Chapter XVI: Comitial Legislation From the Gracchi to Sulla 134-82 (2)

He further proposed to mix with the silver coinage an eighth part of copper,[2473] the proceeds of this gain to be applied perhaps to the execution of his frumentarian project.[2474] There is much controversy as to the intent of his judiciary reform. Appian[2475] supposes that he wished to add three hundred knights to the senate and to draw the jurors from that body thus enlarged. Velleius[2476] is of the opinion that his aim was to transfer the iudicia to the senate; whereas the epitomator of Livy[2477] directly states that he provided for making up the iudicia of senators and knights in equal numbers. We may partially reconcile these conflicting statements by supposing that he planned to compose the jurors’ album of six hundred senators and knights in equal numbers, by which expedient he hoped to bring these two hostile orders back to their former harmony,[2478] while serving the interests of the senate and ridding the state of the corrupt and tyrannical rule of the knights.[2479] By a special article of the rogation a quaestio, probably perpetua, was to be appointed to inquire into the cases of bribery of jurors and to punish the guilty.[2480] His most radical measure, introduced after opposition to his other reforms began to develop,[2481] was for extending the citizenship to the Latins[2482] and to all the Italians.[2483] This group of proposals, designed for the benefit of all parties, proved distasteful to all. The senators found a ground for complaint in the circumstance that the knights would have equal power with them in the courts; the knights were unwilling to surrender their judicial control or to grant the franchise to the Italians; the wealthy Italians feared they might lose the public lands which they still held. Only the poor among the Romans and allies supported the proposal in the hope of profiting by the distribution of lands.[2484] The agrarian, frumentarian, monetary, and judiciary measures were combined in one statute, and passed with violence[2485] and contrary to the omens.[2486] On these grounds and furthermore because they violated the article of the Caecilian-Didian statute forbidding the passing of a lex satura, they were annulled by the senate.[2487] Although Drusus might have interposed his veto against this decree, he preferred rather to disregard it, most probably on the theory that the senatorial authority did not avail against the sovereign will of the people.[2488] Aware that his intercession would but postpone the annulment to another year, he contented himself with informing his opponents that his measures were absolutely necessary for the security of the state, and that those who offended against them did it at their peril. He proceeded to carry his statute into immediate effect.[2489] A plebiscite of Saufeius, a colleague, established a commission of five in addition to the ten provided for by the Livian statute; and Livius was elected a member of both commissions.[2490] After his murder the Livian and Saufeian statutes were both considered null and void.[2491]

The lex Remmia de calumniatoribus, which was enacted before 80, may belong to the year of the Livian attempt at reform, 91;[2492] and in that case it would be most natural to regard it as a piece of counter legislation to offset the proposal for establishing a court for the trial of jurors accused of bribery. The complainant who was proved malicious it rendered liable to trial and punishment with the loss of citizenship and the branding of his forehead with the letter K (for Kalumniator).[2493] This we may believe was the defiance offered by the knights to those who were attempting to bring them to account for their conduct as judges. Exulting in their victory over Drusus, they expressed their antipathy to the Italian movement in a lex de maiestate of Q. Varius, tribune of the plebs in 90. They stood round the Rostra with drawn daggers and forced it through the comitia in spite of tribunician intercession. It supplanted the Appuleian law on the subject by a severe provision against those who encouraged the Italians to demand the citizenship or in any way to conspire or to revolt against the Roman people. It must have contained an article, too, concerning seditions.[2494] The court which it established was to sit on all ordinary dies fasti, undisturbed by iustitia,[2495] and was to be a quaestio perpetua.[2496] Now that two attempts, the Appuleian and the Livian, to substitute more popular measures for the Sempronian frumentarian law had failed, the optimates found themselves strong enough to supersede the Sempronian act by one less popular. This was the Octavian law,[2497] the contents of which are unknown, but which received the praise of Cicero for its moderation.[2498]

The Social War, following close upon the murder of Livius Drusus, compelled the Romans to grant the citizenship to the Italians. This result was brought about by a succession of statutes. A law of the consul L. Julius Caesar, 90, bestowed the citizenship upon the Latins[2499] and on all the Italians who had not taken arms against Rome[2500] and who were willing to accept the gift.[2501] The same statute probably regulated the assignment of these new citizens to the tribes.[2502] In the following year a law of L. Calpurnius Piso, probably a tribune, granted the commanding general power, apparently absolute, to bestow the right of the city upon the soldiers under his orders.[2503] Another statute of 89, carried by M. Plautius Silvanus and C. Papirius Carbo, tribunes of the plebs, granted the citizenship to all members of allied communities who were domiciled in Italy at the time the statute was passed and who within sixty days should signify to the praetor at Rome their willingness to accept the offer.[2504] The object of this measure was not only to expedite the reconciliation, but also to make the work of the next censors practicable. The citizenship thus granted involved the right of suffrage, though in new tribes which voted after the others. Many Italians, especially the Lucanians and the Samnites, took no notice of the offer.[2505] In the same year Cn. Pompeius Strabo, a consul, proposed and carried a law which seems to have empowered himself at his discretion to invest with full citizenship those Transpadani who already enjoyed the Latin rights, and to confer upon the rest the ius Latii.[2506]

The question as to the composition of the courts, still left unsettled, was taken up by M. Plautius Silvanus, the tribune referred to above. His statute transferred the filling of the album from the urban praetor to the tribes, which were to elect each fifteen members. The law made the qualifications of the iudices independent of the social classes. Under it accordingly senators and a few common plebeians in addition to equites served as jurors, so that the equestrian control of the courts was partially checked.[2507]

Mommsen[2508] supposes that these jurors were for the quaestio de maiestate only. For this opinion he depends upon the assertion of Cicero[2509] that the equites remained till Sulla’s legislation in uninterrupted possession of the courts. The authority of Cicero, however, would allow us to assume that while the equites lost the legal monopoly they retained practical control. However that may be, it is hardly possible that this reactionary measure survived the proletarian uprising under Marius and Cinna. The lex agraria of the same Plautius seems to have been intended for supplying the veterans of the Social War with farms.[2510] The lex Papiria, which introduced the semiuncial _as_, is doubtless to be assigned to C. Papirius Carbo, the colleague of Plautius above mentioned. If so, the object was to relieve slightly the financial embarrassment caused by the war, and more particularly to bring the small coins of Rome into correspondence with those of Italy.[2511]

IV. _The Political Equalization of Italy_

88-83

With many Italians still in revolt and the others smarting under the inferior citizenship eked out to them, and with Mithridates threatening the existence of the empire, Rome should have adopted a policy of domestic conciliation. Under these circumstances Sulla, consul in 88, showed a lamentable want of tact in expressing the sentiment that there could be no peace in Italy as long as a single Samnite lived[2512]—a curiously antiquated frame of mind for a statesman of his shrewdness. The cause of the new citizens was taken up by P. Sulpicius Rufus, a patrician who had forsaken his rank to qualify himself for the plebeian tribunate.[2513] A man of marvellous eloquence, he had been an adherent of Drusus, though more inclined to the equestrian interests. As tribune of the plebs, 88, he seems to have tried to win the support of the senate and of the equestrian order to his policy; but failing in the attempt, he looked for aid to the commons and to a small band of knights who were faithful to him. His rogation contained the following articles: (1) that the new citizens and the libertini should be distributed among all the tribes,[2514] with a view to completing the plan of Livius Drusus for the political equalization of Italy; (2) that those who had been driven from the state by violence should be recalled.[2515] This article was probably for the benefit of those knights against whom the Varian law had been turned.[2516] His rogation provided further, (3) that no one who owed more than two thousand denarii should be a senator.[2517] Money was scarce because of the war;[2518] and Sulpicius must have felt that if the senators, most of whom were abundantly able, should pay their debts, it would go far toward relieving the stringency, and that if any were ejected because of failure to pay, an opportunity would be afforded of promoting equites to the vacant places. The consuls of the year, L. Cornelius Sulla and Q. Pompeius Rufus, attempted to prevent a vote on these radical measures by interposing a cessation of business for many days through the proclamation of a festival.[2519] With his armed followers Sulpicius forced the consuls to recall the proclamation, whereupon Sulla fled for safety to his army at Nola. Sulpicius then added to his statute a fourth article to the effect that the imperium of Sulla should be abrogated and that the province of Asia, involving the conduct of the war against Mithridates, should be given to Marius as proconsul,[2520] although the latter was now but a private citizen. Doubtless Sulpicius understood that there could be no guarantee for the execution of his statute as long as Sulla remained in power, and furthermore that the advancement of Marius would be a great gain for the knights. The bill was passed by the comitia of tribes; but Sulla, far from delivering up his command, marched his army into Rome to settle the question in his own interest by the sword. On his initiative Sulpicius, Marius, and ten of their associates were declared public enemies by a decree of the senate ratified by a popular vote.[2521] There is no need of assuming that the supporters of the tribune turned against him; the optimates were as clever as their opponents at packing assemblies. The absurdity of continuing the worn-out comitial machinery as a factor of government is nowhere more apparent than on this page of history, which records that the comitia a few days after adopting the measures of Sulpicius, voted to outlaw him and his friends. Marius fled; Sulpicius and several adherents were killed. Thereupon the senate annulled the entire Sulpician statute on the ground that it had been violently passed.[2522]

No statesman, however opposed to popular government, could think of abolishing the comitia or even of putting an end to their legislative function. But the democracy could be effectually checked by reducing the legislative power of the assemblies to the harmless function of ratifying decrees of the senate. This result Sulla and Pompeius aimed to reach by renewing an ancient law[2523] that no measure should ever again be brought before the people which had not been previously considered and agreed to by the senate.[2524] A closely related law of the same consuls ordered that “the voting should not be by tribes but by centuries, as King Tullius had ordained.”[2525] This statement has often been interpreted to signify the restoration of the earlier form of comitia centuriata. But it seems most improbable that, on the point of setting out for a long, distant war, Sulla should think of restoring an organization which had been obsolete for more than a century and a half, and which could have been known to none but antiquarians. With his clear, practical intelligence he could not have failed to see the insuperable difficulty of restoring the ancient definitions of the classes in terms of iugera or even on the later basis of the libral _as_.[2526] Furthermore no censors were then at hand to undertake the work, and it was altogether unlikely that during his absence any could be elected who would be willing to apply themselves to the revitalization of the antique mummy. Such a measure, too, as Meyer[2527] has pointed out, would place the control of the assembly in the hands, not of the senate, but of the knights, his mortal enemies. It is far more reasonable to suppose that this act transferred the function of ratifying laws from the tribal to the centuriate comitia, to restore the arrangement supposed to have been introduced by Servius Tullius.[2528] If this reasoning is correct, the act under consideration totally abolished the legislative initiative of the tribunes.[2529] The other Cornelian-Pompeian law mentioned by Appian must have applied, accordingly, not to the tribunate but to the other magistracies.[2530] The current interpretation, which involves the theory of a return to the original centuriate system, requires further examination. Its chief basis is the statement of Appian that no law should be brought before the πλῆθος which had not been previously considered in the senate. It is commonly assumed that he uses δῆμος to designate the whole citizen body, and πλῆθος the exclusively plebeian assembly under tribunician presidency. A study of his usage, however, proves that he makes no such discrimination. Δῆμος is ordinarily the people in general, especially as distinguished from the βουλή,[2531] parallel to Livy’s common distinction between plebs and senatus. It is the technical term for the plebs in their tribal comitia under tribunician presidency.[2532] Rarely it signifies the state[2533] with reference to the interest of the people. Πλῆθος, on the other hand, ordinarily denotes the masses, multitude, rabble,[2534] including the crowd gathered not only in a tribunician assembly[2535] but also in the ἐκκλησία (here meaning contio) under the presidency of a patrician magistrate.[2536] But πλῆθος is never technically or officially used to denote any assembly either of the populus or of the plebs. In the passage under discussion Appian’s statement of the Cornelian-Pompeian law is εἰσηγοῦντό τε μηδὲν ἔτι ἀπροβούλευτον ἐς τὸν δῆμον ἐσφέρεσθαι, in which he uses δῆμος according to his custom to designate the popular assembly without specifying whether it is of the populus or of the plebs. In commenting on it he substitutes πλῆθος for δῆμος for the purpose, not of defining the assembly as tribunician, but of contrasting the masses in the assembly with the nobles in the senate: ἐσ τὸ πλῆθος is substantially equivalent to ἐν τοῖς πένησι καὶ θρασυτάτοις used just below; Sulla wished nothing to be submitted to the masses in the comitia centuriata before it had been considered by the senate.

Appian[2537] attributes to Sulla for this early date an attempt to increase the number of senators. “They (the consuls) enrolled three hundred nobles in the senate, which had been reduced in numbers and for that reason had come to be despised.” He does not state, however, by what authority the consuls made this extraordinary adlectio; and it is in fact improbable that the senate had so dwindled. However that may be, the increase did not take permanent effect at this time.[2538] Two other laws of these consuls are briefly mentioned: (1) for planting colonies,[2539] of which nothing is known; (2) a lex unciaria.[2540] The latter may have been a reduction of existing debts by one-twelfth of the principle, or a lowering of the maximal rate of interest to 8⅓ per cent;[2541] or it may have been a general insolvency law, providing for the payment of debts in instalments.[2542] The chief value of these measures, even if we knew them in detail, would be to reveal the idea of their authors; for they were all repealed in the following year on the initiative of the consul L. Cornelius Cinna, probably by a comitial vote.[2543]

Cinna then proposed (1) a renewal of the Sulpician plebiscite for the enrolment of the new citizens and the libertini among all the tribes,[2544] (2) a recall of Marius and the other exiles.[2545] Before these measures could be carried, the consul was driven from Rome and deposed from office by an act of the senate on the motion of Cn. Octavius, the other consul.[2546] This is the only certain instance of the abrogation of the civil imperium known to the history of the republic. Cinna returned at the head of an army; and after taking forcible possession of the city, he carried his law concerning the exiles through the assembly either on his own motion or that of a tribune.[2547] As the senate, reversing its earlier action,[2548] had already legalized the Sulpician provision concerning the distribution of the libertini and the new citizens among the thirty-five tribes,[2549] it was without reënactment carried into effect in 84.[2550] The execution of this measure completed the political unification of Italy. Meantime L. Valerius Flaccus, consul suffectus in 86, to relieve the financial distress, passed a law which compelled creditors to satisfy themselves with one-fourth of the amount due.[2551] In 83 M. Junius Brutus, tribune of the plebs, proposed and carried, as a milder measure of relief, a law for the colonization of Capua.[2552]

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