Chapter XXIV: Appendix: B

WHAT WAS THE UNIT OF ASSESSMENT IN THE CONSTITUTION OF SERVIUS TULLIUS?

Th. Mommsen in his Roman History (I. 95-96 English Trans.) has laid down that land was the basis of assessment, on the analogy of the Teutonic _hide_. He makes the members of the First Class those who held a whole hide; and the remaining four classes were made up of those who held proportionally smaller freeholds. When Mommsen has once spoken, it is presumptuous to raise doubts. If however it can be shown that the Italians rather based their assessments on cattle, and that furthermore the statements of the later historians point to an original rating which harmonizes well with such an original condition, it may have been worth while to start enquiry once again in a case where the data are so scanty and obscure.

Pliny _H. N._ XXXIII. 3. 13. Maximus census CXX. assium fuit illo rege, ideo haec prima classis. This is confirmed by Festus (_s.v._ _infra censum_, p. 113 Müller) infra classem significantur qui minore summa quam centum et viginti millia aeris censi sunt.

Livy I. 42 says the rating of the _prima classis_ was Centum millia aeris, of the _secunda classis_ was infra centum assium ad quinque et septuaginta millia. _Tertia classis_ quinquaginta millia, _Quarta classis_, quinque et viginti millia. _Quinta classis_, undecim millia.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus (IV. 16-17) puts the rating of the 1st class at 100 minae (of silver) or 10,000 drachms; of the 2nd at 75 minae, of the 3rd at 50 minae, of the 4th at 25 minae, and that of the 5th at 12 minae.

All are agreed that it is absolutely incredible that the original rating of the first class was 120,000 _libral_ asses of bronze. The cow was worth 100 _libral_ asses at Rome in 451 B.C. Therefore the rating of 120,000 asses would have been equivalent to 1200 cows. It is impossible to believe that there could have been a numerous body of men in early Rome possessed of such vast capital. Boeckh’s explanation is that with the reduction of the _as_ from its original weight of a _libra_ to two ounces, and one ounce, there was a corresponding raising of the amount of the rating of the several classes.

Mommsen on the other hand thinks that the rating was originally on _land_, and that the change in the method of rating from land to bronze took place at a time when land had greatly risen in value, and that accordingly 120,000 _asses_ of the First Class are libral _asses_. Such a change as Mommsen supposes must have taken place before 260-241 B.C., for the _as_ was reduced to two ounces during the first Punic War. Yet we cannot easily suggest any period before that date when there was likely to have been so great a rise in the value of land, as is necessary to account for the large rating of 120,000 _asses_, which according to Mommsen’s reckoning would be worth about 400 lbs. of silver (or according to Soutzo 1000 lbs. of silver).

Boeckh’s hypothesis seems to fit better the conditions of the problem. Much of the importance of the rating of the various classes passed away when Marius (104 B.C.) changed the whole military system and chose the troops from the _Capite censi_, as well as from the five property classes.

The _as_ had been reduced to a single _uncia_ in the 2nd Punic War (cf. p. 377). Thus 12 _asses_ of the _uncial_ standard were required to make up the weight of the old _libral as_. Accordingly 120,000 _asses_ of the 2nd century B.C. would be equal to 10,000 _libral asses_ of the earlier days. But as by the Lex Tarpeia 100 _asses_ is the value of a cow, 10,000 _libral asses_ = 100 cows. This would be by no means an unlikely number of cows, to form the minimum of the wealthiest class of a pastoral community. There is another curious piece of evidence which seems to confirm my hypothesis. One of the provisions of the Licinian Rogations (367 B.C.) was that no one should hold more than 500 _jugera_ of the Public Land, or should be allowed to feed more than _one hundred_ large cattle or 500 small cattle on public pastures. μηδένα ἔχειν τῆσδε τῆς γῆς πλέθρα πεντακοσίων πλείονα, μηδὲ προβατεύειν ἑκατὸν πλείω τὰ μείζονα καὶ πεντακοσίων τὰ ἐλάσσονα. Appian, _Bell. Civ._ I. 8. If 100 large cattle were the number which qualified a Roman for the first class, there was every reason why Licinius and Sextus should have taken 100 as the _maximum_ number of cows which a citizen could keep on the public pastures.

Next I shall show that the method of rating by cattle and not by land was that actually practised in Sicily. That island stood in such close relations to the Italian Peninsula both geographically and ethnologically that we may reasonably infer that the method of rating in use there was also in use in Italy.

Now we learn from Aristotle’s _Oeconomica_ (II. 21) that when the tyrant Dionysius oppressed the Syracusans with excessive exactions, they ceased to keep cattle:

Τὼν δὲ πολιτῶν διὰ τὰς εἰσφορὰς οὐ τρεφόντων βοσκήματα, εἶπεν ὅτι ἱκανὰ ἦν αὐτῷ πρὸς τοσοῦτον· τοὺς οὖν νῦν κτησαμένους ἀτελεῖς ἔσεσθαι, πολλῶν δὲ ταχὺ κτησαμένων πολλὰ βοσκήματα, ὡς ἀτελῆ ἑξόντων, ἐπεὶ ᾤετο καιρὸν εἶναι, τιμήσασθαι κελεύσας ἐπέβαλε τέλος, κ.τ.λ.

If the citizens of Syracuse, a great Greek trading city, were still rated in cattle in the time of Dionysius (405-367 B.C.), _à fortiori_ we may expect the same primitive method of assessment to prevail among the pastoral peoples of Central Italy in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.

Among the Kelts, the close kinsfolk of the Italians, the same system probably prevailed. Thus in the ancient Irish laws, where the various classes of freemen are described, there are a number of them called _Bo-aires_[449], cow-freemen.

As modern research has shown that everywhere among the Aryans land was originally held in common, and that separate property in land sprung up only at a comparatively late period, we may with some confidence infer that in Italy likewise in early days a man’s wealth was reckoned in his cattle, and not in lands, such as I have shown to have been the practice among the Greeks of the ‘Homeric times’ (‘The Homeric Land System,’ _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, 1885).