Pleb Secessions

[CiceroD]

We all know of the way the office of Tribune was created

 

The pleabians got pissed off. So they packed up and went for a camping trip. This, of course, left the Patricians as rulers of nothing and they quickly acquiesced.

Didn't it work several times? Why wasn't it used later on near the end of the Republic?

 

Perhaps the population had gotten too large to coordinate such an exodus

Perhaps it never really happened; It was just a legendary explanation

maybe they thought that it was unneccessary since they had Tribunes

 

what does the forum think?

Edited September 20, 2007 by CiceroD

[Primus Pilus]

We all know of the way the office of Tribune was created

 

The pleabians got pissed off. So they packed up and went for a camping trip. This, of course, left the Patricians as rulers of nothing and they quickly acquiesced.

Didn't it work several times? Why wasn't it used later on near the end of the Republic?

 

Perhaps the population had gotten too large to coordinate such an exodus

Perhaps it never really happened; It was just a legendary explanation

maybe they thought that it was unneccessary since they had Tribunes

 

what does the forum think?

 

I find no reason to disbelieve that the secessions happened, but they may have been reported (by sources such as Livy) and/or understood by us far too literally. While there's no reason to disbelieve that a segment of the population did abandon the city, this could have been a more symbolic gesture of organized resistance. What I mean to suggest is that a particular vocal and authoritative segment of the plebeian population may have physically moved in order to illustrate their position, but its quite possible that the bulk of the population just stayed in their homes. The secessions were quite akin to labor strikes in which the Plebs stopped participating in daily operations of the city, refused military service, etc. Of course, it's quite impossible for me to prove this theory, especially in the face of Livy's evidence.

 

There were 3 secessions in all.

494 BC - Ended with the introduction of the Tribunis Plebis magistracy

449 BC - Reconfirmed the rights and authority of the tribunii as well as the right to appeal in capital trials.

287 BC - Settled plebeian debt and established plebeian legislation as binding on everyone (plebiscitum)

 

Livy 2.32 first secession

There, without any commander in a regularly entrenched camp, taking nothing with them but the necessaries of life, they quietly maintained themselves for some days, neither receiving nor giving any provocation. A great panic seized the City, mutual distrust led to a state of universal suspense. Those plebeians who had been left by their comrades in the City feared violence from the patricians; the patricians feared the plebeians who still remained in the City, and could not make up their minds whether they would rather have them go or stay. "How long," it was asked, "would the multitude who had seceded remain quiet? What would happen if a foreign war broke out in the meantime?" They felt that all their hopes rested on concord amongst the citizens, and that this must be restored at any cost.

 

Livy 3.52 the second secession

The armies left the Aventine and, going out by the Nomentan - or, as it was then called, the Ficulan - road, they encamped on the Sacred Hill, imitating the moderation of their fathers by abstaining from all injury. The plebeian civilians followed the army, no one whose age allowed him to go hung back. Their wives and children followed them, asking in piteous tones, to whom would they leave them in a City where neither modesty nor liberty were respected? The unwonted solitude gave a dreary and deserted look to every part of Rome; in the Forum there were only a few of the older patricians, and when the senate was in session it was wholly deserted.

 

Unfortunately, we are left with fragments for the third secession, Dio.Cass 8.37 and Zonarius, Livy's Periochae 11, a sentence of Pliny, etc. so I won't bother quoting the text.

 

It wasn't used later in the Republic because the plebeians held most of the authority and no longer needed to be a unified body against the supreme authority of patricians. The struggle of the citizen class orders was gradually supplanted by the fight between the economic classes. While labor strikes, mob intimidation/street thuggery, etc. were all a part of this fight, the issue here was that not everyone agreed and the "people" weren't always unified. That of course is a rather simplistic take, but we have discussed the later politics of the Republic quite often around here, so the focus on the struggle of the orders is a welcome subject.