Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

Our knowledge of the previous constitution of Latin society is mainly derived from the legislation ascribed to Romulus, since it brings into view the anterior organization of the Latin tribes, with such improvements and modifications as the wisdom of the age was able to suggest. It is seen in the senate as a council of chiefs, in the comitia curiata as an assembly of the the people by curiæ, in the office of a general military commander, and in the ascending series of organizations. It is seen more especially in the presence of the gentes, with their recognized rights, privileges and obligations. Moreover, the government instituted by Romulus and perfected by his immediate successors presents gentile society in the highest structural form it ever attained in any portion of the human family. The time referred to was immediately before the institution of political society by Servius Tullius.

The first momentous act of Romulus, as a legislator, was the institution of the Roman senate. It was composed of a hundred members, one from each gens, or ten from each curia. A council of chiefs as the primary instrument of government was not a new thing among the Latin tribes. From time immemorial they had been accustomed to its existence and to its authority. But it is probable that prior to the time of Romulus it had become changed, like the Grecian councils, into a pre-considering body, obligated to prepare and submit to an assembly of the people the most important public measures for adoption or rejection. This was in effect a resumption by the people of powers before vested in the council of chiefs. Since no public measure of essential importance could become operative until it received the sanction of the popular assembly, this fact alone shows that the people were sovereign, and not the council, nor the military commander. It reveals also the extent to which democratic principles had penetrated their social system. The senate instituted by Romulus, although its functions were doubtless substantially similar to those of the previous council of chiefs, was an advance upon it in several respects. It was made up either of the chiefs or of the wise men of the gentes. Each gens, as Niebuhr remarks, “sending its decurion who was its alderman,”[347] to represent it in the senate. It was thus a representative and an elective body in its inception, and it remained elective, or selective, down to the empire. The senators held their office for life, which was the only term of office then known among them, and therefore not singular. Livy ascribes the selection of the first senators to Romulus, which is probably an erroneous statement, for the reason that it would not have been in accordance with the theory of their institutions. Romulus chose a hundred senators, he remarks, either because that number was sufficient, or because there were but a hundred who could be created Fathers. Fathers certainly they were called on account of their official dignity, and their descendants were called patricians.[348] The character of the senate as a representative body, the title of Fathers of the People bestowed upon its members, the life-tenure of the office, but, more than all these considerations, the distinction of patricians conferred upon their children and lineal descendants in perpetuity, established at a stroke an aristocracy of rank in the centre of their social system where it became firmly intrenched. The Roman senate, from its high vocation, from its composition, and from the patrician rank received by its members and transmitted to their descendants, held a powerful position in the subsequent state. It was this aristocratic element, now for the first time planted in gentilism, which gave to the republic its mongrel character, and which, as might have been predicted, culminated in imperialism, and with it in the final dissolution of the race. It may perhaps have increased the military glory and extended the conquests of Rome, whose institutions, from the first, aimed at a military destiny; but it shortened the career of this great and extraordinary people, and demonstrated the proposition that imperialism of necessity will destroy any civilized race. Under the republic, half aristocratic, half democratic, the Romans achieved their fame, which one can but think would have been higher in degree, and more lasting in its fruits, had liberty and equality been nationalized, instead of unequal privileges and an atrocious slavery. The long protracted struggle of the plebeians to eradicate the aristocratic element represented by the senate, and to recover the ancient principles of democracy, must be classed among the heroic labors of mankind.

After the union of the Sabines the senate was increased to two hundred by the addition of a hundred senators[349] from the gentes of the tribe Tities; and when the Luceres had increased to a hundred gentes in the time of Tarquinius Priscus, a third hundred senators were added from the gentes of this tribe.[350] Cicero has left some doubt upon this statement of Livy, by saying that Tarquinius Priscus doubled the original number of the senators.[351] But Schmitz well suggests, as an explanation of the discrepancy, that at the time of the final increase the senate may have become reduced to a hundred and fifty members, and been filled up to two hundred from the gentes of the first two tribes, when the hundred were added from the third. The senators taken from the tribes Ramnes and Tities were thenceforth called Fathers of the Greater Gentes (patres maiorum gentium), and those of the Luceres Fathers of the Lesser Gentes (patres minorum gentium).[352] From the form of the statement the inference arises that the three hundred senators represented the three hundred gentes, each senator representing a gens. Moreover, as each gens doubtless had its principal chief (princeps), it becomes extremely probable that this person was chosen for the position either by his gens, or the ten were chosen together by the curia, from the ten gentes of which it was composed. Such a method of representation and of choice is most in accordance with what is known of Roman and gentile institutions.[353] After the establishment of the republic, the censors filled the vacancies in the senate by their own choice, until it was devolved upon the consuls. They were generally selected from the ex-magistrates of the higher grades.

The powers of the senate were real and substantial. All public measures originated in this body—those upon which they could act independently, as well as those which must be submitted to the popular assembly and be adopted before they could become operative. It had the general guardianship of the public welfare, the management of their foreign relations, the levying of taxes and of military forces, and the general control of revenues and expenditures. Although the administration of religious affairs belonged to the several colleges of priests, the senate had the ultimate power over religion as well. From its functions and vocation it was the most influential body which ever existed under gentile institutions.

The assembly of the people, with the recognized right of acting upon important public measures to be discussed by them and adopted or rejected, was unknown in the Lower, and probably in the Middle Status of barbarism; but it existed in the Upper Status, in the agora of the Grecian tribes, and attained its highest form in the ecclesia of the Athenians; and it also existed in the assembly of the warriors among the Latin tribes, attaining its highest form in the comitia curiata of the Romans. The growth of property tended to the establishment of the popular assembly, as a third power in gentile society, for the protection of personal rights and as a shield against the encroachments of the council of chiefs, and of the military commander. From the period of savagery, after the institution of the gentes, down to the times of Solon and Romulus, the popular element had always been active in ancient gentile society. The council of chiefs was usually open in the early conditions to the orators of the people, and public sentiment influenced the course of events. But when the Grecian and Latin tribes first came under historical notice the assembly of the people to discuss and adopt or reject public measures was a phenomenon quite as constant as that of a council of chiefs. It was more perfectly systematized among the Romans under the constitution of Romulus than among the Athenians in the time of Solon. In the rise and progress of this institution may be traced the growth and development of the democratic principle.

This assembly among the Romans was called the comitia curiata, because the members of the gentes of adult age met in one assembly by curiæ, and voted in the same manner. Each curia had one collective vote, the majority in each was ascertained separately, and determined what that vote should be.[354] It was the assembly of the gentes, who alone were members of the government. Plebeians and clients, who already formed a numerous class, were excluded, because there could be no connection with the Populus Romanus, except through a gens and tribe. This assembly, as before stated, could neither originate public measures, nor amend such as were submitted to them; but none of a certain grade could become operative until adopted by the comitia. All laws were passed or repealed by this assembly; all magistrates and high public functionaries, including the rex, were elected by it on the nomination of the senate.[355] The imperium was conferred upon these persons by a law of the assembly (lex curiata de imperio), which was the Roman method of investing with office. Until the imperium was thus conferred, the person, although the election was complete, could not enter upon his office. The comitia curiata, by appeal, had the ultimate decision in criminal cases involving the life of a Roman citizen. It was by a popular movement that the office of rex was abolished. Although the assembly of the people never acquired the power of originating measures, its powers were real and influential. At this time the people were sovereign.

The assembly had no power to convene itself; but it is said to have met on the summons of the rex, or, in his absence, on that of the praefect (praefectus urbi). In the time of the republic it was convened by the consuls, or, in their absence, by the praetor; and in all cases the person who convened the assembly presided over its deliberations.

In another connection the office of rex has been considered. The rex was a general and also a priest, but without civil functions, as some writers have endeavored to imply.[356] His powers as a general, though not defined, were necessarily absolute over the military forces in the field and in the city. If he exercised any civil powers in particular cases, it must be supposed that they were delegated for the occasion. To pronounce him a king, as that term is necessarily understood, is to vitiate and mis-describe the popular government to which he belonged, and the institutions upon which it rested. The form of government under which the rex and basileus appeared is identified with gentile institutions and disappeared after gentile society was overthrown. It was a peculiar organization having no parallel in modern society, and is unexplainable in terms adapted to monarchical institutions. A military democracy under a senate, an assembly of the people, and a general of their nomination and election, is a near, though it may not be a perfect, characterization of a government so peculiar, which belongs exclusively to ancient society, and rested on institutions essentially democratical. Romulus, in all probability, emboldened by his great successes, assumed powers which were regarded as dangerous to the senate and to the people, and his assassination by the Roman chiefs is a fair inference from the statements concerning his mysterious disappearance which have come down to us. This act, atrocious as it must be pronounced, evinces that spirit of independence, inherited from the gentes, which would not submit to arbitrary individual power. When the office was abolished, and the consulate was established in its place, it is not surprising that two consuls were created instead of one. While the powers of the office might raise one man to a dangerous height, it could not be the case with two. The same subtlety of reasoning led the Iroquois, without original experience, to create two war-chiefs of the confederacy instead of one, lest the office of commander-in-chief, bestowed upon a single man, should raise him to a position too influential.

In his capacity of chief priest the rex took the auspices on important occasions, which was one of the highest acts of the Roman religious system, and in their estimation quite as necessary in the field on the eve of a battle as in the city. He performed other religious rites as well. It is not surprising that in those times priestly functions are found among the Romans, as among the Greeks, attached to or inherent in the highest military office. When the abolition of this office occurred, it was found necessary to vest in some one the religious functions appertaining to it, which were evidently special; whence the creation of the new office of rex sacrificulus, or rex sacrorum, the incumbent of which performed the religious duties in question. Among the Athenians the same idea reappears in the second of the nine archons, who was called archon basileus, and had a general supervision of religious affairs. Why religious functions were attached to the office of rex and basileus, among the Romans and Greeks, and to the office of Teuctli among the Aztecs; and why, after the abolition of the office in the two former cases, the ordinary priesthoods could not perform them, has not been explained.

Thus stood Roman gentile society from the time of Romulus to the time of Servius Tullius, through a period of more than two hundred years, during which the foundations of Roman power were laid. The government, as before remarked, consisted of three powers, a senate, an assembly of the people, and a military commander. They had experienced the necessity for definite written laws to be enacted by themselves, as a substitute for usages and customs. In the rex they had the germinal idea of a chief executive magistrate, which necessity pressed upon them, and which was to advance into a more complete form after the institution of political society. But they found it a dangerous office in those times of limited experience in the higher conceptions of government, because the powers of the rex were, in the main, undefined, as well as difficult of definition. It is not surprising that when a serious controversy arose between the people and Tarquinius Superbus, they deposed the man and abolished the office. As soon as something like the irresponsible power of a king met them face to face it was found incompatible with liberty and the latter gained the victory. They were willing, however, to admit into the system of government a limited executive, and they created the office in a dual form in the two consuls. This occurred after the institution of political society.