struggle between patricians and plebeians

7/30/2019 Struggle Between Patricians and Plebeians

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DISCUSS THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE

THAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN

PATRICIAN AND PLEBEIANS

The domestic history of Rome during the first two centuries of the Republic is dominated by

the conflict between the patricians and plebeians. The patricians constituted small close-knit

elite while the plebeians were the common people. Both the orders were included in the

category of Roman citizens.

The distinction between patricians and plebeians in Ancient Rome was based purely on birth.

This division had a permanency which resembles the permanency of being born into a

particular caste. A citizen was born either a patrician or a plebeian. One could not become apatrician merely by acquiring wealth or political power. Kinship and marriage too were

closely linked with the division of Roman society into two orders. Till 445 B.C. marriages

between patricians and plebeians were prohibited by law and for a long time after that such

marriage were rare.

PATRICIANS

In the early republic, the patrician class dominated Roman society. The patricians were a

privileged class of Roman citizens who exercised great political and religious power, held

military authority, especially during the monarchy and the Roman Republic. Patrician status

was obtained only by birth.

Patrician social organization was based on kinship groups called gentes. Each gens traced its

origin to a common ancestor. Patrician gentes were patrilineal and rigidly patriarchal. Kinship

ties played an important role at the level of patrician social organization. Their closed kinship

structure was so strictly regulated that during the course of the republic the number of gentes

were steadily decreasing.

The patricians were the economically, politically and socially dominant group. Being born apatrician meant automatic access to wealth, political power, and a high social and ritual

status. Patricians were able to exercise a high degree of control over Roman religion. When

the republic came into existence the patricians converted the senate into an exclusive

oligarchical institution for governing Rome. Membership in the patrician class was inherited.

The patricians were able to influence the proceedings of the comitia curiata by choosing

appropriate presiding officers.

The upper class plebeians were barred from magistracies. Middle and lower classes felt the

economic burden. Rural farmers were feeling the effects of war because they had to do much

of the fighting. Poor plebeians were subject to harsh debtor laws.


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The fact that the patrician class was an aristocracy based on birth ultimately led to a decline

in the number of patrician clans, from about 50 in 400 B.C. to only 14 in 31 B.C. Julius

Caesar and the emperor Augustus were granted the power to create new patricians, and later

emperors used their power as censor to elevate other citizens to patrician status. New

patricians created in this manner could pass this status on to their descendants. Even so, the

hereditary class of patricians seems to have disappeared by the A.D. 200. The emperorConstantine revived the title of patricius in the early A.D. 300, but it were given to

individuals as an honor in recognition of service to the empire and did not carry the privileges

or the hereditary status that the original term implied.

PLEBEIANS

Plebeian referred to the mass of the Roman populationall those belonging to the lower

classes of Roman society. At the beginning of the Roman Republic, plebeians were excluded

from all important positions in the government. After the Conflict of the Orders struggle,

plebeians largely attained political equality with patricians.

In 494 B.C. scores of plebeians withdrew from Rome and assembled outside the boundaries

of the city. This was the first of five secessions by the plebeians that occurred during the early

years of the republic. They formed their own popular assembly and elected their own

officials, called Tribunes, to protect their interests against the actions of the patricians. Since

the withdrawal of large numbers of citizens weakened the army, the patricians relented.

Eventually, they accepted the plebeian assembly as able to make laws binding on the

plebeians and their tribunes as legitimate officials, thus creating a plebeian state within

Rome.

The plebeians developed their own institutions that were completely separate from those of

the patricians. They formed an assembly called the concilium plebis, which excluded all

patricians. Decisions (called plebiscite) made by the concilium plebis were binding only on

plebeians, although they could be applied to all Romans if they were also approved by the

patricians. When this condition was removed at the end of the Conflict of the Orders,

plebiscita became law for all the Roman people.

The concilium plebis elected the tribunes and the two plebeian aediles. Each year, the

assembly elected ten tribunes to represent the interests of the plebeians. Although they were

not magistrates of the Roman government, tribunes had considerable power. They helped anyplebeian, who was mistreated by the patricians, and they could block all legislation of the

magistrates and decrees of the Roman Senate that they believed were not in the best interest

of the plebeians. The most powerful weapon in the hands of the plebeians was the refusal to

render military service (secession).

Around 450 B.C., the plebeians demanded that the Roman rulers codify Roman laws so that

they would apply to all citizens equally. Although the result (Twelve Tables) was harsh and

restrictive, it made the laws known to all and not subject to the arbitrary decisions of

magistrates.

Theplebeians greatest success was the passage of the Licinian-Sextian laws of 367-366 B.C.For the first time, plebeians were allowed to hold the office of consul. By the end of the 300s


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B.C., plebeians could hold important governmental offices and state priesthoods, and

imprisonment for debt had been abolished.

After the plebeians' final secession in 287 B.C., the Romans passed the Hortensian law,

which validated legislation passed by the plebeian assembly and applied it to all Roman

citizens, not just plebeians. After this time, plebeians and patricians had equal political andlegal rights. Although this marked the end of the Conflict of the Orders, most political power

remained in the hands of the wealthier noble families.

STRUGGLE BETWEEN PATRICIANS AND

PLEBEIANS

There was lot of internal politics in Ancient Rome. Patrician families would seize all the

public land for their own use, driving many small landowners into debt. The plebeians wereconstantly fighting for a greater say in the government, and finally, the first plebeian consuls

were elected in 366 B.C. However, the patricians continued to control the Senate, sometimes

taking ambitious plebeians into their ranks to achieve their aims.

During the time of the Roman Republic, there was constant struggle between the rich

patrician aristocracy and the plebeians who ranged from jobless laborers to wealthy

landowners who did not belong to the noble class. While on the one hand the patricians tried

to concentrate all political power in their hands, on the other hand the plebeians began to

assert themselves and demanded that they should also have a say in the political process. The

system evolved by the patricians after the establishment of the Republic completely denied

the plebeians any say in the government. The Roman aristocracy had to seek the support of

the peasantry for defending the city and subsequently for expansion in Italy. Roman military

organization was heavily dependent on the peasants who constituted the main fighting force.

The army comprised unpaid soldiers who were primarily recruited from the peasantry. The

soldiers had to supply their own fighting equipment. All able-bodied male adults had to

render military service. As Rome began to expand, the need to have the support of the

peasant soldiers increased. Initially, the peasantry derived some minor benefits from this

expansion, but it was the patrician aristocracy that was the main beneficiary of the empire.

The growth of the empire made the aristocracy wealthy and widened the gap between the rich

and the poor.

In the early phase of Roman expansion, the peasantry was able to extract major political

concessions. Through these concessions a small section of the plebeians got some share in

political power. The struggle between the aristocracy and the peasantry was a struggle

between the patricians and the plebeians and is often referred to as the conflict of the orders.

One of the foremost demands of the plebeians was that there should be a written code of

law so that there was no arbitrary exercise of judicial authority. In the absence of written

laws, the patricians had consistently abused their judicial powers. The plebeians

threatened the Senate that they would not perform military service if it does not initiate

steps to create a proper legal framework for the Roman state. The Senate set up a ten-

member commission ('decemvirs') presided over by Applies Claudius. The commissionprepared a set of laws for the Romans, known as the Code of the Twelve Tables which


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was introduced in c. 450 BC. This code reduced the scope for arbitrary exercise of

judicial authority by the patricians.

The second landmark was the provision whereby one of the consulships was opened to

the plebeians in 367 BC. Since the Consuls were elected by the comitia centuriata and

the names of candidates had to be proposed by senators, it was not easy for a plebeian tobe elected to the highest magistracy of the Roman state. It was only in the last hundred

years of the Republic that plebeians began to regularly hold consulships. These plebeian

Consuls became members of the Senate via the consulship.

Thirdly, the Roman law had a very harsh provision which related to the strict

enforcement of formal contracts or nexum. The impoverishment of the peasants had

forced them to seek regular loans from the rich. If a Roman entered into a formal

agreement or nexum while contracting a loan in which the debtor's person was pledged

as security, failure to honor the agreement resulted in debt bondage. Debts incurred due

to frequent participation in wars, as well as to meet diverse economic needs, had made

indebtedness a chronic peasant problem. Debt bondage had allowed the landedaristocracy to acquire unfree labour for their estates. When the peasants and other poor

people were unable to repay their loans they were enslaved. Nexum thus became a

device for the big landowners to convert free peasants into unfree labour. The abolition

of nexum was thus a crucial issue for the plebeians. In 326 BC, a law was enacted which

prohibited the enslavement of Roman citizens for non-repayment of debts. The peasants

were victorious in their struggle against debt bondage but their fight for retaining

possession over their land remained unsuccessful.

The fourth, and politically the most significant, landmark in the conflict of the orders

during the early Republic was a step taken in 287 BC which gave the plebeian Tribunes

full-fledged magisterial powers. There seems to have been a serious crisis at this stage

which culminated in another threat by the plebeians to withdraw from military service.

By a law of 287 BC the decisions of the concilium plebis were made binding on the

Roman state. Henceforth, the Tribunes were authorized to enforce the decisions of the

concilium plebis with the full sanction of the Roman state, with appropriate

punishments for violation. This legislation greatly increased the clout of the concilium

plebis. Its decisions had full legal authority. Correspondingly, the tribune ship became a

powerful magistracy. The events of 287 BC are supposed to have brought to an end the

conflict of the orders.

CONCLUSION

The struggle between the patricians and plebeians dragged on for hundreds of years, but it led

to success for the plebeians. The council of the plebs, a popular assembly for plebeians only,

was created in 471 B.C., and new officials, known as the tribunes of pleb, were given the

power to protect plebeians against arrest by patrician magistrates. A new law allowed

marriages between patricians and plebeians. Plebeians gained access to nearly all the

important political offices and priesthoods formerly held by the patricians.

One of the important demands of the plebeians in the conflict of the orders during the earlyrepublic had been that plebeians should also be allowed to hold the office of consul. In the 4th


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century B.C.E., plebeians were permitted to become consuls and also became eligible for

magistracy. Finally, in 281 B.C.E., the council of the plebs received the right to pass laws for

all Romans.

The struggle between the patricians and plebeians had a significant impact on the

development of the Roman state. Theoretically, by 287 B.C.E, all Roman citizens were equalunder the law, and all could strive for political office. But in reality, as a result of the right of

intermarriage, a select number of patrician and plebeian families formed a new senatorial

aristocracy that came to dominate the political offices. The wealthiest plebeians thus joined

the patricians in forming a small and exclusive group that dominated Roman politics

thereafter: the "patricio-plebeian nobility."

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Early Social FormationsAmar Farooqi

Ancient Greece and Rome

World History Volume 1 - William J. Duiker, JacksonJ. Spielvogel

struggle between patricians and plebeians

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