صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

claimed upon the arrears. Certainly those who wished to rouse national odium against the patricians would select this circumstance for invective, and would thus stigmatize the patricians as usurers, not merely as hard landlords. This view of the case appears easier to receive, than to imagine, with Ihne, that fanus ever meant rent. It will then certainly be possible that Genucius's law forbade, not interest generally, but interest on -arrears of rent. But this will not suffice for Ihne's view of the Latin colonies, nor is it at all hard to believe that a tribune may have passed a plebiscitum to forbid all interest. When Tacitus (Ann. vI. 16,) speaks of a prohibition of versura (or compound interest?) Ihne himself understands him as alluding to the lex Genucia: and why are we called on to suppose him to have been in error?

On the whole, the interpretation of the foenus just suggested seems to be the least violent and most satisfactory way of presenting what is (fundamentally) Ihne's notion; for we thus avoid to come into collision with our only authorities :-to do which, is to confess that we are in the regions of mere conjecture. For the same reason, we may shrink from holding with him that all plebeians were clients, in the sense in which Livy uses the latter word. Slight modification appears to enable us to adopt all that part of Ihne's theory which tends to remove difficulties, without casting aside Livy's authority too rudely. We can only afford room slightly to sketch his views on some other points. He regards it as certain that the Sabine conquerors of the Capitol became supreme masters of Rome; which is the first conquest, and made the name of Quirites, for ever after, express full citizenship. A second conquest was by the Etruscans, under Tarquin, who depressed both the Sabine and the Latin element. Servius is the organ of a reaction which united the two homogeneous races in final ascendancy over the Etruscans; and in so far, elevated the plebeians into citizens in the English sense. His comitia were intended to establish the Latin supremacy. When the last Tarquin was ejected, Ihne believes that an arbitrary government was for a while essential,

6 This view appears to be taken by Mr. Long, in his article on CLIENTS (Smith's Dictionary,) as far as positive opinion can be ascertained from his very cautious writing.

7 We are disposed to ask, Was not Tarquin only the first king of an Etruscan dynasty, whom tradition has made to represent the whole? Roman religion denotes a long Etruscan rule.

and that Valerius was elected Protector (as we should now style it,) to conduct the revolutionary war: that he held this power for years, and resided in the royal house on the Velia: that hence came the alarms lest he should found a new tyranny; but that when he had fully organized the State, and had put it into the hands of two consuls, he came to dwell at the foot of the hill; hence his fame and name as Publicola. As he had the fullest power of a dictator, though not the name, to this may be referred the fact, that some said Valerius was the first dictator. The author's discussion itself must be read, to judge of the erudite ingenuity with which these points are supported.

He further believes that the Comitia Centuriata were decisively patrician, and that the right of appeal against magistrates was to be made before this assembly, according to Publicola's law: but that this gave no redress to a plebeian, who, in a dispute which concerned the interests of the orders, had nothing to hope from such a body: but, after the Decemvirate, the Duilian law enabled a plebeian to appeal to the Comitia Tributa, by which at length the plebs gained the desired legal protection.

Ihne also attempts to explode the law of Publilius Volero as an entire mistake. He cannot believe that the people, when they extorted Tribunes, could have been cheated into allowing them to be chosen in a patrician assembly. To us this seems very credible, and not unlike the end of an English popular movement: nor, if we found it definitely stated in an ancient author, that the first tribunes, being Sacrosancti, were chosen in Comitia Calata with a pontifex presiding, (as Becker imagines,) should we see any internal improbability in this. But in all these matters, we must beware of confounding the possible with the true and all that we seem certainly to know, is, that before Volero, the tribunes were not chosen in the Comitia Tributa, but in some other way.

On the subject of the colonies, Ihne endeavours to add to Madvig's able researches. It is now, perhaps, generally held, that the members of Roman colonies, as such, had, and those of Latin colonies had not, originally the rights of the Roman state; that is, suffragium, honores, commercium, connubium. Ihne so far modifies this as to assert, that the plebeians and patricians who went out to a Roman colony, retained respectively the same rights as they had always had at home: hence the earliest colonies exhibited the plebeian interests in the same depression

as in early Rome. Of these, Velitræ, Satricum, and Lavici, disappear from history, the two first being violently destroyed, and the third fallen to ruin. But the rest,-Signia, Circeii, Norba, Sutrium, Nepete,—are afterwards called Latin colonies; namely, (says Ihne,) because the populace retained from their first foundation only those inferior rights which were afterwards called Latin. Madvig has on the contrary inferred, that they must all have been originally Latin: but though this cannot be disproved of Signia and Circeii, which are referred to the regal period, Ihne will not admit it of Norba,-from its site beyond the Latin limits; nor of Sutrium and Nepete,-because they were planted during hostilities with Latium; the former, seven years after the Gallic conflagration according to Valerius, the latter B. C. 382,-Liv. vI. 21. When the plebeians had established full and equal rights with the patricians in Rome itself, we may perhaps believe that, even without express enactment, (for no one can refer to the Lex Genucia de Fonore,) full and equal rights in the Roman colonies followed of course. The zeal for Latin colonies which presently springs up, is then well explained by Ihne, as a new artifice of the nobility. He adds, that C. Flaminius's colony in Picenum, against which the aristocracy was so furious, and by which the people were so delighted, must have been a Roman one. The words of Cicero (De Senect. 4,) “agrum viritim contra senatus auctoritatem dividenti,” imply that the mode of division was in some sense a new thing, of which the senate disapproved; and in so far it countenances Ihne's idea, that in the ordinary colonies the plebeians did not receive a perfect and clear freehold. Since Latin colonies were founded with the senate's sanction at Brundusium (B. C. 244,) at Spoletum (242,) and again at Cremona and Placentia (218,) in the Gallic land itself, he infers that the Picenian colony of 232, which so displeased the senate, must have had strictly Roman rights. A priori (all will probably concede to Ihne,) the whole policy of Rome, and the confessions of ancient writers that every colony was an image of the mother city, justify us in believing, that at a time when the plebeians were depressed at home, they were also depressed in the colonies, as far as all political right was concerned: but it is not so clear that no greater substantial rights, as of land, were there granted them; and if there had not been any, it is difficult to

imagine how the patricians ever expected to induce men to expose themselves on the frontier.

That Dr. Ihne rightly rejects Niebuhr's doctrine, of the plebeians possessing the decisive majority in the Comitia Centuriata, appears to be testified by every page of the history: but we need not infer that all of that order were sedulously kept down. If plebeians were introduced into the senate in the regal times, or by the first consuls, we must surely look upon it merely as an ennobling of them into patricians, so as to draw off from the commoners those who would else have been their leaders against the aristocracy. Instead of doubting the fact, with Ihne, we should rather be disposed to think it one of the causes which left the poor plebeians so helpless; for such a measure would elevate only individuals, and weaken the order which they had left. That, as an order, they were exceedingly depressed immediately after the struggle against the Tarquins, is too plain to insist upon; and it seems wonderful how any one can have imagined that they were supreme in the Comitia Centuriata, which was the sovereign power of the nation. Niebuhr was, perhaps, led into this paradox by his theory, that the patricians formed only six centuries of knights in the Servian comitia ; whom he identifies with the Sex Suffragia of Festus. But he names Festus only to say that he was quite mistaken; and then deliberately sets aside the testimony of Livy, Dionysius, and Cicero, who describe these Comitia as giving all power to the rich, and hereby to the noble and few. We may admit to him that it is remarkable, if the centuriate assembly was timocratic, and the curiate aristocratic; but there is no real contradiction here, any more than between a House of Commons and of Lords in England: and, on the whole, such a constitution agrees very well with the history. But to infer with Niebuhr, that "the preponderance, nay, the whole power in the Centuriata, lay with the plebs," would involve exactly the state of things which he had just pointed at (vol. I. p. 433,)—the rending asunder of the nation between two co-ordinate and hostile bodies. If the plebs had really been predominant in the centuriata, what could have made them so eager for the tributa comitia? and what could possibly have forced them to contend by Secessions, and by the Intercessio of the tribune, not by the assembly itself? Niebuhr may, in many places, seem to reply,—Because the clients outvoted the plebs. But this is to allow that

the plebs was not decisively predominant, and it swells the clients into a nation of rich men. For, that wealth predominated in that assembly, (only not patrician wealth,) is fully conceded by Niebuhr.8

F. W. N.

IV.

COMMENTARIES ON, AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF, THE ENEIS OF VIRGIL.

BY JAMES HENRY, M.D.,

Fellow of the College of Physicians, Dublin.

PART I.-COMPREHENDING THE FIRST 350 LINES
OF BOOK I.

Ille ego, &c.-Imitated both by Spenser and Milton:-
Lo! I, the man whose muse whylome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly shepheard's weeds,
Am now enforst a farre unfitter taske,

For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine oaten reeds,
And sing of knights' and ladies' gentle deeds.

Faerie Queene, st. 1.

I who erewhile the happy garden sung.

Par. Reg. v. 1.

V. 1. Martis arma.-Martis joined with arma is not (as a hasty view has led some commentators to suppose,) supererogatory; because arma is not a specific term, corresponding to the English arms, and like it applicable only to martial weapons, but a general term, applicable to all kinds of implements, martial, agricultural, (Georg. 1. 160,) nautical, (En. v.15,) culinary, (En. 1. 177,) &c. Martis is therefore a proper adjunct to arma, and

8 Dr. Ihne writes as if it were a new thing to dissent from Niebuhr's view of these Comitia: but even Dr. Leonhard Schmitz, in his History of Rome, (p. 75,) acquiesces in the common view,

that "patricians and plebeians met on a footing of equality; for there the importance of every citizen was determined by no other standard than that of property and age."

« السابقةمتابعة »