesne for the distribution of which Sp. Cassius could have proposed a law; and, in fact, after the disastrous Volscian wars the agitations about the agrarian laws are at an end, because there was then no occasion for them. Moreover, if the war of Coriolanus in the year 262, had been carried on in the manner in which it appears to have been from the narrative, the Romans would not have had to restore any thing to the Volscians; but after the great Volscian war, these possessed Antium. Lastly, the demanded isopolity was really granted in the year 296, as is proved by the numbers of the census.—As to the giving up of Antium, the Romans say that it had fallen off: yet this is absurd with regard to a colony. The Roman colony was simply withdrawn, and the old Tyrrhenian population left to the Volscians. Even what is mentioned as the cause of the breaking out of the war of Coriolanus, that is to say, the account of the famine, during which a Greek king of Sicily was said to have sent a gift of corn, points to a later period. After the destructive Veientine war, under the consulship of Virginius and Servilius, the surrounding country had been burnt and devastated during the harvest and seed-time. In the year 262, Gelon was at most only prince of the insignificant town of Gela. Dionysius of Halicarnassus shows himself very clever at the expense of the old annalists who mention here the tyrant Dionysius, when he proves that the latter began his reign some eighty years later; yet he deserves much more severe censure himself, as he names Gelon. But after the Veientine war, according to the more probable chronology, Gelon, or at least his brother Hiero, was ruler of Syracuse, and had, on account of his hostility against the Etruscans, substantial reason to support the Romans. All the circumstances indicate the time which we have fixed upon. What gave rise to the mistake, was the mention of the temple of the Fortuna Muliebris, as has been remarked before; yet this surely belongs to an earlier period. The daughter of Valerius Poplicola is mentioned as the first priestess; if it were at all connected with the history of Coriolanus, his wife, or his mother, would have been the first priestess. The account is now as follows.

C. or as others call him, Cn. Marcius Coriolanus, a young patrician of eminence, very likely of the lesser clans, as these are on the whole most opposed to the Plebes, had distinguished himself in the wars against the Antiates. He had been commanding officer in the army which the consuls had led against the Volscians, at a time which of course the poem does not specify. The army besieged Corioli; the Volscians, advancing from Antium, wished to relieve it; Coriolanus took it by storm, whilst the army of the consul fought against the Antiates. For this his name was given him, and he was highly extolled. Yet the same person who in the war appears as a youth, is also a member of the senate, and stands there at the head of the oligarchic faction. There was a famine; and in contradiction to the plebeian statement that the Plebes during the secession had not been guilty of pillage, it is now said that the land had been devastated by them. The whole story is evidently of patrician origin; it glaringly shows the colouring of the caste. Fruitless attempts were made to procure corn: money was sent to Sicily to buy some; but the Greek king returned the money, and gave the corn as a present. Perhaps it was a gift from Carthage. Now it had been discussed in the senate what should be done with this corn. Coriolanus had proposed, that it should neither be sold nor distributed, unless the commonalty renounced its newly acquired rights, selling them for a mess of pottage. Another proposition not much more commendable, was that it should be sold to the commonalty as a body, so that individuals had to buy it of second hand. In this manner the patricians got double the prime cost. This plan was adopted. As might be expected, it excited great exasperation; at the same time, it also transpired that Coriolanus had insisted upon making use of the opportunity to do away with the privileges. The sequel is briefly told by Livy; Dionysius relates it at great length. According to Livy, the tribunes brought a charge against him, as one who had broken the peace; and they had a full right to do so by virtue of the agreement sworn at the Sacred Mount. The impeachment, of course, was brought before the Plebes, a fact indeed which Dionysius does not perceive. Coriolanus therefore was put on his trial before the tribes, with permission to leave the country before the decision was pronounced. This might be done, if bail were found; only not in the way that is generally imagined. Coriolanus is said to have met the charge proudly: Livy, however, tells us that he had not appeared on the day that judgment was given, but had withdrawn before the sentence was made known. Now if he had settled in some place where he had received the right of citizenship, the sentence could not be passed; or, if it were passed, it was null and void, though his sureties had to pay the sums for which they had bound themselves. Coriolanus was perhaps the first who was allowed on this charge to find bail. According to the general account, he now betook himself to the Volscians. This is true;—I believe every thing as far as here,—yet his presenting himself to Attius Tullius at Antium is apocryphal, and entirely copied from the visit of Themistocles to Admetus, the king of the Molossians. It is then stated, that he induced the Volscians, who had been quite disheartened, to hazard a war once more. This is Roman exaggeration, intended to disguise the distress which had been brought on by the Volscian arms. It is related, how he conquered the towns one by one, first Circeri, then those lying to the south of the Appian Way, then those on the Latin road; and how at last he advanced against Rome itself. This does not agree with what follows. Coriolanus now appears on the Roman frontier near the Marrana, the canal which carries the water of the low ground at Grotta Ferrara into the Tiber, five miles from Rome. Here the Romans send an embassy to him: first of all, ten senators; he grants them thirty days, and then three, as the Fetiales did whenever a war was not yet declared; afterwards they send the priests, and at length the matrons also. These last move his heart, and prevail upon him to turn back.

This is all very pretty, but, if we look a little closer to it, impossible. Livy makes on this occasion a most remarkable assertion. He says that one would not indeed have known that the consuls of that year had waged war with the Volscians, had it not been evident from the league of Sp. Cassius with the Latins that one of them, Postumus Cominius, had been absent; for Sp. Cassius had concluded that treaty alone. To account for this, Livy alleges the eclipsing fame of Coriolanus. This is a most valuable notice. The old traditions then do not mention at all that the consul had taken Corioli, but merely that Coriolanus had. Now, as we have seen before, it is not true that he received his cognomen from the conquest of the town, as such surnames do not occur before Scipio Africanus; moreover, Corioli was at that time not a Volscian, but a Latin town, which first became Volscian in the great Volscian war which we call that of Coriolanus, and was destroyed only later. That it was Latin, is plain from the list of the thirty towns which shared in the fight at the Regillus; and yet indeed that list in all likelihood was not originally made out with reference to this, but to the league of Sp. Cassius. Thus the name of Coriolanus meant no more than that of Regillensis, Vibulanus, Mugillanus, and others, whether it was that Corioli stood in a relation of proxeny or clientship to his family, or from any other reason. We have therefore nothing historical concerning Coriolanus, but that he wished to break the treaty with the plebeians, and was therefore condemned. It is the same with all the rest of his story. Coriolanus was condemned as one who had transgressed against the sworn rights (leges sacratæ, the German Frohnenrechte). He who violated them, made both himself and his family accursed; and it was said that such persons were to be sold for slaves at the temple of Ceres. How then could his wife and children have stayed behind in Rome, if such a sentence had been passed upon them? Mercy is not to be thought of in those times. The places against which Coriolanus waged war, were in alliance with Rome; whosoever therefore warred against them, was at war with the Romans, and Rome would already then have been obliged to take the field. And so, when he appeared before Rome, he could no more offer war or peace, but merely an armistice, nor could he settle the conditions of the truce; while on the other hand, the Romans could not possibly conclude peace on their own account without bringing in the Latins and Hernicans. Moreover, it is stated in the old narrative, that repeal of the interdictio aquæ et ignis had been announced to Coriolanus; but that he had not accepted it, but had put forth claims in the name of the Volscians. Yet, after the matrons had moved him, he goes off, and abandons all the conditions made in their behalf. Thenceforward we find no more traces of him beyond the notice in Fabius, that to the end of his days he dwelt among the Volscians; and that it was a remark of his, that in old age one began really to feel, what it was to live away from one’s native land. Others were well aware that the Volscians could not have let things pass off in this way; and hence we are told that they had followed him on account of his personal superiority, but that afterwards, when he left them, they stoned him to death at the instigation of Attius Tullius. Yet even Livy does not believe in this, because it is contradicted by the statement of Fabius.

The story is not altogether a fiction: Coriolanus lives too much in the Roman legends for this to be the case. As for the assertion that he was general of the Volscians, it is to be attributed to the natural feeling that it is less painful to be conquered by one’s own countryman than by a foreigner. From such a feeling of national pride, the Romans gave a false colouring to the Volscian war, and thus softened down, for themselves and the Latins, the disgrace of a defeat which led to such great conquests of the Volscians. In the same spirit, they devised the tale of the magnanimity of Coriolanus, and likewise of his death; and I am convinced that Fabius Pictor was right in asserting that Coriolanus, even to an advanced age, lived in exile among the Volscians. That Rome was on the brink of utter ruin, is likely; the distress, as represented, is perhaps not quite fictitious; but, that the expedients for warding off the danger, namely, the three embassies, of the senate, the priests, and the matrons, were invented to glorify the hero, is not to be denied. The different orders in their narratives mutually revile each other; and thus the Plebes here shows itself at once discouraged, and the patricians proud, as if they did not wish for a reconciliation with Coriolanus.