In November, 82, after destroying his political enemies by war and proscription, Sulla was ready to begin the work of restoring the aristocratic constitution. As both consuls, Cn. Papirius Carbo and C. Marius the younger,[2553] were dead, and as Sulla desired above all things to give his legislation a constitutional basis, he advised the senate to appoint an interrex. The choice fell on L. Valerius Flaccus, princeps senatus, a moderate in politics. Thereupon Sulla withdrew from Rome, leaving the civil authorities free in appearance to act at their discretion. In reality he had determined to retain control of affairs; and accordingly he wrote to Valerius advising the appointment of a dictator, not for a fixed time but till the general unrest should be quieted. He suggested himself as a suitable person for the place. Valerius obediently proposed and carried a law through the comitia centuriata, (1) which made Sulla dictator rei publicae constituendae for an indefinite time with absolute power over the lives and property of the citizens,[2554] (2) which legalized all his past acts, both as consul and as proconsul,[2555] including his arrangements in Asia as well as his proscriptions and confiscations.[2556] He returned to the city, appointed Valerius his magister equitum,[2557] and took to himself twenty-four lictors in addition to a less formal guard of servants and friends.[2558] Without delay he began the promulgation of laws, which undoubtedly he had long been planning. They are here grouped according to subject, with an occasional reference to their chronological relation.
First he applied himself to curbing the power of the tribunate, an institution in which centred the strength of the democracy. A statute for that purpose he must have felt compelled to draw up and pass before the next tribunician election. Instead of renewing his earlier law, however, for absolutely depriving the tribunes of initiative in legislation,[2559] he enacted simply that the previous consent of the senate should be necessary to bills brought by them before the tribes.[2560] By another article of this law he limited the right of tribunes to address the people in contiones.[2561] The range of their intercession was also greatly limited.[2562] Their function of bringing prosecutions before the people underwent restriction not only through the laws affecting the quaestiones but also by special enactment;[2563] for had they retained their unlimited right to prosecute, they could at once have regained all their other power.[2564] Little was left them but their original auxilii latio adversus imperium.[2565] Finally the office was made unattractive to the ambitious by the provision that those who held it were thereby disqualified for other magistracies.[2566] By these measures the most vital and powerful institution in the state was reduced to a shadow without substance.[2567] The return to conditions preceding the Hortensian legislation, in some respects even the Decemviral legislation, was, as Fröhlich[2568] remarks, a backward step such as finds few parallels in history.
About a year[2569] after limiting the power of the tribunes Sulla proceeded to regulate the other offices through his lex de magistratibus, 81. This statute, making use of the principle contained in the lex Villia annalis,[2570] prescribed (1) that no one could be consul before he had been praetor or praetor before he had been quaestor,[2571] (2) that a space of two years should intervene between the holding of consecutive offices.[2572] (3) The minimal age of the quaestor it fixed at thirty-seven.[2573] The fortieth year was therefore the age for the praetorship and the forty-third for the office of consul. The aedileship, while bringing the holder a positive advantage for his future career, was never an essential step to a higher place. But in case this office was taken, the biennial interval had to be observed.[2574] The quaestorship Sulla made the sole avenue to the senate, so as to dispense with the revision of the list by the censors.[2575] The statute of 151, forbidding reëlection to the consulship,[2576] he repealed, and substituted for it the article of the Genucian plebiscite of 442[2577] which fixed an interval of ten years between the expiration of any office and reëlection to the same.[2578] He increased the number of quaestors, at this time certainly more than eight,[2579] to twenty, with the object not only of supplying an administrative need but also of creating the required number of senators.[2580] It was necessary also to raise the number of praetors from six to eight in order to provide presidents for the new quaestiones perpetuae.[2581]
The reforms above mentioned, together with the doubling of the number of senators to be considered below, naturally led to the enlargement of the chief sacerdotal colleges. The augurs and pontiffs were increased from nine to fifteen and the decemviri sacris faciundis were made quindecemviri.[2582] Another measure, which seems to have been an article of the same act, repealed the Domitian lex de sacerdotiis,[2583] and thus restored to these colleges, and at the same time to the epulones, their right of filling vacancies by coöptation,[2584] leaving to the people the function only of electing the head of the pontifical college from among the members.[2585] As the object of the first article was evidently to provide places for some of the new magistrates and senators,[2586] the coöptation doubtless immediately followed the enactment of the law.
In increasing the number of praetors to eight[2587] Sulla provided that during their year of office they were to remain in the city and devote their whole time to the administration of justice. After the expiration of their term they were to take upon themselves as propraetors the command of provinces. In like manner the consuls were to remain in Italy during their term, in the ordinary course of events to give their entire attention to the affairs of peace; only after they had retired from office were they expected as proconsuls to govern provinces. In brief, Sulla by law established an absolute distinction between the civil magistrate and the military promagistrate.[2588] The lex de provinciis ordinandis[2589] recognized the right of the senate to determine which provinces should be consular and which pretorian in the way provided for by the Sempronian law on this subject.[2590] The Cornelian statute did not, however, any more than the Sempronian, forbid the assignment of a province to a promagistrate by popular vote; and it recognized the right of the senate to create promagistracies.[2591] But it established the rule (1) that the two consuls should receive for a year of promagisterial imperium the provinces declared to be consular; and that they should either agree as to which each should take or cast lots for them;[2592] (2) that the senate should annually assign the eight retiring praetors to the remaining provinces, also for a year of promagistracy.[2593] The same law directed that the promagistrate, who had received the imperium in legal form, should retain it till his return to the city and the celebration of his triumph,[2594] provided he merited one. To avoid conflicts between retiring and incoming governors it ordained that the former should leave the province within thirty days after the latter had entered it.[2595] The law further contained the definite regulation of the supplies and honors granted the legati by the provincials.[2596] The tendency of Sulla’s legislation thus far considered was to weaken the civil functionaries (1) by restricting the tribunician initiative. (2) by increasing the number of quaestors and praetors. (3) by depriving the higher civil magistrates of the military imperium. The last-mentioned loss was in some measure an advantage to the senate but in a far higher degree to the promagistrates, who from this time began to overshadow the republic.
The power taken from the tribunes necessarily went to the senate, to restore to it the full control of legislation which it had possessed before the enactment of the Hortensian statute. Under the reformed constitution it was to be supreme. As it had dwindled during the recent civil war and proscription,[2597] and as the performance of jury service, which Sulla was restoring to its members, required a large number of men, he added three hundred, mostly from the equestrian rank, but including some centurions and other insignificant persons who were likely to do his bidding.[2598] Appian[2599] states that these new senators were elected by the tribes, possibly meaning the tribal comitia.[2600] But as that process of selection would have required an enormous length of time, it is far more probable that each tribe had the privilege of choosing a definite number, perhaps nine, after the precedent of the lex Plautia iudiciaria.[2601] This addition would raise the number to about four hundred and fifty. As the normal membership from Sulla to Caesar was about six hundred,[2602] we may assume either that, independently of the extraordinary adlectio by the tribes, he made the usual censorial enrolment of the recently retired magistrates, or that he left it to time to fill up the senate to the desired number by the annual admission of retired quaestors.[2603] Henceforth it was to be recruited automatically by this process, without any action on the part of the censors, who were thus deprived of the only important function remaining to them.[2604] Closely connected with the increase in membership is the lex iudiciaria,[2605] which restored the quaestiones to the senators.[2606] It was enacted near the end of 81, but prior to the increase in the number of quaestors.[2607] Before this act the courts had remained under the control of the knights in spite of the lex Plautia of 89, which seems not to have continued long in force.[2608]
In the reorganization of the criminal courts (year 81) Sulla passed criminal laws, in which he regulated the procedure of the existing courts and created new quaestiones perpetuae.[2609] His reform increased the number to seven, four of which were concerned almost wholly with maladministration of office: (1) quaestio repetundarum, extortion,[2610] (2) quaestio ambitus, bribery in elections,[2611] (3) quaestio peculatus, misappropriation of public funds[2612] and sacrilege,[2613] (4) quaestio maiestatis, injury to the majesty of the Roman name, of which a private person as well as a magistrate might be guilty.[2614] The three following were concerned with common crimes: (5) quaestio inter sicarios et veneficos, assassination, poisoning, and arson,[2615] (6) quaestio de falsis, counterfeiting and falsification of testaments and other forgery,[2616] (7) quaestio iniuriarum, acute personal violence, housebreaking, and probably defamation of character.[2617] These laws concerning quaestiones contained provisions for granting the accused the privilege of deciding whether the vote should be oral or by ballot,[2618] and they directed that the order of voting should be determined by lot.[2619] The first of these two articles aimed to make the jurors individually responsible, and the second to prevent influential men from prejudicing the case by giving their opinions first.[2620]
While the praetor urbanus and praetor peregrinus still busied themselves with civil jurisdiction, the six other praetors presided over these courts; but as the number was insufficient, past aediles were appointed to preside as iudices quaestionis. This arrangement was especially necessary for the quaestio inter sicarios, overburdened as it was with a variety of crimes.
As these courts were vested with the function of trying without appeal all crimes, including those formerly brought before the comitia, the result was that the people were practically, though not constitutionally, deprived of their judicial power. The tendency of the Cornelian legislation in this as in other respects was oligarchic.
Among the statutes passed in the winter or early spring of 81 we must place the lex de proscriptione,[2621] which added certain regulations to those of the Valerian law for the creation of the Cornelian dictatorship,[2622] and which Sulla considered essential to the execution of his policy and the maintenance of its results. The Cornelian statute concerning proscription forbade the giving of relief or aid to a proscribed person;[2623] it legalized the previous slayings and confiscations of property,[2624] and provided also that the estates not only of the proscribed but also of enemies who had fallen in battle should be sold for the benefit of the treasury.[2625] It excepted from the sale ten thousand of the youngest and strongest slaves, who were given their freedom; and it debarred from the ius honorum the sons, grandsons, and other descendants of the proscribed,[2626] with a view to keeping from them the means of vengeance; and lastly, it fixed the date for closing the proscriptions at June 1, 81.[2627]
During the winter of 82-81 Sulla gave his attention not only to law-making but also to the sale of confiscated property and to the regulation of Italy. The latter work was carried out by the administrative power of the dictator through the destruction of the fortifications of rebellious communities, their punishment by fines and extraordinary taxes, and the confiscation of some of their lands, to be assigned to his discharged veterans.[2628] The Cornelian agrarian laws,[2629] which brought about these confiscations and assignments, seem to have been not acts of the comitia but dictatorial orders.[2630] They must have been issued from time to time as occasion demanded, probably through the entire year 81.[2631] The legions were kept together till after the triumph (January 27, 28 of the year 81)[2632] and then disbanded, to be led off gradually to their lands. Some of the municipia to which soldiers were assigned, most obstinately Volaterrae and Nola, resisted their admission by force of arms. To punish these rebels Sulla carried through the comitia centuriata his lex de civitate Volaterranis adimenda,[2633] which disfranchised not only Volaterrae but also other rebellious municipia.[2634] Those who by this act were deprived of the citizenship received the so-called Latin rights of Ariminum.[2635]
Among the regulations for the improvement of the finances, which he found in bad condition,[2636] was his abolition of the distributions of grain.[2637] Whether it was effected by a lex frumentaria or a dictatorial order cannot be determined.[2638] The levy of taxes on Italian and transmarine communities[2639] could be brought about by senatus consulta,[2640] as the people had nothing to do with such matters. Credit had been shattered by the law of L. Valerius Flaccus concerning debts, 86,[2641] which Sulla repealed by one of his own on the same subject, 81.[2642]
In connection with the Circensian games which he celebrated in the autumn of 81, and which in honor of Victoria were thereafter repeated annually from October 26 to November 1,[2643] Sulla must have passed a lex de ludis Victoriae instituendis.[2644] Lastly came the sumptuary law, through which he attempted to regulate the manners and morals of the citizens.[2645] It was the restoration, in a revised form, of the lex Licinia of 104,[2646] which had been repealed by M. Duronius in 97.[2647] The Cornelian statute permitted the expenditure of no more than three hundred sesterces for meals on the calends, nones, ides, ludi, and certain other holidays, and only thirty for ordinary meals; and it fixed the prices of various luxuries.[2648] Another article of the same statute limited funeral expenses.[2649] The author’s object seems to have been to restore the morals and manners as well as the constitution and laws of the good old time before they were corrupted by the demagogues.
Sulla’s legislation was substantially complete on January 1, 80, when he entered upon his second consulship with Q. Caecilius Metellus Pius as colleague.[2650] Retiring into private life early in 79, he left the constitution to its fate. No better comment on its value could be offered than the history of its decline and overthrow in a single decade. Opposition began to manifest itself from the time of his abdication; and he was hardly in his grave when M. Aemilius Lepidus, consul in 78, promulgated bills for the abolition of some of the Cornelian statutes; but the opposition of his colleague, Q. Lutatius Catulus, and of the senate prevented their ratification.[2651] The right of retired tribunes to sue for other offices,[2652] however, was restored by a statute of the consul C. Aurelius Cotta, 75.[2653]
Before coming to the restoration of the tribunician power it is necessary to mention the statutes passed under the Cornelian constitution. To 78 or 77 probably belongs the lex Plautia de vi, generally regarded as tribunician, which established a quaestio perpetua for the trial of persons charged with violence. It also forbade the acquisition by long use of things stolen or violently seized.[2654] As no censors were elected, an order of the people of unknown authorship in 75, pursuant to a senatus consultum, empowered the consuls of the year to farm the vectigalia.[2655] The approaching end of the Cornelian régime was foreboded in the Plautian law for the recall of Cinna and other exiled democrats, if indeed this measure belongs to 73,[2656] and certainly in the consular law of Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus, 72, which directed the consuls of the year to collect the money remitted by Sulla to the purchasers of confiscated estates.[2657] A popular tendency may be discovered as well in the final settlement of the question of conflict between sessions of the senate and of the comitia by the lex Pupia, which seems to have been a statute of M. Pupius Piso Calpurnianus, praetor in 71.[2658] It forbade the magistrates to convoke the senate on those comitial days on which an assembly actually met,[2659] the prohibition applying to that part only of the day which preceded the dismissal of the comitia.[2660] It was probably this year which saw the enactment of the lex Antonia de Termessibus—a plebiscite proposed de senatus sententia by C. Antonius, tribune of the plebs, and several of his colleagues, for granting to Termessus Major in Pisidia the rights of a free state in friendship and alliance with Rome, and for regulating on that basis the relations which were to exist between the inhabitants and the Romans.[2661]
The struggle for the rehabilitation of the tribunes began in 78, when those officials applied to the consuls for legislation on the subject. Even Aemilius Lepidus[2662] declined, as he could see no advantage in the unhampered tribunate.[2663] Though generally in these early years of the Cornelian régime the tribunes were mere puppets of the senate, one of them in 76, L. Sicinius, dared in a contio to plead for the full restoration of their office.[2664] In the following year Q. Opimius, another tribune, continued the struggle, with such success that he secured the passage of the Aurelian law above mentioned.[2665] This measure narrowly escaped annulment, and Opimius after retiring from office was exorbitantly fined on the ground that he had interceded in violation of a Cornelian law.[2666] In the year of the condemnation of Opimius, 74, L. Quinctius, who had risen to the tribunate from the lowest social class, strove energetically for the same object,[2667] though he could effect no more than the maintenance of the Aurelian law. Toward the close of his term, however, he opened battle against the senatorial courts, which had fallen into disfavor because of their corruption.[2668] In 73 the contest was resumed by Licinius Macer the annalist, then tribune of the plebs, who demanded in vain the full restoration of the tribunician power.[2669] In his efforts he had the support of C. Julius Caesar.[2670] The struggle died down as the danger from Spartacus rose; but at the close of the servile war it was a tribune of the plebs, M. Lollius Palicanus, a man of low birth, who in a contio held outside the walls in order that Pompey, a proconsul, might attend, persuaded the latter to commit himself publicly to a definite promise to bring about a repeal of the lex Cornelia de tribunicia potestate.[2671] Inveighing against the corruption of the senatorial courts,[2672] Pompey in the same speech intimated an intention to propose a bill on this subject as well.
Shortly after entering upon the office of consul in 70, or at all events before the elections of the year,[2673] Pompey promulgated his rogation for the restoration of the tribunician power. The senate yielded in spite of its dislike for the measure,[2674] and Licinius Crassus, his colleague,[2675] added his name to the proposal.[2676] The people gladly accepted it. Those articles of the Cornelian statute which remained untouched by the Aurelian law of 75 were thereby repealed, and every restriction on the tribunes removed.[2677] By destroying the chief support of the Cornelian constitution this measure paved the way to its overthrow. Notwithstanding the popular clamor for a reform of the courts,[2678] Pompey hesitated to propose a law for that purpose, as he hoped rather to purify the senatorial order through a severe censorial revision so as to make a judiciary law unnecessary. The reform, however, was taken in hand by L. Aurelius Cotta, praetor in the same year, youngest brother of the consul of 75.[2679] The rogation was promulgated while the trial of Verres was in progress and while the people were excited by lack of confidence in the senatorial jurors.[2680] The first project seems to have been the retransfer of the courts to the equites;[2681] but when the senators saw that they were destined to lose in the contest, they were able to save something by compromise. It was agreed that there should be three decuries of jurors, composed in equal numbers of senators, knights, and tribuni aerarii respectively.[2682] The last-named decury was included because the Plautian judiciary law of 89 had opened the courts to common citizens in addition to senators and knights,[2683] and it was now thought that no less liberality should be shown. The Aurelian statute provided accordingly that the urban praetor[2684] should make up the annual album iudicum of an equal number of men from each of the three classes.[2685] The good feature of the law is obvious. As experience had proved the equestrian courts, as well as the senatorial, to be partisan and corrupt, it was hoped that a combination of the two with an equal proportion of the most responsible and respectable common citizens would be just and impartial. If these expectations were not realized, it was the fault of the Romans, not of their law.
The first tribunician law under the restored constitution may have been the sumptuary statute of C. Antius Restio, which Lange[2686] assigns to the year 70. It limited the amount to be expended on festive meals; it designated some delicacies as allowable and others as forbidden; and it regulated the participation of candidates and of magistrates in dinners away from home, doubtless with a view to curtailing ambitus practiced by such means.[2687] Far however from being a partisan measure, this statute seems to have been suggested by the censors of the year, to reënforce their function of supervising the morals of the citizens.
Three years passed before the tribunes of the plebs were ready to make independent use of their recovered power. The reason is to be found in the harmony—concordia ordinum[2688]—reëstablished between senators and knights, when representatives of the two classes found themselves sitting together on the jury benches. Although the object of the combination was idealized by contemporaries, it was in fact a governing “trust,” which in practice operated for the maintenance of plutocracy and for the ruthless exploitation of the provincials.[2689] The nobles were willing to concede something to the equites to make permanent the alliance with this powerful order.[2690] L. Roscius Otho, tribune of the plebs in 67, as spokesman of the optimates[2691] “railroaded”[2692] through the assembly a statute which ordered that there should be reserved in the theatre for those in possession of the equestrian census[2693] fourteen rows of seats just back of the orchestra, in which sat the senators.[2694] It was more than a restoration of the concession made to the knights in 146, which evidently Sulla had withdrawn.[2695]
There were in this year (67), however, two popular tribunes, A. Gabinius and C. Cornelius, both of whom proposed and carried laws in the interest of the people. Early in the year Gabinius persuaded the tribes to adopt a statute which ordered the senate to sit daily during February to consider embassies.[2696] It was in this month that delegations from other states generally came. Often to obtain a hearing they had to bribe the senators and magistrates.[2697] For that month the Gabinian law reversed the Pupian[2698] by making senatorial sessions compulsory and forbidding the concurrence of comitia.[2699] The object was to limit the stay of foreign embassies at Rome not only for their own convenience but also for lessening both the need and the opportunity for bribery. Closely related was the purpose of his statute which forbade lending money to provincials at Rome.[2700] Representatives of subject and allied states, finding it necessary to bribe more extensively than their resources in hand allowed, were tempted to borrow of the capitalists at exorbitant interest. Private individuals from the provinces must often have similarly borrowed to the ruin of their fortunes. The double aim of the statute, accordingly, was to help the provincials and to check bribery. How it passed against senatorial opposition is unknown. A supplementary measure on the same subject was proposed to the senate by C. Cornelius, a colleague of Gabinius, for prohibiting the lending of money to the legati of other states, the idea being identical with that of the two Gabinian laws. The good intention of Cornelius is vouched for by the well-known uprightness[2701] of his character, which contrasts with the reputed vileness of Gabinius. But the senate rejected the proposal on the ground that it had already made sufficient provision for checking the abuse. Although Cornelius thereupon complained in a contio that the provinces were being exhausted by usury, he does not seem to have urged his measure further.[2702] He promulgated, however, against the interests of the senate a rogation for ordering that no one should receive a dispensation from a law excepting through a vote of the comitia. This right had been acquired by the people in the period between the Publilian and the Hortensian legislation (339-287).[2703] It had come to be regarded as inseparable from the sovereignty of the people to such an extent that all senatus consulta for dispensing from the laws contained a provision for bringing the matter before the comitia. Gradually the custom of referring to the people ceased, and at last the provision to that effect was dropped from senatorial decrees. The result was that often a few senators, meeting in the Curia, voted away to acquaintances and relatives the valuable privilege of exemption from a law. The optimates induced a tribune of the plebs, P. Servilius Globulus, to intercede against the bill while it was being read to the assembly prior to the vote. When the dissenting tribune forbade the crier to proceed with the reading, Cornelius himself read it.[2704] A disturbance in the assembly, started by the interference of Piso the consul, caused Cornelius to dismiss the concilium. Afterward he so compromised with the optimates as to secure the passage of a law that no dispensations should be granted by the senate unless two hundred members were present, and that when a resolution of the kind was brought down from the senate to the people, no one should intercede against the act.[2705] The victory was with the senate; it gained a legal right to a function which it had usurped, provision being merely made against abuse. But it exercised this function by the sufferance of the tribunes, any one of whom could insist on bringing the dispensing resolution before the people, in which case his colleagues were forbidden to intercede.[2706]
Another proposal of this tribune was the rogatio de ambitu, which threatened with severe penalties not only the candidates but also their agents, the divisores, whose duty was to distribute the corruption fund among the tribes.[2707] The senate, declaring the penalties so harsh that neither accuser nor jurors could be found to enforce it, put the bill in the hands of the two consuls, C. Calpurnius Piso and M’. Acilius Glabrio.[2708] Here was a comical situation; both consuls were liable to the existing law on the subject; but for the sake of appearances they had to revise the bill and present it to the comitia in the Forum.[2709] The lex Acilia Calpurnia, enacted in this way,[2710] inflicted on those found guilty of the crime a heavy fine, and forever disqualified them from holding office or sitting in the senate.[2711] Cornelius proposed other measures, all of which were vetoed by colleagues excepting his lex concerning the edict of the praetor, described as follows by Dio Cassius:[2712] “All the praetors themselves compiled and published the principles according to which they intended to try cases; for all the decrees regarding contracts had not yet been laid down. Now since they were not in the habit of doing this once for all and did not observe the rules as written, but often made changes in them and incidentally a number of clauses naturally appeared in some one’s favor or to some one’s hurt, he moved that they should at the very start announce the principles they would use and not swerve from them at all.” The object was to make the administration of the law more just and regular, and to cut off an opportunity for favoritism.[2713]
By far the most important measure of the year was the Gabinian law for the appointment of an especial commander against the pirates. The proposition was that from the consulares should be chosen a general for putting down the pirates; that his province should be the entire Mediterranean and a strip of its coasts extending fifty miles inland, including Italy and the islands; that the command should continue three years; that the holder of this imperium should have the right to fifteen legati and 200 ships, and the privilege of enlisting soldiers and oarsmen over all his province; that he should have credit with the aerarium at Rome and the publicans in the provinces for 6000 talents.[2714] The name of Pompey did not appear in the bill, but no one doubted who was to be the man. The optimates were all opposed, though in 74 they had given Antonius such a command,[2715] which now served Gabinius as a precedent. The senate was compelled by threats of the people to yield, but used its influence on the colleagues of Gabinius to have them oppose the measure. Two of them, L. Roscius Otho, author of the lex theatralis,[2716] and L. Trebellius, attempted to prevent comitial action. The tribes began to vote the deposition of Trebellius; but before the eighteenth was called he desisted.[2717] Thereafter both remained silent, and the law was passed. Pompey was then elected to the command by the tribes.[2718] They enacted further that he should have two quaestors, twenty-four legati pro praetore, 500 ships, 120,000 men, and 5000 cavalry. On one point only the senate refused its sanction; it would not permit Gabinius to be a legatus.[2719] An article of the statute gave as a province to the outgoing consul, M’. Acilius Glabrio, Bithynia and Pontus with the conduct of the war against Mithridates.[2720] The Gabinian law led to far-reaching consequences. It established temporarily, not precisely a monarchy, but a dyarchy, as the Roman world was thereby divided between the senate and a general with almost absolute power. The arrangement was a prototype of the Augustan system. At the outset the act seemed to be justified by the results, for immediately after its adoption the price of grain fell from the famine height to which the piratical control of the seas had forced it.[2721]
An addition to this vast power was made in the following year by the Manilian law. The author, C. Manilius, after entering upon his tribunate on December 10, 67, promulgated a rogation for giving libertini the right to vote in the tribes of their patrons.[2722] It was said by some, though probably without ground, that the real author was Cornelius.[2723] While in general the optimates disliked the measure, some favored it in the hope that they would gain political influence through the votes of their freedmen.[2724] In spite of the fact that constitutionally the comitia could not be held on a festive day, Manilius convoked the assembly on the last day of the year, which was the Compitalia, toward evening, gathering to the assembly a few men who he knew favored the proposal. On the following day the senate heard of the enactment and at once declared it invalid.[2725] The behavior of Manilius exposed him to certain prosecution unless he could win powerful support. This is the motive ascribed to him by Dio Cassius[2726] for his famous law which conferred extraordinary power on Pompey for the conduct of the war against Mithridates.[2727] It gave the Roman general, in addition to his existing command, the provinces of Asia, Bithynia, and Cilicia with the right to declare war and make treaties at his discretion.[2728] The province thus granted him included nearly all the eastern domain of Rome which had not already been conferred by the Gabinian law. No discussion of this measure in the senate is mentioned, though it is difficult to understand how such action could be avoided.[2729] The only optimates who opposed the bill in contiones were Q. Lutatius Catulus and Q. Hortensius, who had been the chief opponents of the Gabinian law. Their objection was the monarchical position in which these measures were placing Pompey.[2730] Its leading supporters were Caesar and Cicero.[2731] It was so enthusiastically favored by the knights and the populace that its adoption was from the beginning a foregone conclusion.
In 65 the conservatives found themselves strong enough to put through the assembly the plebiscite of C. Papius for expelling the peregrini from Rome, and for punishing those who had usurped the rights of the citizens. The object was to prevent Latin-speaking foreigners, especially the Transpadane Gauls, from packing the assemblies with a view to passing measures for the further extension of the franchise. The Papian law was modelled after the Claudian of 177,[2732] the Junian of 126,[2733] and in some respects after the Licinian-Mucian of 95.[2734] Probably to the same Papius belongs the lex Papia de Vestalium lectione, which limited the power of choice exercised by the supreme pontiff.[2735]
After the unusual comitial activity of 67-66 there was almost a pause in legislation till the year of Cicero’s consulship, 63. To that date belongs the plebiscite of T. Atius Labienus, which restored the form of election of sacerdotes introduced by Domitius in 103[2736] and abolished by Sulla.[2737]
A remarkable effort at agrarian legislation was made at the beginning of the year by P. Servilius Rullus, tribune of the plebs. In December, 64, shortly after entering office, he promulgated a bill, comprising more than forty articles,[2738] with the intention of having it voted on in January.[2739] The administration of the law was to be in the hands of ten men elected by seventeen tribes after the manner of the comitia pontificis maximi,[2740] to hold office five years.[2741] Candidates should be required to present themselves in person[2742] (so as to exclude Pompey). This commission was to have the irresponsible[2743] management of large resources[2744] for the purchase of land in Italy,[2745] on which they were to plant colonies at their discretion.[2746] The object of the rogation seems to have been the creation of an oligarchy of ten who with their vast powers and revenues should control Rome and counterbalance the military prestige of Pompey. Caesar and Crassus were probably behind the scheme. Should it by any chance succeed, they would be the dominant members of the board. Its faulty structure and revolutionary demands, however, made failure almost certain from the outset. At all events Cicero, driven into the ranks of the optimates by the necessity of opposing it,—so Caesar may have reasoned,—would thus be eliminated from the leadership of the democratic party, while the populace, with appetite whetted for an agrarian law, would be ready for the saner measure which Caesar was himself intending to propose as soon as an opportunity offered. But Cicero out-manoeuvred his adversaries. It was as a friend of the people and an ally of the tribunes that he opposed the bill in two contiones,[2747] after which a threat of intercession on the part of a colleague induced Rullus to withdraw it.
In Cicero’s judgment there was pressing need of a new lex de ambitu to cover the loopholes left by the Acilian-Calpurnian statute of 67.[2748] Early in the year he passed through the senate a decree which so interpreted that enactment as to make it apply to the hiring of sectatores, the granting of free seats to the tribes at gladiatorial shows, and the entertainment of the public at dinners.[2749] Later in the summer, after the elections of the year had been announced, a dispensation from the Aelian-Fufian law[2750] enabled him and C. Antonius, his colleague,[2751] to propose and carry a new statute concerning bribery at elections.[2752] It increased the penalty on the divisores,[2753] and forbade any one within the two years preceding the announcement of a candidacy to give gladiatorial shows excepting in fulfilment of a testament.[2754] The penalty for the convicted candidate was ten years’ exile.[2755] The part of the law which had to do with the jurors included a provision for fining those who absented themselves from the trial even on the ground of illness.[2756] A measure certainly passed in this year, and probably forming an article of the Tullian lex de ambitu, forbade candidacies in absentia.[2757] Amid the troubles connected with the Catilinarian conspiracy Cicero found time for an attempt to relieve the provincials of one of the most flagrant abuses inflicted on them by the senatorial oligarchy. To increase the dignity and lessen the expense of a member while travelling even on private business through the provinces, the senate was accustomed to have the office of public legatus conferred on him by a magistrate, which honor at the same time implied the right to be absent from sessions of the senate.[2758] In this capacity a senator represented the state,[2759] and could have lictors assigned him by the provincial governors.[2760] Abuses of this privilege were to the provincials an especially vexatious form of oppression.[2761] Cicero’s first rogation on the subject proposed to abolish the free legation, but when a tribune in the service of the illiberals interceded, the measure before enactment was so weakened as to limit the privilege of any one person to a single year,[2762] and hence did little to remedy the mischief.[2763] There was in fact no hope for the provincials either from the avaricious plutocrats or the hungry proletarians.
The legislation of the years between the consulships of Cicero and Caesar, 63-59, involved no important principle. To prevent the introduction of forged statutes in the archives,[2764] a law of D. Junius Silanus and L. Licinius Murena, consuls in 62, forbade the filing of a statute in the aerarian archives excepting in the presence of witnesses.[2765] In this year M. Porcius Cato and L. Marcius, tribunes of the plebs, carried a law which threatened with punishment commanders who reported falsely to the senate the number of the enemy killed and of citizens lost, and required them within ten days after returning to the city to give their oath before the urban quaestors that they had transmitted correct reports.[2766] For the year 60 must be mentioned the pretorian law of Q. Caecilius Metellus Nepos, which abolished vectigalia in Italy,[2767] and the tribunician rogation of L. Flavius for granting lands to Pompey’s veterans. The latter failed through the disapproval of the senate.[2768] Far more interesting because of the procedure, though otherwise of little consequence, was the tribunician rogation of Herennius of the same year for transferring P. Clodius to the plebeian rank. The subject has been considered in an earlier chapter.[2769]
The year of Caesar’s consulship was one of unusual legislative activity. Resuming the agrarian policy of the Gracchi, which had been undone by the statute of 111,[2770] he promulgated early in the year a bill for the distribution of lands, which exempted the Campanian[2771] and Stellatine[2772] territory as well as that of Volaterrae, which Sulla had confiscated without ejecting the inhabitants.[2773] As little other public land remained in Italy, the bill ordered that money accruing from the sale of booty taken by Pompey, and from the new revenues of the territory he had won for Rome, be used for the purchase of lands from those who were willing to sell at the values assessed in the last census.[2774] The beneficiaries were the needy citizens and the veterans of Pompey.[2775] The lots assigned were to remain inalienable twenty years.[2776] The work of distribution was to be in the hands of a board of twenty—vigintiviri[2777]—which should not include the author of the law.[2778] A sub-committee of this large board must have been the Vviri agris dandis adsignandis iudicandis,[2779] who in the opinion of Mommsen[2780] possessed the sole judicial power connected with the work of distribution. As the senate studiously delayed action on the measure, though unable to offer any criticism,[2781] Caesar without its sanction presented the bill to the people.[2782] Bibulus, his colleague, backed by three tribunes of the plebs, not only protested against the bill,[2783] but resorted to sky-watching and the proclamation of festivals to prevent its adoption.[2784] Disregarding this opposition, Caesar with the support of Pompey and Crassus offered his rogation to the tribes,[2785] who accepted it with great enthusiasm. For the remainder of his term he ignored the senate in all his legislation. As to his other agrarian provisions, it is difficult to determine whether they were attached to this rogation before its enactment or formed a new bill. In favor of the second alternative it is to be noticed in the first place that Cicero and others mention Julian agrarian laws,[2786] and that Cicero’s expression “Campanian lex”[2787] could describe a measure relating to the Campanian territory but not the whole group of agrarian provisions of that year. Moreover although Cicero was acquainted with the Julian rogation from the beginning of the year,[2788] he did not at Formiae hear of the inclusion of the Campanian territory till near the end of April.[2789] It might be assumed that after the senate and Bibulus showed opposition Caesar modified the original rogation before putting it to vote, but no mention is made of an alteration. Finally Dio Cassius[2790] and Plutarch[2791] speak distinctly of an earlier and a later law.[2792] On the whole it seems probable therefore that toward the end of April Caesar promulgated a second agrarian bill which provided for the distribution of the Campanian and Stellatine lands among needy citizens, preferably those who had three or more children.[2793] The complete execution of the law would dispose of all public lands in Italy from which a revenue might be derived. An article required not only senators within a specified time to swear that they would support the measures[2794] but also candidates for office for the following year to give their oath in contio that they would not propose any modification or repeal of them.[2795]