THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIBRARY Halsted VanderPoel Campanian Collection
THE
HISTORY OF ROME MOMMSEN
THE
HIST...
196 downloads
1420 Views
35MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIBRARY Halsted VanderPoel Campanian Collection
THE
HISTORY OF ROME MOMMSEN
THE
HISTORY OF ROME BY
THEODOR MOMMSEN TRANSLATED WITH THE SANCTION OF THE AUTHOR BY
WILLIAM PURDIE DICKSON,
D.D., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
A NEW EDITION REVISED THROUGHOUT AND EMBODYING RECENT ADDITIONS VOL.
Ill
LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET Publishers in
rtoinarg to
$cr
1894
fftajcstg
tlje
ucen
Th
GEm
CENTER
LIBRARY
CONTENTS BOOK THIRD FROM THE UNION OF ITALY TO THE SUBJUGATION OF CARTHAGE AND THE GREEK STATES Continued
CHAPTER
XI PAGE
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
CHAPTER
XII
THE MANAGEMENT OF LAND AND OF CAPITAL
CHAPTER LITERATURE AND ART
.
.
...... .....
CHAPTER FAITH AND MANNERS
3
64
XIII
104
XIV
129
BOOK FOURTH THE REVOLUTION
CHAPTER
I
THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES DOWN TO THE TIMES OF THE GRACCHI
213
CONTENTS
vi
CHAPTER
II
PAGE
THE REFORM MOVEMENT AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
CHAPTER
CHAPTER
297
.
334
III
THE REVOLUTION AND GAIUS GRACCHUS
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
IV
.
371
CHAPTER V THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
.
.
CHAPTER
.
414
VI
THE ATTEMPT OF MARIUS AT REVOLUTION, AND THE ATTEMPT OF DRUSUS AT REFORM
CHAPTER
.
.
452
VII
......
THE REVOLT OF THE ITALIAN REVOLUTION
.
SUBJECTS,
AND THE SULPICIAN 490
BOOK THIRD FROM THE UNION OF ITALY TO THE
SUBJUGATION OF CARTHAGE AND THE GREEK STATES Continued
VOL. in
66
CHAPTER
XI
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
THE
fall
of the patriciate by no means divested the of its aristocratic character.
Roman 'Formation
We
commonwealth
have
ofn? w parties.
already (i. 393) indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in
some sense
still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a dis-
tinction
between the senatorial houses who were privileged
in point of burgess rights
and of burgess
usufructs,
and
the mass of the other citizens.
Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed ; and the former engrafted itself as
we have it
already
shown how
were on the fallen
patrici-
and how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between the orders (i. 394). The ate,
formation of these
new
parties
began
in the fifth century,
but they assumed their definite shape only in the century which followed. The development of this internal change of the great wars is, as it were, drowned amidst the noise
and
victories,
mation
is
and not merely so, but the process of formore withdrawn from view than any
in this case
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
BOOK in
Roman history. Like a crust of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and impercep-
other in
more and more,
it
tibly confining
this
new Roman
aristQc_
racy silently arose ; and not less imperceptibly, like the urrent concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, here arose in opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually insignificant, traces of these two
movements, which do not
antagonistic
strophe.
wealth
for
the
present
actual cataproduct any But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the commonin
yield their historical
distinct
was undermined, and the foundation for future and the delineation
revolutions was laid, during this epoch
;
of these as well as of the development of
would remain imperfect,
if
we should
fail
Rome
in general
to give
some idea
of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking
mighty breaking up which was
that foretold the
Germs of the
The Roman
nobility attached
itself,
at
nobility
institutions belonging to the times of the patriciate.
in the
who once had
patriciate.
hand.
in form, to earlier
Persons
the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had at an early period certain
filled
honorary privileges associated with their position. ancient of these was doubtless the permission
The most
given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall, along the wall
painted, and
to
of the death of cession
(i.
where the pedigree was carried, on occasion
have these images
members
373).
To
of the family, in the funeral proappreciate the importance of this
we must
recollect that the honouring of images /was regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, land on that account the Roman state-police did not at all distinction,
itolerate
the exhibition of effigies of the living, and strictly
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
CHAP, xi
that
superintended privilege
of
effigies
of the
were associated various external
by law or custom
for
With
dead.
5
this
insignia, reserved
such magistrates and their descendants
:
golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga the
and the golden amulet-case of the boys l trifling matters, but still important in a community where civic equality even in external
appearance was so
strictly
adhered to
(i.
392),
and where, even during the second Punic war, a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland of roses
These
upon
distinctions
his head. 2
may
have already existed
perhaps
government, and, so
of higher and humbler rank were within the patriciate, may have served as distinguished external insignia for the former ; but they certainly only as
j
\
partially in the time of the patrician
long
,
families
acquired political importance in consequence of the change All these insignia probably belonged on their first emergence only to the nobility proper, i.e. to the agnate descendants of curule magistrates ; although, after the manner of such decorations, all of them in course of This can be distinctly proved in the time were extended to a wider circle. case of the gold finger-ring, which in the fifth century was worn only by the nobility (Plin. H. N., xxxiii. i, 18), in the sixth by every senator and senator's son (Liv. xxvi. 36), in the seventh by every one of equestrian So also with rank, under the empire by every one who was of free birth. the silver trappings, which still, in the second Punic war, formed a badge of the nobility alone (Liv. xxvi. 37) ; and with the purple border of the boys' toga, which at first was granted only to the sons of curule magistrates, then to the sons of equites, afterwards to those of all free-born persons, even to the lastly yet as early as the time of the second Punic war 1
The golden amulet-case (bulla) sons of freedmen (Macrob. Sat. i. 6). was a badge of the children of senators in the time of the second Punic war (Macrob. I.e. Liv. xxvi. 36), in that of Cicero as the badge of the children of the equestrian order (Cic. Verr. i. 58, 152), whereas children The purple stripe of inferior rank wore the leathern amulet (lorum}. (clavus} on the tunic was a badge of the senators (i. 99) and of the equites, so that at least in later times the former wore it broad, the latter narrow with the nobility the clavus had nothing to do. ;
;
The right to appear crowned in public was Plin. H. N. xxi. 3, 6. acquired by distinction in war (Polyb. vi. 39, 9 Liv. x. 47) consequently, the wearing a crown without warrant was an offence similar to the assumption, in the present day, of the badge of a military order of merit without due title. 2
;
;
Patricio-
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
6
BOOK in
of constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained the consulate were placed on a footing of equal
367.
privilege with
now probably
the
families,
patrician
all
entitled to carry images of
of
whom
were
their ancestors.
Moreover, it was now settled that the offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached should inelude neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies
/
;
nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the praetorship which stood on the same level with it (i. 383), and the curule aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice and consequently in the exercise of
i
\
I
the sovereign powers of the state. 1 Although this plebeian of in the strict sense the could only be formed term, nobility,
the curule offices were opened to plebeians, yet it if not at the very first, a certain compactness of organization doubtless because such a
after
exhibited in a short time,
had long been prefigured in the old senatorial The result of the Licinian laws in plebeian families. reality therefore amounted nearly to what we should now
nobility
call
j
the
creation
of a
batch
of peers.
Now
that
the
plebeian families ennobled by their curule ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and
acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they had started ; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy and a hereditary both of which in fact had never disappeared nobility
/but there was a governing hereditary 1
nobility,
and the feud
Thus
there remained excluded the military tribunate with consular 371), the pro-consulship, the quaestorship, the tribunate of the and several others. As to the censorship, it does not appear, not^"people, withstanding the curule chair of the censors (Liv. xl. 45 comp. xxvii. 8), for the later period, however, when ) to have been reckoned a curule office only a man of consular standing could be made censor, the question has
powers
(i.
;
;
(
The plebeian aedileship certainly was not practical importance. reckoned originally one of the curule magistracies (Liv. xxiii. 23) it may, however, have been subsequently included amongst them.
no
;
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
CHAP, xi
in possession of the
between the gentes the
commons The
privileges
government and
j
rising in revolt against the gentes could not
And
but begin afresh. stage.
7
matters very soon reached that
was not content with
its honorary which were matters of comparative indifference,
nobility
but strove after separate and sole political power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the the senate and the equestrian order from organs state of the commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.
The dependence more
republic,
senate, in fact
de jure of the
senate of the The nobility in
of the
especially
Roman
larger
patricio-plebeian possession
on the magistracy had rapidly become lax, and had The subordibeen converted into independence.
nation of the
public
magistracies
to
the
state-council,
introduced by the revolution of 244 (i. 337); the transference of the right of summoning men to the senate from the consul to the censor
(i.
375)
;
lastly,
of the
and above
all,
510.
the
legal recognition of the right of those who had been curule magistrates to a seat and vote in the senate (i. 407), had
converted the senate from a council magistrates and
summoned by
the
many respects dependent on them into a governing corporation virtually independent, and in a certain sense filling up its own ranks ; for the two modes by which
its
in
members obtained admission
curule office and virtually in the
summoning
by the
election to a
censor
power of the governing board
burgesses, no doubt, at this epoch were
still
were both itself.
\
The
i
too independ-
ent to allow the entire exclusion of non-nobles from the senate,
and the
even to wish
nobility
were perhaps
still
too judicious
owing to the strictly aristocratic the senate itself in which those who had
for this
;
but,
gradations in been curule magistrates were sharply distinguished, according to their respective classes of consulares, praeforii, and aedilicii,
from the senators who had not entered the senate
\
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
8
BOOK in
through a curule office and were therefore excluded from the non-nobles, although they probably sat in debate considerable numbers in the senate, were reduced to an insignificant it,
and comparatively
and the senate became
uninfluential
position
in
substantially a mainstay of the
nobility.
The possession of the |
equestrian centuries,
;
j
The institution of the equites was developed into a second, less important but yet far from unimportant, organ As the new hereditary nobility had not of the nobility. , ,, &e power to usurp sole possession of the comitia, it
...
became in the highest degree desirable that it should obtain at least a separate position within the body In the assembly of the representing the community. necessarily
tribes
no method of managing
there was
this;
but the
equestrian centuries under the Servian organization seemed The 1800 horses as it were created for the very purpose.
which 1
the
1 community furnished
were
constitutionally
The
current hypothesis, according to which the six centuries of the alone amounted to 1200, and the whole equestrian force The method of determining accordingly to 3600 horse, is not tenable. the number of the equites by the number of duplications specified by the in fact, each of these statements has originated and annalists is mistaken But there is no evidence either for the first is to be explained by itself. number, which is only found in the passage of Cicero, De Rep. ii. 20, acknowledged as miswritten even by the champions of this view, or for In favour, the second, which does not appear at all in ancient authors. on the other hand, of the hypothesis set forth in the text, we have, first of not but as indicated the the number institutions all, by authorities, by for it is certain that the century numbered 100 men, and themselves there were originally three (i. 90), then six (i. 107), and lastly after the The deviations of Servian reform eighteen (i. 116), equestrian centuries. The old self-consistent the authorities from this view are only apparent. reckons not the i, 243), tradition, which Becker has developed (ii. eighteen patricio-plebeian, but the six patrician, centuries at 1800 men and this has been manifestly followed by Livy, i. 36 (according to the reading which alone has manuscript authority, and which ought not to be corrected from Livy's particular estimates), and by Cicero I.e. (according see Becker, ii. i, to the only reading grammatically admissible, MDCCC. But Cicero at the same time indicates very plainly, that in that 244). then statement he intended to describe the existing amount of the Roman The number of the whole body has therefore been equites in general. of it by a prolepsis, such as is the most to transferred prominent portion common in the case of the old annalists not too much given to reflection : nobility
:
;
;
;
CHAP, xi
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
disposed of likewise by the censors.
It
was,
9
no doubt,
the duty of these to select the equites on military grounds and at their musters to insist that all horsemen incapacitated
by age or otherwise, or
at all unserviceable,
should surrender
their public horse; but the very nature of the institution
implied that the equestrian horses should be given especially to men of means, and it was not at all easy to hinder the censors from looking to genteel birth more than to capacity,
and from allowing men of standing who were once admitted, senators particularly, to retain their horse beyond the proper time. Perhaps it was even fixed by law that the senator might retain
became
it
as -_-.-.
j-.
-
long j
-r
.
as _._i_
he wished. _--j~.
~ Accordingly
it ~~
i-
at least practically the rule for the senators to vote
and the other places these were assigned chiefly to the young men of the The military system, of course, suffered from this nobility.
in the eighteen equestrian centuries, in
not so
much through
the unfitness for effective service of no
small part of the legionary cavalry, as through the destruction of military equality to which the change gave rise, inasmuch as the
,
young men of rank more and more withdrew from
in the same way 300 equites instead of 100 are assigned to the parent-community, including, by anticipation, the contingents of the Tities and the Luceres (Becker, ii. i, 238). Lastly, the proposition of Cato (p. 66, Jordan), to raise the number of the horses of the equites to 2 200, is as distinct a confirmation of the view proposed above, as it is a
just
The closed number of the distinct refutation of the opposite view. equites probably continued to subsist down to Sulla's time, when with the of the the of it fell away, and to all basis de facto abeyance censorship appearance in place of the censorial bestowal of the equestrian horse came thenceforth the senator's son was by acquisition by hereditary right birth an eques. Alongside, however, of this closed equestrian body, the
its
;
equites equo publico, stood from an early period of the republic the burgesses bound to render mounted service on their own horses, who are nothing but the highest class of the census they do not vote in the equestrian centuries, but are regarded otherwise as equites, and lay claim likewise to the honorary privileges of the equestrian order. In the arrangement of Augustus the senatorial houses retained the but by its side the censorial bestowal of the hereditary equestrian right equestrian horse is renewed as a prerogative of the emperor and without restriction to a definite time, and thereby the designation of equites for the first class of the census as such falls into abeyance. ;
;
j
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
10
service in the infantry.
!
the
came
equites proper
The
BOOK in
closed aristocratic corps of
to set
the tone for the whole
legionary cavalry, taken from the citizens who were of This enables us in highest position by descent and wealth.
'
some degree Sicilian
to
understand why the equites during the to obey the order of the consul Gains
war refused
Aurelius Cotta that they should work at the trenches with
IX* 252
the legionaries (502), and why Cato, when commander-inchief of the army in Spain, found himself under the
.
necessity of addressing a severe reprimand to his cavalry.
1
conversion of the burgess-cavalry into a mounted of nobles redounded not more decidedly to the guard the commonwealth than to the advantage of of injury the nobility, which acquired in the eighteen equestrian
But
this
centuries a suffrage not merely separate but giving the tone to the rest. Separation
,
order's in
the theatre, 1
Of a kindred character was the formal separation of the places assigned to the senatorial order from those occupied by the rest of the multitude as spectators at the national It was the great Scipio, who effected this change festivals.
194.J in
his
second consulship
in
560.
The
national
festival
was as much an assembly of the people as were the centuries convoked for voting ; and the circumstance that the former had no resolutions to pass made the official announcement of a distinction between the ruling order and the body of subjects which the separation implied The innovation accordingly met all the more significant.
with
much
censure even from the ruling
was simply invidious and not
useful,
class,
because
and because
it
it
gave
a very manifest contradiction to the efforts of the more prudent portion of the aristocracy to conceal their exclusive
government under the forms of civil equality. These circumstances explain, why the censorship became f tne tne ater republican constitution; why an pi vot prop 'of ^hJ nobility, \office, originally standing by no means in the first rank,
The
cen-
f
'
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
CHAP, xi
came to be not at
u
gradually invested with external insignia which did it in itself and with an altogether unique
belong to
all
and was viewed as the crown and completion of a well-conducted public career and why the government looked upon every attempt of the aristocratic-republican glory,
;
opposition to introduce their
men
into this office, or even
to hold the censor responsible to the people for his ad-
ministration during or after his term of office, as an attack
on
palladium, and presented a united front of re-
their
sistance
to
respect to
every such attempt.
It
is
sufficient
in
this
mention the storm which the candidature of
provoked, and the measures, so in violation of all form, by extraordinarily which the senate prevented the judicial prosecution of
Cato
for the censorship
and
reckless
the two unpopular censors of the year 550. But with 204 their magnifying the glory of the censorship the government combined a characteristic distrust of this, their most important It
and
for that very reason
most dangerous, instrument.
was thoroughly necessary to leave to the censors absolute
control over the personal composition of the senate and the equites ; for the right of exclusion could not well
be separated from the
right of
summoning, and
it
was
indispensable to retain such a right, not so much for the purpose of removing from the senate capable men of the
a course which the smooth -going government opposition of that age cautiously avoided as for the purpose of preserving around the aristocracy that moral halo, without
which
it
opposition.
must
speedily become a prey to right of ejection was retained ;
have
The
the
but
needed was the glitter of the naked the edge of it, which they feared, they took care blade to blunt. Besides the check involved in the nature of the office under which the lists of the members of the what they
chiefly
aristocratic
corporations
intervals of five years
were
liable
and besides the
to
revision
only at
limitations resulting
f
THE GOVERNMENT AND THE GOVERNED
12
from the
right
BOOK in
of veto vested in the colleague and the vested in the successor, there was
of cancelling
right
check which exercised a very sensible a ; usage equivalent to law made it the duty of the censor not to erase from the list any senator or knight without specifying in writing the grounds for his decision,
added a
farther
influence
other words,
in
or,
adopting, as a rule,
procedure.
j
Remodel-
in
this political position
6
mainly based on the senate, the nobility not only
and the censorship
the equites,
consdtu-
government, but also remodelled usurped in substance the .. T to their own views. It was constitution according /the
tion
according
.
t
to the
views of thd
p ar t o f
,
.
their policy, with a
.
.
view to keep up the appreciation
of the public magistracies, to add to the \
/
as
little
ofi
magistrates.
j
243.
as possible,
and
to
keep
it
me)
.
,
227.
197