The Comic History of Rome

by Gilbert Abbott À Beckett

The third law provided for the restoration of the Consuls, and stipulated that one should always be a plebeian; but the patricians, who wanted everything their own way, just as the plebeians wanted everything theirs, succeeded in putting a veto upon the propositions.

In the meantime, the people, placed between two parties—one of which was seeking popularity at any price, while the other was endeavouring to preserve its exclusive interests at any cost—were for eight years deprived of all benefit from either side; and though the public would have accepted a compromise, Licinius, who knew that when the point was settled his popularity would be on the wane, declared that they should either have all or nothing. This policy, which is the same as that of prohibiting a starving man from accepting a moderate meal, unless he is invited to a banquet, was well adapted to the purposes of those whose happiness depends upon the dissatisfaction of all around, and to whom the success of all their avowed designs is the consummation of failure.

As long as the bills continued to be thrown out year after year, C. Licinius and Sextius were pretty sure of their annual election to the tribuneship. At about the end of the fifth year, the opposition began to wane, and it became exceedingly likely that the three bills would pass, when Licinius kept the popularity market brisk, by proposing a fourth measure, which was sure to be strenuously objected to. This was a proposal to put on eight new hands to the keeping of the Sibylline books, by increasing from two to ten the number of the librarians. As the books were but three, there would, of course, be no less than three book-keepers and a fraction to each volume,—an arrangement as objectionable as pluralism, though in an opposite direction; for it is scarcely worse to give ten offices to one man, than to put ten men into one office. Excuses were, however, found for the suggestion, on the ground that as five of the book-keepers were to be plebeians, the skill they would acquire in the interpretation of auguries would qualify a larger number for the consulship; the patricians having maintained that at least a smattering of the fortune-telling art was required for the due execution of the office.

Rome was now suffering from domestic wounds, when, fortunately, a little counter-irritation was got up, by an attack of the Veliternians on Tusculum. There is no better cure for a family quarrel, than the sudden incursion of a neighbour; and when relatives are breaking each other's heads at Number One, a stone thrown from the garden of Number Two will frequently, by the establishment of a single new wound, be the cause of healing half a-dozen. The threatened aggression from without had caused the ten Tribunes to agree to the measures of their colleagues, Licinius and Sextius; but the patricians still held out, and appointed the veteran Furius Camillus to the dictatorship. The tribes were in the act of voting, when Furius ordered them away, with violent menaces; but the fury of Furius was impotent from age, and the Tribunes coolly threatened him with a fine of five hundred thousand asses. They had come to the correct conclusion that he could not get together so many asses without selling himself up; he thought it better to abdicate, and P. Manlius was chosen to stop the fermentation that the sour old man had created.

The bills were now all passed; and L. Sextius had been appointed plebeian consul, when the patricians, refusing to sanction what they could not prevent, declined to ratify the election. As the avalanche does not wait for the consent of the object it is about to sweep away, so the will of the public overcame the feeble opposition of the patricians. The latter, however, succeeded in taking a large portion of power from the consuls, and giving it to a new magistrate, called a Prætor, who was invested with authority that some historians have described as almost preternatural. He was chosen from the patricians, and was, in fact, a sort of third consul, whose duty it was Jus in urbe dicere,[26] to lay down the law—a privilege that, if improperly exercised, might include the prostration of justice—in the city. The patricians thus kept to themselves the power of interpreting the law; and as ambiguity seems inherent in the very nature of law, almost any latitude was left to those who were at liberty to declare its meaning. The power of the patricians was further augmented by the appointment of two curule or aristocratic Ædiles, in addition to the two chosen from the plebeians; and though their duties related chiefly to the mending of the roads, they had opportunities of paving the way for many encroachments on the part of their own order.

The struggle between the patrician and the plebeian parties was severe, and each endeavoured to represent itself as the only real friend of the people. Among other acts, in the interest of the masses, was a measure introduced by C. Poetelius, consisting of a lex de ambitû, an election law, relating to the getting round, or circumventing, of the electors by the candidates. It will astonish those acquainted with election practices to be told, that the word "candidate" is derived from candidus, in allusion to the white robe usually worn as an emblem of purity by the seeker of popular suffrages. The white robe, however, was notoriously, in many cases, a white lie, and the law de ambitû was passed to prohibit canvassing on market-days, when many more things were purchased than the articles ostensibly sold; and the butcher has been known to include in the price of a calf's head, the value he placed upon his own judgment.

The cause of reform made slow but inevitable progress, though it was occasionally discredited by some of those incidents which still cause us to look well to our pockets in the presence of the professional lover of liberty. C. Licinius, the framer of the law against occupying more than a certain quantity of the public land, was, it is said, the first to pay the fine, for holding a double allowance, comprising five hundred jugera in his own name, and five hundred in that of his son; a piece of duplicity which was detected and duly punished. Other instances of private peculation were discovered among those most clamorous for the public good; and it became necessary in those days, as in our own, to look among the loudest talkers for the smallest doers, and the greatest doos of the community.

The law of debt had been rendered somewhat less severe; but the impossibility of permanently helping those who could not help themselves was strikingly exemplified. The rate of interest had been reduced; and advances were to be made by the State to those who could give security; but those who could give none were to have no assistance whatever. To those who could pay no interest at all, it mattered little whether the interest was moderate or high; and an extension of time for discharging a debt, in the case of a man who could pay nothing, was only like lengthening the rope with which he was to hang himself.

In the year of the City 390, a plague broke out in Rome, and the calamity, which swallowed up thousands, being ascribed to the gods, repasts were prepared for them, under the title of lectisternia, in order to draw off their appetites from the people. The richest luxuries were laid out upon tables, to which the gods were invited; but these tables caused no diminution in the tables of mortality. As the guests did not accept in person the invitations addressed to them, they were represented by images; but this imaginary attendance at a real feast fed nothing but the superstition of the people. A statue of Jupiter was laid, at full length, upon a couch of ivory, covered with the softest cushions; but it was found impossible to produce the sort of impression that was so earnestly desired. Chairs were also set round for the goddesses, but none came forward to take the chair at this unfortunate banquet. An effort was then made to divert the attention of the gods, by getting up stage plays, or histriones:[27] but the gods did not patronise the drama in those days, more than in our own; and whether the Olympian dinner-hour interfered, or whether no interest was felt in an entertainment translated from Etruria, as the English drama is from France, the result was the same in both cases, for the plays, during their short-lived career, were dead failures. To add to the misery of the whole affair, while the stage performances were unattended, there was an inconvenient "succession of overflows" of the Tiber's banks, which damped the spirits and deluged the houses of the inhabitants.

Seizing hold of every piece of superstition, instead of taking the pestilence fairly in hand, the Romans, hearing that a plague had once been stopped by knocking a nail into the wall of a temple, resolved on going on that absurd tack; and, for this purpose, a hammer was put by the ninny-hammers into the hands of Manlius. As the pestilence had by this time begun to wear itself out, the people were foolish enough to suppose that the plague had been driven in with the nail; and Manlius having fulfilled the task, which any carpenter might have performed, resigned the dictatorship.