The active presence of the elective principle among the Latin gentes when they first come under historical notice, and from that time through the period of the republic, furnishes strong grounds for the inference that the office of chief was elective in tenure. The democratic features of their social system, which present themselves at so many points, were inherited from the gentes. It would require positive evidence that the office of chief passed by hereditary right to overcome the presumption against it. The right to elect carries with it the right to depose from office, where the tenure is for life.
These chiefs, or a selection from them, composed the council of the several Latin tribes before the founding of Rome, which was the principal instrument of government. Traces of the three powers co-ordinated in the government appear among the Latin tribes as they did in the Grecian, namely: the council of chiefs, the assembly of the people, to which we must suppose the more important public measures were submitted for adoption or rejection, and the military commander. Mommsen remarks that “All of these cantons [tribes] were in primitive times politically sovereign, and each of them was governed by its prince, and the co-operation of the council of elders, and the assembly of the warriors.”[323] The order of Mommsen’s statement should be reversed, and the statement qualified. This council, from its functions and from its central position in their social system, of which it was a growth, held of necessity the supreme power in civil affairs. It was the council that governed, and not the military commander. “In all the cities belonging to civilized nations on the coasts of the Mediterranean,” Niebuhr observes, “a senate was a no less essential and indispensable part of the state, than a popular assembly; it was a select body of elder citizens; such a council, says Aristotle, there always is, whether the council be aristocratical or democratical; even in oligarchies, be the number of sharers in the sovereignty ever so small, certain councilors are appointed for preparing public measures.”[324] The senate of political society succeeded the council of chiefs of gentile society. Romulus formed the first Roman senate of a hundred elders; and as there were then but a hundred gentes, the inference is substantially conclusive that they were the chiefs of these gentes. The office was for life, and non-hereditary; whence the final inference, that the office of chief was at the time elective. Had it been otherwise there is every probability that the Roman senate would have been instituted as an hereditary body. Evidence of the essentially democratic constitution of ancient society meets us at many points, which fact has failed to find its way into the modern historical expositions of Grecian and Roman gentile society.
With respect to the number of persons in a Roman gens, we are fortunately not without some information. About 474 B. C. the Fabian gens proposed to the senate to undertake the Veientian war as a gens, which they said required a constant rather than a large force.[325] Their offer was accepted, and they marched out of Rome three hundred and six soldiers, all patricians, amid the applause of their countrymen.[326] After a series of successes they were finally cut off to a man through an ambuscade. But they left behind them at Rome a single male under the age of puberty, who alone remained to perpetuate the Fabian gens.[327] It seems hardly credible that three hundred should have left in their families but a single male child, below the age of puberty, but such is the statement. This number of persons would indicate an equal number of females, who, with the children of the males, would give an aggregate of at least seven hundred members of the Fabian gens.
Although the rights, obligations and functions of the Roman gens have been inadequately presented, enough has been adduced to show that this organization was the source of their social, governmental and religious activities. As the unit of their social system it projects its character upon the higher organizations into which it entered as a constituent. A much fuller knowledge of the Roman gens than we now possess is essential to a full comprehension of Roman institutions in their origin and development.
CHAPTER XII. - THE ROMAN CURIA, TRIBE AND POPULUS.
Roman Gentile Society.—Four Stages of Organization—1. The Gens; 2. The Curia, consisting of Ten Gentes; 3. The Tribe, composed of Ten Curiæ; 4. The Populus Romanus, composed of Three Tribes.—Numerical Proportions—How Produced.—Concentration of Gentes at Rome.—The Roman Senate.—Its Functions.—The Assembly of the People.—Its Powers.—The People Sovereign.—Office of Military Commander (Rex).—Its Powers and Functions.—Roman Gentile Institutions essentially Democratical.
Having considered the Roman gens, it remains to take up the curia composed of several gentes, the tribe composed of several curiæ, and lastly the Roman people composed of several tribes. In pursuing the subject the inquiry will be limited to the constitution of society as it appeared from the time of Romulus to that of Servius Tullius, with some notice of the changes which occurred in the early period of the republic while the gentile system was giving way, and the new political system was being established.