Capogrossi Colognesi, Law, Power, Roman Commonwealth [Part 2]
The open city, and the kings before the Republic [11 mins.]
In his book Law and Power in the Making of the Roman Commonwealth, published in 2014, Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi wrote:
Chapter 1
The genesis of a political community
The early city: an open system
… The early city resembled a busy laboratory where different forms of social organization were tested, creating the premises for an increasingly distinct new concept of community. To better grasp this, we should recall an underlying characteristic of the pre-urban villages … the fact that they were premised on bonds of kinship. This meant that the mechanism for integrating a new member into the group – which did undoubtedly happen, as individuals circulated across groups – necessarily involved creating a fictional kinship tie where none existed in reality. Assimilation was therefore fairly difficult, and a group’s potential for growth was constrained by the kinship system: a social group was defined by its “father,” its common ancestor, and was restricted exclusively to his descendants, whether real or fictional.
This stands in stark contrast to the fluidity characterizing the archaic city. The city had a “founder,” not a “father,” and could therefore incorporate a diversity of subjects without having to insert them in a family relationship. In this respect, one can say that “the political” subverted the dominance of kinship ties. Whereas the earlier social order assimilated new members by turning them into “relatives,” in the city this process was mediated by institutions that made the individual into a “citizen,” a member of the populus.
It is important to note that my discussion of the “ancient city” here relates exclusively to Rome; the history of the Greek poleis was rather different. Jealous guardians of lineage, the poleis were generally unwilling to extend citizenship to strangers. Ancient observers remarked on this, considering it a weakness that undermined their historical achievement. And this is also why I am reluctant to use the term “city-state” where Rome is concerned, since it is best to avoid suggesting similarities where the institutional mechanisms underlying the notion of “belonging to a city” seem to have been quite different.
The openness of archaic Rome would shape the later history of the city, and would leave a lasting legacy to our own societies as well. The closed world of the village and the family gave way to an unparalleled expansion of opportunities for circulation, attested most forcefully by the rise to power of a number of the legendary “seven” kings of Rome who came from elsewhere. The fact that Numa Pompilius, Tarquinius Priscus, and Servius Tullius could become king despite being foreigners demonstrates the ease with which Rome could absorb new groups of citizens, even allowing some to rise to positions of the highest prominence. This openness was crucial to accelerating the city’s growth, and the Romans would remain aware of its advantages for centuries, relying on it under the empire as well, albeit in very different circumstances.
The traditional image of ancient Rome bequeathed to us by nineteenth-century historians, however, has always emphasized the city’s closure to the external world, its tendency to exclusiveness. And indeed, as its internal structure became better defined, the distinction between those “inside” and those “outside,” between citizens and foreigners, must have become more pronounced. Much like for other cities in antiquity, this tendency led earlier generations of scholars to conclude that Rome and the settlements around it had always had a “natural” hostility to each other, affording no protection to anyone straying outside the narrow confines of their place of origin. We are now much more cautious on this point, considering it likely that a tendency toward mutual exclusion and a mistrust of outsiders were gradual developments, occurring in tandem with the structural consolidation of the new political system. These characteristics were closely tied to the political evolution of the city, therefore, and cannot be taken as a given from the outset.
Based on these premises, we are in a better position to understand the sequence of events described in the ancient sources for much of the regal period, particularly concerning the outcome of the conflicts between Rome and other cities – or settlements undergoing a shift toward urbanization, such as Alba Longa. … This pattern was repeated for later conflicts as well: once a city was defeated, its inhabitants were absorbed by the conquering city. Rome’s wars thus seem on the whole to have entailed a succession of such accelerated instances of synoecism, whereby the inhabitants of each conquered town were resettled in Rome, and completely assimilated. An exemplary case, though not unique, is that of Alba Longa. The legendary center of a federation of Latin communities, it had evolved rather slowly toward urbanization and was thus more fragile than centers such as Aricia, Tibur, Praeneste, or Rome itself. After its war with the Romans under King Tullus Hostilius, Alba was destroyed and its population was moved to Rome and fully incorporated into the Roman citizenry. Its elite gentes were also resettled in Rome, where they were able to retain their status as prominent patricians; among them were the Julii, Servilii, Quinctii, Geganii, Curiatii, and Cloelii.
Rome conquered and absorbed many other communities during the regal period. …The same pattern occurred elsewhere, with the same results. Towns that had urbanized more quickly saw their growth accelerate in quantitative terms, and hence also in military–political terms … to trigger this cumulative mechanism whereby each military success further increased their population and territory, which in turn led to additional conquests. It was at this time that many ancient oppida and populi, isolated fortresses and settlements that had not yet consolidated their position, “passed away without leaving any traces,” to the benefit of the communities that would instead last throughout antiquity and beyond.
But next to the geographical mobility that occurred when weaker settlements were “cannibalized” by their stronger neighbors, there was another form of mobility as well, due to the relative ease with which small groups, individual gentes, families, and even single individuals could leave their original communities and migrate to Rome. The city seems to have been a magnet from the start, not least because of its strategic position and its location at an important communications crossroads.
These developments are highly significant in quantitative terms: they led to Rome’s material growth and made the city more powerful. They are equally significant in cultural terms, however. By accelerating circulation, they had a profound impact on Rome’s social and political system, further weakening the links – indeed, the virtual identity – between the city’s political leadership and the gentes. The migration of whole groups of gentes into Rome no doubt bolstered the clans’ position and autonomy, but on the other hand, migrants who moved to the city independently of their affiliation to a gens must have been even more numerous, and this must have contributed to undermining the exclusivity of lineage and blood ties. In the long run, this process would lead to the breakdown of the primitive social system based on confederated clans, further strengthening the role of the rex as supreme mediator. …
Chapter 2
Early Roman institutions
The rex
Ancient Roman tradition attests to the presence of a king at the head of the primitive city. He played a dynamic role in the process of political unification, one that transcended ancestral tribal and lineage ties, although many elements of this figure are archaic. Particularly significant is the absence of a dynastic component to the early monarchy, as though to counteract the patriarchal and familial logic that was so dominant in the early city. The son never succeeds the father in this form of monarchy. On the contrary, so much stress is laid on how the monarch’s death puts an end to his rule that it can only be explained by reference to Latium’s most archaic traditions, such as that of the rex Nemorensis, the high priest of Diana at Nemi, who could be ousted only when a challenger killed him and took his place. The king’s charismatic role, and its religious overtones, both of which would long influence Rome’s institutions, thus appear to have deep roots dating back to Latium’s prehistoric priest–kings.
All the ancient sources testify that from the start the will of the gods was central to a new king’s appointment. Romulus, the legendary founder of the city, consulted the gods directly for favorable signs, and his successor, Numa Pompilius, a no less legendary figure, was the first to be made king by the solemn ceremony of inauguratio, during which an augur placed his right hand on Numa’s head and asked Jupiter for clear signs that he should be king. This ritual, which survived until the imperial age, took place in a purpose-built sacred space, the templum.
As rex inauguratus, the new king was therefore invested with a sacred aura and became the supreme high priest of Rome, mediating between the community and its gods. But he did so not only, and not entirely, by divine fiat, since both the senate and the people participated in his appointment. It was a member of the senate designated as an interrex who nominated a new king. His nomination, or creatio, was followed by his inauguratio, and then the new king convened the curiate assembly, before which he was invested with his full powers. This formal procedure allowed his future subjects, and especially his army, to participate in the appointment of the new king. Known as the lex curiata de imperio, this was the final step for taking office, and it was still in force in the republican period, when it was used to induct Rome’s higher magistrates into office.
Whether these steps were in fact indispensable to the appointment of a new king remains a moot question, dictated more by a modern concern with regulatory abstractions than by attention to the concrete details of ancient practice. Likewise, there is little point in trying to identify the precise sequence of these formalities, a matter on which there are discrepancies among ancient sources. Nor is there consensus among them about the role played by the populus in the regal period. Livy seems to suggest that it participated actively in the process by voting, and it makes sense for the Romans of the republican era to have interpreted this popular participation as a kind of election: but it is most likely a retrospective attribution of later practice.
Both military leader and high priest, the rex was at once the army’s ductor and the guarantor of the pax deorum within the city, where he was supreme guardian and upholder of the law. The rex “knew” and “spoke” the laws of the city, applying them to address and resolve conflicts between individuals and to punish criminal behavior. He thus ensured the security – even the continued existence – of the community.
In every sphere of his activity, the king gradually came to be assisted by a select group of collaborators. In military matters, the magister populi was an army commander who could substitute for the king when necessary (it is worth noting here that the term populus was originally used to refer to the army rather than to the whole community of citizens). Acting together with the magister populi was the magister equitum, in charge of the cavalry. Nor did the rex act alone in civil government; very early on, he was apparently already assisted by a praefectus urbi, a position that would gradually gain in importance, especially in the fields of civil and criminal law. In enforcing the observance of the city’s traditional body of customs – its mores – the king received assistance from the college of pontiffs, which probably included the king himself among its members.
Ancient sources mention the existence of a number of leges regiae (“king’s laws”) and regulations passed by each Roman king. Unlike the later republican magistrates, the rex most likely did not subject his proposals to the people’s assembly for formal approval. We can also assume that sometimes there was no clear distinction between enacting laws binding on all members of the community and adjudicating quarrels between individual citizens, or cives. Modern scholars have sometimes stressed the “factual” character of Roman law in this early period: Rome’s cives were only made aware of the presence of the law, as such, once a judicial decision had been reached.
As was often the case in early antiquity, the administration of justice was focused primarily on criminal law and on issuing sanctions against behaviors damaging to other members of the community. The importance of this field is confirmed by the early presence of two pairs of assistants of the king: the duoviri perduellionis and the quaestores parricidii, who oversaw the repression of particularly serious crimes.
Situated somewhere between the realm of magic and the earliest forms of technological and scientific knowledge was the king’s role as time keeper, setting the rhythm of city life. Since the Romans had not yet introduced a fixed calendar tied to the yearly cycle of the sun, times and “dates” were set according to a flexible and constantly changing system based on the lunar cycle. This calendar was used to schedule all events in the city, from the meetings of the assembly and the days on which justice could be sought to the various festivities marking the different phases of agricultural work. At the start of each month the pontifex maximus convened the comitia (assembly), and the king announced that month’s calendar, indicating the days on which business could be transacted (dies fasti), and those on which no activities could be conducted (dies nefasti).
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The Source has been:
Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi, Law and Power in the Making of the Roman Commonwealth, translated from Italian by Laura Kopp, Cambridge University Press 2014
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