Struggle of the Orders

1
Struggle of the Orders
2
Rome From M. Grant, History of Rome
3
Aventine-Site of Plebeian Resistance (from Ward,
Heichelheim, and Yeo, A History of the Roman
People)
4
Towards a Methodology for Reconstructing Early
Roman Society (K. Raaflaub)

• Comprehensive Approach recurrent themes and
  patterns in diverse sources are probably
  historically significant (that is, we should not
  limit ourselves to history writing, or even
  literary evidence, for that matter)
• Comparative Approach test hypotheses for early
  Rome against fuller records of societies that
  passed through similar socio-economic historical
  processes (for example, early Greece)
• Archaeology seems to confirm literary tradition
  of socio-economic crisis in 5th-century BCE Rome
  cessation of temple-construction and other public
  building

5
Interrelationship of Roman Foreign Policy and
Internal Roman Politics

• At the outbreak of the First Samnite War in 343,
  the plebeian leaders demand that one of the two
  consulships should always be theirs was still
  being determinedly resisted. By the end of the
  Second Samnite War in 304 this demand had long
  been taken for granted and a closed nobility
  had been formed that was so united that its
  members, patricians and plebeians alike, went
  into mourning when an upstart outsider of servile
  origin like Cn. Flavius was elected curule aedile
  over two noble plebeians see Livy, 9.46
  Pliny, Natural History, 33.17.
• E.T. Salmon, Samnium and the Samnites (Cambridge,
  1967) 217

6
Internal Crises Patricians and Plebeians

• Patricians and non-Patricians (Plebeians)
• Origin senators created by Romulus conscripted
  fathers patres conscripti (Richard Mitchell).
  Distinction seems to become important in the
  early years of the Republic.
• Minority population estimates for Archaic
  Rome--6,600-9,900 adult male citizens
  2,700-4,000 heavy infantrymen (hoplites) 400-600
  adult male patricians (Raaflaub, Social
  Struggles, pg. 44).
• Nexum Debt-Bondage (Table VI cf. Table III)
• War as Palliative (see Livy, Book Two passim
  unity in face of external threats internal
  discord in times of international peace compare
  Dionysius, Roman Antiquities, 10.33)

7
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities,
10.33

• The following year 455 BCEwas not of an even
  tenor but was varied and fraught with great
  events. For the internal struggles, which seemed
  to be already extinguished, were again stirred up
  by the tribunes and some foreign wars sprang up,
  which, without being able to harm the
  commonwealth at all, did it a great service by
  banishing these struggles. For it had by now
  become a regular and customary thing for the city
  to be harmonious in war and to be at odds in
  peace. When all who assumed the consulship
  observed this, they regarded the appearance of
  any foreign war as an answer to prayer. And when
  the enemies were quiet, they themselves invented
  grievances and pretenses for wars, since they saw
  that wars made the commonwealth great and
  flourishing, and seditions humiliated and weak.
  Having come to this same conclusion, the consuls
  of that year resolved to lead an expedition
  against the enemy, apprehensive that idle and
  poor men might, because of peace, begin to raise
  disturbances.

8
Secession of the Plebeians (494 BCE) and
Patrician Concessions

• Creation of the Tribunate (494 BCE)
• veto, intercessio, auxilium
• Plebeian Assembly (concilium plebis)
• Plebeian Record Office
• Plebeian Aediles

9
Twelve Tables ca. 451-449 BCE

• Codification of Early Roman Law

10
Twelve Tables Table III

• the creditor may bind the debtor either in
  stocks or in fetters he may bind him with a
  weight of no more than fifteen poundsUnless they
  make a settlement, debtors shall be held in bonds
  for sixty days. During that time they shall be
  brought before the praetors courton the third
  market day they shall suffer capital punishment
  or be delivered up for sale abroad, across the
  Tiber. On the third market day the creditors
  shall cut pieces.

11
Decemvirate and Twelve Tables ca. 453-449 BCE

• Non-elite Grievances debt (nexum) land (ager
  publicus) military service (stipendia)
• Primary Source Livy, 3.31-35
• Publication of Ten Tables of Codified Law
• Two Supplements Added
• Further Plebeian Gains

12
Supplementary Laws (Tables XI and XII)

• Table XII Whatever the people has last ordained
  shall be held as binding by law
• Table XI Intermarriage shall not take place
  between patricians and plebeians

13
Legislative Skeleton Struggle of the Orders

• 494 BCE first secession of the plebeians
  creation of the tribunate (2, 4 or 5 at first,
  later 10) Plebeian Council (concilium plebis)
• 454 BCE Aternian-Tarpeian legislation fixes
  maximum fine a magistrate could impose
• ca. 450 BCE Decemvirate and Twelve Tables
• 449 BCE Valerio-Horatian legislation makes
  decisions of Plebeian Council (concilium plebis)
  law
• 445 BCE Canuleian law allows intermarriage
  between patricians and plebeians (conubium)
• 367 BCE Licinian-Sextian legislation addresses
  debt limits holding of ager publicus (?)
  demands one plebeian consul
• 326 BCE Poetelian-Papirian law abolishes nexum
  debtor cant pledge person
• 300 BCE Valerian law protects citizens by right
  of appeal (provocatio)
• 300 BCE Ogulnian law opens priesthoods to
  plebeians
• 287 BCE Hortensian law makes decisions of
  Plebeian Council law

14
Voting was the formal mechanism leading to the
contested consulate (from M. Grant, History of
Rome
15
Curia Iulia
16
Cui Bono? Troubled Harmony (?)

• Codification of Law (the Twelve Tables) a
  measure to ensure aristocratic predominancean
  attempt to stabilize the political and social
  status quo, which was being seriously threatened
  by social unrest. (W. Eder, in Social Struggles
  in Archaic Rome, 263)
• Patricio-Plebeian Aristocracy (Licinian-Sextian
  legislation of 367 BCE)
• A new nobility arose to which only a few
  plebeians were admitted, and which was as
  dominant as the patricians had been. Its economic
  interests and oligarchic sentiments were no
  different. The order of society was basically
  unchanged. The old social conflicts were to
  reappear, but it was harder for the poor to find
  champions, once the political ambitions of the
  rich plebeians had been satisfied. (P.A. Brunt,
  Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic, 58-59)