Rise of a City Rabble

At length the rabble of clients assumed a position, formally of equality and often even, practically, of superiority, alongside of the class of independent burgesses.  The institutions out of which it sprang were of great antiquity.  From time immemorial the Roman of quality exercised a sort of government over his freedmen and dependents, and was consulted by them in all their more important affairs; a client, for instance, was careful not to give his children in marriage without having obtained the consent of his patron, and very often the latter directly arranged the match.  But as the aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became parasites and beggars; and the new adherents of the rich undermined outwardly and inwardly the burgess class.  The aristocracy not only tolerated this sort of clientship, but worked it financially and politically for their own advantage.  Thus, for instance, the old penny collections, which hitherto had taken place chiefly for religious purposes and at the burial of men of merit, were now employed by lords of high standing—­for the first time by Lucius Scipio, in 568, on occasion of a popular festival which he had in contemplation—­for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions a contribution from the public.  Presents were specially placed under legal restriction (in 550), because the senators began under that name to take regular tribute from their clients.  But the retinue of clients was above all serviceable to the ruling class as a means of commanding the comitia; and the issue of the elections shows clearly how powerfully the dependent rabble already at this epoch competed with the independent middle class.

The very rapid increase of the rabble in the capital particularly, which is thus presupposed, is also demonstrable otherwise.  The increasing number and importance of the freedmen are shown by the very serious discussions that arose in the previous century,(43) and were continued during the present, as to their right to vote in the public assemblies, and by the remarkable resolution, adopted by the senate during the Hannibalic war, to admit honourable freedwomen to a participation in the public collections, and to grant to the legitimate children of manumitted fathers the insignia hitherto belonging only to the children of the free-born.(44) The majority of the Hellenes and Orientals who settled in Rome were probably little better than the freedmen, for national servility clung as indelibly to the former as legal servility to the latter.

Systematic Corruption of the Multitude
Distributions of Grain