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Conflict of the orders
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The Conflict of the Orders, also called the Struggle of the Orders, is a modern term for accounts of a political struggle for equality between plebeians and patricians in the ancient Roman Republic. It concluded by the third century BC with the plebeians winning full political rights alongside the patricians.

Ancient sources use the conflict to explain "virtually all" developments in the republic's constitution after its foundation and establishment of the plebeian tribunate. They posit an early start of the conflict, with the patricians having taken over the state shortly after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, with multiple secessions from Rome by the plebeian population in order to force concessions from the patrician elite. Through multiple centuries, they depict the rights of the plebeians expanding: the plebeians' tribunes gain powers to veto magisterial actions, plebeians earn the power to legislate for the whole city, and plebeians become eligible for all the offices of state (including those of consul and dictator).

Modern scholars cast substantial doubt on the veracity of the conflict, at least as described by the ancient sources. It is generally accepted that many of the ancient accounts were influenced by conflicts in the late republic, retrojected onto histories of Rome's distant past. There are also significant problems with the traditional account, including the presence of plebeian names at an early period in the list of consuls (the fasti) EXPAND

Traditional account

The traditional account of the conflict of the orders derives mainly from Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and various fragments from previous Roman historians starting with Quintus Fabius Pictor c. 200 BC at the close of the second Punic war. The source of the written tradition in literary and antiquarian pursuits also emerges around this time, though oral stories are slightly older. These stories, transmitted through songs, plays, and family traditions without clear indications in time, focused on historical events and persons. Coupled with a timeline from priestly and state records, it became the role of the earliest Roman historians to place those events in time and link them up logically.

The reliability of the ancient accounts are questioned. The details of the account are undoubtedly "highly contrived and unrealistic". But historians disagree as to whether those accounts are true or not. Most accept their "structural facts" while dismissing the details as likely literary embellishments (such injections "were an accepted feature of [then-contemporary] historical writing").

On the other hand, other scholars view the descriptions of the Conflict are "so heavily contaminated... that reconstructing the history of the latter is virtually impossible". Specific events may have been recast, reinterpreted, or altogether invented in the polarised political environment of the late republic to create historical examples and precedents with which then-contemporaries could justify their actions.

Account

The traditional account reports a series of major events:

494 BC

Protesting against patrician use of debt bondage (nexum), the plebeians declare, what is in effect, a general strike and withdraw from the city in the first secession of the plebs. The patricians then give the plebs a the right to elect two tribunes (who later number ten) and allow the plebs to form the concilium plebis.

451–50 BC

A board of ten – the Decemvirate – is formed to create a code of laws, known as the Twelve Tables, so that the whole Roman people (rather than just the patricians) could know the laws by which they would be governed. A provision of the 11th table bans intermarriage between patricians and plebeians. An attempt to establish a tyranny in 450 BC is subverted by a second secession of the plebs which forces the "Second Decemvirate" from office.

449 BC

A law is passed which guarantees the right of citizens to appeal to the people (Latin: provocatio ad populum) against scourging or execution by a magistrate, reaffirming a supposed law to that effect carried with the republic's formation.

Another law is passed extending bills passed by the plebeian council, plebiscites, to bind the whole community.

445 BC

The law banning marriage of plebeians and patricians is repealed.

444–392 BC

Instead of consuls, boards of consular tribunes – numbering from three to six – are elected, which the traditional sources explain in terms of permitting the election of plebeians to the supreme magistracy without actually giving them the right to stand for the consulship.

367 BC

The Sextian-Licinian rogations abolish the consular tribunate. They also make plebeians eligible for the normal consulship and create a praetorship. Further legislation limits the amount of public land any citizen can own to 500 iugera and alleviates indebtedness among the plebs.

After the Sextian-Licinian rogations, plebeians extend their political rights. The first plebeian dictator – Gaius Marcius Rutilus – is appointed in 356 BC. In 351 BC, he becomes the first plebeian censor. Around a decade later, in 342 BC, a lex Genucia henceforth requires election of at least one plebeian consul annually.

Further legislation is passed by another plebeian dictator, Quintus Publilius Philo, in 339 BC, reaffirming that plebeian laws bind the whole community. He also passes legislation requiring that at least one censor be plebeian. A plebeian is then first elected praetor in 336 BC. And in 300 BC, plebeians break the patriciate's monopoly over the priesthoods. Also among those reforms is legislation reaffirming the right of provocatio. The conflict of the orders finally ends with the third secession of the plebs, in 287 BC, to secure passage of a law again reaffirming that plebiscites bind both plebeians and patricians.

Problems

There are a number of problems and inconsistencies with the traditional account. Beyond the sources being clear reconstructions by relatively uncritical ancients, the stories that they tell are not themselves internally consistent. Modern scholars view many of the transmitted details as implausible.

Inconsistencies

It is unlikely that the plebeians and patricians were unchanging groups all the way from the 490s to the 280s BC. Moreover, the presence of plebeian names in the early consular lists (typified by Lucius Junius Brutus) indicates that the patricians did not become an exclusive political class until around the 450s BC. It also is unclear whether or not the "plebeians" were defined by some other unifying characteristic prior to their later definition as not-patrician.

The development of the consulship and the role of the consular tribunes also is unclear. The consular fasti are known to be unreliable before 440 BC and the name of the office that became that of consul was known in ancient times to have first been called "praetor", even though the Livian account credits the praetorship to have been established in 367 BC. The explanation that consular tribunes were elected to give plebeians access to the highest magistrate is implausible when so few plebeians are recorded as consular tribunes; nor is the explanation that this tribunate was established for military purposes when multiple dictators are also recorded.

Laws affirming the right to provocatio also are implausible before c. 300 BC. Moreover, the possibility that plebeians started to bind the whole community in 449 BC with plebiscites is questionable, especially when future legislation seems to repeatedly reaffirm that position.

Modern views

Various modern views have been proposed which question basically all portions of the received account of a traditional conflict of the orders. More critical scholars, such as Gary Forsythe, author of A critical history of ancient Rome (2005), do not accept as historical:

the ancient traditions of the first secession of the plebs, a second board of decemviral legislators, the second secession, and the Valerian Horatian Laws of 449 BC, as well as the prevalent modern notions of an extra-legal plebeian state within the state and the existence of a concilium plebis...

The Conflict of the Orders was previously seen as "uniquely Roman" due to the special patrician elite with few parallels in other ancient societies. For some scholars, such as Gary Forsythe, this lack of similar events is a reason to question the veracity of the traditional accounts. However, comparative studies of city-state politics in mediaeval Italy have "revealed interesting parallels" where small oligarchies are challenged by il popolo which creates representative institutions raising elites outside the formal oligarchy to challenge that oligarchy before being co-opted and becoming part of the normal government.

Semi-traditional account

Accepting the accounts of the ancient historians in terms of their structural facts, the semi-traditional account places a more conservative approach towards the ancient literary tradition. Various scholars have presented accounts in this vein, including Tim Cornell and Kurt Raaflaub.

Taking the consular fasti as reasonably accurate, the presence of plebeian names in the earliest portions of the fasti indicate that the patricians at the start of the republic, contra the ancient Roman accounts, had not yet established a monopoly over political power. The closing of the patriciate to new members and their monopolisation of political power emerges some time between 480 and 450 BC, creating a static aristocracy. In response, rich plebeians, dissatisfied with patrician exploitation with debt, debt bondage, inequality of landholdings, and control over the state, demand the public codification of laws and the opening of political offices to the plebeians as a whole. These demands are pushed through the plebeian institutions and forced upon the political aristocracy – especially during wartime – by repeated mass secession of the plebs; eventually, they also win recognition of the plebeian institutions established to protect plebeians from patrician magistrates.

The specific causes of each of these secessions is lost to us, and scholars reject "the idea of a class struggle that lasted for 200 years... fed over that entire period by essential the same causes" as "historically implausible". Similarly, the highly confrontational tactics implied by general strikes in the various plebeian secessions appear implausible in the context of Roman cultural values. Those specific causes are lost to us. But the causes of the late secessions are less shrouded in mystery and likely the place from which the stories of the earlier Conflict emerge. Economic issues must have been of some import to have had multiple measures through the late third century BC reducing the burden of debts; laws passed either in 326 or 313 BC abolished debt bondage, coinciding with the emergence of a slave economy at Rome. Laws opened the magistracies to plebeians through that century, until the last remaining limit on plebiscita – a requirement that plebiscita receive the approval of the senate – is abolished by the lex Hortensia in 287 BC. Thereon, the plebeians are fully integrated into the political system and the power-holding elite turns into a nobilitas of powerful patrician and plebeian families.

The orders

See also: Patricians and plebeians

Before discussing the various accounts of the Conflict of the Orders, it is important to know what the two orders were. Among other things, scholars have debated for some time the extent to which the patricians were a closed upper class. Similarly, they have debated whether the plebs were an undifferentiated mass of non-patricians and their composition.

Patricians

The traditional account transmits that Romulus, shortly after the founding of the city, divided the city into patrician patres and plebeians. There is some debate among scholars as to whether the split the population into patricians and plebeians occurred so far back in history. There exists some evidence corroborating the ancient accounts that it emerged at least in the regal period; however, the extent to which the patriciate was an exclusive group in this early period is unclear. In the regal period, there are some indications that the patriciate was an "open aristocracy" into which the kings could infuse new blood.

Patricians as a monopolistic aristocracy were likely rich religious leaders who formed themselves into a closed elite after accomplishing the expulsion of the kings. The patriciate may have been defined by their monopolisation of hereditary priesthoods that granted ex officio membership in the senate. The distinction between patres and conscripti for members of the senate suggests there were non-patrician senators from the earliest period of the republic, selected "from the elite of the plebs". The senators as a whole consisted of patrician priests who were automatically senators and conscripti who were not.

Modern reconstructions of the first years of the republic also rely on evidence that the early patriciate "opened itself up to new elements" and worked with elite plebeians, but over the course of the half century from c. 500 BC to the second half of the fifth century, it closed itself off and started to monopolise power. Before this closing, plebeians held consulships, as suggested by non-patrician names in the consular fasti, such as the first consul, Lucius Junius Brutus, with 15 other examples until 445 BC. The non-patrician senators of the early republic, "unable to transmit the seat they held in the senate to their descendants... formed a second-class nobility" which realised "collaboration with the patriciate was nothing but a bait" and, hence, embraced "the cause of the plebs".

Plebeians

The plebs – in terms of a distinct group with its own identity – emerged, in the traditional accounts, due to oppressive debt bondage in a mass withdrawal from Rome to either the mons sacer (the Sacred Mount) or the Aventine hill, dated to 494 BC. There, they created an alternate state with a separate assembly, called the concilium plebis, with two officers, the tribunes of the plebs. The plebs who withdrew from the city were likely the poor in general rather than a specific subset of the urban or rural poor; they also likely were those insufficiently rich to arm themselves as hoplites, leaving open both the possibility that they were those who were too poor for military service or that they served as light infantry.

Plebeian institutions

Further information: Plebeian tribune and Plebeian council

The traditional accounts of the first secession of the plebs and "a mixture of legend and romance" with "confused" and generally unverifiable details. The various sources disagree on those details as well. The extent to which the traditional accounts should be believed is minimal, but in general, historians agree that by the 450s BC, the plebeians' state-within-a-state had fully emerged with a set of tribunes, aediles, and an assembly.

The ancient tradition was itself divided on the number of tribunes at different times. Lucius Calpurnius Piso reported the plebeian tribunes were originally two, expanding to five in 471 BC. Livy and Dionysius, however, believe that there were originally five in 494 BC, with the original two having selected three colleagues immediately. The tribunes themselves gained their powers from their sacrosanctity, a solemn oath of the plebeians to obey the tribunes and to defend them with deadly force, giving the tribunes powers to impose legal punishments up to death against those who challenged them or threatened their persons. Importantly was also power of auxilium (lit. 'assistance') in which a tribune intervened personally by interposing their sacrosanctity between a magistrate and a victim. In the traditional story, after the acceptance of these rights by the patricians, this intercession expanded to legislative matters, which formed the basis of the tribunician veto.

The plebeian aediles were created as helpers for the tribunes, perhaps related to the temple (aedes) of Ceres, Liber, and Libera on the Aventine. The traditional account holds that in 449 BC, senatorial decrees were then filed with the plebeian aediles in the temple of Ceres, which may have been a concession to permit the plebs to know what the senate was doing and allow for an archival recording of law and state decisions.

Tribunes also called meetings of the concilium plebis (the plebeian council), which was ostensibly open to all plebs. The traditional account reports that in 471 BC it was reorganised along similar terms to those of the comitia tributa, with a possible prior organisation in terms of the curiae or simply a majority of those present. The plebs' council initially had powers to pass laws binding the plebeians only, but the extent to which these laws bound the community as a whole is debated: early laws may have been given full state authority by means of plebeian enforcement via their sacrosanct magistrates.

Plebeian grievances

For the period from 474 to 400 BC, there are very few archaeological finds in Rome. Moreover, those finds that are present are overwhelmingly of poorer quality than previous and later artefacts. This may indicate economic distress consistent with literary sources of plebeian struggle against food shortages, debt, and other social and economic deprivations. Those grievances may also have to do with land distribution, with the elite holding large swathes of public land while the average plebeian was close to subsistence.

The extent to which these specific grievances, however, are legitimate reflections of the early republic, is debated. Some scholars view them as retrojections of the late republic's disputes over land, the grain dole, and other economic issues into the early republic. At the same time, other scholars – such as Tim Cornell – believe that the literary sources' depictions of those early struggles are at least plausible and that the ancient historians such as Livy were likely working on a well-known structure for early Roman history that – even if details are fictional – at least reflects structural facts of early republican political disputes.

Doma militaeque

One theory mentioned by Gary Forsythe in his article for the Encyclopedia of Ancient History is that the focus on patricians and plebeians misses the point. Rather, the Conflict of the Orders was instead a political dispute between the civilian and military aspects (domi and militae) of the republic. Where the consuls and the "patrician" magistracies reflected the sphere militae, the plebeian tribunes reflected the sphere domi. The "Conflict" then is reframed around the extent to which the civilian aspect of the republic controlled the military aspect, with the eventual victory of the civilians.

See also

• Constitution of the Roman Republic
• Plebeian Council
• Plebeians
• Patricians

References

Sources

• Beard, Mary (2015). SPQR: a history of ancient Rome (1st ed.). New York: Liveright Publishing. ISBN 978-0-87140-423-7. OCLC 902661394.
• Cornell, Tim (1995). The beginnings of Rome. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01596-0. OCLC 31515793.
• Drogula, Fred (2015). Commanders & command in the Roman republic and early empire. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-1-4696-2314-6. OCLC 905949529.
• Forsythe, Gary (1997-03-26). "Review of "Beginnings of Rome"". Bryn Mawr Classical Review. ISSN 1055-7660.
• Forsythe, Gary (2005). A critical history of early Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-94029-1. OCLC 70728478.
• Forsyteh, Gary (2015-12-29). "Struggle of the orders". Encyclopedia of Ancient History. doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah26400.
• Holloway, R Ross (2008). "Who Were the "Tribuni Militum Consulari Potestate?"". L'Antiquité Classique. 77: 107–125. ISSN 0770-2817.
• Lintott, Andrew (1999). The constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-815068-7. OCLC 39706770.
• Momigliano, Arnaldo; Lintott, Andrew (2012). "plebs". In Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Antony; Eidinow, Esther (eds.). The Oxford classical dictionary (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 1161. ISBN 978-0-19-954556-8. OCLC 959667246.
• Oakley, SP (2014). "The early republic". In Flower, Harriet (ed.). The Cambridge companion to the Roman republic (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 3 et seq. ISBN 978-1-107-03224-8. OCLC 866253238.
• Pellam, Gregory (2014). "A peculiar episode from the 'Struggle of the Orders'? Livy and the Licinio-Sextian rogations". The Classical Quarterly. 64 (1): 280–292. doi:10.1017/S0009838813000712. ISSN 0009-8388.

• Raaflaub, Kurt A (2006). "Between myth and history: Rome's rise from village to empire". In Rosenstein, NS; Morstein-Marx, R (eds.). A companion to the Roman Republic. Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-7203-5. OCLC 86070041.

• Raaflaub, Kurt A, ed. (2005) [1986]. Social struggles in archaic Rome (Expanded and updated ed.). Malden: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-0060-1. OCLC 58043131.
  • Cornell, Tim. "The value of the literary tradition concerning archaic Rome". In Raaflaub (2005), pp. 47-74.
  • Develin, Robert. "The integration of the plebeians into the political order after 366 BC". In Raaflaub (2005), pp. 293-311.
  • Mitchell, Richard E. "The definition of patres and plebs: an end to the struggle of the orders". In Raaflaub (2005), pp. 128-167.
  • Raaflaub, Kurt (2005a). "From protection and defense to offense and participation: stages in the Conflict of the Orders". In Raaflaub (2005), pp. 185-222.
  • Richard, Jean-Claude. "Patricians and plebeians: the origins of a social dichotomy". In Raaflaub (2005), pp. 107-127.
  • von Ungern-Sternberg, Jürgen. "The end of the Conflict of the Orders". In Raaflaub (2005), pp. 312-332.

old source list

• Abbott, Frank Frost (1901). A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions. Elibron Classics (ISBN 0-543-92749-0).
• Byrd, Robert (1995). The Senate of the Roman Republic. U.S. Government Printing Office, Senate Document 103-23.
• Cicero, Marcus Tullius (1841). The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero: Comprising his Treatise on the Commonwealth; and his Treatise on the Laws. Translated from the original, with Dissertations and Notes in Two Volumes. By Francis Barham, Esq. London: Edmund Spettigue. Vol. 1.
• Lintott, Andrew (1999). The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford University Press (ISBN 0-19-926108-3).
• Polybius (1823). The General History of Polybius: Translated from the Greek. By James Hampton. Oxford: Printed by W. Baxter. Fifth Edition, Vol 2.
• Taylor, Lily Ross (1966). Roman Voting Assemblies: From the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar. The University of Michigan Press (ISBN 0-472-08125-X).
• Kurt Raaflaub, ed. Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of Orders (University of California Press, 1986) ISBN 0-520-05528-4
• Shindler, Michael (2014). Patrician and Plebeian Sociopolitical Dynamics in Early Rome. The Apollonian Revolt.

old further reading

• Ihne, Wilhelm. Researches Into the History of the Roman Constitution. William Pickering. 1853.
• Johnston, Harold Whetstone. Orations and Letters of Cicero: With Historical Introduction, An Outline of the Roman Constitution, Notes, Vocabulary and Index. Scott, Foresman and Company. 1891.
• Mommsen, Theodor. Roman Constitutional Law. 1871-1888
• Tighe, Ambrose. The Development of the Roman Constitution. D. Apple & Co. 1886.
• Von Fritz, Kurt. The Theory of the Mixed Constitution in Antiquity. Columbia University Press, New York. 1975.
• The Histories by Polybius
• Cambridge Ancient History, Volumes 9–13.
• A. Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, (Fontana Press, 1993).
• M. Crawford, The Roman Republic, (Fontana Press, 1978).
• E. S. Gruen, "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic" (U California Press, 1974)
• F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, (Duckworth, 1977, 1992).