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The Historians' History of the World 05 [The Roman Republic]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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The conditions in Rome after the expulsion of the Tarquins were similar to those which prevailed in Greece under what was called the Eupatridian rule. The supreme power which was formerly vested in the king, now passed into the hands of a magisterial body whose members were to be appointed by vote. These republican officials, now commonly called consuls, were then given the title of prætors; a title that since the time of the decemvirs fell into disuse as designating the head of the state, but was later applied to the incumbents of a newly created office. The weight of the high civil, military, and judicial authority that passed from the hands of the king into those of the head of the republic, became considerably lessened by the action of causes that were, from their very nature, bound to make themselves more and more strongly felt. From the beginning of the republic, the Romans always placed two consuls at the head in order that the actions of the one might be under the restraining influence of the other’s veto. The term of the highest office was never longer than one year. At the expiration of the year the consul returned to the class of citizens to which he belonged, but could at any time be called to account for his official acts.
This system of one-year tenure of office was later found to have grave defects: but so much a part was it of the patrician as well as the democratic republicanism of that day that it never occurred to any one to change it. To the eminently practical Roman mind, however, the disadvantages connected with a yearly change of officials must have been apparent in many ways. As the life of Rome developed in fulness and freedom, the “scribes,” those lower officials who were permanently appointed to their posts, came to be of great importance in the actual conduct of public affairs. In time of war when naturally every head of the republic did not show equal qualifications for military leadership, the command of the army was given to some experienced general who was specially appointed by the proper authorities. When a consul was confronted by great and unexpected difficulties, he was empowered by the senate to appoint the best man of the state as dictator, and this dictator was in his turn to select as his assistant a master of horse—magister equitum. The dictatorship, which was for the term of but six months, had control over all minor offices, and as the dictator could not be held accountable, and as there was no appeal from his decisions, the patricians frequently had recourse, during the course of internal struggles, to the appointment of one, in order effectually to quell the plebeian opposition.
The consuls were preceded by but twelve lictors bearing the axe and fasces, while to the dictators were given twenty-four, like the kings in earlier days. Owing to the constant increase in the volume of public affairs the consuls frequently appointed, for the performance of certain duties, deputies, whose term of office expired with their own. Associated with the consuls in the keeping of the state archives and treasure were the two quæstors, probably the same officials to whom was also entrusted the prosecution of criminals. Two commissioners were appointed by the consuls to judge cases of sedition and high treason; the consuls had further to select and instruct two private personages who were to decide all civil suits. The consuls had unlimited power to impose fines; and as punishment for disobedience to certain laws, notably those governing the recruiting service, could even pronounce sentence of death. In cases requiring corporal or capital punishment the consuls and their aids had jurisdiction in the first instance; but save in cases that came under martial law, delinquents whom they had condemned could after the foundation of the republic (by virtue of the Valerian law, 509 B.C.) appeal to the higher tribunal of the general assembly, this body having also, even before 451, entire jurisdiction in regard to heavy fines.
The most marked limitation of the consuls’ power arose from the altered position of the senate towards them. According to formal law the senators stood in the same relation to the consuls as they did to the kings, being not above but under the head of the republic: who every four years, on the occasion of assessment for taxes, revised the list of senators and appointed new ones to fill whatever vacancies had occurred. Now, however, little by little, but ever more sensibly, began to be felt the enormous predominance held in all ages by any large aristocratic corporation whose members, all men of great political experience, have a life-long tenure of office, over functionaries who are appointed to their responsible positions for but the term of a single year. The senate represented the unity, and the firmly established traditions of Roman politics and rule. Not all the proud self-consciousness of a few powerful consuls could prevent the office as a whole from coming to be considered as merely the executive organ of the senate.
Since the foundation of the republic the people’s assemblies had also assumed an entirely different character and position. The necessity felt by the governing power at the overthrow of the Tarquins, to make sure of the sympathy of the lower classes had brought the centuriate assembly—in which both patricians and plebeians were bound together for the rendering of important decisions—into great prominence. The function of this body extended to the election of consuls, to the ratification or rejection of measures proposed by the higher government, to the declaration of wars of aggression, and lastly to the exercise of jurisdiction in criminal cases where appeal, now the privilege of the plebeian as well as of the noblest patrician, was permitted from the sentence of the quæstors.
PLEBEIANS AND PATRICIANS
The plebeians were soon forced to see, however, that under the new order all the advantages of public life fell to the patricians. If this class had at that time so far risen above its prejudices as to take into its own circles the more nearly related plebeian families, to admit them to equal marriage rights, to rights in the senate, and to eligibility for the various public offices; and if it had further opened the state’s domains to the mass of plebeians, and striven by a just apportionment of the land to found a new and more contented peasant order, there would be no need now to write the account of a hundred and fifty years’ struggle between these two classes. But instead of doing these things the Roman patricians displayed the most tenacious selfishness and greed—qualities manifested, it is true, in equal degree by all their plebeian kindred.
In matters pertaining to legal marriage, as well as in higher affairs of state, religious superstition played a very prominent part. It remained for some decades the honest belief of the patricians that they alone had the right of holding communications with the gods or of taking correct auspices, maintaining further that any intermingling by marriage with plebeian blood would impair if not destroy this power of reading signs. According to them, auspices taken by plebeians, being of no value, always failed in their effect; hence there could be no question of appointing plebeians to offices which were so indissolubly connected with the taking of public auspices.
Thus it came about that not long after the foundation of the republic, the populus, i.e., the patrician body, and the plebeian stood arrayed against each other like two entirely unrelated races—between whom there cannot possibly be any unity of feeling or equality of rights. Through absorption of the Sabellian clan of Appius Claudius—who, at variance with his own people, had gone over to the side of the Romans and at the head of five thousand followers had settled on the opposite shore of the Anio—the patrician party was much the stronger and more numerous, and having alone the right to make appointments to civil office and to the priesthood, was the true guardian and promoter of the legal traditions and spiritual knowledge of the state.