Chapter 66

The First Sack of Rome

In Rome, between 495 and 390 BC, patricians and
plebians quarrel, and Gauls burn the city
Citizens of Class ROME HAD THROWN its net across peoples on the outside, and as it
began to mutate towards an empire it faced the same difficulty as the
Persians or Spartans: how to combine people with great power (the
original conquerors) and those with no power (the conquered, now
absorbed) into a harmonious whole. In Sparta, the conquerors were
called citizens, while the conquered were helots.

In Rome, the two groups had slightly different origins. The patricians
(from the Latin word pater, “father”) were by tradition descendants of
the Roman council of advisors that served the old kings. The plebians
were everyone else which means “not patricians.” This included
conquered peoples now living in Rome, but also men who traced their
ancestry back to lowly inhabitants of the original city.
Citizens of Class The plebians outnumbered the patricians, but the patricians held a
disproportionate amount of land and wealth. Even in the early days of
the Republic, the plebians managed to elect one of their own to be
consul on a fairly regular basis, but Rome’s magistrates and priests,
landowners and generals, were all patricians.

As in Athens, the problem of debt had become acute. A plebian who

had to borrow money in time of famine, or while away at war, to feed
his family, had to pledge himself as security; if the money was not paid
back, he and his dependents became slaves. The patricians in this way
were gaining not only land and money, but also ownership over the
citizens of Rome themselves, in increasing numbers. The plebians
found it particularly galling that they often fell into debt and slavery as
a result of having gone off to fight for Rome.
Slaves of Debt
In 495, their unhappiness was brought to public riot when an old
soldier, once famous for his exploits, hobbled into the Forum. Livy
writes, “his dreadful pallor and emaciated body…his unkempt hair and
beard…he was a pitiable sight.” He was recognized, and a murmur
went through the crowd; more and more people gathered to hear him.
He ripped his shirt apart and showed his chest scarred with sword-cuts
suffered during his service to Rome, his back marked with weals from
beatings given him by his wealthy master. “While I was on service,”
the old man said, “during the Sabine war, my crops were ruined by
enemy raids, and my cottage was burnt. Everything I had was taken,
including my cattle. Then, when I was least able to do so, I was
expected to pay taxes, and fell, consequently, into debt.”

At this, debt slaves (some still in chains) from all over the city
thronged into the streets, shouting for the Senate to decide at once how
to give them relief from their slavery. News came that the nearby tribe
of the Volscii, who lived south of Rome, were marching on the city.
The Senate passed a hasty resolution that no man could in the future be
reduced to debt slavery as long as he was on active military duty. At
this, practically everyone in the streets joined the army and went out to
fight the Volscians who were on there way to attack Rome. The
attackers were thoroughly thrashed, since the army of debtors that
came charging out to meet them was, as Livy puts it, “spoiling for a
fight.”
 Their only strength in Rome was that of numbers, and they
The First Recorded Strike used it. In 494, they went on the world’s first recorded strike:
“They took themselves off in a body to the Sacred Mount,
three miles from the city…,” Livy says, “and there…they
made themselves a camp.” This became known as the Plebian
Secession, and within Rome it threw both the patricians (who
had lost their slaves and most of their army) into a panic. The
city froze up, vulnerable to attack, its daily work undone.

Finally the Senate and consuls proposed a solution. From now

on, they would be joined in government by special magistrates
called tribunes, who would always be appointed from the
ranks of the plebians, and who would be “above the law”
(which is to say, immune from pressures applied by Senate
and consuls, since Rome had as yet no written law). Their job
would be to protect the plebs from injustice. It was the first
Roman office blocked off to patricians, as so many offices had
been to the plebs.
The twelve Tables
Rome’s need for a written law which would act as even further
protection for the plebians. Roman ambassadors who had visited
Athens came back talking of the laws of Solon. So in 451, a board of
ten lawmakers—the decemvirs—was appointed in place of the regular
Roman officers to serve during the year 450. Their task was not only
to run the government but to draw up laws to govern Rome. the
decemvirs spent their year working on the laws and then presented
them to the people for public discussion. When the laws had been
amended by the discussion, an assembly of all the people was held to
approve them. There was a general feeling that a little more regulation
was still in order, so decemvirs were appointed for the following year
also to draw up two more tables. The Twelve Tables that resulted were
written out on wood and set in the Forum, where all could see them.

reads Table III: “You who admit to or have been judged to owe money
have thirty days to pay it.” After that, the debtor can be taken to court,
and if he has no surety or income, he can be put in chains; but his
accuser must pay for his food
The Gaul Invade The next two decades were filled with minor battles, until the year
405, when Rome mounted a siege against Veii. This proved to be
another drawn- out campaign. Veii finally fell, in 396; it had been a
bitter fight on both sides, as Veii was the richest and most resourceful
of all the Etruscan cities. The siege had significantly weakened the
Roman army. A message from the city Clusium to the north thousands
of Celts had suddenly shown up at the city gates, waving weapons.
Clusium had no official ties with Rome or reason to expect her
friendship…they sent a mission to ask help from the Senate. But the
Gauls were an enemy that tended to unite the peninsula. If Rome had
been able to send troops to fight them, it would have. But after the
constant fighting of the last thirty years, the Senate had no real aid to
give.

Instead, they sent ambassadors to convince the Gauls to settle

peacefully in the area, rather than overthrowing Clusium by force.
However, the Roman envoys lost their tempers when the Gauls defied
them. The Romans drew their swords
 The Romas could not defend the city that the whole population retreated
Rome Burn and Falter into the Capitol, leaving the rest of the city unguarded. The Gauls
flooded into it, killing anyone who had trailed behind in the flight to the
Capitol and burning houses indiscriminately. Trapped in the Capitol, they
could not fight back. On the other hand, the Celtic warriors down below
could not get to them. Presumably a long enough siege could have
starved them out, but the Gauls had no way of knowing how much food
and water were inside the Capitol. And although conditions inside the
Capitol were wretched, conditions down in the city soon grew just as
bad. Food was limited, and the Gauls had camped on low ground, in a
spot with little ventilation. Clouds of ash and dust from the fires of
burning Rome blew over them and settled, in a lowland miasma that
produced hacking coughs and lung infections. Eventually the crowded
conditions led to epidemics. They started to die in tens and then in
hundreds, until there were too many bodies to bury; the living burned
them in huge heaps instead. Romans made a proposition: they would pay
the Gauls off with gold, if the besiegers would back away from Rome’s
walls. In this, the Romans had been encouraged by an offer of help from
an unexpected source. The Massalians, from the old Greek colony up on
the southern coast of Europe, had had their own encounter with roving
Celts, who had shown up and camped around Massalia’s walls. The
Gauls took the total and retreated back to the north, where the
mountainous cool was a little more congenial than the hot south of the
Italian peninsula.
Chapter 66 questions
Section 1: Who, What, Where
• Write a one or two sentence answer explaining the significance of each
item listed below.
1. Decemvirs

2. Patricians

3. Plebians

4. The Twelve Tables

Section 2 Comprehension
• Write a two/three sentence answer to each of the following questions

1. Though the plebians largely outnumbered the Patricians, why did the Patricians have so much power?

2. Under what circumstance might a plebian and his dependents become slaves? How did this increase the
power of the Patrician class?

3. What caused the 495 BC debt slave uprising in Rome?

4. Describe the worlds first recorded strike, plebian secession?

5. How did the senate responded to the Plebian secession?

6. When thousands of Celts showed up at Clausum's city gate waving weapons, why couldn’t Rome send
aid to its northern neighbor?