Plaustrum, Waggon. (From a Bas-Relief at Rome.)
PLĒBES or PLEBS. PLĒBĒII. This word contains the same root as im-pleo, com-pleo, &c., and is therefore etymologically connected with πλῆθος, a term which was applied to the plebeians by the more correct Greek writers on Roman history, while others wrongly called them δῆμος or οἱ δημοτικοί. The plebeians were the body of commons or the commonalty of Rome, and thus constituted one of the two great elements of which the Roman nation consisted, and which has given to the earlier periods of Roman history its peculiar character and interest. The time when the plebeians first appear as a distinct class of Roman citizens in contradistinction to the patricians, is in the reign of Tullus Hostilius. Alba, the head of the Latin confederacy, was in his reign taken by the Romans and razed to the ground. The most distinguished of its inhabitants were transplanted to Rome and received among the patricians; but the great bulk of Alban citizens, who were likewise transferred to Rome, received settlements on the Caelian hill, and were kept in a state of submission to the populus Romanus or the patricians. This new population of Rome, which in number is said to have been equal to the old inhabitants of the city or the patricians, were the plebeians. They were Latins, and consequently of the same blood as the Ramnes, the noblest of the three patrician tribes. After the conquest of Alba, Rome, in the reign of Ancus Martius, acquired possession of a considerable extent of country, containing a number of dependent Latin towns, as Medullia, Fidenae, Politorium, Tellenae, and Ficana. Great numbers of the inhabitants of these towns were again transplanted to Rome, and incorporated with the plebeians already settled there, and the Aventine was assigned to them as their habitation. Some portions of the land which these new citizens had possessed were given back to them by the Romans, so that they remained free land-owners as much as the conquerors themselves, and thus were distinct from the clients.—The plebeians were citizens, but not optimo jure; they were perfectly distinct from the patricians, and were neither contained in the three tribes, nor in the curiae, nor in the patrician gentes. The only point of contact between the two estates was the army. The plebeians were obliged to fight and shed their blood in the defence of their new fellow-citizens, without being allowed to share any of their rights or privileges, and without even the right of intermarriage (connubium). In all judicial matters they were entirely at the mercy of the patricians, and had no right of appeal against any unjust sentence, though they were not, like the clients, bound to have a patronus. They continued to have their own sacra, which they had had before the conquest, but these were regulated by the patrician pontiffs. Lastly, they were free land-owners, and had their own gentes.—The population of the Roman state thus consisted of two opposite elements; a ruling class or an aristocracy, and the commonalty, which, though of the same stock as the noblest among the rulers, and exceeding them in numbers, yet enjoyed none of the rights which might enable them to take a part in the management of public affairs, religious or civil. Their citizenship resembled the relation of aliens to a state, in which they are merely tolerated on condition of performing certain services, and they are, in fact, sometimes called peregrini. That such a state of things could not last, is a truth which must have been felt by every one who was not blinded by his own selfishness and love of dominion. Tarquinius Priscus was the first who conceived the idea of placing the plebeians on a footing of equality with the old burghers, by dividing them into three tribes, which he intended to call after his own name and those of his friends. But this noble plan was frustrated by the opposition of the augur Attus Navius, who probably acted the part of a representative of the patricians. All that Tarquinius could do was to effect the admission of the noblest plebeian families into the three old tribes, who were distinguished from the old patrician families by the names of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres secundi, and their gentes are sometimes distinguished by the epithet minores, as they entered into the same relation in which the Luceres had been to the first two tribes, before the time of Tarquinius. It was reserved to his successor, Servius Tullius, to give to the commonalty a regular internal organisation, and to determine their relations to the patricians. He first divided the city into four, and then the subject country around, which was inhabited by plebeians, into twenty-six regions or local tribes, and in these regions he assigned lots of land to those plebeians who were yet without landed property. [[Tribus].] Each tribe had its praefect, called tribunus. The tribes had also their own sacra, festivals, and meetings (comitia tributa), which were convoked by their tribunes. This division into tribes with tribunes at their heads was no more than an internal organisation of the plebeians, analogous to the division of the patricians into thirty curiae, without conferring upon them the right to interfere in any way in the management of public affairs, or in the elections, which were left entirely to the senate and the curiae. These rights, however, they obtained by another regulation of Servius Tullius, which was made wholly independent of the thirty tribes. For this purpose he instituted a census, and divided the whole body of Roman citizens, plebeians as well as patricians, into five classes, according to the amount of their property. Taxation and the military duties were arranged according to these classes in such a manner, that the heavier burdens fell upon the wealthier classes. The whole body of citizens thus divided was formed into a great national assembly called comitiatus maximus, or comitia centuriata. [[Comitia].] In this assembly the plebeians now met the patricians apparently on a footing of equality, but the votes were distributed in such a way that it was always in the power of the wealthiest classes, to which the patricians naturally belonged, to decide a question before it was put to the vote of the poorer classes. A great number of such noble plebeian families, as after the subjugation of the Latin towns had not been admitted into the curies by Tarquinius Priscus, were now constituted by Servius into a number of equites, with twelve suffragia in the comitia centuriata. [[Equites].] In this constitution, the plebeians, as such, did not obtain admission to the senate, nor to the highest magistracy, nor to any of the priestly offices. To all these offices the patricians alone thought themselves entitled by divine right. The plebeians also continued to be excluded from occupying any portion of the public land, which as yet was possessed only by the patricians, and they were only allowed to keep their cattle upon the common pasture.—In the early times of the republic there was a constant struggle between the two orders, the history of which belongs to a history of Rome, and cannot be given here. Eventually the plebeians gained access to all the civil and religious offices, until at last the two hostile elements became united into one great body of Roman citizens with equal rights, and a state of things arose, totally different from what had existed before. After the first secession, in B.C. 494, the plebeians gained several great advantages. First, a law was passed to prevent the patricians from taking usurious interest of money, which they frequently lent to impoverished plebeians; secondly, tribunes were appointed for the protection of the plebeians [[Tribuni]]; and lastly, plebeian aediles were appointed. [[Aediles].] Shortly after, they gained the right to summon before their own comitia tributa any one who had violated the rights of their order, and to make decrees (plebiscita), which, however, did not become binding upon the whole nation, free from the control of the curies, until the year B.C. 286. In B.C. 445, the tribune Canuleius established, by his rogations, the connubium between patricians and plebeians. He also attempted to divide the consulship between the two orders, but the patricians frustrated the realisation of this plan by the appointment of six military tribunes, who were to be elected from both orders. [[Tribuni].] But that the plebeians might have no share in the censorial power, with which the consuls had been invested, the military tribunes did not obtain that power, and a new curule dignity, the censorship, was established, with which patricians alone were to be invested. [[Censor].] In B.C. 421 the plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship, which opened to them the way into the senate, where henceforth their number continued to increase. [[Quaestor]; [Senatus].] In B.C. 367 the tribunes L. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius placed themselves at the head of the commonalty, and resumed the contest against the patricians. After a fierce struggle, which lasted for several years, they at length carried a rogation, according to which decemvirs were to be appointed for keeping the Sibylline books instead of duumvirs, of whom half were to be plebeians. The next great step was the restoration of the consulship, on condition that one consul should always be a plebeian. A third rogation of Licinius, which was only intended to afford momentary relief to the poor plebeians, regulated the rate of interest. From this time forward the plebeians also appear in the possession of the right to occupy parts of the ager publicus. In B.C. 366, L. Sextius Lateranus was the first plebeian consul. The patricians, however, who always contrived to yield no more than what it was absolutely impossible for them to retain, stripped the consulship of a considerable part of its power, and transferred it to two new curule offices, viz. that of praetor and of curule aedile. [[Aediles]; [Praetor].] But after such great advantages had been once gained by the plebeians, it was impossible to stop them in their progress towards a perfect equality of political rights with the patricians. In B.C. 356, C. Marcius Rutilus was the first plebeian dictator; in B.C. 351 the censorship was thrown open to the plebeians, and in B.C. 336 the praetorship. The Ogulnian law, in B.C. 300, also opened to them the offices of pontifex and augur. These advantages were, as might be supposed, not gained without the fiercest opposition of the patricians, and even after they were gained and sanctioned by law, the patricians exerted every means to obstruct the operation of the law. Such fraudulent attempts led, in B.C. 286, to the last secession of the plebeians, after which, however, the dictator Q. Hortensius successfully and permanently reconciled the two orders, secured to the plebeians all the rights they had acquired until then, and procured for their plebiscita the full power of leges binding upon the whole nation. After the passing of the Hortensian law, the political distinction between patricians and plebeians ceased, and, with a few unimportant exceptions, both orders were placed on a footing of perfect equality. Henceforth the name populus is sometimes applied to the plebeians alone, and sometimes to the whole body of Roman citizens, as assembled in the comitia centuriata or tributa. The term plebs or plebecula, on the other hand, was applied, in a loose manner of speaking, to the multitude or populace, in opposition to the nobiles or the senatorial party.—A person who was born a plebeian could only be raised to the rank of a patrician by a lex curiata, as was sometimes done during the kingly period, and in the early times of the republic. It frequently occurs in the history of Rome that one and the same gens contains plebeian as well as patrician families. In the gens Cornelia, for instance, we find the plebeian families of the Balbi, Mammulae, Merulae, &c., along with the patrician Scipiones, Sullae, Lentuli, &c. The occurrence of this phenomenon may be accounted for in different ways. It may have been, that one branch of a plebeian family was made patrician while the others remained plebeians. It may also have happened that two families had the same nomen gentilicium without being actual members of the same gens. Again, a patrician family might go over to the plebeians, and as such a family continued to bear the name of its patrician gens, this gens apparently contained a plebeian family. When a peregrinus obtained the civitas through the influence of a patrician, or when a slave was emancipated by his patrician master, they generally adopted the nomen gentilicium of their benefactor, and thus appear to belong to the same gens with him.
PLĒBISCĪTUM, a name properly applied to a law passed at the comitia tributa on the rogation of a tribune. Originally, a plebiscitum required confirmation by the comitia curiata and the senate; but a Lex Hortensia was passed B.C. 286, to the effect that plebiscita should bind all the populus (universus populus), and this lex rendered confirmation unnecessary. The Lex Hortensia is always referred to as the lex which put plebiscita as to their binding force exactly on the same footing as leges. The principal plebiscita are mentioned under the article [Lex].
PLECTRUM. [[Lyra].]
PLETHRON (πλέθρον), the fundamental land measure in the Greek system, being the square of 100 feet, that is, 10,000 square feet. The later Greek writers use it as the translation of the Roman jugerum, probably because the latter was the standard land measure in the Roman system; but, in size, the plethron answered more nearly to the Roman actus, or half-jugerum, which was the older unit of land measures. As frequently happened with the ancient land measures, the side of the plethron was taken as a measure of length, with the same name. This plethron was equal to 100 feet (or about 101 English feet) = 66⅔ πήχεις = 10 ἄκαιναι or κάλαμοι. It was also introduced into the system of itinerary measures, being 1-6th of the stadium.
PLŬTĔUS, was applied in military affairs to two different objects. (1) A kind of shed made of hurdles, and covered with raw hides, which could be moved forward by small wheels attached to it, and under which the besiegers of a town made their approaches. (2) Boards or planks placed on the vallum of a camp, on moveable towers or other military engines, as a kind of roof or covering for the protection of the soldiers.
PLYNTĒRĬA (πλυντήρια, from πλύνειν, to wash), a festival celebrated at Athens every year, on the 25th of Thargelion, in honour of Athena, surnamed Aglauros, whose temple stood on the Acropolis. The day of this festival was at Athens among the ἀποφράδες or dies nefasti; for the temple of the goddess was surrounded by a rope to preclude all communication with it; her statue was stripped of its garments and ornaments for the purpose of cleaning them, and was in the meanwhile covered over, to conceal it from the sight of man. The city was therefore, so to speak, on this day without its protecting divinity, and any undertaking commenced on it was believed to be necessarily unsuccessful.
PNYX. [[Ecclesia].]
PŌCŬLUM, any kind of drinking-cup, to be distinguished from the Crater or vessel in which the wine was mixed [[Crater]], and from the Cyathus, a kind of ladle or small cup, used to convey the wine from the Crater to the Poculum or drinking-cup.
PŎDĬUM. [[Amphitheatrum].]