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infantry was divided into five classes, armed and equipped according to property alone; each class comprising a certain number of Centuries, which, again, were classified half and half, according to their composition, whether of Elders, from forty-five years upwards, or of Juniors, between the ages of forty-five and seventeen.101 Of the five classes, the first contained eighty Centuries, whose members were severally worth one hundred thousand asses, and whose equipment was a complete suit of bronze armour; the second included twenty Centuries, distinguished from the first, in arms, by wooden shields and the absence of coats of mail, and in property, by being rated at seventy-five thousand asses or upwards to one hundred thousand; the third class, likewise of twenty Centuries, wore no greaves, and possessed from fifty to seventy-five thousand asses; the fourth, of the same number of Centuries, embraced those whose qualification was from twenty-five to fifty thousand asses, but whose arms were only the pike and the javelin; while the fifth class, of thirty Centuries, had only twelve thousand five hundred asses for their property, and only slings and darts for their weapons. The clients may have been enrolled with their patrons or by themselves; but it is not certain that they were at first admitted to the Centuries. Besides the one hundred and seventy Centuries enumerated, of which the first one hundred and forty, or the first four classes, formed the Phalanx, that is, the main body of the ar

101 As a general rule, the Juniors served in the field, the Elders in the defence of the city.

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my, there were four others of mechanics and musicians, attached to one or another of the upper classes.102 A sixth class contained, according to our best authority,103 but a single century of the Capite Censi, or proletarians, whose miserable fortunes barely entitled them at all to a place in the Census. 104 It is scarcely necessary to remark that there were many in Rome, such as the traders and the workmen, with those called Ærarians, in addition to the slaves, who were not included in any way among the Centuries.105

These details are not the most enlivening to read; yet they lie at the foundation, which this book is intended to describe, of Roman liberty. Hard was the labor of the monarch to work them into the form they wear in history; and harder still the struggle, doubtless, through which he and his adherents came out victorious against the opponents of the new constitution. Yet the change it wrought is not to be overrated; and the reader who will take the pains to sum up the numbers of the preceding account will find that the Centuries of the Knights and of the first class amounted to so decided a majority over the rest,

102 The Accensi or Velati were in a Century taken from, not joined to, the fifth class, to act as a reserve and supply the places of the slain. See also Festus, s. v. Adscriptitii. 103 Dion. Hal., IV. 18. Cf. Cic., De Rep., II. 22.

104 As for the value of the as in modern currency, it is wellnigh impossible to make an accurate account. The writer of the latest

history of Rome, Dr. Schmitz,

reckons it at about three quarters of a penny. 100,000 asses were probably equivalent to near 2,000 of our dollars.

105 On the various classes, as here described, reference must be made to Livy, I. 43; Dion. Hal., IV. 16 et seq.; Cic., De Rep., II. 22. I have also consulted most of the modern writers on Roman history.

that, if they were united, or if even a sufficient number of them were supported by their clients, when these were also in the Centuries, the lower classes were powerless. The spirit of the new assembly may be further tested by observing that the Elders and the Juniors exactly divided the Centuries between them, although one class must have much outnumbered the other; but the authority of age was obeyed in Rome long before the Centuries were ever planned. As already remarked, however, the new institution was, in its beginning, little more than a new organization of the public forces; and it would be but anticipating its operation at a later period, to speak of the Patrician influence which was still preserved at the election or the deliberation. There is no doubt but that the Patricians still maintained the upperhand, forming, as they did, the great proportion of the higher Centuries; yet there is no weightier doubt but that the Plebeians, clustered together in the Phalanx, were henceforth able to resist, or, at all events, to prepare to resist, the cavalry or the menat-arms, their fellow-soldiers and still their adversaries. 106

In describing the assembly of the Tribes, it was observed that the chief article of the consultations they held in their rude way must have been the provision of the Tributum, that is, the tax on prop

106"Das gesammte Volk, welches sich gegen den Feind bewaffnen kann, und zwar nach dem Maasse in dem es sich zu bewaffnen das Ver

mögen hat, zum Antheil an der Herrschaft aufgerufen," etc. Müller, Etrusker, II. 2. 12. Cf. Ruperti, Röm. Alt., Vol. II. p. 67.

erty, the method of raising it, and, in some instances, the amount to raise. This had been long imposed on individuals in equal portions for the rich and the poor, until, by the Census of Servius Tullius, it was more justly ordered to be graduated according to the fortune or the poverty of every citizen.107 It is true that the tax was laid upon real property, in such a manner, that, while the debtor was taxed for his mortgage or his debt, the public land in possession of the richer Patricians was exempt from impost; but the land was, at least nominally, held under other obligations, of which we shall take our account at a later moment; and for the present, it was as much as could have been naturally yielded by the Patricians, that the downright beggar should be spared the burdens they bore themselves.108 In after times, if not in these, the Senate ordered the tax, and committed its collection amongst the Tribes to the Tribunes, or the Ærarian Tribunes, as they were named, after the Ærarium, or Treasury, of which they became the ministers; but the Tribes themselves could reject the burden they thought unjust, or, perhaps, avoidable: 109 thus far, at least, though not, perhaps, under the monarchy, the Plebeians drew or loosened their own purse-strings.

107 Censum enim instituit, rem saluberrimam tanto futuro imperio: ex quo belli pacisque munia non viritim ut ante, sed pro habitu pecuniarum fierent." Liv., I. 42. "Tribus appellavit, ut ego arbitror, ab tributo; nam ejus quoque æqualiter ex censu conferendi ab eodem inita

ratio est." Ibid., 43. Cf. Dion. Hal., IV. 22.

108 It is a little uncertain, perhaps, whether the Patricians paid any of this tax until the time of the Commonwealth. Liv., IV. 60. 109 Dion. Hal., IV. 14, 15. Liv., V. 12.

These changes which Servius wrought are almost too numerous and too profound to be regarded as the work of a single king, especially in the government of a confused and turbulent people. Consciously or unconsciously, he had set the seal upon the promises already discernible of the wonderful destiny in prepation for the Roman nation, by bringing them from out their embryo existence into the sight of law and confidence and maturity. He was the great king of the line which governed Rome; 110 nor only as the ruler, but as the warrior, of the same ardent heart in the hour of horror which bore him through the hour of reform. He revenged his people upon their Etruscan enemies, and was, perhaps, in reality, as in dim tradition, the liberator as well as the lawgiver of his people; and it appears, besides, that he loved a free so much better than a monarchical government, as to propose either to lay down his power or else to establish two magistrates to succeed him when he died.112 Under such a monarch the people of

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every class were stirred; some, perhaps, like him, to wisdom, — more, undoubtedly, like him also, to war, but all, like a boiling and overboiling fluid, above the never-ceasing fire, to find new issues for its strength or steam. But there were none among the heated people to save the life of Servius, or to protect his corpse from dishonor, when his daughter

110"Præcipuus Servius Tullius sanctor legum fuit." Tac., Ann., III. 26.

111 According to our previous conjecture, not worth the attempt

of being proved, from various signs
we have, that Tarquin was an
Etruscan conqueror of Rome.
112 Liv., I. 48, 60.

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