Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (25 page)

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Authors: Susan Ford Wiltshire

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they put factious men in charge of the state, then they drove most deserving citizens out of the country.

103

Cicero's objection to seated assemblies may have stemmed from the platforms such assemblies provided for demagogues. With no controls on their freedom of speech, not even the discomfort of their listeners, they could harangue the people at will and bring about unforeseen and objectionable results.
One of the great strengths of Roman political lifeand one remarked upon with astonishment by Greekswas the extent of citizenship. Slaves manumitted by citizens became citizens themselves and after one generation could hold public office. The citizen body was the basis of the military and, in a way much more rigid and pervasive than the Athenian, military considerations in the time of the republic defined Roman civic participation.
From very early times, perhaps the early republic, but ascribed by Roman tradition to the reign of Servius Tullius, the penultimate king toward the end of the sixth century
B.C.
,
104
Roman citizens were classified into centuries on the basis of wealth. The 193 centuries of the
comitia centuriata
were political units organized to regulate Rome's armed forces by classifying the citizens according to their ability to equip themselves for various military units. At the top were 18 centuries of mounted
equites
, and next came the first class, consisting of 2 centuries of
fabri
(noncombatant armorers) and 80 of the 170 centuries of infantrymen, or
pedites
. The remaining
pedites
were divided into four further classes in descending order of wealth. The fifth class, for example, could afford only javelins and slings. The proletariat (
proletarii,
or "offspring givers," since they had nothing but offspring to contribute to the Roman state), also called
capite censi
, were enrolled by their name alone, since they had no wealth. They constituted one huge century at the bottom. Even though modifications in this system were made with time, the principle remained unchanged that fewer of the wealthier citizens constituted the higher centuries and

 

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classes and that these centuries and classes voted first, so that the wealthy few always had primacy in the assembly.
Cicero in his
Republic
approves the spirit and effect of the so-called Servian reforms, which for him enshrined a basic principle of governance: "He made this division in such a way that the greatest number of votes belonged, not to the common people, but to the rich, and put into effect the principle which ought always to be adhered to in the commonwealth, that the greatest number should not have the greatest power (
ne plurimum valeant plurimi
)."

105

The growth of the power of the plebeians involved the creation of plebeian officials, of whom the most important were the tribunes of the plebs, and of another assembly, the
concilium plebis
or
comitia tributa
, the plebeians organized by tribes based originally on the place of domicile. Later a
comitia populi tributa
, to which patricians were also admitted, was founded, and the earlier
comitia curiata
persisted in form but was no longer attended by the people.
106
These assemblies met for the purpose of voting on magistrates and laws.
The plebeian organization, in creating its assembly, preserved what Michael Crawford calls "one of the most curious features of existing Roman assemblies,"
107
namely voting by groups. Indeed, the very word
comitia
means "goings together," referring to sorting into groups for the purpose of voting. It was never the case in any Roman assembly that decisions were reached by a simple majority of those present and voting. Each group had one vote, and the decision of the assembly was the decision of a majority of the groups.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes the procedure of voting. All 193 centuries of the six classes assembled in the Field of Mars. Standing under their centurions and standards as in war, they voted in the order of wealth when called upon by the consuls. There were 98 centuries in the first class. With one vote per century, if 97 of them agreed (97 to 96 = 193), then voting proceeded no further down through the centuries. Dionysius remarks: "The poorest of the citizens, who were no less numerous than

 

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all the rest, voted last and made but one century; they were exempt from the military levies and from the war taxes paid by the rest of the citizens in proportion to their ratings, and for both these reasons were given the least honor in voting."

108

In the
contio
(from
conventio
, "gathering"), the people gathered together en masse in unsorted crowds to listen to announcements or speeches, often but not always prior to leaving for voting. Only the magistrates had the right to summon the
contio
and to determine who would address the people. Although the main purpose of the
contiones
was speaking, access to the platform was carefully controlled. It included the presiding magistrates and men from the Senate who were not in office at the time. Sometimes opponents of a measure were also asked to speak, but only to prevent their being given the chance to speak at a
contio
held by an opposing tribune.
109
Polybius, eager to advance his theory that Rome's greatness resulted from the separation and balance of powers among three equal entities (monarchy = consuls, aristocracy = senate, democracy = people), describes the part left for the people to play since between them the Senate and consuls took care of war, peace, revenues, and all matters foreign and domestic. "But nevertheless there is a part, and a very important part, left for the people. For it is the people which alone has the right to confer honors and inflict punishment, the only bonds by which kingdoms and states and in a word all human society are held together.... Thus here again one might plausibly say that the people's share in the government is the greatest, and that the constitution is a democratic one."
110
In her discussion of the fact that the Romans stood rather than sat in both the
contiones
and the
comitia
, Taylor emphasizes the Roman distrust of having the people deliberate and vote at the same time.
111
She concludes that by the age of Caesar, however, it mattered little anymore. The "Greekling" mobs in the city gave way in importance to the professional soldiers loyal to their generals, and when Caesar won supremacy through his legions, the republic was at an end. "It is significant," says

 

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Taylor,'' that the only famous
contio
under the dictatorship of Caesar is the one he called on the outskirts of Rome to speak to the soldiers of the Tenth Legion, the speech in which he quelled a mutiny by addressing the soldiers as civilians,
Quirites
.''

112

The republican forms were maintained under the empire, and Augustus, zealous to appear to keep them, built a fine new rostra or speakers' platform at the temple of the Divine Julius. But the only salient feature of the republican
contio
that was maintained was the tradition of standing rather than sitting. As Taylor wryly notes: "The men who attended did not sit down on the job; instead they stood on their feet, and let the world see the vigor inherent in the Roman race."
113
The need of the upper classes to control the Roman populace, evident from the very beginning, made any private association outside the established public order cause for suspicion. One example is the funeral associations or burial guilds that were widespread among the lower classes. Caesar banned all private associations as potentially subversive; the burial guilds alone were allowed by Augustus to start up again.
Generally it seems that the funerary colleges (
collegia tenuiorum
) did not require special authorization. Marcian writes: "But it is permitted to the
tenuiores
to contribute a monthly subscription provided, however, that they meet only once a month, lest under a pretext of this kind an unlicensed college arise."
114
An inscription of a
senatus consultum
found at Lanuvinum also seems to indicate that the right of assembly was granted generally to funerary associations.
115
The evidence seems to be that a whole category of
collegia
or associations was thus exempt from compliance with the requirement of special approval,
coire licet
. The Christians found cover under this guise, and it may be that the adherents of Mithraism did so as well.
116
One interpretation of this unusual permissiveness in the Roman state is that the emperors did not fear sedition from the lower classes, among whom these practices were most common. The exemption did not apply to the

 

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middle and upper classes, which alone could have constituted a threat to the emperor.

117

In summary, the Roman assemblies amounted to carefully contrived forms for maintaining the power of the oligarchic aristocracy. The Romans, ever scornful of Athenian democracy, never created even the fiction of vesting actual political power in the populace. Furthermore, the oligarchy looked with suspicion on private associations of any kind because of the possibility that such groups might achieve a measure of power.
Ironically, this tenacious resistance to popular power meant ultimately that the Senate and the Roman people lacked the ability to prevent the usurpation of supreme power by the most popular individual of all, Julius Caesar. Thus came the end of an oligarchic but successful republic, which had lasted nearly five hundred years.
Right to Petition
The Roman suspicion of popular assemblies carried over into the matter of petition. Petitions to the
princeps
for redress of grievances were common during the empire, but these were individual petitions handled individually by the emperor, not expressions of mutually interdependent relationships in the civic realm.
A great portion of the Roman law that has come down to us is the product of the first three centuries of the empire, the period when the emperors were in fact serving as lawmakers. Once the principate began, the emperor was expected to assume many of the functions that previously had been held by a variety of officials. He frequently acted as judge and issued opinions on points of law. At least from the reign of Tiberius if not earlier, the Roman ruler provided essentially a legal aid service to the empire. Private citizens, even women and slaves, could submit a written petition, called a
libellus
, to the emperor for advice about legal problems. Private petitionsfor a benefit, for legal advice, for some sort of protectionwere generally presented by individuals, although Honoré

 

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