History of Human Society

by Frank W. Blackmar

The tribunes of the people finally gained more power, and a resolution was introduced in the senate providing that a body of ten men should be selected to reduce the laws of the state to a written code. In 451 B.C. the ten men were chosen from the patricians, who formed ten tables of laws, had them engraved on copper plates, and placed them where everybody could read them. The following year ten men were again appointed, three of whom were plebeians, who added two more tables; the whole body became known as the Laws of the Twelve Tables. It was a great step in advance when the laws of a community could be thus published. Soon after this the laws of Valerius and Horatius made the acts of the assembly of the tribunes of equal force with those of the assembly of the centuries, and established that every magistrate, including the dictator, was obliged in the future to allow appeals from his decision. They also recognized the inviolability of the tribunes of the people and of the aediles who represented them. But in order to circumvent the plebeians, two quaestors were appointed in charge of the military treasury.

Indeed, at every step forward which the people made for equality and justice, the senate, representing the aristocracy, passed laws to circumvent the plebeians. In 445 B.C. the tribune Canuleius introduced a law legalizing marriage between the patricians and plebeians. The children were to inherit the rank of their father. This tribune further attempted to pass a law allowing consuls to be chosen from the plebeians. To this a fierce opposition sprang up, and a compromise measure was adopted which allowed military tribunes to be elected from the plebeians, who had consular power. But again the senate sought to circumvent the plebeians, and created the new patrician office of censor, to take the census, make lists of citizens and taxes, appoint senators, prepare the publication of the budget, manage the state property, farm out the taxes, and superintend public buildings; also he might supervise the public morality.

With the year 587 B.C. came the invasion of the Gauls from the north and the famous battle of the Allia, in which the Romans suffered defeat and were forced to the right bank of the Tiber, leaving the city of Rome defenseless. Abandoned by the citizens, the city was taken, plundered, and burned by the Gauls. Senators were slaughtered, though the capitol was not taken. Finally, surprised and overcome by a contingent of the Roman army, the enemy was forced to retire and the inhabitants again returned. But no sooner had they returned than the peaceful struggle of the plebeians against the patricians began again.

First, there were the poor, indebted plebeians, who sought the reform of the laws relating to debtor and creditor and desired a share in the public lands. Second, the whole body of the plebeians were engaged in an attempt to open the consulate to their ranks. In 367 B.C. the Licinian laws were passed, which gave relief to the debtors by deducting the interest already accrued from the principal, and allowing the rest to be paid in three annual instalments; and a second law forbade that any one should possess more than 500 jugera of the public lands. This was to prevent the wealthy patricians from holding lands in large tracts and keeping them from the plebeians. This law also abolished the military tribuneship and insisted that one at least of the two consuls should be chosen from the plebeians—giving a possibility of two. The patricians, in order to counteract undue influence in this respect, established the praetorship, the praetor having jurisdiction and vicegerence of the consuls during their absence.

There also sprang up about this time the new nobility (optimates), composed of the plebeians and patricians who had held office for a long time, and representing the aristocracy of the community. From this time on all the Roman citizens tended to go into two classes, the optimates and, exclusive of these, the great Roman populace. In the former all the wealth and power were combined; in the latter the poverty, wretchedness, and dependence. Various other changes in the constitution succeeded, until the great wars of the Samnites and those of the Carthaginians directed the attention of the people to foreign conquest. After the close of these great wars and the firm establishment of the universal power of Rome abroad, there sprang up a great civil war, induced largely by the disturbance of the Gracchi, who sought to carry out the will of the people in regard to popular democracy and the division of the public lands.

Thus, step by step, the plebeians, by a peaceful civil struggle, had obtained the consulship, and, indeed, the right to all other civil offices. They had obtained a right to sit in the senate, had obtained the declaration of social equality, had settled the great land question; and yet the will of the people never prevailed. The great Roman senate, made up of the aristocracy of Rome, an aristocracy of both plebeians and patricians, ruled with unyielding sway, and the common people never obtained full possession of their rights and privileges. Civil strife continued; the gulf between the rich and the poor, the nobility and the proletariat representing a few rich political manipulators, on the one side, and the half-fed, half-mad populace, on the other, grew wider and wider, finally ending in civil war. In the midst of the strife the republic passed away, and only the coming of the imperial power of the Caesars perpetuated Roman institutions.

Rome Becomes a Dominant City.—In all of this struggle at home and abroad, foreign conquest led to the establishment of Rome as the central city. The constitution of Rome was the typical constitution for all provincial cities, and from this one centre all provinces were ruled. No example heretofore had existed of the centralization of government similar to this. The overlordship of the Persians was only for the purpose of collecting tribute; there was little attempt to carry abroad the Persian institutions or to amalgamate the conquered provinces in one great homogeneous nation.

The empire of Athens was but a temporary hegemony over tributary states. But the Roman government conquered and absorbed. Wherever went the Roman arms, there the Roman laws and the Roman government followed; there followed the Roman language, architecture, art, institutions, and civilization. Great highways passed from the Eternal City to all parts of the territory, binding together the separate elements of national life, and levelling down the barriers between all nations. Every colony planted by Rome in the new provinces was a type of the old Roman life, and the provincial government everywhere became the type of this central city. Here was reached a state in the development of government which no nation had hitherto attained—the dominant city and the rule of a mighty empire from central authority.

The Development of Government.—The remarkable development of Rome in government from the old hereditary nobility, in which priest-kings ruled the people, to a military king who was leader, subsequently into a republic which stood the test for several centuries of a fierce struggle for the rights of the people, finally into an imperial government to last for 450 years, represents the growth of one of the most remarkable governments in the world's history. The fundamental idea in government was the ruling of an entire state from the central city, and out of this idea grew imperialism as a later development, vesting all authority in a single monarch. The governments of conquered provinces were gradually made over into the Roman system. The Roman municipal government was found in all the cities of the provinces, and the provincial government became an integral part of the Roman system. The provinces were under the supervision of imperial officers appointed by the emperor. Thus the tendency was to bind the whole government into one unified system, with its power and authority at Rome. So long as this central authority remained and had its full sway there was little danger of the decline of Roman power, but when disintegration began in the central government the whole structure was doomed.

One of the remarkable characteristics of the Roman government was a system of checks of one part by every other part. Thus, in the republic, the consuls were checked by the senate, the senate by the consular power, the various assemblies, such as the Curiata, Tributa, and Centuriata, each having its own particular powers, were checks upon each other and upon other departments of the government. The whole system of magistrates was subject to the same checks or limits in authority. And while impeachment was not introduced, each officer, at the close of his term, was accountable for his actions while in office. But under imperialism the tendency was to break down the power of each separate form of government and to absorb it in the imperial power. Thus Augustus soon attributed to himself the power of the chief magistrates and obtained a dominating power in the senate until the functions of government were all centralized in the emperor. While this made a strong government, in many phases it was open to great dangers, and in due time it failed, as a result of the corruption that clustered around the despotism of a single ruler unchecked by constitutional power.