The Roman assemblies from their origin to the end of the Republic

by George Willis Botsford

CHAPTER X
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COMITIA CENTURIATA

I. In the Early Republic

From the point of view of the Roman historians the centuriate assembly,[1181] planned by Servius Tullius, came into existence at the beginning of the republic; its earliest act in their opinion was the election of the first consuls[1182] and its earliest statute the Valerian law of appeal.[1183] Though they could not know precisely when it voted for the first time, they were right in understanding it to have been the basal comitia of the republic during the patrician supremacy. It may not have been instituted till some time after the downfall of the kingship,[1184] and it certainly did not reach its full complement of a hundred and ninety-three centuries till more than a hundred years after that event.

Through the early republic Rome was engaged in an almost unceasing struggle for existence. The army was constantly in the field; and the consuls from the praetorium issued their commands for the protection and the government of the city. Their measures, after discussion in the council of war, they must often have submitted to the approval of the army. The military contio was sometimes summoned for exhorting the men,[1185] for promising the reward of spoil in case of victory,[1186] for reprimanding as well as for encouraging.[1187] On one occasion the master of horse, calling a contio of soldiers, appealed to them for protection from the dictator,[1188] and they replied with a shout that they would allow no harm to befall him.[1189] Thereupon the dictator summoned another contio to witness the court-martial of the rebellious officer.[1190] On another occasion the consuls asked the soldiers to decide a question by acclamation, and they obeyed.[1191] We hear of the adjournment of a meeting on the motion of a military tribune.[1192] After a victory, honors and rewards were granted by vote of the soldiers.[1193] For acclamation, the regular form of voting,[1194] was sometimes substituted a division of the army to right and left for the sake of silence.[1195] A military assembly, meeting at Veii, decided upon the appointment of Camillus, then in exile, to the dictatorship, and despatched the resolution to Rome.[1196] In the year 357 the consul Cn. Manlius held a tribal assembly of his troops at Sutrium, and passed in it a law which imposed a tax of five per cent on the manumission of slaves.[1197] Long afterward the army in Spain elected a propraetor.[1198] It may be that much other political business was decided by the army in the troublous times which followed the overthrow of the kings. Although such acts were valid, they were always of an exceptional nature, and they ran counter to the spirit of the constitution, which granted to all the citizens, not to those merely who chanced to be on military duty, a voice in the decision of such public affairs as came before the people.

It is true that the centuriate assembly, having developed from the army, showed pronounced military features. It could not be convoked within the pomerium, for the reason that the army had to be kept outside the city;[1199] before the reform it met ordinarily in military array under its officers and with banners displayed;[1200] the usual place of gathering was the Campus Martius; and no one but a magistrate cum imperio could under his own auspices convoke it for the purpose of taking a vote.[1201] For these reasons it was frequently, even in official language, termed exercitus.[1202] The use of this word, however, should not mislead us into supposing that the assembly was an actual army. Though Dionysius[1203] represents the first meeting as armed—a mere supposition, apparently to account for its known military features—the fact is that the citizens carried weapons to none of the assemblies.[1204] Strictly, too, the centuriate gathering was termed exercitus urbanus in contrast with the real army designated as exercitus armatus or classis procincta.[1205] The facts thus far adduced amply warrant us in refusing to consider the voting assembly an army.

But some imagine the censorial assembly for the assessment and lustration of the citizens to have been an army.[1206] For this view they rely upon Dionysius,[1207] who states that the people came armed to the first lustrum, and upon an uncertain passage from the Censoriae Tabulae, quoted by Varro,[1208] which possibly speaks of the citizens in the lustral assembly as armati. If this word should be supplied in the passage, it might refer to an inspection of arms of the men of military age;[1209] but that circumstance would by no means imply that all who attended the lustrum were armed or were liable to military duty. It is certain that as the census-taking had primary reference to property for the purpose of apportioning taxes and other burdens of citizenship, those only were summoned who were legally capable of holding property in their own name. The list excluded all the men “in patris aut avi potestate,” however liable they were to military duty,[1210] as well as the women and children.[1211] All such persons were reported by the father or guardian. It included, on the other hand, many who were exempt from military service on account of age, physical condition, or want of the necessary property qualification. Hence the censorial assembly could not have been identical with the army. Furthermore the centuriate assembly was not a basis for the levy.[1212] On the contrary, the soldiers were enrolled directly from the tribes.[1213] These facts warrant the conclusion that the relation between the army and the assembly must have been one of origin only; the organization of the assembly developed from that of the army, but at no time was the political assembly an army or the army otherwise than exceptionally or irregularly a political assembly. The truth is that an army regularly officiating as a political body would require for its explanation two revolutions—one to bring it into existence and another to abolish it; but of both cataclysms history is silent.

The growth of the political from the military organization was somewhat as follows. After the Romans had determined to use the centuries regularly as voting units for the decision of questions not purely military, they proceeded forthwith to extend the organization so as to include all the citizens. For this purpose the men of military age who were free from duty for the time being, or who had served the required number of campaigns—sixteen in the infantry or ten in the cavalry[1214]—or who were exempt on account of bodily infirmity or for any other reason, had to be admitted to the junior centuries, thus materially increasing their number and making them unequal with one another. In a state, too, in which great reverence was paid to age the seniors could not be ignored. They were accordingly organized in a number of centuries (84) equal to that of the juniors—an arrangement which made one senior count as much as three juniors.[1215] The mechanics who were liable to skilled service in the army[1216] were then grouped for voting purposes in two centuries, that of the smiths and that of the carpenters,[1217] based on the two guilds in which these artisans were already organized.[1218] Authorities differ as to the classes with which they were associated. Livy[1219] adds them to the first class. Cicero,[1220] too, places a century of carpenters with that group, making no mention of the smiths, whereas Dionysius[1221] assigns both centuries of mechanics to the second class. The explanation of the difference of opinion seems to be that information as to this point was not contained in the censorial document from which the annalist (Fabius Pictor) drew his knowledge of the earlier comitia centuriata; the Romans knew only by tradition that the industrial centuries were associated in the assembly with one of the higher classes. The weight of authority inclines in favor of the first class, and the reason for the respectable place occupied by the mechanics is the high value placed on their service in early time.[1222] In like manner the trumpeters (tubicines, liticines) and the hornblowers (cornicines) were grouped each in a century for voting in the comitia,[1223] also on the basis of their guild organizations.[1224] The accensi velati, who as we are informed followed the army in civilian dress and without weapons,[1225] also received a centuriate organization. As to the number of centuries belonging to them opinion has differed. Some, formerly including Mommsen,[1226] have assumed two. Livy,[1227] however, gives but one century; Cicero[1228] seems to have only one in mind; and in imperial time there was a single collegium, or century, of accensi,[1229] probably a survival of the old political group. These considerations led Mommsen to abandon his former view, to assume instead a single century of the kind; and recent writers are inclined to follow him.[1230] Lowest in rank of the supernumerary centuries was that of the proletarians.[1231] The government so designated those citizens who owned no land,[1232] and hence were poor. They were exempt from military duty, excepting in so far as they served with arms furnished by the state.[1233] Though few in the beginning, their number gradually increased till in the time of Dionysius[1234] it exceeded all the five classes together. At some time in the early history of the comitia centuriata they were formed into a century and given one vote,[1235] which was not counted with any class but was reported after all the others. Dionysius[1236] wrongly speaks of it as a sixth class. The existence of this century is due to the principle that no one should be excluded from the right to vote on account of poverty.[1237]

Six supernumerary centuries have now been mentioned and the place of three—the two industrial and the one proletarian—in the voting system has been considered. With reference to the others Dionysius assigns the musicians to the fourth class, Livy to the fifth. The settlement of this question is aided by an examination into the total number of comitial centuries of the fifth class. It is given as thirty by the sources.[1238] Assuming this to be the correct number and adding to the sum of centuries in the five classes (170) the six supernumerary centuries and the eighteen centuries of knights to be considered below, we should have in all a hundred and ninety-four, which would be one too many. In an earlier chapter, however, the conclusion was reached that there were but fourteen military centuries in the fifth class.[1239] Two of the thirty centuries assigned to that class In the comitia centuriata must therefore have been in fact supernumerary. If one was the accensi, what was the other? Most probably it was the century of the tardy described by Festus,[1240] made up at each meeting of those who came too late to vote in their own classes. Obviously all writers who apply the discriptio centuriarum to the army view this century, as well as that of the proletarians, with suspicion.[1241] The two centuries of the accensi and the tardy should be included among, not added to, the thirty of the fifth class.[1242] Having reached this result, it might seem advisable for us to assume no further supernumerary centuries for the fifth class, but to follow the authority of Dionysius in assigning the musicians to the fourth. Or as the trumpeters preceded the hornblowers in rank, it might be plausibly argued that the former belonged to the fourth and the latter to the fifth. In this way a compromise could be effected between Livy and Dionysius, and Livy’s three supernumerary centuries of the fifth class could be explained. Absolute certainty is unattainable. The notion of Dionysius that one century of musicians voted with the seniors, the other with the juniors, and so of the mechanics,[1243] is erroneous; for the seniors did not vote separately from the juniors.

In the centuriate assembly each of the six tribal troops of knights[1244] had one vote, and was called, therefore, a suffragium. As the term centuria had not previously applied to these groups, it was for a time withheld from them in the comitia, the six divisions being known simply as the sex suffragia.[1245] Afterward as new voting groups were added to the equites they came to be called centuries, and thence the term extended to the old.[1246] The centuriate organization of the comitia did not demand the creation of suffragia seniorum, to correspond with the centuriae seniorum of the infantry, perhaps because the six votes in the comitia centuriata adequately represented the whole number of patricians. As the equites originally provided their own horses,[1247] they held their rank for life, not merely through the period of service. After the state had undertaken to furnish money for the purchase and keeping of the horses,[1248] the eques retained his public horse, and consequently his membership in an equestrian century, long after his retirement from active duty.[1249] The increase in the number of equestrian votes was owing to the participation of plebeians in the mounted service.[1250] From them twelve equestrian centuries were formed for the centuriate assembly, and added to the six groups already existing. This increase probably came about in the course of the fourth century, accompanying or following the enlargement of the infantry from two to four legions.[1251] Thus the total number of one hundred and ninety-three centuries could not have been reached till shortly before 269.

The foregoing discussion has made it evident that from the time when the comitia centuriata came into being, there were two centuriate organizations; (1) the military, which continued as before till it changed to the manipular formation,[1252] (2) the political, which developed from the military but which was at no time identical with it.