The plebs were of slow growth, though from conquests and other causes, there is no doubt that, at times, large additions were made to their number. The commonalty arose ' out of a medley of elements, [begin surface 19] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Early Roman History 229 as it was by incorporating such, that it supported and immensely enlarged itself.' It grew up alongside of the patrician houses, with whom it waged a long and bitter contest, which often threatened ruin to the nation. The founding of the great plebs, is attributed to the formation of a domain out of the towns won from the Latins. The name of Ancus Marcius, the fourth of the traditionary kings, is intimately connected with the origin of this order. ' In the accounts of the conquests made by the first kings, it is stated that many of the conquered places were converted into colonies, that the others were destroyed, and the inhabitants carried to Rome; where they, along with the citizens of the colonies, received the Roman franchise. With regard to the origin of the plebs of king Ancus, however, we are to suppose that after the destruction of Alba a portion of the Latins were ceded by a treaty adjusting the claims of Rome and Latium, and thus were placed in a like relation to Rome. The names of the acquired places given by the historian, rest on no sufficient authority; nor can it be any thing but an accident that they were all Latin towns: whatever people those new members of the state may have belonged to, their collective body formed a commonalty. Their franchise resembled that which in later times was citizenship without a vote; for a vote could not be given except in the curies: but their condition was worse than that of those who afterward stood on this footing: for they could not intermarry with the patricians, and all their relations with them were uniformly to their prejudice. Nevertheless, these new citizens, scantily as they were endowed with rights, were not made up then, any more than in later times, merely of the lower orders: the nobles of the conquered and the ceded towns were among them; as subsequently we find that the Mamilii, the Papii, the Cilnii, the Cæcinæ, were all plebeians.' (Niebuhr, vol. i, pp. 313, 314.) He also holds, ' that the plebeian commonalty arose out of the freemen thus incorporated with the state, is sufficiently proved by the tradition that Ancus assigned habitations on the Aventine to the Latins from towns which had been subject to Rome: for this hill was afterward the site of what was peculiarly the plebeian city. The statement indeed that they were conveyed thither is not historical: it is impossible that such an enormous population should have been amassed at Rome, so as to be prevented from cultivating its remote estates. Those who chose to settle there had the Aventine allotted them as a place for a suburb where they might live apart under their own laws: for the greater portion staid in their home: but their towns ceased to be corporations. The territory of a place that had been taken by storm, or had surrendered unconditionally, belonged by the Italian law of nations to the state: a part of it continued to be public property, and was turned to account by the patricians for themselves and their vassals: a part fell to the share of the crown: the rest was parcelled out and assigned by the kings to the old proprietors, in their new capacity of Romans. Often probably the confiscation did not extend beyond the public domain.' Arnold's description of the standing of the early plebs, is strikingly clear and comprehensive. Wherever states composed of a body of [begin surface 20] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 230 Early Roman History houses with their clients, he says, ' had been long established, there grew up amidst, or else beside them, created in most instances by conquest, a population of a very distinct kind. Strangers might come to live in the land, or more commonly the inhabitants of a neighboring district might be conquered, and united with their conquerors as a subject people. Now this population had no connection with the houses separately, but only with a state composed of those houses; this was wholly a political, not a domestic relation; it united personal and private liberty with political subjection. This inferior population possessed property, regulated their own municipal as well as domestic affairs, and as free men fought in the armies of what was now their common country. But, strictly, they were not its citizens; they could not intermarry with the houses, they could not belong to the state, for they belonged to no house, and therefore to no curia, and no tribe; consequently they had no share in the state's government, nor in the state's property. What the state conquered in war became the property of the state, and therefore they had no claim to it; with the state demesne, with whatever in short belonged to the state in its aggregate capacity, these as being its neighbors merely, and not its members, had no concern. Such an inferior population, free personally, but subject politically, not slaves, yet not citizens, was the original Plebs, the commons of Rome. The mass of the Roman commons were conquered Latins. These, besides receiving grants of a portion of their former lands, to be held by them as Roman citizens, had also the hill Aventinus assigned as a residence to those of them who removed to Rome. The Aventine was without the walls, although so near to them; thus the commons were, even in the nature of their abode, like the Pfalburger of the middle ages; men not admitted to live within the city, but enjoying its protection against foreign enemies.'
grand ages rome reign of augustus serial number
2ff7e9595c
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