In comparison to the times when aristocratic warriors fought each other in highly individual actions, hoplite forces had expanded the number of men that were actively involved in fighting and thus had increased the military strength of a community. The change also reflected a shift in political power and social status. Henceforth, the army consisted of men who performed their duty as citizens by fighting their community’s enemies. They acquired and maintained their own equipment, which in the case of a heavily armed foot soldier demanded some wealth. In agricultural societies such as early Greece or Rome, the heavy infantry (or hoplites), who formed the core of the army, therefore largely consisted of prosperous farmers. The very rich families - the members of the aristocracy - continued to play a special role: they provided the cavalry, whose status was still large, although its role on the battlefield was secondary to that of the heavy infantry. The rise of the hoplite army thus reflects an increase of the political power of a larger, well-to-do segment of society.
The close relationship between army and politics is clearly revealed in the Roman constitution that is traditionally ascribed to Rome’s sixth king, Servius Tullius. Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote their accounts in the late first century BC, give descriptions of this constitution. According to both authors, Servius Tullius introduced a system in which the citizenry was divided into five property classes. Each class had its own weaponry. Although Livy (1.43) and Dionysius (4.16) disagree in detail, they agree that the equipment of the first class was the heaviest, II and III less heavy, and that the members of classes IV and V were lightly armed. Each class was divided into a number of centuriae in the following manner:
80 centuriae 20 centuriae 20 centuriae 20 centuriae 30 centuriae
However, actually there were seven classes, since there was a ‘‘class’’ of the wealthiest citizens, consisting of the equites (horsemen), and also a group called infra classem, i. e., ‘‘those below the classes,’’ consisting of the poor. The equites had 18 centuriae, the infra classem 5. Moreover, the centuriae in each class were equally divided into two groups: the iuniores (men aged 18-46) and the seniores (over 46). The latter were not normally expected to fight. The centuriae formed the basic units of voters in one particular kind of assembly of the Roman People (the comitia centuriata). This assembly, in which the majority of centuriae was decisive, decided on war and peace and elected the magistrates that served as commanding officers. The division of centuriae shows that power in the assembly securely rested with the equites and the first classis, in other words, with the rich and well-to-do segments of society, and that also greater voting power was placed in the hands of the older citizens. The close relationship between army and assembly is obvious. It is reflected in the fact that the comitia centuriata assembled on the Campus Martius, which was outside the borders of the city. It was strictly forbidden for Roman citizens to enter the city in arms. Hence, this location shows that the comitia centuriata originally had been the assembly of the citizenry in arms under the leadership of the chief magistrates (see also Chapter 12).
However, Livy and Dionysius depict a political structure as it pertained in much later times, when the development of army and assembly had separated. Much of the debate among modern historians centers on the problem of how to reconstruct the origins of the system that the later tradition ascribed to Servius Tullius. There seems to be consensus now that there originally had been just one classis. The introduction of the heavy infantry brought with it the need to distinguish only between those who were sufficiently wealthy to serve as hoplites and those who were not. The aristocracy served as horsemen; the rest were infra classem and either fought as lightly armed troops or acted as servants. The questions remain when the classes II-V were added to the original classis, and how to interpret the variety of equipment between the classes. Some reject the differences of weaponry among the classes and argue that there was no place in a hoplite phalanx for such a diversity of arms.3
The close relationship between army and politics continued to play a role in the conflicts of the early Republic. According to the literary sources, the so-called ‘‘Struggle of the Orders’’ centered on the struggle of the wealthy plebeians to gain political influence and of the poor masses against poverty and indebtedness. The dates and events as given by Livy and other authors cannot be taken at face value, but it seems probable that at one point the plebeians seceded from the Roman community (traditionally in 494) and created their own political institutions as instruments in their political fight. The withdrawal of their men was intended to put pressure on their patrician opponents. It has rightly been pointed out that the traditional dichotomy between patricians and plebeians cannot be correct, since the military predominance of the plebeian farmers, who served as hoplites, would have crushed any opposition.4 At the same time, however, the plebeian cause cannot have been confined to the starving mass of poor farmers, since their secessio would have been of little concern to the predominant classes. Hence, a military role seems to have been played by a wider segment of society than a pure hoplite army implies. We have already seen that the nature of Roman fighting and the terrain in which many campaigns had to be fought rules out the idea that warfare was exclusively in the hands of a hoplite phalanx. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that during the fourth century the Roman army was based on a manipular structure that operated markedly different from a ‘‘pure’’ hoplite army. There is little reason to assume a drastic reform of the Roman army in the meantime. Hence, already in the fifth century, men who were not armed or did not fight like hoplites, and who were less wealthy, contributed to Rome’s military power (see also Chapter 6).
World History
