A History of the Roman World (12 page)

In primitive times the Roman people was divided into three tribes (
tribus
), the Ramnes, Tides and Luceres, about which very little is known. They probably do not represent three original settlements of Romans, Sabines and Etruscans
and may even comprise groupings that existed before Rome in any sense became a city. Some scholars believe that their names are Etruscan, and that consequently their origin is much later, but the names could be later Etruscanized forms of earlier Latin words. Unlike the Greek phylae, they had, as far as we know, no political significance.
³²
Rather, the earliest group of importance is the
curia
, ten of which were said to form each tribe.

The establishment of thirty
curiae
is attributed to Romulus. A
curia
meant both a ‘gathering of people’ (
co-viria
, i.e. a section of the Roman people included in the three tribes) and a place where they met, on the north-east corner of the slopes of the Palatine. The names, of which eight survive, are based on gentile or place names, such as Acculeia or Veliensis. The
curiae
were perhaps formed on the basis of kinship rather than of locality, because each was composed of a number of
gentes
(so that membership of a
gens
determined to which
curia
a man belonged), while the number of
gentes
in each
curia
probably varied, as did the size of the clans. The
curiae
correspond to the Attic
phratriae
and are found among other Latin peoples beside the Romans. The members banded themselves together for mutual protection, and developed three aspects, religious, military and political. Each
curia
may have had its own territory, and like any early association, each had its own cult and
sacra
presided over by its
curio
; further, groups of
curiae
held communal agricultural festivals such as the Fordicidia (when pregnant cows were sacrificed) and the Fornacalia (a feast of ovens), partly separately in each
curia
, and partly together, when they were presided over by a
curio maximus
. They paid special devotion to Juno Quiritis. Although not part of the organization of the army, each
curia
nevertheless was the unit from which a hundred infantrymen (
centuria
) were raised. Three centuries of cavalry were also raised, but perhaps directly from the tribes, since they had the tribal names of Titienses, Ramnes and Luceres (which they retained when their number was doubled to six, traditionally by Tullus Hostilius: Romulus’ three centuries of
celeres
became the
sex suffragia)
. As the state became more powerful than the individual families of which it was composed, the
curiae
gradually assumed the aspect of a corporate political body, the Comitia Curiata. In very early days its will was probably expressed by shouting, but at some point a system of group voting was evolved, a fundamental Roman device: within each
curia
a majority vote of all its members decided the vote of the
curia
, which counted as one unit in the vote of the whole Comitia. It included all the citizens, not the patricians alone (if in fact such a clear-cut division yet existed), but its powers and duties were limited by the executive power of the king and the consultative rights of the Senate. In practice, the method of voting was less democratic than it appears, for in each
curia
the well-organized noble clans and their dependents outweighed the scattered votes of the plebs; a majority of groups, not necessarily an absolute majority of individuals, decided each question. The Comitia
Curiata met to witness certain private acts, such as adoption and the execution of the early form of will. It conferred authority (
imperium
) on the king, but had little choice as to the ruler himself, who had been nominated by an
interrex
and ratified by the Senate. It met to hear the king’s decrees, as there was no other way of publishing them, and it might be called upon to express consent to the declaration of war. Thus the power of the people found little effective expression.
³³

A Council of Elders (
senatus
) was formed by certain leading members of patrician
gentes
, but not by the heads of all of them; it was rather a body of advisers selected by the king from the ruling families. Its numbers varied; Romulus is said to have chosen one hundred; with Tatius he doubled the number by admitting representatives of the
minores gentes
. Livy attributes this action to Tarquinius Priscus who, according to Dionysius, raised the total to three hundred, which remained the normal number till the day of Sulla; but these figures are doubtless too large for the early period and are suppositions on the part of later writers. Once appointed, the senators held office for life, and vacancies were filled by the king who added to the list (
conscribere)
; thus the Senate had the double title of Patres (et) Conscripti.
³⁴
Its powers were at first consultative rather than deliberative. Custom demanded that the king should summon and consult the
patres
, but he could reject their advice (
senatus consultum)
. At the king’s death, the one occasion when they could meet unsummoned, they appointed an
interrex
or viceroy, or several in succession, to nominate a king. The existence of
interreges
thus upheld the continuity of
Imperium
, and there was no ‘demise of the Crown’. The candidate chosen by the
interrex
had then to be sanctioned by the
patrum auctoritas
. As the Senate lived on while kings came and went, it became the repository of ancestral custom and of the traditional knowledge of divine and human law, by which the
pax deorum
could be maintained; it conferred on the king himself, and later on the consuls, the authority to perform the
auspicia
to determine the will of heaven. It thus came to gain a unique authority in the state, though in the regal period it was of little political account.

All administrative and executive power (
imperium
) was vested in the king or in those to whom he delegated it. The kingship was elective, not hereditary; though the king may have nominated or suggested his successor, who might coincide with the choice of the
interrex
, he had apparently no right to do this. However simple the outward style of the earlier Latin kings may or may not have been, the authority of the later Etruscan kings was reflected in their trappings of office. On formal occasions they sat, arrayed in purple, on an ivory chair (
sella curulis
, so called because it was set on a chariot,
currus
) and were attended by lictors carrying the
fasces
which grimly exhibited their
imperium
(p. 29). After successful campaigns they led their army in triumphal procession through the city streets. At this ceremony, which may originally
have involved a ritual purification of the soldiers and city, the Etruscan kings wore the purple and gold clothing of Jupiter, and had their faces painted with vermilion like that of the god’s terracotta statue in the Capitoline temple. As the triumphator stood in his four-horsed chariot, his escorting army shouted ‘
io, triumphe
’ (while a servant in the chariot kept repeating: ‘Remember that you are mortal’).
³⁵
Once elected, the king held office for life and was supreme as general, priest and judge. Perhaps his primary function had been to rule and guide (
regere
) the people in war. To this end he could impose a war tax (
tributum
), and he exercised power of life and death over his troops. As priest he was responsible for maintaining the
pax deorum
and for the performance of religious rites, auspices and festivals. He could delegate any of his functions to subordinates: he could leave a
praefectus urbi
in charge of the city when he rode forth to war, and he nominated pontiffs, augurs or flamens to share his religious duties.

One of his chief duties as priest was fixing the calendar of the year. Numa as we have seen (p. 47) was credited with the creation of a new twelve-month calendar to replace the older ten-month one (March to December) which in turn had traditionally been the work of Romulus. This reform, however, although almost certainly belonging to the regal period, was more probably the work of one of the Etruscan kings. The new calendar helped to correlate the lunar with the solar year, but had to be adjusted at suitable intervals by the insertion of an intercalary month of 22 or 23 days (a refinement which was perhaps added or elaborated in 450
BC
). The king was responsible personally for reporting to his people, on the calends (the first day of the month), after a minor priest had announced to him the appearance of the new moon. King and priest then sacrificed to Juno, while the
regina
, the king’s wife, sacrificed to her in the Regia. He then summoned the people (cf.
calare
, to call) and an announcement was made about how many days would elapse until the nones (either the fifth or seventh day). This notice was required in order to give the country people time to gather on the nones to hear the king himself announce which days of the month would be
fasti
, which
nefasti
, that is, days on which public business, such as the summoning of an assembly or the dispensation of justice, might or might not be transacted.
³⁶

As judge the king wielded wide powers, especially in cases of treason and homicide, although we cannot trace in detail the relationship of public to private law. A number of
leges regiae
were ascribed to the regal period.
³⁷
To some extent the king’s jurisdiction was limited by the authority of the
paterfamilias
over his household and by the power of the
gentes
, so that his ability to intervene in disputes between private citizens was restricted. On the other hand, he was responsible for the security of the state, so he delegated capital cases to specially appointed officials:
duoviri perduellionis
, who dealt with cases of treason (
perduellio
), and
quaestores
(later
quaestores parricidii
) to investigate murder
(the precise meaning of
parricidium
is uncertain: later it was applied to the murder of a father).
³⁸
The punishments suggest great antiquity: hanging on a tree sacred to the infernal gods for
perduellio
, and sewing in a sack and casting into the Tiber for
parricidium
. Whether any possibility of appeal to the people (
provocatio
) existed in the regal period is uncertain. Cicero (
de rep.
, i, 54) said that it did: this he said on the authority of the records of the pontiffs and the augural books of his own day. If he was right, any revision of a capital sentence by the Comitia Curiata must surely have depended on the king’s pleasure rather than on any law. In general, the king’s control of criminal justice seems to have been effective; at any rate the blood-feud, which bedevilled so many early states, as for instance Athens, was absent from early Rome.

The extent of the king’s authority depended upon his relation to the Senate. Many have judged that this had a contractual basis: the leaders of the
gentes
chose a leader for war and religious matters, while retaining for themselves in the Senate considerable power. Others have insisted on the absoluteness of the king’s authority. The truth may lie perhaps somewhere between these extremes, which in a sense correspond to the two successive stages which Roman historians later saw in the development of the monarchy: the early Latin-Sabine kings respected the
gentes
, while the later Etruscan rulers were more aggressive and lawless.

Servius Tullius is credited with a reform, military in origin and political in development, which had far-reaching consequences. In order to meet the growing military needs of the day it was considered necessary to take a census of the people and to reclassify them on the basis of wealth and age in a new structure that would supersede the old ‘Romulean’ tribes and gentile
curiae
. A chief reason for the complexity of the reform was the desirability of incorporating into the citizen body all the immigrants whom trade had attracted to Rome in order to make them liable for military service, but this could scarcely be effected through the existing conservative
curiae
, which were based on kinship. So a system of new tribes was devised, which was based on a census of all free residents and in which domicile was the title to citizenship. From this change there developed a new political assembly, which gradually ousted the older Comitia Curiata. The ancient accounts of this reform record many details which were elaborated only after years of development: consequently many scholars would date the reform to the fifth or even the beginning of the fourth century. But although it scarcely sprang complete from the head of Servius, its essence probably goes back to the regal period. It will therefore be described at this point, though it must be remembered that its principles rather than its details belong to this age.

For the sake of simplicity it will be convenient to consider the military aspects first: this will involve tracing the growth of the Roman army. The earliest army comprised some 3,000 infantry, each of the three Romulean
tribes providing 1,000 men commanded by a
tribunus militum
, and each of the corps being divided into ten units (
centuriae
) which corresponded to the ten
curiae
of each tribe (p. 61). In addition, three squadrons of 100 horsemen (
equites
or
celeres
), each under a
tribunus celerum
, were raised, directly from the tribes. Armed probably with a long body-shield and throwing-spear, the early Roman soldier fought in a somewhat rough-and-ready fashion, like the armies of other city-states in their earlier ‘heroic’ stages of growth. The nobles (whether patricians alone is uncertain) provided the cavalry, whose role in battle is also obscure: possibly the
equites
may primarily have formed the king’s bodyguard and not have played a major part in battle tactics.
³⁹
But radical changes in methods of warfare had been taking place in Greece in the early seventh century and had spread to Etruria certainly by the time of Servius Tullius. These consisted in the adoption of a new battle-line of heavily-armed soldiers (hoplites) who were suitably equipped: the full panoply comprised helmet, breastplate, greaves, shield, sword and spear. To meet Rome’s expanding military, economic and social needs Servius Tullius instituted a major reform of the army: he doubled the number of men, levied them on the basis of wealth, of new tribes (see below) in place of the old three, and of centuries in place of the old thousands. The new levy (
legio
) now consisted of 6,000 infantry, organized into sixty centuries; the men were armed with a sword and a round shield (
clipeus
) fastened to the forearm (one such bronze
clipeus
has been found in a tomb of
c.
600
BC
on the Esquiline).
⁴⁰
The cavalry was also increased, either to six centuries (
sex suffragia
) or possibly in two stages, first (by Tarquinius Priscus?) to six and then by Servius to eighteen; these consisted of sixty
turmae
, each of thirty
equites
, corresponding to the sixty centuries of the legion.
⁴¹
The new battle-line of sixty centuries of hoplites was the
classis
, with all the rest named
infra classem
; or possibly, even at the time of its establishment by Servius a division into Five
classes
had already been made, and the battle-line was formed by members of the top three
classes
. In other words, some scholars would see two stages of development here (first a single undifferentiated
classis
, then a fivefold subdivision), others only one (five
classes
from the beginning of the reform).
⁴²
The next stage of development, which falls after the regal period (either when the Republic was established or later) was the division of this organization into two legions, each of 3,000 legionaries, each commanded by a consul.