004 - The Public Thing

Hello, and welcome to the history of Rome. It had been 200 years since the founding of Rome, and since that time the Romans had undergone a massive transformation. In the beginning they were a collection of pastoral herdsmen and unsavory castoffs, making their way in the world by flock and trade, and since that time they had learned to become settled farmers, tilling the land and raising crops. They had gone from being a collection of armed rabble to a society of laws with a well-equipped, well-disciplined army. They had gone from upstart village to regional capital, and now stood ready to challenge a wider pool of neighbors for control of all Italy. The Etruscans lay to the north and the Greeks to the south, and having conquered the central lowlands during the reign of the kings, the Romans now turned to the hills and mountains of East Italy for fresh conquests, and, as always, were forced to parry the thrust of the Etruscan cities to the north. This is the world into which the Republic was born.

According to the legendary chronology, the kings were overthrown in 509 BC, though the date is highly suspect. Most likely later, patriotic Roman historians changed the timing of the event to slightly predate the establishment of democracy in Athens by Cleisthenes in 508 BC. The Romans had a hard time believing they were not first and best in everything, especially in the democracy they took so much pride in, so they altered their history to outdo the Greeks. However, without any concrete data, it is hard to know exactly when the kings were driven out, so we are forced to mark our own histories of the city with the 509 date. As I said in part 1, the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 389 BC destroyed all primary documentation, so we are left with a mixture of legend and historical fiction.

Before we get into the story of the early Republic, I want to pause for a moment and establish who exactly we are talking about here. I often say that Rome did this and that the Romans did that, but except for a few passing disambiguations I have not done much to describe the varying nature of the population. Were they some homogeneous hive mind who agreed on everything and acted with a single will? No, quite the opposite. There were rich Romans and poor Romans and middle class Romans. There were men and women and children. There were slaves and freed slaves and immigrants and criminals and honest men who worked hard every day and lazy men who did not. There were prostitutes and vestal virgins and intellectuals and illiterates. Just like any society, the city of Rome was inhabited by a vast array of individuals, each with their own worldview, motivation and dream. And just like in any society, the Romans did not always get along with one another and, in fact, often fought bitterly with one another for control and freedom from control.

When the Republic was founded, the population of Rome was around 130,000. This population was divided into two basic groups, the patricians and the plebes. Put simply, the patricians came from those families who could trace their roots back to the original 100 senators chosen by Romulus and the plebes came from those that could not. Generally speaking, the distinction between patrician and plebe also followed economic class divisions, though, as we will see, it was never that simple. In the early days, the political weight of the classes was inversely related to their numerical size. The smaller set of patricians held power over the larger set of plebes. As I noted last week, the two richest classes in Rome held between them enough votes to snuff out any possible opposition and those classes were, for the most part, made up of patricians, so the patricians made the rules. In the beginning, then, the democratic republic was really an oligarchy of wealthy, aristocratic families who shaped policy to serve their interests and who had no intention of ever letting anyone else into the decision-making process.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but let me just say that it did not take long for the plebes, especially those plebes who were wealthy, to demand a greater voice in government. This tension between the patricians and the plebes would dominate Roman politics for the duration of the empire. Outside the basic patrician-plebe dichotomy, there were those without even nominal political standing, namely women, slaves, and immigrants. These groups formed a majority in sheer numerical terms but were denied almost all political rights. Even the plebeian males who howled righteously at the injustice of being denied a say in government would have cried just as loud if someone had suggested suffrage being extended to women or slaves or immigrants. The idea would have been beyond comprehension.

The contradictions of the early republic bear a striking resemblance to the contradictions of the early United States. When you picture the burgeoning Roman republic, picture what you know of the burgeoning American republic. The United States, though rhetorically cloaked in the language of freedom and equality, allowed only white, landowning males to vote. Eventually the propertyless men agitated against the injustice of an oligarchical elite trampling on their freedoms and earned the same right, but women and blacks and Indians and the new immigrants were left out in the cold, present but unheard. This was Rome, a republic in which the disenfranchised majority were ruled by a disproportionately powerful elite.

This then was the basic political breakdown of the population. Economically speaking, whether patrician or plebe, the majority of Romans were, by this time, settled farmers. But this was no utopia of landowning citizen farmers. The land was owned by an elite minority and worked by the rest of the population. Economics and politics coincided just as they do today, and the tension between owner and operator mirrored the tension between patrician and plebe. Farmers were constantly agitating for land redistribution, and patricians blocked reform whenever they could. In this early stage of the empire, the actual work of the farms was still done by the lower class citizens, slaves being an important part of the Roman economic model, but not yet the keystone upon which the entire system was based.

The farms produced two basic products, food for internal consumption, usually grain and cereals, and crops for external trade, usually olives and grapes, and the refined offspring oil and wine. The Romans, building on the roots already established by the Etruscans, used savvy trade policies to enrich themselves with all manner of foreign goods, establishing a truly international flavor in the city. But as in so many other aspects of Roman society, it was the wealthy patricians who controlled the import-export boards, and it was they who benefited the most from foreign trade. Needless to say, the landless plebe who worked in the fields did not dress in African finery and eat off of Greek silverware. Romans were many within the population, economically and politically, and hatred abounded between the classes, but, in the end, they were all Romans and set aside their differences any time the city was threatened, though picking up their rivalries right where they left off when danger had passed.

That all being said, it's time to continue with our story. The tyranny of the monarchy had been banished forever. It was decided, and again, when you picture this, feel free to picture the patrician senators and equides hammering out the details, because it was really them making all the early decisions, the lower classes and plebes had nothing to do with it. The two men should rule annually to avoid any single man accumulating too much power. Originally these men were called praetors, though the title would be changed in the early 300s BC to the more familiar consul. For clarity's sake I will use the latter designation even for the early executives who were technically praetors, because the office itself did not change, just the name, and, well, most translations of early Roman history refer to them as consuls anyway, so there is no reason to confuse an already confusing situation with a lot of semantic nitpicking.

Anyway, to the Roman mind, ensuring freedom was not so much a matter of scaling back or limiting the power of the executive, as the founding fathers sought to do with their system of checks and balances, as it was a matter of limiting the length of time within which absolute rule could be wielded. The consuls had all the same powers a king had, near absolute power over war and peace, life and death, they just had to give it up after a year. The second consul was the one check the Romans did add into the system. One consul could veto the actions of the other, and that was that. Any consul who tried to run away with power could be stopped at a word from his colleague. If the two conspired to oppress the people, their terms of office expired after a year and they were back to being mere citizens, with all the legal weight that would be brought down upon two men who sought to make themselves king. In the end, it was the expiring term of office that really let the Romans sleep well at night. The executive power sharing was merely a useful novelty.

In that year, 509 BC, this was as far as the Republic had gone constitutionally. Rather than the comitus and suriata getting together and electing a king who served for life, they got together and elected two men who served for one year. As I said last week, the first two consuls were Lucius Junius Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. The former led the revolt against the king, and the latter's raped wife had sparked the event. Brutus' first act was to make all men swear an oath that they should never again allow a king to rule Rome. As you can see, the legacy of Numa remained a potent force. Brutus felt that a sacred oath before Jupiter would be enough to bind men to oppose monarchy, and barring a few exceptions, it did. The Romans did not mess around with their oaths.

There was, however, an immediate problem. Collatinus, you will note, bore the hated moniker Tarquinius, being a relative of the overthrown king. The population, jittery in their newfound freedom, worried that lust for power was an inborn trait of the Tarquins, and immediately regretted their election of Collatinus, despite the fact that he had helped lead the revolution and vocally denounced his cousins. In press, though, Collatinus agreed, for the sake of the stability and viability of the new republic, to resign the consulship, even though everyone agreed it was completely ridiculous to ask him to do so. In his place, another one of the ringleaders of the revolt was elected, Publius Valerius, who will, in a moment, earn the honorary in publicola, or friend of the people, for his service to Rome.

Students of American history will immediately recognize Publius' name. The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, in defense of the newly written constitution, appeared in print under the pseudonym Publius in honor of this consul's role in securing Rome's new republic. Publius is often cited as being one of the original consuls of Rome, but we should not forget Collatinus and his selfless resignation in the face of baseless and superficial fears for the sake of his country's freedom.

The first threat the new republic faced was the first threat all successful revolutions face, namely, counter-revolution. There were more than a few Romans who had lived just fine under the kings, and were in no mood to lose their privileged place in society. A collection of young nobles, including two sons of the consul Brutus, conspired with envoys of the exiled king Tarquin to betray the city to him and reinstate the monarchy. The plot was revealed by one of the nobles' slaves, and the entire group was arrested. Brutus was shocked to see his own sons involved in the affair, but incontrovertible evidence was produced confirming their guilt. The penalty for treason was severe, and despite his tortured misgivings, Brutus would not stop the sentence from being carried out. The young conspirators were tied to a post, scourged, and then beheaded. Brutus' decision was long lauded by the Romans as a patriotic sacrifice, teaching a moral lesson about putting the welfare of the state before even one's own family, but the ruthlessness of the decision often makes it difficult for us to see the nobility of the act.

The second threat the new republic faced was the second threat all successful revolutions face, namely, invasion by an opportunistic enemy trying to take advantage of a neophyte central government. Tarquin had by this time taken refuge in Vieilles, and pleaded with the nobility there to aid him in reconquering Rome. He argued that the virus of republicanism might infect Truria and wipe out all the royal families in the region. The nobles of Vieilles were indeed worried about their subjects catching the freedom bug and, believing that Rome's leadership would be shaky and disjointed without a strong king in charge, agreed to aid Tarquin and attacked. However, to the surprise and consternation of Tarquin and the Vieilles, Brutus and Publius proved to be extremely capable commanders, routing the army from Vieilles easily. The battle was not without tragedy for the Romans though. In the middle of the fight, Brutus, liberator of Rome, was killed. His body was borne back to the city and Rome went into mourning for a full year.

Publius now stood alone and, like Collatinus before him, soon fell under suspicion by the fickle and paranoid masses. After the battle with the Vieilles, Publius began construction on a home atop the Velia, a ridge jutting from the north side of the Palatine hill. The people suspected him of making a fortress from which he could safely enslave them all. Publius caught wind of the sentiment and called a mass meeting, shaming the populace for their irrational fears and announcing that if it worried them so much, he would move his home to the bottom of the hill, where they could all keep watch on him. He further used the opportunity provided by the meeting to propose two new laws which made him a hero to the now assuaged masses and earned him the aforementioned title Publicola. The two laws are famous even to this day. The first stated that any man who tried to make himself king could be killed at any time by any other man without fear of reprisal, and the second stated that any decision by the magistrates could be appealed to the people's assemblies.

Publius, content with the single credit he received for these democratic initiatives, then called for an election to fill the open consulship. Marcus Horatius Pulvius was eventually elected after a short detour through a consul who was elected but then died from old age a few days later. This closed the first year of the Republic. Consulship settled, the people mollified, and Rome secure.

In the coming years the tension between patrician and plebe would dominate public life in Rome. The patricians wary always of runaway mob rule and the plebes seeing no practical difference between the overthrown king and the newly empowered senate. Next week we will jump headlong into this so-called conflict of the orders and witness the plebes voting with their feet and demanding a real voice in the allegedly democratic republic they had all fought so hard to establish and keep.