Folk stands

The people's tribune ( Latin tribunus plebis, plebei or plebi ) is one of the most important and peculiar Roman institutions.

According to legend, the post of the national (literally - plebeian) tribune was established after the first secession , that is, after the plebeians left the Sacred Mountain in 494 BC. e.: the plebs were allowed to choose their magistrates , who enjoyed the inviolability and the right to support oppressed plebeians against the authorities. The inviolability of the personality and rights of the stands was not recognized immediately; the plebs managed to achieve it only by revolutionary means. The plebeians pledged for themselves and for their descendants to punish the death of anyone who offends their chosen people or will impede their actions aimed at protecting the plebs, and sealed this decision with a common oath, from where the power of the tribunes was called " Sacrosancta potestas ", that is, a power founded not by on the law (legitima), and on religious consecration. The killing of those guilty of assaulting the stands was not considered criminal, but, on the contrary, compulsory, expiring from this oath. The position of the national tribune lasted throughout the republican and imperial periods, with the exception of only a short period when the decemvira was in operation. When the latter was established, the tribunate was destroyed, but after the abolition of the decemvirate, it was again restored. Being at first the leaders of only a plebs, organized in a special community, with special meetings, the stands were not yet magistrates of the Roman people; but as the rights of the plebs grew, the meaning of the tribune expanded. Initially, the main task of the stands was to provide, through intercession , support to the oppressed plebs against the patrician magistrates. For the intercession to be valid, the tribune had to personally appear before the magistrate, whose action he wanted to stop; Intermediary or written intervention was not valid. It was necessary that the stands be accessible to all who sought their protection; they were obliged, therefore, to be constantly in the city, had no right to leave the house for the whole day, and their doors were always open, even at night. Since the tribune defense was all the more accessible, the more there were tribunes, their number, initially equal to two, then five, soon (according to Titus Libya - in 457 BC) was increased to ten.

Initially, the missing number of stands was replenished by co-optation ; then the law began to require that the stands of this year take care in advance of the selection of their successors without fail in full. For this, tribute commissions were convened, chaired by one of the tribunes. If all 10 tribunes were not elected at one meeting, additional elections were called. For failure to fulfill this requirement, which is necessary for the continuity of the operation of the tribune, the stands were threatened with execution by burning. The stands were selected exclusively from the plebeians, which remained after the equation of the estates: patrician could become a tribune only after the formal transitio ad plebem (transition to the plebs). According to Roman tradition, the election of the stands was carried out first in the chicken comitia , and then (from 471 BC) in the tribute. They were elected for one year and took office on December 10. Not initially the officials of the entire Roman people, the tribunes did not enjoy the rights that belonged to the magistrates: they did not have magistrate insignia, nor a chair, nor a purple border on the toga, nor lictors . Instead of the latter, ministers (viatores, praecones) were with them, but without fascia and axes. The stands had neither the rights of auspices ( auspicia populi Romani ), nor the empire ; their power was initially purely negative. It belonged in its entirety to each individual tribune; each of them could with his “veto” stop the action of the magistrate even if all the other stands would be against him; the advantage was always on the side of the restraining, denying power. The oldest rights of the stands - the right to help ( ius auxilii ) and the right to communicate with the plebs ( ius egendi cum plebe ) - the germ and source of all further. The stands enjoyed the right of intercession in relation to the actions of magistrates, which they could even prohibit the further discharge of their position, as well as in relation to private individuals, but only in relation to their actions that were of a public nature. The tribune could not, for example, prohibit a private person from bringing another private person to court on charges of a crime that did not affect the interests of the community. Much more important was their right of intercession against the rogations introduced into the national assemblies, against the decisions of these assemblies already held and against the decisions of the Senate. In order to ensure these rights for their chosen ones and to force the patrician authorities to bow before the tribune intercession, the plebeians had to resort to violent acts, to lynching. Acts of revenge against those who did not submit to the tribunal authority, the plebs committed usually at the invitation and invitation of the stands. This probably led to the development of the right of the tribunals to subject them to fines, arrest, in exceptional cases even executions, or to bring to justice the people who violate the interests of the latter or the sacred rights of the tribunes. Even the highest magistrates ( consuls and censors ), but not the dictators of summo iure, were subject to the action of this “curbing” ( coercitio ) from the stands. Thanks to this right, the stands took the position of the highest authority, to the control of which all others were subordinate.

The rights of the tribune could become very dangerous if they did not meet restrictions in the intercession of other tribunes and in the right of the sentenced to punishment appeal to the people in the centuriate or (judging by the imposed penalty) tribute commissions. In the further development, numerous and very important consequences were accompanied by the right of the stands to communicate with the people. It gave them the opportunity to convene meetings of the plebs, lead them, make their proposals and monitor the implementation of decisions made by the plebs. This right turned out to be especially important because in the further development of the Roman system, tribute comitia gradually reached equatorial equations in legislative matters; their decisions ( plebiscita ) became laws ( leges ), binding on all citizens. Along with this, a legislative initiative passed into the hands of the stands, on which almost the entire meaning of the stands stands in the future. Thanks to the elevation of tribute comitia to the significance of a nationwide assembly, the general position of the stands also changed: they became magistrates of the Roman people, and, moreover, higher ones. Their attitude towards the Senate has also changed. Initially, the stands were not directly related to the Senate and did not use the right to sit in it. When they needed to inquire about what was being done in the Senate, they sat on a bench set outside the doors of the Senate meeting rooms, and only listened. Now they have gained access to the Senate and the right to speak in it, even to convene it. With the new meaning of the tribune, the Senate itself was interested in knowing in advance the attitude of the tribunes to one measure or another. From the defenders of individuals and one estate, the stands turned to the elect of the people, guardians of their interests, guardians of their rights and dignity; they became the main organ of progressive democratic legislation. Since then, legislation has concentrated mainly in the hands of the stands; the most important laws were mostly leges tribuniciae . This is primarily due to the very setting up of the tribune: the tribunes were not, like other magistrates overwhelmed with a host of management affairs, and therefore could focus their attention on issues of legislation and on the supervision of other authorities. Rotations and political processes, in which the stands are representatives of the interests of the people, have since absorbed most of their time and energy. And then, however, the negative authority did not lose its meaning: it was a guarantee against the abuse of the magistrates - abuses, especially possible and dangerous due to the fact that, according to Roman law, during the discharge of his post, the magistrate could not be prosecuted by a private person who suffered from arbitrary and illegal actions of a magistrate. A particularly lively activity develops the tribune in the last half century BC. e.

The tribunes were then such remarkable figures of the democratic party as the Gracchus brothers , Lucius Appuley Saturnin , Sulpicius Rufus . Due to the negative nature of the tribunate, he sometimes turned into an instrument of other parties. Seeing the main pillar of democracy in the tribune, Sulla , having received a dictatorship, decided to break its significance. The Cornelian law of 82 BC was to serve this purpose. e. He closed the way for other magistrates to the people who held the position of the tribune, robbed the tribunals of the right to independent legislative initiative, subject to its prior permission from the Senate, and the right to convene and conduct public assemblies that decide (convene simple gatherings, contiones , they could); they also probably lost the right to prosecute the people in criminal proceedings and the right to impose punishments. In 70 BC e., at the first consulate of Crassus and Pompey the Great , these restrictions were destroyed, and the stands again took their former position. The emerging principate found a convenient tool in the tribune for carrying out his goals, all the more so as the principle grew on the same democratic ground on which Julius Caesar grew up, for example, he found valuable allies in the national stands Marche Anthony and Kourion . Tribune power has entered, as one of the most important elements, into the structure of the principate. The Princesses treasured her, thanks to her sacred character ( sacrosanctitas ) and veto law. Along with the “tribune power”, the princeps continued to exist during the imperial period and the tribune, in its previous form, but without any significance, since the role of representatives of national interests and rights was assumed by the emperors, and most importantly, the field in which the tribunes acted - comitia - soon have disappeared. Since then, the tribunate has eked out a miserable existence, as one of the remnants of antiquity, only by virtue of habit; he became, as Pliny put it, "an empty shadow and a name without honor . "