495-449 B.C.

outside the city gates, the whole force left its general and encampment, and marched to a hill between the Tiber and the Anio. This celebrated secession, to what was afterward called "the sacred mount (Mons Sacer), was terminated by the mediation of the dictator and the submission of the senate. The consequences of the movement undertaken by the multitude without a settled leader, and accomplished without bloodshed, were felt for many centuries. It was the origin of the tribunate of the plebs.

The following were the chief characteristics of the tribunate. The two tribunes were of plebeian rank, and elected by the plebeians assembled in curies. Their power was confined to the city's limits, and thus could not oppose the military imperium of the consul, which was all-powerful outside those limits, nor the authority of the dictator, whether exercised inside or outside the city. Within these limits the tribunes stood on an equal and independent footing with the consuls, and had the right to cancel any command, issued by a magistrate, upon a formal protest from the burgess aggrieved by such a command. This power of intercession made it possible for the tribunes to bring the ordinary administration and execution of the law to a deadlock while an appeal against the sentence of a judge or decree of the senate was being investigated. Their judicial powers, owing to the vague and ill-defined laws touching offenses against order, and crime against the community, were alike extensive and arbitrary. They could by their messengers summon before them any burgess, even the consul, arrest him on refusal, imprison him, or allow him bail pending investigation, and finally sentence him to death or the payment of a fine. An appeal from their sentence was heard, not by the whole body of burgesses, but by the whole plebeian body, and the tribunes defended themselves before this assembly in case of such an appeal. Out of this right of defense sprang the right of holding assemblies of the people, and addressing them on other matters, a right expressly guaranteed to the tribunes by the Icilian law of 492 B.C., which rendered liable to severe punishment anyone who interrupted a tribune while speaking, or who bade the assembly disperse. They could take the vote of the people at such meetings, and the "plebiscites," or resolutions thus passed, soon came to have a force and validity which did not properly belong to them. Lastly, the persons of the tribunes were declared inviolable, and the man who laid hands on them was counted accursed in the sight of gods and men.

495-449 B.C.

This outline of the tribunician power serves to show that it was really a copy of the consular power. In both cases the Roman check of intercession, or veto, plays a prominent part; as one consul could veto his colleague, so one tribune could thwart the other. The special power of vetoing the consul, or any other state magistrate, belonged to the tribune, in virtue of his position as protector and counsel of the plebs. Again, the duration of office was limited to a year in both cases, and in both cases the holder of the office could not be deposed. Further, in their criminal jurisdiction, two aediles were associated with the tribunes, just as two quaestors had been attached to the consuls; but the consul submitted to the prohibition of the tribune, while the tribune was unrestricted by any such prohibition from the consul. Still, although a copy, the tribunician power presented a contrast to the consular. It was essentially negative, while that of the consuls was essentially positive. The consuls alone were magistrates of the Roman people, as being elected by the whole burgess-body, and not merely by the plebeians. Therefore the consul alone had the outward insignia of office; the tribune lacked official attendants and the purple-bordered robe, and had no seat in the senate. Thus in this remarkable institution absolute prohibition was in the most stern and abrupt fashion opposed to absolute command; the quarrel was settled by legally recognizing and regulating the discord between rich and poor.

It remains for us to consider what was the political value of the tribunate. Springing as it did from the miseries caused by overtaxation, the baleful system of credit, and the pernicious occupation of the state lands, it yet put no stop to these evils. The reason of this is simply that the wealthy plebeians had as much interest in these abuses as the patricians. The good that the office might do in individual cases of hardship, and in helping plebeians to gain admission to state offices, was more than counterbalanced by the evil of rendering the administration of criminal law subject to the party passion of politics. For party purposes, too, the tribunes could employ their power to veto, and throw out of gear the machine of state, and thus pave the way for that very tyranny which they were created to render impossible. In the latter days of the republic we shall find that this was the very course they pursued; and the odium thus incurred found expression in the contemptuous definition of the tribunate as a "pestiferous power, the offspring of sedition, with sedition for its end and aim." The events which followed the insti

491-466 B.C.

tution of the tribunes indicate a state of organized civil war between the two parties of the state. Among minor conflicts stands out the story of Gaius Marcius, surnamed Coriolanus, from the storming of Corioli. Romance has doubtless colored his bitter opposition to the tribunes in 491 B.C., his expulsion by them from Rome, his return at the head of the Volscian army, his withdrawal on the appeal of his mother, his death at the hands of the exasperated Volscians; but the truth of these disgraceful conflicts between the Roman orders remains unshaken. The murder of the tribune, Gnaeus Genucius, who had dared to impeach two men of consular rank in 473 B.C., had a more lasting result, giving rise two years later to the Publilian law. The proposer of this law, Volero Publilius, who was tribune in 471 B.C., established in the first place the comitia tributa,1 or plebeian assembly of tribes. Hitherto the plebeians had voted by curies, and numbers alone had determined their decision. The clients of patrician families voted in these assemblies, and thus enabled the nobility to exercise no small influence on the result. The new plebeian assembly was composed solely of those who were freeholders, and thus excluded the great majority of freedmen and clients, as well as all the patricians. Owing to this the comitia tributa was practically an assembly of the independent middle class, and was, owing to its exclusion alike of patricians and non-freeholder plebeians, less representative of the burgesses than the assembly of curies had been. In the second place we must ascribe, if not directly to the provisions of the Pubilian law, at least indirectly to its effects, the fact that the resolutions of the plebs (plebiscita) were recognized as legally binding on the whole community, and had the same validity as the decrees of the comitia centuriata. Probably, also, the increase of the number of tribunes from two to five was due to this law, and their election was now transferred to the comitia tributa. Previous to this outcome of party triumph and party legislation, a far wiser and far more serious attempt to deal with the real source of evil was made by Spurius Cassius, a patrician of the patricians, and personally illustrious by two triumphs. He proposed to reform the public land system by distributing a portion of it among the needy citizens; but the cry of "king" was raised, and the commons, irritated by the proposed association of the Latins in the distribution,

1 The origin of the comitia tributa is a much disputed question. For another view of the question see Ihne, "Early Rome," 144-147.

466-450 B.C.

and ever ready to believe that royal power was being aimed at, refused to save their champion. Cassius fell, and his law was buried along with him; but its specter thenceforward incessantly haunted the eyes of the rich, and again and again it rose from the tomb against them, until, amid the conflicts to which it led, the commonwealth perished.

Later, in 462 B.C., a further attempt to abolish the tribunate came from one holding that office. Gaius Terentilius Arsa proposed to nominate a commission of five men for the purpose of preparing a legal code which should bind the consuls in the exercise of their judicial powers. Ten years of party strife elapsed before this proposal was carried into effect, and during that strife two concessions were made to induce the plebeians to give up this legal code. In 457 B.C. the tribunes were increased from five to ten; in 456 B.C., the Aventine, which had hitherto been sacred ground and uninhabited, was distributed among the poorer burgesses, for them to build on and occupy. But these concessions did not turn aside the plebs. The legal code was agreed to, and in 451 B.C. ten men were elected by the centuries, for the purpose of drawing it up. These decemvirs had full powers as supreme magistrates in the place of the consuls; no appeal was allowed in their case; the tribunate was suspended; and, what was more important, plebeians, as well as patricians, were eligible for the new office. The first plebeians were elected at the second election in 450 B.C., and these were the first non-patrician magistrates of the Roman community. The object of this new creation was to substitute a limitation of the consular powers by written law for the more turbulent veto of the tribunes. The pledge given by the decemvirs not to infringe the liberties of the plebs did not, perhaps, imply the abolition of the tribunate; but a wise compromise would doubtless have brought this about, had the decemvirs retired when their task was done. In 451 B.C. the law, engraven on ten tables of copper, was affixed in the Forum to the rostra in front of the senate-house. Two more tables were added in the following year, and thus originated the first and only legal code of Rome-the Twelve Tables. The changes introduced by this code were of a comparatively slight character; the maximum of interest was fixed at ten per cent., and the usurer was rendered liable to heavy penalties. The legal distinction between freeholders and non-freeholders was retained, as also the invalidity of marriage between patricians and plebeians. The chief feature was the denial

451-449 B.C.

of appeal to the comitia tributa in capital cases, and the confirmation of it in the case of the comitia centuriata. The political significance of this code lay not so much in the particulars of its legislation, as in the fact that the consuls were now bound to administer justice according to set forms and rules; while the exhibition of the code in public subjected the administrator to the control of the public eye. The downfall of the decemvirs, who under various pretexts refused to abdicate their office, has been ascribed by legend to the tyranny of their chief, Appius Claudius. The murder of Lucius Siccius Dentatus, the bravest soldier in Rome, and a former tribune, was laid at the door of the decemvirs; and the act of the centurion Lucius Verginius, who slew his own daughter to save her from the brutal lust of Appius, caused the storm of popular indignation to break forth. The two armies, which a double war against the Sabines and Volscians had called into the field, on hearing the story from Verginius and Lucius Icilius, the betrothed lover of the dead maiden, straightway left their camps, and once more seceded to the Sacred Mount. They there nominated their tribunes, and, as the decemvirs still remained obstinate, returned to the city, and encamped on the Aventine. The decemvirs now gave way, and Appius Claudius and Spurius Oppius put an end to their lives, while the remaining eight went into exile. It is hard to believe that the decemvirate, one of the triumphs of the plebs, was abolished by that body. Possibly the whole story is a myth of the aristocrats. The overthrow of the decemvirate would more naturally have come from the patricians. A subsequent contest may possibly have ensued to force the patricians to restore the tribunate, resulting in the victory of the plebs, and in the compromise which was confirmed by the Valerio-Horatian laws, the so-called Magna Charta of Rome.

At any rate the tribunate was restored, and, under the ValerioHoratian laws, gained the following new powers in 449 B.C.: The consuls were forced to administer justice in accordance with the twelve tables of the decemvirs; to compensate for the loss of right of appeal in capital cases to the comitia tributa, every magistrate, the dictator among the rest, was obliged to allow the right of appeal; the tribunes could, as before, inflict fines without limitation, and submit their sentences to the comitia tributa; the management of the military chest was taken from the consuls, and intrusted to two quaestors, who were chosen by the whole body of freeholders, both patrician and plebeian; the votes of this assembly were taken by