CHAPTER IV.
THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION

As once in virtue, so in vice extreme,
This universal fabric yielded loose,
Before ambition still; and thundering down,
At last beneath its ruins crush'd a world. —Thomson.

I. The most remarkable feature in the Roman constitution is the division of the people into Patricians and Plebeians, and our first inquiry must be the origin of this separation. It is clearly impossible that such a distinction could have existed from the very beginning, because no persons would have consented in a new community to the investing of any class with peculiar privileges. We find that all the Roman kings, after they had subdued a city, drafted a portion of its inhabitants to Rome; and if they did not destroy the subjugated place, garrisoned it with a Roman colony. The strangers thus brought to Rome were not admitted to a participation of civic rights; they were like the inhabitants of a corporate town who are excluded from the elective franchise: by successive immigrations, the number of persons thus disqualified became more numerous than that of the first inhabitants or old freemen, and they naturally sought a share in the government, as a means of protecting their persons and properties. On the other hand, the men who possessed the exclusive power of legislation, struggled hard to retain their hereditary privileges, and when forced to make concessions, yielded as little as they possibly could to the popular demands. Modern history furnishes us with numerous instances of similar struggles between classes, and of a separation in interests and feelings between inhabitants of the same country, fully as strong as that between the patricians and plebeians at Rome.

2. The first tribes were divided by Ro'mulus into thirty cu'riæ, and each cu'ria contained ten gentes or associations. The individuals of each gens were not in all cases, and probably not in the majority of instances, connected by birth;²⁶ the attributes of the members of a gens, according to Cicero, were, a common name and participation in private religious rites; descent from free ancestors; the absence of legal disqualification. 3. The members of these associations were united by certain laws, which conferred peculiar privileges, called jura gentium; of these the most remarkable were, the succession to the property of every member who died without kin and intestate, and the obligation imposed on all to assist their indigent fellows under any extraordinary burthen.²⁷ 4. The head of each gens was regarded as a kind of father, and possessed a paternal authority over the members; the chieftancy was both elective and hereditary;²⁸ that is, the individual was always selected from some particular family.

5. Besides the members of the gens, there were attached to it a number of dependents called clients, who owed submission to the chief as their patron, and received from him assistance and protection. The clients were generally foreigners who came to settle at Rome, and not possessing municipal rights, were forced to appear in the courts of law, &c. by proxy. In process of time this relation assumed a feudal form, and the clients were bound to the same duties as vassals²⁹ in the middle ages.

6. The chiefs of the gentes composed the senate, and were called "fathers," (patres.) In the time of Romulus, the senate at first consisted only of one hundred members, who of course represented the Latin tribe Ramne'nses; the number was doubled after the union with the Sabines, and the new members were chosen from the Titienses. The Tuscan tribe of the Lu'ceres remained unrepresented in the senate until the reign of the first Tarquin, when the legislative body received another hundred³⁰ from that tribe. Tarquin the elder was, according to history, a Tuscan Iticumo, and seems to have owed his elevation principally to the efforts of his compatriots settled at Rome. It is to this event we must refer, in a great degree, the number of Tuscan ceremonies which are to be found in the political institutions of the Romans.

7. The gentes were not only represented in the senate, but met also in a public assembly called "comitia curiata." In these comitia the kings were elected and invested with royal authority. After the complete change of the constitution in later ages, the "comitia curiata"³¹ rarely assembled, and their power was limited to religious matters; but during the earlier period of the republic, they claimed and frequently exercised the supreme powers of the state, and were named emphatically, The People.

8. The power and prerogatives of the kings at Rome, were similar to those of the Grecian sovereigns in the heroic ages. The monarch was general of the army, a high priest,³² and first magistrate of the realm; he administered justice in person every ninth day, but an appeal lay from his sentence, in criminal cases, to the general assemblies of the people. The pontiffs and augurs, however, were in some measure independent of the sovereign, and assumed the uncontrolled direction of the religion of the state.

9. The entire constitution was remodelled by Ser'vius Tul'lius, and a more liberal form of government introduced. His first and greatest achievement was the formation of the plebeians into an organized order of the state, invested with political rights. He divided them into four cities and twenty-six rustic tribes, and thus made the number of tribes the same as that of the curiæ. This was strictly a geographical division, analagous to our parishes, and had no connection with families, like that of the Jewish tribes.

10. Still more remarkable was the institution of the census, and the distribution of the people into classes and centuries proportionate to their wealth. The census was a periodical valuation of all the property possessed by the citizens, and an enumeration of all the subjects of the state: there were five classes, ranged according to the estimated value of their possessions, and the taxes they consequently paid. The first class contained eighty centuries out of the hundred and seventy; the sixth class, in which those were included who were too poor to be taxed, counted but for one. We shall, hereafter have occasion to see that this arrangement was also used for military purposes; it is only necessary to say here, that the sixth class were deprived of the use of arms, and exempt from serving in war.

11. The people voted in the comitia centuriata by centuries; that is, the vote of each century was taken separately and counted only as one. By this arrangement a just influence was secured to property; and the clients of the patricians in the sixth class prevented from out-numbering the free citizens.

12. Ser'vius Tul'lius undoubtedly intended that the comitia centuriata should form the third estate of the realm, and during his reign they probably held that rank; but when, by an aristocratic insurrection he was slain in the senate-house, the power conceded to the people was again usurped by the patricians, and the comitio centuriata did not recover the right³³ of legislation before the laws³⁴ of the twelve tables were established.

13. The law which made the debtor a slave to his creditor was repealed by Ser'vius, and re-enacted by his successor; the patricians preserved this abominable custom during several ages, and did not resign it until the state had been brought to the very brink of ruin.

14. During the reign of Ser'vius, Rome was placed at the head of the Latin confederacy, and acknowledged to be the metropolitan city. It was deprived of this supremacy after the war with Porsen'na, but soon recovered its former greatness.

15. The equestrian rank was an order in the Roman state from the very beginning. It was at first confined to the nobility, and none but the patricians had the privilege of serving on horseback. But in the later ages, it became a political dignity, and persons were raised to the equestrian rank by the amount of their possessions.

16. The next great change took place after the expulsion of the kings; annual magistrates, called consuls, were elected in the comitia centuriata, but none but patricians could hold this office. 17. The liberties of the people were soon after extended and secured by certain laws, traditionally attributed to Vale'rius Public'ola, of which the most important was that which allowed³⁵ an appeal to a general assembly of the people from the sentence of a magistrate. 18. To deprive the plebeians of this privilege was the darling object of the patricians, and it was for this purpose alone that they instituted the dictatorship. From the sentence of this magistrate there was no appeal to the tribes or centuries, but the patricians kept their own privilege of being tried before the tribunal of the curiæ. 19. The power of the state was now usurped by a factious oligarchy, whose oppressions were more grievous than those of the worst tyrant; they at last became so intolerable, that the commonalty had recourse to arms, and fortified that part of the city which was exclusively inhabited by the plebeians, while others formed a camp on the Sacred Mount at some distance from Rome. A tumult of this kind was called a secession; it threatened to terminate in a civil war, which would have been both long and doubtful; for the patricians and their clients were probably as numerous as the people. A reconciliation was effected, and the plebeians placed under the protection of magistrates chosen from their own body, called tribunes of the people.

20. The plebeians, having now authorised leaders, began to struggle for an equalization of rights, and the patricians resisted them with the most determined energy. In this protracted contest the popular cause prevailed, though the patricians made use of the most violent means to secure their usurped powers. The first triumph obtained by the people was the right to summon patricians before the comitia tributa, or assemblies of people in tribes; soon after they obtained the privilege of electing their tribunes at these comitia, instead of the centuria'ta; and finally, after a fierce opposition, the patricians were forced to consent that the state should be governed by a written code.

21. The laws of the twelve tables did not alter the legal relations between the citizens; the struggle was renewed with greater violence than ever after the expulsion of the decem'viri, but finally terminated in the complete triumph of the people. The Roman constitution became essentially democratical; the offices of the state were open to all the citizens; and although the difference between the patrician and plebeian families still subsisted, they soon ceased of themselves to be political parties. From the time that equal rights were granted to all the citizens, Rome advanced rapidly in wealth and power; the subjugation of Italy was effected within the succeeding century, and that was soon followed by foreign conquests.

22. In the early part of the struggle between the patricians and plebeians, the magistracy, named the censorship, was instituted. The censors were designed at first merely to preside over the taking of the census, but they afterwards obtained the power of punishing, by a deprivation of civil rights, those who were guilty of any flagrant immorality. The patricians retained exclusive possession of the censorship, long after the consulship had been opened to the plebeians.

23. The senate,³⁶ which had been originally a patrician council, was gradually opened to the plebeians; when the free constitution was perfected, every person possessing a competent fortune that had held a superior magistracy, was enrolled as a senator at the census immediately succeeding the termination of his office.

Questions for Examination.

1. What is the most probable account given of the origin of the distinction between the patricians and the plebeians at Rome?

2. How did Romulus subdivide the Roman tribes?

3. By what regulations were the gentes governed?

4. Who were the chiefs of the gentes?

5. What was the condition of the clients?

6. By whom were alterations made in the number and constitution of the senate?

7. What assembly was peculiar to the patricians?

8. What were the powers of the Roman kings?

9. What great change was made in the Roman constitution by Servius Tullius?

10. For what purpose was the census instituted?

11. How were votes taken in the comitia centuriata?