Licinio-Sextian rogations
The Licino-Sextian rogations were a series of laws proposed by
These laws provided for a limit on the interest rate of loans and a restriction on private ownership of land. A third law, which provided for one of the two consuls to be a plebeian, was rejected. Two of these laws were passed in 368 BC, after the two proponents had been elected and re-elected tribunes for nine consecutive years and had successfully prevented the election of patrician magistrates for five years (375–370 BC). In 367 BC, during their tenth tribunate, this law was passed. In the same year they also proposed a fourth law regarding the priests who were the custodians of the sacred Sibylline Books.
The laws and the long struggle to pass them were part of the two hundred year
Background
According to Livy, Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius proposed three bills before the Plebeian Council (the assembly of the plebeians) in 375 BC. Two of them concerned land and debt (which were two issues which greatly affected the plebeians) and the third concerned the termination of the
In 368 BC the Roman troops came back from Velitrae. As the controversy dragged and given that with the return of the troops voting could be carried out, the patrician senate appointed
In 367 BC Marcus Furius Camillus was again appointed as dictator, this time to fight Gauls who had got into territories near Rome. The senate, bruised by years of civic strife, carried the proposals of the plebeian tribunes and the two consuls were elected. In 366 BC Lucius Sextius Lateranus became the first plebeian consul. The patricians refused to confirm this, commotions broke out and the plebeians were close to seceding (see plebeian secessions). Marcus Furius, "however, quieted the disturbances by arranging a compromise; the nobility made a concession in the matter of a plebeian consul, the plebs gave way to the nobility on the appointment of a praetor to administer justice in the City who was to be a patrician. Thus after their long estrangement the two orders of the State were at length brought into harmony".[4]
The laws
Lex de aere alieno
This law provided that the interest already paid on debts should be deducted from the principal and that the payment of the rest of the principal should be in three equal annual instalments.
Indebtedness was a major problem among the plebeians, particularly among small peasant farmers, and this led to conflicts with the patricians, who were the aristocracy, the owners of large landed estates and the creditors. Several laws regulating credit or the interest rates of credit to provide some relief for debtors were passed during the period of the Roman Republic.
Lex de modo agrorum
This law restricted individual ownership of public land in excess of 500 iugeras (300 acres) and forbade the grazing of more than 100 cattle on public land.
Shortages of land for the poor was a significant problem during the Roman Republic. Roman citizens were given plots of lands of two
Lex de consule altero ex plebe (et de praetore ex patribus creando?)
This law provided for the termination of the military tribunes with consular powers and the return to regular consulships, one of which was to be held by the plebeians. It is possible that the law also provided for the creation of a new and elected magistracy (office of state), the praetorship, as Livy wrote that in 367 BC "the plebs gave way to the nobility on the appointment of a praetor";[5] that is, the plebeians agreed that the praetor should be a patrician. The praetors were chief justices who presided over criminal trials and could appoint judges for civil cases. Later they issued edicts for amendments of existing laws. They also held imperium; that is, they could command an army. Forty years later, in 337 BC, the plebeians gained access to the praetorship, when the first plebeian praetor, Quintus Publius Philo, was elected.[6]
Law proposed at the beginning of the tenth tribunate
Lex de Decemviri Sacris Faciundis
This provided for the abolition of the Duumviri (two men) Sacris Faciundis, who were two patrician priests who were the custodians of the sacred
Modern evaluation
Livy's account of the struggles of Gaius Licinius and Lucius Sextius and their legislation on the consulship has been analysed by T.J. Cornell. He thinks that very little of Livy's narrative can be accepted. However, its institutional changes are "reasonably certain." He argues that the significance of the law on the consulship is unclear and its background is "extremely puzzling" due to obscurity around the military tribunes with consular power. Livy wrote that they had been instituted because it was decided that in some years the consulship should be replaced by the consular tribunes (whose numbers varied from three to six), that this office would be open to plebeians and that it had been created as a concession to the plebeians who wanted access to the consulship.[7] However, from 444 BC (the year of the first consular tribunes) to 401 BC there were only two plebeian consular tribunes (out of a total of 100). For the 400-376 BC period, in 400, 399 and 396 BC the majority of these tribunes were plebeians (4, 5, and 5 out of 6, respectively) and in 379 BC there were three plebeians of six. This raises some questions. Why from 444 to 401 BC were there only two plebeians? Why, given the presence of plebeians in the subsequent period, which shows their eligibility to the highest office, was plebeian access to the consulship considered such a landmark for the political promotion of the plebeians? Why was there such resistance to this? The sources seem to see the law as a breakthrough not just because it provided access to the consulship, but because it required that one of the two consuls each year be a patrician. However, during one twelve-year period after the passage of the laws, from 355 to 343 BC, both consuls were patricians and the consulship became an unbroken line of shared office only after that.[8]
Cornell notes that, according to Livy and his sources, the regular and unbroken sharing of the consulship stemmed from the Lex Genucia proposed by the plebeian tribune Lucius Genucius in 342 BC which, it is claimed, allowed plebeians to hold both consulships.[9] However, the Fasti consulares (a chronicle of yearly events in which the years are denoted by their consuls) suggest that this law made it obligatory for one consulship to be held by a plebeian. This most probably explains why the first instance of plebeians holding both consulships was in 173 BC despite Livy's interpretation. It might be that it was the Lex Genucia which truly introduced power-sharing between patricians and plebeians and that the Lex Licinia Sextia may simply have been an administrative adjustment which transferred plebeian access to the highest office from the consular tribunes to the consulship and, thus, Lucius Sextius becoming the first plebeian consul "becomes rather less impressive."[10] Von Fritz and Sordi also think that the Lex Licinia Sextia on the consuls and the praetors was an administrative reform.[11][12]
The significance of the law on the consulship of 367 BC, according to Cornell, lies elsewhere. He suggests that before this law, the plebeian tribunes were excluded from high office and that the plebeians who served prior to this were clients of the patricians who had nothing to do with the plebeian movement and its agitations or the Plebeian Council and did not hold plebeian offices (they were neither plebeian tribunes nor aediles, their assistants). Cornell argues "[t]hat the aim of Licinius and Sextius was to abolish all forms of discrimination against the plebeians as such", and their law was a victory for the plebeians who were attracted to the plebeian movement and chose to join this, rather than becoming clients of patricians, which offered nominal prestige, but no independent power. Many leading plebeians were "wealthy, socially aspiring and politically ambitious". It was a small group of "rich men who made common cause with the poor and [ ] used the institutions of the plebeian movement to gain entry into the ranks of the ruling class", which necessitated a struggle against the exclusiveness of the patricians. Some of these men were wealthy landowners who, thus, shared the same interests as the patricians, as the case of Gaius Licinius, who was fined for breaking his own agrarian law by exceeding the 500 iugera limit, shows.[13]
The outcome of the Leges Liciniae Sextiae was the facilitation of the emergence of a patrician-plebeian aristocracy and once the leading plebeians had entered the ruling class on an equal footing with the patricians, they turned their back on the poor plebeians, who "gained some temporary economic relief, but lost control of their organisation." The plebeian council passed the agrarian and the debt laws, which were in tune with the interests of the poor plebeians, but rejected the law on the consulship. Those who opposed the latter had good reason to be suspicious because "[s]uch a measure, they knew, would destroy the plebeian movement."[14] It lost its identity and ceased to exist as a separate organisation. Its institutions were incorporated into the structures of the state. The tribunate and the aedilship were increasingly occupied by young nobles who treated them as stepping stones for the consulship; "the men who held them did not consider themselves in any way bound to promote the interests of the mass of the plebs."[15] Livy described some plebeian tribunes as 'slaves of the nobility'[16]
See also
- Conflict of the Orders
- Military tribunes with consular power
- Plebeian tribune
- Aedile
- Plebeian Council
- Roman dictator
References
- ^ Drogula 2015, p. 37. "So-called because the Plebeian Assembly did not yet possess the legal capacity to pass a lex, nor would it have this capacity until the lex Hortensia of 287 BC. Livy generally refers to this bill put forward by the plebeian tribunes L Sextius and C Licinius as a rogatio... although he does occasionally refer to it as a lex".
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 6.35, 36.1-6, 37.12
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 38, 39.1-5,11-12, 42.1-5
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 6.42
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 6.42
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 8.12
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 4.6.6-8
- ^ Cornell, T.J., The Beginnings of Rome, pp.344-37
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 7.42
- ^ Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, pp.337-38
- ^ von Fritz, K, Historia,1 (1950), pp. 3-44
- ^ Sordi, M., I rapporti romano-ceriti e l' origine della 'civitas sine suffragio', Rome 1960, pp. 73-9. Sordi argues that it was an administrative reform inspired by the institutions of Ceare.
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 7.16.9
- ^ Cornell, T,J., The Beginnings of Rome, pp. 339-340
- ^ Cornell, T.J., The recovery of Rome, in Walbank, F.B.A., Austin, A.E., Federicksen, M.W.W., and Ogilivie, R,M., Cambridge Ancient History, vol 7, part 2, ch. 3, p.341 Cambridge University Press
- ^ Livy, The History of Rome, 10.37.11
Bibliography
- Beck, Hans; et al., eds. (2011). Consuls and res publica. Cambridge University Press. LCCN 2011017494.
- Smith, Christopher. "The magistrates of the early Roman republic". In Beck et al. (2011), pp. 19–40.
- Bergk, Alexander. "The development of the praetorship in the third century BC". In Beck et al. (2011), pp. 61–74.
- Cornell, Tim (1995). The beginnings of Rome. London: Routledge. OCLC 31515793.
- Drogula, Fred K (2015). Commanders and command in the Roman republic and early empire. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-2127-2.
- Forsythe, Gary (2005). A critical history of early Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press. OCLC 70728478.
- Livy (1905) [1st century AD]. . Translated by Roberts, Canon – via Wikisource.