The History of Rome. Book I

Equality of the Burgesses

Sternly defined as was the contrast between burgess and non-burgess, the equality of rights within the burgess-body was complete. No people has ever perhaps equalled that of Rome in the inexorable rigour with which it has carried out these principles, the one as fully as the other. The strictness of the Roman distinction between burgesses and non-burgesses is nowhere perhaps brought out with such clearness as in the treatment of the primitive institution of honorary citizenship, which was originally designed to mediate between the two.  When a stranger was, by resolution of the community, adopted into the circle of the burgesses, he might surrender his previous citizenship, in which case he passed over wholly into the new community; but he might also combine his former citizenship with that which had just been granted to him. Such was the primitive custom, and such it always remained in Hellas, where in later ages the same person not unfrequently held the freedom of several communities at the same time.  But the greater vividness with which the conception of the community as such was realized in Latium could not tolerate the idea that a man might simultaneously belong in the character of a burgess to two communities; and accordingly, when the newly-chosen burgess did not intend to surrender his previous franchise, it attached to the nominal honorary citizenship no further meaning than that of an obligation to befriend and protect the guest (jus hospitii), such as had always been recognized as incumbent in reference to foreigners. But this rigorous retention of barriers against those that were without was accompanied by an absolute banishment of all difference of rights among the members included in the burgess community of Rome. We have already mentioned that the distinctions existing in the household, which of course could not be set aside, were at least ignored in the community; the son who as such was subject in property to his father might thus, in the character of a burgess, come to have command over his father as master. There were no class-privileges: the fact that the Tities took precedence of the Ramnes, and both ranked before the Luceres, did not affect their equality in all legal rights. The burgess cavalry, which at this period was used for single combat in front of the line on horseback or even on foot, and was rather a select or reserve corps than a special arm of the service, and which accordingly contained by far the wealthiest, best-armed, and best-trained men, was naturally held in higher estimation than the burgess infantry; but this was a distinction purely de facto, and admittance to the cavalry was doubtless conceded to any patrician. It was simply and solely the constitutional subdivision of the burgess-body that gave rise to distinctions recognized by the law; otherwise the legal equality of all the members of the community was carried out even in their external appearance. Dress indeed served to distinguish the president of the community from its members, the grown-up man under obligation of military service from the boy not yet capable of enrolment; but otherwise the rich and the noble as well as the poor and low-born were only allowed to appear in public in the like simple wrapper (toga) of white woollen stuff. This complete equality of rights among the burgesses had beyond doubt its original basis in the Indo-Germanic type of constitution; but in the precision with which it was thus apprehended and embodied it formed one of the most characteristic and influential peculiarities of the Latin nation. And in connection with this we may recall the fact that in Italy we do not meet with any race of earlier settlers less capable of culture, that had become subject to the Latin immigrants[8]. They had no conquered race to deal with, and therefore no such condition of things as that which gave rise to the Indian system of caste, to the nobility of Thessaly and Sparta and perhaps of Hellas generally, and probably also to the Germanic distinction of ranks.

Burdens of the Burgesses

The maintenance of the state economy devolved, of course, upon the burgesses. The most important function of the burgess was his service in the army; for the burgesses had the right and duty of bearing arms. The burgesses were at the same time the "body of warriors" (populus, related to populari, to lay waste): in the old litanies it is upon the "spear-armed body of warriors" (pilumnus poplus) that the blessing of Mars is invoked; and even the designation with which the king addresses them, that of Quirites[9], is taken as signifying "warrior". We have already stated how the army of aggression, the "gathering" (legio), was formed.  In the tripartite Roman community it consisted of three "hundreds" (centuriae) of horsemen (celeres, "the swift," or flexuntes, "the wheelers") under the three leaders-of-division of the horsemen (tribuni celerum)[10] and three "thousands" of footmen (milties) under the three leaders-of-division of the infantry (tribuni militum), the latter were probably from the first the flower of the general levy.  To these there may perhaps have been added a number of light-armed men, archers especially, fighting outside of the ranks[11]. The general was regularly the king himself.  Besides service in war, other personal burdens might devolve upon the burgesses; such as the obligation of undertaking the king's commissions in peace and in war[12], and the task-work of tilling the king's lands or of constructing public buildings. How heavily in particular the burden of building the walls of the city pressed upon the community, is evidenced by the fact that the ring-walls retained the name of "tasks" (moenia). There was no regular direct taxation, nor was there any direct regular expenditure on the part of the state. Taxation was not needed for defraying the burdens of the community, since the state gave no recompense for serving in the army, for task-work, or for public service generally; so far as there was any such recompense at all, it was given to the person who performed the service either by the district primarily concerned in it, or by the person who could not or would not himself serve. The victims needed for the public service of the gods were procured by a tax on actions at law; the defeated party in an ordinary process paid down to the state a cattle-fine (sacramentum) proportioned to the value of the object in dispute. There is no mention of any regular presents to the king on the part of the burgesses. On the other hand there flowed into the royal coffers the port-duties[13], as well as the income from the domains - in particular, the pasture tribute (scriptura) from the cattle driven out upon the common pasture, and the quotas of produce (vectigalia) which those enjoying the use of the lands of the state had to pay instead of rent. To this was added the produce of cattle-fines and confiscations and the gains of war.  In cases of need a contribution (tributum) was imposed, which was looked upon, however, as a forced loan and was repaid when the times improved; whether it fell upon the burgesses generally, or only upon the metoeci, cannot be determined; the latter supposition is, however, the more probable.

8. I. II. Primitive Races of Italy

9. Quiris, quiritis, or quirinus is interpreted by the ancients as "lance-bearer", from quiris or curis = lance and ire, and so far in their view agrees with samnis, samnitis and sabinus, which also among the ancients was derived from saunion, spear. This etymology, which associates the word with arquites, milites, pedites, equites, velites - those respectively who go with the bow, in bodies of a thousand, on foot, on horseback, without armour in their mere over-garment - may be incorrect, but it is bound up with the Roman conception of a burgess. So too Juno quiritis, (Mars) quirinus, Janus quirinus, are conceived as divinities that hurl the spear; and, employed in reference to men, quiris is the warrior, that is, the full burgess. With this view the usus loquendi coincides.  Where the locality was to be referred to, "Quirites" was never used, but always "Rome" and "Romans" (urbs Roma, populus, civis, ager Romanus), because the term quiris had as little of a local meaning as civis or miles. For the same reason these designations could not be combined; they did not say civis quiris, because both denoted, though from different points of view, the same legal conception. On the other hand the solemn announcement of the funeral of a burgess ran in the words "this warrior has departed in death" (ollus quiris leto datus); and in like manner the king addressed the assembled community by this name, and, when he sat in judgment, gave sentence according to the law of the warrior-freemen (ex iure quiritium, quite similar to the later ex iure civili). The phrase populus Romanus, quirites (populus Romanus quiritium is not sufficiently attested), thus means "the community and the individual burgesses," and therefore in an old formula (Liv. i. 32) to the populus Romanus are opposed the prisci Latini, to the quirites the homines prisci Latini(Becker, Handb. ii. 20 seq.)

In the face of these facts nothing but ignorance of language and of history can still adhere to the idea that the Roman community was once confronted by a Quirite community of a similar kind, and that after their incorporation the name of the newly received community supplanted in ritual and legal phraseology that of the receiver. - Comp. iv. The Hill-Romans On The Quirinal, note.

10. Among the eight ritual institutions of Numa, Dionysius (ii. 64) after naming the Curiones and Flamines, specifies as the third the leaders of the horsemen (oi eigemones ton Kelerion). According to the Praenestine calendar a festival was celebrated at the Comitium on the 19th March [adstantibus pon]tificibus et trib(unis) celer(um). Valerius Antias (in Dionys. i. 13, comp. iii. 41) assigns to the earliest Roman cavalry a leader, Celer, and three centurions; whereas in the treatise De viris ill. i, Celer himself is termed centurio. Moreover Brutus is affirmed to have been tribunus celerum at the expulsion of the kings (Liv. i. 59), and according to Dionysius (iv. 71) to have even by virtue of this office made the proposal to banish the Tarquins.  And, lastly, Pomponius (Dig. i. 2, 2, 15, 19) and Lydus in a similar way, partly perhaps borrowing from him (De Mag.  i. 14, 37), identify the tribunus celerum with the Celer of Antias, the magister equitum of the dictator under the republic, and the Praefectus praetorio of the empire. Of these-the only statements which are extant regarding the tribuni celerum - the last mentioned not only proceeds from late and quite untrustworthy authorities, but is inconsistent with the meaning of the term, which can only signify "divisional leaders of horsemen," and above all the master of the horse of the republican period, who was nominated only on extraordinary occasions and was in later times no longer nominated at all, cannot possibly have been identical with the magistracy that was required for the annual festival of the 19th March and was consequently a standing office. Laying aside, as we necessarily must, the account of Pomponius, which has evidently arisen solely out of the anecdote of Brutus dressed up with ever-increasing ignorance as history, we reach the simple result that the tribuni celerum entirely correspond in number and character to the tribuni militum, and that they were the leaders-of-division of the horsemen, consequently quite distinct from the magister equitum.

11. This is indicated by the evidently very old forms velites and arquites and by the subsequent organization of the legion.

12. I. V. The King

13. I. IV. The Tibur and Its Traffic