If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the old aristocracy of the clans, and if the encroachment on the other burgesses as respected the joint enjoyment of political rights was in the one case de jure, in the other only de facto, the second form of inferiority was for that very reason worse to bear and worse to throw off than the first. Attempts to throw it off were, as a matter of course, not wanting. The opposition rested on the support of the public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate: in order to understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the commonwealth.
Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like the Roman, which was not the moving spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole machinery - a sure perception of the common good, a sagacious deference towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit in prosperous and evil days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the individual for the general welfare and the comfort of the present for the advantage of the future - all these qualities the Roman community exhibited in so high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a whole, all censure is lost in reverent admiration. Even now good sense and discretion still thoroughly predominated. The whole conduct of the burgesses with reference to the government as well as to the opposition shows quite clearly that the same mighty patriotism before which even the genius of Hannibal had to quit the field prevailed also in the Roman comitia. No doubt they often erred; but their errors originated not in the mischievous impulses of a rabble, but in the narrow views of burgesses and farmers. The machinery, however, by means of which the burgesses intervened in the course of public affairs became certainly more and more unwieldy, and the circumstances in which they were placed through their own great deeds far outgrew their power to deal with them. We have already stated, that in the course of this epoch most of the former communities of passive burgesses, as well as a considerable number of newly established colonies, received the full Roman franchise[37]. At the close of this period the Roman burgess-body, in a tolerably compact mass, filled Latium in its widest sense, Sabina, and a part of Campania, so that it reached on the west coast northward to Caere and southward to Cumae; within this district there were only a few cities not included in it, such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, Norba, and Ferentinum. To this fell to be added the maritime colonies on the coasts of Italy which uniformly possessed the full Roman franchise, the Picenian and Trans-Apennine colonies of the most recent times, to which the franchise must have been conceded[38], and a very considerable number of Roman burgesses, who, without forming separate communities in a strict sense, were scattered throughout Italy in market-villages and hamlets (fora et conciliabula). To some extent the unwieldiness of a civic community so constituted was remedied, for the purposes of justice[39] and of administration, by the deputy judges previously mentioned[40]; and already perhaps the maritime[41] and the new Picenian and Trans-Apennine colonies exhibited at least the first lineaments of the system under which afterwards smaller urban communities were organized within the great city-commonwealth of Rome. But in all political questions the primary assembly in the Roman Forum remained alone entitled to act; and it is obvious at a glance, that this assembly was no longer, in its composition or in its collective action, what it had been when all the persons entitled to vote could exercise their privilege as citizens by leaving their farms in the morning and returning home the same evening. Moreover the government - whether from want of judgment, from negligence, or from any evil design, we cannot tell - no longer as formerly enrolled the communities admitted to the franchise after 513 in newly instituted election-districts, but included them along with others in the old; so that gradually each tribe came to be composed of different townships scattered over the whole Roman territory. Election-districts such as these, containing on an average 8000 - the urban naturally having more, the rural fewer - persons entitled to vote, without local connection or inward unity, no longer admitted of any definite leading or of any satisfactory previous deliberation; disadvantages which must have been the more felt, since the voting itself was not preceded by any free debate. Moreover, while the burgesses had quite sufficient capacity to discern their communal interests, it was foolish and utterly ridiculous to leave the decision of the highest and most difficult questions which the power that ruled the world had to solve to a well-disposed but fortuitous concourse of Italian farmers, and to allow the nomination of generals and the conclusion of treaties of state to be finally judged of by people who understood neither the grounds nor the consequences of their decrees. In all matters transcending mere communal affairs the Roman primary assemblies accordingly played a childish and even silly part. As a rule, the people stood and gave assent to all proposals; and, when in exceptional instances they of their own impulse refused assent, as on occasion of the declaration of war against Macedonia in 554[42], the policy of the market-place certainly made a pitiful opposition - and with a pitiful issue - to the policy of the state.
At length the rabble of clients assumed a position, formally of equality and often even, practically, of superiority, alongside of the class of independent burgesses. The institutions out of which it sprang were of great antiquity. From time immemorial the Roman of quality exercised a sort of government over his freedmen and dependents, and was consulted by them in all their more important affairs; a client, for instance, was careful not to give his children in marriage without having obtained the consent of his patron, and very often the latter directly arranged the match. But as the aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became parasites and beggars; and the new adherents of the rich undermined outwardly and inwardly the burgess class. The aristocracy not only tolerated this sort of clientship, but worked it financially and politically for their own advantage. Thus, for instance, the old penny collections, which hitherto had taken place chiefly for religious purposes and at the burial of men of merit, were now employed by lords of high standing - for the first time by Lucius Scipio, in 568, on occasion of a popular festival which he had in contemplation - for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions a contribution from the public. Presents were specially placed under legal restriction (in 550), because the senators began under that name to take regular tribute from their clients. But the retinue of clients was above all serviceable to the ruling class as a means of commanding the comitia; and the issue of the elections shows clearly how powerfully the dependent rabble already at this epoch competed with the independent middle class.
37. III. XI. Italian Subjects, Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
38. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
39. In Cato's treatise on husbandry, which, as is well known, primarily relates to an estate in the district of Venafrum, the judicial discussion of such processes as might arise is referred to Rome only as respects one definite case; namely, that in which the landlord leases the winter pasture to the owner of a flock of sheep, and thus has to deal with a lessee who, as a rule, is not domiciled in the district (c. 149). It may be inferred from this, that in ordinary cases, where the contract was with a person domiciled in the district, such processes as might spring out of it were even in Cato's time decided not at Rome, but before the local judges.
40. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise.