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Citizenship and Orders in the State.

Accordingly there were among Roman citizens three social (and in a manner political) ranks (ordines) the Senatorial Order (ordo senatorius, the Equestrian Order (ordo equestris), and the People (populus, in the narrower sense). The first two of these made up the Roman aristocracy.

Senatorial Order.

The Ordo Senotorius was strictly speaking only another name for the Senate, the members of which, by virtue of their life tenure of office, their privileges and insignia, and their esprit de corps, formed a kind of Peerage. The list of Senators, regularly numbering 300, was in early times made up by the Censors at their discretion from among those who had held high magistracies. But after the reforms of Sulla (B.C. 80) every person who had held the quaestorship —the lowest grade of the regular magistracy (see below, p. lix) was lawfully entitled to a seat in the Senate. This aristocracy was therefore an official or bureaucratic class. Their number fluctuated, running up to five or six hundred.

Nobility, however, did not really depend on holding offices oneself, but on being descended from an ancestor who had held a curule office. 1When any person not so descended was chosen a magistrate, he was called a novus homo, 2 and, though he of course became a member of the Senatorial Order, he was not regarded as a noble. His posterity, however, would belong to the nobility. But such instances were very uncommon; for the Senate and the magistrates had such control over the elections that it was very difficult for any person not already a member of the nobility to be chosen to any office entitling him to enter the Senate. Hence the Senatorial Order and the Nobility were practically identical, and "new men" became necessarily identified with the class to which their posterity would belong, rather than that from which they themselves had come. This double relation of Cicero—a member of the Senate, but sprung from the Equestrian Order—goes a great way to explain what is inconsistent and vacillating in his political career.

Equestrian Order.

The title Equites was originally applied to the members of the eighteen centuries equitum equo publico under the Servian constitution, to whom a horse was assigned by the state, together with a certain sum of money yearly for its support, and who constituted the old Roman cavalry. Those who served equo publico had to have the equestrian census, 3 i.e. possess a fortune of 400,000 sesterces; and the horses were assigned by the Censors, as a rule, to the young men of senatorial families. These centuriae equitum were therefore composed of young noblemen. When they entered the Senate, they were (in the later years of the republic) obliged to give up the public horse. Therefore, on becoming Senators, they voted in the centuries of the first class, not with the Equites (see p. lv, below). This aristocratic body had, however, long before Cicero's time, ceased to serve in the field; they formed a parade corps (somewhat like the Royal Guards in England), from which active officers of the legion, tribuni militum, were taken. 4

During the time that the equites equo publico still served in the field as cavalry, another body grew up by their side, consisting of equites equito privato: that is, persons of the equestrian census (having a property of 400,000 sesterces), who had not received a horse from the state, but who volunteered with horses of their own. This body consisted mainly of young men of wealth who did not belong to noble (that is, senatorial) families. No very distinct line was, however, drawn between the two classes until the Lex Judiciaria of C. Gracchus (B.C. 123), which prescribed that the judices should not, as heretofore, be taken from the Senators (see p. lxv), but from those who possessed the equestrian census, and at the same time were not members of the Senate. This law did not formally exclude nobles who were not members of the Senate; but the entire body of nobility was so far identified in spirit and interest with the Senate, that an antagonism immediately grew up between them and this new judicial class. A principal cause of the antagonism was that members of the Senate were prohibited from being engaged in any trade or business; while, as has been shown above, the Senate, by its control over the elections, virtually filled its own vacancies, of course from the ranks of the nobility. Hence, as rich men of non-senatorial families were excluded from a political career, and so from the nobility, while Senators were excluded from a business life, there were formed during the last century of the republic two powerful aristocracies, - the nobles, or Senatorial Order, a governing aristocracy of rank, and the Equestrian Order, an aristocracy of wealth, corresponding to the moneyed aristocracy of our day. The name Ordo Equestris was given to the latter body because its members possessed the original equestrian census: that is, that amount of property which would have entitled them to a public horse. From the ranks of the nobility were taken the oppressive provincial governors: the Equestrian Order, on the other hand, furnished the publicani the equally oppressive tax-gatherers.

The Equestrian Order, Ordo Eqitestris, is therefore not merely distinct from the centuriae equitum, but strongly contrasted with them. The former is the wealthy middle class, the latter are the young nobility. The term equites is sometimes applied to both indiscriminately, although the strictly correct term for the members of the Equestrian Order was judices.

Populus.

Below these two aristocratic orders, in estate and so in social position, were all the rest of the free-born citizens not possessing a census of 400,000 sesterces. Among these there was naturally great variety in fortune, cultivation, and respectability; but they all had a status superior to that of the libertini (freedmen) and the foreign residents. it was this third class which was under the control of the tribuni plebis and which by its turbulence brought on all the disturbances which ultimately resulted in the overthrow of the republic. It must not be supposed, however, that these humbler citizens were debarred from political preferment except by their want of money, and in fact many of them rose to positions of wealth and influence.

The populus (in the narrower sense) was often confounded with the plebs, but in reality the distinction between the plebs and the patricians was in Cicero's time historical rather than political The patricians had been originally a privileged class of hereditary nobility, entirely different from the later senatorial nobility; but only a few patrician families remained, and these, though still proud of their high birth, had no special privileges and had been practically merged in the Senatorial Order. Opposed to the patricians had been originally the plebs, a class of unknown origin (probably foreign residents) destitute of all political rights. These had gradually, in the long controversies of the earlier Republican times, acquired all the rights and privileges of full citizens, and a majority of the Senatorial and Equestrian Orders were of plebeian origin. In time plebs in an enlarged

sense and populus in its narrower acceptation had become synonymous, meaning the "third estate" or, in other words, all citizens not Senators or equites. Officially, however, Populus (in its wider sense) includes all Roman citizens. 5

Roman Citizenship.

Roman citizenship, like all rights that have grown up in a long period of time, included many minute details. The important points, however, may be included under two heads: (i) political rights, including those of voting kus suffragii) and holding office (jus honorum), and (ii) civil rights, especially those securing personal freedom by the right of appeal (jus provocationis), etc., and by other privileges limiting the arbitrary power of magistrates (see remarks on the imperium, p. lviii, below). Among the civil rights were those of trade (commercii), intermarriage (connubii), making a will (testamenti), and others, which, though affecting the status of a man before the law, were unimportant in comparison with the great political and civil privileges first mentioned. Full citizens of Rome (cives optimo jure) enjoyed not only all the civil rights referred to, but also the jus suffragii et honorum; but many persons, not cives optimo jure, had important civil rights without being entitled to vote or hold office. The jus provocationis was especially sought after by foreigners as affording a powerful protection all over the world in times when the rights of common humanity were scantily recognized.

Italian Towns.

Roman citizenship was originally restricted to the inhabitants of the city and a small amount of adjacent territory. But as Rome enlarged her boundaries the rights of citizenship were extended, in different degrees, to the conquered Italians.

A native Italian town which lost its original independence and was absorbed in the Roman state, ceased to be a separate civitas, and became a municipium; its citizens now possessed Roman citizenship as well as that of their own town. This Roman citizenship was possessed in various degrees. Some municipia lost all rights of self-government, without receiving any political rights at Rome in their place: that is, their political existence was extinguished, and their citizens became mere passive citizens of Rome, with civil rights, but no political ones. A second class of towns retained their corporate existence, with the right of local self-government, but without the Roman franchise. The condition thus established was called jus Caeritum, because the Etruscan town of Caere was taken as the type. The most favored class of municipia retained all powers of self-government, with magistrates of their own election, at the same time being full citizens of Rome. If, as happened in many cases, colonists were sent from Rome (or Latium) to occupy the conquered territory, these retained their full Roman citizenship though living at a distance from the city.

Thus a class of towns called colaniae, possessing special privileges, grew up.

After the Social War, which resulted (B.C. 90) in giving full Roman citizenship to the inhabitants of all the Italian towns not already enjoying it, there were practically but three classes of such towns: coloniae, municipia and praefecturae. There was no longer any real distinction between the colaniae and the municipia, though the former were looked upon with more respect. The praefecturae, however, had not full rights of self-government, for the administration of justice was in the bands of prefects (praefecti) sent from the capital.

Provincials.

The foreign conquests of Rome were organized as fast as possible as provinces (provinciae). The native inhabitants of these would not be Roman citizens at all, unless citizenship, usually of the lowest grade, was specially conferred upon them. Thus St. Paul was a free-born citizen of Tarsus, for his father had in some way secured the lesser Roman citizenship, which conferred civil rights but did not carry with it the right of suffrage or any other political privileges (see p. liii, above).

Freedmen.

Besides the free-born citizens (ingenui), the Roman state included a large class of libertini or freedmen. Manumitted slaves became citizens, but their exact status was a standing subject of controversy in politics. In Cicero's time they voted in the four city tribes, though there had been various attempts to make them eligible for membership in all the tribes so that their suffrages might count for more (see under Assemblies, p. lv, below). Throughout the history of the republic, there was a constant tendency to extend the suffrage, in spite of the efforts of the upper classes.

The government of this complex assemblage of citlzens was in the hands of a still more complex system of magistrates and assemblies. As in our own day, we must distinguish the Legislative the Executive, and the Judicial though these various branches of the state authority were not so scrupulously kept separate as with us.


1 Whoever held any curule office — that is, dictator, consul, interrex, praetor, magister equitum, or curule aedile — secured to his posterity the jus imaginum; that is, the right to place in the hall and carry at funeral processions a wax mask of this ancestor, as well as of any other deceased members of the family of curule rank. (See Def. of Milo, sect. 33, p. 185, l. 14.)

2 Examples are Cato the Censor, Marius, and Cicero.

3 This requirement grew up only after the establishment of the equites equo privato.

4 When the Roman equites ceased to serve as cavalry, troops of horse were demanded of the allies; and in the time of Caesar we find that the Roman legion consisted exclusively of infantry, the cavalry being made up of such auxiliaries.

5 So in the formula for the Roman government: Senatus Populusque Romanus.

Select Orations of. Cicero. Allen and Greenough's Edition. Revised by J. B. Greenough and G. L. Kittredge, with a special vocabulary by J. B. Greenough.

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