IX. the old burghers, who enjoyed exclusively the right of CHAP. occupation with regard to the undivided public land, had no share in it whatever when it was divided, because they already enjoyed from ancient allotment a freehold property of their own. Thus the public land was wholly unprofitable to the commons, so long as it was undivided, and became wholly lost to the burghers whenever it was divided. law was needed at of Roman Now twenty-four years after the expulsion of Tar- An agrarian quinius, there must have been at least as great need greatly of an agrarian law as at any former period of the this period Roman history. The loss of territory on the right history. bank of the Tiber, and all those causes which had brought on the general distress of the commons, and overwhelmed them hopelessly in debts, called aloud for a remedy; and this remedy was to be found, according to precedent no less than abstract justice, in an allotment of the public land. For as the burghers who occupied this land had even grown rich amidst the distress of the commons, so they could well afford to make some sacrifice; while the reservation to them of the exclusive right of occupying the public land till it was divided, held out to them the hope of acquiring fresh possessions, so soon as the nation, united and invigorated by the proposed relief, should be in a condition to make new conquests. Spurius Cassius accordingly proposed an agrarian Spurius leges of the English universities will recollect the somewhat similar practice there with regard to fines. Whatever benefits arise out of the administration of the college property belong exclusively to the ruling part of the society; the fellows engross the fines to themselves, just as the burghers at Rome enjoyed the exclusive right of occupying the public land. But the rents of college lands are divided in certain fixed proportions amongst the fellows and scholars, the populus Cassius pro IX. poses his is violently opposed by the burghers. CHAP. law 10 for the division of a certain proportion of the public land, while from the occupiers of the remainder law, which he intended to require the regular payment of the tithe, which had been greatly neglected, and to apply the revenue thus gained, to paying the commons whenever they were called out to serve as soldiers. Had he been king, he could have carried the measure without difficulty, and would have gone down to posterity invested with the same glory which rendered sacred the memory of the good king Servius. But his colleague, Proculus Virginius", headed the aristocracy in resisting his law, and in maligning the motives of its author. His treaties with the Latins and Hernicans were represented as derogating from the old supremacy of Rome; and this cry roused the national pride even of the commons against him, as, four centuries afterwards, a similar charge of sacrificing the rights of Rome to the Italian allies ruined the popularity of M. Drusus. Still it is probable that the popular feeling in favour of his law was so strong, that the burghers yielded to the storm for the moment, and consented to pass it "2. They followed the con 10 I have here followed Niebuhr (Vol. II. p. 188, 2nd Ed.) in assuming as the original proposal of Cassius, what is represented in Dionysius as the proposal of A. Sempronius Atratinus, to which the senate assented. Dionysius, VIII. 75, 76. "Livy, II. 41. This was the the commons in Castile. The com- 12 part with the crown, in the famous war of the commons in the reign of Charles V. See Ranke, Fürsten und Völker von Süd-Europa. Vol. I. p. 218. 12 See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 196. He argues, that as the tribunes before the Publilian laws had no power of originating any legislative measure, and as we hear of their agitating the question of the agrarian law year after year from the death of Cassius, the fact must have been that the law was passed, and its execution fraudulently evaded: and that the tribunes demanded no more than the due execution of an existing law. And he supposes that the words of Dionysius, τοῦτο τὸ δόγμα εἰς τὸν δῆμον εἰσενεχθέν, τόν τε Κάσσιον ἔπαυσε τῆς δημαγωγίας καὶ τὴν ἀνα IX. stant policy of an aristocracy, to separate the people CHAP. from their leaders, to pacify the former by a momentary resignation of the point in dispute, and then to watch their time for destroying the latter, that so, when the popular party is deprived of its defenders, they may wrest from its hands that concession which it is then unable to retain. 13 sius is im before the condemned, cuted. When therefore the year was over, and Spurius Spurius CasCassius was no longer consul, the burghers knew that peached their hour of vengeance had arrived. Ser. Cornelius burghers, and Quintus Fabius 3 were the new consuls: Kæso and exeFabius, the consul's brother, and Lucius Valerius were the inquisitors of blood, quæstores parricidii, who, as they tried all capital offences subject to an appeal to the burghers or commons, were also empowered to bring any offender at once before those supreme tribunals, instead of taking cognizance of his case themselves. Cassius was charged with a treasonable attempt to make himself king, and the burghers, assembled in their curiæ, found him guilty. He shared the fate of Agis and of Marino Falieri; he was sentenced to die as a traitor, and was, according to the usage of the Roman law, scourged and beheaded, and his house razed to the ground. ῥιπιζομένην ἐκ τῶν πενήτων στάσιν OVK ElaσE TEрaιтéрш проελbεîν, VIII. 76, are taken from some Roman annalist, who by the words "ad populum latum " meant the old populus, the assembly of the burghers in their curiæ. At any rate, the words εἰς τὸν δῆμον εἰσενεχθὲν seem to imply more than the mere communicating to the people the knowledge of a decree of the senate. They must apparently signify that the decree of the senate, as a προβούXevua, was submitted to the people for its acceptance and ratification; and this “people” must have been CHAPTER X. X. The burgh ers claim the ex pointment of the con suls. ASCENDANCY OF THE ARISTOCRACY - THE FABII AND A.U.C. 269-283. Ἡσυχίαν εἶχεν ὁ δῆμος καὶ κατάπληξιν τοιαύτην ὥστε κέρδος ὁ μὴ πάσχων τι βίαιον, εἰ καὶ σιγῴη, ἐνόμιζε.—THUCYD. VIII. 66. "Les abus récens avaient bravé la force et dépassé la prévoyance des anciennes lois : il fallait des garanties nouvelles, explicites, revêtues de la sanction du parlement tout entier. C'était ne rien faire que de renouveler vaguement des promesses tant de fois violées, des statuts si long-temps oubliés."-GUIZOT, Révolution d'Angleterre, Livre I. p. 45. CHAP. THE release of all existing debts by the covenant concluded at the Sacred Hill, and the appointment of the tribunes to prevent any tyrannical enforcement of the clusive ap- law of debtor and creditor for the time to come, had relieved the Roman commons from the extreme of personal degradation and misery. But their political condition had made no perceptible advances; their election of their own tribunes was subject to the approval of the burghers; and their choice of consuls, subject also to the same approval, was further limited to such candidates as belonged to the burghers' order. Even this, however, did not satisfy the burghers; the death of Spurius Cassius enabled them to dare any usurpation; while on the other hand they needed a more absolute power than ever, in order to evade their own concession in consenting to his agrarian law. Accordingly, they proposed to elect' the con 1 See Niebuhr, Vol. II. p. 202, et seqq. Dionysius and Livy both as X. suls themselves, and only to require the confirmation CHAP. of them by the centuries; a form which would be as unessential as the crowd's acceptance of the king at an English coronation, inasmuch as it was always by the vote of the burghers in their curiæ that the imperium or sovereignty was conferred; and when a consul was already in possession of this, it mattered little whether the centuries acknowledged his title or not. In this manner were Lucius Æmilius, and A.U.C. 270. Kæso Fabius the prosecutor of Spurius Cassius, chosen consuls by the burghers; and it was in vain that the commons demanded the execution of the agrarian law; the consuls satisfied the object of those who had elected them, and the law remained a dead letter. The same spirit was manifested in the elections of the A.U.C. 271. following year, and was attended with the same result; the other prosecutor of Cassius, L. Valerius, was now chosen by the burghers, and with him another member of the Fabian house, Marcus, the brother of Kæso and of Quintus. 2 protect the their refusal soldiers. But the complete usurpation of the consulship by The tribunes the burghers served to call into action the hitherto commons in untried powers of the tribuneship. In the year 271, to serve as the tribune Caius Mænius set the first example of extending the protection of his sacred office to those of the commons who on public grounds resisted the sovereignty of the consuls, by refusing to serve as soldiers. This was the weapon so often used from cribe the election of Æmilius and Fabius to the influence of the patricians; but Dionysius (VIII. 83) further notices their coming into office as a marked period in the Roman history, and mentions the date, and the name of the archon at Athens for that year; as if there had been some important alteration then made in the constitution. And Zonaras, who copies Dion Cassius, says expressly that the commons, in 2 Dionysius, VIII. 87. |