Public Law in Rome

in 81, at the conclusion of a bloody civil war, the Roman people approved a bill sponsored by L. Valerius Flaccus, as interrex, making L. Cornelius Sulla “Dictator for Writing the Laws and Restoring the State” (dictator legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae).¹ Sulla's first act as dictator was an inno­vation.

For centuries the Romans reached decisions about law relating to the most critical aspects of their society in a public process concluded in the voting assem­blies of Rome. The first reported public lawmaking occasion fell in the first year of the Republic, 509, when the first consul M. lunius Brutus, in accordance with a Senate decree, carried a measure to exile all members of the Tarquin clan. The last reported occasion of certain date occurred during the reign of the emperor Nerva, CE 96-98, when the emperor himself presented a bill assign­ing land to poor Romans. In between lay roughly six hundred years and 750 unevenly reported public law proposals or enacted public laws.

Over the many centuries of public lawmaking activity, the historical circum­stances surrounding the production of public law are haphazardly recorded. It is paradoxical that the most famous public laws with the profoundest conse­quences are sometimes puzzlingly detached from precise historical circumstances. A plebiscite commonly known as the lex Aquilia de damno, for instance, dating perhaps to the early third century, between 287 (the date of the lex Hor­tensia making plebiscites binding on the entire Roman community) and 133-12 (the period of the Gracchi) provided the foundations for the fundamental Roman delict, or tort, dealing with wrongful damage to property, damnum ini- uria datum. Roman jurists commented extensively on the meaning and appli­cation of relevant provisions of the lex Aquilia, much of their commentary surviving in the Digests, where it provides a clear measure of the importance of the lex Aquilia in the development of Roman private law. Yet we know next to nothing of the contemporary issues prompting a lawmaker possibly named Aquilius to draft and promulgate such a public law proposal and prompting the Roman plebs at some time reportedly in the first half of the third century to accept it as law.⁵ Why was this issue addressed in a public law at all, rather than by the praetor in his edict?

Another famous public law, the lex Agraria of 111, owes its celebrity pri­marily to the accidents of survival facing a bronze tablet on which the law was engraved in the late second century, possibly in the Roman town of Forum Sem­pronia (Fossombrone) in Umbria.⁶ Ceremonially displayed in a town center or temple precinct, bronze tablets engraved with laws provided a monumental record of the enactments of Rome's assemblies.

the lex Agraria, that instituted momentous changes in the legal status of Roman public property (ager publicus). While the historical circumstances of the law are broadly known, precise details are lacking.⁷ The identification and content of the lex Agraria have been at issue since discovery of the bronze fragments on which it was engraved near Urbino, in north Italy, in the fifteenth century CE.⁸ In particular, scholars have been at pains to determine what precisely the lex Agraria enacted and where this law fits in the scheme of agrarian legisla­tion of the period reported by ancient narrative sources.⁹ Who was the law­maker? Why was such a law or indeed any of the land laws between 133 and in presented to the people? Why did not the Roman censors, or consuls, or indeed the Senate decide about the legal status of ager publicus in this instance as they had in other instances?

No less fundamental questions haunt even those public law sessions that are recorded in some detail, as for instance when the tribune Ti. Sempronius Grac­chus in 133 promulgated a proposal to recover ager publicus in private posses­sion and redistribute the land to poor Romans—the epochal, initial proposal in the hotly debated series culminating in the lex Agraria. The draft of his pro­posal had been carefully prepared by Gracchus and a council of advisors that included friends and family members, among them some of the highest-rank­ing senators of Rome. Gracchus's public speeches on the measure, as reported by the later historian Appian, touched on burning issues of the day: access to land resources, military manpower needs, and a slave labor force.¹⁰ Crowds of people came to Rome, both supporters and opponents, to be on hand when the day of the voting assembly arrived: rich men who stood to lose some of their holdings on ager publicus, long in their possession even if irregularly held; men of military age, soldiers, and ex-soldiers without land; Roman and Latin colonists and restricted-citizen inhabitants (cives sine suffragio) of municipia; and Italians interested in the disposition of such land.¹¹ Inns and private accommoda­tions could not hold all the Romans, Latins, and Italians who descended on Rome, bent on attending the outcome of the vote.

Despite this relatively detailed picture of the circumstances of the lex Sem­pronia agraria, one of the best known lawmaking events of the Roman Repub­lic, our knowledge of the context of those circumstances is nonetheless as incomplete in several important respects as it is in the case of the lex Agraria. Attendance at Gracchus's public lawmaking sessions provides a case in point. Not only did vast numbers of people travel sometimes great distances to Rome to attend Gracchus's assembly, but they did so in some cases knowing they could not vote—in 133 the general grant of citizenship to all Italians was nearly fifty years in the future. Only citizens could enact law or elect Rome's political and military leaders in legitimately convened assemblies. Nonetheless, noncitizens as well as citizens converged on Rome in 133 to participate in the public lawmaking event sponsored by Gracchus. The participation by so large and diverse a group serves as a significant measure not only of the importance of the issues but also of the mechanism used to address those issues—a public lawmaking event. The general involvement of Romans from throughout Italy from all levels—from that of the elite Roman, a man of wealth and status if not a senator or elected official, to that of the ordinary citizen—in the public lawmaking process, especially in the years before all Italy became officially Roman at the conclusion of the Italian War, is striking.

THE DIMENSIONS OF LAWMAKING ACTIVITY

This book thus seeks to join public law to life in the Roman Republic through­out Italy during the years of greatest expansion, ca. 350 to 44. In this chapter my main project is to use my compilation of evidence about public law and law­making to focus as precisely as possible on what needs to be explained. What does the surviving evidence show about public lawmaking activity during the period in Roman history within which it was most extensively used, that is, the years from ca. 350 to 44? To begin, over the entire period of Roman public lawmaking, from roughly 509 BCE to 96 CE, reports on about 669 proposals or laws are known. But the main focus of my investigation is on our main period of interest, rather arbitrarily extended for ease of comparison by a few years at one end and divided into twenty-five-year blocks of time, as shown in table 1.1.¹² Although cutting across the conventional periodization used by Roman historians, the table reveals some striking variations over time in the Romans' resort to public law, which are unrelated to changes in the volume of reportage.¹³ Over the quarter century from 249 to 225, for instance, Romans gathered to consider proposals of law about once every six years on average, for a total of only four occasions. Over the quarter century from 74 to 50, however, law sponsors called Romans together on 118 occasions, on average just over five times yearly.

The most intense lawmaking activity over our period of interest obviously falls in times of reported historical crises. The Second Punic War is fought between 218 and 201, and concurrently the number (43) of public laws for the quarter century within which it lies more than doubles any similar earlier period. Support for the thesis that the Romans existed in a constant state of crisis after 133, the beginning of the “century of revolution,” is provided by a climb in the incidence of public law proposals at around that time. Lawmakers offered 68 bills, a new record, for public scrutiny over the quarter century from 124 to 100. In turn this total is almost matched by the 67 laws proposed over the follow­ing quarter century, 99 to 75, years that include the critical events of 91 to 81 and the temporary abeyance of the office of tribune. Roman law sponsors pre­sented a record-breaking 118 laws to the Roman people from 74 to 50, a time span that brackets the slave revolt led by Spartacus between 73 and 71 and the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63. Our era of interest concludes with the third high­est incidence of laws for any quarter century in Roman history, 67 laws between 49 and 25. This quarter century witnessed the first round of civil wars involv­ing Julius Caesar and Pompey and the second round of civil wars involving Octavian and M. Antonius, that is, 44 to 31.

But what does all this mean for public lawmaking on a year-to-year basis? What could a Roman citizen expect in the way of public lawmaking events dur­ing a typical year? Arranging the incidence of lawmaking assemblies, or the absence thereof, on the basis of individual years within our selected periods, as in table 1.2, confirms the tendency toward a high rate of lawmaking during times of crises and the increasing frequency of lawmaking sessions as we approach the emergence of the Empire. Overall, as column 2 in table 1.2 indicates, for almost half (144) of all years over our period no public lawmaking sessions held the Romans' attention. For each of 79 years (column 3) the Romans participated on a single occasion in the public consideration of a law proposal, followed by two occasions per year for each of 32 years (column 4), three per year for each of 19 years (column 5), and four occasions per year for each of 11 years (column 6). In 5 years across the period Romans participated in five lawmak­ing sessions (column 7), and in 23 years they participated in six such sessions (column 8). Overall, in those years in which the Romans considered public law proposals (181), an average of about two and a half (2.6) laws per year were presented. All quarter-century divisions have a number of years with no law­making activity and a peak year in which lawmaking activity occurred many times. During the quietest quarter century, that is, 249 to 225, for 21 out of the 25 years not a single public law was proposed; at the other extreme, however, from 74 to 50, in 24 years out of 25 years, Romans participated in the public consideration of at least one law.

After 225, the patterns of public lawmaking shift significantly, as noted in table 1.2. In contrast to earlier times when Romans could expect state heralds to summon them to at most one meeting a year to hear arguments on the merits of a law proposal, now they found themselves enduring the rigorous public law­making process three or four times during a single year. The finer calibration in table 1.2 confirms the findings in our previous table of a relationship between crises and the incidence of public lawmaking as the Romans extend their con­trol across Italy and the Mediterranean. Although public lawmaking follows no simple discernible pattern, the general trend is in the direction of more laws in more years for each quarter century and more laws during times of crises, as we approach the end of the Republic, by which time Romans were engaged in about five public lawmaking assemblies in a typical year. After 125, the years in which the number of law proposals climbs to six or higher are also far more fre­quent than earlier. Over the same period, the highest rate of law proposals in any single year ranges from thirteen in 123 to a high of nineteen laws in 44, the most we see in one year (column 9, table 1.2). Within each quarter century, except 199-175 and 174-150, there is a year of intensive lawmaking activity: 217 with six laws or proposals, 133 with seven, 123 with thirteen, 81 with eighteen, 58 with sixteen, and 44 with the historically unprecedented nineteen laws (column 9). All were years of turmoil. The years of the 50s, in which Romans participated in a remarkable seventy-two lawmaking events, and the 11 years from 91 to 80, in which lawmakers promulgated fifty-five bills, were the busiest in Roman his­tory. Given the customary requirements for the public display and recitation of law proposals and the religious and political rituals accompanying the public pas­sage of law, such a grueling schedule of lawmaking meetings and assemblies meant that throughout the century preceding the demise of the Republic the Roman people spent much, if not most, of their year involved in one way or another with the public lawmaking process.

ISSUES IN LAWMAKING

What issues inspired proposals of law? This is a complicated question, for many of the law proposals as reported are exceedingly difficult to label. After reject­ing accepted categories as too imprecise, I devised a more refined labeling sys­tem that allowed me to examine, with some degree of confidence, the subject matter of 559 public laws—the entire body of reliably reported laws for the period between 350 and 25 (table 1.1). Altogether these proposals and enacted laws address 254 subjects or issues. Of these, 74 subjects appear more than once, as listed in table 1.3. By far the most important issues inspiring Roman lawmak­ers to resort to the public lawmaking process, listed in table 1.3, are repeated law proposals dealing in some way with senators or elected officeholders, Rome's political leaders: chief among such issues, at twenty-one occurrences, are pro­posals to appoint special commissions of investigation, that is, to establish courts of inquiry to collect information and take decisive action on an important mat­ter most often involving elite Romans. Other popular issues also involved polit­ical leaders and other elite Romans: the suspension or circumvention of law, usually (though not always) to bend the rules of office holding to the advan­tage of any individual; selection of commanders; creation of extraordinary boards; assignment of provinces; abrogation or prorogation of command (imperium); triumphs; and the removal of a tribune from office. A total of 44 separate issues involving the political and social leadership spurred Romans to participate in 205 specific lawmaking meetings. A total of 30 other issues involved the wider population—often including the political leadership it should be noted; the categories are somewhat loose. Among these other issues, citizen grants to individuals and groups, 19 in number, were most frequently aired. Reflecting the exigencies of expansion, I note that declarations of war, of which 16 were passed, and the foundation of colonies vie for second place among other issues in table 1.3, followed in third place by the distribution and assignment of land (15). Also prominent in the listing are repeated proposals dealing with grain distributions, peace, voting, crimes, the settlement of debts, and individ­ual civil or citizen liberties (provocatio).

Of the remaining 254 subjects, 180 appear only once during the period, as in table 1.4, where the listing of issues is divided into those involving the polit­ical leadership and others. As with the repeated issues in table 1.3, these individual issues overwhelmingly involve matters relating to political leaders and other elite Romans, with a total of 98 lawmaking sessions covering indi­vidual issues pertaining to their activities. Although some issues here seem friv­olous to modern eyes (importing wild beasts from Africa is one of the more obvious examples), the great majority of all the proposals appear in no way less important than the repeated issues listed in table 1.3, as we might expect given that they moved Roman lawmakers to initiate the public lawmaking process. Through the presentation of these individual bills, Romans tried to remove a consul from office, they first deprived of power and then reinvigorated the office of tribune, they defined the voting rights of freedmen, they regulated the elec­tion of military tribunes, and they fixed the length of tenure of provincial gov­ernors, to point at some of the more obviously important listed issues that were covered in a one-time public law proposal. The variety and extent of issues in tables 1.3 and 1.4 over the period reveal the wide reach of decisions made by public lawmaking assemblies into every conceivable nook and cranny of Rome's social, political, economic, and religious system, no matter how inconsequen­tial or how vital. More important, the variety and extent of issues underscore the importance to the Roman people of the public lawmaking process in main­taining their society as they expanded across Italy and incorporated other Ital­ians into the Roman state.

But to what extent did these patterns of issues inspiring Roman lawmakers to initiate the lawmaking process change over time? To examine this ques­tion I listed issues that inspired public lawmaking events for five selected crit­ical periods in Roman history: 350 to 219; 218 to 201; 200 toi34; 133 to 92; and, finally, 91 to 44, as noted in table 1.5. These periods encompass signifi­cant historical developments: the initial stage of Roman expansion in Italy to the Second Punic War (350-219); the Second Punic War itself, the first major crisis faced by the Roman state (218-201) and worthy of separate considera­tion both for that reason and because of the first-time, strikingly high incidence of lawmaking throughout the crisis; the beginnings of Roman expansion into the eastern Mediterranean and the years following, when the social problems consequent on expansion were first recognized in a serious way (200-134); the tribunate of Ti. Gracchus to the Italian War, when building social problems came to a head in the war of the Italian allies for inclusion in the Roman state (133 to 92); and the Italian War to the assassination of Julius Caesar, the period of the precipitate decline of the Republic (91-44). Although our selected spans are uneven in length, they allow us to focus on the relationship between broad developments and the issues presented to Roman voters in public law propos­als to a far greater degree than the arbitrary quarter-century divisions of tables 1.1 and 1.2. It is immediately clear, for instance, from table 1.5 that changes occurring in the topic and frequency of the repeated issues presented to the Roman people from one of our selected periods to the next are, as we might expect, best explained by the historical circumstances of each period.

Over our earliest time span in table 1.5, that is, the 131-year period from 350 to 219, Romans participated in a lawmaking session about once every three years for a total of fifty-three such public sessions. When we list all proposals of law for this period, as in table 1.6, we find that these irregularly held sessions covered thirty-seven topics, of which thirty were raised only once, and the remaining twenty-three covered seven topics repeated anywhere from two to ten times. By far the most recurrent overarching topic of concern to Romans in the public law proposals presented to them is the behavior of political leaders and other elite Romans, which forms 40 percent of the total listing in table 1.6. As they expanded across Italy, the Romans were compelled, time after time, to come together in lawmaking assemblies to develop a consensus on ques­tions of leadership and the behavior of elite Romans, including efforts to open office holding at all levels to the widest possible field, action in the case of a commander’s surrender, the announcement of the Senate's opinion about the matter at hand prior to assemblies, the suspension or circumvention of law, and extension of a commander’s imperium. Next in importance is declaring war, which accounts for ten public lawmaking sessions during the period, as noted in table 1.6. Taken together with the repeated and individual sessions to pass laws to send requested military assistance (to the Mamertines), to establish a board to arrange the outfitting and repair of the Roman fleet, to approve treaties, to confirm peace, or to fix the punishment of a place or of rebellious troops, we can see a concern with matters bearing on the progress of Roman expansion. Similarly as shown in table 1.6, both repeated and single issues also address the vigor of the Roman people, including three public law sessions on the grant­ing of citizenship to groups, two on the general force of plebiscites, and one each on the assignment of land, the end of debt bondage, and civil liberties. Finally, efforts to regularize market conditions, or protect property throughout Roman territory, make up an additional important block of six public law ses­sions, including public legislation to establish state oversight over the weights and measures used in markets, to set legal business on market days, and to address the payment of debts.

The perceived importance of public lawmaking assemblies to Romans in dealing with perceived structural limitations in periods of stress is suggested by the extent to which Rome’s elected officials called such sessions over the sev­enteen years of the Second Punic War, 218 to 201, as shown in table 1.7. Almost twice per year on average Romans considered public law proposals, participat­ing in thirty-eight lawmaking sessions over seventeen years, a sixfold increase over earlier years in the frequency with which Romans debated public law proposals. As in the earlier years, however, the Romans used the public law­making process to resolve issues of leadership and the behavior of political lead­ers as well as other elite Romans. More than half (sixteen) of the twenty-nine different topics presented to the Romans as proposals of law (table 1.7) address these concerns. But there were differences of focus compared to previous times in the leading, repeated concerns: leadership was most prominent in the cre­ation of extraordinary administrative boards, the selection or election of commanders and dictators, and abrogation or extension of imperium. Likewise, the confirmation of peace and the granting of citizenship inspired public law­making on more than one occasion. Similarly, the earlier concern with regu­larizing market conditions seems now to be conditioned by war, as reflected in the fairly prominent cluster of proposals that attempted to regularize cur­rency and regulate personal expenditures. Overall, the suspicion that Romans were trying to deal with unsettled conditions across a broad front, suggested by the unprecedented frequency of the public law sessions, is strengthened by the focus of topics of this period.

The conclusion of the Punic Wars coincided with a dramatic drop in the Romans' resort to public lawmaking—albeit the frequency of public law pro­posals is not as low as the level of the 131 years before the war—as shown in table 1.8, which covers our next selected period, 200 to 134. With sixty-one proposals of law over these sixty-six years, Roman involvement in the public law process is on average slightly less than one proposal per year. Of this overall total, eleven issues are presented anywhere from two to six times to account for a total of thirty-three sessions: the remaining twenty-eight issues are brought to public lawmaking events one time. Of the overall sixty-one top­ics, matters involving the political and social leadership, at thirty-three, more than half, again dominate as the inspiration for public law. Next in importance are issues relating to the Roman expansion across Italy, in particular to the perennial concern with regularizing market conditions. Together the laws reg­ulating personal expenditure, women's capacity to inherit, money lending, the lease of ager Campanus, and two laws extending certain Roman laws to Latin and Italian allies account for a significant block of seven proposals, as noted in table 1.8. An intersecting set of concerns are the proposals relating to the dis­tribution or assignment of land, the foundation of colonies, Roman civil liber­ties (provocatio), the citizen status of former slaves and their sons, privileges and honors for individuals, the grant of citizenship to an outside group, and efforts to expel Latin and Italian immigrants from Rome. Prominent also as pro­viding the inspiration for multiple sessions are the appointment of special com­missions of investigation, the suspension or circumvention of law, confirma­tion of peace, declarations of war, and a new concern, presented twice to the Roman people, voting by written ballot.

Over our next selected time span, the almost half century from 133 to 92, that is, the period marked off by the tribunates of Ti. Gracchus and M. Livius Drusus, Roman lawmakers called the Roman people to consider about two and a half public law proposals per year, more than in the preceding years, although still less than the average frequency over the Second Punic War. While mat­ters involving the political and social leadership again form a large cluster among issues that inspired such sessions, at thirty-eight proposals, for the first time other issues, involving the majority population, as well as senators, elected officeholders and other Romans of wealth and status, are more prominent at forty-nine proposals, or almost half of the total number of proposals over the period (table 1.9). Legislation dealing with the founding of colonies heads the listing of repeated issues, followed by the appointment of special commissions of investigation, the distribution or assignment of land, the grant of citizenship, and the distribution of grain to citizens. Among other issues addressed more than once in public law proposals presented to the Roman people are bills to set the term of military service, to vote by written ballot, to extend Roman civil liberties, and to fix the composition of juries. A large number of repeated and single issues addressed in public law proposals involve the conditions facilitat­ing trade and expansion within Italy but also beyond its borders. These include using the bequest of King Attalus to finance a land commission; leasing state contracts in Asia; regulating port duties; building new roads in Italy; the status of landholdings; regulating boundaries; and extending an existing action-at- law, the remedy of manus iniectio, against money lenders (faeneratores). An issue never before presented to the people, namely, the outright abrogation of an enacted public law, also inspired two public lawmaking sessions. We shall return to this in chapter 9. The extent to which the issues brought to the people touch on more diverse facets of political, social, and economic order hints at a more commonplace recourse to public lawmaking assemblies in this period.

This trend toward a more commonplace and diverse use of the public law­making process intensifies as we approach the crucial final years of the “free” Republic, 91 to 44, shown in table 1.10. Now Romans attended anywhere from one to twenty public lawmaking sessions in a single year, the average number reaching the unprecedented level of five per year, the busiest sustained period of lawmaking in Roman history. Whether or not the lawmaking process was observed in its entirety by the dictators, Sulla and Caesar, the point nonethe­less holds: Romans were involved with public lawmaking throughout much of the year.¹⁴ Not only did the number of issues broached at lawmaking sessions, during the period from 91 to 44, exceed that of earlier periods, but many (37) of these same issues were far more likely to be presented to the Roman public at lawmaking events on more than one occasion. Of the total 139 issues over that time span, most (93) appeared only once in the record. But other issues were aired more often: 18 appear twice; 13 appear three to five times; and 6 appear between six and eleven times. Clearly, the issues were becoming more complicated and conditions were changing so fast that the Romans were often forced to reconsider them. The variety and tenacity of the issues provide more evidence of the growing political and social turmoil of the period.

Of the various topics inspiring action by key Roman lawmakers and the Roman people between 91 and 44, issues relating to political leaders and other elite Romans became even more dominant as inspirations for proposals of law, as shown in table 1.10. More than half of the lawmaking sessions over the entire period were devoted to such legislation, for an unprecedented total of 141 sep­arate sessions out of 234, on eighty separate subjects. The presentation of so many public law proposals relating to elite Romans suggests a certain degree of social turmoil, especially at the upper levels of society. Particularly expressive of disruption are proposals calling for the recall of exiles, which led to 11 events, no fewer than 7 special commissions of investigation, as well as a large cluster of laws (29) relating to more precisely defined criminal matters, involving for the most part political leaders, from the juries of criminal courts to particular crimes, another cluster (15) making innovative changes in the Roman struc­ture of political office and Senate membership, and finally an unprecedented number of proposals (6) granting privileges and honors to individuals. That all levels of Roman society and all regions of Italy were experiencing a certain amount of turmoil is indicated by the high number of proposals for granting or defining citizenship (11), distributing land (9), and assigning new citizens to tribes or creating new tribes (3). At the same time, the group of proposals (19) designed to regularize communications and trade suggests a continuing society­wide concern with the necessity of maintaining trade and commerce over a much larger area. Among these are proposals dictating interest payments on debts, port duties, the settlement of contracts on land, the supervision of roads, and the metal content of coins. We shall return to the complexity of the issues presented to the Roman people between 91 and 44 in some detail in part 3.

Finally, it should be noted that across the entire period from 350 to 44, the changing variety of issues addressed in public law proposals are in many respects indistinguishable from issues addressed by the Roman Senate. While a detailed comparison of Senate decrees and public laws is beyond the scope of this study, my compilation assembles some rough indicators of similarity. A small number of public laws confirmed or overturned previous Senate decrees. A larger num­ber of laws reflect Senate involvement in the lawmaking process, by which I mean the Senate's more direct intervention in the process rather than the ear­lier, formal expression of its opinion about a law proposal. Law sponsors cus­tomarily presented projected proposals to the Senate before promulgation, and the Senate's official opinion (patrum auctoritas) about a public law proposal, believed to relate to possible religious flaws in a proposal, was broadcast before the Roman people voted on a public law proposal (in accordance with a pub­lic law of the fourth century). But the Senate also at times involved itself directly in the lawmaking process to the extent that it initiated a law by passing a decree that instructed a consul or some other magistrate to present a particular mat­ter to the people in a public law proposal. The Senate's concurrence with a law­maker's proposal might also be so resounding as to justify the comment of ancient authors. A rough count of such laws in the period from 350 to 219 shows that the Senate intervened in the lawmaking process on 14 occasions out of 53, either giving its public approval of a proposal or formally advising that a pro­posal be brought to the people in matters involving war, treaties, gifts to Roman senators received from foreign rulers, and grants of citizenship, that is, in matters involving external affairs, thus underscoring the value of the public lawmaking process in facilitating Roman expansion. Similarly, from 218 to 201, Senate intervention came in a different range of 15 issues out of 38 involving questions of leadership, wartime penalties, use of confiscated land, and state cult. The apparent concurrence between Senate and lawmakers in this time of crisis is exceptional. Between 200 and 134, issues concerning the suspension of existing law (3), war (2), the foundation of colonies, the extension of Roman debt law to all Italy, personal expenditures, relations between candidates and voters during electoral campaigns, Italian residents of Rome, leadership, and peace invited Senate involvement on 14 occasions out of 61. Thereafter, the number of such occasions appears to diminish drastically. Between 133 and 92, the Senate intervened on a single lawmaking occasion (out of 98) involving the grant of citizenship to an individual. Between 90 and 44, the Senate inter­vened 11 times (out of 234) in matters relating to exiles (6), the grant of auton­omy to a foreign city, electoral bribery, a citizenship grant, and the city of Rome grain supply. Overall, both the external affairs of the Roman state and internal matters invited the Roman Senate's intervention in the public lawmaking process. Intervention, however, was a far more likely occurrence in the years before 133 than after. Finally, while issues of concern to the Roman people and the Roman Senate appear to be to a large degree intertwined (so much so that the total count of proposals over the period includes about ten reported laws that modern scholars think are more likely to be Senate decrees), the topics of proposals in whose generation the Senate was involved suggest that presenting a bill served as an important accepted mechanism in each period for resolv­ing especially vexing matters. We shall pursue this avenue in later chapters.

SPONSORS OF PUBLIC LAW

Of the men elected each year to office between 350 and 25, no fewer than thir­teen, and eventually as many as twenty, magistrates had the authority to con­vene assemblies (ius agendi cum populo or cum plebe) and thus the capability of sponsoring proposals of law. The number includes Rome's ten tribunes, two consuls, and from one to eight praetors.¹⁵ These then were Rome's potential lawmakers. Considering that the only regularly elected high officials who did not convene the people for this purpose were the four aediles and the eight (eventually twenty, after 81) quaestors, potential lawmakers comprised roughly half the total number of annually elected magistrates: a striking measure of the diffusion of power among high officeholders in Rome in the most formative years. Although the potential lawmakers were a formidable group in numbers alone, however, not every member of the group availed himself of the privilege of proposing laws to public assemblies.

Public law proposals were in fact unevenly presented by officeholders dur­ing the years when the Republic expanded and grew in complexity, as we can see when we organize patterns of sponsorship of public laws for our five selected critical periods over our period of interest, as shown in table 1.11. Although extraordinary magistrates did occasionally present bills to the assembled people (and once, perhaps, a priest and another time an aedile), the common practice more typically involved the tribunes, consuls, or praetors, holding the annually revolving high offices filled by vote of the people in the plebeian tribal assembly (tribunes) and the centuriate assembly (praetors and consuls). Although our evidence is somewhat incomplete for our earliest selected time span, 350 to 219, it seems that tribunes, with 32 percent of all proposals of public law, led the list, followed by dictators, consuls, and praetors, roughly in that order. For the remaining, selected historical periods of interest, as noted in table 1.11, more reliable information reveals that tribunes had doubled their performance to 61 percent over the seventeen years of the Second Punic War, a four-to-one lead over consuls and praetors, which they managed to maintain down to the last century of the Republic. The involvement of consuls in lawmaking dropped from 18 percent of the total for the period between 200 and 134, as noted in table i.ii, to 7 percent for the following period, 133 to 91.

Out of the total number of 234 laws or proposals over the years from 91 to 44 as shown in table i.ii, almost one-half (44 percent) were sponsored by tribunes, one-quarter (25 percent) by consuls, and 5 percent by praetors. Although tribunes still lead all others as sponsors of public laws during this most recent period, their representation had dropped significantly from the 66 percent figure of the earlier half century to 44 percent, as shown in table i.ii. On the other hand, the 25 percent of public laws proposed by consuls between 91 and 44 represented a significant expansion from the 7 percent rep­resentation over the years from 133 to 92. A striking feature of this most recent period is the lawmaking activity of the singular office of dictator legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae: the two men who held this office, Sulla and Caesar, sponsored a remarkable thirty-three laws between them, 14 percent of the unusually large number of public law proposals during this golden age of public lawmaking.

But to what extent were the various political leaders who proposed laws asso­ciated with the most powerful Roman clans (gentes), that relatively small hand­ful of families in any generation that, in the analysis of Ronald Syme, ruled Rome?¹⁶ I attempted first to determine the number of lawmakers produced by the various Roman clans that provided Rome's political leadership, over our five selected periods, on the basis of 154 public law “titles” or clan names on which information has survived (these furnish the tag naming individual laws: lex Cornelia, lex Aurelia, and so on), as shown in table 1.12. With a total of sixteen clans recorded and the titles of thirty-three laws unreported, relatively few clans appear in our earliest period, 350-219, in proportion to the total num­ber of laws, fifty-three. Almost as many clans, twelve, appear in the next col­umn covering the far shorter span of the Second Punic War. During the same time period the titles of twenty-three proposals or laws are unreported and the frequency of lawmaking across the period is 38. With our third period, 200-134, the number of clans more than doubles to thirty-six, the titles of only sixteen proposals or laws are unreported, and the frequency of lawmaking across the period is 6i. While the number increases only slightly in the years between 133 and 92, to forty, when the titles of twenty proposals or laws have gone unre­ported and the frequency of lawmaking across the period is 98, it climbs higher in our final period to fifty-four clans. In this last period, the titles of thirty pro­posals or laws are unreported and the frequency of lawmaking across the period is 234. Despite the incompleteness of table 1.12, it is clear that no one clan, or even handful of clans, monopolized Roman public lawmaking.¹⁷ Rather, from the Second Punic War onward, there was a substantial increase in the number of clans whose involvement in lawmaking was manifest. At the same time, within each period some clans show a greater degree of involvement than oth­ers—whether the numbers reflect the activities of a single individual or several from different branches of one clan.

A further attempt to more precisely identify individual law sponsors and the relationship between lawmaking activity and political careers entailed match­ing the names of individual law sponsors, when known, and their offices in our five selected periods. The names of known sponsors of public law in the years between 225 and 44 for three selected periods in Roman history-225 to 134, 133 to 91, and 90 to 44—are listed in tables 1.13-15. In the ninety-one-year period between 225 and 134, out of a total number of 101 laws or proposals, 13 to 17 laws or proposals were sponsored singly or jointly by consuls, 4 to 8 by a praetor, and 65 by tribunes.¹⁸ Of the sixty-four individuals we can identify by name, thirteen are consuls, four are praetors, forty-nine are tribunes, and one holds an unknown office, M. lunius Brutus, perhaps a praetorship. More than one-third (38) of all reported laws and proposals across the period between 225 and 134 fall within the relatively brief span of the Second Punic War years, when lawmaking activity was greatly intensified, and almost one-quarter (four­teen) of the named sponsors fall within the same years. We have more compre­hensive information for the forty-two-year period between 133 and 91, which shows that out of a total number of 98 laws or proposals, 7 laws or proposals were sponsored by consuls, 1 by a praetor, and 65 by tribunes.¹⁹ Between 133 and 91, as well, the names of forty-seven sponsors are known, including twelve consuls sponsoring bills either singly or jointly, one praetor, and thirty-six tribunes.²⁰ Among these named sponsors are ten “new men” (novi homines), including nine tribunes, and one consul.²¹ Of the new men who sponsored bills as tribunes, three held further office, one as praetor, and two advanced to the consulate as well.²² Out of the total number of 234 laws or proposals through­out the forty-six-year period from 90 to 44, 102 were sponsored by tribunes, 59 by consuls, 12 by praetors, and 35 by the dictators Sulla and Caesar.²³ The names of twenty-seven consuls who sponsored bills, either singly or jointly, are recorded, as well as nine praetors and forty-nine tribunes (table 1.15). One con­sul, M. Tullius Cicero, was a new man. Among the named tribunes, almost half, eighteen in number, were new men. To our knowledge, many of the named tribunes (including eight new men) advanced to higher office: nine to the prae­torship, and eight more to the consulship. Of these tribunes with further polit­ical careers, four also sponsored laws as praetors or consuls. One of the named sponsors in the period between 91 and 44, Q. Pompeius Rufus, consul in 88, had also sponsored a bill at an earlier stage of his career before 91, as trib­une in 99. The patterns of clans and offices confirm the idea of an exten­sive and expanding diffusion of power among Roman political leaders and elite families as we approach the end of the Republic.

The exercise of matching named sponsors and offices greatly refines the pat­terns in table 1.12. The most striking findings are the lawmaking activity of an increasing number of political newcomers—new men—whose fathers or grand­fathers had never held high office in Rome, as we move toward the Empire, and equally the unusually intense lawmaking activity of a small number of individ­uals either in a single office or over the course of a longer political career and several offices: C. Sempronius Gracchus, L. Appuleius Saturninus, L. Cornelius Sulla, Cn. Pompeius Magnus, C. Iulius Caesar, P. Clodius Pulcher, A. Gabinius, P. Vatinius, and M. Antonius all sponsor anywhere from six to thirty-one laws. These are exceptionally high numbers for any one individual.

Overall, more political leaders begin to take the risk of advancing public law proposals as we approach the first century. As always, tribunes perform most of the lawmaking activity across the period, followed by consuls. Praetors lag far behind. Tribunes had always been the most active lawmakers. Now, more tribunes propose public laws, notwithstanding the ten-year suspension of the office between 81 and 70. Similarly, more consuls and more praetors sponsor public law proposals than in any earlier period. Over the same time a broader range of families appear to be involved in lawmaking in crisis years, in particular more new men are involved after 133. Among the individuals who sponsor public law a few stand out as excep­tional lawmakers—nearly all tribunes. The two dictatores legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae of the first century, Sulla and Caesar, form a unique pair of lawmakers. In sum, the period between 90 and 44 appears to be one in which not only more families and more new men but also more offices were involved in the promulgation of more laws than throughout the earlier periods.

Summary speculations are possible. The involvement of those political leaders who had the authority to convene the Roman people in presenting proposals of law to the Roman people underscores the unique role of public lawmaking assem­blies within Roman society. Lawmaking was a critically important arena for elite Romans, one in which they exercised the personal dimension of their leadership to the fullest by displaying their ability to discern the will of the people through public orating.²⁴ Notwithstanding the increasing number of risk takers, lawmak­ing remained a relatively rare act for individual officeholders even in the first cen­tury. The well-known careers of the majority of the most active sponsors of public law between 133 and 44 suggest that public law sponsors tended to be men with exceptionally high political aspirations.

In fact, as the Republic wore on, a clear and strong connection was emerging between effective leadership and public lawmaking. This is most evident in the lawmaking activity and career paths of tribunes and new men. When the Romans turned more frequently to public lawmaking in crisis years, the laws were most often fielded by tribunes. We should not be surprised since tribunes, because of their functions as officers of the plebs, were closer to the people than consuls or praetors. Tribunes, moreover, stayed in Rome.²⁵ The clustering of laws in crisis periods suggests that tribunes, in particular, mediated changes that met with the concurrence of the Roman people in critical times. But we might suspect that the political aspirations of individual tribunes—especially tribunes who were new members of the political elite, often from newly admitted families—were crucial to their participation in public lawmaking. The office of tribune was instrumen­tal in further political advancement—thus the extent to which changes in the ori­gins of men involved in public law sponsorship reflect the transformation of the Republic. The extraordinary dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar provide further con­firmation of the relationship between the sponsorship of public law and effective leadership in the period between 90 and 44. But throughout the period between 225 and 44, the political dimension of public lawmaking, especially participation in the public debate, was of some consequence to officeholders with the author­ity to convene the people.

ASSEMBLIES

Tables 1.16 and 1.17 display the volume of lawmaking activity in each of Rome's three popular assemblies, the comitia centuriata (centuriate assembly), in which the Roman people (populus Romanus) voted in centuries (centuriae); the con­cilium plebis (plebeian tribal assembly), in which a portion of the Roman peo­ple, the plebs, voted in tribes (tribus); and finally the comitia tributa (tribal assembly), in which the Roman people again voted in tribes. I have listed them here in probable order of generation. It should be noted that neither is the comi­tia tributa directly attested nor are the circumstances of its creation known.²⁶ Rather, it is the widely accepted modern formulation of Theodor Mommsen, who postulated the existence of a voting assembly in which patricians as well as plebeians voted in their tribes, on the model of the concilium plebis.²⁷ The presumptive comitia tributa is enmeshed in the overall scheme (as under­stood today) of lawmaking in Rome's firmly attested assemblies, the comitia centuriata and the concilium plebis, in spite of efforts to cast doubt on the resiliency of the constitutional arguments on which it rests. Suffice to say that the evidence attesting the involvement of three distinct voting assemblies in the enactment of public law is overwhelming (I shall return to this). Accord­ingly, table 1.16 collects the different volumes of lawmaking activity in the comitia centuriata, concilium plebis, and comitia tributa.

In line with our findings in the previous section, the largest number of public laws were presented to or were intended for presentation to the concilium plebis. As shown in table 1.16, between 350 and 219, 32 percent of all proposed and enacted laws involved this assembly; between 218 and 201, 60 percent; between 200 and 134, 54 percent; between 133 and 91, 66 percent; and between 91 and 44, 44 percent.²⁸ Visible across the entire period are fluctuating levels of lawmak­ing activity in the plebeian tribal assembly, which plainly match the patterns of sponsorship by the elected officials of the Roman plebs, the tribunes, who had the authority to convene this assembly. Over much of the Middle and Late Republic, from the Second Punic War to the dictatorship of Sulla, half or more of recorded laws for the period passed through Rome's concilium plebis.

Notably smaller and more uncertain is the volume of lawmaking activity involving both the comitia tributa and the comitia centuriata, assemblies con­vened by consuls, dictators, and praetors. More precisely, our sources seldom record the form of the popular assembly to which these curule sponsors of law presented or intended to present their bills during our period of interest, 350-44. As shown in table 1.17, where the information is collected by quarter centuries, the information accompanies only 8 percent of laws over our period of inter- est—a rather small number, given that consuls or praetors presented roughly half the reported proposals and enacted laws in table 1.17 to the Roman people, presumably in one or the other assembly. Evidently, the office held by a curule law sponsor is more likely to appear in the record than is the assembly over which he presided. Of course, the same holds true for tribunician law spon­sors; however, the involvement of the concilium plebis is rightly assumed because it was the only assembly tribunes convened. Did ancient reporters take the assemblies of curule law sponsors for granted in the same way? Was there an understood relationship, with respect to the enactment of law, between curule sponsors of law and either the tribe-based or century-based assembly of the Roman people?²⁹ Given that ours is a patently modern question, the likelihood of a com­prehensive explanation secured by explicit testimony seems remote.³⁰ Still, it is worth the attempt to render somewhat more intelligible the respective levels of lawmaking activity in the comitia tributa and the comitia centuriata.

The prevailing interpretation posits well-defined constitutional areas of respon­sibility for the centuriate assembly, implicitly leaving others for the full tribal assembly.³¹ To the former assembly, accordingly, consuls brought matters relat­ing to imperium or the election of curule magistrates, to include declarations of war and the creation of curule offices. Moreover, only consuls and dictators con­vened the centuriate assembly, whereas praetors (as well as curule aediles, in the case of iudicia populi) convened only the comitia tributa, the full tribal assem­bly. Similarly, urban praetors tend to be identified as sponsors of laws relating to civil law issues, who presented bills to the comitia tributa (unless the sponsor is identified specifically as a tribune or the law as a plebiscitum). By the same token, a public law as well as the responsible assembly might be hypothesized because the circumstances, if they fall into determined categories—the creation of an office, declaration of war, or citizenship grant—appear to require one.³² The assignment of laws sponsored by consuls, praetors, and dictators to the comitia tributa or the comitia centuriata as well as the assignment of responsibility between the two assemblies on a legal basis are now taken for granted. It should be stressed, however, that the prevailing interpretation is an integral facet of that monumen­tal achievement of late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars, the Roman constitution.

For this reason, the interpretation is not unconditional, as the reservations of some scholars about the presumptive comitia tributa confirm. Another view, first introduced at the beginning of the century and revived in 1975, rules out entirely the possibility of a distinct comitia tributa and posits instead that the concilium plebis became a comitia tributa when convened by curule magis- trates.³³ In effect, there was no lawmaking by the populus Romanus in tribes because the comitia tributa was an assembly of the plebs Romana. In 1986, how­ever, Farrell established a clear distinction between the terms concilium and comitia, as used by Livy and Cicero, thus ruling out any possibility of viewing the concilium plebis and comitia tributa as one and the same assembly of the plebs Romana.³⁴ Whether Rome's comitia tributa and concilium plebis were two distinct assemblies of the populus Romanus and the plebs Romanus, respec­tively, as Mommsen supposed, or one and the same assembly of the plebs Romana convened by different magistrates has been settled conclusively on the side of Mommsen. Nevertheless, a related explanation of the lawmaking activity in Rome's assemblies persists that posits that all laws were made in the concilium plebis and that no laws were presented to the centuriate assembly (except dec­larations of war).³⁵ This is in part a second resurrection of the previous hypoth­esis and a further attempt to reject or redefine the comitia tributa. In either case our sources uniformly attest that the populus Romanus at times voted in tribes as well as in centuries.

Caution nonetheless applies to the prevailing interpretation of the two law­making assemblies of the populus Romanus. Specifically, a number of schol­ars, in more recent years, have convincingly argued that the ancient sources cannot support a strictly constitutional interpretation of the purview of Rome's legislative voting assemblies, particularly in regard to the centuriate assembly, either in specific instances or even overall.³⁶ Indeed, the terms that Livy and Cicero, our most important sources, regularly use to say “the consul carried a law” or “the praetor presented a bill to the people” apply to either assembly. Only when the voting units, tribus or centuriae, are named can we be more or less confident about identifying an assembly as comitia tributa or centuriata.

Tables 1.16 and 1.17 display the limitations both of the ancient record and of our understanding of the circumstances determining an elected official's choice of assemblies to make law. There is no consistent and obvious relationship between the lawmaking activity in the comitia tributa or the comitia centuriata and the sponsors of law who had the authority to convene these assemblies, namely, the consuls, dictators, and praetors. Some laws, including declarations of war, were presented to or intended for presentation to the comitia tributa, some to the comi­tia centuriata. In turn, at one time, a consul, a dictator, or a praetor involved both assemblies in lawmaking. In brief, when presented in tables, the evidence suggests even more clearly a changing and ad hoc use of both assemblies, in particular, the centuriate assembly.³⁷

THE SECOND PUNIC WAR, 2l8-2OI

To fill out the framework so far established through processing my compilation of public laws let us next examine the first major crisis of the expanding Repub­lic, the Second Punic War from 2I8 to 2OI, with a view specifically to narrow­ing the focus on the relationship between Roman law and life in a time of crisis. The most unprecedented and most intensive period of lawmaking activity in Roman history began in 2I8 when Hannibal, the young Carthaginian com­mander of Spain, unexpectedly crossed the Alps into Italy at the head of an army of foreign troops fighting in the service of Carthage for pay. The Romans mus­tered quickly to deal with Hannibal's invasion. Quickly the consul, P. Cor­nelius Scipio, who was already en route to take command of an anticipated campaign against the Carthaginians in his assigned province, Spain, turned back at Massilia in order to confront Hannibal in northern Italy. He was defeated at the Ticinus River by the invaders, the first of a series of sometimes desperate reverses faced by the Roman state over the next few years. At successive bat­tles, Roman armies were again and again stunningly defeated by Hannibal's mer­cenary army as it traversed Italy gathering support from Gauls and certain of the Italians, culminating in the calamitous rout at Cannae in southern Italy in 2I6, where almost forty-eight thousand soldiers fell, about half of them Roman—among them the consul and two quaestors; twenty-nine military trib­unes, some of consular and praetorian rank; as well as eighty senators—and forty- five hundred were taken prisoner.³⁸ Never before had Romans seen utter ruin so close at hand.

Responses to the crisis of the Second Punic War were societywide in variety and scope. Alliances in Italy, formed by Rome over the previous 150 years with Italians and Latins, faltered. Towns hastily threw up walls for defense in antici­pation of Hannibal or Rome. Men, women, and children in the regions through which armies marched abandoned their farms, migrating temporarily for safety to nearby towns and to Rome. Across Italy, businessmen, the class of contractors known as publicani, quickly entered the field of army supply and profited. Cash supplies dwindled as Roman state outlays for supply mounted, and individuals fearful of plunder buried valuable belongings for later recovery. Of all cities in Italy, Rome especially, the clearinghouse of formal response, was abuzz. Cash resources had to be secured through a variety of stratagems embracing the civil­ian population. As army after army was routed, the regular Roman leadership had to be augmented. Manpower to replenish depleted legions had to be found from new sources, including men without sufficient property rating for military service, underage youths, and even slaves. As was customary, clear decisions were made swiftly and confidently by commanders with imperium in the field, by elected officials with the power of edict, and by the Roman Senate.³⁹ But at such a time of pervasive crisis the Romans turned also to lawmaking assemblies.

For the first time the future of the Roman state was seriously threatened, and from then until the resolution of the threat in 201 the Romans reacted with the most intensive period of lawmaking activity in history before the surges in such activity of the first century.⁴⁰ Across this seventeen-year period an unusually large number of bills, listed in table 1.18, required attention by Roman voters in public lawmaking assemblies. In 218, two measures were carried, includ­ing the declaration of war against Carthage, not long before Hannibal’s light­ning descent into Italy. But in the year following, in 217, the Roman people assembled to consider six measures, the highest number ever presented to the people in a single year since the beginning of Roman expansion in Italy. The tribunes carried a measure releasing former consuls from an earlier plebiscite of 342 that prohibited them from standing again for the consulate before ten years had passed. The urgent need for experienced commanders was patent. Also in 217, shortly before his death in battle at Lake Trasimene, the consul C. Flaminius tried to remedy a desperate wartime need for cash by carrying a law depreciating the value of Rome’s bronze coinage, the as, relative to the sil­ver sestertius.⁴¹ After the death of the consul Flaminius, and in the absence of the surviving consul, Cn. Servilius Geminus, who would ordinarily have made the appointment, again in 217 the Roman people elected a dictator rei gerundae causa, Q. Fabius Maximus, and a magister equitum, M. Minucius Rufus, to take charge of the war in northern Italy.⁴² Following the alarming defeat at Lake Trasimene, the Romans turned sharply to their gods. On the counsel of the pontifex maximus, who advised that societywide authorization was required, a proposal was put to the Roman people to endorse the ritual dedication called ver sacrum recommended by the priests (pontifices) of Rome to expiate the disaster.⁴³ The outcome is unrecorded. Later in the year, responding to public discontent and the dissatisfaction of the magister equitum with the stratagem of Q. Fabius Maximus to avoid direct engagement with Hannibal in battle, the tribune M. Metilius proposed to remove Maximus from his office. When the bill failed he proposed another to make the magister equitum co-dictator. And in the years following 217, down to the end of the war in 201, as noted in table 1.18, anywhere from one to five laws or proposals addressing the crisis are recorded in all but four years, for a total of thirty-eight spanning the war years.⁴⁴ Such intense communitywide effort to pass public laws over such a short time span is not recorded again until the two years spanning the tribunates of C. Sempronius Gracchus, 123-121, and the disruption of the first century.

Most of this activity understandably focused on the conduct of war. Leader­ship was the primary issue throughout the period, as we can see from table 1.18. Not only in 217, but again in 210, the Roman people elected a dictator to con­duct military operations in Italy. In a novel step in 215, the Roman people gave the authority of a consular commander to M. Claudius Marcellus so that he could direct the war against Carthage in Sicily; in 211 they allowed Marcel­lus to keep his imperium when he entered Rome in an ovation; and in 209 the tribune C. Publicius Bibulus proposed unsuccessfully that Marcellus’s imperium be abrogated. In 211 the people unanimously approved the selection of the underage P Cornelius Scipio (Africanus), son of the consul of 218, to direct the war in Spain with proconsular imperium, and in 204 they prorogued the command of the two proconsular commanders who were already there, L. Cornelius Lentulus and L. Manlius Acidinus.⁴⁵ In 208 the people accorded imperium to C. Aurunculeius, praetor in 209, so that he could command a province regularly handled by a praetor.⁴⁶ In 202 P. Cornelius Scipio was chosen unanimously by a plebeian tribal assembly to conduct the war in Africa, contrary to the recommendations of the Senate. In 201 the plebs selected C. Cornelius Cethegus to command in Spain.

Other issues dealt with in lawmaking assemblies also pertained directly to war. In 215, the year following the disaster at Cannae, tribunes proposed the purchase of slaves for military service and made arrangement also for the special board to make the purchases. Similarly, in 212 tribunes carried a bill enabling the conscription of underage youths by the fiction of requiring them to swear the military oath as though they were seventeen.⁴⁷ Both measures followed seri­ous depletion of Roman manpower. In another direction we see rewards to groups and individuals for their role in the war effort—a grant of citizenship to three hundred Campanian cavalrymen for service in Sicily in 215; to three foreign­ers, a Spaniard, and a Syracusan in 211; and to a Carthaginian in 210. M. Claudius Marcellus in 210 was given the right to keep his imperium when he came into Rome to celebrate his ovation for his victories in Sicily.⁴⁸ Penalties were also levied. Cn. Fulvius Flaccus, praetor in 212 who had been tried and convicted of treason (perduellio) before a popular assembly for the defeat of his army by Han­nibal, was exiled by decision of a plebeian assembly after he left Rome.⁴⁹ The tribunes Sp. Carvilius and L. Carvilius carried a measure exiling the war con­tractor M. Postumius of Pyrgi after he failed to appear to answer capital charges for swindling the Roman state.⁵⁰ The scam involved deliberately scuttling empty ships purportedly carrying army supplies for which the state had contracted and collecting compensation for the imaginary cargo. Public outrage was so high that the tribunes set his fine at two hundred thousand asses, despite protest by other contractors, and proposed exile when Postumius fled. Penalties against allies who broke their treaties with Rome were also considered in lawmaking assem­blies. After Rome captured Capua in 210, the tribune L. Atilius carried a meas­ure instructing the Senate to determine appropriate punishment.⁵¹

Still other issues addressed in lawmaking assemblies involved war funds and the division of spoils, again as we see in table 1.19. These include the meas­ure restricting the carrying weight of ships owned by Roman senators, brought to the people by the tribune Q. Claudius shortly before the onset of war in 218 and supported by C. Flaminius—an effort to protect Rome's “war chest” for the anticipated struggle with Carthage—and the measure by C. Flaminius in 217 depreciating the value of Rome's bronze coinage—an effort, as noted, to increase cash resources.⁵² The bill carried by the tribune C. Oppius in 215 limiting the value of clothing and jewelry a woman could wear was another effort to increase cash resources and, similarly, two carried in 209 and 204 limiting gifts and remunerations receivable by Roman patrons, legal advocates, and others.⁵³ A measure in 210 authorizing the Roman censors to lease lands in the newly confiscated ager Campanus dealt in a timely fashion with the division of spoils in one of the most fertile regions of Italy. This was the first but by no means the only time that the highly desirable land in Campania was the subject of a law­making assembly.

Who was responsible for this lawmaking activity? Throughout the years of the Second Punic War, we see a total of thirty-eight laws or proposals whose sponsors in fifteen cases are known by name, as shown in table 1.19. These include two consuls (C. Flaminius, consul in 217, and P Cornelius Scipio, con­sul in 205 ), one praetor (P Licinius Varus, praetor urbanus in 208) and twelve tribunes. The political standing of these sponsors of law between 218 and 200 was fairly consistent. One, M'. Acilius Glabrio, a tribune in 201 who enacted jointly with a colleague, Q. Minucius Thermus, that the Senate should make peace with Carthage and that Scipio should bring the army home, was a new man—a man with no political antecedents of the rank of consul or praetor.⁵⁴ He later became praetor in 196 and consul in 191.⁵⁵ Of the rest, three (P Cor­nelius Scipio, P. Licinius Varus, and Q. Minucius Thermus) belonged to noble families and eight (Q. Claudius, M. Metilius, M. Minucius, L. and Sp. Carvilius, M. Cincius Alimentus, L. Atilius, and C. Publicius Bibulus) belonged to families that, although containing some noble branches, were at the time not included among the ranks of the most illustrious clans of Rome.⁵⁶ If not political newcomers, they were nonetheless men on the outside of the inner circle of ascendant clans.⁵⁷ Some of them were more obviously successful than others in their later careers. M. Metilius, tribune in 217, was next reported as legate and envoy in 212.⁵⁸ C. Publicius Bibulus, tribune in 209, was plebeian aedile perhaps in 195.⁵⁹ M. Cincius Alimentus, tribune in 204, was prefect in 193.⁶⁰ Q. Minucius Thermus, tribune in 201, had been military tribune in 202 and was curule aedile in 198, praetor in 196, and consul in 193.⁶¹ No further career is reported for M. Minucius, tribune in 216; C. Oppius, tribune in 215; L. and Sp. Carvilius, tribunes in 212; L. Atilius, tribune in 210; and M. Lucretius, tribune in 210.

In view of the range of possible avenues available to the Romans for respond­ing to crisis, specifically the decisions of elected officials and of the Senate, we must question why the Romans resorted so often to public lawmaking during the Second Punic War. What in particular made public lawmaking such an appropriate avenue of response to crisis that more proposals passed in review during the most critical war to date than in any previous period?⁶² Since this question will engage us throughout this study, here let us look more closely at what these public laws achieved in the circumstances. We begin with the Roman leadership, the primary issue across the period of the Second Punic War. Time and again we see the Romans making adjustments in the regular patterns of lead­ership due to the exigencies of war. In particular, the Romans supplemented the number of commanders by presenting bills to lawmaking assemblies that adjusted or reinterpreted the rules for holding the office of consul, for instance, or adapted the power of command (imperium) to unanticipated circumstances, or selected dictators, or even modified the dictatorship. In all such instances involving lead­ership, the Romans resorted to lawmaking assemblies in order to put the most publicly recognized, most competent men in charge of the war through the mod­ification to a greater or lesser extent of regular institutions or ordinary practices. The legitimization of leaders by society at large in a public lawmaking assembly ensured the strongest response in a time of war. Leadership was the archetypal issue touching all members of society, especially in time of war.

While military command was the first concern in this regard, areas of domes­tic leadership also necessitated a turn toward lawmaking assemblies. Across the period of the war a number of reported measures addressed the need to perform some specific, irregular administrative function, geared toward strengthening the society for war. Extraordinary commissions were created by vote of the people in three years to perform a wide range of tasks: the dedication of a tem­ple to Venus Erycina (215) and the resolution of a shortage of silver (216), the purchase of twenty-four thousand slaves for military service (215), the restora­tion of city walls and towers, the inventory of temple goods, and the restora­tion of the temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta (all three in 212 by a single plebiscite). In less troubled times at least some of these tasks, we might imag­ine, would fall perfunctorily to a regular official such as the aedile or to a sen­atorial task force created by Senate decree. But in wartime, particularly such an unprecedented war that produced uncommonly high casualties among Rome's senators and elected officials, the ordinary routes were blocked and the usual sources of funds were constrained. It was also vital that a communitywide con­sensus be established on many issues. The Romans therefore resorted to law­making assemblies to create special boards to handle specific tasks.

But in the remedy inspired by immediate concerns we sometimes discern deeper issues troubling the Roman state. Although the obvious focus of law­making events in the period from 218 to 201 is war, it is equally apparent that other more fundamental issues intersect with this overarching concern. Partic­ularly visible are the strains of an expanding number of Romans of wealth and status. Consider again the issue of leadership, primary throughout the war. In 217, as noted, tribunes carried a bill exempting former consuls from the ten- year gap between one consulate and the next prescribed by law. In 203, tri­bunes carried a measure clearing the consul of C. Servilius Geminus of crimi­nal intent to deceive the people (fraus) when in the recent past he held ple­beian offices—the tribunate sometime before 209 and the plebeian aedileship in 209—unaware that his father, a former praetor who was thought to have died when serving as a land commissioner in northern Italy, was in fact alive and prisoner of the Gauls.⁶³ An earlier enactment prohibited sons of curule magis­trates from holding plebeian office in their fathers' lifetimes.⁶⁴ Roman adapt­ability, even to the point of circumventing existing law, significantly through a societywide measure, is very much in evidence. But in the case of these enact­ments we are clearly also dealing with measures adjusting existing law that had widely diffused power among eligible Romans. Such a diffusion of power could doubtless serve as a hindrance to quick decision making under the conditions faced by Rome during the Second Punic War, when the state desperately needed a rapid source of competent commanders to replace commanders who fell in battle. Even so, issues of leadership are barely submerged and from time to time—the failed proposal to abrogate the imperium of M. Claudius Marcellus provides a case in point—resurface, even in wartime.

Other enactments similarly address the strain of an expanding number of elite Romans very directly—even in wartime. These are the enactments setting restric­tions on the display and outlay of wealth, especially by elite Romans. Extrava­gant displays of wealth or large outlays of cash by individual Romans made Romans uneasy at the best of times; such behavior was especially unpopular in Rome in wartime given the cash demands of the war as well as the sacrifices of a great many people. The concern is reflected in the lex Metilia of 220, two years before the war, which set limits on extravagant dress. It was followed up by the controversial lex Claudia of 218, carried by the tribune Q. Claudius a few months before the outbreak of war. This enactment—pre­sented shortly after the consular elections of June, supported by the consul designate C. Flaminius, and fiercely opposed by the Senate—prohibited sena­tors and senators' sons from owning seagoing boats larger than the carrying weight of thirty amphorae. Livy, writing two hundred years after the event, states that the motivation behind the measure was to restrict the commercial activities of senators by enabling them to transport crops, but no more, from their farms because money making was considered undignified for senators.⁶⁵ Modern his­torians believe that deeper concerns were involved. Cargo lost at sea set up a chain of events: the senator's financial ruin; his reduction to a lower property rating; his removal from the Senate list by the censor at the next census; and his replacement in the Senate by a new senator through adlection. Thus the statute attempted to prevent senators from engaging in risky trading ventures in order to maintain the current Senate membership. John D'Armes has described the lex Claudia as an attempt to preserve the old order, necessitated by the heavy involvement of wealthy men in trading ventures accompanied by the new mem­bership in the Senate.⁶⁶ But given the immediate circumstances, namely, the anticipated approaching war with Carthage, a more likely explanation for the tribune Claudius’s sponsorship of the lex Claudia is a concern on the part of some Romans to preserve the wealth of elite Romans so that they could invest their capital in the coming war. When war did come, Romans in the highest property classes were assessed to contribute fixed amounts to the state to pay the sailors.⁶⁷ The Roman people approved related measures throughout the war: the lex Publicia of probably 209, restricting gifts that clients could give to their patrons at Saturnalia to the small human figures shaped from wax used in the ceremonies of that holiday, and the lex Cincia of 204, restricting the amount of remuneration legal advocates received for legal defenses and regulating the degree of relationship permissible in giving and receiving gifts.⁶⁸ Finally, the sheer size of the group of lawmakers known by name during the period, their families and political careers, is itself testimony to circumstances facilitating risk taking in the lawmaking arena by men from newer or less powerful clans.

Whence such a variety of concerns? The necessity of securing cash resources in wartime in a limited cash economy, a development from the exigencies of war specific to the wartime period from 218 to 201, clearly plays a role in the lawmaking activity of that period. But several other developments intersect, devolving primarily from Roman expansion in Italy over the previous 150 years. Chief among them are the admission of new members to the Roman equestrian class and the new business interests of Romans and Italians in an expanding, monetized economy. Throughout the Second Punic War we see Romans turn­ing to public lawmaking assemblies to resolve matters arising from these longer- term developments as well as from the circumstances of the war itself.

FUNCTIONS AND MEANING OF PUBLIC LAWMAKING

What can we say so far about the functions and meaning of public lawmaking? Let me begin with the most obvious feature of Roman public law: the extraor­dinary persistence of the phenomenon. For half a millennium the Roman people displayed an enduring commitment to public lawmaking assemblies, espe­cially in times of crisis. Despite the extraordinary range of issues addressed in such public assemblies, certain patterns emerge from the palimpsest. Across the more than three hundred years of our period of interest Romans voted in pub­lic lawmaking assemblies on fundamental matters, most often involving mili­tary and civilian leadership and ranging from the rules for elite officeholders, disposition of state land, the constitution of courts, questions of war and peace, citizenship and civil rights, the abrogation of existing statues, to the estab­lishment of special commissions to investigate previously unknown conditions. With each successive period, however, the Romans mooted different issues in public lawmaking sessions unique to the circumstances at hand. That Romans could abstain from lawmaking activity for many years and yet retain both an appreciation of the functions of lawmaking and a detailed knowledge of the nec­essary procedures for enacting legitimate law suggests that the process rested on many of the beliefs and assumptions of everyday Roman life. On the other hand, throughout the first century, the Romans resorted to lawmaking activity with such frequency as to radically change its character.

Overall, most of the issues involved in lawmaking assemblies seem also in some way to deal with some vital aspect of community life. Nevertheless, it is obvious that it was a rare issue that was taken to these rather irregularly held assemblies. They dealt at times with issues that the Roman Senate at the same time also addressed in its decrees. Or the Senate sometimes recommended that certain matters be presented to the people in a public law proposal. Thus, an issue addressed at one time in a lawmaking assembly could at another time be resolved in other ways, by the Roman Senate or by magistrates with imperium. There are no consistently obvious reasons to the modern eye why such was the case. Only close scrutiny of the circumstances of each issue sheds light on why matters were handled as they were. While modern scholars accept broad principles about the sovereign role of the Roman people in resolving matters pertinent to the Roman people, the specific instances do not always conform to the principle, as we shall see in later chapters.⁶⁹

In identifying specific issues for public adjudication and in convening the Roman people for public sessions to handle such issues, a number of magistrates had the authority to take action, although overall relatively few political leaders with the authority to do so ever sponsored public law proposals. Initially, the tri­bunes played a key role, convening twice as many lawmaking sessions as their near­est rivals, the consuls. After the Second Punic War, however, the pattern becomes more complicated as the incidence of lawmaking gathers speed. Although they are joined by more consuls, praetors, and an occasional extraordinary magistrate or dictator in convening public lawmaking assemblies, tribunes remain most important in proposing public lawmaking assemblies up to the end of our period of interest, 44. Again, there are no consistently obvious reasons to the modern eye why one officeholder rather than another convened the people in a law­making assembly. The most persistent modern rationale assumes some formal, con­stitutional basis and pursues the question from another angle, namely, why the Romans met to enact law most frequently in a plebeian tribal assembly, less fre­quently in a full tribal assembly, and only rarely in a centuriate assembly.

However, more immediate factors can be adduced to explain the patterns of sponsorship, and at times therefore the type of assembly, in certain periods. For instance, consuls were seldom in Rome for any length of time during the Sec­ond Punic War, 218-201. At all times, the nature of their office kept tribunes in Rome. Moreover, after 133, aspiring political leaders used the office of tri­bune more aggressively in furthering their political careers. The clustering of laws in crisis periods combined with the high level of involvement of tri­bunes in such periods suggests that tribunes in particular mediated changes that met with the concurrence of the Roman people in critical times. The overall lawmaking activity by consuls, praetors, and tribunes is skewed by the unique activity of a small group of individual lawmakers, specifically the tribune C. Gracchus, and the sometimes consuls, sometimes dictators Sulla and Caesar. While no one clan ever held a monopoly on proposing law, a greater number of clans appear to be involved in lawmaking in crisis years, such as the period of the Second Punic War, and in particular more new men are involved after 133. Over the first century, the elite sponsors of public law came from at least fifty different clans. Additionally, the period between 90 and 44 appears to be one in which not only more families but more offices were involved in the promulgation of more laws than throughout the earlier periods. Tribunes in this period are still by far the most active lawmakers as in earlier periods, notwithstanding the ten-year hiatus in the office of tribune imposed by a public law of the dictator Sulla. Most new men are involved in lawmaking at this level as well. At the same time, the lawmaking activity of consuls and prae­tors was boosted after 81 by other public laws of Sulla, which had the effect of keeping consuls and praetors in Rome until after their year of office.⁷⁰ Now, consuls and praetors are more involved in lawmaking than before. Both the pat­tern of sponsorship and the incidence of lawmaking activity in relation to the total body of officials with the authority to enact laws with the people confirm that not every man with the required authority took it upon himself to enact law. These patterns, however, also confirm the idea of an appreciable diffusion of power among elite Romans throughout the period, which expands as we approach the end of the Republic. In turn, the creation of the office of dictator legibus scribendis et rei publicae constituendae suggests that some Roman leaders viewed the pub­lic lawmaking capacity of office as a way of legitimizing political position.

Finally, our exploration permits a few general observations about the achieve­ments of public lawmaking activity in Roman society. In 325 years of public lawmaking activity, between 350 and 25, the most apparently intractable issues in Roman history, as well as what appear today as some of the most frivolous, were addressed in public law proposals and decided by the people. Whether in times of crisis or times of relative peace the Romans resorted to public law­making assemblies to resolve what we regard as some of the most vital issues in their history, for example, laws to settle questions on the distribution and own­ership of lands throughout conquered territory. At other times the Romans turned to public lawmaking assemblies to decide far less weighty matters, at least from a modern perspective, for instance, when the assembly convened in 241 to exempt the senator L. Caecilius Metellus from the public law prohibit­ing senators from entering the Senate house carried on a litter or the many pub­lic lawmaking sessions between the third and the first centuries convened to regulate the cost of dinner parties.⁷¹ Thus, across this 325-year period the issues addressed in public lawmaking assemblies could be both urgently important and seemingly unimportant; they could be both communitywide in scope and narrowly focused on an individual or group. Public lawmaking assemblies dealt with issues involving the survival of the Roman state and also covered what to modern eyes appear to be the most trivial matters. Despite the importance of many of the issues with which public lawmaking assemblies dealt, their activa­tion appears infrequent and random.

Something of the special importance and resiliency of Roman lawmaking emerges from the arrangements achieved through laws enacted in public assem­blies during the Second Punic War, especially involving the Roman leadership. It would seem that when existing offices and the regular leadership were insuf­ficient to the situation at hand, public lawmaking gave the Romans wide lati­tude to move beyond customary limits to remedy deficiencies in a process that involved individuals on all levels of society in the decision. At that time, the risk of presenting such remedies as public law proposals to the Roman people was taken by tribunes, who were junior-level officials and often men from polit­ically obscure families. In the circumstances of the Second Punic War, a great many of the issues involved suggest that the public lawmaking process served as a flexible instrument for developing consensus on issues that might other­wise have proven disruptive. In all periods the range of topics considered in public lawmaking sessions suggests that the Romans used the process as a means of addressing issues that could not be resolved in another, more usual, tradi­tional manner by the Roman Senate or by elite officeholders serving in a wide variety of official offices. The issues Roman lawmakers presented to the Roman people further suggest a continuing societywide concern with the necessity of adapting to the conditions and consequences of Roman expansion across Italy and the Mediterranean. Thus, whatever the focus and scope of the particular public law proposal or public law, they have little meaning outside of a full understanding of their surrounding circumstances.

Our quest for such an understanding continues in the remainder of part 1 with an examination of the lawmaking process itself, whose distinctive features make it a singularly important object of study. Public law was generated by the Roman people when convened in a voting assembly by one of their elected officials and subject to the approval or disapproval of the Roman people. The elaborate ritualized procedures at public lawmaking sessions provided a microcosm of the social and political functioning of the Roman world and involved a wider range of participants in a more elaborate series of customary behaviors than almost any other public process. Every stage of public lawmaking provides clues to the com­plex interaction between different groups in Roman society and to beliefs and assumptions underlying their behavior. In the next chapter we turn to the pres­entation of public law and in particular to the role of oratory in allowing politi­cal leaders to reflect the will and manage the emotions of the Roman people.

Information for Tables in Chapter One

Note that tables 1.3 and 1.4, which organize information by subject only, not date, uti­lize all 559 laws, because all 559 are lodged securely within the 325 years between 350 and 25 BCE. Tables organizing the information by quarter centuries between 350 and 25 (tables 1.1, 1.2, and 1.17), for purposes of analysis, are based on 494 laws and pro­posals because no more than 495 (out of 559) can be precisely or approximately assigned to a fixed, twenty-five-year span of time. Tables that organize the information by con­ventional, historical period between 350 and 44 (tables 1.5-1.12, 1.16, 1.18, and 1.19), for purposes of analysis, are based on 484 laws and proposals (out of 541) because it is possible to assign some laws of uncertain date, though not all, to these broader, more easily defined periods. These variations are the unavoidable outcome of periodization.

The overall patterns remain the same, notwithstanding. Among the 559 laws reli­ably falling between 350 and 25 BCE, 64 (11.4 percent) cannot be positively dated to any twenty-five-year block within the larger period. Of these, 17 (3 percent) are of unknown date altogether; seven (1 percent) fall between 350 and 219; nine (2 percent) between 200 and 134; 27 (5 percent) fall between 133 and 44; and five (less than 1 per­cent) are dated after the end of the Republic. In brief, there are still more laws or pro­posals in the last century of the Republic, even though they are uncertain in date. Furthermore, among the 541 laws reliably falling between 350 and 44 BCE, 57 (10.5 percent) cannot be positively dated to one of the conventional historical periods. Of these, 26 (4.8 percent) are of unknown date altogether; two (less than one-half of 1 per­cent) are dated before 200; 10 (2 percent) are dated before 149; 15 (3 percent) are dated before 80; one (less than one-quarter of 1 percent) is dated after 390; one (less than one- quarter of i percent) is dated after 253; and two (less than one-half of 1 percent) are dated after 241. Hence, the volume of absolute uncertainty is relatively small (4.8 per­cent), and the remaining 7 percent does not contradict the overall impression from the tables organizing information by conventional, historical period that more laws were proposed or presented to assemblies after the mid-second century.

TABLE 1.1 Frequency of Lawmaking Activity by Quarter

Century, 350—25

Source: See appendixes A and C.

^aPercentages do not always add to 100 because of rounding

TABLE 1.2 Patterns of Lawmaking Activity for Selected Periods, 350—25

Source: See appendixes A and C.

^aMore than one year in quarter century with this total.

TABLE 1.3 Repeated Public Laws by Category and Subject, 350—25

Issues Involving Leader

acta

Subtotal: 205

Percentage: 54

citizens in all the tribes

Subtotal: 150

Percentage: 40

Unknown: 24

Percentage: 6

Total laws: 379________________

Source: See appendixes A and C.

TABLE 1.4 One-Time Public Laws by Category and Subject, 350—25

Opening censorship to plebs

Interval between offices, consecutive offices, ple­beian consuls

Two-man board for outfitting and repairing fleet

Number and qualifications of augurs and priests

Election of Illviri coloniae deducendae

Gifts of Ptolemy to ambassadors Surrender of a commander Iteration of the censorship Selection of military tribunes by the consul

Stipend of censured equites

Expanding the number of praetors

Jurisdictio of urban praetor

Carrying weight of boats owned by senators

Abrogation of a dictator's imperium

Equalizing imperium of dicta­tor and magister equitum

Expensive clothing

Proconsular imperium for a praetor

Women's clothing/jewelry/ horse-drawn carriages

Extension of proconsul's imperium until ovation

Election of the military tribunes of legions 1—4

Exculpating C. Servilius from breaking the law

Issues Involving Leaders

Authorization to make peace with Carthage and recall army

Creation of three-man priesthood (epulones)

Authorization to negotiate a peace

Provincial governor's power of requisition

Assignment of responsibility for intercalation

Number of guests at dinner parties

Number of praetors in alternate years

Return of M. Popillius Laenas to appear before court Annulment of state leases and contracts made by censors Extension of commander's imperium until his triumph Reelection to the office of consul

Theater seats for equites Rejection of peace and surrender of commander

Jurisdictio of land commissioners

Iteration of office by tribunes The public horse of senators Reelection to office of previous year's tribunes Magistrates who have been deposed by the people Ages for election as military tribune

Allotment of consular provinces by the Senate

Election and responsibilities of the Illviri capitales

Use of bequest of King Attalus Liability for trial of Romans on state business abroad Authorization for praetor to escort Jugurtha to Rome Expulsion from Senate of individuals losing imperium

Importation of wild animals from Africa

Membership of tribunes in the Senate

Trinundinum and unrelated measures in one proposal

Addition of equestrians to Senate and jury composition

Election of jurors by the tribes A ceiling on senators’ debts Replacement of a commander Order, interval, and age limits for holding office

Establishment of standing courts and jury composition

Number of priests and restoration of co-optation

Restrictions on provincial governors

Restoration of the office of tribune

Right of tribunes to seek other office

Responsibility for letting state contracts

Praetor's observance of his edict

Loans to foreign states

Creation of a command against pirates

Senate audiences with foreign embassies

Loans to foreign envoys Selection of Vestals Assignment of Egypt as a

province

A candidate's entourage

Standing for office when absent from Rome

Recall of a commander from his province

Depositing the law in the archives

Transfer to a plebeian clan

Issues Involving Leadership

Reassignment of oversight over temple reconstruction

Ratification of a commander's acts

The staff of a provincial governor

Magistrates who put citizens to death without trial

Comitial days and their interruption

The voting order of jurors

Senate and comitial meeting days

Responsibility for restoring King Ptolemy

Personal expenditures by senators

Proconsular imperium and assignment of province

Interval between office and promagistracy

Cost of travel equipment Supervision of roads

Capacity of Pompey's men to stand for office

Eligibility for selection to priesthood

Length of provincial governorships

Travel outside Italy by citizens, ages 20-40

Abolition of the office of dictator

Attendants for plebeian aediles

A commission to examine Caesar's acta

Repeal of decrees of Antony and Lepidus

Lictors for Vestal Virgins

Placement of statues of divus

Iulius

Reprieve of two proscribed individuals

The appointment of municipal prefects

Assignment of a judex after

30 days

Subtotal: 98

Percentage: 54

Water supply of Rome

Mutiny by soldiers

A day when the ludi Romani are repeated

Renewal of treaty with Samnites

Treaty with Lucani

Legal business on market days

Action among co-owners for division of common property

Punishment of legio Campana Damage to property

Damage done by a dog

Military aid to the Mamertines

Treaty with Hiero of Syracuse Value of bronze coinage Public vow of a sacred spring

Other Issues

Punishment of Campanian rebels by the Senate Gift giving by clients on the Saturnalia

Wrongful ownership of citizen/slave of citizen

Celebration of the ludi Apollinares

Games of chance

Gift giving by defendants in law cases

Extension of Roman laws on debt to allies and Latins

Children in will

Fraud perpetrated against minors

Moneylending

Size of legacies

Capacity of women to inherit Ownership of stolen property

Return of a widow's dowry

Sexual offenses against freeborn people

Extension of the lex Fannia to all Italy

Amount of sponsio before centumviral court

Expulsion of foreigners from Rome

The formulary procedure

Conditions of military service

Lease of state contracts in

Asia

Interest payment on principal of debts

The crime of sicarii and venefici

Confirmation of heirs

Construction of new roads

Order of voting in the centuriate assembly

Foreign participation in the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus

Stopping a colony foundation Voting bridges (pontes) Victory on a coinage issue Addition of bronze to silver

coinage

Creation of new tribes

Introduction of the semiuncial as (coin)

Proscription of citizens Enactment of law in the centuriate assembly

Removal of citizenship from towns

The crime of falsa

Interest rates

Subtotal: 82

Percentage: 46

The crime of iniuria

The crime of peculatus Limitations on suretyship Malicious prosecutions Confirmation of citizenship Remittance of purchase price of proscribed property Autonomy for a foreign city Voting rights of freedmen Expulsion of foreigners from Rome

Debt and land distribution

Land boundaries

Contracts of the publicani of Asia

Roman relations with foreign cities and states

Authorization to dedicate a statue on Capitolium

Restoration of collegia King Deiotarus and Pessinus

Annexation of Cyprus as a province

Involvement of quaestorian scribae in trade

The crime of parricidium

The crime of sodalicia

Annexation of Numidia as province

Acquisition of servitudes through usucapio

Immunity for Delos

Hire of sheperds of free status List of eligible grain recipients Extending the pomerium Tax burden and provincial status of Crete

Appeals to the people Minimum portion allowable to heir under a will

Remission of rents in Rome and Italy

Total: 180

Source: See appendixes A and C.

TABLE 1.5 Repeated Public Laws by Selected Periods, 350-44 (frequency in parentheses)

350-219

Declaration of war (10)

Grant of citizenship to group (3) Suspension or circumvention of law (2) Announcement of auctoritas patrum (2) Punishment of a community (2) Prorogation of imperium (2)

The general validity of plebiscites (2)

Single issues: 30

Subtotal laws: 53

218-201

Creation of extraordinary board (4) The selection of a commander (3) Suspension or circumvention of law (2) Confirmation of peace (2)

Election of a dictator (2)

Grant of citizenship to individual (2)

Single issues: 23

Subtotal laws: 38

200-134

Special commission of investigation (6)

Suspension or circumvention of law (4) Declaration of war (4)

Confirmation of peace (4)

The foundation of colonies (3)

Abrogation of an existing statute (2)

Distribution or assignment of land (2)

Privileges and honors for individuals (2)

The crime of ambitus (2)

Obnuntiatio in assemblies (2)

Voting by written ballot (2)

Single issues: 28

Subtotal laws: 61

133-92

Uncertain or conjectural (11)

The foundation of colonies (6)

Distribution or assignment of land (4) Crime of repetundae (3)

Grant of citizenship to outside group (3) Civil liberties (3)

Jury composition (3)

Recall of exile(s) (3)

Selection of a commander (2)

Abrogation of an existing statute (2) Sponsor’s election to post his law created (2) Voting by written ballot (2)

Term of military service (2)

Single issues: 38

Subtotal laws: 98

91-44

Recall of exile(s) (11)

Distribution or assignment of land (9)

Uncertain or conjectural (8)

Special commission of investigation (7) Grant of citizenship to outside group (7) Privileges for individuals (6)

The crime of ambitus (6)

Settlement of debts (5)

Jury composition (5)

The crime of repetundae (5)

The foundation of colonies (5)

The distribution of grain to citizens (5)

Unknown: 57

The assignment of a province (4)

Restoration of civil liberties (4)

Suspension or circumvention of law (3)

A triumph for a commander (3)

Selection of dictator (3)

The crime of vis (3)

Assignment of consular provinces (3)

Local jurisdiction in Italy (3)

Censor’s authority to review Senate (2) Abrogation of a commander’s imperium (2) Prorogation of imperium (2)

Reassignment of provinces (2)

Citizen status of ex-slaves and their sons (2) Food and guests at dinner parties (2) Removal of tribune(s) from office (2)

Port duties (2)

The crime of maiestas (2)

Exile of individual(s) (2)

Restrictions on tribunes (2)

Enrollment of new citizens in all the tribes (2)

Removal of a consul from office (2)

Confirmation of commander’s grants of citizenship (2)

The power to give exemptions from the law (2)

Assignment of oversight over grain supply (2)

Remission of rents in Rome (2)

Interest payments on the principal of debts

(2)

Single issues: 93

Subtotal laws: 234

Total laws: 541

Source: See appendixes A and C.

Subtotal laws: 21

Percentage: 40

Total laws: 53

Source: See appendixes A and C.

Issues Involving Leadership Other Issues

Creation of extraordinary board (4)

Selection of a commander (3)

Suspension or circumvention of law (2)

Election of a dictator (2)

Carrying weight of boats owned by senators Abrogation of a dictator’s imperium Equalizing the imperium of the dictator and magister equitum

Proconsular imperium for a praetor

Extension of proconsul’s imperium

Abrogation of a commander’s imperium Prorogation of imperium

The assignment of a province

The selection of two commanders

Exculpating C. Servilius from knowingly breaking the law

Authorization to make peace with Carthage

The exile of individual(s)

Subtotal laws: 23

Percentage: 61

Total laws: 38

Confirmation of peace (2)

Grant of citizenship to individual (2)

Declaration of war

The value of bronze coinage

Public vow of a ver sacrum

Grant of citizenship to group

Women’s clothing and accoutrements

The absent M. Postumus Pyrgensis Punishment of Campanian rebels by the Senate

Lease of ager Campanus

Gift giving by clients on the Saturnalia Celebration of the ludi Apollinares

Gift giving by defendants in law cases and value of gifts

Subtotal laws: 15

Percentage: 39

Source: See appendixes A and C.

Issues Involving Leadership Other Issues

Special commission of investigation (6) Suspension or circumvention of law (4) Abrogation of an existing statute (2) The crime of ambitus (2)

Obnuntiatio in assemblies (2)

The ages for holding office

Abrogation of a commander’s imperium

The assignment of a province

The selection of two commanders

Creation of a three-man priesthood (epulones) Authorization to negotiate a peace

Reassignment of provinces

Assignment of responsibility for intercalation Number of praetors elected in alternate years The return of M. Popillius Laenas Annulment of state leases and contracts made by censors

Extension of commander’s imperium until he triumphs

The crime of repetundae

The election of priests

Rejection of peace and surrender of commander

The importation of wild animals from Africa Membership of tribunes in the Senate

Declaration of war (4)

Confirmation of peace (4)

The foundation of colonies (3)

Distribution or assignment of land (2)

Privileges for individuals (2)

Voting by written ballot (2)

Grant of citizenship to group

Civil liberties

Lease of ager Campanus

Extension of Roman laws on debt to allies and Latins

Moneylending

Citizen status of former slaves and their sons

Number of guests at dinner parties

Expulsion of Latin and Italian immigrants from Rome

The capacity of women to inherit

Food and guests at dinner parties

Extension of the lex Fannia to all Italy

Subtotal laws: 28

Percentage: 46

Subtotal laws: 33

Percentage: 54

Total laws: 61

Source: See appendixes A and C.

Special commission of investigation (5)

The crime of repetundae (3)

Jury composition (4)

Recall of exile(s) (3)

Selection of a commander (2)

Abrogation of an existing statute (2)

Law sponsor’s election to post he created (2)

Abrogation of commander’s imperium

Subtotal laws: 38

Percentage: 38.7

The foundation of colonies (6)

The distribution of grain to citizens (5)

Distribution or assignment of land (4)

Status of landholdings (4)

Grant of citizenship to group (3)

Citizen liberties (3)

Voting by written ballot (2)

Term of military service (2)

Issues Involving Leadership

Assignment of a province Election of priests

Jurisdictio of three men for granting and assigning land

Removal of tribune(s) from office

Iteration of office by tribunes The public horse of senators Addition of members to Senate from equestrian class

Magistrates deposed by the people

Other Issues

Declaration of war

Cost of food at dinner parties Regulation of suretyship Grant of citizenship to individual

Wrongful ownership of a citizen or citizen’s ex-slave

Expulsion of Latin and Italian immigrants from Rome

Use of bequest of King Attalus The ruler of Egypt

Expelling foreigners from Rome

Conditions of military service

Ages for election as military tribune

Allotment of consular provinces by Senate

Authorization for praetor to escort Jugurtha to Rome Expulsion from Senate of indi­viduals losing imperium The crime of maiestas Exile of individual(s) Trinundinum and unrelated measures

Selection of military tribunes Jury matters

Lease of state contracts in Asia

Port duties

Construction of new roads Order of voting in centuriate assembly

Foreign participation in the cult of Capitoline Jupiter

Stopping a colony foundation Voting bridges (pontes) Victory on a coinage issue Modification or extension of legis actiones

Land boundaries

Subtotal laws: 49

Percentage: 50

Unknown: 11

Percentage: 11.2

Total laws: 98

Source: See appendixes A and C.

Recall of exile(s) (11)

Special commission of investigation (7)

Privileges for individuals (6) The crime of ambitus (6) Jury composition (5) The crime of repetundae (5) The assignment of a province

⁽⁴⁾

Restoration of civil liberties

(4)

Suspension or circumvention of law (3)

A triumph for a commander

(3)

Selection of dictator (3)

The crime of vis (3) Assignment of consular

provinces (3)

Censors’ authority to review Senate membership (2)

Abrogation of a commander’s imperium (2)

Prorogation of imperium (2) Reassignment of provinces (2) Removal of tribune(s) from office (2)

The crime of maiestas (2)

The exile of individual(s) (2) Restrictions on tribunes (2) Removal of a consul from office (2)

The power to give exemptions from the law (2)

Assignment of oversight over grain supply (2)

Assignment of oversight over weights and measures

Expanding the number of praetors

Election of a dictator

Creation of extraordinary commission

Subtotal laws: 141

Percentage: 60.2

Issues Involving Leadership

Abrogation of an existing statute

The necessary conditions for a triumph

Theater seats for equites The election of priests Addition of equestrians to

Senate

Addition of equestrians to Senate/jury composition

The election of jurors by the tribes

A ceiling on senators’ debts The order, interval, and age limits for holding office Establishment of standing courts/jury composition The number of priests and restoration of co-optation Restrictions on provincial governors

Expanding the number of quaestors

The crime of peculatus Restoration of the office of tribune

Right of tribunes to seek other office

Responsibility for letting state contracts

The praetor’s observance of his edict

Loans to foreign states

Creation of a command against pirates

Senate audiences with foreign embassies

Loans to foreign envoys Selection of Vestals Assignment of Egypt as a province

A candidate’s entourage Standing for office when absent from Rome

Recall of a commander from his province

Depositing of law in the archives

Reassignment of oversight over temple reconstruction Transfer to a plebeian clan Ratification of a commander’s acts

The staff of a provincial governor

Magistrates who put citizens to death without trial

Comitial days and their inter­ruption

The voting order of jurors

Senate and comitial meeting days

Assignment of responsibility for restoring King Ptolemy

Personal expenditures by senators

Proconsular imperium and assignment of province

Interval between office and promagistracy

Cost of travel equipment

Supervision of roads

Grant of tribunician powers to Caesar

Capacity of Pompey’s men to stand for office

Length of provincial governorships

Eligibility for selection to priesthood

Travel outside Italy

Creation of new patrician families

Ratification of Caesar’s acta

Abolition of the office of dictator

A commission to examine Caesar’s acta

Appeals to the people

Distribution or assignment of land (9)

Grant of citizenship to outside group (7)

The foundation of colonies (5)

The distribution of grain to citizens (5)

Settlement of debts (5) Local jurisdiction in Italy (3) Citizen status of ex-slaves and their sons (2)

Food and guests at dinner parties (2)

Port duties (2)

Enrollment of new citizens in all the tribes (2)

Confirmation of commander’s citizenship grants (2)

Remission of rents in Rome (2)

Interest payments on the prin­cipal of debts (2)

Confirmation of heirs

Interest rates

Subtotal laws: 85 Percentage: 36.3 Unknown: 8 Percentage: 3.4

Total laws: 234

Other Issues

Judicial organization of

Cisalpine Gaul

The ruler of Egypt

The crime of sicarii and venefici

Cost of food at dinner parties Addition of bronze to silver coinage

Creation of new tribes

Introduction of the semiuncial as (coin)

Enacting law in the centuriate assembly

Proscription of citizens

The removal of citizenship from towns

The crime of falsa

The crime of iniuria Limitations on suretyship Permissible gambling Remittance of purchase price for property of proscribed Autonomy for a foreign city The voting rights of freedmen Expulsion of foreigners from Rome

Debt and land distribution

Contracts of the publicani of Asia

Roman relations with foreign states

Authorization to dedicate a statue on Capitolium

The restoration of collegia

King Deiotarus and Pessinus

The annexation of Cyprus as a province

The involvement of quaesto- rian scribae in trade

The crime of parricidium

The crime of sodalicia

Annexation of Numidia as province

Acquiring servitudes through usucapio

The hire of shepherds of free status

List of eligible grain recipients

Extending the pomerium of the city

Tax burden and provincial status of Crete

Restoration of power to King Deiotarus

Immunity for Delos

Source: See appendixes A and C.

TABLE 1.11 Public Law Sponsors for Selected Periods by Number and Percentage³

Source: See appendixes A and C. ^aPercentages do not always add to 100 because of rounding. ^bLess than 1%.

TABLE 1.12 Clan Membership of Law Sponsors by Selected Periods (numbers of laws sponsored by clan members in parentheses)^a

Source: See appendixes A and C.

^aBecause consular laws usually carry the names of both consuls, there is no one-to-one correspondence between clans and laws.

Office Held when

Source: MRR; PW; Scullard 1973; Wiseman 1971.

^aUnderlining indicates “new man.” The highest office (other than tribune) attested for the lawmaker follows his name.

^bQuestion mark preceding name indicates that year of office as law sponsor is uncertain. Question mark following praenomen indicates that praenomen is uncertain.

^cQuestion mark with year indicates that date is uncertain.

^dParentheses with name or portion of name indicate that the identification of the lawmaker is uncer­tain.

Source: MRR; PW; Scullard 1973; Wiseman 1971.

^aUnderlining indicates “new man.” The highest office (other than tribune) attested for the lawmaker follows his name.

^bSingle question mark preceding name indicates that year of office when sponsoring law is uncertain. Two question marks preceding name indicate that year when sponsoring law and office held when sponsoring law are uncertain. Question mark following praenomen indicates that praenomen is uncertain.

TABLE 1.15 Sponsors of Public Law by Office, 90—44

Source: MRR; PW; Scullard 1973; Wiseman 1971.

^aUnderlining indicates “new man.” The highest office (other than tribune) attested for the lawmaker follows his name.

^bParentheses with name or portion of name indicate that the identification of the lawmaker is uncertain.

^cQuestion mark with year indicates that date is uncertain.

^dQuestion mark preceding name indicates that year of office as law sponsor is uncertain. ^eSee note 17 on page 58.

TABLE 1.16 Public Law Assemblies for Selected Periods by Number and Percentage³

Source: See appendixes A and C.

Percentages do not always add to 100 because of rounding.

Source: See appendixes A and C.

^aPercentages do not always add to 100 because of rounding.

Source: See appendixes A and C. ^aLeadership issues.

TABLE 1.19 Named Sponsors by Year and Office, 218—201

Source: See appendix C and MRR.

^aJointly sponsored a law with the preceding individual.

Notes

1. On the title, reported by Appian, B.C. 1.99 but not in the fasti Capitolini, see Mommsen, R.St. 2.703, and F. Hurlet, La dictature de Sylla: Monarchie ou magistrature republicaine? Essai d’histoire constitutionnelle, vol. 30, Institut Historique Belge de Rome. Etudes de Philologie, d’Archeologie et d’Histoire Anciennes (Brussels and Rome, 1993), 95 with n. 5.

2. On Sulla’s abdication in 80 see MRR 3.74-75.

3. For a comparison of Caesar’s position with that of Sulla see Hurlet 1993, 172-75, and chapter 9.

4. The comparison has been drawn before, e.g., R. Seager, “Sulla,” CAH 9, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1994), 199.

5. For the latest edition of the text see RS 2 No. 41.

6. For the latest edition of the text see RS 1 No. 2.

7. Date and identity of the lex Agraria: RS 1.53-60 No. 2; A. Lintott, Judicial reform and land reform in the Roman republic (Cambridge, 1992), 282-86, cf. 48-49. The ancient debate is recorded in Appian, B.C. 1.7-27. See further chapter 4.

8. Discovery and earliest interpretations of the fragments: A. Lintott, “The so- called tabula bembina and the humanists,” Ath. 61 (1983): 201-14.

9. Cf. Appian, B.C. 1.7-27 with commentary of E. Gabba, Appiani bellorum civilium liber primus (Florence, 1958); and K. Johannsen, “Die lex agraria des Jahres 111” (Ph.D. diss. Munich, 1971).

10. Appian, B.C. 1.11.

11. Italians: Gabba 1958, 29, and Gabba, “Rome and Italy in the second century B.C.,” (CAH, vol. 8, Rome and the Mediterranean to 133 B.C., ed. A. E. Astin, F. W. Walbank, M. W. Frederiksen, and R. M. Ogilvie, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1989), 240. While the term Italio- tai sometimes includes Roman inhabitants of Italian land, it is surely to be understood in its broader application in the context of the occasion reported by Appian, in view of the involve­ment of allies in the later difficulties confronted by the commission when trying to deter­mine boundaries and possession. See Brunt 1988, 131, with reference to the observations of Gelzer on Appian's tendency to translate Roman agrestes as Italiotai. Mouritsen 1998, 15-16, with n. 39, agreeing that agrestes means rural Romans, provides a useful discussion.

12. See “Information for Tables in Chapter 1.”

13. See appendix B.

14. Called leges Corneliae and luliae, the laws of the dictators were sometimes enacted on the sole authority of the dictator and sometimes in assemblies. See chapters 8 and 9.

15. In principle all praetors could convene the people. In practice it appears that only the urban or peregrine praetor did so: LPPR, 120. Lawmaking by praetors: T. C. Brennan, The praetorship in the Roman republic (Oxford, 2000), 1.119-120.

16. R. Syme, The Roman revolution (Oxford, 1939), 18.

17. Table 1.12 measures only clan involvement; it does not provide a one-to-one correspondence between clans and individual laws. For instance, some laws were spon­sored by two (or more) officials, both of whose clan names provided the title for the resulting law. These are most often consular laws although a few tribunician laws are also known by the names of more than one sponsor, notoriously the lex Mamilia Ros­cia Peducaea Alliena Fabia—now identified as the lex Iulia agraria of 59 (RS 2 No. 54). In such a case table 1.12 credits the respective clans with the sponsorship of one law—without recognizing that it is the same law. As a result, the numbers following each clan name indicating the number of laws that a member of that clan was involved in sponsoring do not add up to the frequency of laws for the period. Additionally table 1.12 does not distinguish either among the various branches of a particular clan or among the nameless and named members of particular clans. Thus the lawmaking activity of individual law sponsors is invisible in table 1.12.

18. The sponsor of four proposals is believed to be either a consul or a praetor. The offices of the sponsors of twelve laws or proposals are unknown.

19. The sponsors of two laws are unknown.

20. Q. Marcius Rex sponsored a bill either as praetor by 121 or consul in 118 (MRR 1.521, 527).

21. Aedile: Remmius; consul: T. Didius.

22. Praetor: Q. Calidius; consuls: C. Marius and C. Coelius Caldus.

23. Only nine laws or proposals were sponsored by men whose offices are unknown.

24. See chapter 2.

25. E. S. Staveley, Greek and Roman voting and elections (London, 1972), 132.

26. Lintott notes a reference in Livy to the comitia tributa: A. Lintott, The consti­tution of the Roman republic (Oxford, 1999).

27. And so, coming into existence after the concilium plebis: Mommsen, R.St. 3.322-24. He called it the comitia tributa. Mommsen conjectured that the comitia trib­uta was separate from the concilium plebis because it incorporated both patricians and plebeians but that this tribal assembly was modeled on the concilium plebis insofar as citizens voted in their tribes.

28. Between 349 and 287, when the lex Hortensia made plebiscita binding on the entire Roman people, eleven, or 32 percent (since 350), of all recorded laws (thirty- four) were presented by tribunes. On the effectiveness of tribunician laws before 287 see M. Humbert, “La normativite des plebiscites selon la tradition annalistique,” in Melanges de droit romain et d’historie ancienne: Hommage d la memoire de Andre Magdelain, ed. M. Humbert and Y. Thomas ([Paris], 1998), 211-38.

29. Not so in the case of elections: consuls convened the centuriate assembly for the election of curule magistrates.

30. On the respective roles of these assemblies in generating public law see most recently U. Paananen, “Legislation in the Comitia Centuriata,” in Senatus populusque romanus: Studies in Roman republican legislation, ed. J. Vaahtera (Helsinki, 1993), 9-73.

31. E.g., Staveley 1972, 122-32.

32. See appendix B.

33. R. Develin, “Comitia tributa plebis,” Ath. 53 (1975): 302-37, and R. Develin, “Comitia Tributa Again,” Ath. 55 (1977): 423-25.

34. J. Farrell, “The distinction between comitia and concilium,” Ath. 74 (n.s. 64, 1986): 407-38. Farrell's arguments rest specifically on a comprehensive analysis of the uses of the terms comitia and concilium used by Livy and Cicero. Cf. Lintott 1999, 53-54.

35. R. E. Mitchell, Patricians and plebeians: The origins of the Roman state (Ithaca, NY, 1990); and K. Sandberg, “The concilium plebis as a legislative body,” in Vaahtera 1993, 74-96. These efforts to give the concilium plebis sole responsibility for lawmak­ing in the early and Middle Republic are unpersuasive.

36. Paananen 1993. Cf. Farrell 1986, 411 n. 24.

37. Only twice, for certain, in the Late Republic, in 81 (lex Cornelia de civitate Volaterranis adimenda) and 57 (lex Cornelia Caecilia de revocando Cicerone).

38. Losses: Livy 22.49.15-18. Brunt 1971,419, holds that losses perhaps amounted to thirty-five thousand, half of them Roman.

39. Independent decisions of commanders: A. Lintott, Imperium romanum: Poli­tics and administration (London and New York, 1993), 43-46; and A. Eckstein, Senate and general: Individual decision-making and Roman foreign relations, 264-194 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1987). A different view is taken by K.-J. Holkeskamp, Die Entstehung der Nobilitdt (Stuttgart, 1987), 170-203; cf. Holkeskamp, “Conquest, com­petition and consensus,” Hist. 42 (1993): 34.

40. The lawmaking activity of the period has also been addressed by R. Feig- Vishnia, State, society and popular leaders in Mid-Republican Rome, 241-167 (London and New York, 1996).

41. The name of the sponsor is owed to an uncertain restoration of Festus p. 347 M: see P Willems, Le senat de la republique romaine (Louvain, Paris, and Berlin, 1885), 2.438, n. 3, and 449. According to Livy 21.53 and 22.6, C. Flaminius spent only one day in Rome during his consulate. On the depreciation in this year see M. H. Crawford, Coinage and money under the Roman republic (London, 1985), 55.

42. Polyb. 3.87-88, Livy 22.8.6. See discussion in MRR 1.243.

43. Livy 22.10.2.

44. As noted in table 1.18, the highest number of laws or proposals in any one year is six, in 217, the year after the war began; the lowest is one, in four years (216, 205, 203, 202). In three years, two lawmaking occasions are reported (218, 209, 208); in four years, three lawmaking occasions are reported (212, 204, 201, 200); in two years, four lawmaking occasions are reported (211, 210); and in one year five lawmaking occasions are reported (215).

45. 211: Livy 26.2.5; 204: Livy 29.13.7.

46. According to Mommsen the people did this because he was given Sardinia and Sicily as his province, normally assigned to praetors: Mommsen, R.St. 2.211 n. 1. The presumption is that the people make such decisions only when the rules have to be bent.

47. Val. Max. 7.6.1 (slaves); Livy 25.5.8 (underage youths).

48. Livy 26.21.4.

49. Livy 26.3.12; Val. Max. 2.8.3; see MRR 1.271 n.2.

50. Livy 25.4.9.

51. Livy 26.33.12.

52. The lex Claudia is dated between 223 and 218, depending on whether schol­ars believe the tribune Claudius presented his bill in C. Flaminius's first (223) or sec­ond (218) consulate. On the “war party” in Rome see Scullard, Roman politics (Oxford, ¹973⁾, 39^-55.

53. The lex Publicia and the lex Cincia (= RS 2 No. 47).

54. Both tribunes are described by Scullard 1973, 81, as “staunch supporters of Sci­pio later.”

55. PW 35.

56. P. Licinius Varus, P. Cornelius Scipio belong to the “Aemilian-Scipionic group”: Scullard 1973, 39-55.

57. The classic views on the evolving Roman “nobility” in relation to the offices of consul and praetor and the impediments to political advancement facing men out­side this nobility, presented in M. Gelzer, The Roman nobility (Oxford, 1969), and Scullard 1973, have been refined by P. Brunt, “Nobilitas and novitas,” JRS 72 (1982): 1-17.

58. PW 1, 9; MRR 2.591.

59. MRR 2.609.

60. MRR 2.544.

61. MRR 2.592.

62. For a constitutional explanation of the tribunes' functions see J. Bleicken, Das Volkstribunat der klassischen Republik (Munich, 1955); cf. Feig-Vishnia 1996.

63. Date of his tribunate: MRR 1.271 n. 5.

64. Summary of debate about the legal issues: Scullard 1973, 276-77.

65. Livy 21.63.2; cf. Cic., Verr. 2.5.18.45.

66. J. D’Armes, Commerce and social standing in ancient Rome (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 31-34; F Cassola, I gruppi politici romani nel III secolo a.c. (Trieste, 1962), 216-17. On the new nobility see Holkeskamp 1987.

67. Livy 24.11.7-9. Crawford 1985, 60-61, postulates that metal was initially avail­able, then around 215 the Romans went to credit and subvention of sailors’ pay by the wealthy.

68. Lex Cincia: RS 2 No. 47.

69. Broad principles: Lintott 1999.

70. See T. Hantos Res publica constituta: Die Verfassung des Dictators Sulla (Stuttgart, 1988), 73-74, who believes that the six new praetors as well as the previous praetor urbanus and praetor peregrinus presented laws to tribal assemblies.

71. 241: Polyb. 6.16.3; Plin. N.H. 7.43 (45), 141.