31 32 do with the auspices, which would be polluted by any connection with them or their mongrel offspring, seems to prove that Canuleius introduced the question of intermarriage because it led most directly to that of the auspices he rather wished to claim. The second demand he made touched the point more boldly. Eight of his nine colleagues joined him in preferring a second bill before the Tribes, that the Consuls should be chosen indiscriminately from both estates of the Commonwealth.33 The Plebeians could not, of course, be Consuls without obtaining the auspices; but it was rather to daunt the Patricians into the acceptance of his first proposal, that Canuleius dared to ask for his order a place in the consulship, which would give them a greater share in the auspices than he had sought through intermarriage. Resistance was to be expected; and it soon appeared. But when wars and enlistments began to be rumored, in order, says the historian, to silence the Tribunes, Canuleius, standing without the open door of the temple in which the Senate were assembled, swore, that, so long as he lived, there should be neither enlistment nor war, until the Tribes had been allowed to decide upon the bills proposed by himself and his colleagues. The menace being unheeded, and some severe action on the part of the Senate or the 31 Liv., IV. 1. 6. "Plebes maxime indignatione exarsit, quod auspicari, tanquam invisi diis immortalibus, negarentur posse." 32 Dion. Hal., 33 Liv., IV. 1. 53 et seq. XI. 53. Dion. Hal., XI. Patricians perhaps ensuing, an insurrection of the lower order broke out under the instigation, or, at all events, the direction, of Canuleius. Of the sad and furious scenes that followed, but one remains reported, in which we see the Janiculan hill beyond the Tiber in the possession of an armed and angry multitude. The bill, however, concerning the marriage of the Plebeians under auspices, as it ought to be styled, was passed in the midst of these unknown tumults; and it was very probably at the same time, or immediately afterwards, that the Tribunes were invested with the right of taking the auspices before the Tribes.36 The moment of such gains was that from which the Plebeians might most accurately date their social and their political liberty. 35 It still remained, however, to settle the second project of the Tribunes concerning the consulship, upon which the Plebeians would be less intent after having won the privilege more directly calculated to affect them all. The Patricians, however, were on their guard. In a secret meeting, from which Valerius and Horatius are mentioned as having purposely absented themselves, it was first proposed, in plain language, to murder the Tribunes, but finally determined, that, if the Plebeians, who had strangely increased of late, in power as well as in pretension, 34 Florus, I. 25. 35 It is in this connection that Duni's ingenious theories are to be most clearly accepted: "Il dritto del connubio veniva ad essere, come un fondamento de' dritti civili " (Cap. VI.); because, as he says, "l' originaria di lui [il cittadino Romano, era] fondata sulla ragione degli Auspicj." Cittadino, etc., di Roma, Cap. IV. 36 Zonaras, VII. 19. should compel the Patricians to yield, there should be a new magistracy created, with authority inferior to that of the consulship, in order to foil at the same time that it satisfied the ambition of the rising order. An act immediately passed the Senate, ordering the election of Consular Tribunes 37 from both estates,appointing three, probably, as the number which each was to have for its representatives.38 As had been foreseen, the Plebeians were perfectly contented; and the act was accepted more willingly, it appears, by the Centuries, in which they voted, than by the Curies, in which the Patricians would hardly be consoled for the loss of the consulship by having outwitted their opponents. Three Patricians were elected to the new office; but of the numerous Plebeian candidates, none were returned, perhaps because they were so many that the suffrages of their order were scattered, or else because the Centuries by which the election was made were too much under Patrician influence to throw a sufficient majority of votes in favor of Plebeians.39 The three Patricians took the place of the retiring Consuls, as Consular Tribunes, on whom the consular power devolved only so far as it was military. That the Plebeians were disputing, meanwhile, among themselves, after the fashion of most successful parties, appears 37 Their full title was "tribuni militum consulari potestate." Liv., IV. 6. 60. failure of the Plebeian candidates to have been caused by the "modesty, equity, and magnanimity of the 38 Liv., IV. 6. Dion. Hal., XI. people." Plutarch is quite as simple in his account of the office. 39 Livy (loc. cit.) believes the Cam., 1. from the fact, that, in little more than two months, the Consular Tribunes were compelled to resign; their place being almost immediately filled by two Consuls, just as of old, elected by the Centuries." Any disappointment produced among the shrewder Plebeians, by this return to the consulship, could scarcely have added much to that they had felt from the time when the office was first suspended. The readiness with which their order adopted the tribunate in its place can be easily understood, on recollecting the little interest to be excited amongst them, generally, with regard to an authority that most of them could never hope to gain; nor need we imagine that the ambitious or the wiser men were deceived. Even from the military powers, which were alone transferred from the old office to the new, the right of triumph was abstracted, while other honors and pomps were still farther removed. The institution. or the proposal of the censorship, though originally intended to bear the authority which was necessary to take the Census, hitherto conducted by the Consuls, was one of the detractions from the consulship, in order to adapt the consular tribunate to the meaner station of those to whom it was committed. The Censors, two in number, were to be chosen, like the Consuls, by the Centuries, and from the Patricians alone, but, unlike the Consuls, they were to hold their office for five years. The character of the new magistracy will soon be made more clear. 40 Liv., IV. 7. 41" Censuræ initium, rei a parva origine ortæ," etc. Liv., IV. 8. 41 Cf. Cic., De Leg. Agr., II. 11; De Five or six years again roll by, in which there is little that we can now remark, except the continuance and perhaps the spread of suffering amongst the poorer classes. In their behalf, apparently, a Plebeian, known only by name, Patelius, being two years successively elected Tribune, renewed in both his terms of office 42 the long interrupted claims for assignments from the public lands. There were few to support him in his solitary enterprise, besides the crowd of haggard faces and despairing hearts for whom he labored; a circumstance that demonstrates, beyond a doubt, the wider separation between those who wished for power, or the rich, and those who wanted independence, or the poor, the two divisions of a single estate, that, namely, of the Plebeians. Potelius was but a fool, says the historian, for his pains; 43 yet not because he failed to seek the advantage of the higher as well as the lower Plebeians. In asking land and bread for the latter, he also urged the claims of the former on the consular tribunate, an office hardly in existence, and only revived, if revived at all, for the exclusive occupancy of the Patricians. In a state like the Roman, where there could be little employment for the freeman besides labor for himself on his own ground, or for the Commonwealth on her battle-fields, the loss of land or of the most moderate fortune involved either degradation or starvation, it might be, both. Mere mechanical occupations were in too small demand, and in much 42 A. C. 442-441. Liv., IV. 12. 43 Ludibrioque erant minæ tribuni," etc. Liv., IV. 12. |