Ancient society

by Lewis Henry Morgan

Servius Tullius instituted the new system, and placed it upon a foundation where it remained to the close of the republic, although changes were afterwards made in the nature of improvements. His period (about 576-533 B. C.) follows closely that of Solon (596 B. C.), and precedes that of Cleisthenes (509 B. C.). The legislation ascribed to him, and which was obviously modeled upon that of Solon, may be accepted as having occurred as early as the time named, because the system was in practical operation when the republic was established 509 B. C., within the historical period. Moreover, the new political system may as properly be ascribed to him as great measures have been attributed to other men, although in both cases the legislator does little more than formulate what experience had already suggested and pressed upon his attention. The three principal changes which set aside the gentes and inaugurated political society based upon territory and upon property, were: first, the substitution of classes, formed upon the measure of individual wealth, in the place of the gentes; second, the institution of the comitia centuriata, as the new popular assembly, in the place of the comitia curiata, the assembly of the gentes, with a transfer of the substantial powers of the latter to the former; and third, the creation of four city wards, in the nature of townships, circumscribed by metes and bounds and named as territorial areas, in which the residents of each ward were required to enroll their names and register their property.

Imitating Solon, with whose plan of government he was doubtless familiar, Servius divided the people into five classes, according to the value of their property, the effect of which was to concentrate in one class the wealthiest men of the several gentes.[378] Each class was then subdivided into centuries, the number in each being established arbitrarily without regard to the actual number of persons it contained, and with one vote to each century in the comitia. The amount of political power to be held by each class was thus determined by the number of centuries given to each. Thus, the first class consisted of eighty centuries, with eighty votes in the comitia centuriata; the second class of twenty centuries, to which two centuries of artisans were attached, with twenty-two votes; the third class of twenty centuries, with twenty votes; the fourth class of twenty, to which two centuries of horn-blowers and trumpeters were attached, with twenty-two votes; and the fifth class of thirty centuries, with thirty votes. In addition to these, the equites consisted of eighteen centuries, with eighteen votes. To these classes Dionysius adds a sixth class, consisting of one century, with one vote. It was composed of those who had no property, or less than the amount required for admission into the fifth class. They neither paid taxes, nor served in war.[379] The whole number of centuries in the six classes with the equites added, made a total of one hundred and ninety-three, according to Dionysius.[380] Livy, agreeing with the former as to the number of regular centuries in the five classes, differs from him by excluding the sixth class, the persons being formed into one century with one vote, and included in or attached to the fifth class. He also makes three centuries of horn-blowers instead of two, and the whole number of centuries one more than Dionysius.[381] Cicero remarks that ninety-six centuries were a minority, which would be equally true under either statement.[382] The centuries of each class were divided into seniors and juniors, of which the senior centuries were composed of such persons as were above the age of fifty-five years, and were charged with the duty, as soldiers, of defending the city; while the junior centuries consisted of those persons who were below this age and above seventeen, and were charged with external military enterprises.[383] The armature of each class was prescribed and made different for each.[384]

It will be noticed that the control of the government, so far as the assembly of the people could influence its action, was placed in the hands of the first class, and the equites. They held together ninety-eight votes, a majority of the whole. Each century agreed upon its vote separately when assembled in the comitia centuriata, precisely as each curia had been accustomed to do in the comitia curiata. In taking a vote upon any public question, the equites were called first, and then the first class.[385] If they agreed in their votes it decided the question, and the remaining centuries were not called upon to vote; but if they disagreed, the second class was called, and so on to the last, unless a majority sooner appeared.

The powers formerly exercised by the comitia curiata, now transferred to the comitia centuriata, were enlarged in some slight particulars in the subsequent period. It elected all officers and magistrates on the nomination of the senate; it enacted or rejected laws proposed by the senate, no measure becoming a law without its sanction; it repealed existing laws on the proposition of the same body, if they chose to do so; and it declared war on the same recommendation. But the senate concluded peace without consulting the assembly. An appeal in all cases involving life could be taken to this assembly as the highest judicial tribunal of the state. These powers were substantial, but limited—control over the finances being excluded. A majority of the votes, however, were lodged with the first class, including the equites, which embraced the body of the patricians, as must be supposed, and the wealthiest citizens. Property and not numbers controlled the government. They were able, however, to create a body of laws in the course of time which afforded equal protection to all, and thus tended to redeem the worst effects of the inequalities of the system.

The meetings of the comitia were held in the Campus Martius annually for the election of magistrates and officers, and at other times when the public necessities required. The people assembled by centuries, and by classes under their officers, organized as an army (exercitus); for the centuries and classes were designed to subserve all the purposes of a military as well as a civil organization. At the first muster under Servius Tullius, eighty thousand citizen soldiers appeared in the Campus Martius under arms, each man in his proper century, each century in its class, and each class by itself.[386] Every member of a century was now a citizen of Rome, which was the most important fruit of the new political system. In the time of the republic the consuls, and in their absence, the praetor, had power to convene the comitia, which was presided over by the person who caused it to assemble.

Such a government appears to us, in the light of our more advanced experience, both rude and clumsy; but it was a sensible improvement upon the previous gentile government, defective and illiberal as it appears. Under it, Rome became mistress of the world. The element of property, now rising into commanding importance, determined its character. It had brought aristocracy and privilege into prominence, which seized the opportunity to withdraw the control of the government in a great measure from the hands of the people, and bestow it upon the men of property. It was a movement in the opposite direction from that to which the democratic principles inherited from the gentes naturally tended. Against the new elements of aristocracy and privilege now incorporated in their governmental institutions, the Roman plebeians contended throughout the period of the republic, and at times with some measure of success. But patrician rank and property possessed by the higher classes, were too powerful for the wiser and grander doctrines of equal rights and equal privileges represented by the plebeians. It was even then far too heavy a tax upon Roman society to carry a privileged class.

Cicero, patriot and noble Roman as he was, approved and commended this gradation of the people into classes, with the bestowment of a controlling influence in the government upon the minority of citizens. Servius Tullius, he remarks, “having created a large number of equites from the common mass of the people, divided the remainder into five classes, distinguishing between the seniors and juniors, which he so constituted as to place the suffrages, not in the hands of the multitude, but of the men of property; taking care to make it a rule of ours, as it ought to be in every government, that the greatest number should not have the greatest weight.”[387] In the light of the experience of the intervening two thousand years, it may well be observed that the inequality of privileges, and the denial of the right of self-government here commended, created and developed that mass of ignorance and corruption which ultimately destroyed both government and people. The human race is gradually learning the simple lesson, that the people as a whole are wiser for the public good and the public prosperity, than any privileged class of men, however refined and cultivated, have ever been, or, by any possibility, can ever become. Governments over societies the most advanced are still in a transitional stage; and they are necessarily and logically moving, as President Grant, not without reason, intimated in his last inaugural address, in the direction of democracy; that form of self-government which represents and expresses the average intelligence and virtue of a free and educated people.

The property classes subserved the useful purpose of breaking up the gentes, as the basis of a governmental system, by transferring their powers to a different body. It was evidently the principal object of the Servian legislation to obtain a deliverance from the gentes, which were close corporations, and to give the new government a basis wide enough to include all the inhabitants of Rome, with the exception of the slaves. After the classes had accomplished this work, it might have been expected that they would have died out as they did at Athens; and that city wards and country townships, with their inhabitants organized as bodies politic, would have become the basis of the new political system, as they rightfully and logically should. But the municipal organization of Rome prevented this consummation. It gained at the outset, and maintained to the end the central position in the government, to which all areas without were made subordinate. It presents the anomaly of a great central municipal government expanded, in effect, first over Italy, and finally over the conquered provinces of three continents. The five classes, with some modifications of the manner of voting, remained to the end of the republic. The creation of a new assembly of the people to take the place of the old, discloses the radical character of the Servian constitution. These classes would never have acquired vitality without a newly constituted assembly, investing them with political powers. With the increase of wealth and population the duties and responsibilities of this assembly were much increased. It was evidently the intention of Servius Tullius that it should extinguish the comitia curiata, and with it the power of the gentes.

This legislator is said to have instituted the comitia tributa, a separate assembly of each local tribe or ward, whose chief duties related to the assessment and collection of taxes, and to furnishing contingents of troops. At a later day this assembly elected the tribunes of the people. The ward was the natural unit of their political system, and the centre where local self-government should have been established had the Roman people wished to create a democratic state. But the senate and the property classes had forestalled them from that career.