The Roman Republic. Michael Crawford
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Roman Republic - Michael Crawford страница 11
Название: The Roman Republic
Автор: Michael Crawford
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Историческая литература
isbn: 9780007385263
isbn:
Quite apart from providing the manpower which Rome controlled, the organization of Italy was also a considerable source of strength by reason of the loyalty which Rome was able to inspire by its means. In the first place, the range of statuses, with full citizens at one end and allies at the other and cives sine suffragio, citizens without the vote, and Latins in between prevented undue polarization. Secondly, the process of conquest of course involved deprivation, of booty or land or both, for the defeated; but once part of the Roman confederacy, they were entitled to a share in the spoils of the next stage and had indeed, as we shall see, an interest in ensuring that it took place. Finally, the way in which Italy was organized meant that there were open avenues of approach to full Roman citizenship. Civitas sine suffragio, citizenship without the vote, came to be regarded as a half-way house, whatever its original function; and it was possible for allies to join Latin colonies and thence, eventually no doubt, for their descendants to become Roman citizens.
It is also important to remember that apart from the levy, which was normally followed by a successful campaign, Roman rule lay light on the Italian communities; even in the case of incorporated communities, local government survived, and mostly the various elements of the Italian confederacy were left to themselves to perpetuate or evolve their own peculiar political structures. P. A. Brunt has indeed shown that the levy itself could not have been conducted without considerable local government institutions.
Given the power and preponderance of Rome, however, it is hardly surprising that the different cities of Italy should have increasingly assimilated themselves to Rome. Colonies obviously had a tendency at the outset to model themselves on different aspects of the city of Rome; thus Cosa, founded in 273, borrowed the notion of a curia, senate-house, linked with a circular comitium, place of assembly, directly from Rome. Building styles in general came increasingly to spread out from Rome to the periphery. And Cicero talks of the voluntary adoption of Roman institutions by Latin cities:
C. Furius once passed a law on wills, Q. Voconius on inheritance by women; there have been countless other measures on matters of civil law; the Latins have adopted those which they wished to adopt (pro Balbo 21).
The end product of the social and political process I have described is incisively delineated by Ennius, a native of Rudiae in Apulia, whose maturity belongs in the early second century (Annales, line 169 V): ‘The Campanians were then made Roman citizens.’
1. In 471 these regional units were chosen as the basis of a new organization of the Roman people for voting purposes, the comitia tributa, trial assembly (see Appendix 1).
2. Much later the rule was introduced whereby the magistrates of Latin communities acquired Roman citizenship.
3. A variety of ad hoc measures existed to provide jurisdiction for Roman citizens in colonies and scattered in individual assignations.
V From Italian Power to Mediterranean Power
THE REMOVAL OF the barriers against the participation of plebeians in the political and religious life of the Roman state was followed by the Roman assertion of her hegemony over Latium and then by the defeat of the Samnites and of the Gallic incursion of 295. The mixed patrician and plebeian nobility was tested and confirmed in power by the successes of those years; but it is also plausible to suppose that the opening up of avenues to power to groups previously excluded was likely to cause disturbances. The career of Appius Claudius Caecus, the earliest Roman to appear in our sources as a personality rather than the edifying stereotypes dear to the later Republic or the age of Augustus, provides evidence of such disturbances. Despite the deformation in a historical tradition often hostile to the gens to which he belonged, the essential outline is clear. His elogium, reinscribed at Arretium (Arezzo) in the age of Augustus, is startling enough, with its frequent repetition of magistracies:
Appius Claudius, son of Caius, Caecus (the blind), censor, consul twice, dictator, interrex three times, praetor twice, curule aedile twice, quaestor, tribune of the soldiers three times. He captured several towns from the Samnites, routed an army of Sabines and Etruscans. He prevented peace being made with King Pyrrhus. In his censorship he paved the Appian Way and built an aqueduct for Rome. He built the temple of Bellona (Inscr. It. XIII, 3, no. 79 – contrast the original funerary inscription of Scipio Barbatus, see here).
The most revolutionary period of Appius Claudius’ career was his censorship in 312:
Ap. Claudius had his fellow-magistrate L. Plautius under his thumb and disturbed many ancestral practices; for in currying favour with the people he paid no attention to the senate. First he built the aqueduct known as the Aqua Appia over a distance of nine miles to Rome and spent much public money on this project without senatorial approval; next he paved with stone blocks the greater part of the road named after him the Via Appia, which runs from Rome to Capua, the distance being well over 100 miles; and since he dug through high ground and filled in ravines and valleys even where substantial fill was needed, he spent all the available public money, but left an enduring monument to himself, deploying his ambition in public service.
And he changed the composition of the senate, not only enrolling the noble and eminent in rank, as was customary, but including many who were sons of freedmen; so that those who were proud of their nobility were angry. He also gave citizens the right to be enrolled in whichever regional tribe they wished and to be registered accordingly by the censors.
In general, seeing the cumulative hatred for him of the upper class, he avoided giving offence to any other citizen, contriving to gain the good-will of the masses to balance the hostility of the nobles. At the inspection of the cavalry (one of the functions of the censors), he deprived no man of the horse provided for him by the state (a way of disgracing someone), and in drawing up the list of senators, he ejected no member of the senate as unfit, unlike his predecessors. And the consuls, because of their hatred for him and their desire to curry favour with the upper class, summoned the senate not as constituted by Ap.Claudius, but as constituted by the preceding censors.
But the people, resisting these moves and sharing the ambition of Ap. Claudius and wishing to secure the advance of their class, elected as curule aedile (the election is effectively undated in Diodorus, but occurred for the year 304) Cn. Flavius, the son of a freedman, who was the first Roman whose father had been a slave to gain that (or presumably indeed any) office (Diodorus xx, 36, 1–6).
Apart from his other misdemeanours, Ap. Claudius refused to resign his censorship at the end of eighteen months according to the law and according to one tradition was still censor when a candidate for the consulship of 307. He was also remembered as the man who persuaded the family of the Potitii to make public the nature of the rites at the altar of Hercules, for which they had been responsible, and thereby invited their destruction by an angry divinity, and as the man who attacked the privileges of the sacred college of flautists (tibicines).
Much СКАЧАТЬ