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 All laws were passed or repealed by this assembly; all magistrates and high public functionaries, including the rex, were elected by it on the nomination of the senate.355 The imperium was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.
No direct steps were taken, prior to the time of Servius Tullius, to establish a state founded upon territory and upon property; but the previous measures were a preparation for that event. In addition to the institutions named, they had created a city magistracy, and a complete military system, including the institution of the equestrian order. Under institutions purely gentile Rome had become, in the time of Servius Tullius, the strongest military power in Italy.
Among the new magistrates created, that of warden of the city (custos urbis) was the most important. This officer, who was chief of the senate (princeps senatus), was, in the first instance, according to Dionysius, appointed by Romulus.357 The senate, which had no power to convene itself, was convened by him. It is also claimed that the rex had power to summon the senate. That it would be apt to convene upon his request, through the call of its own officer, is probable; but that he could command its convocation is improbable, from its independence in functions, from its dignity, and from its representative character. After the time of the Decemvirs the name of the office was changed to præfect of the city (præfectus urbi), its powers were enlarged, and it was made elective by the new comitia centuriata. Under the republic, the consuls, and in their absence, the praetor, had power to convene the senate, and also to hold the comitia. At a later day, the office of praetor (praetor urbanus) absorbed the functions of this ancient office and became its successor. A judicial magistrate, the Roman praetor was the prototype of the modern judge. Thus, every essential institution in the government or administration of the affairs of society may generally be traced to a simple germ, which springs up in a rude form from human wants, and, when able to endure the test of time and experience, is developed into a permanent institution.
A knowledge of the tenure of the office of chief, and of the functions of the council of chiefs, before the time of Romulus, could they be ascertained, would reflect much light upon the condition of Roman gentile society in the time of Romulus. Moreover, the several periods should be studied separately, because the facts of their social condition were changing with their advancement in intelligence. The Italian period prior to Romulus, the period of the seven reges, and the subsequent periods of the republic and of the empire are marked by great differences in the spirit and character of the government. But the institutions of the first period entered into the second, and these again were transmitted into the third, and remained with modifications in the fourth. The growth, development and fall of these institutions embody the vital history of the Roman people. It is by tracing these institutions from the germ through their successive stages of growth, on the wide scale of the tribes and nations of mankind, that we can follow the great movements of the human mind in its evolution from its infancy in savagery to its present high development. Out of the necessities of mankind for the organization of society came the gens; out of the gens came the chief, and the tribe with its council of chiefs; out of the tribe came by segmentation the group of tribes, afterwards re-united in a confederacy, and finally consolidated by coalescence into a nation; out of the experience of the council came the necessity of an assembly of the people with a division of the powers of the government between them; and finally, out of the military necessities of the united tribes came the general military commander, who became in time a third power in the government, but subordinate to the two superior powers. It was the germ of the office of the subsequent chief magistrate, the king and the president. The principal institutions of civilized nations are simply continuations of those which germinated in savagery, expanded in barbarism, and which are still subsisting and advancing in civilization.
As the Roman government existed at the death of Romulus, it was social, and not political; it was personal, and not territorial. The three tribes were located, it is true, in separate and distinct areas within the limits of the city; but this was the prevailing mode of settlement under gentile institutions. Their relations to each other and to the resulting society, as gentes, curiæ and tribes, were wholly personal, the government dealing with them as groups of persons, and with the whole as the Roman people. Localized in this manner within inclosing ramparts, the idea of a township or city ward would suggest itself when the necessity for a change in the plan of government was forced upon them by the growing complexity of affairs. It was a great change that was soon to be required of them, to be wrought out through experimental legislation—precisely the same which the Athenians had entered upon shortly before the time of Servius Tullius. Rome was founded, and its first victories were won under institutions purely gentile; but the fruits of these achievements by their very magnitude demonstrated the inability of the gentes to form the basis of a state. But it required two centuries of intense activity in the growing commonwealth to prepare the way for the institution of the second great plan of government based upon territory and upon property. A withdrawal of governing powers from the gentes, curiæ and tribes, and their bestowal upon new constituencies was the sacrifice demanded. Such a change would become possible only through a conviction that the gentes could not be made to yield such a form of government as their advanced condition demanded. It was practically a question of continuance in barbarism, or progress into civilization. The inauguration of the new system will form the subject of the next chapter.
The Populus.—The Plebeians.—The Clients.—The Patricians.—Limits of the Order.—Legislation of Servius Tullius.—Institution of Property Classes.—Of the Centuries.—Unequal Suffrage.—Comitia Centuriata.—Supersedes Comitia Curiata.—Classes Supersede the Gentes.—The Census.—Plebeians made Citizens.—Institution of City Wards.—Of Country Townships.—Tribes Increased To Four.—Made Local instead of Consanguine.—Character of New Political System.—Decline and Disappearance of Gentile Organization.—The Work it Accomplished.
Servius Tullius, the sixth chief of the Roman military democracy, came to the succession about one hundred and thirty-three years after the death of Romulus, as near as the date can be ascertained.358 This would place his accession about 576 B. C. To this remarkable man the Romans were chiefly indebted for the establishment of their political system. It will be sufficient to indicate its main features, together with some of the reasons which led to its adoption.
From the time of Romulus to that of Servius Tullius the Romans consisted of two distinct classes, the populus and the plebeians. Both were personally free, and both entered the ranks of the army; but the former alone were organized in gentes, curiæ and tribes, and held the powers of the government. The plebeians, on the other hand, did not belong to any gens, curia or tribe, and consequently were without the government.359 They were excluded from office, from the comitia curiata, and from the sacred rites of the gentes. In the time of Servius they had become nearly if not quite as numerous as the populus. They were in the anomalous position of being subject to the military service, and of possessing families and property, which identified them with the interests of Rome, without being in any sense connected with the government. Under gentile institutions, as we have seen, there could be no connection with the government except through a recognized gens, and the plebeians had no gentes. Such a state of things, affecting so large a portion of the people, was dangerous to the commonwealth. Admitting of no remedy under gentile institutions, it must have furnished one of the prominent reasons for attempting the overthrow of gentile society, and the substitution of political. The Roman fabric would, in all probability, have fallen in pieces if a remedy had not been devised. It was commenced in the time of Romulus, renewed by Numa Pompilius, and completed by Servius Tullius.
The origin both of the plebeians and of the patricians, and their subsequent relations to each other, have been fruitful themes of discussion and of disagreement. A few suggestions may be ventured upon each of these questions.
A person was a plebeian because he was not a member of a gens, organized with other gentes in a curia and tribe. It is easy to understand how large numbers of persons would have become detached from the gentes of their birth in the unsettled times which preceded and followed the founding of Rome. The adventurers who flocked to the new city from the surrounding tribes, the captives taken in their wars and afterwards set free, and the unattached persons mingled with the gentes transplanted to Rome, would rapidly furnish such a class. It might also well happen that in filling up the hundred gentes of each tribe, fragments of gentes, and gentes having less than a prescribed number of persons, were excluded. These unattached persons, with the fragments of gentes thus excluded from recognition and organization in a curia, would soon become, with their children and descendants, a great and increasing class. Such were the Roman plebeians, who, as such, were not members of the Roman gentile society. It seems to be a fair inference from the epithet applied to the senators of the Luceres, the third Roman tribe admitted, who were styled “Fathers of the Lesser Gentes,” that the old gentes were reluctant to acknowledge their entire equality. For a stronger reason they debarred the plebeians from all participation in the government. When the third tribe was filled up with the prescribed number of gentes, the last avenue of admission was closed, after which the number in the plebeian class would increase with greater rapidity. Niebuhr remarks that the existence of the plebeian class may be traced to the time of Ancus, thus implying that they made their first appearance at that time.360 He also denies that the clients were a part of the plebeian body;361 in both of which positions he differs from Dionysius,362 and from Plutarch.363 The institution of the relation of patron and client is ascribed by the authors last named to Romulus, and it is recognized by Suetonius as existing in the time of Romulus.364 A necessity for such an institution existed in the presence of a class without a gentile status, and without religious rites, who would avail themselves of this relation for the protection of their persons and property, and for the access it gave them to religious privileges. Members of a gens would not be without this protection or these privileges; neither would it befit the dignity or accord with the obligations of a gens to allow one of its members to accept a patron in another gens. The unattached class, or, in other words, the plebeians, were the only persons who would naturally seek patrons and become their clients. The clients formed no part of the populus for the reasons stated. It seems plain, notwithstanding the weight of Niebuhr’s authority on Roman questions, that the clients were a part of the plebeian body.
The next question is one of extreme difficulty, namely: the origin and extent of the patrician class—whether it originated with the institution of the Roman Senate, and was limited to the senators, and to their children and descendants; or included the entire populus, as distinguished from the plebeians. It is claimed by the most eminent modern authorities that the entire populus were patricians. Niebuhr, who is certainly the first on Roman questions, adopts this view,365 to which Long, Schmitz, and others have given their concurrence.366 But the reasons assigned are not conclusive. The existence of the patrician class, and of the plebeian class as well, may be traced, as stated, to the time of Romulus.367 If the populus, who were the entire body of the people organized in gentes, were all patricians at this early day, the distinction would have been nominal, as the plebeian class was then unimportant. Moreover, the plain statements of Cicero and of Livy are not reconcilable with this conclusion. Dionysius, it is true, speaks of the institution of the patrician class as occurring before that of the senate, and as composed of a limited number of persons distinguished for their birth, their virtue, and their wealth; thus excluding the poor and obscure in birth, although they belonged to the historical gentes.368 Admitting a class of patricians without senatorial connection, there was still a large class remaining in the several gentes who were not patricians. Cicero has left a plain statement that the senators and their children were patricians, and without referring to the existence of any patrician class beyond their number. When that senate of Romulus, he remarks, which was constituted of the best men, whom Romulus himself respected so highly that he wished them to be called fathers, and their children patricians, attempted,369 etc. The meaning attached to the word fathers (patres) as here used was a subject of disagreement among the Romans themselves; but the word patricii, for the class is formed upon patres, thus tending to show the necessary connection of the patricians with the senatorial office. Since each senator at the outset represented, in all probability, a gens, and the three hundred thus represented all the recognized gentes, this fact could not of itself make all the members of the gentes patricians, because the dignity was limited to the senators, their children, and their posterity. Livy is equally explicit. They were certainly called fathers, he remarks, on account of their official dignity, and their posterity (progenies) patricians.370 Under the reges and also under the republic, individuals were created patricians by the government; but apart from the senatorial office, and special creation by the government, the rank could not be obtained. It is not improbable that a number of persons, not admitted into the senate when it was instituted, were placed by public act on the same level with the senators as to the new patrician rank; but this would include a small number only of the members of the three hundred gentes, all of whom were embraced in the Populus Romanus.
It is not improbable that the chiefs of the gentes were called fathers before the time of Romulus, to indicate the paternal character of the office; and that the office may have conferred a species of recognized rank upon their posterity. But we have no direct evidence of the fact. Assuming it to have been the case, and further, that the senate at its institution did not include all the principal chiefs, and further still, that when vacancies in the senate were subsequently filled, the selection was made on account of merit and not on account of gens, a foundation for a patrician class might have previously existed independently of the senate. These assumptions might be used to explain the peculiar language of Cicero, namely that Romulus desired that the senators might be called Fathers, possibly because this was already the honored title of the chiefs of the gentes. In this way a limited foundation for a patrician class may be found independent of the senate; but it would not be broad enough to include all the recognized gentes. It was in connection with the senators that the suggestion was made that their children and descendants should be called patricians. The same statement is repeated by Paterculus.371
It follows that there could be no patrician gens and no plebeian gens, although particular families in one gens might be patricians, and in another plebeians. There is some confusion also upon this point. All the adult male members of the Fabian gens, to the number of three hundred and six, were patricians.372 It must be explained by the supposition that all the families in this gens could trace their descent from senators, or to some public act by which their ancestors were raised to the patriciate. There were of course patrician families in many gentes, and at a later day patrician and plebeian families in the same gens. Thus the Claudii and Marcelli, before referred to (supra p. 287), were two families of the Claudian gens, but the Claudii alone were patricians. It will be borne in mind, that prior to the time of Servius Tullius the Romans were divided into two classes, the populus and the plebeians; but that after his time, and particularly after the Licinian legislation (367 B. C.) by which all the dignities of the state were opened to every citizen, the Roman people, of the degree of freemen, fell into two political classes, which may be distinguished as the aristocracy and the commonalty. The former class consisted of the senators, and those descended from senators, together with those who had held either of the three curule offices, (consul, praetor, and curule ædile) and their descendants. The commonalty were now Roman citizens. The gentile organization had fallen into decadence, and the old division could no longer be maintained. Persons, who in the first period as belonging to the populus, could not be classed with the plebeians, would in the subsequent period belong to the aristocracy without being patricians. The Claudii could trace their descent from Appius Claudius who was made a senator in the time of Romulus; but the Marcelli could not trace their descent from him, nor from any other senator, although, as Niebuhr remarks, “equal to the Apii in the splendor of the honors they attained to, and incomparably more useful to the commonwealth.”373 This is a sufficient explanation of the position of the Marcelli without resorting to the fanciful hypothesis of Niebuhr, that the Marcelli had lost patrician rank through a marriage of disparagement.374
The patrician class were necessarily numerous, because the senators, rarely less than three hundred, were chosen as often as vacancies occurred, thus constantly including new families; and because it conferred patrician rank on their posterity. Others were from time to time made patricians by act of the state.375 This distinction, at first probably of little value, became of great importance with their increase in wealth, numbers and power; and it changed the complexion of Roman society. The full effect of introducing a privileged class in Roman gentile society was not probably appreciated at the time; and it is questionable whether this institution did not exercise a more injurious than beneficial influence upon the subsequent career of the Roman people.
When the gentes had ceased to be organizations for governmental purposes under the new political system, the populus no longer remained as distinguished from the plebeians; but the shadow of the old organization and of the old distinction remained far into the republic.376 The plebeians under the new system were Roman citizens, but they were now the commonalty; the question of the connection or non-connection with a gens not entering into the distinction.
From Romulus to Servius Tullius the Roman organization, as before stated, was simply a gentile society, without relation to territory or to property. All we find is a series of aggregates of persons, in gentes, curiæ and tribes, by means of which the people were dealt with by the government as groups of persons forming these several organic unities. Their condition was precisely like that of the Athenians prior to the time of Solon. But they had instituted a senate in the place of the old council of chiefs, a comitia curiata in the place of the old assembly of the people, and had chosen a military commander, with the additional functions of a priest and judge. With a government of three powers, co-ordinated with reference to their principal necessities, and with a coalescence of the three tribes, composed of an equal number of gentes and curiæ, into one people, they possessed a higher and more complete governmental organization than the Latin tribes had before attained. A numerous class had gradually developed, however, who were without the pale of the government, and without religious privileges, excepting that portion who had passed into the relation of clients. If not a dangerous class, their exclusion from citizenship, and from all participation in the government, was detrimental to the commonwealth. A municipality was growing up upon a scale of magnitude unknown in their previous experience, requiring a special organization to conduct its local affairs. A necessity for a change in the plan of government must have forced itself more and more upon the attention of thoughtful men. The increase of numbers and of wealth, and the difficulty of managing their affairs, now complex from weight of numbers and diversity of interests, began to reveal the fact, it must be supposed, that they could not hold together under gentile institutions. A conclusion of this kind is required to explain the several expedients which were tried.
Numa, the successor of Romulus, made the first significant movement, because it reveals the existence of an impression, that a great power could not rest upon gentes as the basis of a system. He attempted to traverse the gentes, as Theseus did, by dividing the people into classes, some eight in number, according to their arts and trades.377 Plutarch, who is the chief authority for this statement, speaks of this division of the people according to their vocations as the most admired of Numa’s institutions; and remarks further, that it was designed to take away the distinction between Latin and Sabine, both name and thing, by mixing them together in a new distribution. But as he did not invest the classes with the powers exercised by the gentes, the measure failed, like the similar attempt of Theseus, and for the same reason. Each guild, as we are assured by Plutarch, had its separate hall, court and religious observances. These records, though traditionary, of the same experiment in Attica and at Rome, made for the same object, for similar reasons, and by the same instrumentalities, render the inference reasonable that the experiment as stated was actually tried in each case.
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.
One of the first acts ascribed to Servius was the institution of the census. Livy pronounces the census a most salutary measure for an empire about to become so great, according to which the duties of peace and of war were to be performed, not individually as before, but according to the measure of personal wealth.388 Each person was required to enroll himself in the ward of his residence, with a statement of the amount of his property. It was done in the presence of the censor; and the lists when completed furnished the basis upon which the classes were formed.389 This was accompanied by a very remarkable act for the period, the creation of four city wards, circumscribed by boundaries, and distinguished by appropriate names. In point of time it was earlier than the institution of the Attic deme by Cleisthenes; but the two were quite different in their relations to the government. The Attic deme, as has been shown, was organized as a body politic with a similar registry of citizens and of their property, and having besides a complete local self-government, with an elective magistracy, judiciary and priesthood. On the other hand, the Roman ward was a geographical area, with a registry of citizens and of their property, with a local organization, a tribune and other elective offices, and with an assembly. For a limited number of special objects the inhabitants of the wards were dealt with by the government through their territorial relations. But the government of the ward did not possess the solid attributes of that of the Attic deme. It was a nearer copy of the previous Athenian naucrary, which not unlikely furnished the model, as the Solonian classes did of the Servian. Dionysius remarks, that after Servius Tullius had inclosed the seven hills with one wall he divided the city into four parts, and gave the names of the hills to the re-divisions: to the first, Palatina, to the second, Suburra, to the third, Collina, and to the fourth, Esquilina; and made the city consist of four parts, which before consisted of three; and he ordered the people who dwelt in each of the four regions, like villagers, not to take any other dwelling, nor to pay taxes elsewhere, nor give in their names as soldiers elsewhere, nor pay their assessments for military purposes and other needs, which each must furnish for the common welfare; for these things were no longer to be done according to the three consanguine tribes (φυλὰς τὰς γενικὰς), but according to the four local tribes (φυλὰς τὰς τοπικὰς), which last had been arranged by himself; and he appointed commanders over each tribe, as phylarchs or comarchs, whom he directed to note what house each inhabited.390 Mommsen observes that “each of these four levy-districts had to furnish the fourth part not only of the force as a whole, but of each of its military subdivisions, so that each legion and each century numbered an equal proportion of conscripts from each region; evidently for the purpose of merging all distinctions of a gentile and local nature in one common levy of the community, and especially of binding, through the powerful leveling influence of the military spirit, the meteoci and the burgesses into one people.”391
In like manner, the surrounding country under the government of Rome was organized in townships (tribus rusticae), the number of which is stated at twenty-six by some writers, and at thirty-one by others; making, with the four city wards, a total of thirty in one case, and of thirty-five in the other.392 The total number was never increased beyond thirty-five. These townships did not become integral in the sense of participating in the administration of the government.
As finally established under the Servian constitution, the government was cast in the form in which it remained during the existence of the republic; the consuls taking the place of the previous military commanders. It was not based upon territory in the exclusive sense of the Athenian government, or in the modern sense; ascending from the township or ward, the unit of organization, to the county or arrondissement, and from the latter to the state, each organized and invested with governmental functions as constituents of a whole. The central government overshadowed and atrophied the parts. It rested more upon property than upon territory, this being made the commanding element, as is shown by the lodgment of the controlling power of the government in the highest property classes. It had, nevertheless, a territorial basis as well, since it recognized and used territorial subdivisions for citizenship, and for financial and military objects, in which the citizen was dealt with through his territorial relations.
The Romans were now carried fairly out of gentile society into and under the second great plan of government, founded upon territory and upon property. They had left gentilism and barbarism behind them, and entered upon a new career of civilization. Henceforth the creation and protection of property became the primary objects of the government, with a superadded career of conquest for domination over distant tribes and nations. This great change of institutions, creating political society as distinguished from gentile society, was simply the introduction of the new elements of territory and property, making the latter a power in the government, which before had been simply an influence. Had the wards and rustic townships been organized with full powers of local self-government, and the senate been made elective by these local constituencies without distinction of classes, the resulting government would have been a democracy, like the Athenian; for these local governments would have moulded the state into their own likeness. The senate, with the hereditary rank it conferred, and the property basis qualifying the voting power in the assembly of the people, turned the scale against democratical institutions, and produced a mixed government, partly aristocratic and partly democratic; eminently calculated to engender perpetual animosity between the two classes of citizens thus deliberately and unnecessarily created by affirmative legislation. It is plain, I think, that the people were circumvented by the Servian constitution, and had a government put upon them which the majority would have rejected had they fully comprehended its probable results. The evidence is conclusive of the antecedent democratical principles of the gentes, which, however exclusive as against all persons not in their communion, were carried out fully among themselves. The evidence of this free spirit and of their free institutions is so decisive that the proposition elsewhere stated, that gentilism is incompatible with monarchy, seems to be incontrovertible.
As a whole, the Roman government was anomalous. The overshadowing municipality of Rome, made the centre of the state in its plan of government, was one of the producing causes of its novel character. The primary organization of the people into an army with the military spirit it fostered created the cohesive force which held the republic together, and afterwards the empire. With a selective senate holding office for life, and possessing substantial powers; with a personal rank passing to their children and descendants; with an elective magistracy graded to the needs of a central metropolis; with an assembly of the people organized into property classes, possessing an unequal suffrage, but holding both an affirmative and a negative upon all legislation; and with an elaborate military organization, no other government strictly analogous has appeared among men. It was artificial, illogical, approaching a monstrosity; but capable of wonderful achievements, because of its military spirit, and because the Romans were endowed with remarkable powers for organizing and managing affairs. The patchwork in its composition was the product of the superior craft of the wealthy classes who intended to seize the substance of power while they pretended to respect the rights and interests of all.
When the new political system became established, the old one did not immediately disappear. The functions of the senate and of the military commander remained as before; but the property classes took the place of the gentes, and the assembly of the classes took the place of the assembly of the gentes. Radical as the changes were, they were limited, in the main, to these particulars, and came in without friction or violence. The old assembly (comitia curiata) was allowed to retain a portion of its powers, which kept alive for a long period of time the organizations of the gentes, curiæ and consanguine tribes. It still conferred the imperium upon all the higher magistrates after their election was completed, though in time it became a matter of form merely; it inaugurated certain priests, and regulated the religious observances of the curiæ. This state of things continued down to the time of the first Punic war, after which the comitia curiata lost its importance and soon fell into oblivion. Both the assembly and the curiæ were superseded rather than abolished, and died out from inanition; but the gentes remained far into the empire, not as an organization, for that also died out in time, but as a pedigree and a lineage. Thus the transition from gentile into political society was gradually but effectually accomplished, and the second great plan of human government was substituted by the Romans in the place of the first which had prevailed from time immemorial.
After an immensely protracted duration, running back of the separate existence of the Aryan family, and received by the Latin tribes from their remote ancestors, the gentile organization finally surrendered its existence, among the Romans, to to the demands of civilization. It had held exclusive possession of society through these several ethnical periods, and until it had won by experience all the elements of civilization, which it then proved unable to manage. Mankind owe a debt of gratitude to their savage ancestors for devising an institution able to carry the advancing portion of the human race out of savagery into barbarism, and through the successive stages of the latter into civilization. It also accumulated by experience the intelligence and knowledge necessary to devise political society while the institution yet remained. It holds a position on the great chart of human progress second to none in its influence, in its achievements and in its history. As a plan of government, the gentile organization was unequal to the wants of civilized man; but it is something to be said in its remembrance that it developed from the germ the principal governmental institutions of modern civilized states. Among others, as before stated, out of the ancient council of chiefs came the modern senate; out of the ancient assembly of the people came the modern representative assembly, the two together constituting the modern legislature; out of the ancient general military commander came the modern chief magistrate, whether a feudal or constitutional king, an emperor or a president, the latter being the natural and logical result; and out of the ancient custos urbis, by a circuitous derivation, came the Roman praetor and the modern judge. Equal rights and privileges, personal freedom and the cardinal principles of democracy were also inherited from the gentes. When property had become created in masses, and its influence and power began to be felt in society, slavery came in; an institution violative of all these principles, but sustained by the selfish and delusive consideration that the person made a slave was a stranger in blood and a captive enemy. With property also came in gradually the principle of aristocracy, striving for the creation of privileged classes. The element of property, which has controlled society to a great extent during the comparatively short period of civilization, has given mankind despotism, imperialism, monarchy, privileged classes, and finally representative democracy. It has also made the career of the civilized nations essentially a property-making career. But when the intelligence of mankind rises to the height of the great question of the abstract rights of property,—including the relations of property to the state, as well as the rights of persons to property,—a modification of the present order of things may be expected. The nature of the coming changes it may be impossible to conceive; but it seems probable that democracy, once universal in a rudimentary form and repressed in many civilized states, is destined to become again universal and supreme.
An American, educated in the principles of democracy, and profoundly impressed with the dignity and grandeur of those great conceptions which recognize the liberty, equality and fraternity of mankind, may give free expression to a preference for self-government and free institutions. At the same time the equal rights of every other person must be recognized to accept and approve any form of government, whether imperial or monarchical, that satisfies his preferences.
How the change might have been made.—Inheritance of property the Motive.—descent in the Female Line among the Lycians.—The Cretans.—The Etruscans.—Probably among the Athenians in the time of Cecrops.—The Hundred Families of the Locrians.—Evidence from Marriages.—Turanian System of Consanguinity among Grecian Tribes.—Legend of the Danaidæ.
An important question remains to be considered, namely: whether any evidence exists that descent was anciently in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes. Theoretically, this must have been the fact at some anterior period among their remote ancestors; but we are not compelled to rest the question upon theory alone. Since a change to the male line involved a nearly total alteration of the membership in a gens, a method by which it might have been accomplished should be pointed out. More than this, it should be shown, if possible, that an adequate motive requiring the change was certain to arise, with the progress of society out of the condition in which this form of descent originated. And lastly, the existing evidence of ancient descent in the female line among them should be presented.
A gens in the archaic period, as we have seen, consisted of a supposed female ancestor and her children, together with the children of her daughters, and of her female descendants through females in perpetuity. The children of her sons, and of her male descendants, through males, were excluded. On the other hand, with descent in the male line, a gens consisted of a supposed male ancestor and his children, together with the children of his sons and of his male descendants through males in perpetuity. The children of his daughters, and of his female descendants, through females, were excluded. Those excluded in the first case would be members of the gens in the second case, and vice versâ. The question then arises, how could descent be changed from the female line to the male without the destruction of the gens?
The method was simple and natural, provided the motive to make the change was general, urgent and commanding. When done at a given time, and by preconcerted determination, it was only necessary to agree that all the present members of the gens should remain members, but that in future all children, whose fathers belonged to the gens, should alone remain in it and bear the gentile name, while the children of its female members should be excluded. This would not break or change the kinship or relations of the existing gentiles; but thereafter it would retain in the gens the children it before excluded, and exclude those it before retained. Although it may seem a hard problem to solve, the pressure of an adequate motive would render it easy, and the lapse of a few generations would make it complete. As a practical question, it has been changed from the female line to the male among the American aborigines in a number of instances. Thus, among the Ojibwas descent is now in the male line, while among their congeners, the Delawares and Mohegans, it is still in the female line. Originally, without a doubt, descent was in the female line in the entire Algonkin stock.
Since descent in the female line is archaic, and more in accordance with the early condition of ancient society than descent in the male line, there is a presumption in favor of its ancient prevalence in the Grecian and Latin gentes. Moreover, when the archaic form of any transmitted organization has been discovered and verified, it is impossible to conceive of its origination in the later more advanced form.
Assuming a change of descent among them from the female line to the male, it must have occurred very remotely from the historical period. Their history in the Middle Status of barbarism is entirely lost, except it has been in some measure preserved in their arts, institutions and inventions, and in improvements in language. The Upper Status has the superadded light of tradition and of the Homeric poems to acquaint us with its experience and the measure of progress then made. But judging from the condition in which their traditions place them, it seems probable that descent in the female line had not entirely disappeared, at least among the Pelasgian and Grecian tribes, when they entered the Upper Status of barbarism.
When descent was in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes, the gens possessed the following among other characteristics: 1. Marriage in the gens was prohibited; thus placing children in a different gens from that of their reputed father. 2. Property and the office of chief were hereditary in the gens; thus excluding children from inheriting the property or succeeding to the office of their reputed father. This state of things would continue until a motive arose sufficiently general and commanding to establish the injustice of this exclusion in the face of their changed condition.
The natural remedy was a change of descent from the female line to the male. All that was needed to effect the change was an adequate motive. After domestic animals began to be reared in flocks and herds, becoming thereby a source of subsistence as well as objects of individual property, and after tillage had led to the ownership of houses and lands in severalty, an antagonism would be certain to arise against the prevailing form of gentile inheritance, because it excluded the owner’s children, whose paternity was becoming more assured, and gave his property to his gentile kindred. A contest for a new rule of inheritance, shared in by fathers and their children, would furnish a motive sufficiently powerful to effect the change. With property accumulating in masses and assuming permanent forms, and with an increased proportion of it held by individual ownership, descent in the female line was certain of overthrow, and the substitution of the male line equally assured. Such a change would leave the inheritance in the gens as before, but it would place children in the gens of their father, and at the head of the agnatic kindred. For a time, in all probability, they would share in the distribution of the estate with the remaining agnates; but an extension of the principle by which the agnates cut off the remaining gentiles, would in time result in the exclusion of the agnates beyond the children and an exclusive inheritance in the children. Farther than this, the son would now be brought in the line of succession to the office of his father.
Such had the law of inheritance become in the Athenian gens in the time of Solon or shortly after; when the property passed to the sons equally, subject to the obligation of maintaining the daughters, and of apportioning them in marriage; and in default of sons, to the daughters equally. If there were no children, then the inheritance passed to the agnatic kindred, and in default of the latter, to the gentiles. The Roman law of the Twelve Tables was substantially the same.
It seems probable further, that when descent was changed to the male line, or still earlier, animal names for the gentes were laid aside and personal names substituted in their place. The individuality of persons would assert itself more and more with the progress of society, and with the increase and individual ownership of property, leading to the naming of the gens after some ancestral hero. Although new gentes were being formed from time to time by the process of segmentation, and others were dying out, the lineage of a gens reached back through hundreds not to say thousands of years. After the supposed substitution, the eponymous ancestor would have been a shifting person, at long intervals of time, some later person distinguished in the history of the gens being put in his place, when the knowledge of the former person became obscured, and faded from view in the misty past. That the more celebrated Grecian gentes made the change of names, and made it gracefully, is shown by the fact, that they retained the name of the mother of their gentile father, and ascribed his birth to her embracement by some particular god. Thus Eumolpus, the eponymous ancestor of the Attic Eumolpidæ, was the reputed son of Neptune and Chione; but even the Grecian gens was older than the conception of Neptune.
Recurring now to the main question, the absence of direct proof of ancient descent in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes would not silence the presumption in its favor; but it so happens that this form of descent remained in some tribes nearly related to the Greeks with traces of it in a number of Grecian tribes.
The inquisitive and observing Herodotus found one nation, the Lycians, Pelasgian in lineage, but Grecian in affiliation, among whom in his time (440 B. C.), descent was in the female line. After remarking that the Lycians were sprung from Crete, and stating some particulars of their migration to Lycia under Sarpedon, he proceeds as follows: “Their customs are partly Cretan and partly Carian. They have, however, one singular custom in which they differ from every other nation in the world. Ask a Lycian who he is, and he answers by giving his own name, that of his mother, and so on in the female line. Moreover, if a free woman marry a man who is a slave, their children are free citizens; but if a free man marry a foreign woman, or cohabit with a concubine, even though he be the first person in the state, the children forfeit all the rights of citizenship.”393 It follows necessarily from this circumstantial statement that the Lycians were organized in gentes, with a prohibition against intermarriage in the gens, and that the children belonged to the gens of their mother. It presents a clear exemplification of a gens in the archaic form, with confirmatory tests of the consequences of a marriage of a Lycian man with a foreign woman, and of a Lycian woman with a slave.394 The aborigines of Crete were Pelasgian, Hellenic and Semitic tribes, living locally apart. Minos, the brother of Sarpedon, is usually regarded as the head of the Pelasgians in Crete; but the Lycians were already Hellenized in the time of Herodotus and quite conspicuous among the Asiatic Greeks for their advancement. The insulation of their ancestors upon the island of Crete, prior to their migration in the legendary period to Lycia, may afford an explanation of their retention of descent in the female line to this late period.
Among the Etruscans also the same rule of descent prevailed. “It is singular enough,” observes Cramer, “that two customs peculiar to the Etruscans, as we discover from their monuments, should have been noticed by Herodotus as characteristic of the Lycians and Caunians of Asia Minor. The first is, that the Etruscans invariably describe their parentage and family with reference to the mother, and not the father. The other, that they admitted their wives to their feasts and banquets.”395
Curtius comments on Lycian, Etruscan and Cretan descent in the female line in the following language: “It would be an error to understand the usage in question as an homage to the female sex. It is rather rooted in primitive conditions of society, in which monogamy was not yet established with sufficient certainty to enable descent upon the father’s side to be affirmed with assurance. Accordingly the usage extends far beyond the territory commanded by the Lycian nationality. It occurs, even to this day, in India; it may be demonstrated to have existed among the ancient Egyptians; it is mentioned by Sanchoniathon (p. 16, Orell), where the reasons for its existence are stated with great freedom; and beyond the confines of the East it appears among the Etruscans, among the Cretans, who were so closely connected with the Lycians, and who called their father-land mother-land; and among the Athenians, consult Bachofen, etc. Accordingly, if Herodotus regards the usage in question as thoroughly peculiar to the Lycians, it must have maintained itself longest among them of all the nations related to the Greeks, as is also proved by the Lycian inscriptions. Hence we must in general regard the employment of the maternal name for a designation of descent as the remains of an imperfect condition of social life and family law, which, as life becomes more regulated, was relinquished in favor of usages, afterwards universal in Greece, of naming children after the father. This diversity of usages, which is extremely important for the history of ancient civilization, has been recently discussed by Bachofen in his address above named.”396
In a work of vast research, Bachofen has collected and discussed the evidence of female authority (mother-right) and of female rule (gyneocracy) among the Lycians, Cretans, Athenians, Lemnians, Ægyptians, Orchomenians, Locrians, Lesbians, Mantineans, and among eastern Asiatic nations.397 The condition of ancient society, thus brought under review, requires for its full explanation the existence of the gens in its archaic form as the source of the phenomena. This would bring the mother and her children into the same gens, and in the composition of the communal household, on the basis of gens, would give the gens of the mothers the ascendency in the household. The family, which had probably attained the syndyasmian form, was still environed with the remains of that conjugal system which belonged to a still earlier condition. Such a family, consisting of a married pair with their children, would naturally have sought shelter with kindred families in a communal household, in which the several mothers and their children would be of the same gens, and the reputed fathers of these children would be of other gentes. Common lands and joint tillage would lead to joint-tenement houses and communism in living; so that gyneocracy seems to require for its creation, descent in the female line. Women thus entrenched in large households, supplied from common stores, in which their own gens so largely predominated in numbers, would produce the phenomena of mother right and gyneocracy, which Bachofen has detected and traced with the aid of fragments of history and of tradition. Elsewhere I have referred to the unfavorable influence upon the position of women which was produced by a change of descent from the female line to the male, and by the rise of the monogamian family, which displaced the joint-tenement house, and in the midst of a society purely gentile, placed the wife and mother in a single house and separated her from her gentile kindred.398