PLEBES
PLEBES or
PLEBS, PLEBE´II. The word
plebes is formed from the same root as
appears in
compleo, impleo, plenus,
πλῆθος, &c. as properly signifies
“the multitude,”
“the common people,” as opposed to any eminent or privileged
classes. This, its natural sense, was to a certain extent obscured (as in
the case of our own “Commons” ) by the circumstance that many
of the noblest and most powerful men in Rome belonged to the plebeian order,
in its technical sense of non-patrician: this order was indeed in later days
the whole state less two or three score of families. Nevertheless the
natural sense of the word survives, as when Livy says (39.17, 6) that
certain of the Bacchanalian ringleaders were “ex plebe Romana,”
or when Cicero speaks of Verres as “solitus virgis plebem Romanam
concidere” (
in Verr. 1.47, 122). Under the Empire,
after the functions of the plebs as a political corporation had fallen into
disuse, the word was used very nearly in its etymological sense of the
poorer citizens who were qualified to receive corn largesses (
plebs frumentaria), as when Augustus is said by
Tacitus (
Tac. Ann. 1.8) to have bequeathed
money “populo et plebi” (i. e. partly to the state-chest,
partly to the needy citizens); and again more generally of the common people
in distinction from senators and knights, as when Pliny (
Plin. Nat. 33.29) says, “anuli
distinxere alterum ordinem a plebe,” and Horace (
Hor. Ep. 1.1,
57), “Si quadringentis sex septem millia desunt, Plebs
eris.”
The, origin of such a multitude of nonprivileged citizens at Rome is wrapped
in obscurity. Our ancient authorities, on the one hand, give us a plebs as
coeval with Romulus, and, on the other hand, represent it as consisting
wholly of the clients of the patricians. Now the term
plebs implies citizens, but citizens excluded from a
privileged class. It is therefore not applicable to the days when the word
patricius actually meant what it says, and
a patricius alone was capable of becoming a paterfamilias. In those days the
patricius was the only citizen, because he alone could exercise the rights
of a father over his legitimate child, or of a master over his property, and
he alone was recognised as having a standing in the Roman law-courts. The
client while he remains in his original position, though he may be protected
by religion or custom from the actual treatment of a slave, is not really a
free man, but rather to be assimilated to those informally emancipated
persons who in later times were said “domini voluntate in libertate
morari, et tantum metu serviendi liberari” (from the
“Consultatio veteris Jurisconsulti,” quoted by Ortolan,
Inst. Just. 2.55).
The subsequent process is best described in the words of Mommsen
(
Staatsr, iii. p. 66): “Out of a condition
destitute of rights there was developed a capacity for rights, a
guaranteed freedom, which was recognised by the state and its courts,
ordinarily with the co-operation of the patron, but which in the last
resort was enforced even against him. It was a legal status which,
though at every given moment definite, seems as we look back on it
continually in flux. Even though we had fuller knowledge of it, we could
only characterise it as wavering between two extremes, so that the
element of servitude, the clientship, is always waning; that of freedom,
the plebeiate, always increasing; until the process ends with the
conversion of the half-free into the full freeman.” If we reckon
up all the legal capacities which the freeman possesses while they are
denied to the slave, the acquisition of each will serve to mark a possible
stage in this development. The freeman has a legal right to property,
whereas the slave holds a peculium merely on the sufferance of his lord. A
corollary to the possession of property is the power to alienate it, and to
make binding contracts regarding it. The next step is a recognised standing
in the law-courts, the power to sue and be sued in one's own person. On
another line we have the power to contract a legal marriage; from this would
follow the patria potestas over the children born of such a marriage, and
from thence the agnatic relationship and the rights of succession bound up
with it. Next comes the right and duty of serving in the armies of the
state, and probably in close connexion with this the right to vote in the
comitia. Last of all we have the eligibility to office. It is possible that,
in spite of the hereditary nature of clientship, these rights were acquired
first of all by clients who had been born in that station, and that they
were only afterwards claimed by those who had been themselves released from
actual slavery or who had.placed themselves as homeless strangers under the
protection of a citizen. It is possible likewise, as Mommsen suggests, that
some of these privileges may have been exercised first in fact, and only
afterwards have obtained formal recognition. In any case it is difficult, to
draw the line, and to lay down that here a man ceases to be a client and
becomes a free plebeian. Perhaps we may say, that in the sphere of private
rights the most distinctive characteristic of independence is the capacity
to sue and be sued in one's own person, and that of public rights the most
significant indication of citizenship is that of voting as a member of the
sovereign populus. We have no means of ascertaining when the descendants of
the clients attained to the first of these privileges, but of the second we
can say with confidence that it was assured to them at least as early as the
era known by the name of Servius Tullius, when the Comitia Centuriata with
its elaborate grades of military service was organised. The arrangement of
the infantry, at least, recognises no distinction in fighting or in voting
between patricians, plebeians, and clients.
Though the clients undoubtedly won their way to the position of plebeians, it
does not follow that the clients were the only or the
[p. 2.435]most important element of the plebs. We find in very early
times two relationships established amongst the kindred communities of
Latium, the
jus commercii and the
jus exulandi. The first relates to the privileges
mutually accorded to the citizens of the contracting states, when trading or
temporarily sojourning in each other's territory. The second grants the
right of permanent settlement and transfer of civic allegiance to those who
wish to renounce their old state and to migrate to a new home ( “solum
vertere exilii causa” ). The legal position of such an
exul after his transfer of domicile is a matter of
dispute, and the question will best be considered in connexion with. the
privileges enjoyed by such persons before their migration. A Praenestine,
while he remains a Praenestine, has the full right of commercium with Rome.
This right is explained by the clause in the second Treaty of Rome with
Carthage (
Plb. 3.24,
12), regarding the Romans who go to trade in Sicily:
πάντα καὶ ποιείτω καὶ πωλείτω ὅσα καὶ τῷ πολίτῃ
ἔξεστιν: ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ ὁ Καρχηδόνιος ποιείτω ἐ
Ρώμῃ. The privileged foreigner then has the same right to
acquire property and the same standing in the lawcourts as a citizen. He is
thus in a different position from the
hostis in
the old sense of the word (Varr.
L. L. 5.3),
“peregrinus qui suis legibus uteretur.” The latter has a
status only under the laws of his own country, which of course are not
enforceable at Rome (see, however, the contrary view in Mommsen,
Böm. Forsch. i. p. 349): he is incapable of
using Roman law, and if he is wronged can sue only in the name of some
citizen. He must secure this representation either by entering into an equal
contract of hospitality with a Roman, in case he can promise him in turn
similar assistance in his own home, or else by subjecting himself to the
protection of the Roman, if he be a homeless outcast (see Mommsen,
Röm. Forsch. i. p. 357). From any such
necessities the privileged foreigner who has an independent standing in the
Roman law-courts is free. Now let us suppose that our Praenestine by virtue
of
his jus commercii has acquired land in Roman
territory, which he can hold, alienate by Roman methods, and defend in his
own person in a lawsuit. Suppose next that the Praenestine afterwards finds
it convenient to exercise his
jus exulandi, to
renounce his connexion with Praeneste, and to settle in Rome. Are we to
believe that he thereby forfeits all his previous rights? Mommsen answers
the question in the affirmative (
Staatsr. iii. p. 58). The
rights, he contends, belonged to the man as a guest of the community, and
“a domiciled guest is an absurdity.” What the
jus exulandi, he argues above (p. 50, n. 1),
guarantees to the fugitive is not the full citizenship, but protection. This
may be true in the sense that political as distinct from private rights
would not necessarily accrue to the
exul; but it
seems difficult to uphold that the granting of protection consisted in the
withdrawal of the privileges which he had previously possessed. Mommsen
holds (ib. p. 64) that; every such
exul would be
obliged to put himself under the protection of a Roman citizen as his
client. He defends this view (ib. p. 57) by the well-known passage from
Cicero,
de Or. 1.39, 177: “quid quod item in
centumvirali judicio certatum esse accepimus, qui Romam in exilium
venisset, cui Romae exulare jus esset, si se ad aliquem quasi patronum
applicavisset, intestatoque esset mortuus . . . . nonne in ea causa jus
applicationis,” &c. Now this passage shows that
applicatio was possible for an
exul, not that it was obligatory. “Si se
applicavisset” is put parallel to the death without a will, as
something which might, not which must occur, and the phrase
“quasi-patronum” seems to indicate something irregular in
the transaction. It is probable that the legal controversy in this case
turned on the inconsistency between
exilium and
applicatio, and that it was this which made
the patron's claim to the inheritance doubtful. As the deceased had the
jus exulandi, which guaranteed him the rights of a
freeman in Rome, was not his act in placing himself in the quasi-servile
position of a client void
ab initio? or, on the
other hand, was his voluntary
applicatio to be
taken as a valid renunciation of his rights as an
exul? Cicero does not inform us what was the answer.
If Mommsen's view be correct, the
exules would merely
swell the numbers of the clients: if the opposite theory be maintained, we
have here an independent and more honourable source for the plebs. While the
mass of fugitives who come from whence no man knew, would arrive in Rome
without rights, and could gain protection only by subjecting themselves to a
citizen, those who were openly exercising the
jus
exulandi, secured to them by the common law of Latium, would be
under no such necessity. They might set up at once as patresfamilias on
their own account, and we must consider them as from the first citizens,
though citizens of an inferior order. It is obvious that the existence of
such a class, distinct from and yet personally independent of the ruling
citizens, would render more easy the acquisition of a similar status by the
clients of the latter.
The same question occurs with regard to the people of conquered towns
deported to Rome. One of the best attested facts of the Regal period is the
destruction of Alba and the transfer of its inhabitants to Rome. Mommsen
believes (
Staatsr. iii. pp. 57 and 67) that in such cases the
new comers would necessarily undergo an
applicatio to some Roman citizen of their choice. This seems
hardly probable. The existence of such families as that of the Julii shows
that some Albans were, as Livy (
1.28,
7) says, admitted to the patriciate, and it is
difficult to believe that the
civitas which he
ascribes to the rest was nothing more than the choice of a master.
Closely connected withú the question, whether the original plebeians were all
clients, is the question whether a plebeian can be a
gentilis. According to Scaevola's definition: (
Cic. Top. 6, 29), the descendant
of a slave (or client), though he may belong to a gens and so have gentiles,
can never himself be a gentilis: he is excluded by the clause “quorum
majorum nemo servitutem serviret” (see Ortolan,
Inst.
Just. 3.1038). But Scaevola's definition says nothing about the
patriciate as a qualification for gentilitas. Many of the later plebeian
families could trace a descent in which there was no taint of servile blood.
Marius could never (according to the definition) attain to
[p. 2.436]gentilitas, because his family had been clients of the Herennii
(Plut.
Marius, 5); but there is no reason why
Cicero (who claimed to spring from a Volscian royal family) should not have
been a gentilis. We have the undoubted cases of the plebeian Minucii, who
had a right to gentile inheritances (
Cic. in
Verr. 1.45, 115), and of the plebeian Popillii, who
supplied the leading case (
Cic. de
Leg. 2.2. 2, 55) in the law of gentile sepulchre. There
seems no reason to follow Mommsen (
Staatsr. iii. pp. 66 and
74) in ascribing only a quasi-gentilitas to these plebeian houses, and in
asserting that they had only a
stirps and not a
real gens of their own. If the view maintained above as to
exilium be correct, the descendants of the first
exul would satisfy every point of Scaevola's
definition. They would therefore have a gens of their own; and if their
house ever came in turn to have its own freedmen and clients, its pure-born
members would be gentiles to the descendants of these, and have rights of
succession and guardianship over them. The same would be the case with those
patricians who had renounced their birthright and had been admitted as
members of the plebeian order (see below). When Livy (
10.8,
9) makes Decius Mus say,
“Semper ista audita sunt eadem . . . . vos solos gentem
habere,” he is not to be taken as admitting the claim, but rather as
illustrating the insolence of the patricians, who spoke as if all the
plebeians were their clients and ignored the more respectable origin which
belonged to many of them. The famous lawsuit mentioned in Cicero,
de
Or. 1.39, 176, “Quum Marcelli ab liberti filio stirpe,
Claudii patricii ejusdem hominis hereditatem gente ad se rediisse
dicerent,” illustrates an exception which proves the rule. When
there was a patrician and a plebeian family of the same name, it seems to
have been the legal presumption that the latter had once been the clients of
the former. The Claudii Marcelli had of course long ago extinguished their
clientship by attaining to curule office (Plut.
Marius, 5), but the original taint in their blood precluded the
possibility of their ever being gentiles. It is obvious from Cicero's
statement that the Marcelli lodged no claim to succeed
patronatus jure, as they would undoubtedly have done had the
deceased been their freedman. The right of the patron to inherit extended in
the later Republic only over the actual freedman or applicant, not over his
descendants (see Ortolan,
op. cit. 3.1045). The
inheritance of the son of a freedman would therefore be determined by the
legitima successio of the Twelve Tables,
which provided, “si agnatus nec sit gentiles familiam habento.”
The patrician Claudii were clearly the only persons who could claim
gente, but the Marcelli seem to have maintained
that, when they attained to independence of their patrician namesakes, they
founded a
stirps which had rights of
inheritance similar to those of the gens over the descendants of their own
clients. It is not known whether the patricians in this case made good their
claim; but even if they did, it would prove nothing against the gentilitas
of plebeians in whose case no ancestral clientship could be established.
It was probably owing to the admixture of servile blood in their order, that
the plebeians were so long debarred from the right of intermarriage with the
patricians. The prohibition of conubium is first mentioned as part of the
law of the Twelve Tables; but there can be no doubt that this law only
formulated and confirmed a more ancient disqualification. Marriage between
the orders was soon afterwards legalised by the Lex Canuleia of B.C. 445.
The struggle of the plebeians for admission to the magistracies of the Roman
People occupies a large portion of the internal history for the first two
centuries of the Republic. The quaestorship was held for the first time by a
plebeian in B.C. 409, the consulship in B.C. 366, the dictatorship in B.C.
356, the censorship in B.C. 351, and the praetorship in B.C. 337. The
priestly colleges were not opened to plebeians till B.C. 300. From that time
onwards, though certain disqualifications survived on the one side and on
the other [see
PATRICII], the
members of the two orders were on a footing of practical equality, and the
distinction between them remained only as an historical reminiscence with
the smallest possible effect upon practical politics.
But in the meantime the plebeians had formed themselves (on their secession
to the Mons Sacer in B.C. 494) into an exclusive order, with magistrates and
assemblies and powers of corporate action of their own. From that time to
the end of the Republic
plebs generally means
not so much the vague and lowly multitude as. this clearly defined body,
which comprised families as honourable and powerful, though not. as ancient,
as those of the purest patrician stock.. The constitution and political
powers of the plebs in its corporate capacity will be more conveniently
discussed in the articles
PLEBISCITUM and
POPULUS Here it will be sufficient to say a few words on the
qualifications for membership.
Every Roman who was not a patrician belonged to this order, so that, unlike
the patriciate, the plebeiate was constantly being recruited. All newly-made
citizens, whether they had formerly been slaves or foreigners, passed at
once and without any special act of admission into this body. A person born
a patrician became a plebeian if he underwent the “minima capitis
deminutio” by being dismissed from his ancestral house by
emancipatio. The same result would of
course occur if he became by adoption the son of a plebeian. But besides
these indirect methods of transfer, the plebeians had (unlike the
patricians) a corporate assembly of their own, and so were able to admit new
members by their own act. This is the process properly called
“transitio ad plebem,” by which a patrician renounces his
old order and sues for admission to a new one. It is best described by
Zonaras (
7.15),
εἰ δέ
τις τὸ τοῦ γένους ἀξίωμα ἐξωμόσατο καὶ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ πλήθους
μετέστη μόμισιν, ἀσμένως αὐτὸν προσεδέχοντο. καὶ συχνοὶ το̂ν
σφόδρα εὐπατριδῶν ἀπείπαντο τὴν εὐγένειαν ἔρωτι τοῦ μέγα
δυνηθῆναι καὶ ἐδημάρχησαν. As far as can be gathered from
the somewhat obscure notices, Clodius at first attempted to become a
plebeian in this way; but finding opposition too powerful, he afterwards
effected his object by the machinery of adoption. Some genealogists of the
time of Augustus invented for the plebeian Octavii a history of this sort,
which the emperor himself
[p. 2.437]was sensible enough to
ignore; see
Suet. Aug. 2: “Ea gens a
Tarquinio Prisco rege inter minores gentis adlecta in senatum, mox a
Servio Tullio in patricias traducta, procedente tempore ad plebem se
contulit.”
(The best modern authorities on the points discussed in this article are
Mommsen,
Römische Forschungen, vol. i., and
Staatsrecht, vol. iii.; and Ortolan,
Explication
historique des Instituts de l'Empereur Justinien. The principal
references have been given
passim.）
[
J.L.S.D]
