The Historians' History of the World 05

The legal and constitutional changes which took place at Rome during this period were rendered imperatively necessary (in spite of the conservative character of the Roman people) by the changed status of the city. During the earlier half of the monarchy all civil institutions had been arranged with an eye to municipal conditions. But the Rome of the Tarquins (in the sixth century B.C.) had hardly become the capital of a domain of nearly a thousand square kilometres before she found herself under the necessity of admitting her new citizens, first into the companies (centuriæ) of the army, and presently (after 509 B.C.) into the popular assemblies which voted by centuries. The old sacral ordinances, which were unsuited to any but municipal conditions, were superseded by the jus Quiritium, or Law of the Spearman, an ordinance of civil law.

It was no longer necessary to secure the assistance of the pontiff and the assent of the popular assembly voting by curiæ in order to make a will or regulate other points of family law. The civil testament and corresponding civil institutions took the place of the old system.

But the Roman state did not escape grievous internal troubles. After the expulsion of the kings the patrician aristocracy strove to get all power into their own hands. The senators were drawn exclusively from their ranks, civil and military office became the prerogative of a class. All priestly offices were occupied by members of patrician families. The patricians were supposed to be the only exponents of human and divine law. And it was an additional evil that the aristocratic comitia centuriata, which actually excluded the poorer citizens, were wholly deficient in initiative.

The Roman plebs suffered even more from the lack of legal security under an unwritten law arbitrarily administered by patrician judges than from the lack of political rights. In the famous bloodless revolution of 494 B.C. the plebs won the right of choosing guardians of their own, in the person of the tribunes of the people, who had the right of intervention even against the consuls, and soon gained a decisive influence in all public affairs. By decades of strife the hardy champions of civil liberty succeeded in securing first a written code of common law and then a share for the plebeians in public office and honours. From 443 B.C. onward there were special rating-officers (censors) independent of the consul, whose business it was to settle the place of individual citizens on the register of recruiting and citizenship, and to regulate taxation and public burdens.

But the most important triumph was that the assemblies of the plebs succeeded by degrees in securing official recognition for the resolutions they passed on legal, judicial, and political questions. After the year 287 B.C. the plebiscita had the same force as laws (leges) passed by the whole body of the people.

Although the subject classes had thus won a satisfactory measure of civil rights and liberties, they never forgot—and this is the most significant feature of the whole struggle for liberty—that none but a strong government and magistracy can successfully meet ordinary demands or rise to extraordinary emergencies. At Rome the individual magistrate found his liberty of action restrained in many ways by his colleagues and superiors. But within the scope of his jurisdiction, his provincia, he enjoyed a considerable amount of independence.

The senate was the only power which ultimately contrived to impose limits upon this independence. In that body the effective authority of the government was concentrated by gradual degrees. In face of the constant augmentation in the number of magistrates it frequently succeeded in getting its own way without much trouble. In the bosom of its members reposed the arcana imperii, the secrets of a policy which had known how to make Rome great. Selfishness, consistency, perfidy, perseverance—such were the motives, some noble, and some base, which shaped its resolutions. Yet we cannot deny that there is a certain grandeur in the political aims represented by the senate. Nor did it fail of success; indeed, its achievements were marvellous.

In the year 390 B.C. the city of Rome was in the hands of the Gauls, and the Roman body politic had to all appearance perished. Exactly a hundred years later, at the end of the Second Samnite War, Rome was mistress of nearly the whole of Italy. A few years more, and she occupied Tarentum (272) and Rhegium (270). What is the explanation of this prodigious change?