The History of Rome, Book V: The Establishment of the Military MonarchyMommsen, Theodor
History
The History of Rome, Book V: The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
Mommsen, Theodor
Rome -- History
Not less important was the abolition of the arrangements
as to taxation established for Asia by Sulla,(3) which presumably
likewise fell to this year. The governor of Asia at that time,
Lucius Lucullus, was directed to reestablish the system of farming
the revenue introduced by Gaius Gracchus; and thus this important
source of money and power was restored to the great capitalists.
Renewal of the Censorship
Lastly, the censorship was revived. The elections for it,
which the new consuls fixed shortly after entering on their office,
fell, in evident mockery of the senate, on the two consuls of 682,
Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius, who had been removed
by the senate from their commands on account of their wretched
management of the war against Spartacus.(4) It may readily be conceived
that these men put in motion all the means which their important
and grave office placed at their command, for the purpose of doing
homage to the new-holders of power and of annoying the senate.
At least an eighth part of the senate, sixty-four senators, a number
hitherto unparalleled, were deleted from the roll, including Gaius
Antonius, formerly impeached without success by Gaius Caesar,(5)
and Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul of 683, and presumably also
not a few of the most obnoxious creatures of Sulla.
The New Constitution
Thus in 684 they had reverted in the main to the arrangements
that subsisted before the Sullan restoration.
Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest,
in other words by the provinces;(6) again the tribunician authority
gave to every demagogue a legal license to overturn the arrangements
of the state; again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue
and possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised their
heads alongside of the government as powerfully as ever; again the senate
trembled before the verdict of jurymen of the equestrian order and before
the censorial censure. The system of Sulla, which had based the monopoly
of power by the nobility on the political annihilation of the mercantile
aristocracy and of demagogism, was thus completely overthrown.
Leaving out of view some subordinate enactments, the abolition
of which was not overtaken till afterwards, such as the restoration
of the right of self-completion to the priestly colleges,(7) nothing
of the general ordinances of Sulla survived except, on the one hand,
the concessions which he himself found it necessary to make
to the opposition, such as the recognition of the Roman franchise
of all the Italians, and, on the other hand, enactments without
any marked partisan tendency, and with which therefore even judicious
democrats found no fault--such as, among others, the restriction
of the freedmen, the regulation of the functional spheres
of the magistrates, and the material alterations in criminal law.
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