Roman politics

by Frank Frost Abbott

The rapid growth of Rome and her conquest of adjacent territory not only brought to the surface the economic questions which we have just been discussing, but also necessitated an increase in the number of magistrates to manage the larger population and to meet the more complex conditions which had arisen. In the early Republican period the only important officials with positive powers were the two consuls. They presided over the meetings of the senate and of the assemblies which were made up of the whole people, and they were the chief executives and the judicial and financial officials of the community. They supervised the conquered districts of Italy, represented the city in its dealings with foreign states, and commanded the army. These manifold duties, and in particular the absence of the consuls from the city in carrying on war, made it necessary to relieve them of some of their civil functions. The first step taken in this direction was to increase the importance of a minor police official, the aedile. To this official was assigned the duty of keeping order in public places, of supervising commercial transactions, and later, as a natural development of these two functions, of taking charge of the public games and of providing a supply of grain for the city. The financial duties of the consul were turned over to the censor. First and foremost, of course, among these, were the collection of taxes and the expenditure of public moneys. In order that he might draw up a correct list of taxable property, the censor required every citizen to appear before him every five years and make a statement concerning his property, his business, and the main facts of his life. Consequently the censors not only knew the financial status of every Roman, but were also familiar with his occupation and his moral standing in the community. Now the value of a citizen’s vote in the principal popular assembly depended on the amount of property which he held, and certain occupations were regarded as beneath the dignity of a senator or likely to interfere with the disinterested performance of his duty. In later times, too, inclusion in the new social order of the knighthood depended on the possession of a certain amount of property. It was natural therefore that the censors, having all the necessary information before them, should assume responsibility for assigning citizens to their proper places in the centuriate assembly, and for revising every five years the lists of senators and knights. This attempt to supervise the morals of the community is one of the most interesting experiments in government which the Romans ever made. It reached certain social evils, like extravagance and cowardice, of which the courts could not readily take cognizance, and the penalties imposed, of loss of voting importance in the assembly or of exclusion from the list of senators or knights, were severe. It may well indicate a gradual growth of wealth in the community and a threatened disappearance of the simple life and the simple virtues of the olden time. What the censors tried to do was to maintain the moral and social standards of earlier days. While the censor’s office flourished, deviations from those standards were not defined by law, but were determined by officials, from whose decisions there was no appeal. Perhaps no official in Roman history enjoyed such absolute power within the limits fixed by the penalties which could be imposed.[3] The institution played an important rôle for many decades, but towards the close of the second century before our era, the population had become so large that an examination of the business and the life of every citizen became impossible. One of the objects which the Romans had tried to accomplish by the establishment of the censorship, they attempted later to attain by the passage of sumptuary laws.

The growth of Rome and the consequent increase of public business led the Romans to take his judicial functions from the consul in 367, just as they had previously relieved him of police duties and of financial business. Henceforth a new magistrate, the praetor, took his place in the courts. To no other institution in the Roman political system does the modern world owe so much as it owes to the praetor’s office. At first there was only one incumbent of the office, and since his duties confined him to the city he was called the urban praetor. A hundred years later when a second praetor was added, to deal with cases in which one party or both parties to the case were foreigners, the new official was styled the peregrine praetor and in his courts the principles of the law of nations were developed. Sulla ultimately raised the number of praetors to eight. With the institution of the praetor’s office our modern court system of judge and jury was firmly established, and a beginning was made in the development of Roman Law. On taking office the praetor published an edict containing the maxims of law and the forms of procedure which would govern him throughout his year of office. This document followed the edict of his predecessor, with such modifications and additions as his own judgment and the needs of the times required. The law in this way became a living thing and constantly adapted itself to the changing needs of society. The later history of the edict and certain additions to the praetor’s duties we shall have occasion to notice in another connection.

The increase which the tribune’s power underwent during this period almost made his office a new one. With their characteristic hesitation about introducing radical changes in the constitution, and with their tendency to take concrete action, the Romans at the outset had required the tribune to intervene in person when a citizen was being harshly treated. But their common sense showed them in course of time that it was far better to allow the tribune to record his opposition to a bill when it was under consideration than to have him prevent the execution of a law. This change placed a tremendous power in the hands of the tribune in his struggle with the senate and the nobility.

In the early period the senate had been composed of the representatives of the leading clans, but as public business became more complex, in making out the list of senators the censors gave a preference to ex-magistrates, who were already experienced in public affairs, and in course of time this practice was crystallized into law. The men who thus became senators by virtue of having held the praetorship, or consulship, for instance, were elected to a magistracy, to be sure, by the people, but the prestige of a candidate who could point to magistrates among his ancestors was so great that a “new man” had little or no chance of being elected against him. The results were twofold. A new nobility was established composed of ex-magistrates and their lineal descendants. In the second place the senate, being henceforth made up of men who had had experience in administration at home and abroad, easily gained supremacy both over the magistrates, who held office for a year only, and over the popular assemblies, which were unwieldy and ill-informed on important matters. For a century and a half, down to the time of the Gracchi (i.e., the second century B.C.), this nobility maintained itself, and Rome was ruled by a parliament. This state of things is the more astonishing in view of the fact that at the beginning of this period the democracy had won a complete victory, and the action of the popular assembly was accepted as final on all matters. The anomaly is easily explained by the fact that the senate controlled the magistrates; they only could bring bills before the assemblies, and they dared not submit measures of which the senate disapproved.

The ascendency of the senate during this period was due in no small measure to the necessity of dealing with important foreign affairs, for which the people were not qualified. Between 287 and 133 came the war with Pyrrhus and the acquisition of Southern Italy, the three wars with Carthage and the conquest of the Western Mediterranean, the wars with Macedonia and the subjugation of the Eastern Mediterranean. By 133 Rome’s territory included practically all the lands bordering on the Mediterranean. The government of this newly-acquired empire was a peculiarly difficult problem for a city-state. It was somewhat simplified however by the fact that in her ultimate arrangements Rome had to deal with city-states like herself. In Italy, at the outset, she gave conquered cities civil rights and the right of self-government. The Social War in 91-89 B.C. forced her to grant them the political rights of Roman citizens also. Henceforth Italy was a political unit, but, inasmuch as ballots could be cast at Rome only, voters outside the city were at a disadvantage. The Roman Republic never got far enough away from the tradition of the city-state to recognize the fact that citizens could cast their ballots elsewhere than at Rome or that other communities could send their representatives to Rome.

To provide for a new province outside Italy, the senate sent a commission of ten to co-operate with the Roman commander in drawing up a charter. In this document the province was divided into judicial circuits, and the status of each city was fixed either by separate treaty with Rome or by legislative action. Provincial cities were usually permitted to retain their senates, popular assemblies, local magistrates and courts. A few of them were “free cities,” exempt from taxation, but most of them were required to pay a fixed sum in taxes, or to turn over to Rome a certain proportion of the annual return from the land. The rate of taxation was not high, but farming out the taxes to contractors, whose sole desire was to extort as much from the provincials as possible, made taxation in the provinces oppressive. Roman governors were often in league with the moneyed interests at Rome, and were themselves anxious to line their pockets during their year abroad. After a period of experimentation the Romans settled down to the practice of sending out ex-consuls and ex-praetors as provincial governors. These men had experience in public affairs, but their term of office was so short that they acquired little knowledge of local conditions and felt little sympathy with the provincials. Public sentiment at Rome could effect no change, because, like most democracies, the Roman democracy felt little interest in the welfare of the provincials.[4]

The tribunates of the two Gracchi[5] at the end of the period which we have been considering begin the century-long revolution which ultimately overthrew the oligarchy and brought in the empire. The attention of Tiberius Gracchus was called to the gradual disappearance of the peasant proprietor from Italy, to the abnormal growth of the city at the expense of the country, and to the crushing out of the middle class. He and his brother set themselves to work to remedy this situation by limiting the size of landed estates, by assigning state lands to homesteaders, and by drafting off the city’s proletariat to colonies in Italy and abroad. In these plans Tiberius met the violent opposition of the senate, but carried his measures through in a popular assembly in spite of the senate’s efforts. By this action, and by securing “the recall” of a hostile tribune, he struck a fatal blow at the prestige of the senate, which had controlled legislation for a century and a half. Ten years later by securing the passage in the popular assembly of one bill to supply grain to the poor of Rome at a price lower than the market rate, of another imposing a penalty on a magistrate who carried out the final decree of the senate suspending certain constitutional guarantees, and of a third which dealt with the taxes in Asia, Gaius, the brother of Tiberius, vindicated the claim of the popular assembly to be the controlling factor in legislation on domestic and foreign affairs. The political history of Rome for the next century is a continuation of this life-and-death struggle between the nobility and the democracy, with one and the other contestant alternately in the ascendant. The development of the empire and the need of a standing army to carry on wars abroad and maintain order, in the end, gave a decisive turn to the struggle.

To maintain its integrity an oligarchy must keep its numbers small and must prevent individuals from gaining too great eminence or popularity. The traditional acceptance by the masses of certain families as the only families qualified to furnish rulers for the state had kept the nobility a close corporation. To accomplish the second object, that is, to prevent an ambitious individual from rising too rapidly to power, from holding his authority too long a time, and from securing too strong and compact a following, the senate had hedged the magistracies about with a number of legal safeguards. The strict laws enacted before the time of the Gracchi against bribery and prescribing a secret ballot were passed to protect the nobility, and not in the interests of morality. Custom at first, and later, legislation, fixed minimum age requirements for most of the offices, established a certain order in which they must be held, and required an interval between the incumbency of two successive magistracies. The reactionary recasting of the constitution under Sulla illustrates well the aristocratic policy in these matters. In it the important magistracies stand in the order of quaestorship, aedileship, praetorship, and consulship, and a two-year interval was necessary between each two. The minimum age requirement for the consulship was forty-three years, and no one might be reëlected to a magistracy until a period of ten years had expired. This is essentially the system which had been gradually worked out during the flourishing period of the oligarchy. It had also always been a fundamental principle of the Republic that no magistrate should hold office for more than a year, except the censor, whose term was eighteen months. This provision of the constitution took from the magistrate his power and desire to initiate political action. He had been a senator for many years before becoming consul. In twelve months he would be a senator again. He did not lose class-consciousness during his short term of office. If he had wished to assert himself, it would have been impossible. The senate was a body of trained administrators, many of whom had a wider technical knowledge of the questions at issue than he had himself. It was a body of men bound together by mutual self-interest, which had a tradition of centuries behind it. The danger point in the system for the oligarchy lay in the fact that an army and unlimited authority had to be given to the governor of a province. The senate tried to minimize this danger by keeping a tight grip on the purse-strings when appropriating money and in voting troops for the provinces, and by requiring governors to submit their arrangements in the provinces to the senate for ratification, when their terms had expired.

The decline of parliamentarism in the century which lies between the Gracchi and Caesar may be traced in the loss of these safeguards, one after another. Disorders at home, the pressure of wars abroad and the dominance of the army led to their disregard. A case in point occurred toward the close of the second century before our era. The senatorial leaders had shown great incompetence and venality in their campaigns against the Numidian king Jugurtha, and the popular party forced the election to the consulship of Marius, a man of humble birth, and gave him command of the forces in Africa. His brilliant success in this war made the people turn to him in 104, when the Cimbri and Teutons swept down into Italy and overwhelmed the aristocratic leaders. Once more he succeeded, and was elected to the consulship year after year, until, in the year 100, he held this office for the sixth time. The popularity of Marius brought his son to the consulship before he had reached his twentieth year. Twenty-five years later the senate itself was forced to give up an important feature of its policy. Sertorius, a brilliant democratic leader, had established himself in Spain; he had formed an alliance with Mithridates, Rome’s deadly enemy in the East, and threatened to return to Italy and restore the democracy to power. To avert this danger the senate made Pompey proconsul, although he had not yet held even the quaestorship, and sent him to Spain with 40,000 troops. A little later the Gabinian and Manilian laws, carried through by the democracy against the vigorous opposition of the oligarchy, entrusted him with extraordinary powers for a long term to carry on the wars against the Cilician pirates and against Mithridates. The dictatorship of Sulla in 82 B.C. and the sole consulship of Pompey in 52, both of which resulted from disorder in Rome, violated the principle of collegiality which was one of the most important safeguards of the oligarchy. Within one hundred years, then, of the time of the Gracchi all the bulwarks which the aristocracy had built up to protect its position were broken down. “New men” were put in the consulship. Popular favorites attained that office before reaching the minimum age required of candidates, and men were freely reëlected to it. The fixed “order of the offices” and the principle of collegiality were violated.

In its struggle for power, the democracy met a reverse in the suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy in 63 B.C., so that when Pompey returned from his campaign against Mithridates in the following year, the senate ventured to postpone the ratification of his arrangements in Asia and the reward of his veterans. This forced him to make common cause with the democratic leader Caesar, and with Crassus, whose wealth and financial associates made him a man of great influence. In 60 B.C. these three political leaders formed the compact, known as the First Triumvirate, which directed the politics of Rome through its control of the popular assembly for a number of years.[6] Caesar was given the consulship, and later an important command in Gaul. The death of Crassus in a campaign in Parthia left Caesar and Pompey face-to-face. Pompey who had staid in Rome ultimately threw in his lot with the senatorial party, and, when in 49 B.C. the senate tried to make Caesar give up his Gallic province and the Civil War broke out, Pompey was put in charge of the army operating against Caesar. Caesar’s success in the war made him undisputed master of Rome, and before his death he became dictator for life. The liberators, as they called themselves, made a last stand for the old régime, but were defeated at Philippi, and the victors, Octavius, Antony and Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate, the members of which did not content themselves with the unofficial position of political bosses, as Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey had done, but secured a legal basis for their autocratic power through legislation in the popular assembly. Again the elimination of one member of the triumvirate, Lepidus, and the battle of Actium in 31 B.C. left Octavius, or Augustus as we know him in later life, in undisputed control of the state. The revolution was complete. The old machinery of government had broken down under the strain put upon it by the policy of imperialism. Parliamentarism and the narrow policy of a city-state were ill adapted to the government of an empire. The large armies and the long terms of office abroad which Marius and Sulla, Pompey and Caesar had held, had put at their disposal greater resources than the state could command, and the Roman citizens and provincials who had been taught to obey them implicitly in the field maintained their allegiance to their old commanders upon the return of the latter to Italy.