Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. At the opening of the sixth book of his monumental history of Rome since its foundation, Livy wrote, The History of the Romans from the foundation of the city to its capture, First Under Kings, then Under Consoles and Dictators, Decemvarae and Consular Tribune, Wars of Broad and Decentions at Home. I have set out in five books, covering matters which were obscure, both through their great antiquity, like objects dimly perceived in the far distance, and because in those days there were few written records, the only reliable means of preserving a memory of past events. A further reason was the loss of most of such accounts as were preserved in the commentaries of the Pontiffs and other public and private records when the city was destroyed by fire.
From now on a clearer and more reliable account can be given of the city's civil and military history, after it made a second start, reborn as it were from its old roots with increased vigor and productivity. That seems like a good place to start this week. Rome was devastated. The city was in ruins and the population, what remained of it anyway, despaired.
Officially the subject of abandoning Rome had been closed, but unofficially the idea was still a potent force. Why rebuild when perfectly good homes sat vacant in a well-positioned, defensible city? The Romans had been merciless in their annihilation of the vayites, and the Intrussan city was practically a ghost town. But the sentence mine was made up, and the Romans were ordered to rebuild, each according to their means.
Camillis, whom the people now looked upon as twice their savior, if we believe the legends, stood firm behind staying in Rome, and the population, somber-luckantly, followed their heroes' lead. The new Rome that would grow out of the ashes of the Galaxac would be recognizable today, with its haphazard streets and deep-tangled neighborhoods clearly devoid of any central planning. There was in fact no planning whatsoever. The Romans simply picked up what material they could salvage and began rebuilding wherever the whims of each individual directed.
Rome, and I say this with love, is, and has been since the 380s BC, a convoluted mess that defies logic. The irony being that in almost every other town, city, or camp built by the Romans, rational right angles was the norm. A model was developed for the Fourth Five Military Camp that centered around bisecting perpendicular roads that was copied in almost every other settlement the Romans established. A centurion in Camp and Britain would have been able to easily navigate his way around a camp in Syria.
Everywhere the Romans went, they took their standard grid city layout with them, but the eternal city itself was the dark city of this Roman-type A OCD. From the roots of that chaos lay in the years after the Galaxac, when the Romans rebuilt quickly, but without any kind of master plan. Not that this is necessarily the Romans' fault. As they were attempting to rebuild their shattered city, nearly every one of their formerly subdued enemies took their shot at setting themselves free of the Roman hegemony.
As I mentioned at the end of last week, the usual suspects, particularly the Volsians reappeared, but longtime allies now rose up as well. Piling it on Rome became the fad to Jour among longest-grunter Latin communities who never got over Rome's breaking up to the Latin League a hundred years earlier at the Battle of Lake Regilis. Even colonies set up by Rome was strong ties to the city joined in the rebellions and kicked their mother's city while she was down. While trying to put their lives back together, the Romans kept being recalled arms, notified on this front, notified that enemy, notified this former friend.
It is no wonder the city grew so haphazardly. There was barely enough time to nail down the roof before it was time to go and fight again. Throughout these years, Camillus was the rock behind which the insecure Romans hid. In times of danger, they turned to him again and again to lead them to victory.
Whether he was appointed official dictator, as he was in 389, 368, and for the fifth and final time, 367 BC, or whether he was elected as one of the military tribumes for that year, Camillus was unquestionably the leader of Rome. Camillus relied upon his strategic and tactical brilliance to see them through these dark times. His enemies, and he did have a few, accused him of arrogance, of treating his fellow tribumes as if they were his vassals, not his equals. But the people were indifferent to these accusations.
Camillus was their man. Plus, the other commanders did little to inspire the people's confidence. At one point, a tribune leading a legion against an allied army of Latins and Volsians saw his army flee and tear and hide behind their camp walls. Camillus was ordered to take command and, by his very presence, instilled the soldiers with enough confidence to march back out and defeat the enemy they fought so powerful.
Camillus dominated his time and it would be another 150 years until anyone emerged to equal him in the Pantheon of Roman heroes. That man, Scipio Afrikanis, who delivered the Romans from the Scourge of Hannibal, is often mentioned in the same breath as Camillus, and indeed the consensus opinion is that later historians, Plutarch and Livius especially, covered their descriptions of Camillus to make him seem a prelude to the great Scipio of Africa. But as Camillus remained in the people's highest steam, another hero fell from grace. Marcus Manly is capital on us, the last same attach in honor of his bravery during the galaxy which soon find himself etched into Roman history, not as a great hero, but as a villain.
After the withdrawal of the Gauls, Manly is his ego with severely bruised by the honors heaped upon Camillus, and he took them as a personal insult. Had he and the others not held out against the Gauls, Camillus never would have had the opportunity to save him. Surely that deserved some glory, but Camillus hogged it all. Manly is one of the few amongst the citizen body who could not stand the sight of Camillus, who he considered to be a pompous fraud.
This aggravation led Manly as to break ranks with his fellow patricians and take up the cause of the pleads. By making himself their champion, Manly has hoped to do an end run around Camillus and earn the acclaim he felt he deserved. The most pressing issue of the day was debt relief. Obviously as the Romans rebuilt, there was a hefty amount of borrowing going on, and the interest payments began to bankrupt the population.
Every day saw men hauled off to prison for defaulting on loans. Men who had fought at VA and stood firm against the Gauls were daily being made slaves by money lenders who showed no mercy or compassion. Manly spoke up publicly in favor of relief, and often paid the debts of former soldiers out of his own pocket and offered interest for loans to any who asked. The patricians were disturbed by Manly as his new image as the savior of the people, not only because they saw him as letting irresponsible debtors off the hook, but also because he constantly slipped in references to the great untapped strength of the populace and how their numerical superiority ought to count for something in the formation of policy.
The patricians saw these as veiled and not so veiled threats against the established order, began to see Manly as a revolutionary figure. Manly's was arrested once, on charges of bringing false claims of theft against the money lenders, but public outcry was so great that they were forced to release him. With peace abroad to allow for real public unrest, riots began to break out between patrician and plead factions. Manly is offering daily harangs against the tyranny of the nobles, and offering himself as the only patrician who cared about his fellow citizens.
The implication was clear, throw out the senate, and elect a new democratic government, with me as your leader. Finally, unable to take it anymore, the patricians again arrested Manly as this time on charges of sedition and treason. The trial of Manly's would become famous for the way it would play out. The trial was originally held on the campus marshes, which lay in the shadow of the Capitoline Hill.
During his defense, Manly's was able to stretch his hand up to the hill and remind the people of his great service to the city, asking how anyone could possibly believe he was now engaged in treason. The argument was having its effect, so the savvy patricians adjourned the trial to a different location. Now, without the Capitoline as a backdrop, the charges and evidence he had manly stood on their own merits. Public opinion turned against Manly's, who, it became obvious, was engaged in an active conspiracy to overthrow the senate.
The verdict was swift and harsh. He was to be thrown from the tarpian rock, a steep cliff on the Capitoline Hill used for executions, ironically dying in disgrace a few feet from where he had achieved his greatest glory. The death of Manly's did nothing to end plebeian unrest, however. Manly saw an opportunity and exploited it.
He did not create the conditions for that opportunity. The plebe's overriding concern at this point were, as we have seen debt relief, but the old standbys of land redistribution and access to political power rose again. The former problem was wrapped up in a ladder, too, and the plebe's began to focus their energy on the land and power questions. Both the land taken from the VA in the north and the land taken from the volions in the south conspicuously wound up in the hands of a few patrician landowners rather than being divided up amongst the masses.
However, the people supposed to pay off their debts when they were denied the income land provided. Further, how was it that state policy had granted so much to so few? Obviously, whatever concessions had been made to the plebe's in the past had lost their potency. The plebe finally saw the office of military trivia and with consular power for what it was, an attempt to water down plebe's authority and deny them access to the consulship, the ultimate office of state.
One man in particular, a patrician with two daughters, took it upon himself to end once and for all this unbalanced. Marcus Fabius and Bustas, a patrician who enjoyed plebe's support, had married his eldest daughter to an influential patrician and his youngest to a wealthy plebe named Gaius Licinius Polo. The younger daughter complained that she would never receive the honors her elder sister received on account of her husband's plebe's status. Fabius, the story goes, promised his daughter she would have everything her sister had and began working with his son-in-law Licinius to break the patrician's strength hold on the consulship.
They began by pointing out to people that despite plebe's access to the office of military tribune, no plebe had been elected to set office for the last decade, which was true. They then demanded a permanent return to the dual consulship, with a stipulation that one of the consuls had to be a plebe. Licinius got himself elected tribune of the plebe's, an office that had fallen into disrepute, and used his veto power to bring government business to a standstill. He promised to veto everything in sight, including the yearly elections, until his demands were met.
In addition to access to the consulship, Licinius also demanded that it cap be put on the total amount of land a man can own, as well as regulations on interest rates. It was this shutdown, engineered by Fabius and Licinius, that Libby used his chronological gap, stating that between 375 and 370 BC no mandestereal elections were held. The duration and excess of the standoff is no doubt exaggerated, the outcome is not. The plebe's finally gained access to the consulship.
The moment would not come without a final appearance of the great Camillus, however. The civil unrest and power vacuum led to calls for a dictator, and the Senate named Camillus, who enjoyed the support of everyone, patrician and plebe alike. They were hoping Camillus would see things their way, but much the other discomfort keyed not. Due to a flaw in the appointment ceremony, a religious event stuffed full with every kind of Roman superstition.
Camillus was forced to resign for that year, granting a reprieve of sorts to the clearly defensive patricians. The next year, though, 367 BC, Camillus was again named dictator for the fifth and final time. He used his power to broker the deal Licinius and his colleagues demanded, and for the first time a plebe would be elected consul. The crisis settled, Camillus resigned.
The old Roman leader died soon after, the victim of a plague that decimated the Romans in the 360s BC. With his death, a new era dawned. The Romans had survived their brush with death and emerged a strong, more democratic place. The honor of first plebe consul historically goes to Lucius Sextius, one of Licinius' colleagues, who helped engineer the shutdown.
The land ownership ceiling and regulation of debt were granted at the same time, and ironically, Licinius himself would be prosecuted years later for violating his own laws after he sought to accumulate large tracts of land for himself and his family. At this point, the law stated merely that one of the consuls could be a plebe. Later, around 342 BC, a law would be passed stating that one of the consuls had to be a plebe. For now, though, the plebe's accepted the obvious victory and passed to the next generation the task of not simply allowing equal access to power but guaranteeing it.
The veracity of this patrician plebe's showdown and the election of a first plebeian consul in 367 BC has been called into question by modern historians. In the first place, they point out that Roman historians of the late republic and early imperial period were obviously drawing their narrative for more recent events, specifically the conflicts that centered around the Gratkei brothers, who used their veto power to try and force through land redistribution in the 130s and 120s BC. Second, modern analysis has determined that as many as a third of the consuls prior to 367 were in fact a plebe in origin. As is so often the case, a clear dramatic delineation in history is less plausible than a gradual shift in policy over the years.
There is no doubt that the vast majority of early consuls were patricians, but it is suspected that this was not the result of overt discrimination, but rather because of the greater wealth and fame of patrician candidates. The 367 BC date is important though, because from that point on there is a marked increase in plebe consuls, demonstrating some sort of conscious decision to grant plebeians more power. And of course, the existence of a 342 BC law stipulating that one of the consuls had to be a plebe is not disputed, and it seems likely that this was the culmination of a decades long shift rather than a bolt out of the blue. In general, what can be stated is that after the sack of Rome, the plebe's demanded and received far greater power than they had enjoyed prior to the arrival of the Gauls.
The Romans struggled in the years after the Gauls left them for dead, but managed to hold on in the face of massive external pressure and internal dissension. The new enfranchisement of the plebe's made the Romans more cohesive and less divisive society. This cohesion would be tested by a confrontation that loomed on the horizon. But the Romans did not know it yet.
They were about to begin a series of war that would leave them the dominant force, not just in the Latium or Central Italy, but in the entire peninsula. Next week, we will introduce the Samnites, the fiercest of all the hill tribes, who would not only prove more than a match for Rome, but also force the Romans to rethink everything they knew about warfare. The Romans would fight a single great war with three distinct phases against the Samnites between 343 and 295 BC. The Samnite wars would pull all the major powers of Italy onto one side or the other and culminate with the largest battle ever fought on Italian soil.
When it was over, the Roman victory was so complete that it would be 200 years before an Italian people again mounted a serious threat to Roman rule. And by that time, Rome had grown into a global empire the Italians were not trying to topple, but rather gained fully access to shit with her.