Niebuhr's lectures on Roman history, Vol. 1 (of 3)Niebuhr, Barthold Georg
History
Niebuhr's lectures on Roman history, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Niebuhr, Barthold Georg
Rome -- History
absorbed in the idea that they were Roman. They acquired common _sacra_
like the tribes composed of clans, as Dionysius expressly mentions.
Sacred rites were always among the ancients a bond of union. That
the plebeian tribes had _sacra_, we know from the fact that Tarquin
the Proud positively forbade them. Besides this, there was a local
subdivision into _vici_ for the city, and into _pagi_ for the country.
Each of these vici had a warden (_magister_); each tribe, a tribune.
The same system was established at Athens. If for instance a person was
registered at Acharnæ, and emigrated to Sunium, he still remained an
Ἀχαρνεύς. As in the earlier times these tribes were all equal, there
was no occasion for any one to wish to be registered in another tribe;
but afterwards it was different, when there arose between the tribes
an inequality of political consideration, of which I shall afterwards
speak. The _tribus urbanæ_ were inferior to the _rusticæ_, and the
removal from the latter to the former was a _nota ignominiæ_: this
dates from the censorship of Fabius Maximus. If a man became a Roman
citizen _sine suffragio_, he was not received into a plebeian tribe;
nor could he get admission therein by isopolity or emancipation; and
therefore he could not hold any office, nor have a vote. A vote in the
plebeian tribes belonged only to those who were settled on the land,
and to the cultivators of the soil; he who got his livelihood by some
other trade was debarred from it.
Now that the lawgiver had constituted the two bodies, the patricians
and the plebeians, he might, as is done in modern states, have put them
side by side in two separate assemblies. Yet this was impracticable in
those earliest times, inasmuch as they both looked upon each other as
enemies. In order to effect an accommodation, Servius established the
centuries (_centuriæ_), similar to the _concilio grande_ in Venice,
in which every one was equal to his neighbour on entering the Hall,
whether he were rich or poor, each being in a plain garb. It was the
object of the centuries, to unite the patricians and the plebeians,
and those who grew up at the side of the plebeians, and now took the
place which these formerly held; and at the same time to exclude
those, who, as they had no property at all, could give no guarantee to
the state. The centuries therefore contained the whole of the first
estate; of the second, those who were qualified to vote; of the third,
all those, who, owing to their means, were equals of the second; and,
besides, some distinguished trades. Great confusion with regard to
this was created in Roman history by the views of Livy and Dionysius,
who imagined the tribes to have differed as to rank and fortune only.
They thought that the old body of the citizens, which contained the
patricians, had been divided into curies, and that these were all
placed on the same footing; but that this had been an oppressive
democracy which Servius Tullius had done away with by establishing
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