History of Human Society

CHAPTER XV

ROMAN CIVILIZATION

The Romans Differed in Nature from the Greeks. – Instead of being of a philosophic, speculative nature, the Romans were a practical, even a stoical, people of great achievement. They turned their ideas always toward the concrete, and when they desired to use the abstract they borrowed the principles and theories established by other nations. They were poor theorizers, both in philosophy and in religion, but were intensely interested in that which they could turn to immediate and practical benefit. They were great borrowers of the products of other people's imagination. In the very early period they borrowed the gods of the Greeks and somewhat of their forms of religion!

Later they borrowed forms of art from other nations and developed them to suit their own, and, still later, they used the literary language of the Greeks to enrich their own. This method of borrowing the best products of others and putting them to practical service led to immense consequences in the development of civilization. The Romans lacked not in originality, for practical application leads to original creation, but their best efforts in civilization were wrought out from this practical standpoint. Thus, in the improvement of agriculture, in the perfection of the art of war, in the development of law and of government, their work was masterly in the extreme; and to this extent it was worked out rather than thought out. Indeed, their whole civilization was evolved from the practical standpoint.

The Social Structure of Early Rome and That of Early Greece. – Rome started, like Greece, with the early patriarchal kings, who ruled over the expanded family, but with this difference, that these kings, from the earliest historical records, were elected by the people. Nevertheless there is no evidence that the democratic spirit was greater in early Rome than in early Greece, except in form. In the early period all Italy was filled with tribes, mostly of Aryan descent, and in the regal period the small territory of Latium was filled with independent city communities; but all these cities were federated on a religious basis and met at Alba Longa as a centre, where they conducted their worship and duly instituted certain regulations concerning the government of all. Later, after the decline of Alba Longa, the seat of this federal government was removed to Rome, which was another of the federated cities. Subsequently this territory was invaded by the Sabines, who settled at Rome, and, as an independent community, allied themselves with the Romans.

And, finally, the invasion of the Etruscans gave the last of three separate communities, which were federated into one state and laid the foundation of the imperial city. But if some leader founded Rome in the early period, it is quite natural that he should be called Romulus, after the name of Rome. Considering the nature of the Romans and the tendency to the old ancestral worship among them, it does not seem strange that they should deify this founder and worship him. Subsequently, we find that this priestly monarchy was changed to a military monarchy, in which everything was based upon property and military service. Whatever may be the stories of early Rome, so much may be mentioned as historical fact.

The foundation was laid in three great tribes, composed of the ancient families, or patricians, who formed the body of the league. Those who settled at Rome at an early period became the aristocracy; they were members of the tribes of immemorial foundation. At first the old tribal exclusiveness prevailed, and people who came later into Rome were treated as unequal to those who long had a right to the soil. This led to a division among the people based on hereditary right, which lasted in its effect as long as Rome endured. It became the custom to call those persons belonging to the first families patricians, and all who were not patricians plebeians, representing that class who did not belong to the first families. The plebeians were composed of foreigners, who had only commercial rights, of the clients who attached themselves to these ancient families, but who gradually passed into the plebeian rank, and of land-holders, craftsmen, and laborers. The plebeians were free inhabitants, without political rights. As there was no great opportunity for the patricians to increase in number, the plebeians, in the regal period, soon grew to outnumber them. They were increased by those conquered ones who were permitted to come to Rome and dwell. Also the tradesmen and immigrants who dwelt at Rome increased rapidly, for they could have the protection of the Roman state without having the responsibility of Roman soldiers. It was of great significance in the development of the Roman government that these two great classes existed.

Civil Organization of Rome. – The organization of the government of early Rome rested in a peculiar sense upon the family group. The first tribes that settled in the territory were governed upon a family basis, and their land was held by family holdings. No other nation appears to have perpetuated such a power of the family in the affairs of the state. The father, as the head of the family, had absolute power over all; the son never became of age so far as the rights of property are considered as long as the father lived. The father was priest, king, and legislator for all in the family group. Parental authority was arbitrary, and when the head of the family passed away the oldest male member of the family took his place, and ruled as his father had ruled.

A group of these families constituted a clan, and a group of clans made a tribe, and three tribes, according to the formula for the formation of Rome, made a state. Whether this formal process was carried out exactly remains to be proved, but the families related to one another by ties of blood were united in distinct groups, which were again reorganized into larger groups, and the formula at the time of the organization of the state was that there were 30 cantons formed by 300 clans, and these clans averaged about 10 families each. This is based upon the number of representatives which afterward formed the senate, and upon the number of soldiers furnished by the various families. The state became then an enlarged family, with a king at the head, whose prerogatives were somewhat limited by his position. There were also a popular assembly, consisting of all the freeholders of the state, and the senate, formed by the heads of all the most influential families, for the government of Rome. These ancient hereditary forms of government extended with various changes in the progress of Rome.

The Struggle for Liberty. – The members of the Roman senate were chosen from the noble families of Rome, and were elected for life, which made the senate of Rome a perpetual body. Having no legal declaration of legislative, judicial, executive, or administrative authority, it was, nevertheless, the most powerful body of its kind ever in existence. Representing the power of intellect, and having within its ranks men of the foremost character and ability of the city, this aristocracy overpowered and ruled the affairs of Rome until the close of the republic, and afterward became a service to the imperial government of the Caesars.

From a very early period in the history of the Roman nation the people struggled for their rights and privileges against this aristocracy of wealth and hereditary power. At the expulsion of the kings, in 500 B.C., the senate lived on, as did the old popular assembly of the people, the former gaining strength, the latter becoming weakened. Realizing what they had lost in political power, having lost their farms by borrowing money of the rich patricians, and suffered imprisonment and distress on that account, the plebeians, resolved to endure no longer, marched out upon the hill, Mons Sacer, and demanded redress by way of tribunes and other officers.

This was the beginning of an earnest struggle for 50 years for mere protection, to be followed by a struggle of 150 years for equality of power and rights. The result of this was that a compromise was made with the senate, which allowed the people to have tribunes chosen from the plebeians, and a law was passed giving them the right of protection against the oppression of any official, and subsequently the right of intercession against any administrative or judicial act, except in the case when a dictator was appointed. This gave the plebeians some representation in the government of Rome. They worked at first for protection, and also for the privilege of intermarriage among the patricians. After this they began to struggle for equal rights and privileges.

A few years after the revolt in 486 B.C. Spurius Cassius brought forward the first agrarian law. The lands of the original Roman territory belonged at first to the great families, and were divided and subdivided among the various family groups. But a large part of the land obtained by conquest of the Italians became the public domain, the property of the entire people of Rome. It became necessary for these lands to be leased by the Roman patricians, and as these same Roman patricians were members of the senate, they became careless about collecting rent of themselves, and so the lands were occupied year after year, and, indeed, century after century, by the Roman families, who were led to claim them as their own without rental. Cassius proposed to divide a part of these lands among the needy plebeians and the Latins as well, and to lease the rest for the profit of the public treasury. The patricians fought against Cassius because he was to take away their lands, and the plebeians were discontented with him because he had favored the Latins. The result was that at the close of his office he was sentenced and executed for the mere attempt to do justice to humanity.

The tribunes of the people finally gained more power, and a resolution was introduced in the senate providing that a body of ten men should be selected to reduce the laws of the state to a written code. In 451 B.C. the ten men were chosen from the patricians, who formed ten tables of laws, had them engraved on copper plates, and placed them where everybody could read them. The following year ten men were again appointed, three of whom were plebeians, who added two more tables; the whole body became known as the Laws of the Twelve Tables. It was a great step in advance when the laws of a community could be thus published. Soon after this the laws of Valerius and Horatius made the acts of the assembly of the tribunes of equal force with those of the assembly of the centuries, and established that every magistrate, including the dictator, was obliged in the future to allow appeals from his decision. They also recognized the inviolability of the tribunes of the people and of the aediles who represented them. But in order to circumvent the plebeians, two quaestors were appointed in charge of the military treasury.

Indeed, at every step forward which the people made for equality and justice, the senate, representing the aristocracy, passed laws to circumvent the plebeians. In 445 B.C. the tribune Canuleius introduced a law legalizing marriage between the patricians and plebeians. The children were to inherit the rank of their father. This tribune further attempted to pass a law allowing consuls to be chosen from the plebeians. To this a fierce opposition sprang up, and a compromise measure was adopted which allowed military tribunes to be elected from the plebeians, who had consular power. But again the senate sought to circumvent the plebeians, and created the new patrician office of censor, to take the census, make lists of citizens and taxes, appoint senators, prepare the publication of the budget, manage the state property, farm out the taxes, and superintend public buildings; also he might supervise the public morality.

With the year 587 B.C. came the invasion of the Gauls from the north and the famous battle of the Allia, in which the Romans suffered defeat and were forced to the right bank of the Tiber, leaving the city of Rome defenseless. Abandoned by the citizens, the city was taken, plundered, and burned by the Gauls. Senators were slaughtered, though the capitol was not taken. Finally, surprised and overcome by a contingent of the Roman army, the enemy was forced to retire and the inhabitants again returned. But no sooner had they returned than the peaceful struggle of the plebeians against the patricians began again.

First, there were the poor, indebted plebeians, who sought the reform of the laws relating to debtor and creditor and desired a share in the public lands. Second, the whole body of the plebeians were engaged in an attempt to open the consulate to their ranks. In 367 B.C. the Licinian laws were passed, which gave relief to the debtors by deducting the interest already accrued from the principal, and allowing the rest to be paid in three annual instalments; and a second law forbade that any one should possess more than 500 jugera of the public lands. This was to prevent the wealthy patricians from holding lands in large tracts and keeping them from the plebeians. This law also abolished the military tribuneship and insisted that one at least of the two consuls should be chosen from the plebeians – giving a possibility of two. The patricians, in order to counteract undue influence in this respect, established the praetorship, the praetor having jurisdiction and vicegerence of the consuls during their absence.

There also sprang up about this time the new nobility (optimates), composed of the plebeians and patricians who had held office for a long time, and representing the aristocracy of the community. From this time on all the Roman citizens tended to go into two classes, the optimates and, exclusive of these, the great Roman populace. In the former all the wealth and power were combined; in the latter the poverty, wretchedness, and dependence. Various other changes in the constitution succeeded, until the great wars of the Samnites and those of the Carthaginians directed the attention of the people to foreign conquest. After the close of these great wars and the firm establishment of the universal power of Rome abroad, there sprang up a great civil war, induced largely by the disturbance of the Gracchi, who sought to carry out the will of the people in regard to popular democracy and the division of the public lands.

Thus, step by step, the plebeians, by a peaceful civil struggle, had obtained the consulship, and, indeed, the right to all other civil offices. They had obtained a right to sit in the senate, had obtained the declaration of social equality, had settled the great land question; and yet the will of the people never prevailed. The great Roman senate, made up of the aristocracy of Rome, an aristocracy of both plebeians and patricians, ruled with unyielding sway, and the common people never obtained full possession of their rights and privileges. Civil strife continued; the gulf between the rich and the poor, the nobility and the proletariat representing a few rich political manipulators, on the one side, and the half-fed, half-mad populace, on the other, grew wider and wider, finally ending in civil war. In the midst of the strife the republic passed away, and only the coming of the imperial power of the Caesars perpetuated Roman institutions.

Rome Becomes a Dominant City. – In all of this struggle at home and abroad, foreign conquest led to the establishment of Rome as the central city. The constitution of Rome was the typical constitution for all provincial cities, and from this one centre all provinces were ruled. No example heretofore had existed of the centralization of government similar to this. The overlordship of the Persians was only for the purpose of collecting tribute; there was little attempt to carry abroad the Persian institutions or to amalgamate the conquered provinces in one great homogeneous nation.

The empire of Athens was but a temporary hegemony over tributary states. But the Roman government conquered and absorbed. Wherever went the Roman arms, there the Roman laws and the Roman government followed; there followed the Roman language, architecture, art, institutions, and civilization. Great highways passed from the Eternal City to all parts of the territory, binding together the separate elements of national life, and levelling down the barriers between all nations. Every colony planted by Rome in the new provinces was a type of the old Roman life, and the provincial government everywhere became the type of this central city. Here was reached a state in the development of government which no nation had hitherto attained – the dominant city and the rule of a mighty empire from central authority.

The Development of Government. – The remarkable development of Rome in government from the old hereditary nobility, in which priest-kings ruled the people, to a military king who was leader, subsequently into a republic which stood the test for several centuries of a fierce struggle for the rights of the people, finally into an imperial government to last for 450 years, represents the growth of one of the most remarkable governments in the world's history. The fundamental idea in government was the ruling of an entire state from the central city, and out of this idea grew imperialism as a later development, vesting all authority in a single monarch. The governments of conquered provinces were gradually made over into the Roman system. The Roman municipal government was found in all the cities of the provinces, and the provincial government became an integral part of the Roman system. The provinces were under the supervision of imperial officers appointed by the emperor. Thus the tendency was to bind the whole government into one unified system, with its power and authority at Rome. So long as this central authority remained and had its full sway there was little danger of the decline of Roman power, but when disintegration began in the central government the whole structure was doomed.

One of the remarkable characteristics of the Roman government was a system of checks of one part by every other part. Thus, in the republic, the consuls were checked by the senate, the senate by the consular power, the various assemblies, such as the Curiata, Tributa, and Centuriata, each having its own particular powers, were checks upon each other and upon other departments of the government. The whole system of magistrates was subject to the same checks or limits in authority. And while impeachment was not introduced, each officer, at the close of his term, was accountable for his actions while in office. But under imperialism the tendency was to break down the power of each separate form of government and to absorb it in the imperial power. Thus Augustus soon attributed to himself the power of the chief magistrates and obtained a dominating power in the senate until the functions of government were all centralized in the emperor. While this made a strong government, in many phases it was open to great dangers, and in due time it failed, as a result of the corruption that clustered around the despotism of a single ruler unchecked by constitutional power.

The Development of Law Is the Most Remarkable Phase of the Roman Civilization. – Perhaps the most lasting effect of the Roman civilization is observed in the contribution of law to the nations which arose at the time of the decline of the imperial sway. From the time of the posting of the Twelve Tables in a public place, where they could be read by all the citizens of Rome, there was a steady growth of the Roman law. The decrees of the senate, as well as the influence of judicial decisions, gradually developed a system of jurisprudence. There sprang up, also, interpreters of the law, who had much influence in shaping its course. Also, in the early period of the republic, the acts of the popular assemblies became laws. This was before the senate became the supreme lawmaking body of the state.