Texts in Context:
Senatus Populusque Romanus
By Gabriel Blanchard
Rome had rid herself of kings. Ridding herself of tyrants was another matter.
Patricians and Plebeians
Last week, we discussed the Roman monarchy and its downfall. Five hundred years passed, in which the Roman rēs publica, “public affairs,” know no monarch. These five centuries were felt to be the “gold standard” of their society. Nearly half the Romans on our author bank come from the age of the rēs publica: Terence, Cicero, Lucretius, Livy, even Virgil and Cæsar themselves, all grew to manhood in a world with no emperor. Still, the empire didn’t come out of nowhere. From the founding of the Republic near the end of the sixth century BC, all the way to the cementing of the Empire in 27 BC, Rome’s aspirations and inner contradictions continually transfigured her.
These tensions were mostly defined by class. From Rome’s own perspective, there were two basic classes in society: patricianī, i.e. the patricians or nobility; and plēbs, or commoners.1 The plebs were everything from artisans to day laborers to tenant farmers to merchants. Their job was to grow or make or trade for the material goods Rome needed to be a city. However, one of the interesting wrinkles of Roman culture was that the only really respectable full-time profession was farming (a truth which held well into the period of the empire). It was not impossible for one of the plebs to have an independent, prosperous farm; but there is a reason that being tenant farmers is the kind of agriculture that showed up just now in the list of ordinary plebeian professions.
The patricians may have started out as a priestly caste, like the brahmāṇi of India; whether that guess is correct or not, by the early Republic, they were a hereditary, landed, leisured class. If one were feeling nice, one might say the patricians’ job was to perpetuate the high culture Rome needed to be, not merely a city, but Rome. In any case, the patricians possessed the best agricultural land and, in the early Republic, a complete monopoly on political power. At first, this monopoly was not merely a practical custom, but had the force of law; and even after laws were altered, bit by bit, allowing plebeians into more and more offices, elected to office were often forbidden from most other work, while work for the state was not paid. In other words, only those who could afford to leave a prosperous farm to be managed by tenants or slaves were in a position to fill public offices at all.
Excursus: Important Offices of Ancient Rome2
A few important offices are explained briefly below. (Not all were instituted at the same time: tribunes of the people did not come into existence until after the founding of the Republic, while the Vestals were supposedly an older institution than Rome itself.)
- Censor [cēnsor, cēnsōris]. Official who conducted the census (listing all inhabitants of Rome with their class, family, and property), and had authority to punish violators of many laws and customs, whether the offense was public or private. Censors could even purge members from the Senate.
- Consul [cōnsul, cōnsulis]. The normal chief executive. Two consuls served simultaneously, for one year; each had the power to veto all acts of the other. If a consul died in office, a special election was held to choose a substitute (a suffect, or “replacement,” consul).
- Dictator [dictātor, dictātōris]. A chief executive appointed during states of emergency, with nigh-absolute power but a limited term of office.
- Supreme Pontiff [pontifex maximus, pontificis maximī]. The most senior Roman priest.
- Senator [Senātor, Senātōris]. Literally “elder”: a member of the Senate, an advisory body to the chief executive—not, as with most modern senates, a legislative body. Its prestige waxed and waned with time; it was most powerful in the early Republic.
- Tribune of the People [tribūnus plēbis, tribūnī plēbis]. An advocate for the rights of the plebs (one of a few offices for which only plebs were eligible). They had the right to veto any legislation, and were personally sacrosanct—i.e., laying violent hands on a tribune, for any reason, was punished by death.
- Vestal Virgin [Virgō Vestālis, Virginis Vestālis]. A priestess of Vesta, goddess of the hearth, who kept the sacred fire of the city. Vestals too were sacrosanct, answering only to their superior (the Vestalis Maxima) and the Pontifex Maximus. They had many unique privileges, e.g. the power to deliver those sentenced to death by a touch; but, they themselves were executed if they broke their vow of chastity.5
Imperialists and reactionaries often invoke Rome as the very model of order and obedience; but Rome was the very reverse. The real history of ancient Rome is much more like the history of modern Paris. It might be called in modern language a city built out of barricades.
The Conflict of the Orders
Being excluded from the halls of power was, for many among the plebs, a small concern in the early Republic. At the time, they made up the bulk of the army—and most plebs could not afford to staff a farm remotely all through a campaign season: one battle too many, and a veteran might come home from victory to a freshly ruined livelihood. They had little choice except to ask for loans from the patricians. But even receiving a loan did not resolve the root problem that had ruined their livelihood in the first place; accordingly, many of the plebs defaulted, and were forced into slavery to their patrician creditors, to work off the debt. To the shock of the patricians, this was not a sustainable system well-loved by all.
In 494 BC, while Rome was at war with tribes to its north, northeast, and southeast, the first “general strike” on the part of the plebs took place. It had been less than twenty years since the founding of the Republic. It was as a result of this not-quite-revolt that the office of tribune of the people was instituted. This was only the beginning of a centuries-long internal back-and-forth over the Roman constitution, known to historians as the conflict of the orders. The struggle to be protected from debt slavery became, at the same time, a struggle for the plebs to achieve equality before the law with the patricians.
The conflict of the orders is conventionally dated as falling between 494 and 287—coincidentally, around the same time as the stretch beginning with the Persian reconquest of Ionia and ending with the very last Wars of the Diadochi. (Almost smack in the middle of the period, in 387, Rome had its first go at the “being sacked” hobby it would go on rather to overindulge later in life, though for variety’s sake this early experiment was done by Gauls rather than Goths.) Not long after this, the Western Mediterranean would find its history defined by a series of three wars between two wealthy, ambitious, and—each in their own way—pious regional powers: Rome and Carthage.
1There was technically a third class: the equitēs, “horsemen,” or “knights” in older works. However, while many equitēs were noteworthy individuals, their impact as a class on the story of Rome was negligible.
4If you’d like to be extra thorough, you might also note the following titles:
Ædile [aedīle, aedīlis]. Overseer and maintainer of public works.
Flamen, or priest [flāmen, flāminis]. Most Roman gods were served by a flāmen. The most prestigious were the flāminēs Diālis, Mārtiālis, and Quirīnālis (priests of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus respectively).
Lictor [līctor, līctōris]. Bodyguard for certain officials (but not those who were personally sacrosanct). Lictors carried fascēs, bundles of sticks with an axe-blade protruding from within: these symbolized state power to punish non-lethally (the sticks: beating with rods) and lethally (the axe: beheading).
Prætor [praetor, praetōris]. Military commander. These later assumed civilian functions as well.
Quæstor [quaestor, quaestōris]. Criminal investigator; they later took on financial duties as auditors.
5This may seem to contradict the statement that the Vestal Virgins were sacrosanct, but the Romans had a way around this. If a Vestal were condemned to die, she would not be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock like most offenders; instead, she would be shut in an underground chamber with a small amount of food and drink—thus, starvation (and not her executioners) was “to blame” for her death.
Gabriel Blanchard is a proud uncle to seven nephews. He came to work for CLT in 2019, and serves as CLT’s editor at large. He lives in Baltimore, MD.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to check out our podcast, Anchored, where our CEO and founder, Jeremy Tate, talks with leading intellectuals both on current matters of education and policy and on perennial questions of goodness, truth, and beauty.
Published on 26th August, 2024. Page image of an engraving made in 1799: it represents the institution of the Twelve Tables, an important early code of Roman law, in 449 BC (drawing by Silvestre David Mirys, engraved by Claude-Nicolas Malapeau).