Chapter 3 — The Rise Of The Peasantry

CHAPTER III

The Rise of the Peasantry

The sixth century ended with a revolution^1 that drove the Etruscan tyrants out of Rome. That this was not entirely a nationalistic movement, we may infer from the fact that many of the nobles prominent in the new government bore Etruscan names.^2 Nor does it bear the marks of being a democratic stroke: the succeeding government was in every respect oligarchic in form. But it inaugurated a bitter struggle of two centuries between the patricians, who controlled the state, and the plebeians, who bore many of its burdens although enjoying few of a citizen’s privileges. This new revolution shows, in its endless checks and counterchecks, its intricate compromises, and juristic fencing, the patient legal-mindedness of the Roman race. No nation in history except the English has, under like pressure, produced a similar drama of bloodless revolution. Recent criticism^3 has been prone to call the struggle wholly political, pointing out that the traditional narrative of it was produced after the Gracchan days and was therefore probably colored by ideas that emerged at a later date. However, even if there is too much economic interpretation of the early revolution in Livy, the laws which the struggle produced are abiding testimony that the battle was fought largely on economic grounds; and early Roman society reveals a caste system based largely upon economic property. The story of the struggle, therefore, has a place in a Roman economic history.

1. The story of the revolution is, of course, full of legendary elements. However, in view of the persisting hatred of “kings” in historical times, and the definite provisions in early laws against the crime of adfectare regnum, it is safest to assume that the political consciousness had actually been deeply affected by a revolution which stirred the city to its foundations. Acts of very deep significance, like the exaction of the Magna Charta, for instance, are not likely to be wholly distorted by legend.

2. See Schulze, Rom. Eigennamen.

3. See Niese, Hermes, 1888, p. 410; De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, II, 213.

Before the revolution, the great bulk of the peasantry was in the position of more or less free villeins. We do not know that there was actual serfdom, and we are never told of a definite “freeing of the serfs,” though recent historians^4 have suggested that the creation of “tribunes of the plebs” in 495 may imply such an act. If some or many of the peasants had fallen into serfdom, the liberation may, of course, have been a gradual movement which therefore left no trace in the laws that survived. So, for instance, it is possible that the Etruscan autocrats of Rome had pursued a policy of weakening the powerful landlords and of protecting the peasants for the sake of bolstering their own power; or again, the lords during the revolution may have resigned their rights to many customary services in order to assure the loyalty of their villeins in the struggle with the king’s troops. Such things occurred everywhere in the breaking up of the medieval feudal system.^5 At any rate, no sure trace of serfdom is found in the early republic, for the so-called Servian constitution, while based mainly upon an economic division in the electorate and in the army, giving the predominance of power to rich landholders, constitutes a large part of the army from peasants whom it assumes to be freeholders. Whether the peasants were serfs or free in the sixth century, however, they were in a miserable economic condition.

4. Neumann, Bauernbefreiung, 1900, in part accepted by E. Meyer, article Plebs, in Conrads Handwörterbuch.

5. Cf. Lipson, The Economic History of England, p. 77.

In the first place, their lots were small and of decreasing value. The very works of reclamation which we have noticed are proof that the land was being driven to the capacity of its production in order to feed an overcrowded population. That the soil was being exhausted and refused to respond to all the requirements is also shown by the frequent notes in Livy^6 recording famines and food commissions in the fifth century. If, furthermore, the peasants had recently received their freeholds, as seems probable, they must have had all the problems of economic independence to face on their own responsibility and with little experience. This occurred, too, at a time when the penalties of an extremely severe property law permitted debtors to be reduced to a state of peonage or to be sold into foreign lands as slaves. If under such circumstances the peasants called for material relief, as Livy so constantly contends, is his story not reasonable? And if they also asked for a better standing in court and equal political rights, this was due in no small measure to the fact that they knew that the most direct road to a more comfortable existence led by way of civil and political equality.

6. Cf. Livy, II, 9; 34; 52; III, 32; IV, 12; 25; 52. Some of these passages are doubtless based upon conjecture, but it must be remembered that the priestly annales made a point of recording things of religious import like quotiens annona cara, quotiens lunae aut solis lumine caligo aut quid obstiterit, Cato, Orig. frag. 77.

Certain urban classes possessing inferior rights also shared in the contest. The aggressive policy of the kings, who had brought Rome into the currents of Etruscan commerce and industry, had invited many workmen to Rome. Doubtless Rome had some share in the production of such things as we can attribute to most of the neighboring cities:^7 gold jewelry, engraved and chased work in silver for ornaments and toilet articles, all kinds of utensils in copper and iron, pottery and architectural ornaments of terracotta, clothing, armor, and much besides. Commerce required service at the docks,^8 in transportation, and in shops. Much labor was employed in the building of temples, public works, and palaces. But many of those who had been invited to the city by these industries were left in difficulties on the expulsion of the kings, for Rome was not only then severed from Etruria, the home of these industries, but also apparently from the currents of commerce. Very few articles dating from the fifth century have been found at Rome which indicate contact with Greece or the East, and the seaport at Ostia seems to have fallen into neglect. An idle proletariat, quite ripe for revolution, resulted. Was the lex Icilia de Aventino publicando^9 of 456 an effort to pacify this class with small plots of land, and were the first four tribunes intended as official patrons for these city poor, to take the place of the king whose expulsion had left them without protection?

7. Pinza, Bull. Com., 1912, p. 53. Rome later spread so rapidly over the regions where the early habitations and graves had been that very little has survived from which to judge the state of her earliest industry. The best records naturally come from the neighboring cities which dwindled away because of Rome’s increase.

8. There are traces of a sixth-century village near the center of Ostia. About the middle of the fourth century, a small colony was planted there and the village fortified by a wall which now seems to have enclosed three or four acres of ground.

9. Rosenberg, Hermes, 1913, 371, thinks the lex a proof that the plebeians of the city were still non-citizens who could be kept within a “pale.”

Livy^10 connects the first “secession” of the plebeians with the Latin wars that followed the expulsion of the kings. He had, of course, no contemporaneous source that provided an explanation of causes and effects, but his conjecture is wholly reasonable. This was a period of liberation for the Latins as well as for the Roman plebeians, and the one movement may well have induced the other. The first Carthaginian treaty, as we have seen, implied that the kings of Rome had made their city master of Latium as far as Tarracina, and the new Republic in this treaty assumed that it would continue the same hegemony. This, of course, could not be, for the new government, having incurred the hostility of the Etruscans, was too weak for such a task. The Latins naturally claimed their former position of freedom in a tribal union;^11 when refused, they fought for it and in time gained their point, so that a Latin league was founded in which they formed an element of equal standing with Rome. It was in this struggle, according to Livy, that the hard-pressed government called the peasantry to army service and thus gave the plebeians an opportunity to bargain for representatives, called tribunes, to protect their interests.

10. Livy, II, 32.

11. The tribal union later called the “Latin league” went through constant changes, some phases of which we seem able to define.

(a) Before the Etruscans entered Latium, there must have been some common tribal cult which made for unity of action even in political matters, especially in times of danger.

(b) The Etruscan princes, gaining possession of various hill towns, shattered this union. The leadership throughout Latium established by the Roman king was based upon the king’s power, not upon racial unity, for it extended over Volscian towns like Tarracina and Antium.

(c) The attempt of the Roman Republic to continue this hegemony failed, the Latin cities forming an independent Latin league from which even Rome was excluded—if, as is usually assumed, the ancient inscription cited by Cato (Hist. Rom. Frag., Cato, 58) gives a complete list of the members. The northern line of cities was made up of Tibur, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, and Lavinium; the southern line, by Ardea, Pometia, and Cora. The league therefore had slightly more territory than Rome, but failed to gain the adhesion of the Latin town of Praeneste—perhaps still under Etruscan rule—and the Volscian territory from Antium to Tarracina which Etruscan Rome had commanded. The date of this league can be fixed at about 500+ by the fact that the Latin colonies of Signia and Norba had apparently not yet been founded, while Cora is included. Rosenberg, Hermes, 1919, p. 159.

(d) After a few years of separation, Rome made a treaty with the league, not as one of nine members, but as an equal half of the league. This foedus Cassianum, plausibly dated by Livy (II, 33, 4) in 493, is given by Dion. Hal. VI, 95. During the rest of the century, this Latin league worked in fair harmony in defending Rome’s border against the Etruscans and the southern Latin border against the Aequi and Volsci.

(e) In the fourth century, Rome began to assume leadership because of her ability to act as a unit among cities of diverse interests. After several disagreements on this score, especially after Rome was weakened by the Gallic invasion, it became necessary to renew the league by a new agreement in 358.

In 343 there was a general revolt of the Latins against Rome’s assumption of superiority, and the Roman victory in the Latin War enabled her to form the federation into which she fitted the old league members at will. The Latin cult was continued in a perfunctory way on Rome’s responsibility, and all Latin communities—50 or 60, Pliny, III, 69—were admitted to the festival on equal terms, including many towns that had belonged to Rome, e.g., Gabii, Bovillae, etc., or to the other former members of the league, e.g., Bola, Corioli, etc.

Since after 493 there was commercium and conubium between all Latins of the league, and residence secured citizenship in any city, we may assume that economic changes, whether at Rome or in any part of Latium, quickly made themselves felt throughout the territory of the league.

The institution of tribunes^12 was in many respects peculiar and implies in its very form something about the nature of the grievances that were to be corrected. The tribunes, at first apparently four, were sacrosanct, which implies that the plebeians had formed a separate body in the state and had compelled the government to take an oath to respect the persons of their representatives, under penalty of divine vengeance. This fact proves that tradition was correct in attributing the plebeian victory to a strike. Moreover, the fact that the tribune’s power at first was not magisterial, but personal, applicable in the aid of individuals, and that only within the city walls, justifies the inference that his services were those of an advocate to be exercised in cases of alleged injustice by the court and its agents. It was the tribune’s business, therefore, to protect the personal liberty of the poor man who was in danger of falling under the debtor’s sale, and at least to see that he had his days of grace and an opportunity to summon his friends to his relief. The whole institution, in short, points to economic grievances as the starting point of the revolution.

12. Livy, II, 33; Diod. XI, 68. The early number and the date—495 or 471—were matters of dispute among the Romans. See especially Mommsen, Staatsr. II, 272; E. Meyer, article Plebs in Conrads Handwörterbuch; and Rosenberg on sacrosanctus in Hermes, 1913, 359.

Once organized, however, the tribunes readily extended their powers. The meetings of the plebeians for elections enabled them to discuss and formulate further measures, to instruct their representatives, and, when they had grown into a compact body, to use pressure upon the government through threats of tribunician interference. Thus, in 452 they forced the government to promise a codification and publication of customary law whereby judicial rulings might be checked and a basis laid for consistent reforms. A few years^13 later, they compelled the legislative assembly to recognize a plebiscite as a bill which the assembly must consider, and presently social distinctions were removed by the permission of intermarriage between plebeians and patricians. In 393 an old custom of the Latin league was resurrected, and the territory recently taken from Veii was distributed to all citizens, each receiving seven jugera. To the great significance of this act we must recur; suffice it here to say that, as the distribution was a proof of democratic power and set a precedent for the party’s policy, it also in turn strengthened the party by lifting a large number of the proletariat into the class of property owners, thus giving them better standing in the legislative assembly and doubtless starting many on the road to economic success. Their increased strength enabled them finally, by means of the Licinian-Sextian law of 366, to gain entrance into the consulship,^14 the highest magistracy in the state, and to strengthen their opportunities of sharing in further land distributions by limiting to 500 jugera the amount of public land that any man might rent. Thus, the plebeians gained legal recognition for their claim to political and civil equality and some measure of economic relief.

13. The traditional dates are: Twelve Tables, 451; the laws of Horatius and Valerius recognizing in some measure the plebiscite, 449; lex Canuleia permitting conubium, 445.

14. The Licinian-Sextian laws contained, according to Livy, a clause restricting the rental of public lands. Recent critics have, with Niese, Hermes, 23, 410, placed this restriction in the second century. There seems to be no definite way to settle the dispute. In two subsequent passages, Livy indicates judicial actions on infringements of the law which, if accurate, imply that the traditional account is correct. In VII, 16, he reports that Licinius was himself fined for possessing a thousand acres in 357, and in X, 13 (298 B.C.), that very many persons were fined quia plus quam quod lege finitum erat agri possiderent; cf. X, 23; X, 47—damnatis aliquot pecuariis—seems to refer to the same law.

The law corresponds well to the economic situation of that time as we now know it. Land was deteriorating in value, and some landlords who were consequently introducing cattle raising must have sought extensive leases. The poor had already learned the advantage of land distribution, but had, of course, sustained many losses in the Gallic invasion. We need not assume with Niese that the law presupposed a great number of latifundia at this time, for the existence of a few might suffice to induce preventive legislation.

We may conveniently anticipate and add that in 287 the plebeians, by a very peculiar method, used their power to establish equal manhood suffrage in legislation. They compelled the legislative assembly, which voted by classes based upon property, to recognize as of equal standing the tribal assembly, which voted by wards, apparently inviting the patricians, who were of course a small minority, to participation in the tribal organization. Thus this state within the state, a kind of soviet government, grew, by absorbing the patrician element, to be the very state itself; thenceforth tribunes could call the populace together under their presidency to decide the politics of the commonwealth. This was victory more than complete, and had Rome remained a state of small size, whose problems the populace had dared to settle single-handed without the advice of the senate, Rome, like the Greek city-states, would henceforth have provided an example of a pure democracy.

In the light of this evolution, we may recur for a moment to the land distribution of 393, whereby all citizens secured an allotment of seven jugera from the captured Veian territory immediately north of the city. To the wealthy landholders, of course, the allotment brought little of value; they probably sold their portions or leased them. To the proletariat, however, it gave, in those days of hand tools and intensive culture, enough for a livelihood. To the state, it meant that through a period of gravest dangers Rome was to be provided in these working landowners with a sound body of patriotic and reliable citizens. These aided her for some time to avoid the immobility of an absentee landlord class and the listlessness of peasant-tenants or their substitute, the farm slaves.

The Romans knew as well as we, of course, that the working landowner on his small farm was not always progressive. A master farmer like Cato, instructed in the agricultural lore of the Greeks and Carthaginians, could doubtless plant more wisely and secure greater returns by adapting his crops to the soil and to wider market needs. Like the Renaissance advocates of the enclosure system in England, he knew that there was an economic advantage in concentration. Furthermore, he must have found that the division of the Veian lands into small plots destroyed the possibility of operating the extensive drainage tunnels which had been dug through large tracts of that territory.^15 Individual holders of small lots would hardly take care of their segments when unable to control the current above and below, and coordinated effort was probably out of the question.^16 At any rate, the tunnels fell into disuse, and the total of production must have fallen also.

15. There are still many traces of these drainage tunnels to be seen in the valleys near Veii, especially toward the north, where the land is hilly; they have also been reported in the neighborhood of Bieda, farther north, Rom. Mitt. XV, pp. 185–6.

16. There seems to be a reference to this difficulty in Digest, 30, 3, 2, 1.

However, maximum production was never an ideal of Roman statescraft. The senate usually considered the value of its citizens from the point of view of military and political needs, and the democratic element looked, of course, to social as well as economic amelioration. Obviously, a homogeneous citizen-army was highly desirable in a small state as poorly protected as Rome. To constitute such an army, it was necessary to have a large proportion of responsible property owners for whom the defense of the state was a matter of personal interest. On that idea the army had been built for centuries. It was equally important that the nation should have a large group of self-supporting citizens whose opinions and sympathies were stabilized at election time by contentment and faith in the existing order. These were everyday doctrines at Rome, and few statesmen permitted themselves to advocate in the senate the economic advantages of a landlord system over the political and social advantages of the system based upon the working proprietor. If the former system nevertheless emerged victorious in the end, it was not for want of comprehension and interest, but rather because the force of economic laws withstood the application of such remedies as were then available. That Rome bore so well the shock of the Gallic invasion, that she passed without bloodshed through the broils of the class struggles, survived the revolt of the Latins, and had the prudence to devise the liberal and flexible constitution which enabled her to unite Italy in an effective federation—all this seems now in no small measure due to the habit of providing, by land distribution, a solid and interested citizen body from the proletariat.

In the above summary, the slow evolution of plebeian civil rights has, for unity’s sake, been considered simply in connection with agrarian problems. Near the end of the crisis, the economic problems were not a little complicated by the entrance of a new factor, the establishment of a state mint, which, by the issue of money not hitherto used, for some time upset the stable economic system of Rome, brought on financial upheavals, and quickened the course of the revolution.

The precise date at which Rome instituted a mint is now difficult to determine. The Romans, who were prone to credit all their institutions with great antiquity, attributed the innovation to Servius Tullius. But the designs upon the earliest coins are now definitely assigned on artistic grounds to the fourth century.^17 If the prow,^18 which serves as the emblem upon the first coins, has reference to the colonization of the seaport of Ostia, which dates from about the middle of the fourth century, we have in this first issue an explanation of several peculiar financial measures that followed immediately.

17. See Hill, Historical Roman Coins.

18. The arguments for the dates of Ostia I have given in Class. Phil., 1919, p. 314. The statement of Festus, who says the colony was subsequent to the first building of the village, is supported by the facts that its citizens belong to two different tribes and that its government has a double set of officials. See Taylor, Cults of Ostia. Recent excavations have revealed a city wall which shows the workmanship and the material prevalent in the fourth century; see Am. J. Arch., 1918, 182.

In 352 a bankruptcy commission^19 was appointed; in 347 the legal rate of interest, which had for a century stood at 8⅓ percent, was halved; and in 343 the taking of interest was absolutely forbidden. The laws look very much like an exertion on the part of a government inexperienced in financial affairs to curb the evils which result from a sudden “inflation” of currency. It is clear that the first issue of currency in an age that had been accustomed to barter must have acted as a heavy overissue does today and upset the peaceful tenor of the market. It must have stimulated buying and invited new trade to the city; it must have facilitated borrowing for new ventures, not to speak of needless and perilous ones; and since prices tend to increase with the quantity of currency, there were doubtless many miscalculations and numerous failures. How this situation quickly led to such financial crises as Livy records can readily be conceived. The laws that were passed to meet the stress show that the lower classes were gaining an ever-increasing influence over the government. It was only three years after the prohibition of interest that the bold plebeian leader Publilius Philo passed the laws that canceled the privilege of the patricians in the senate to veto legislation.

19. The bankruptcy law, Livy, VII, 21; the laws on interest, VII, 27, and VII, 42, to be read with Tac. Ann. VI, 16, and Appian B.C. I, 54.

Statesmen, however, learned that in forbidding interest they had only increased the difficulty: later notices show that the old legal rate was soon accepted; and when presently conquests in Latium and Samnium opened up new lands for colonization, the surplus currency was doubtless absorbed and the financial equilibrium reestablished.

CHAPTER III

The Rise of the Peasantry

The sixth century ended with a revolution[1] that drove the Etruscan tyrants out of Rome. We may infer that this was not entirely a nationalistic movement from the fact that many nobles prominent in the new government bore Etruscan names.[2] Nor does it bear the marks of a democratic stroke: the government that succeeded it was oligarchic in every respect. But it inaugurated a bitter, two-century struggle between the patricians, who controlled the state, and the plebeians, who bore many of its burdens while enjoying few of a citizen’s privileges. In its endless checks and counterchecks, intricate compromises, and juristic fencing, this new revolution reveals the patient legal-mindedness of the Roman race. No nation in history except the English has, under similar pressure, produced a comparable drama of bloodless revolution.

[1] The story of the revolution is, of course, full of legendary elements. However, in view of the persistent hatred of “kings” in historical times, and the definite provisions in early laws against the crime of adfectare regnum, it is safest to assume that political consciousness had actually been deeply affected by a revolution that stirred the city to its foundations. Acts of very deep significance, such as the exaction of Magna Charta, are not likely to be wholly distorted by legend.

[2] See Schulze, Rom. Eigennamen.

Recent criticism[3] has tended to call the struggle wholly political, pointing out that the traditional narrative was produced after the days of the Gracchi and was therefore probably colored by ideas that emerged later. However, even if Livy’s account places too much economic interpretation on the early revolution, the laws produced by the struggle are abiding testimony that the battle was fought largely on economic grounds; and early Roman society reveals a caste system based largely on economic property. The story of the struggle therefore has a place in a Roman economic history.

[3] See Niese, Hermes, 1888, p. 410; De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani, II. 213.

Before the revolution, the great majority of the peasants occupied the position of more or less free villeins. We do not know that actual serfdom existed, and we are never told of a definite “freeing of the serfs,” although recent historians[4] have suggested that the creation of “tribunes of the plebs” in 495 may imply such an act. If some or many of the peasants had fallen into serfdom, their liberation may, of course, have been a gradual movement and therefore left no trace in the surviving laws. For example, it is possible that the Etruscan autocrats of Rome had pursued a policy of weakening the powerful landlords and protecting the peasants in order to strengthen their own power. Alternatively, during the revolution, the lords may have surrendered their rights to many customary services in order to ensure the loyalty of their villeins in the struggle against the king’s troops. Such things occurred everywhere during the breakup of the medieval feudal system.[5]

[4] Neumann, Bauernbefreiung, 1900, accepted in part by E. Meyer, article “Plebs,” in Conrads Handwörterbuch.

[5] Cf. Lipson, The Economic History of England, p. 77.

At any rate, no certain trace of serfdom is found in the early Republic. The so-called Servian constitution, though based mainly on an economic division of the electorate and the army and giving predominant power to rich landholders, drew a large part of the army from peasants whom it assumed to be freeholders. Whether the peasants were serfs or free in the sixth century, however, they were in a miserable economic condition.

In the first place, their lots were small and decreasing in value. The very reclamation works we have noticed prove that the land was being pushed to the limit of its productive capacity in order to feed an overcrowded population. That the soil was becoming exhausted and no longer met all demands upon it is also shown by Livy’s frequent references[6] to famines and food commissions in the fifth century. Furthermore, if the peasants had recently received their freeholds, as seems probable, they must have faced all the problems of economic independence on their own responsibility and with little experience. This happened at a time when the penalties under an extremely severe property law allowed debtors to be reduced to peonage or sold as slaves in foreign lands. If, under such conditions, the peasants demanded material relief, as Livy repeatedly contends, is his account not reasonable? And if they also demanded better standing in court and equal political rights, this was due in no small measure to their knowledge that the most direct road to a more comfortable existence led through civil and political equality.

[6] Cf. Livy, II, 9; 34; 52; III, 32; IV, 12; 25; 52. Some of these passages are doubtless based on conjecture, but it must be remembered that the priestly annals made a point of recording matters of religious significance, such as quotiens annona cara, quotiens lunae aut solis lumine caligo aut quid obstiterit, Cato, Orig. frag. 77.

Certain urban classes possessing inferior rights also took part in the contest. The aggressive policy of the kings, who had brought Rome into the currents of Etruscan commerce and industry, had attracted many workers to the city. Rome doubtless had some share in producing the kinds of goods that we can attribute to most neighboring cities:[7] gold jewelry; engraved and chased silverwork for ornaments and toilet articles; all kinds of utensils in copper and iron; pottery and architectural ornaments of terracotta; clothing; armor; and much else. Commerce required labor at the docks,[8] in transportation, and in shops. Much labor was also employed in building temples, public works, and palaces.

[7] Pinza, Bull. Com., 1912, p. 53. Rome later spread so rapidly over the regions occupied by its early homes and graves that very little has survived from which to judge the state of its earliest industry. The best records naturally come from neighboring cities that dwindled as Rome grew.

[8] There are traces of a sixth-century village near the center of Ostia. About the middle of the fourth century, a small colony was planted there and the village was fortified by a wall that now appears to have enclosed three or four acres of ground.

But many of those whom these industries had attracted to the city were left in difficulty after the expulsion of the kings, for Rome was then cut off not only from Etruria, the home of these industries, but apparently also from the currents of commerce. Very few articles dating from the fifth century have been found at Rome that indicate contact with Greece or the East, and the seaport at Ostia seems to have fallen into neglect. The result was an unemployed proletariat quite ready for revolution. Was the lex Icilia de Aventino publicando[9] of 456 an attempt to pacify this class by giving its members small plots of land? And were the first four tribunes intended to serve as official patrons for these urban poor, replacing the king whose expulsion had left them without protection?

[9] Rosenberg, Hermes, 1913, p. 371, considers the law proof that the city’s plebeians were still noncitizens who could be confined within a “pale.”

Livy[10] connects the first “secession” of the plebeians with the Latin wars that followed the expulsion of the kings. He had, of course, no contemporary source explaining causes and effects, but his conjecture is entirely reasonable. This was a period of liberation for the Latins as well as for the Roman plebeians, and one movement may well have induced the other. As we have seen, the first Carthaginian treaty implied that the kings of Rome had made their city master of Latium as far as Tarracina, and in this treaty the new Republic assumed that it would continue the same hegemony. This could not, of course, happen, because the new government, having incurred the hostility of the Etruscans, was too weak for such a task. The Latins naturally claimed their former freedom within a tribal union.[11] When this claim was refused, they fought for it and in time gained their point, so that a Latin league was founded in which they formed an element equal in standing to Rome.

[10] Livy, II, 32.

[11] The tribal union later called the “Latin League” went through constant changes, some phases of which we seem able to define.

(a) Before the Etruscans entered Latium, there must have been some common tribal cult that encouraged united action even in political matters, especially in times of danger.

(b) The Etruscan princes, by gaining possession of various hill towns, shattered this union. The leadership throughout Latium established by the Roman king rested on the king’s power, not on racial unity, for it extended over Volscian towns such as Tarracina and Antium.

(c) The Roman Republic’s attempt to continue this hegemony failed. The Latin cities formed an independent Latin league from which even Rome was excluded—if, as is usually assumed, the ancient inscription cited by Cato (Hist. Rom. Frag., Cato, 58) provides a complete list of its members. The northern line of cities consisted of Tibur, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium, and Lavinium; the southern line consisted of Ardea, Pometia, and Cora. The league therefore possessed slightly more territory than Rome, but it failed to gain the allegiance of the Latin town of Praeneste, perhaps still under Etruscan rule, or of the Volscian territory from Antium to Tarracina that Etruscan Rome had commanded. The date of this league can be fixed at about 500 or later from the fact that the Latin colonies of Signia and Norba had apparently not yet been founded, while Cora is included. Rosenberg, Hermes, 1919, p. 159.

(d) After a few years of separation, Rome made a treaty with the league, not as one of nine members but as one equal half of the league. This foedus Cassianum, plausibly dated by Livy (II. 33, 4) to 493, is given by Dion. Hal. VI, 95. During the rest of the century, this Latin league worked in reasonable harmony to defend Rome’s frontier against the Etruscans and the southern Latin frontier against the Aequi and Volsci.

(e) In the fourth century, Rome began to assume leadership because of its ability to act as a single unit among cities with diverse interests. After several disagreements on this issue, especially after Rome was weakened by the Gallic invasion, it became necessary to renew the league by a new agreement in 358.

In 343, there was a general revolt by the Latins against Rome’s assumption of superiority. The Roman victory in the Latin War enabled Rome to create the federation into which it fitted the former members of the league as it wished. The Latin cult was continued perfunctorily under Rome’s responsibility, and all Latin communities—50 or 60, according to Pliny, III, 69—were admitted to the festival on equal terms. These included many towns that had belonged to Rome, such as Gabii and Bovillae, or to other former members of the league, such as Bola and Corioli.

Because commercium and conubium existed after 493 among all Latins belonging to the league, and because residence secured citizenship in any city, we may assume that economic changes, whether at Rome or in any part of Latium, quickly made themselves felt throughout the league’s territory.

According to Livy, it was during this struggle that the hard-pressed government called the peasantry into military service and thus gave the plebeians an opportunity to bargain for representatives, called tribunes, to protect their interests.

The institution of tribunes[12] was peculiar in many respects, and its very form implies something about the nature of the grievances it was intended to correct. The tribunes, apparently four at first, were sacrosanct. This implies that the plebeians had formed a separate body within the state and had compelled the government, under penalty of divine vengeance, to swear that it would respect the persons of their representatives. This fact proves that tradition was correct in attributing the plebeian victory to a strike. Moreover, the tribune’s power was at first not magisterial but personal: it could be used only to aid individuals and only within the city walls. This justifies the inference that his services were those of an advocate, to be exercised in cases of alleged injustice by the court and its agents. It was therefore the tribune’s duty to protect the personal liberty of a poor man in danger of being sold for debt, and at least to ensure that he received his days of grace and an opportunity to summon his friends to his aid. In short, the whole institution points to economic grievances as the starting point of the revolution.

[12] Livy, II, 33; Diod. XI, 68. The original number of tribunes and the date—495 or 471—were disputed among the Romans. See especially Mommsen, Staatsr. II, 272; E. Meyer, article “Plebs,” in Conrads Handwörterbuch; and Rosenberg on sacrosanctus in Hermes, 1913, p. 359.

Once organized, however, the tribunes readily extended their powers. The plebeians’ electoral meetings enabled them to discuss and formulate further measures and to instruct their representatives. When they had grown into a compact body, they could bring pressure on the government by threatening tribunician interference. Thus, in 452, they forced the government to promise that customary law would be codified and published, allowing unjust rulings to be checked and laying a foundation for subsequent reforms. A few years later,[13] they compelled the legislative assembly to recognize a plebiscite as a bill that the assembly was required to consider. Soon afterward, social distinctions were removed by permitting intermarriage between plebeians and patricians.

[13] The traditional dates are: the Twelve Tables, 451; the laws of Horatius and Valerius, recognizing the plebiscita to some extent, 449; and the lex Canuleia, permitting conubium, 445.

In 393, an old custom of the Latin League was revived, and the territory recently taken from Veii was distributed among all citizens, each receiving seven jugera. We must return to the great significance of this act. For now, it is enough to say that the distribution was both proof of democratic power and a precedent for the party’s policy. In turn, it strengthened the party by raising a large number of the proletariat into the class of property owners, giving them better standing in the legislative assembly and doubtless setting many on the road to economic success.

Their increased strength finally enabled them, through the Licinian-Sextian law of 366, to gain access to the consulship,[14] the highest magistracy in the state. It also enabled them to strengthen their prospects of sharing in further land distributions by limiting to 500 jugera the amount of public land any one man could rent. Thus, the plebeians gained legal recognition of their claim to political and civil equality, as well as some measure of economic relief.

[14] According to Livy, the Licinian-Sextian laws included a clause restricting the rental of public lands. Recent critics, following Niese, Hermes, 23, p. 410, have placed this restriction in the second century. There seems to be no definite way to settle the dispute. In two later passages, Livy describes judicial actions against violations of the law that, if accurate, imply that the traditional account is correct. In VII, 16, he reports that Licinius himself was fined in 357 for possessing a thousand acres; and in X, 13, under the year 298 B.C., he reports that a great many people were fined quia plus quam quod lege finitum erat agri possiderent. Cf. X, 23; X, 47—damnatis aliquot pecuariis—seems to refer to the same law.

The law fits well with the economic situation of the time as we now understand it. Land was declining in value, and some landlords who were consequently introducing cattle raising must have sought extensive leases. The poor had already learned the advantages of land distribution but had, of course, suffered many losses during the Gallic invasion. We need not assume with Niese that the law presupposed a great number of latifundia at this time, for the existence of even a few might have been enough to prompt preventive legislation.

We may conveniently look ahead and add that in 287 the plebeians used their power, by a very unusual method, to establish equal manhood suffrage in legislation. They compelled the legislative assembly, which voted by classes based on property, to recognize the equal standing of the tribal assembly, which voted by wards. They apparently invited the patricians, who were of course a small minority, to participate in the tribal organization. Thus, this state within the state—a kind of soviet government—absorbed the patrician element and grew into the state itself. From then on, the tribunes could call the populace together under their presidency to determine the policies of the commonwealth. This victory was more than complete. If Rome had remained a small state whose populace dared to settle its problems single-handedly, without the advice of the Senate, Rome, like the Greek city-states, would thereafter have provided an example of pure democracy.

In light of this evolution, we may return for a moment to the land distribution of 393, through which all citizens received an allotment of seven jugera from the captured Veian territory immediately north of the city. To wealthy landholders, of course, the allotment brought little of value; they probably sold or leased their portions. To the proletariat, however, it provided enough land for a living in those days of hand tools and intensive cultivation. To the state, it meant that during a period of the gravest danger, Rome would possess, in these working landowners, a sound body of patriotic and reliable citizens. For some time, they helped Rome avoid both the immobility of an absentee landlord class and the listlessness of tenant peasants—or their substitute, farm slaves.

The Romans knew as well as we do, of course, that a working landowner on his small farm was not always progressive. A master farmer such as Cato, instructed in the agricultural knowledge of the Greeks and Carthaginians, could doubtless plant more wisely and obtain greater returns by adapting his crops to the soil and to the needs of a broader market. Like Renaissance advocates of the enclosure system in England, he knew that concentration offered an economic advantage. Furthermore, he must have found that dividing the Veian lands into small plots destroyed the possibility of operating the extensive drainage tunnels that had been dug through large tracts of that territory.[15] Individual holders of small lots would hardly maintain their own sections when they could not control the current above and below, and coordinated effort was probably out of the question.[16] At any rate, the tunnels fell into disuse, and total production must also have declined.

[15] Many traces of these drainage tunnels can still be seen in the valleys near Veii, especially toward the north, where the land is hilly. They have also been reported in the neighborhood of Bieda, farther north. Rom. Mitt. XV, pp. 185–86.

[16] There seems to be a reference to this difficulty in Digest, 30. 3. 2. 1.

Maximum production, however, was never an ideal of Roman statecraft. The Senate usually considered the value of its citizens from the perspective of military and political needs, while the democratic element naturally sought social as well as economic improvement. A homogeneous citizen army was obviously highly desirable in a small and poorly protected state such as Rome. To create such an army, it was necessary to have a large proportion of responsible property owners for whom the defense of the state was a matter of personal interest. The army had been built on that principle for centuries.

It was equally important that the nation should possess a large group of self-supporting citizens whose opinions and sympathies at election time were stabilized by contentment and confidence in the existing order. These were commonplace doctrines at Rome, and few statesmen allowed themselves to argue in the Senate that the economic advantages of a landlord system outweighed the political and social advantages of a system based on working proprietors. If the former system nevertheless emerged victorious in the end, it was not because of a lack of understanding or concern. Rather, it was because the force of economic laws resisted the remedies then available.

That Rome withstood the shock of the Gallic invasion so well, passed without bloodshed through the turmoil of the class struggles, survived the revolt of the Latins, and had the prudence to devise the liberal and flexible constitution that enabled it to unite Italy in an effective federation—all this now seems due in no small measure to the practice of creating a solid and committed body of citizens out of the proletariat through land distribution.

For the sake of unity, the preceding summary has considered the slow evolution of plebeian civil rights simply in connection with agrarian problems. Near the end of the crisis, the economic problems were significantly complicated by the entrance of a new factor: the establishment of a state mint. By issuing money, which had not previously been used, the mint disrupted Rome’s stable economic system for a time, caused financial upheavals, and accelerated the revolution.

It is now difficult to determine the exact date when Rome established a mint. The Romans, who were inclined to credit all their institutions with great antiquity, attributed the innovation to Servius Tullius. But the designs on the earliest coins are now definitely assigned, on artistic grounds, to the fourth century.[17] If the prow,[18] which appears as the emblem on the first coins, refers to the colonization of the seaport of Ostia around the middle of the fourth century, then this first issue helps explain several unusual financial measures that immediately followed.

[17] See Hill, Historical Roman Coins.

[18] I have given the arguments for the dates of Ostia in Class. Phil., 1919, p. 314. The statement of Festus, who says that the colony was established after the village was first built, is supported by the facts that its citizens belonged to two different tribes and that its government had a double set of officials. See Taylor, Cults of Ostia. Recent excavations have revealed a city wall displaying the workmanship and materials prevalent in the fourth century. See Am. J. Arch., 1918, p. 182.

In 352, a bankruptcy commission[19] was appointed. In 347, the legal interest rate, which had stood at 8½ percent for a century, was halved; and in 343, the taking of interest was completely forbidden. These laws look very much like an inexperienced government’s attempt to curb the evils produced by a sudden “inflation” of the currency.

[19] The bankruptcy law: Livy, VII, 21. The laws on interest: VII, 27 and VII, 42, to be read with Tac. Ann. VI, 16, and Appian, B.C. I, 54.

It is clear that the first issue of currency in an age accustomed to barter must have had the same effect as a heavy overissue today and disrupted the peaceful course of the market. It must have stimulated buying and drawn new trade to the city. It must also have made borrowing for new ventures easier, including unnecessary and dangerous ventures. Since prices tend to rise with the quantity of currency, there were doubtless many miscalculations and numerous failures. It is easy to understand how this situation quickly led to financial crises of the kind Livy records.

The laws passed to meet the crisis show that the lower classes were gaining ever-increasing influence over the government. Only three years after interest was prohibited, the bold plebeian leader Publilius Philo passed laws that ended the privilege of the patricians in the Senate to veto legislation.

Statesmen learned, however, that by forbidding interest they had only increased the difficulty. Later notices show that the old legal rate was soon accepted again. When conquests in Latium and Samnium presently opened new lands for colonization, the surplus currency was doubtless absorbed and financial equilibrium restored.