The arrangement was only temporary. In 88 Sulpicius, tribune of the plebs, carried a law containing a provision for the distribution of the new citizens and the libertini among all the thirty-five tribes.[326] His plebiscite was annulled by the senate on the ground that it had been passed by violence;[327] but the provisions contained in it were afterward legalized by a senatus consultum, and it was finally carried into effect by Cinna as consul in 84.[328] This settlement of the question was approved by Sulla[329] for all the Italians excepting the Marsians and the Paelignians, who were enrolled in one tribe—the Sergia.[330]
The nature of the tribes may be inferred from their object. The intention of the organizer was to introduce the Greek military system, comprising heavy and light infantry, in which the kind of service to be performed depended upon financial ability to provide equipments.[331] Seeing that a classification of citizens with respect to property was necessary for this purpose, Servius instituted the tribes as a basis for the census. That they contained the ager privatus only is indicated by the exclusion from them of the Capitoline and Aventine hills.[332] Their local character is established by the concurrent testimony of ancient writers.[333] Yet even in the beginning they could but roughly be described as districts, for they excluded all public land and all waters and waste places claimed neither by individuals nor by the government. They retained the approximate character of districts so long only as the territory of annexed communities continued to be formed into new tribes. The process came to an end in 241; and it was as early at least as this date that the Roman colonies, not originally in the tribes, were incorporated in them.[334] Thereafter the annexation of new territory tended more and more to render the tribes geographically indeterminate.[335] The process was far advanced by the admission (90-84) of the Latins and Italians with their lands to the existing tribes,[336] which were further enlarged in the imperial period by the incorporation of provincial communities.[337] As consisting of lands, though no longer necessarily adjacent, they were still considered local.[338]
The tribe was also a group of persons; in fact the word applies far more frequently to persons than to territory.[339] During the early republic a considerable degree of harmony was maintained between the two aspects of the institution (1) possibly by a restriction on the transfer of residence,[340] (2) by the change in membership from tribe to tribe, through the censors, on the basis of a transfer of domicile, (3) by the assignment of new citizens to the tribe in or near which they had their homes, (4) by the creation of new tribes for new citizens who did not live in or near the existing tribes. This harmony experienced its first serious disturbance through the enrolment of the landless, irrespective of domicile, in the urban tribes in 304,[341] but continued to such a degree that a hundred years later the rural voters generally still resided in their own tribes.[342] In the last century of the republic the personal tribe, emancipated from the local, depended solely on inheritance and the will of the censors.[343]
The original composition of the personal tribe is determined by its purely military object. It comprised accordingly those only who were liable to service in war. From the early Roman point of view those citizens were qualified who found their livelihood in agriculture.[344] Not all landowners were enrolled in the tribes; for Latin residents,[345] freedmen,[346] widows and orphans,[347] all of whom might possess land, lacked membership. Those proprietors, too, were excluded whom the censors assigned to the aerarii as a punishment. Tribesmen were all the other landowners—adsidui[348] et locupletes[349]—together with the male descendants of military age under their potestas.[350]
Another object of the tribes, referred to Servius by our sources, was the collection of taxes.[351] We know that they afterward served this purpose; and the ancient writers, who could have had no direct knowledge of the intentions of Servius but who assigned to him without hesitation all the later developments of his organization, were in this case especially misled by their false derivation of tributum from tribus or vice versa.[352] A brief study of the facts in the case will prove their inference to be wrong. The most obvious consideration is that had Servius intended the tribes for the levy of taxes as well as for military purposes, he would have included all who were subject to taxation as well as all who were liable to service in the army, whereas in fact he admitted those only who were to serve. It is to be noted that primitive Rome imposed no regular direct taxes on the citizens in general. Every man equipped himself for war even after the introduction of the phalanx;[353] doubtless at first the knights provided their own horses;[354] and in short campaigns the soldiers carried their provisions from their own farms.[355] Fortifications and public buildings were erected by forced task-work. The king supported himself partly by gifts from his subjects and partly from the public property, including land.[356] Other early sources of revenue were tolls levied for the use of harbors, boundaries, temples, bridges, roads, sewers, and salt works.[357] In time the idea arose, too, that the person who did not perform military service should help with his property in the defence of the country. The estates of widows and orphans were accordingly taxed to support the horses of the knights.[358] Those men, also, who were exempt from service because they possessed no land[359] and yet had other property were required to pay on it a regular tax. From this connection with the public treasury (aerarium) they were termed aerarii. This class comprised shopkeepers and merchants. Sometimes the censors assigned to it as a punishment men who owned land. The fact that such persons were at the same time removed from their tribes is sufficient proof that the aerarii were originally outside these associations.[360] The cives sine suffragio, or Caerites, after this class had come into existence in 353, were like the aerarii in (1) that they did not belong to the tribes, (2) that they paid a regular tax, (3) that men were placed on their list as a punishment. They may accordingly be regarded as a special class of aerarii, enrolled as they were in a distinct list.[361] Whereas the cives sine suffragio either wholly lacked the franchise, as the phrase implies, or at most had but the right of the Latins,[362] the other aerarii must have voted in the proletarian century.[363]
The ordinary taxes sufficed for the usual light expenses; but in case of especial need an extraordinary tax was imposed upon the citizens. It was called tributum from tribuere, “to apportion,” because it was distributed among the citizens in proportion to their ratable property.[364] We hear of such a tax levied for ransoming the city from the Gauls[365] and another for the building of a wall;[366] but the most common use was for the payment of soldiers, hence the tributum was thought of primarily as a war tax.[367] For this reason tributum came to be correlative with stipendium.[368] It was not often imposed before the introduction of pay in 406.[369] Even then it was not levied every year; it was sometimes refunded when the condition of the treasury permitted; and it fell into disuse after 167.[370] As it was imposed on those only who were liable to military duty,[371] the tribe lists were followed in its collection, and in this sense we may say that it was collected tributim.[372] The work was done by state functionaries, as the tribe, so far as we know, had neither fiscal officers[373] nor a treasury; and possessing no property, it could not be held financially responsible.
An epoch in the history of the tribes was made in 312 by Appius Claudius Caecus the censor, who enrolled the landless citizens, proletarians as well as aerarii, in the existing thirty-three tribes without discrimination.[374] Cives sine suffragio were alone excepted.[375] By giving the landless the upper hand in the assemblies this measure roused the animosity of the proprietors, and thus endangered the peace of the state. In order to soothe the excited feelings of the better class, Q. Fabius Rullianus, censor in 304, supported by his colleague Decius, removed the landless from the rural tribes; but not to deprive them wholly of tribal privileges, he registered them in the four urban tribes. Hence his measure is spoken of as a compromise. Thereafter the landholding and hence more respectable citizens were preferably enrolled in the rural tribes,[376] whereas the landless were confined to those of the city.[377] It was a permanent gain that henceforth tribal membership was a test of perfect citizenship. The censors still had the power to transfer a man from one tribe to another, for instance, from a rural to an urban tribe; but they could not exclude him wholly from the tribes, for that would be tantamount to depriving him of the citizenship.[378] There were still aerarii; individuals and sometimes large groups of citizens were still assigned as a punishment to this class, which, however, was henceforth included in the tribes of the city.[379] Although the ordinary urban tribesmen were usually exempt from military duty, the aerarii were required to serve, at times under especially hard conditions,[380] and were not disqualified for office.[381] In registering them in the tribes Claudius made them, like the landowners, liable to military service and to the tributum according to their means. To effect this object he necessarily assessed their personal property on a money valuation; and in order to treat all tribesmen alike, he must have changed the terms of valuation of the landholders’ estates from iugera to money.[382]
Niebuhr, B. G., Römische Geschichte, i. 422-50, Eng. 200-12; Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, I. bk. xvii; Huschke, Ph. E., Verfassung des Königs Servius Tullius, ch. iii; Ihne, W., History of Rome, i. 62, 114; Nissen, H., Templum, 144 ff.; Italische Landeskunde, ii. 503 f.; Beloch, J., Italischer Bund unter Roms Hegemonie, ch. ii; Soltau, W., Altröm. Volksversammlungen, 375-548; Meyer, E., Ursprung des Tribunats und die Gemeinde der vier Tribus, in Hermes, xxx (1895). 1-24; controverted by Sp. Vassis, in Athena, ix (1897). 470-2; Neumann, K. J., Grundherrschaft der röm. Republik; Siebert, W., Ueber Appius Claudius Caecus; Mommsen, Th., History of Rome, bk. I. ch. vi; Röm. Tribus; Röm. Staatsrecht, iii. 161-98; Abriss des röm. Staatsrechts, 28-36; Marquardt, J., Röm. Staatsv. ii. 149-80; Willems, P., Droit public Romain, 40 ff., 98 ff.; Mispoulet, J. B., Institutions politiques des Romains, i. 37-42; Études d’institutions Romaines, 3-48; Lange, L., Röm. Altertümer, i. 501-22, and see index s. Tribus; Madvig, J. N., Verfassung und Verwaltung des röm. Staates, i. 100-8; Herzog, E., Geschichte und System der röm. Staatsverfassung, i. 39, 101 ff., 1016-31; Grotefend, C. L., Imperium romanum tributim descriptum; Kubitschek, J. W., De romanorum tribuum origine ac propogatione; Imperium romanum tributim discriptum; Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. i. 674-6: Aerarius (Kubitschek); 682-4: Aes equestre (idem); 780-93: Ager (idem); iii. 1281-3: Caere (Hülsen); 2650 f.: Claudia (Wissowa); iv. 117 f.: Clustumina (Kubitschek); Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. i. 125: Aes equestre and hordearium (Humbert).