This page needs to be proofread.
OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
447
of the city.[1] Three thousand brass plates, the acts of the senate and people, were deposited in the Capitol;[2] and some of the acts, as the Julian law against extortion, surpassed the number of an hundred chapters.[3] The Decemvirs had neglected to import the sanction of Zaleucus, which so long maintained the integrity of his republic. A Locrian who proposed any new law stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and, if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.
Laws of the people The Decemvirs had been named, and their tables were approved, by an assembly of the centuries, in which riches preponderated against numbers. To the first class of Romans, the proprietors of one hundred thousand pounds of copper,[4] ninety-eight votes were assigned, and only ninety-five were left for the six inferior classes, distributed according to their substance by the artful policy of Servius. But the tribunes soon established a more specious and popular maxim, that every citizen has an equal right to enact the laws which he is bound to obey. Instead of the centuries, they convened the tribes; and the patricians, after an impotent struggle, submitted to the decrees of an assembly in which their votes were confounded with those of the meanest plebeians. Yet, as long as the tribes successively passed over narrow bridges,[5] and gave their voices- ↑ De principiis juris et quibus modis ad hanc multitudinem infinitam ac varietatem legum perventum sit altius disseram (Tacit. Annal. iii. 25). This deep disquisition fills only two pages, but they are the pages of Tacitus. With equal sense, but with less energy, Livy (iii. 34) had complained in hoc immenso aliarum super alias acervatarum legum cumulo, &c.
- ↑ Suetonius in Vespasiano, c. 8.
- ↑ Cicero ad Familiares, viii. 8.
- ↑ Dionysius, with Arbuthnot and most of the moderns (except Eisenschmidt de Ponderibus, &c. p. 137-140), represent the 100,000 asses by 10,000 Attic drachmæ, or somewhat more than 300 pounds sterling. But their calculation can apply only to the later times, when the as was diminished to 1/24th of its ancient weight, nor can I believe that in the first ages, however destitute of the precious metals, a single ounce of silver could have been exchanged for seventy pounds of copper or brass. A more simple and rational method is to value the copper itself according to the present rate, and, after comparing the mint and the market price, the Roman and avoirdupois weight, the primitive as or Roman pound of copper may be appreciated at one English shilling, and the 100,000 asses of the first class amounted to 5000 pounds sterling. It will appear, from the same reckoning, that an ox was sold at Rome for five pounds, a sheep for ten shillings, and a quarter of wheat for one pound ten shillings (Festus, p. 330, edit. Dacier. Plin. Hist. Natur. xviii. 4): nor do I see any reason to reject these consequences, which moderate our ideas of the poverty of the first Romans.
- ↑ Consult the common writers on the Roman Comitia, especially Sigonius and Beaufort. Spanheim (de Præstantiâ et Usu Numismatum, tom. ii. dissert, x. p. 192, 193) shews, on a curious medal, the Cista, Pontes, Septa, Diribitor, &c.
