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User:Ifly6/Conflict of the Orders/Notes

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How do you write an article about an event some people are 100pc sure existed and some people are similarly 100pc sure didn't happen?

Nb patricians = pats. Pats != the New England Patriots.

Cornell 1995

[edit]

Ch 10: Pats and plebs

  • "surviving sources have a great deal to tell us"; "accounts... fail to explain it's true character and do not allow us to reconstruct it with any confidence"; "problem is aggravated [as] late republican annalists interpreted [the struggle] in terms of the political divisions of their own day". p 242.
  • Romulus made pats and plebs == "undoubtedly misleading"
    • Niebuhr was wrong in plebs being from outside the cmty
    • Invasionist model is racist and stupid. p 243–44.
  • pats senate and cav. p 245f.f
    • c arteius capito said populus = pats + plebs; plebs = populus - pats. pats included "Trojan families" and others from Alba Longa (eg Julii). "greater and lesser clans" unclear but does imply it had something to do with heredity
    • pats are patres. Patres = senate?
      • Niebuhr had this fanciful notion 30 curiae split into 10 clans each to make 300 senators. there's no evidence for this. p 246.
      • pats = senators is popular but may be anachronistic and is, regardless, unlikely
        • senate = patres + conscripti. pats != senate
        • senate under kings or in early rep != super-senate of classical rep. was initially ad hoc. p 248. cornell likes this arg
        • interrex and that the "auspices revert to the pats" implies pats exist separate from senate, which was created by kings
        • in latin, patres = pats at times
      • something about mommsen and six cavalry centuriae; cornell says this is just incidental. p 251
  • pat privilege
    • "closing of the patriciate" is right
    • cornell thinks pats existed before republic though due to interrex and reservation of major priesthoods. cornell also speculates that last kings were overthrown in part because they tried to restrict patrician religious power
  • "closing of the patriciate". p 252
    • pleb consuls before 445. includes LJB. p 253
      • reject them as fake? p 253
      • say they were pats actually though (as broughton does). p 254
    • ban on pats-pleb marriage was probs "an outrageous novelty" and repealed in a few years. implies closing occurred around then. p 255
  • "rise of the plebs"
    • first secession, due to debt and arbitrary treatment
    • created tribunate
    • plebs = masses from plethos. p 257
    • plebs were probs poor. if they were the rich soldiers, "conflict of the orders would not have lasted two days, let alone two centuries". p 257. lol


Review

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See https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1997/1997.03.26/

  • "Its [Cornell's book's] single greatest weakness, however, is its insufficiently critical treatment of the ancient literary sources concerning the struggle of the orders during the fifth century B.C., for which archaeology is of little use."
  • Main chapters in Cornell are Ch 10 to 13: Pats and plebs, 12 tables, and Emancipation of the plebs, respectively.
    • Cornell says no to Niebuhr's dumb racialist theories, hereditary senate membership unlikely, equestrians not yet a thing
    • Cornell argues that pats got power from control of auspices and existed under the kings. Accepts historicity of ban on pats-plebs marriage and that it "existed as an exclusive body some time before the middle of the fifth century"
    • Cornell follows Momigliano in thinking the plebs evolved over time
    • "[Cornell]'s overall approach to many key events in the struggle of the orders is conservative and strikes this reviewer as even being rather uncritical": accepts first secession, second decemvirate, second secession, and Valerian-Horatian laws (449 BC) as real. Forsythe thinks all these are fake
    • Cornell remarks that plebs struggle was "without parallel in the history of the ancient city state". Forsythe thinks this "should immediately set off alarm bells and arouse grave doubts as to its historical validity".

Raaflaub 2006

[edit]
  • "Early republic: domestic conflicts"
    • roman tradition
      • struggle of the orders
      • started probably around 487 with closing of the patriciate
      • debt crisis, debt bondage, aristocratic abuses, plebeian elite, etc as causes
      • secession from city to force change
      • ends in early third century when plebs win
    • "idea of a class struggle that lasted for 200 years and was fed over that entire period by essentially the same causes is historically implausible"
      • final phase is most historical
      • had to do with debt stuff; plebs win in 287 with lex Hortensia
      • final phase causes probably retrojected by historians
    • above retrojection however "would be too radical"
      • debt crises are plausible, 12 tables are strict
      • unusual pleb institutions must have been something
    • why no decisive solution?
      • elite was cohesive and unified
      • but cohesion and unity implies no secessions of plebs
      • wars were profitable and yielded loot to satisfy pleb demands
      • no meaningful conclusion?
  • "The conquest of Italy"
    • romans got involved in lots of wars
    • Second Samnite war occurred.... first samnite war is "probably is mostly fictitious" (p 142)
    • via Appia; third samnite war
    • Pyrrhic war
    • victory due to cohesive elite and solid ties between elite and non-elite; chattel slavery replaced internal use of dependent labour

Forsythe 2015

[edit]
  • Term meaning.
    • Modern scholars use it to refer to struggle
    • Struggle in ancient accounts
    • Struggle used in those accounts to explain all constitutional change
  • Traditional account
    • 494, first secession
    • 471, tribal assembly
    • 450, 12 tables
    • 445, lex Canuleia
    • consular tribunes from 444 to 367
    • reorg roman state in 367
    • opening of priesthoods in 300
    • 287, lex Hortensia
  • sources are anachronistic
    • late republican influence clear
    • scholars disagree about extent to which sources are wholly fake
  • "a kind of orthodoxy"
    • cornell's view
    • "basically historical"
    • pats and plebs existed in 509, roman history was a civil rights movement
    • elite plebs got political office, ordinary plebs got debt reform and booty
    • scholars accept 3 secessions, tribal vs concilium plebis
    • struggle was real and ended in 287
  • "other modern scholars reject this orthodoxy... they offer variant interpretations"
    • Struggle was made up to harmonise and simplify various unrelated changes.
      • consular lists suggest patrician tyranny didn't happen in 509 or that they didn't yet exist
      • tribal assembly and concilium plebis were same. populus = centuries; plebs = tribes.
  • historicity
    • first and second secessions not historical
    • modern orthodoxy on lex Hortensia dubious
    • use of patres refers probably to senators. could be dyadic constitutional structure misinterpreted
  • twelve tables
    • tables said to be limits on pats consul
    • that's nowhere to be found however. easier to explain as part of state formation
    • second decemvirate is fake
    • consular tribunes explanation fake, if not altogether a misunderstanding
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