2. The Birth of the Republic

According to tradition, the last Etruscan ‘king’ of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, also known as Tarquin the Proud, was expelled by the Roman people in 509 BC. It may be that he tried to change the status of a tribal chief (rex), to which the Romans were accustomed, into something resembling an actual king and thus came into collision with the Roman aristocracy.

In any case, it is clear that the revolt against Etruscan rule coincided with a sharp decline in Etruscan power. As we have seen, the southerly expansion of the Etruscans brought them into direct conflict with the wealthy and powerful Greek city-states. This encounter proved fatal.

After some initial successes Etruria suffered defeat and its fortunes were eclipsed. It was this weakening of Etruscan power that enabled the Romans, around 500 BC, to carry out a successful rebellion against the Etruscans and gain their independence. This prepared the way for their future development.

It is at this point that Rome abandoned monarchy in favour of a republican system. The banishment of the last rex led to the replacement of the office of rex by two military leaders (consuls) with equal powers. The new republican constitution was based on a Senate, composed of the patricians of the city, along with popular assemblies which involved political participation for most of the freeborn men and elected magistrates annually. The public power consisted of the body of citizens liable for military service.

The two consuls were elected and possessed almost absolute powers (imperium). They controlled the army and interpreted and executed the laws. But the consuls’ powers were limited by two things: firstly, they were elected for only one year; secondly, each could veto the decisions of the other.

In theory, the Senate possessed no executive powers. It merely advised the consuls on domestic and foreign policy, as well as finance and religious matters. But since the senators and consuls all came from the same class, they almost always acted in the same spirit and followed the same class interests. In fact, Rome was ruled by an exclusive and aristocratic club.

Ultimate power supposedly resided in the popular assembly of the comitia centuriata, which elected the consuls on a yearly basis. But just as in our modern bourgeois democracy the power of the electorate remains in practice a legal fiction to a large extent, so in Rome, the power of the assembly of Roman citizens was effectively annulled, as Michael Grant points out:

However, this Assembly had been weighted from the beginning so that the centuries of the well-to-do possessed far greater voting power than the poor. Moreover, candidates for the consulship were proposed in the Assembly by the senators, from their own ranks. The Assembly, it was true, enacted laws and declared war and peace, and conducted trials (iudicia populi). Yet the senators, with their superior prestige and wealth, controlled its votes on all such occasions. In many respects, therefore, the legal appearance of democracy was sharply corrected by what in fact happened.^[1]

Patronage

There was yet another factor that undermined the power of the Assembly. In the fifth century BC there were around fifty-three patrician clans (gentes) that are known to us, although the actual number may have been greater. This would mean that a closed body of not more than a thousand families ruled Rome.

In turn, a smaller body of especially powerful clans exercised supreme control: the Aemilii, the Cornelii, the Fabii, and later on, the Claudii. This means that the patricians comprised less than one-tenth of the total citizen population, and possibly not more than one-fourteenth. The question is: how was it possible for such a small number of people to dominate Rome?

The answer is really quite simple. In any society the ruling class is too small to exercise its class domination without the aid of a larger class of dependents. There is always a large number of sub-exploiters, sub-sub-exploiters and parasites who are at the service of the rulers of society. The relationship between patrons and clients had its roots in the primitive gentile organisation of the city in its earliest days, but was transformed by the division of Roman society into distinct and unequal classes.

The Senate was composed of the heads of families (patres familias) and other prominent citizens. The power of the patricians was partly based on tradition (the age-old memory of clan loyalties), partly on their monopoly of religious rites (which were inherited) and the right to consult the auguries, and the calendar (also a religious practice), but also through their inherited clients.

In ancient Rome, in addition to ties of blood and marriage, there existed an extensive system of patronage. The rich and powerful patroni were surrounded by a large number of dependent clients (clientes), who looked to them for protection and help. The client was a free man who entrusted himself to the patronage of another and received favours and protection in return.

It was similar to the kind of relation found in societies dominated by the Mafia, and it is not impossible that it is the distant historical ancestor of the latter. But in ancient Rome, clientela was all-pervasive. It was also hereditary. The obligation of the patrons to their clients was regarded as absolute. A law of the mid-fifth century BC condemns any patron who fails to meet his obligation to his clients.

The system of clientela succeeded to some extent in blunting the sharp differences between the patricians and the plebs. As long as the latter was kept happy by the concessions and favours provided by their patrons, they were willing to accept the leading status of the patricians. But although all clients were plebeians, not all plebeians were clients. For example, immigrant traders were left out in the cold. Moreover, the total exclusion of the plebs from political power constituted a constant source of discontent. The lower orders were excluded from the consulship and, initially, from the Senate.

To the poor majority of plebeians, this was an academic question, since they could not afford to take up public office anyway. But to the minority of the plebs who had acquired a certain level of wealth, this exclusion from public office and what is known as ‘the fruits of office’ was a very sore point. This was the layer that put itself at the head of social protest, either for genuine reasons or to further its own advance.

Their position was comparable to that of the reformist labour leaders of today, who use the labour movement as a means of personal advancement. As one British Labour leader put it: “I am in favour of the emancipation of the working class, one by one, commencing with myself.” Such a mentality has been present throughout the history of class struggle, beginning with the Roman Republic, although not all the popular leaders were cynical careerists, then or now.

Debt slavery

This was a time when famine was a permanent threat. Grain shortages occurred at regular intervals. In order to prevent such disasters (and distract the attention of the plebeians) the Roman ruling class established the cult of Ceres, the goddess of grain, about 496 BC. This, for obvious reasons, was a cult of the plebeians, who knew all about the lack of bread.

The number of plebeians who were falling into debt rose inexorably. And if a man did not have the means of settling his debts, his only solution was to offer his own body to his creditors. He became a ‘man in fetters’ (nexus). He was not formally a slave, but in practice the difference was academic. It was similar to the bonded labour in the West Indies in the eighteenth century or on the South-Asian Subcontinent today.

The phenomenon of debt slavery became increasingly common. “If a debtor to the state did not fulfil his obligations, he was without further ceremony sold with all that he had; the simple demand on the part of the state was sufficient to establish the debt.”^[2] Once a man had sunk into debt slavery, there was little or no possibility of ever regaining freedom.

This problem was at the heart of the bitter class antagonism that emerged in the first century of the Republic, and the blind hatred of the plebeians towards the patrician governing class. Livy’s History is full of examples of the class struggle in the early period of the Republic:

But a war with the Volscians was imminent, and the State was torn with internal dissensions; the patricians and the plebeians were bitterly hostile to one another, owing mainly to the desperate condition of the debtors. They loudly complained that whilst fighting in the field for liberty and empire they were oppressed and enslaved by their fellow-citizens at home; their freedom was more secure in war than in peace, safer amongst the enemy than amongst their own people.^[3]

He cites the example of a veteran, a former centurion, who emerged in the forum pale and emaciated from hunger and destitution:

To persons repeatedly inquiring, whence that garb, whence that ghastly appearance of body, (the multitude having now assembled around him almost like a popular assembly), he says “that whilst serving in the Sabine war, because he had not only been deprived of the produce of his land in consequence of the depredations of the enemy, but also his residence had been burned down, all his effects pillaged, his cattle driven off, a tax imposed on him at a time very distressing to him, he had incurred debt; that this debt, aggravated by usury, had stripped him first of his father’s and grandfather’s farm, then of his other property; lastly that a pestilence, as it were, had reached his person. That he was taken by his creditor, not into servitude, but into a house of correction and a place of execution.” He then showed his back disfigured with the marks of stripes still recent. At the hearing and seeing of this a great uproar takes place.^[4]

The angry mood of the populace is described here in vivid terms. This incident provoked a riot, which spread through the entire city.

These popular tumults continued unabated for a long time. The ruling class responded to the threat from below with the usual methods – a combination of trickery, deceit and bloody repression. The leaders of the plebs were invariably drawn from the wealthiest, who were always willing to betray the interests of the poor in return for political concessions from the patricians. The latter gave concessions to the wealthy plebeian leaders. They first allowed selected representatives of this layer to enter the Senate.

The American Marxist, Daniel de Leon, gives a good description of the position of the latter, which he compares to that of modern labour leaders in bourgeois parliaments:

But there, among the august and haughty patrician Senators, the Plebs Leaders were not expected to emit a sound. The patricians argued, the patricians voted, the patricians decided. When they were through, the tellers turned to the Plebs Leaders. But they were not even then allowed to give a sign with their mouths. Their mouths had to remain shut: their opinion was expressed with their feet. If they gave a tap, it meant they approved; if they gave no tap, it meant they disapproved; and it didn’t much matter either way.^[5]

Revolt of the plebs

Every military victory purchased with the blood of the plebeian soldier, merely served to strengthen the position of the patricians and the wealthy plebeians, who were increasingly bound together by economic interests and fear of the poor plebeians.

At the other extreme, the problems of the poor continued to worsen, in particular debts and debt slavery, which led to renewed calls for relief. The resulting tensions between the classes flared up in a series of rebellions.

The first recorded strike in history was that of the Egyptian workers engaged on the construction of the mortuary temple of the Pharaoh Ramesses III in 1159 BC. But the first record of what amounted to a general strike was in the early period of the Roman Republic.

The Roman plebs of this period were that nameless majority who from time immemorial have ploughed the fields, planted the grain, baked the bread, fought in the wars. And this fact was brought to the attention of the noble patricians in a very novel way. On at least five occasions, in fact, the plebs threatened to ‘secede’ by withdrawing from Rome altogether. The problem was that, whereas the plebs could do very well without the patricians, the latter could not do without the plebs at all.

Things came to a head in 494 BC. Livy gives a detailed account, which is possibly more of fiction than history, but offers a captivating illustration of the process of popular rebellion, and in the absence of more reliable sources, it would be a shame not to repeat his account here.

The handing over of plebeian veterans and their families into debt slavery so enraged the masses that they refused to enlist for the army and held “secret conferences” and “nightly gatherings”. The response of the senators was to order the consuls to double down on the levy as “it was idleness that made the plebeians lawless”. In response, the crowd declared:

[…] it was impossible to deceive the commons any longer; the consuls would never have a single soldier unless a public guarantee were given: liberty must first be restored to every man before arms were given him, that he might fight for his country and his fellow-citizens, not for a master.^[6]

Again, the consuls turned to the senators for guidance and proposed reforms to allay the discontent of the plebs. The senators, with the hardened reactionary Appius Claudius at their head, instead chose to appoint a ‘dictator’, a magistrate who was appointed by the Senate to exercise full powers, including over the life and death of citizens, for a limited period in order to tackle a specific problem. However, fearing revolution if they appointed a vicious enemy of the plebs such as Claudius as dictator, the Senate opted for a ‘moderate’, Manius Valerius, who reassured the plebeians that no oppressive acts would be taken against them.

At this time Rome was threatened by a formidable invasion from the surrounding mountain tribes and Valerius levied an army to fight it off. Following the victory of the Romans, Valerius came to the Senate appealing for measures to alleviate the suffering of the plebs. When the Senate refused, he ominously announced: “For my own part I will not be the means of further disappointing my fellow citizens […] I will play my part as a private citizen rather than as a dictator, when the mutiny breaks out.”^[7]

The city rested on a knife edge. At last the tipping point came when the Senate tried to draft the plebs into the army once more, on the pretext of another foreign invasion. The masses immediately left the city and set up camp at the Mons Sacer, or ‘Sacred Mount’. “There”, Livy writes, “without any leader, they fortified their camp with stockade and trench, and continued quietly, taking nothing but what they required for their subsistence, for several days, neither receiving provocation nor giving any.”^[8]

In panic, the Senate sent an ambassador to appeal to the plebeians, who offered a fable so characteristic of the psychology of the ruling classes of all times that it deserves repeating in full:

In the days when man’s members did not all agree amongst themselves, as is now the case, but had each its own ideas and a voice of its own, the other parts thought it unfair that they should have the worry and the trouble and the labour of providing everything for the belly, while the belly remained quietly in their midst with nothing to do but to enjoy the good things which they bestowed upon it; they therefore conspired together that the hands should carry no food to the mouth, nor the mouth accept anything that was given it, nor the teeth grind up what they received. While they sought in this angry spirit to starve the belly into submission, the members themselves and the whole body were reduced to the utmost weakness. Hence it had become clear that even the belly had no idle task to perform, and was no more nourished than it nourished the rest, by giving out to all parts of the body that by which we live and thrive, when it has been divided equally amongst the veins and is enriched with digested food – that is, the blood.^[9]

A class that enriches the rest by its consumption, or to put it another way: the trickle-down economics of the fifth century BC.

In addition to these honeyed words a compromise was agreed, in which the plebs were allowed to elect two Tribunes of the Plebs (tribuni plebis) who represented their interests and existed side by side with the two patrician consuls. This was the first victory of the plebs.

The tribune had extensive powers, and could veto the consuls, while he was supposed to be inviolate. He could also seal the Public Treasury, and thus bring the whole business of the State to a grinding halt. However, as usual, the Senate found ways and means of getting round this. In the first place, a tribune had no salary, and therefore the office could (yet again) only be held by a citizen of independent means.

The patricians, as we have seen, were descended from the original Roman tribal aristocracy and constituted a privileged class that exploited and oppressed the rest of the population, the plebeians. The influx of immigrants from other tribes may be part of the explanation for the sharp line of differentiation between the patricians and plebs in early Roman history. This has even led some to speculate as to whether the plebeians were a different people to the patricians, who regarded them as racially inferior.

Whether or not one accepts the hypothesis that the original difference between patricians and plebeians can be explained by different ethnic origins, one thing is certain: that throughout the history of class society, the ruling class has always looked upon the poor and labouring classes with contempt, and in fact regards them as something like a different species, an inferior class of people, unfit to rule society or run industry – a class of inferior beings whose sole purpose is to work to keep their ‘betters’ in luxury, and to breed new generations of slaves for the same purpose.

The very word ‘aristocracy’ signifies ‘rule of the best’ in the Greek language, and the Latin word proletarii, from which the word ‘proletarian’ originates, means precisely a class that is only fit for the task of reproduction, like any farmyard animal. Hegel, who was well aware of these class contradictions in Roman society, explained:

The weaker, the poorer, the later additions of population are naturally underrated by, and in a condition of dependence upon those who originally founded the state, and those who were distinguished by valour, and also by wealth. It is not necessary, therefore, to take refuge in a hypothesis which has recently been a favourite one – that the Patricians formed a particular race.^[10]

The Decemvirate

The plebeian agitation led to a series of reforms. In 471 BC the Senate was forced to accept the establishment of a special assembly, composed exclusively of plebeians, the concilium plebis. This was to be convened by the tribunes and had the right to adopt certain measures (plebiscita). But this was yet another trick, since these decisions did not have the status of law.

At this time the laws were not written down but were interpreted by a Council of Priests (pontifices), who were all still patricians. The background to this unrest was war, famine and pestilence, in which the brunt of the fighting and suffering was borne by the poor plebeian small farmers. None of the economic problems of the poor plebeians were addressed. The central issue was land owned by the State (ager publicus), which the patricians wished to monopolise, while the plebs wanted to have it distributed among themselves.

The internal commotions and civil strife caused by the quarrels of patricians and plebeians were followed by a temporary truce. But this broke down again when the college of tribunes attempted to check the power of the consuls by restricting their right to punish plebeians. The patricians were alarmed at what they regarded as an attempt to undermine their hereditary rights, and a long and bitter struggle began.

In the year 452 BC a compromise was reached when a commission of ten men, called decemviri, constituting the ‘decemvirate’, was chosen to write up a code of law defining the principles of Roman administration. During the decemvirate’s term in office, all other magistracies would be suspended, and their decisions were not subject to appeal. Originally, all the decemvirs were patricians.

The result was the famous Twelve Tables, where the laws were written down for the first time and set up in stone in the forum. This is traditionally seen as a decisive turning point in the history of Rome and a great advance for democracy. But as a matter of fact, it left the fundamental social and political relations virtually untouched.

The ferocious severity of the laws on debt was only slightly mitigated. The execution of the laws was delayed for thirty days, during which the creditor was obliged to feed the debtor ‘adequately’. But that was not much comfort for a man who could not pay his debts, and in the end the creditor still had the right to make the debtor a nexus, that is, to enslave him.

The fact that the Twelve Tables wrote this down for the first time meant that these harsh laws were literally ‘set in stone’. This was a finished recipe for a further intensification of the class struggle in Rome, which would later enter onto an unprecedented level of ferocity.

A further concession was made when, in the year 450 BC, several plebeians were appointed to the new decemvirate, but this solved nothing, since the patricians still dominated. The peasantry was being ruined by constant wars with the neighbouring nations. Compelled to make good their losses by borrowing money from patrician creditors, they were liable to become bondsmen if they defaulted on their repayments.

None of the problems were addressed by the decemvirate, which became increasingly violent and tyrannical. To make matters worse, when its term of office expired, its members refused to leave office or permit successors to take office.

The conduct of the decemvirs had brought matters to the verge of civil war, and finally provoked an uprising in 449 BC. At first the ruling class resorted to the old trick of prevarication. But when the common soldiers saw that the endless discussions of their problems were getting nowhere, they decided to take drastic action. Led by an ex-tribune called Marcus Duillius, they simply left the city and moved to the Sacred Mount, and the whole of the civilian population followed them. They said that they would only return on condition of being protected by tribunes of their own. The scene is vividly conveyed in the words of Livy:

The plebeian civilians followed the army; no one whose age allowed him to go hung back. Their wives and children followed them, asking in piteous tones, to whom would they leave them in a City where neither modesty nor liberty were respected? The unwonted solitude gave a dreary and deserted look to every part of Rome; in the Forum there were only a few of the older patricians, and when the senate was in session it was wholly deserted.^[11]

The angry citizens taunted the magistrates, asking them: “Are you going to administer justice to walls and roofs?”^[12] It was an incredible situation. A city that shortly before had been bustling with vibrant life stood empty, its streets as silent as a desert. One can envisage a factory without capitalists, but never a factory without workers. The same was true in ancient Roman society. The ruling class was suddenly seized by panic.

Faced with the prospect of losing the people who did all the work in peacetime and all the fighting in the wars, the decemvirate backed away. It is always the same story: faced with losing everything, the ruling class will always be prepared to give something. This threat tore concessions from the ruling class, which attempted to defuse the conflict by compromise.

At last, the decemvirs gave way, overwhelmed by the unanimous opposition. They said that since it was the general wish, they would submit to the authority of the Senate. “All they asked for was that they might be protected against the popular rage; they warned the Senate against the plebs becoming by their death habituated to inflicting punishment on the patricians.”^[13] As always, the concessions of the ruling class were dictated by fear.

The people regained the right to elect their tribunes. This caused panic among the patricians. Livy writes: “Great alarm seized the patricians; the looks of the tribunes were now as menacing as those of the decemvirs had been.” The tribunes did take action against some of the most hated patricians, such as Appius Claudius, a particularly extreme reactionary.

When he took the field against the Volsci, his soldiers would not fight, and he had every tenth man in his legions put to death. For these acts he was brought to trial by the tribunes M Duillius and C Sicinius. Seeing that conviction was certain, he committed suicide.

However, the ruling class need not have worried. Most of the people’s tribunes were like our modern reformists, as the following words of Duillius show quite well:

M Duillius the tribune imposed a salutary check upon their excessive exercise of authority. “We have gone,” he said, “far enough in the assertion of our liberty and the punishment of our opponents, so for this year I will allow no man to be brought to trial or cast into prison. I disapprove of old crimes, long forgotten, being raked up, now that the recent ones have been atoned for by the punishment of the decemvirs. The unceasing care which both the consuls are taking to protect your liberties is a guarantee that nothing will be done which will call for the power of the tribunes.”^[14]

Livy adds:

This spirit of moderation shown by the tribune relieved the fears of the patricians, but it also intensified their resentment against the consuls, for they seemed to be so wholly devoted to the plebs, that the safety and liberty of the patricians were a matter of more immediate concern to the plebeian than they were to the patrician magistrates.^[15]

These lines might have been written yesterday! They accurately convey the conduct and psychology of the kind of individuals who, while trying to mediate between irreconcilable class interests, invariably abandon the struggle for the interests of the poor and oppressed and assume responsibility for defending the interests of the rich and powerful.

The new oligarchy

Despite the sharp conflict between the upper layers of the plebs and the old aristocracy, these two social groups, as the chief holders of property, had far more in common than they had with the poorest plebeians. By degrees, the old patrician aristocracy came to understand that the tribunes could be useful to control the excesses of the masses, in whose eyes they enjoyed great authority.

The plebs’ leaders succeeded in obtaining concessions from the patricians by leaning on the masses, and the patricians were usually flexible enough to give concessions and reforms in order to preserve their class rule and privileges. Eventually, this led to a process of fusion that created a new oligarchy of nobiles, determined not by birth but by wealth and the possession of political power.

As a concession to the plebs (that is, to the wealthy plebeians), it was agreed that in future, one of the two consuls would always be a plebeian. By 351 BC the censorship was also opened to plebeians, and later it was agreed that a censor must always be a plebeian. This meant that the patricians had understood that in order to keep the masses in check, it was necessary to buy off their leaders by giving some of them access to positions of power.

About this time a new temple was established at Rome – the Temple of Concord. A kind of concord had indeed been established in Rome, but not between rich and poor. As Michael Grant points out:

The effect of these changes was to create a new ruling class, no longer an entirely patrician aristocracy but a nobility consisting of those men, patricians and plebeian alike, whose ancestors had included consuls or censors or dictators – which is what the term ‘noble’ came to mean. And within the next century plebeian clans such as the Marcii and Decii and Curii, in addition to those who had come from Tusculum and elsewhere, succeeded in establishing themselves among the leaders of this new oligarchy of nobles.^[16]

Endnotes

[1] Grant, History of Rome, p. 59, emphasis in original.

[2] Mommsen, History of Rome, Vol. 1, Book 1, p. 209.

[3] Livy, History of Rome, Vol. 1, Book 2, p. 92.

[4] Livy, History of Rome: The First Eight Books, pp. 105-6.

[5] de Leon, Two Pages from Roman History, p. 19.

[6] Livy, Livy in Fourteen Volumes, Vol. 1, Book 2, p. 309.

[7] Ibid., p. 321.

[8] Ibid., p. 323.

[9] Quoted ibid., p. 325.

[10] Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 285.

[11] Livy, History of Rome, Vol. 1, Book 3, p. 197.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., pp. 205-6.

[14] Ibid., p. 206.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Grant, History of Rome, p. 68.