From the preceding examination of the social ranks it at once becomes evident that the ancients made the populus comprise both patricians and plebeians; in further proof of their view may be cited the following juristic definition: “Plebs differs from populus in that by the word populus all the citizens are meant, including even the patricians, whereas plebs signifies the rest of the citizens, excepting the patricians.”[126] Since the sources generally consider the patricians the descendants of the hundred original senators,[127] they cannot help regarding the populus as composed chiefly of plebeians. In common speech the term, like our word people, often applies to the lower class as distinguished from the higher, in which sense it is interchangeable with plebs; often, too, it signifies the people in contrast with the senate.[128] It is clear, then, as Mommsen has pointed out,[129] that if populus signifies first the whole body of citizens and secondly the commons as distinguished from the nobles, it could not possibly have as a third equivalent the patricians as distinguished from the plebeians. In certain formulae found in addresses, wills, prayers, and oracles, populus is so joined with plebs (populus plebesque or the like) as to suggest the possible meaning patricians.[130] The combination of the two words with senatus,[131] however, reveals at once the overlapping of the terms so joined. In these passages reference is to the modes by which an individual may approach the state; he may address the consuls, praetors, or plebeian tribunes, and in the same way the senate, populus, or plebs.[132] Hence in these formulae, merely representing groups of institutions through which the state is accustomed to act, the word populus does not apply solely to the patricians, and the same may be said of its use in all other connections. We may conclude, therefore, that the Latin language gives no hint of an exclusively patrician populus.
Regarding the populus as made up of patricians, plebeians, and clients, our sources necessarily ascribe the same social composition to its divisions, the three old tribes and the thirty curiae.[133] With perfect consistency they mention repeated enlargements of the populus and of the tribes and curiae, through the admission of masses of aliens, most of whom must have remained plebeian. In fact the sources uniformly represent all the kings as freely admitting conquered aliens without exception to the citizenship and to the tribes and the curiae, even compelling some forcibly to enter this condition.[134]
Might the plebeians and clients belong in a restricted sense to the populus and curiae, and yet remain so far inferior to the patricians as to be excluded from the political meetings of the curiae—the comitia curiata? There can be no uncertainty as to the answer to this question, for the ancient writers agree that the comitia curiata included plebeians and clients as well as patricians.[135] Not only did the lower classes attend this assembly, but they also voted in it, and constituted the majority.[136]
II. The Conventional Modern View
The passages cited above suffice to prove that the ancient writers thought of the populus, and consequently of the comitia curiata, as composed from the earliest times of patricians, clients, and plebeians. Another question, far more difficult, is whether the ancients were right in their view.
As none of the authorities on whom we directly depend for our knowledge of Roman affairs lived earlier than the last century of the republic, they could have had no first-hand acquaintance with primitive Roman conditions, but must have drawn their information concerning the remote past from earlier writers—the annalists—now lost. Niebuhr, who in the opening years of the last century introduced the modern method of investigating Roman history, was convinced that writers of the late republic and of the empire, lacking historical perspective and interpreting their sources in the false light of existing or recent conditions, came to wrong conclusions in regard to the primitive Roman state. He believed he could point to instances of such misunderstanding, and he thought it within the power of a well-equipped modern historian to eliminate much of the error so as to come near to the standpoint of the earlier and more trustworthy annalists.[137]
The position of Niebuhr has in the main proved untenable. Notwithstanding all the source-sifting of modern times, pursued most zealously by the Germans, we are obliged to admit that it is rarely possible with any fair degree of certainty to discover the view of an annalist on a given subject excepting in the few cases in which the citation is by name. We must also admit that though Cicero and the Augustan writers might misinterpret Fabius Pictor in minor details, it is inconceivable that they should fail to understand his presentation of so fundamental a subject as the character of the original populus or the composition of the earliest assembly. Present scholarship accordingly insists that in such weighty matters there was no essential difference of view between earlier and later writers.[138]
These considerations have simplified but not solved the problem. Scholars now agree that no contemporary account of the regal period—ending 509 (?) B.C.—ever existed; and even if it be conceded that the earliest Roman annalist—Fabius Pictor, born about 250 B.C.—had access to traditional or documentary[139] information reaching back to the close of that period, no historian will admit such a possibility for the beginnings of Rome. It follows then that for the origin and character of her earliest institutions Cicero, Livy, and Dionysius, or their sources, have relied wholly on inference from later conditions, in so far as they have not resorted to outright invention. Though with their abundant material they were in a far better position for making such deductions than we are, they lacked the experience and the acute critical method of the moderns.[140] Of the three writers above mentioned—our main sources for the subject under discussion—Cicero was essentially an orator, Dionysius a rhetorician, and Livy, though historian in name, was in spirit rhetorical and dramatic rather than critical. Naturally therefore they or their sources, who on the whole were equally uncritical, made mistakes in the difficult work of drawing inferences as to the history and institutions of the regal period. Such is the view of historians today. It was formerly argued that Dionysius, a rhetorician and a Greek, failed in spite of his twenty-two years of preparation at Rome to understand the spirit and character of the Roman constitution and has therefore been an especial fountain of error;[141] but it is now clear that though in his treatment of early Rome he shows far greater amplitude than Livy and is for that reason proportionally more liable to error in detail, he follows good Roman sources for institutions, and is in this field, with the reservation here mentioned, not essentially inferior to the extant native writers.[142]
Considering the sources untrustworthy and following certain clues which he believed they afforded to a right understanding of the annalists, Niebuhr came to his theory as to the composition of the primitive Roman state. Although he asserts that it was made up of “patrons and clients,”[143] he does not rest satisfied with this view, but proceeds to trace clientage to the following origins, as though in his opinion this institution did not exist from the beginning: (1) some native Siculians perhaps, who were conquered by Latin invaders; (2) strangers settling on Roman territory and choosing a Roman as protector; (3) inhabitants of communities which were obliged to take refuge under Roman protection; (4) manumitted slaves.[144] Logically he goes back to a state made up exclusively of patricians.
He sought evidence for this hypothesis in the scheme of tribal organization of Rome. The primitive city was divided into three tribes, thirty curiae and, as he believed, three hundred gentes. As no one could be a citizen without membership in a gens,[145] and as the patricians alone were active members of the gentes,[146] it must follow that the patricians alone were citizens. It is doubtful whether he would have proposed this hypothesis had it not been for the analogy of the Attic tribal scheme. An imperfect quotation from the lost part of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens[147] seems to signify that the Athenian state was once divided into four tribes (φυλαί), twelve phratries and three hundred and sixty gentes (γένη). On this authority Niebuhr supposes that the phratry was a group of gentes, and he assumes further that both phratries and gentes were composed exclusively of eupatrids.[148] But the suppositions (1) that there were three hundred and sixty gentes, (2) that the phratry was a group of gentes, (3) that both phratries and gentes contained only eupatrids are contradicted by well known facts. From the earliest times the Greek tribes and phratries included commons as well as nobles. This is true of the Homeric Greeks,[149] and a law of Draco[150] proves that the early Attic phratry comprised both nobles and commons. In historical times all citizens belonged to the phratries; whereas but few were members of the gentes.[151] Most of the gentes were in fact composed of the old landed nobility, though a few, like the Chalkidae and the Eupyridae, were apparently industrial guilds, which had received the privileges of the gentes. So far therefore from supporting Niebuhr in his peculiar view of the Roman gentes and curiae, the Attic analogy militates in every way against him. As his assumption that the curia was a group of ten gentes has already been disproved,[152] it remains only to consider whether the gens was an exclusively patrician institution. From the circumstance that patricianism is not given as an element of Scaevola’s definition, quoted by Cicero,[153] we may at once conclude that in their time plebeians, too, were gentiles. This conclusion is supported by a variety of evidence.