صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

two were on good terms; but there is nothing in his position to make it legally necessary: as long as he had no occasion to appear before the judge, there seems no reason why he should be any one's client. This certainly is Livy's idea,—that all clients were plebeians, but not all plebeians always clients: nor does there appear any ground for rejecting it. In troublous times, moreover, when patricians did not hesitate to assassinate a tribune, why should it be questioned that they kept round their persons retainers, who would be peculiarly spoken of as their clients, and might give occasion to Dionysius's exaggerated representations? Of course such retainers could not reside away from Rome, and in so far would justify Niebuhr's assertion, that the clients (in this restricted sense) were townspeople. As such, the consul would not covet their presence in the army: indeed, there may have been a tacit understanding among the patricians, not to press into the public service any of the clients who served as a private guard to a patrician noble.

Ihne's view of the landed property is not only simple and ingenious, but really sweeps off many serious difficulties. Yet it encounters or makes new ones, in the distinction which it introduces between old public land and new public land; the former being that which became public before there were finance ministers, and which consequently fell under the power of individual patricians by avowed regulations; but the latter being farmed out by the censors for five years at a time, and being allowed to become patrician property only by connivance. We should have expected this distinction of the public land to be clearly made by the ancients; but Ihne has not set himself definitely to establish that they do make it. Perhaps he argues that so large a part of the new public land also was made (in every practical sense) private property, as to obliterate the division of new and old. Among the passages to which reference is made in this discussion, there is one which seems to recognize the distinction, in Livy, (IV. 51,) as late as B. C. 410; therefore after the appointment of quæstors of the treasury and of censors. "Hæc ipsa indignitas angebat animos, non in re

• It is sometimes said that "the client in Rome could not form and dissolve his relation to his patron at will, as in Greece;" but it is not clear on what evidence this rests. A client who left

his patron would probably have found it hard in early times to find another patrician willing to become his patron: but this is a different thing from legal incapacity.

tinendis modo publicis agris, quos vi teneret, pertinacem nobilitatem esse; sed ne vacuum quidem agrum, nuper ex hostibus captum, plebi dividere." Ihne believes that the struggle concerning the old Roman land was reproduced in the colonies, where the patricians or nobles endeavoured to keep to themselves the rights of lords of the soil, while the plebeian colonists expected that, at least there, they should be made freeholders. There is a great deficiency of documentary evidence on this whole subject; and general probabilities appear to stop short in this, that patricians are not likely to have been willing to join a colony, unless large landed rights were given them: these could often be had only at the expense of the Roman colonists; and as the senate must have desired to send out some patricians, in order to secure the allegiance of the colony, they are likely to have struggled to invest them with the character of patrons and landlords to the rest. Sometimes, however, their position could be maintained, at the expense not of the new colonists, but of the old inhabitants. Thus in the Roman colony at Antium, the conquered people paid rent to the Roman colonists, who became their landlords. This precisely represents Ihne's view of the old plebeians, whom he supposes in all cases a conquered people, as the Antiates afterward. He also refers to the Campanian knights, who were Roman citizens and received rents from the commonalty, as representing at a later period the same relation between the orders.

5

Again, if Ihne's theory is correct, an agrarian law was a different thing in earlier and in later times. With Spurius Cassius, it meant, to secure to a tenant as freehold (or perhaps rather as only a fixed tenure, liable to the payment of a quitrent,) the land which he previously held as tenant-at-will, at least in the theory of the patricians, which they were often able to enforce. With the Gracchi, it meant to plant new proprietors on small farms which had previously been held in masses, and generally been used for pasturage only. At least we cannot conceive that Spurius Cassius could have wished to give the land to any but former tenants, except where these had died or vanished, under the pressure of distress. Perhaps, however, in the general obscurity which the ancients have left over the

5 Ihne quotes a passage as from Dionys. x. 60, in proof; but the reference is

erroneous.

whole subject of agrarian laws, we ought not to expect this distinction (if it really existed, as Ihne's theory requires,) to have been made prominent by any early writer.

That there was a considerable portion of public land which was not practically leased out by the censors, Ihne proves from the difficulty which was experienced in the time of Tiberius Gracchus to discriminate what land was public, or at least what were the limits of it. In fact, the land really so reserved was quite exceptive: certain districts of Campania and Sicily could not otherwise have been so much talked of. We may probably infer, that the new aristocracy continued to practise as far as possible towards conquered lands, what the old patricians had done originally, to get the state-lot into private possession, without the controul of censor or quæstor.

It is a very ingenious conjecture of Ihne's, that the zeal which so suddenly displayed itself in Rome, for founding Latin colonies, was intended to evade a law which enacted that the members of all future Roman colonies should be freeholders. At the same time, that the patricians (or rather, nobles) who chose to join a Latin colony might lose nothing, it was enacted that all the magistrates in such colonies should have a right to claim full Roman citizenship. This would be in perfect harmony with the proceedings of a Roman aristocracy, and seems to carry conviction to the mind, although there is a difficulty in finding the law which was to be evaded. Ihne believes it to be no other than the Lex Genucia, mentioned by Livy, (vII. 42,) as forbidding fonus; according to which, not only must fanus mean "rent of land," but an important limitation, unnamed by Livy, should be added to the law; viz. that "in no future division of public lands shall fœnus be exacted." This certainly is not to interpret.

And here we perhaps hit on the main difficulty of the theory, viz. that we have no ground for translating fonus, rent. The derivation of the word allies it to fœtus, as roxoc to réxos, and shews that it strictly and originally meant interest of money. If land were purchased as an investment, the rent might be styled interest; but not else. Hence we shall be forced to conclude that all the ancients were in positive error, when they spoke of the Patrician nobles as fœneratores; unless we can be satisfied with the modified view, that the great, or at least the avowed, grievance of the plebs was, not the rent itself, but the interest

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

« السابقةمتابعة »