Part 1 — CHAPTER III THE THIRTY-FIVE TRIBES

That among the Romans the conception of property first attached to movable objects is attested by the words “pecunia” and “mancipatio.”[262] There was probably a period during which the citizens cultivated the lots of arable land assigned them by the state without regarding these holdings as property either public or private. In view of the well-established fact that the gens was a relatively late institution, we should for this remote period exclude the idea of gentile tenure.[263] The land was distributed among the families according to tribes and curiae; and when the idea of ownership extended to the soil, it took the form of family ownership of the ager privatus and state ownership of the public domain.[264]

The condition of tenure anterior to the conception of property in land left little trace of itself in the language and institutions and absolutely none in tradition. The sources declare that family ownership existed in Rome from her foundation as well as in her earliest colonies—a view confirmed by the comparative study of language.[265] Each family, they assume, held two iugera—the heredium[266]—or we may more correctly say, at least two iugera.[267] This small lot has generally been explained[268] as the private landed property of the individual, in contrast with the public land and with the common land of the gens, and thus it is taken as evidence of a condition prior to the extension of private ownership to the arable fields. Should we grant this to be the true explanation, we might still assume that public and gentile tenure had developed into private ownership of arable land long before Servius, or that Servius himself converted the fields into private holdings. For the second alternative we could find apparent support in the sources, which have much to say of the distribution of land among the citizens by Servius.[269] For the continued absence of private ownership after the Servian reforms not even the shadow of an authority can be found.

But the explanation of heredium given above is by no means necessary; in fact the sources regard it not as the only private land, but rather as the smallest share allotted to any citizen, the rich and noble possessing more.[270] While accordingly the wealthy man owned many iugera, the poor man, limited to his heredium, was obliged to earn part of his living by labor as a tenant or as a wage-earner in the field of his rich neighbor;[271] and in the early colonies the bina iugera were granted on the same aristocratic principle. If this is the true explanation of heredium, the strongest argument in support of the theory of public ownership at Rome in the late regal period is taken away; we must either abandon the theory or relegate it to a time far anterior to the Servian reforms. Mommsen’s assumption[272] that the sixteen oldest rural tribes were instituted some time after the city tribes by the division of gentile lands is untenable on other grounds. The gens which gave its name to the tribe could not have owned all the land in the tribe; for in that case all but the sixteen gentes would have been landless. Again, assuming, as he does, that all the land belonged to the gentes, which he supposes to have been exclusively patrician, we should be forced to conclude that the division left the plebeians landless. And further, if we bear in mind that the gens developed from the family, we must also believe that the undivided gentile land was once a family estate, which according to Roman usage had to be registered in some tribe, even if the land of the gens was not so registered. Mommsen’s theory proves therefore not only to be unsupported by the sources but actually unthinkable. In conclusion we may safely say that though some land remained public, and though the gens after it had come into existence owned some common land, individual, or at most family,[273] ownership was in full force in the earliest times of which we have knowledge.

The clearest and most detailed account of the origin of the Servian tribes is given by Dionysius iv. 14. 1 f.: “When Tullius had surrounded the seven hills with one wall, he divided the city into four parts, and giving to the parts the names of the hills—to one Palatina, to another Suburana, to the third Collina, and to the fourth Esquilina—he made the city to consist of four tribes, whereas up to that time it had comprised but three.... And he ordained that the men who lived in each of the four parts should not change their abode or give in their census elsewhere. The enlistment of soldiers also and the collection of taxes, which they were to pay individually to the treasury for military and other purposes, were distributed no longer among the three gentile tribes but among the four local tribes instituted by him.... [15. 1:] And the whole country he divided, as Fabius says,[274] into twenty-six parts, also called tribes, adding to them the four city tribes; but Venonius is authority for thirty-one rural tribes, which with those of the city would complete the thirty-five of our own time. Cato, however, who is more trustworthy than either of these two, says that all the tribes in the time of Tullius amounted to thirty, though he does not separate the number of parts” (into urban and rural).

A great variety of opinion has arisen regarding the original number of the Servian tribes. Niebuhr[275] believed that Servius created in all thirty, afterward reduced by unfortunate war with the Etruscans to twenty. This view found supporters but was refuted by Huschke.[276] Those who rejected it generally agreed that Servius divided the city into four tribes and the country into districts, regiones, pagi.[277] Mommsen[278] gave a new phase to the theory of the subject by assuming that the four so-called city tribes, which all the sources agree in ascribing to Servius,[279] included the country as well as the city. According to this hypothesis Alba[280] and Ostia,[281] for instance, belonged to the Palatine tribe. His opinion has found wide acceptance.[282] Afterward changing his mind, he asserted that the four urban tribes were confined within the pomerium—a view which now seems to be established beyond doubt.[283] With this final position of Mommsen the creation of theories as to the number and limitations of the Servian tribes has not been exhausted; for against the view that Servius instituted only the four urban tribes may be placed that of Pais,[284] who assigns their origin to the censors of the year 304. The theory of Pais implies that the sixteen rural tribes which bore gentile names were far older than the four urban tribes.

Light will be thrown on this obscure subject by an inquiry into the relation of the sources to one another. It seems certain that Fabius derived his information concerning the tribes and the entire centuriate organization from the “discriptio centuriarum”—a document in the censors’ office. Though ascribed to Servius Tullius as author,[285] it set forth the centuriate system as it existed in reality before the reform—that is in the time of the first war with Carthage.[286] It was this late form of the centuriate organization which Fabius had in mind. He must have been prevented, however, from ascribing to Servius the institution of all the thirty-three tribes then existing, by the recollection that two tribes were added as recently as 299 from territory too far from Rome to have formed a part of her domain under Servius; and perhaps the curiate organization led him to favor the number thirty. He made Servius the author of thirty tribes, accordingly, in spite of the fact that this number was not reached till 318. His error is not more absurd than the ascription to Servius of the whole centuriate organization as it stood at the opening of the First Punic War, or the assumption that in the first Servian census were enrolled eighty thousand men fit for military service.[287] Cato, who also states the original number as thirty, without separating them into rural and urban,[288] may have been influenced by Fabius, though it is likely that he drew from the same source. Vennonius in making Servius the author of all thirty-five tribes but slightly exceeds the absurdity of earlier writers.[289] Evidently Fabius and Cato were the sources for all future annalists. While depending on them, Varro seems to have noticed the error of ascribing twenty-six rural tribes to Servius, as there were but seventeen of this class before 387. To avoid the difficulty and at the same time to retain the Fabian number, he supposed that the country districts of Servius were not yet tribes but the regiones from which the tribes were afterward formed[290]—a superficial explanation in the true Varronian style.[291] Following Varro, however, later authorities generally speak of the four urban tribes of Servius without mentioning those of the country.[292] So Dionysius, after referring to the four city tribes, proceeds to describe their character and functions, as though these were all the tribes then existing.[293] Thus far he depends upon Varro. Fortunately, however, he gained from Fabius the information that there were also twenty-six rural tribes, his description of which[294] is slightly troubled by the Varronian notion that these country districts were not so much tribes as regiones, πάγοι, but which served all the purposes of tribes including the taking of the census.[295]

The various contradictory statements of the ancients regarding the original number of Servian tribes can now be appreciated at their respective values. In the course of the discussion it has become evident, too, that Fabius and Cato, the sources of later annalists, had no tenable ground for their assumption of thirty original tribes. Had they examined the records, perhaps the succeeding parts of their own chronicles, they would have found that before 387 there could have been only twenty-one tribes in all.[296] A less certain indication of the admission of one or possibly two tribes still earlier in the republic may have existed;[297] but here we reach the extreme limit of their knowledge. Any investigation of the number in the regal period, whether by the ancients or by the moderns, must rest not upon contemporary records but upon inference pure and simple. We may inquire, accordingly, whether the view of Mommsen[298] and Meyer[299] that the four city tribes were created first and existed for a time before the institution of the rural tribes, having no trustworthy foundation in the sources, can be deduced from our knowledge of the general conditions of the time. We must by all means avoid the supposition of Mommsen[300] that in the time of Servius there was no private property in land outside of the city.[301] If then we bear in mind two points which Mommsen has himself established, (1) that the local tribe was an aggregate of private estates,[302] (2) that the four urban tribes of Servius were limited to the city,[303] we must conclude that in the time of Servius the country estates were registered in rural tribes—in other words that Servius instituted rural as well as urban tribes.[304] The view of Meyer that all the citizens lived in the city and the dependents in the country[305]—which would afford a ground for assuming the urban tribes to have been earlier than the rural—has no basis either in institutions or in tradition. If originally the country was all-important,[306] and if at the dawn of history we find the country and city politically equal, as is actually the case, we have no motive for the insertion of an intermediate stage in which the city was all-important. There was indeed a tendency toward the concentration of political power within the city, but it did not advance beyond the equalization of city and country.[307] To maintain Meyer’s view we should be obliged to complicate the early history of Rome with two revolutions—one by which the city gained supremacy over the country, and the other in which the supremacy was lost. It is mainly to defend the early history of the comitia, and of the constitution in general, against this complication that the present discussion of the early land tenure and of the origin of the Servian tribes is offered.

The original number of tribes, as has been stated, is unknown. It was increased by the acquisition of territory. Possibly the annalists found an obscure trace of the admission of the sixteenth rural tribe—the Claudia—in 504. To that year Livy assigns the coming of Attius Clausus with his host of clients, who were formed into the Claudian tribe.[308] Wissowa[309] suggests that the immigration of the Claudian gens, the date of which did not appear in the original tradition,[310] was arbitrarily assigned to the year in which was recorded the admission of the tribe. This conjecture is supported by the situation of the Claudia, which would place it among the latest of the twenty.

With more confidence we may assign the admission of the seventeenth rural tribe—the twenty-first in the entire list—to 495.[311] It must have been the Clustumina.[312] We are certain that there were only twenty-one till 387, when four new tribes were formed, bringing the number up to twenty-five.[313] The twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh were admitted in 358,[314] the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth in 332,[315] the thirtieth and thirty-first in 318,[316] the thirty-second and thirty-third in 300[317], the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth in 241.[318] To the year 90 that number is known to have remained unchanged, and the evidence of a temporary increase during the Social War is obscure. On this point Appian[319] states that “the Romans did not enroll the newly admitted citizens in the existing thirty-five tribes for fear that, being more numerous, they might outvote the old citizens in the comitia; but by dividing them into ten parts (?) they made new tribes, in which the new citizens voted last.” This view of an increase in number is confirmed by a statement of Sisenna[320] as to the creation of two new tribes at about that time. Velleius[321] however informs us that the new citizens were enrolled in eight tribes. In the object of the arrangement he agrees with Appian. Next he mentions the promise of Cinna to enroll the Italians in all the tribes. From the connection we should naturally infer that in the opinion of Velleius the new citizens were enrolled before Cinna in eight old tribes; and yet it is difficult to understand how the assembly could be persuaded to visit any group of rural tribes with this disgrace and political disability.[322] As the authority of Sisenna, if not that of Appian, compels us to accept the fact of new tribes, it is better to interpret Velleius in that light.[323] We may suppose then that the eight tribes which he mentions were provided for by the Julian law of 90; and we must accept the statement of Sisenna that in 89 the Calpurnian law “ex senati consulto” created two other new tribes, in which were to be enrolled the citizens admitted under this law. Thus we could account for the ten (?) new tribes mentioned by Appian. As regards the Lucanians and the Samnites, who held out obstinately against Rome, the same historian[324] states that they were respectively enrolled in tribes, as in the former instances. He does not inform us, however, that for this purpose other new tribes were instituted. At all events there seems to be no essential disagreement among our sources; and we have no reasonable ground for doubting an increase, though we may remain uncertain as to the number added.[325]

The arrangement was only temporary. In 88 Sulpicius, tribune of the plebs, carried a law containing a provision for the distribution of the new citizens and the libertini among all the thirty-five tribes.[326] His plebiscite was annulled by the senate on the ground that it had been passed by violence;[327] but the provisions contained in it were afterward legalized by a senatus consultum, and it was finally carried into effect by Cinna as consul in 84.[328] This settlement of the question was approved by Sulla[329] for all the Italians excepting the Marsians and the Paelignians, who were enrolled in one tribe—the Sergia.[330]

The nature of the tribes may be inferred from their object. The intention of the organizer was to introduce the Greek military system, comprising heavy and light infantry, in which the kind of service to be performed depended upon financial ability to provide equipments.[331] Seeing that a classification of citizens with respect to property was necessary for this purpose, Servius instituted the tribes as a basis for the census. That they contained the ager privatus only is indicated by the exclusion from them of the Capitoline and Aventine hills.[332] Their local character is established by the concurrent testimony of ancient writers.[333] Yet even in the beginning they could but roughly be described as districts, for they excluded all public land and all waters and waste places claimed neither by individuals nor by the government. They retained the approximate character of districts so long only as the territory of annexed communities continued to be formed into new tribes. The process came to an end in 241; and it was as early at least as this date that the Roman colonies, not originally in the tribes, were incorporated in them.[334] Thereafter the annexation of new territory tended more and more to render the tribes geographically indeterminate.[335] The process was far advanced by the admission (90-84) of the Latins and Italians with their lands to the existing tribes,[336] which were further enlarged in the imperial period by the incorporation of provincial communities.[337] As consisting of lands, though no longer necessarily adjacent, they were still considered local.[338]

The tribe was also a group of persons; in fact the word applies far more frequently to persons than to territory.[339] During the early republic a considerable degree of harmony was maintained between the two aspects of the institution (1) possibly by a restriction on the transfer of residence,[340] (2) by the change in membership from tribe to tribe, through the censors, on the basis of a transfer of domicile, (3) by the assignment of new citizens to the tribe in or near which they had their homes, (4) by the creation of new tribes for new citizens who did not live in or near the existing tribes. This harmony experienced its first serious disturbance through the enrolment of the landless, irrespective of domicile, in the urban tribes in 304,[341] but continued to such a degree that a hundred years later the rural voters generally still resided in their own tribes.[342] In the last century of the republic the personal tribe, emancipated from the local, depended solely on inheritance and the will of the censors.[343]

The original composition of the personal tribe is determined by its purely military object. It comprised accordingly those only who were liable to service in war. From the early Roman point of view those citizens were qualified who found their livelihood in agriculture.[344] Not all landowners were enrolled in the tribes; for Latin residents,[345] freedmen,[346] widows and orphans,[347] all of whom might possess land, lacked membership. Those proprietors, too, were excluded whom the censors assigned to the aerarii as a punishment. Tribesmen were all the other landowners—adsidui[348] et locupletes[349]—together with the male descendants of military age under their potestas.[350]

Another object of the tribes, referred to Servius by our sources, was the collection of taxes.[351] We know that they afterward served this purpose; and the ancient writers, who could have had no direct knowledge of the intentions of Servius but who assigned to him without hesitation all the later developments of his organization, were in this case especially misled by their false derivation of tributum from tribus or vice versa.[352] A brief study of the facts in the case will prove their inference to be wrong. The most obvious consideration is that had Servius intended the tribes for the levy of taxes as well as for military purposes, he would have included all who were subject to taxation as well as all who were liable to service in the army, whereas in fact he admitted those only who were to serve. It is to be noted that primitive Rome imposed no regular direct taxes on the citizens in general. Every man equipped himself for war even after the introduction of the phalanx;[353] doubtless at first the knights provided their own horses;[354] and in short campaigns the soldiers carried their provisions from their own farms.[355] Fortifications and public buildings were erected by forced task-work. The king supported himself partly by gifts from his subjects and partly from the public property, including land.[356] Other early sources of revenue were tolls levied for the use of harbors, boundaries, temples, bridges, roads, sewers, and salt works.[357] In time the idea arose, too, that the person who did not perform military service should help with his property in the defence of the country. The estates of widows and orphans were accordingly taxed to support the horses of the knights.[358] Those men, also, who were exempt from service because they possessed no land[359] and yet had other property were required to pay on it a regular tax. From this connection with the public treasury (aerarium) they were termed aerarii. This class comprised shopkeepers and merchants. Sometimes the censors assigned to it as a punishment men who owned land. The fact that such persons were at the same time removed from their tribes is sufficient proof that the aerarii were originally outside these associations.[360] The cives sine suffragio, or Caerites, after this class had come into existence in 353, were like the aerarii in (1) that they did not belong to the tribes, (2) that they paid a regular tax, (3) that men were placed on their list as a punishment. They may accordingly be regarded as a special class of aerarii, enrolled as they were in a distinct list.[361] Whereas the cives sine suffragio either wholly lacked the franchise, as the phrase implies, or at most had but the right of the Latins,[362] the other aerarii must have voted in the proletarian century.[363]

The ordinary taxes sufficed for the usual light expenses; but in case of especial need an extraordinary tax was imposed upon the citizens. It was called tributum from tribuere, “to apportion,” because it was distributed among the citizens in proportion to their ratable property.[364] We hear of such a tax levied for ransoming the city from the Gauls[365] and another for the building of a wall;[366] but the most common use was for the payment of soldiers, hence the tributum was thought of primarily as a war tax.[367] For this reason tributum came to be correlative with stipendium.[368] It was not often imposed before the introduction of pay in 406.[369] Even then it was not levied every year; it was sometimes refunded when the condition of the treasury permitted; and it fell into disuse after 167.[370] As it was imposed on those only who were liable to military duty,[371] the tribe lists were followed in its collection, and in this sense we may say that it was collected tributim.[372] The work was done by state functionaries, as the tribe, so far as we know, had neither fiscal officers[373] nor a treasury; and possessing no property, it could not be held financially responsible.

An epoch in the history of the tribes was made in 312 by Appius Claudius Caecus the censor, who enrolled the landless citizens, proletarians as well as aerarii, in the existing thirty-three tribes without discrimination.[374] Cives sine suffragio were alone excepted.[375] By giving the landless the upper hand in the assemblies this measure roused the animosity of the proprietors, and thus endangered the peace of the state. In order to soothe the excited feelings of the better class, Q. Fabius Rullianus, censor in 304, supported by his colleague Decius, removed the landless from the rural tribes; but not to deprive them wholly of tribal privileges, he registered them in the four urban tribes. Hence his measure is spoken of as a compromise. Thereafter the landholding and hence more respectable citizens were preferably enrolled in the rural tribes,[376] whereas the landless were confined to those of the city.[377] It was a permanent gain that henceforth tribal membership was a test of perfect citizenship. The censors still had the power to transfer a man from one tribe to another, for instance, from a rural to an urban tribe; but they could not exclude him wholly from the tribes, for that would be tantamount to depriving him of the citizenship.[378] There were still aerarii; individuals and sometimes large groups of citizens were still assigned as a punishment to this class, which, however, was henceforth included in the tribes of the city.[379] Although the ordinary urban tribesmen were usually exempt from military duty, the aerarii were required to serve, at times under especially hard conditions,[380] and were not disqualified for office.[381] In registering them in the tribes Claudius made them, like the landowners, liable to military service and to the tributum according to their means. To effect this object he necessarily assessed their personal property on a money valuation; and in order to treat all tribesmen alike, he must have changed the terms of valuation of the landholders’ estates from iugera to money.[382]

Niebuhr, B. G., Römische Geschichte, i. 422-50, Eng. 200-12; Schwegler, Römische Geschichte, I. bk. xvii; Huschke, Ph. E., Verfassung des Königs Servius Tullius, ch. iii; Ihne, W., History of Rome, i. 62, 114; Nissen, H., Templum, 144 ff.; Italische Landeskunde, ii. 503 f.; Beloch, J., Italischer Bund unter Roms Hegemonie, ch. ii; Soltau, W., Altröm. Volksversammlungen, 375-548; Meyer, E., Ursprung des Tribunats und die Gemeinde der vier Tribus, in Hermes, xxx (1895). 1-24; controverted by Sp. Vassis, in Athena, ix (1897). 470-2; Neumann, K. J., Grundherrschaft der röm. Republik; Siebert, W., Ueber Appius Claudius Caecus; Mommsen, Th., History of Rome, bk. I. ch. vi; Röm. Tribus; Röm. Staatsrecht, iii. 161-98; Abriss des röm. Staatsrechts, 28-36; Marquardt, J., Röm. Staatsv. ii. 149-80; Willems, P., Droit public Romain, 40 ff., 98 ff.; Mispoulet, J. B., Institutions politiques des Romains, i. 37-42; Études d’institutions Romaines, 3-48; Lange, L., Röm. Altertümer, i. 501-22, and see index s. Tribus; Madvig, J. N., Verfassung und Verwaltung des röm. Staates, i. 100-8; Herzog, E., Geschichte und System der röm. Staatsverfassung, i. 39, 101 ff., 1016-31; Grotefend, C. L., Imperium romanum tributim descriptum; Kubitschek, J. W., De romanorum tribuum origine ac propogatione; Imperium romanum tributim discriptum; Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. i. 674-6: Aerarius (Kubitschek); 682-4: Aes equestre (idem); 780-93: Ager (idem); iii. 1281-3: Caere (Hülsen); 2650 f.: Claudia (Wissowa); iv. 117 f.: Clustumina (Kubitschek); Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. i. 125: Aes equestre and hordearium (Humbert).