City-States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy

City States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy Edited by ANTHONY MOLHO KURT RAAUB JULIAEMLEN

An Arbor The University of Michigan Press

Proceedings of a conference sponsored by Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. InstitUle for International Studies

Distribution in al of Europe (mcluding the U.K.) by Franz Steiner Verlag. Stuttgart

Copyright@ 1991 by Franz Steiner Verlag

Al rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press 1994

1993

1992

1991

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3

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library of Congres Cataloging-in Publication Data applied for T�1\N 0-47' 1 (l'R�_Q

Contents Acknowledgements

8

Editors' Preface

9

Introductory Remarks: Max Weber's "The City" Revisited,

19

Wilfried Nippel PART I CONSCIOUSNESS AND REPRESENTATION Reflections of the Greek City on Unity and Division, Nicole Rome: The History of an Anachronism, The City and the "New" Saints,

Loraux

Timothy J. Cornell

53

Chiara Frugoni

71

City and Citizen: Changing Perceptions in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, Alison Brown Commentary:

33

Carmine Ampolo

93 113 121

Giovanni Ciappelli PART II CITIZENS AND THE POLITICAL CLASSES Norms of Citizenship in Ancient Greece,

David Whitehead

135

The Legal Definition of Citizenship in the Late Middle Ages,

155

D iego Quaglioni Who Rules? Power and Participation in Athens and Rome, The Rulers of Florence, 1282-1530,

Walter Eder 169 197

David Herlihy

From Social to Political Representation in Renaissance Florence,

223

Riccardo Fubini Commentary:

Christiane Klapisch-Zuber

241

PART III POLITICS AND CONFLICT The Exercise of Power in the Roman Republic,

Erich S. Gruen

The Dialogue of Power in Florentine Politics, John M.

Najemy

A Typology of Social Conflict in Greek Poleis, Th omas J.

Figueira

251 269 289

Social Structure and Conflict in the Medieval City, Giorgio Cracco

309

Commentary:

Harry W. Pleket

331

Ronald F. Weissman

345

PART IV URBAN AND A RCHITECTURAL FORMS The City of Athens: Space, Symbol, Structure, Tonio Holscher

355

Urban Development in Ancient Rome and the Impact of Empire, L. Richardson jr

381

Civic Urbanism in Medieval Florence, Franek Sznura

403

Urbanism in Medieval Venice, Juergen Schulz

419

Commentary:

447 453

Edmond Frezouls James Ackerman

PART V S YMBOLS AND RITUALS Symbols and Rituals in Classical Athens, Adalberto Giovannini

459

From Violence to Blessing: Symbols and Rituals in Ancient Rome,

479

Keith Hopkins Symbols and Rituals in Florence, Franco Cardini

499

The Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic, Patricia Fortini Brown

511

Commentary:

549 555

Glen W. Bowersock Marino Berengo

PART VI TERRITORY, EXTERNAL RELAT IONS AND EMPIRE City-State, Territory and Empire in Classical Antiquity, Kurt Raaflaub

565

The Italian City-State and Its Territory, Giorgio Chittolini

589

Diplomacy in the Italian City-State, James S. Grubb

603

Commentary:

619 627

Hartmut Galsterer Anthony Molho

Concluding Reflections, Guido Clemente

641

Index

649

To Our Colleagues in the Department of Classics and the Department of History, Brown University, most especially to the memory of David Herlihy

Acknowledgements

EVERAL

PEOPLE contributed generously to the realization of this volume, and of the symposium on which it is based. Without the material support of Artemis A. W. and Martha Joukowsky and of Jim Twadell, it is unlikely that either the symposium could have taken place or the book could have been published. We are profoundly grateful to them for their enlightened patronage. The Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies at our University offered us its institutional sponsorship. Our colleague and good friend, Abbott Gleason, associate director of the Institute at the time of this project's inception, enthusiastically endorsed our proposal. His successors, P. Terrence Hopman, and the current director of the Institute, Howard R. Swearer, continued their support and greatly facilitated the realization of this undertaking. We received much valuable assistance from Joanna Drell, Patricia Henry, Melissa Marshall, and Ruthann Whitten. Andrew Gilmartin, Allen Renear, Geoffrey Bilder, and Claire Durst provided helpful programming advice, and Dalia Geffen much useful editorial help. Our special thanks go to Cherrie Guerzon, secretary and assistant extraordinaire, without whose help the type­ script of this book could not have been completed on time. In particular we wish to recognize the critical assistance of Patricia Arney whose proofreading and indexing during the final stages of manuscript preparation lent the volume much of its cohesiveness. We are also very grateful to Professor James Ackerman and to Dott. Giovanni Ciappelli for· having agreed to step in and fill gaps created by the inability of two colleagues to submit to us the written versions of the comments they had read in the course of the conference. Neither Ackerman nor Ciappelli attended the conference; both wrote their observations without benefit of the discussions held there. Ackerman's and Ciappelli's comments arrived while the preparation of the final version of this manuscript was well advanced; as a result, authors of the papers to which these comments are addressed did not have a chance to take into account points made in the two commentaries. Finally, we relied heavily on the patience and help of our colleagues in the Department ofClassics and theDepartment of History. To them, we dedicate this volume in acknowledgement of their longstanding friendship and support.

S

Editors' Preface

HE

ANCIENT CITY (Greek, "polis") gives us our words for "politics," "politicians," and, in what may seem a contrary sense, "polite." The city (Latin, "civitas") also gives us our word for "civilization." And no cities of the world have informed those terms more than Athens and Rome in antiquity, and Florence and Venice in the late Middle Ages. Athens and Rome were exceptional cities, not only in size and achievement. Yet both started out as typical poleis, "city-states," and shared with hundreds of others many characteristics, both in structure and development.1 The polis usually was a community with an urban political and religious center and a limited territory cultivated by its citizen owners. As a type of community , the polis emerged in the archaic period (eighth to sixth century B.C. ) in Greece, Etruria and other parts of Italy, and (possibly slightly earlier) in Phoenicia; in the "age of colonization" (circa 750-550 B.C. ) it spread rapidly along the coastal areas of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It seems that in their early histories, many of these poleis experienced similar crises of growth. Exclusive aristocracies first domi­ nated, but with time their power eroded. The political system that replaced the rule of the few admitted the responsible participation of larger segments of the citizen body. In a long and difficult process that often was punctuated by a sequence of violent conflicts and compromises, increasing numbers of nonaristocratic citizens -at least those who qualified for military service in the heavily armed infantry (hoplites) -were integrated into the political community and shared important citizens' rights. In the archaic period, the results of this common process of social and political struggle and of transformation and integration provided a crucial premise for some of the . truly remarkable achievements that characterize the classical ages ofAthens and Rome. In tum, these achievements set these two cities

T

1. Fo r the view that early Rome, despite significant differences, in all important respects fits the typology of the polis as we can reconstruct it from the beter known Greek examples, see Kurt A. Raaflaub, in Social Conflicts (n. 3) 30 35; id., in Eder, Staat unil Staatlichkeit (n. 3) 512lS.

10

Preface

apart from other classical poleis.2 It is not too much to say that the changes it underwent in the sixth century equipped Athens to withstand the historic challenge of the Persian Wars (490-480/79 B.C.), subsequendy to acquire do­ minion over the first empire ruled by a city-state in the Graeco-Roman world, and to create, in democracy, a political system that stimulated a unique level of citizen involvement in communal affairs. For all its shortcomings, it gained the admiration, though not always the approval, of political thinkers and leaders in the intervening almost 2,500 years. The century of these political developments produced many of the political values (such as liberty and equality) and the constitutional terminology that have shaped political discourse ever since.It also wimessed the cultural brilliance of fifth-century Athens that bestowed on posterity the genres of tragedy, comedy, historiography, and rhetoric, classical architecture and sculpture, the foundations of philosophy and of pedagogy as well as the beginnings of political theory. The "Periclean decades" represent one of the densest, most optimistic, and most influential periods of political and cultural achievement in world history. In its early development, particularly during the first centuries of the Republic, Rome experienced a not dissimilar "struggle of the orders" between the patrician aristocracy and the nonaristocratic plebeians (traditionally 494-287 B.C.). The successful resolution of this conflict gave Rome the internal strength and cohesion it needed as it embarked on its extraordinary conquests ofItaly and the entire Mediterranean basin. Thereby Rome was able to build an empire that lasted longer than any other in Western history, and to achieve the cultural brilliance of the age of Cicero, Vergi� and Augustus- not to speak of the political and cultural unification of the Mediterranean world and adjacent areas in the centuries of the pax Augusta. This unification, as is well known, had an enor­ mous impact on Western civilization. While the historical significance of the ancient city-states cannot be ques­ tioned, there is much about their histories that is paradoxical and difficult to understand. To mention just one major issue, down to the conquest of Greece by Philip II of Macedon in 338 B.C., the polis remained the politically leading and culturally dominant type of state in Greece. Even in its greatest days of political and cultural dynamism, Athens remained a polis, exploiting to the utmost the strengths and eventually foundering because of the weaknesses and limitations of this form of community. Rome, by contrast, very early in its imperial expansion exceeded the limitations in size of territory and population that by any definition were typical of a polis and necessary for its functioning. Yet in its internal structure, patterns of behavior and rule, ideology and self-perception, 2. This elementary historical fact is inevitably reflected in the distribution of, and perspective predominant in, our sources as much as we might regret the limitations and potential erors imposed on our historical understanding and judgment by the traditionally narrow focus on these two exceptional cities. For a recent effort at correcting such one-sidedness, apart from many boks written on the histories of individual cities (such as Corinth, Megara, Argos, Samos, and, of course, Sparta), se Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Jenseits von A then and Spart4. Das Dritte Griechenland 14nd seine StaterJwelt (Munich: Beck, 1986) . -

Preface

11

Rome remained a city-state - thereby creating the paradox of an enormous empire being ruled, not really by a city-state, but by a power maintaining in many respects the structures of a city-state and governed by an elite that retained the mentality characteristic of a city-state. To a large extent, it is precisely the consequences of this paradox that eventually caused the failure of the Roman Republic. Alongside this paradox, there are other questions about the histories of these city-states that remain obscure. Their development, structure, and functioning, particularly in the early and formative stages of their history, are only partially understood; so are the domestic conflicts and compromises from which emerged the well-integrated communities of the classical periods of Greece and Rome. To a large extent, this difculty is due to the scarcity of sources. Particularly in the case of Rome, contemporary and specific evidence is lacking almost completely, and the picture drawn by more detailed sources that were written many centuries later is in many ways greatly distorted.3 The cities of late medieval Italy, on the other hand, are comparatively well illuminated. Their libraries and archives contain some of the richest and most remarkably complete sets of historical sources available for any pre-modern European societies. These sources show that the development of the communes was also marked by intense political conflicts, and that these tensions crucially shaped their social and political development. In large part because of these conflicts, politicians and thinkers fashioned a vocabulary with which to describe political institutions, and these words, together with the concepts attached to them - freedom, republicanism, tyrany, and the like - left a profound imprint Qn the European consciousness. Their economic institutions - the bank, the check, double entry bookkeeping, maritime insurance - enabled their inhabit­ ants to conceive of work, money, profit in strikingly new ways and laid the foundations for the subsequent economic development of Europe. Their techno­ logical know-how, from bronze casting with which to produce both cannons and pieces of sculpture, to cathedral building, from <;,artography to navigation, from the manufacturing of paper to the mass production of manuscript books before the invention of printing, resulted in breakthroughs admired by their contempo­ raries and by many subsequent generations. And they too can boast of enviably high cultural creativity.. They, Florence and Venice foremost among them, left to future generations a stunning heritage in the painterly, graphic, and plastic arts, in literature and political theory, in educational thought, historical writing, and in jurisprudence. Our proposal is to undertake a parallel reading of the history and analysis of the development, structures and conflicts - social, economic, and political­ of both sets of cities, using insights gained from one to illuminate the other. In

. 3.

For recent discussions,

se

Kurt A. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Conflicts in Archaic Rome: (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

New Perspectilles on the Conflictofthe Orders Press, 1986); Walter &ler (ed.), Staat und

(Stuttgart: Steiner, 1990).

Staatlichkeit in der (rUhen TBmischen Republik

12

Preface

some respects, this can be taken as an exercise in comparative history. But comparative history itself has had a long history, especially. during this century, and it no longer enjoys the vogue it did until a few decades ago. Our views have changed since the days shortly following World War I when Henri Pirenne, the preeminent medievalist of his day, thought that comparative history offered a methodological way out of the nationalistic and racist theories which were contaminating much historiography at the turn of the century. In his character­ istically trenchant style, he urged historians to embrace the comparative method as the only antidote to irrational and dangerous theories of historical interpreta­ tion: "n reste done, si nous voulons comprendre les originalites et les individua.lites nationales, qu'un seul procede s'offre a nous, et c'est celui de comparaison. Par elle, en efet, par elle seule, nollS pourrons nous elever alacomparaisonscientifique. Nous n'y arriverons jamais si nous nous confinons dans les limites de l'histoire nationale."4 At about the same time, Henri See, another eminent medievalist of his day, urged upon his readers more or less the same message: "La comparaison aura precisement pour vertu de permettre une discrimination plus nette entre les faits accidentels et ceux qui ont un eatactere general ou permanent."5 And Marc Bloch, as much as anyone else responsible for founding the Annales school of historiography, surely the most influential school of historical research during the central decades of the twentieth century, echoed many of Pirenne's and See's views regarding the study of comparative history.' In more recent years, the powerful influence of cultural anthropology and ethnography on historical research has tempered these initial enthusiasms. Not that comparative history has been altogether discarded, or dismissed as being an unhelpful historical method. Rather, in this area of research as in so many others, we have come under the powerfully sweeping influence of Max Weber's thought. And Weber, while obviousiy not critical of comparative history, had expressed serious reservations about some of its possible applications. Here, it may be useful to cite him at some length:

A genuinely critical comparison of the developmental stages of the ancient polis and the medieval city... would be rewarding and fruitful- but only if such a compari­ son does not chase after"analogies" and"parallels" in the manner of the presendy fashionable general schemes of development; in other words, it should be concerned with the distinctiveness of each of the two developments that were fmally so diferent, and the purpose of the comparison must be the causal explanation of the diference. It remains true, of course, that this causal explanation requires as an indispensable preparation the isolation (that means, abstraction) of the individual components of the course of events, and for each component the orientation toward

Henri Pirenne, "De la methode comparative en hi�toire," in yo Congres intematWnaI (Brusls, 1 923) 38. 5. Cited in Luciano Allegra and Angelo Torres, La nascita della storia sociale in Ft-ancia Dalla Comune alle "Annales" (Turin: Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 1977) 247-248. 6. Ibid . 250 and Carole Fink, Marc Bloch: A ute in History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 4.

des sciences histof'iques

-

Preface

13

rules of experience and the fonnulation of clear concepts without which causal attribution is nowhere possible? And in another passage in this same essay, he underscored with even greater emphasis the possible dangers inherent in the careless use of a comparative approach: "Comparisons [of ancient] with medieval and modern phenomena, although seemingly quite plausible, are highly unreliable for the most part, indeed are often an obstacle to clarity and understanding. For the similarities are all too easily deceptive. Ancient civilization had specific characteristics which sharply differentiate it from medieval and modern civilization.'" Others, scholars who have studied carefully the extraordinarily rich thought of Max Weber, must draw the many implications of these statements. Here, it is important to underscore two points which find us in substantial accord with Weber's reflections. First, comparative historical studies can be extremely useful, for casting findings about one society against those drawn from the study of another, for illuminating the specificities of one as against those of another. There is an enormously fertile line of inquiry in such a method, and Weber's monumen­ tal work - one of the great intellectual landmarks of our century - stands as a testament to its utility. But there is also the second point, the need to be flexible and unschematic, to avoid the temptation of detecting analogies and parallels at all points and at all costs, to shy away from grand generalizations about the course of human history, or of "Western Civilization," or about the stages of historical development. Weber's conception of the value and limitations of comparative history, like so many of his other ideas, is pregnant with tensions and reflections which demand a careful and meditated response. Yet, at least on first reading, it does not seem far removed from the programatic statement issued by Sylvia Thrupp, founding editor of Comparative Studies in Society and History, the one Anglophone historical journal especially dedicated to comparative study. Writ­ ing in 1958, Thrupp took her cue from a statement of Lord Acton who, in Pirenneian terms, had invoked the utility of comparative history as an antidote to the narrowness of a nationalist focus in historical research. But rather than transforming comparativism into a sort of Aladin's lamp with which to reveal congruences and similarities in the development of diverse societies, Thrupp advanced a more modest and realistic cause: "Today's advocates of comparative study urge only that specialists in related fields compare notes on specific similar

Cited by Guenther Roth in his "Introduction" to Max Weber, Economy and Society­ Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley, California: University of California Pres, 1978) xxii. 1be quotation is taken from Weber's 1909 esy "Agrarverhiiltnisse im Altertum." 8. Max Weber, The Agrarian Sociology ofAncient Civilization, tr. by R. I. Frank (London: New Left Boks, 1976) 39-40. This passage is also discusd in Dirk Kasier, Max Weber: An Introduction to his Life and Work, tr. by Philippa Hurd (Chicago: University of Chicago Pres 1988) 38. 7.

An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by

14

Preface

problems more frequently." And she continued, in presenting the reasons which led to the foundation of a new journal whose editorship she was about to assume: What is advocated now is wider and more public exchange of infonnation and ideas on matters that are of wider concern... No group has a monopoly of the recurrent problem of interaction, for example, of the problem of how political ideologies or religions spread, or of what may make certain elements of a cultural pattern for long periods resistant to change. Problems of this order are common domain. They challenge co-operative attack through regular exchange of hypotheses and findings. Comparative Studies in Society and History has been founded to bridge this gap, to serve as a forum for comparable work on recurrent types of problem of general •••

interest.'

One could perhaps add here that the issues which lent such urgency to the call for comparative history in Lord Acton's and in Pirenne's days do not seem to be anywhere near as compelling now as they were then. To our great good fortune, the power of nationalism in Western Europe appears to have waned. In the past decade or so, Europe has been rediscovering historical roots and cultural traditions which make it possible for inhabitants of the European Community to transcend the curse of nationalism, which since the end of the eighteenth century at once fragmented Europe and triggered a series of internecine European wars. We need no longer rely on the method of comparative history in order to transcend the limits and bounds of nationalistic thought. Other agencies, new and powerful forces, are helping to bring about a state of mind much less dependent on the old shiboleths of nationalism. But even with the decline of nationalism, we- scholars - still need the sort of "forums" where to "compare our work" with that of others, precisely the sort of institutions and occasions called for by Tbrupp in her lead editorial. We conceived of this book (and of a conference on which the book itself is based) along these very same terms: as a forum for discussing a set of ideas which, during the past several years, have animated many historians of antiquity and medieval Italy. The conference, held in the spring of 1989 at Brown University, aimed at helping to bring about a meeting of scholars from neighboring disciplines who share many interests and problems but, strange as it may seem, do not spend much time talking to each other. This estrangement is striking, especially when one stops to think of Petrarch's attitude to the ancients, an intellectual and emotional stance cultivated by generations of scholars from Boccaccio, Bruni and Pogio, to Ficino, Valla, and Machiavelli. Machiavelli's melancholy evocation of his emotionally and intellectually charged daily collo­ quies with ancient men may no longer offer an appropriate cue to students of medieval history on how to approach the study of antiquity.10 But the fact is that 9.

1-4: 2.

Sylvia Thrupp, "Editorial," Comparative Studies in Society and History 1 (1958-1959)

10. Niccolo Machiavelli to Francesco VettDri, 10 December, 1513 (in Mario Martelli, ed., Tutte Ie opere [Florence: Sansoni, 1971) 1 158-1 1 60: 1 159): "Rivestito condescentemente entto nelle antique corti degli antiqui huomini, dove, da loro ricevuto

Machiavelli

-

4

Preface

15

during the past half century or more, thanks to the work of a number of eminent scholars, there have emerged elements of a common conceptual and linguistic ground on which the fields of ancient and medieval history can stand today. One example must sufice for all. Ronald Syme and Niccola Ottokar would have had little difficulty under­ standing and approving of the terms that each used to describe political realities in late republican Rome and in late-thirteenth century Florence. One knows that Ottokar, a white Russian refugee to Italy where he concluded a distinguished academic career begun in his native country, and Syme, an English scholar­ diplomat trained at Oxford, were much too accomplished as historians to seek superficial, if seemingly apparent, parallels between medieval Florence and ancient Rome. Yet, a reader of their distinguished monographs cannot but be struck by the similar language with which both authors referred to institutions, political practices, and conceptions of power in two societies separated by more than 1,300 years,u A few scholars - our own contemporaries and teachers - were able, in their long and distinguished careers, to build bridges that spanned the chrono­ logical gap between antiquity and the Middle Ages, foremost among them Arnaldo Momigliano, Eugenio Garin, and Paul Oskar Kristeller. But their numbers are few; they stand as isolated examples in a world of great scholarly specialization and its attendent intellectual isolation. A few others, preeminently students of only one of the two fields covered in this book, also understood the importance of looking to the other. One thinks, for example, of the late Elias J. Bickerman who suggested that constitutional and institutional developments in Italian communes of the late Middle Ages paralleled those of early Rome. Perhaps then, he thought, comparison with their better known medieval ana­ logues might illuminate the social history of the archaic Roman city-state.12 These scholars, however great their influence, have been few. And, while it is easy to talk about comparative research and to refer to one or two obvious examples, it is an entirely different and, indeed, very difficult proposition to establish clearly the parameters and limits of comparability between two or more societies and to undertake a comprehensive comparison.13 In the last decades we have witnessed a vigorous proliferation of studies in ancient and in medieval Italian history, with specialists in each field using very much the same vocabulary and imagery, the same range of concepts and approaches; it is even possible that they have reached roughly comparable conclusions aboutthe problems inherent in the societies that each group of specialists seeks to understand.

amorevolmente, mi pasco di quel cibo, che solum e mio . . . io non mi vergogno parlare con loro, et domandarli della ragione delle loro actioni. 11. Niccola Ottokar, I1comune eli FirertZe alia fine del Dugento (Florence: Vallecchi, 1927); Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939). 12. "Some Reflections on Early Roman History, Riuista di filologia e eli istruzjone clas 97 (1969) 393-408. 1 3 . For a recent initiative, aiming in this direction, se Robert Griffeth and Carol G. Thomas (eds.), The City-State in Five Cultures (Santa Barbara, Cal ifornia and Oxford: ABC Clio, 1981). n

n

16

Preface

Our aim, and that of the scholars who contributed to the conference and to this volume, was to launch a dialogue, to air common problems, to probe each other's. vocabulary, to see if such an initial exchange might be worthy of a sequel. Given the degree of specialization in our respective fields, it was thought not inappropriate to avoid broadly based discussions on numerous and widely ranging case studies. This consideration explains the specific issues and limita­ tions with which contributors to the conference and to this volume were presented. Above all, we chose not to concentrate on urban history in general but to focus our attention on city-states, a term which finds a definition in several of this book's chapters, especially those in Part 6. But even the category of the city­ state was too broad; it encompasses cases in too numerous and diverse geographi­ cal locales and chronological eras. As a result, we chose to overlook the city-states of ancient Phoenicia, as well as those of the Swiss Confederation and of southern and northern Germany. Their histories raise too variable a number of issues, while the sources available for their study are too disparate to be dealt with in the course of this initial exercise. And, furthermore, rather than dealing in more general terms with the histories of ancient and of medieval Italian city-states, we thought it best to further focus our attention on a small sample of particularly eminent city-states, about which there exists reasonably sufficient information, enabling one to talk with a greater degree of concreteness. In such a manner it might be easier to develop a firm base for drawing comparisons, for casting a contrapuntal discourse which might at once retain its specificity, while encom­ passing the experience of more than one of our exemplary city-states. In the end, we settled on what are, perhaps, the four best known city-states in European history: Athens and Rome from antiquity, Florence and Venice from late medieval Italy.

The initiative in planning and realizing this project was taken by a group of historians at Brown University: David Herlihy, Anthony Molho, Kurt Raaflaub, and Juergen Schulz. From the beginning, they were encouraged and supported by Brown's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies, its associate director, Abbott Gleason, and its program director ,JuliaEmlen. They defined the goals of the conference and the subjects to be discussed, and selected for each of these a scholar to serve as commentator. In view of the dearth of experts sufficiently competent in both fields, the decision was made early on to ask specialists in both disciplines to address the same questions and issues, each from the point of view ofhis or her own field, and to assign mostly to the commentators the task of drawing the comparisons. Among those who agreed to serve in this function (and who appear in this volume as commentators), Glen W. Bowersock, Guido Clemente, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, and Caroline Elam and Julius Kirshner (who both were forced to withdraw from the project after the conference), met in November 1987 in Providence with the local organizing committee. Others, unable to attend, sent their suggestions. During two days of intensive discussions, the subject areas and

Preface

17

paper topics were formulated, questions on which the contributors might profitably focus their attention were defined, and the contributors were selected. In addition, it was decided that the economic foundations of social and political phenomena and their transformation over time were to be central to all panels; accordingly, they should be taken into consideration by all contributors. Thus we chose not to designate specific panels to the political development and economies of the city-states. The conference took place, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Association of Ancient Historians, in early May 1989 on the Brown University Campus and in Providence's "historic" Omni-Biltmore Hotel. The papers were distributed in advance and summarized only briefly at the conference; thus ample time was reserved for the prepared comments and for discussion. Our main goal, to stimulate a discourse among medievalists and ancient historians sharing similar interests, certainly met with success. Readers of this volume will judge whether we have also met our second goal, to suggest an initial framework within which precise comparisons might be made. A further exploration of such specific fields of comparison will be the subject of a follow-up conference that, we hope, wil take place in Florence in the near future.

Introductory Remarks: Max Weber s "The City" Revisited '

WILFRIED NIPPEL

�

ALK

ON

MAX WEBER'S ESSAY Die Stadt ("The City") which is nowadays

known as a part of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, seems to be an obvious starting point for a conference on the city-states in antiquity and the Middle Ages.1 After all, Weber's essay is not only the most famous dissertation on our subject, it is in a certain sense also the only one. During the last seventy years, a considerable number of ancient historians, medievalists and sociologists have referred to this pioneer work. But as with other presumably classic texts, one cannot be sure whether such citations indicate a deeper acquaintance with the work or even prove its impact on scholarly work in progress. T 00 often, either the same quotations of well-known phrases are cited or Weber is reverently invoked in introductions whereas the bulk of the work is just scholarly business as usual. There are only a few studies on "The City" by Weber specialists, and these deal only with certain aspects of it. Such neglect has also been the fate of other parts of Weber's earlier work that show his strong interest in historical subjects. For a long time the reception of Weber's work, especially in American sociology, was strongly biased toward his sociology of religion and the formal­ ized categories of his only systematic, though unfinished work, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. And, of course, antiquity and the Middle Ages are rather remote .. periods for sociologists of our times. However, the situation has changed during, say, the last ten or fifteen years due to the cumulative effect of several tendencies. The recognition that often we have to discuss Weber 'on a dubious textual basis has led to the project of a critical edition, which is now in progress; the question of the thematic unity of

1 . I have kept the style of an open ing lecture and restricted annotation to a minimum. For a comprehensive bibliography of recent scholarship pertinent to Weber's historical work se my article, "Methoaenentwicklung und Zeitbeziige im althistorischen Werk Max Webers," Geschichte lind Gesellschaft 16 (1990) 355-374; compare also my piece "Finley and Weber. Some Comments and Theses," forthcoming in OPUS. I use the following abbreviations for Weber's works: MWG Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Tiibingen, 1984ff.) ; RS Gesammelte Allfsiit:a zur Religionsoziologie, 3 vols. (Tiibingen, 9th ed. 1988) ; SWG Gesammelte Aufsiit:a zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tiibingen, 2nd ed. 1988) ; Wg Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Miinchen and Leipzig, 1923); WuG WiTtschaft lind Gesellschaft (Tiibingen, 5th ed. 1980); WL Gesammelte Aufsiitze ZUT WisenschaftslehTe (Tiibingen, 5th ed. 1988) . =

=

=

=

=

=

20

Introductory Remarks

a work left in the condition of a big torso has been raised; both concerns have led to a more historical approach to Weber's texts, one that pays attention both to his own intellectual biography and to the debates in contemporary jurisprudence, political economy, and history, in which he was involved. Recent changes in the intellectual climate have also stimulated a new inter­ est in Weber's work. Especially in Italy and France the decline of Marxism's intellectual attractiveness has had this by-effect; but even in Eastern Europe it is no longer possible to ignore Weber or to denounce him as an ideologist of the bourgeoisie. Among ancient historians, interest for Weber has been stimulated by the debate on Moses Finley's work and the critical evaluations of the history of classical scholarship undertaken and proposed by Arnaldo Momigliano. And finally, the accessibility of the more historical parts of Weber's work has been greatly facilitated by fairly recent translations, especially into English and Italian. Weber's "The City" is still an under-researched subject, and I cannot hope to provide here a comprehensive survey of all the relevant topics or even of only those, which presumably are of interest to the purpose of the present volume. Instead, I will try to discuss Weber's essay from a different perspective by looking both at the direction his own work took and at the contemporary scholarly debates on which he drew and in which he engaged. Such an approach should help us to appreciate the merits and recognize the problems of this text. I will start with some short remarks on Weber's earlier works, which laid the foundations for the theories he developed in his work on the city. Weber's doctoral dissertation of 1889 dealt with the Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter (the history of Medieval trade companies).l Weber demonstrated that the legal framework necessary for sustained capitalist trade and industrial enterprises was not available in classical Roman law; it developed in Italy only during the Middle Ages. In Die Romische Agrargeschichte, theHahilitationsschrift approved by the Juristische Fakultiit of the University of Berlin in 1 8 9 1 , Weber traced the development of the Roman agrarian law and economy from their very beginnings through the agrarian capitalism of the late republic, to their decline during the empire. For the earlier parts of his history, he used the writings of the Roman agrimensores as key sources. Methodologically, he was indebted to the work of contemporary German agrarian historians, especially to his teacher August Meitzen, who had reconstructed German agrarian history on the basis of inferences from field maps (Flurkarten) dating from the eighteenth century or earlier.3 This affinity implied, however, also Weber's accepting the idea of a universal development from primitive communism to private property, a model that bedeviled very different kinds of historians and social scientists, for example, Maine and Marx, both of whom had relied on Georg von Maurer's work on the

2. 3.

SWG 312·443. See the editor's introduction

ed. by j. Deininger (Tiibingen,

in Max Weber, Die Riimische Agrargeschichte

1 986: MWG 1.2).

. . .

1891,

Nippel: Weber's "The City" Revisited

21

Germanic Markgenossenschaft as historical proof of that law of development.4 Weber later explicitly rejected this kind of theory. Especially in his 1904 article "Der Streit urn den Charakter der altgerman ischen Sozialverfassung," he attacked evolutionist models and offered instead the comparison of ideal types, a concept he developed simultaneously in his first famous methodological article.s In his later writings on antiquity he made several casual remarks against all attempts to identify historical institutions as survivals of prehistorical stages; thus, for example, he interpreted the subdivisions of the polis as units artificially created for administrative and military purposes and not as relics of tribal structures. After his Habilitation, Weber almost immediately undertook the project of evaluating the inquiry on the conditions of the agrarian labor force in the eastern parts of Prussia, which had been arranged by the Verein fUr Sozialpolitik.' The publication of his eight-hundred-page report after only several months of hard work promptly earned him the chair for political economy in Freiburg. He then concentrated his work on problems of contemporary social and economic policy, such as agrarian problems or stock exchange legislation. Still, in his publications on Prussian agrarian policy he sometimes drew parallels to late Roman develop­ ments, and in 1896 he gave a popular lecture on the social causes of the decline of the ancient world.7 He also wrote an article on "Agrarverhaltnisse im Altertum" for the Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, published in 1897, and a somewhat enlarged version for the second edition, which was published one year later. In the years after 1898, Weber repeatedly sufered nervous breakdowns, which made him temporarily unfit for work, and finally forced him to retire in 1903 from the chair in Heidelberg, which he had ocupied since 1896. Upon recovery, he soon showed again his incredible capacity for work, publishing a series of articles on methodological questions of the social sciences, on the Protestant ethic, on the Russian Revolution of 1905, or on the psychology of industrial labor. I have mentioned these biographical detaiTs in order to draw attention to a somewhat surprising fact: Weber's revision of his article "Agrarverhaltnisse im Altertum" for the third edition of the Encyclopedia resulted in a piece of book length (almost 300 pages in book size), which he had written in the incredibly short period of three or four months in the winter of1907/1908.sWe do no t rea1ly know the personal motives for his making such a tremendous effort, but we can say something about the scholarly debates to which he was reacting. In his survey 4. For details, se chapter 4 of my book Griechen, Barbaren und "Wilde" (Frankfurt, 1990). 5. SWG 508-556; "Die 'Objektivitit' sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis," WL 146-214. 6. Die Lage tIer LandarbeiteT im ostelbischen Deutschland (1 892), ed. M. Riesebrodt (Tiibingen, 1984: MWG 1.3). 7. "Die sozialen Griinde des Untergangs der antiken Kulrur," SWG 289 3 1 1. 8. Se now the respective letters in Max Weber, Briere 1906-1908. MWG II. 5 (1990) nos. 426, 429, 430,433, 704.

22

Introductory Remarks

of ancient agrarian history, Weber dealt not only with all of Greco-Roman history but also at length with ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Israel. He probably would not have been able to do so without having Eduard Meyer's work as a guide.' But he also showed a superb conunand of the rapidly growing scholarship in all parts of his broad subject, which, despite all other interests and distractions, he tried to grasp fairly comprehensively. Before beginning his survey of the main areas and periods of Mediterra­ nean and Near Eastern antiquity, Weber offered a model of the political econ­ omy of ancient states ("eine okonomische Theorie der antiken Staatenwelt"). Two of its themes are of special importance in our context. The first is the notion of ancient capitalism. Weber's leading question was whether one could properly, that is, with respect to its cultural importance, speak of ancient capitalism; he answered it with a qualified yes. To understand this fully, we have to consider the background of his reasoning, that is, the controversial discussions of the ten or fifteen preceding years. One such controversy revolved around Karl Bucher's scheme of a sequence of Hauswirtschaft, Stadtwirtschaft, Volkswirtschaft (domestic economy, urban economy, national economy) as a model of economic development.1o The sharp reactions of Eduard Meyer andJulius Beloch are well known to ancient historians who have been reminded of them by Moses Finley.ll Especially in view of Finley's devastating criticism of Meyer and his praise of, and indebtedness to, Weber, it is perhaps surprising to see Weber defending the use of" capitalism" for antiquity. But Bucher, whose previous work included a number of studies on late medieval cities, especially Frankfurt, had also stirred up the medievalists. They would probably not have accepted Meyer's notorious comparisons between antiquity and the Middle Ages, but their reaction to Bucher followed the same psychologi­ cal pattern as that of the ancient historians: the identification of the Middle Ages with an urban economy presupposed, in their eyes, a far too primitivist model of medieval economy, just as the alleged identification of antiquity with Hauswirtschaft did.12 (I will pass over the question of whether their reaction did justice to Bucher's concept.) The medievalists were again challenged when in 1902 Werner Sombart published his book on the origins of modem capitalism.ll Sombart drew a sharp 9. See A. Momigliano, "The Instruments of Decline," in id., Sesto rontributo alia storia degli studi classici e del mondo artUco (Rome, 1980) 285-293. 10. Die Erttstehurtg der Volkswirtschaft (1893; Tubingen, 11th ed. 1919). For a balanced

evaluation of Bucher's work se B. Schefold, "Karl Bucher und der Historismus in der deutschen Nationalokonomie," in N. Hamrstein (ed.), Deutsche GeschichtswisrtSchaft um 1900 (Stuttgart, 1988) 239-267. 11. Se the selection of main texts in M. I. Finley (ed.), The Bucher-Meyer Controversy (New York, 1979), and Finley's romments in his AtJCimt Slavery and Modem Ideology (London, 1980), chapter 1. 12 . Se L. Schorn-Schutte, "Stadt und Stat. Zum Zusamnhang von Gegenwarts­ verstandnis und historischer Erkenntnis in der Stadtgeschichtsschreibung der Jahrhun­ dertwende," Die Alte Stadt 10 (1983) 228-266. 13. Der modeme Kapitalismus (1902; revised 2nd ed. Munich and Leipzig, 1916; reprint Munich, 1987).

Nippel: Weber's "The City " Revisited

23

dividing line between the medieval economy as oriented toward commodity supply and the acquisitive capitalism oflater times; furthermore, Sombart argued that the original accumulation of capital was based on ground rents and not on urban trade and industry. Here, too, medievalists felt provoked to defend the putative modernity of "their" period. Especially experts in Italian history such as Heinrich Sieveking or Robert Davidsohn sought to prove the capitalist nature of the medieval urban economy.14 Henri Pirenne later accepted their argumenta­ tion,15 and other historians - for example Georg von Below and Alfons Dopsch - continued to defend the use of "capitalism" with respect to the Middle Ages.16 (There is a certain irony in the fact that right-wing scholars such as Below made this defense of capitalism at a time when the association of the term with Marxist theory led others either to use it, like Sombart, in a Marxist sense or, even better, to avoid it.) Weber suggested taking Biicher's categories as ideal types and dissociating them from any evolutionist assumptions or direct links to definite historical epochs. He advocated the use of "capitalism" both for antiquity and the Middle Ages not in order to assert structural identities but rather to compare both periods with each other and the modem age, and thus to be able to identify the decisive new elements that triggered the dynamics of the modem economy. The essays on the Protestant ethic ( 1 905-1906) had already focused on an important aspect in the comparison between the Middle Ages and the modem world. In a long footnote, which he added to the revised version ofthe text, Weber later revealed his interest in the triple comparison by illustrating the problem of the Rationalisierung der LebensfUhrung (rationalization of the conduct of life) with references to the economic treatises of Cato, Leon Batista Alberti, and Benjamin Franklin respectivelyP In the Agrarverhaltnisse ( 1909) Weber em­ barked on the comparison between antiquity and the Middle Ages . He stressed, on the one hand, the purely political foundations of ancient capitalism, which made it so dependent on specific political preconditions that it could not survive the era of the autonomous city-state and was strangled by imperial bureaucracy; on the other hand, he emphasized the fundamenta1ly militaristic structures of the ancient city-states that occupied their citizens as soldiers but also satisfied their material needs through war and policy, and the limits of productivity necessarily inherent in the employment of slave labor in comparison with that of formally free labor; finally, he returned to issues already discussed in his doctoral dissertation and reasserted his opinion that both corporate law and a legal

14. H. Sieveking, "Die mittelalterliche S tadt " Vierteliah,ssch,ift fU, Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 2 (1904) 177-218; id., "Die kapitalistische Entwicklung in den italienischen Stadten des Mittelalters," i bid. 7 (1909) 64-93; R. Davidsoh n, "Ober die Entstehung des Kapitalismus," in id., Fo,schungen zu, Geschichte von Floren: IV (Be rlin , 1908) 269-294. 15. H. Pirenne, "The Stages in the Social History of Capitalism," American Historical Review 19 (191 3-14) 494-515. 16. See the references in B. vom Brocke (ed.), Somba,ts "Moderner Kapitalismus. Mate­ rialien zu, Kritik und Rezeption (Mun ich, 1987), 74ff. 17. RS I.38. ,

U

24

Introductory Remarks

distinction between family and business (Haushalt und Betrieb) developed only in the Middle Ages.

Weber did not restrict himself to comparisons within the confines of European history. The second important issue in his political economy of antiquity is the distinction between the Greco-Roman and the Oriental worlds. He saw two distinct patterns of development "for all the peoples dwelling between the Seine and the Euphrates who showed some signs of urban culture." 18 This difference was due to fundamental geographical and ecological fac­ tors.19 Within the coastal civilization of the Greco-Roman world (a notion Weber had already used in his 1 896 essay on the decline of ancient civilization) the citizen state could develop, whereas within the civilizations situated at the banks of great rivers, the necessities of river regulation and irrigation strengthened the primordial kingdoms and fostered the development of a centralized bureaucracy subject to a monarch with an indisputable monopoly in political, military, and economic power. This was a version of the "Oriental despotism" that had been anticipated by Montesquieu and that Marx too had formulated in a similar form in his theory of the Asiatic mode of production (which Weber, however, could not have known at that time). The problematic assumptions of his theory are, first, that towns were founded for commercial reasons and that those who could dispose of the gains of commerce - either the primordial monarch or a sort of aristocracy - determined the direction of development; and second, that the irrigation problem made a centralized solution inevitable. The distinction between an Oriental and an Occidental course of history is a fundamental point in Weber's discussion of the city, to which I will return. The piece known as Die Stadt was published only posthumously. When it was actually written has not yet been established, although a date of about 19 1 3 seems to be a reasonable conjecture. It was first published as an article in the 1920-1921 volume of the Archiv fUr Sozialpolitik and then incorporated into the first posthumous edition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in 192 1. The corre­ spondence between editor (Marianne Weber) and publisher on this point shows that even Weber's widow had no information about the status of the text and Weber's intentions for it.lO After considerable hesitation, she placed it as the concluding part of the sociology of domination in Wirtschaft und GeselIschaft, a position it retained in later editions.l1 This decision was justified insofar as Weber in his original outline of the major work had planned such a section on the city as a type of illegitimate domination. But we canot be sure whether he

1 8 . SWG 35. 19. Se ]. Deininger, "Die politischen Strukturen des mittelmeerisch-vorderorientalischen Altertwns bei Max Weber," in W. Schluchter (ed.), Max Webers Sicht tks antiken Christentums (FrankfurtlMain, 1985) 72-110, and S. Breuer, "Stromuferkultur und Kiistenkultur. Geographi­

sche und okologische Faktoren in Max Webers 'okonomischer Theorie der antiken Statenwelt'," ibid. 11 1-150. 20. Se ]. Winckelmann, Max Webers hinteriasenes Hauptwerk (Tiibingen, 1986) 93ff. Winckelman, however, did not subscribe to the conclusion given in the text above.

2 1 . WuG 727-814.

Nippel: Weber's "The City " Revisited

25

would have considered the text as we know it as fitting this place. After all, it is obviously incomplete; for example, there are references to passages on the city in the Roman Empire that he did not write or that have been lost.21 A close analysis of the contents shows that the text is a sort of working paper that shifts between quite different systematic contexts. Weber begins with a discussion of the adequate definition of the Stadt (city). He tries out a series of definitions based on geographical, economic, or legal criteria, only to come to the conclusion that in view of the great variety of phenomena existing all over the world (in addition to his accumulated stock of examples he also included Arabia, China, India, and Russia) any supposedly comprehensive definition must necessarily fail. However, a special interest in economic definitions is detectable, due probably to Sombart's attempt at such a typology in his work on modern capitalism and in an article in the Archiv fUr Sozia/politik in 1907.13 In view of recent discussions among classicists, it is worth stressing that Weber never associated these categories - consumer city, producer city, and merchant city­ with particular periods.24 Moreover, having abandoned the discussion on this sort of typology, he did not come back to it in the remainder of the text - which, of course, does not exclude a sensible employment of the category of the consumer city in ancient history, but at present l am onlyconcemed with Weber's theory. In the course of his essay, Weber concentrated fully on the Stadt im Rechtssinne, the city as a unit with a distinct political-administrative status, that is, die Gemeinde, the commune, as a self-governing body. There is a certain ambiguity in this definition because Weber wants to cover different legal types of cities: the fully autonomous ancient city-state; the self-governing city, which as the subject of a kingdom or of the Holy Roman Empire could not claim sovereignty; and also, of course, the Italian city-states, with their ambiguous position concerning sovereignty. As he indicated with respect to antiquity, the status of a Gemeinde in this restricted legal sense could be ascribed only to the cities within the Roman Empirefs by using the Gemeinde as the key criterion, he obviously chose the minimum definition for a s elf-governing urban community that could a fortiori be met by the ancient or the Italian city-states. Only the Occidental city, in which military organization was based on the citizens' ability to provide their own equipment, could possess this specific quality, whereas in the Oriental societies (China and India included) the basic 22. Se J. Deininger, "Die antike Stadt a1s Typus bei Max Weber," in Festschrift Robert Werner (Konstanz, 1989) 269-289, esp. 274ff. 23. "Der Begriff der Stadt und das Wesen der Stidtebildung," Archiv fur Sozialwisen­ schaft und Sozialpolitik 25 (1907) 1-9. 24. Se H. Bruhns, " De Werner Sombart a Max Weber et Moses I. Finley: la typologie de la ville antique et la question de la ville de consommation," in P. Leveau (ed.), L 'origine des richeses depensies dans la ville antique (Aix-en-Provence, 198 1 ) 2 55 273 , with respect 10 the -

discusion provoked by M. I. Finley, " The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges 10 Max Weber and Beyond, Comparative Studies in Society and History 19 (1977) 305-327. 25. WuG 745, compare 288, 430; H. Spe, Herschaft und Legitimitit (Berlin, 1978) 152ff. "

26

Introductory Remarks

structures did not allow such a development. In addition to his argument concerning irrigation work and bureaucracy, Weber now stressed a second, that is, a religious factor, probably the fruit of his concurrent work in comparative religion on which he had embarked in the meantime; the articles on Confucian­ ism, Hinduism, and Buddhism were published in 1 9 1 5 and 1916.26 The distinctiveness of the Occidental city is based on its character as a confraternity, Verbriderung, the constitution of an association with a common cult, equality before the law, connubium, common meals, and solidarity against nonmembers. In Asia the existing taboos between sibs (as in China) or castes (as in India) prevented such confraternal structures. In the Middle Ages confraternity had a religious basis. It took place in a constellation in which ritual taboos had already been abolished by Christianity, as is symbolized in the community of the Eucharist. Both here and several times in his articles on the sociology of religion, Weber refers to the breakthrough in Antioch praised by Saint Paul, when at the Lord's Supper the community between circumcised and uncircumcised Chris­ tians was practiced for the first time. This event represents the hour of conception ofthe citizens' association, which, however, was realized only in the coniurationes of city dwellers one thousand years later P Ancient religion did not provide such a positive predisposition for confra­ ternity as Christianity did, but it also did not prevent confraternity. This concept was, however, not fully developed because only the heads of sibs or clans could initiate steps toward such a union (in the act of synoikismos), whereas in the medieval communes individual burghers by taking an oath constituted the new community .2 8 Weber applied the model, according to which the burgher community had originated in coniurationes as a sort of revolutionary uprising against established authorities, to both the Italian and the North European and especially German cities. But he was anxious to add that it fully fitted only the Italian case, whereas in the German one there was a complicated mixture of usurpations of rights and free concessions from the overlord.29 Seen against the background of modern scholarship on these questions, Weber subscribed to the thesis, formulated by Karl Hegel in the late 1 840s against Friedrich Karl von Savigny's position,l° that city rights were not based on the relics of Roman municipalities. Weber, however, did not commit himself unequivocally in the debates of his day on the origins of the city or the original

26. Se H. Bruhns, "La cite antique de Max Weber," forthcoming in OPUS, for the orientation toward Religionsziologie detectable in "The City."

27. WuG 745; RS II. 39f., II. 439; Wg 277. 28. WuG 744-747. 29. See K. Schreiner, "Die mittelalterliche Stadt in Webers Analyse und die Deutung des okzidentalen Rationalismus," in J. Kocka (ed.), Max Weber, der Historilcer (GOttingen 1986), 1 1 9-150, for a splendid analysis of Weber's dealing with the medieval city. 30. Geschichte der Sti:idteller(asung lion ltalien (Leipzig, 1 847; reprint Aalen, 1964). {

Nippel: Weber's "The City " Revisited

27

legal status of the guilds.J1 Historical scholarship was often used as an argument in political controversies over communal self-government, free access to trade (Gewerbe{reiheit), or trade unionism, whether in a more authoritarian or a more liberal sense. On one hand, Weber stressed the importance of free associations (freie Einungen) in the sense of Otto von Gierke in his Genossenschaftsrecht, but on the other hand he insisted on characterizing as illegitimate the city regimes established by usurpation of rights. According to his belief that values should not be decided upon in scholarly discourse, Weber avoided any allusion to actual political debates. Moreover, in contrast to those committed speakers who all too easily talked about the medieval city although they referred exclusively to German examples, he tried to differen­ tiate between the common and the peculiar features of the Italian, German, and English cities. Weber's discussion of the city focused on the Middle Ages and took antiquity into account only insofar as it seemed to provide illuminating compari­ sons. Accordingly, he formulated his analysis in a terminology borrowed from the medieval materials: Verbrnderung, Gemeinde, Genossenschaft, Zunft, and so on. This bias toward the Middle Ages becomes even more obvious in the passages in which Weber compares the typical development of political regimes in both periods from a domination ofpatrician families (the Geschlechterherrschaft, as he puts it following an established usage) to a more popular regime. The comparison always starts with the medieval example. The Middle Ages are usually represented by the Italian city-states, which were of special interest in this connection because of the incorporation of the landed aristocracy into the urban elite. Weber drew parallels between thepopolo led by the capitano del popolo and the Roman plebs with their tribuniplebis or even the Spartan damos and the ephors, or between podesta and aisymnetes, signor and tyrant. nIuminating as these comparisons surely are, even more important ar� the general observations Weber made on the development of political institutions. The movements that caused the broadening of the political basis of the regimes had recourse to just the same means of organization and legitimation that were used to found the commune. Furthermore, as a result of the popular movements, the political system was thoroughly rationalized. Formal political and legal privileges were abolished, the law was codified and rules were set up for changing the law, jurisdiction was formalized, rules were established concerning the access to, and the conduct of, public offices, which reduced incumbents to functionaries of the community. All

31 . See inter alia A. Heit, " Die mittelalterlichen Stidte als begriffliches und definitorisches Problem," Die Alte Stadt 5 (1978) 350-408; J. Frc'ichling, "Georg von Below Stadtgeschichte zwischen Wissenschah und Ideologie," ibid. 6 (1979) 54-85; O. G. Oexle, "Die mittelalterli che Zunh als Forschungsproblem," Blatter fur deutsche Landesgeschichte 1 1 8 (1982) 1-44; id., "Otto von Gierkes 'Rechtsgeschichte der deutschen Genossenschaft'," in N. Hammerstein (ed.), Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft um 1900 (Stuttgart, 1988) 193-2 1 8.

28

Introductory Remarks

this marked the breakthrough to transpersonal authority over a defined territory, the anstaltsma/3ige Gebietskorperschaft, as Weber puts it.ll Although the popular movements made it possible for the leaders of the Roman plebs or the Italian guilds to acquire a share in government, thus changing the composition and character of the ruling dite, they did not succeed in abolishing government by an elite of notables (Honoratioren) in favor of a system based on broad and permanent participation by the great majority of citizens. It is interesting to see how Weber in just one sentence passed over the Ciompi revolution,J3 which, after all, Alfred Doren in 1908 had called the first proletarian revolution (whether rightly so or not).J4 In the last part of his essay, Weber finally returned to the question of economic rationality, which had originally led him to the comparison between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Here we meet the famous distinction between the ancient homo politicus and the medieval homo oeconomicus, a distinction often cited out of context.3S For this peculiar comparison, the medieval city is represented by the type of the industrial or artisanal inland city (bUrgerliche gewerbliche Binnenstadt): the northern European cities are taken as the purest examples of this type. These cities were embedded in a power structure that did not allow them to play an independent military role. Consequently they neither offered their citizens opportunities for material gain by military and political means nor did they burden them with more than a minimum of military service. While they thus differed sharply from the ancient city, the Italian city-states were located between these extremes. The maritime republics were nearer to the ancient type. The inland city-states also showed some characteristics comparable with the ancient ones: in particular, they embraced a contado and were able to pursue an expan­ sionist policy, their elites still showed the mentality of knighthood, and the standards regulating their conduct of life did not encourage them to take on the role of entrepreneur. On the other hand, the bulk of the citizenry consisted of craftsmen; like their northern European counterparts, they were interested in an economic policy that promoted their commercial interests. In antiquity, the typical declassed citizen was a dispossessed farmer, in the Middle Ages it was an unemployed craftsman, and that explains the different character of class struggles. In comparison with his former work, the focus on the lower strata of citizens represents a new element in Weber's considerations of the diferent levels of rational economy in antiquity and the Middle Ages. An ancient demos who ­ through colonization, booty, soldier's pay, and so on - could participate in the profits of an expansionist policy was of course interested in keeping the exclusiveness of a status providing material rewards. That is why Weber somewhat paradoxically called the citizens of a democratic city a warrior guild;

32 . 33. 34. 35.

WIIG 782 compare 745, 779. WIIG 778; Wg 280f. Das Florentiner Zunftwesen vom 14.-16. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1908) 231. WIIG 804ff.; compare SWG 254ff. ,

Nippel: Weber's «The City '" Revisited

29

thereby he meant that with respect to citizen status they pursued some sort of closed-shop policy. As a consequence of the emphasis laid on status distinctions between citizens and all the others (metics, freedmen, foreigners, and slaves), groups such as the metics and freedmen were the only ones that were truly oriented toward pursuing, through commerce and trade, peacefully acquired gains. For the same reasons there could be no guilds in the proper sense. The medieval guilds were the first organizations of formally free labor, the most productive type of labor force known in history. Rethinking thus the question of why the basis for rational capitalism was laid only in the Middle Ages, Weber came to evaluate ancient politics, especially Athenian democracy, differently. He interpreted the extremely high level of political participation by the citizens, the time they had to spend on the political process and in military service, primarily as an impediment to economic rationality; he mentioned liturgies ( such as the private funding of public cultural activity) only as a danger for private property; the same holds true for the popular courts; and the lack of personal freedom is lamented in a style reminiscent of Benjamin Constant or Jacob Burckhardt. Moreover, Weber's judgment of Athenian democracy fits some of his fundamental political convictions, especially his idea that any sort of direct democracy necessarily would be replaced in the long run by a rule of notables.l6 In 1 9 1 9 Weber announced that he would like to supplement his studies on the sociology of religion with a sketch of the development of the European Burgertum in antiquity and the Middle Ages (the term Burgertum covers citizen, burgher, and bourgeois at the same time).l7 He did not live to realize either this plan or the project to give an account of the great Western revolutions, beginning with the commune movement of the Middle Ages.l 8 Thus we are faced with the somewhat paradoxical situation that Weber did not elaborate his ideas on the peculiarities of Occidental development in their proper context, although this was the leading question for his work, structuring even his interest in non­ European cultures.l9 So far I have stressed the various contexts in which Weber's approaches to the ancient and medieval city-states must be situated. A thorough analysis of this part of his work has been undertaken only recendy and is still far from being completed. The question of what historians of our kind could now do with Weber's work is nevertheless legitimate. There should, of course, be a middle path between using some ideas and phrases, in or out of context, and following Weber's cross-cultural comparisons from the point of view of a universal history.

36. Compare my remarks in "Die Kulturbedeutung der Antike. Marginalien zu Weber," in Kocka (ed.), Max Weber (n. 29) 1 1 5f. 37. Se W. Schluchter, "Max Webers Religionssoziologie. Eine werkgeschichdiche Re­ konstruktion," in id. (ed.), Max Webers Siebt des tmtiften Christentums (Frankfurt, 1 985) 541 . 38. W"G 155; RS I. 349. 39. Se W. J. Mommsen, "Max Webers &griff der Universalgeschichte," in Kocka (ed.), Max Weber (n. 29) 63.

30

Introductory Remarks

Let me end by making some suggestions. They relate in a certain sense to Weber's unfinished proj ect of a comparative study of the European Burgertum. The concept of confraternity is a key idea. Subsequent research has stressed its importance for phenomena that Weber himsel f did not fully visualize, especially with regard to the interconnections between the commune movement, the Treuga Dei movement, and religious brotherhoods clamoring for ecclesiastical reforms.40 Yet Weber's ideas al so raise the question as to the relationship between confraternization and citizenship. After all, communities based on individual oaths were soon dominated by sorts of natural rulers, then changed to regimes based on corporations, and finally, at least in Florence, adapted themselves to ideas of citizenship inspired by the ancient example. For an ancient historian, it is somewhat disturbing to see that citizenship played a role in integrating well­ to-do newcomers from the contado which gave the jurists the opportunity to elaborate on the question of whether the civitas sibi princeps was entitled at all to confine citizenship - or with regard to the composition of a changing elite of those eligible for political office. What about the status of the other city dwellers? Wh at about the symbolic and integrative value of right of participation in popular assemblies, a right enjoyed by the poorest citizens in most ancient city-states, however ineffective it may have been? What about equivalents to the right of provocatio or the function of the tribuni plebis or even the diverse measures aiming at integrating the nonenfranchised? In view of the large number of learned and brilliant articles and books on the statements of the jurists, on the compo­ sition of the ruling class, or on the ideology of classical republicanism, such works seem particularly desirable that would try to explain comprehensively what it meant or did not mean to be a citizen in an Italian city-state, and what other sorts of religious, political, and social integration might be of comparable signifi­ cance.41 On the other hand, ancient historians might be inspired by works on ritual brotherhood or civic ritual and look more closely at the religious and cultural foundations or concomitants of citizenship, thus beginning to approach a more comprehensive model of the ancient city-state. One could of course elaborate upon these questions by considering such issues as the right of free association and the suspicions of governments regarding this right; the measures of preventing social confl icts through market regulations, charities, or patronage; the recourse to riots as a method of articulating demands; and the strategies and opportunities used by authorities to deal with them. And, fi nally, there still remains Weber's particularly important insight into the rol e of the nobility; a comparative approach can perhaps help us to formulate the right questions that will lead us to the definition of the aristocracies in the city-states. -

40. See inter alia H. Keller, "Die Entstehung der italienischen Stadtkommunen als Pro­ blem der Sozialgeschichte,n Frihmittelalterliche Studien 1 0 ( 1 976), 1 69-2 1 1 ; id., "Einwohner­ gemeinde und Kommune. Probleme der italienischen Stadtverfassung im 1 1 . Jahrhundert, n

Historische Zeitschrift 224 (1977) 5 6 1 -579.

4 1 . Compare my "Biirgerideal und Oligarchie. 'Klassischer Republikanismus' aus alt­ historischer Sicht, n in H. G. Koenigsberger (ed.), Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa tier Frihen Neuzeit (Munich, 1988) 1 - 1 8 .

P A RT I

Consciousness and Representation

Reflections of the Greek City on Unity and Division

N I CO LE LORAUX

I

BEGIN THIS CHAPTER with a few remarks defining some of the method­

ological issues behind the debate on representations of the city-state. First,

the notion, or rather, the term "city-state" is an expression modern histo­ rians of ancient Greece use to denote the practical political functions of the polis. Despite the reservations that Moses Finley, for example, attaches to the use of the term, he still considers it the least unsatisfactory description of what we understand by the polis.1 Although we may in this way avoid the misunderstandings that arise from the simple use of the word "city, " we may still be slipping into the almost inevitable trap of anachronism. For among the many definitions of what the polis represented to a Greek a community as -

well as the source of virtually transcendent authority, and moreover a com­ munity conceived of more in terms of andres polis (men are the city) than in the formula "We, the city"2 - there is nothing that corresponds to the expres­ sion "city-state," which we nonetheless continue to accept as an adequate • rendering of the ancient reality.

In considering " contemporary representations of the city-state," I have chosen to concentrate on the first part of the phrase, "contemporary repre­ sentations. " By doing so, I will emphasize what polis means in Greek terms and I will leave a number of other questions aside. I will not ask, as Suzanne Dixon did, "Who owns the city ? " because, as Kurt Raaflaub has correctly observed, only the gods can be considered .its owners. Citizens, for their part, do not think of the city as belonging to them in that way. The question I propose is difficult to formulate. I would like to ask: Who creates the city in thought? Who imagines it? ( " Qui pense la cite ? " ) Who imagines the city, given that "polis" is, for the Greeks themselves, the name of a model? Is it, perhaps, the community of citizens in the sense 1. See M. I. Finley, The Ancient Greeks (Harmondsworth, 1966) 54 60; id., "The An cient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and Beyond," Comparative Studies in So­ ciety and History 19 (1 977) 305-327 = id., Economy and Society in Ancient Greece, ed . B. D. Shaw and R. P. Saller (New York, 1981) 3·23, and the first chapter of id., Politics itl the An cient World ( Ca m b ri dge, 1983) 1 ·23. 2. See Nicole Loraux, The Invention o f Athens: The Funeral Oration i n the Classical City (Cambridge, Mass., 19 86) 264·87.

34

Consciousness and Representation

which Kurt Raaflaub described, that is, the citizens thinking of themselves as being the city? But apart from the fact that andres polis is only one definition of the city, and just as ideological a definition as any other, and apart as well from the fact that the formula "We, the city" is a hapax in the surviving evidence,3 I fear that attributing ideas on the city to a communis opinio is, in the end, only a nominal solution to the problem. One might as well answer the question with the problematic assertion that "the city imagines the city. " The circular nature of this proposition will, of course, be clear to everyone, though one could say that inevitably there is some play between the position of "the city" as both the subject and object of the same sentence. I would add, though, that while a statement put as baldly as this is certainly open to question, it is simply the implicit and ever unstated assumption behind an anthropology of ancient Greece in which many, if not all, of the main currents have taken the city as their subject. So, "the city imagines the city. " I will not address the question of whether this is a tautologous proposition just yet, but I will at least suggest that such a statement is only the reduction, by means of a removal of their content, of a great many comments that have already been made on the city.

II A question such as this, which concerns the representations the Greek city created of itself, offers a number of possible approaches. Perhaps, to avoid some of the difficulties that a statement of this kind entails, it is better to say that the question concerns the representations that Greek cities created of the city, which already leads to the question of how far these cities were conscious of the actual forces behind their existence and functioning. However, so as not to present a simple thematic catalogue of these approaches, I have chosen to concentrate on some of the ways in which cities thought about the very disturbing question of conflict. I will not set myself any very rigid chronological boundaries between the archaic period and the beginning of the classical era. I am concerned with that period beyond periodization during which the meaning of the word "polis" was expansive but not formalized. I will limit myself to considering the opposing images of the city as a unity and the city in division. More particularly, I will attempt to present an alternative to that edifying model of the city as a single entity, at peace with itself and ready to pass directly into the pages of school books and the kind of anthropological studies that in general overlook issues of breakup and movement. I will attempt to show some of the many precautions that were taken and some of the various screens that were erected by cities and by those who thought about cities to avoid having to envisage conflict as a natural part of city life. One of the most widespread of all the

3. "We, the city" is a phrase that occurs in the first line of a Cretan inscription (Spen­ sithios) published by L. H. Jeffery and A. Morpurgo-Davis, Kadmos 9 (1 970) 1 1 8-54.

Loraux:

Unity and Division

35

stratagems of civic life seems, in fact, to have consisted in making an excep­ tion of conflict, imagining it as a catastrophe or an epidemic that had overcome the body politic in its entirety. In other words, conflict became a sickness of the city, but unlike those sicknesses studied by medical writers, not one that belonged to and made up part of the body in the same natural way that health does.4 As though civil war were a suspension of political time, the restoration of a civic time structure after such a war first entails the reinstatement of the succession of public offices. The recurrent political aei that marks out the ex­ istence of the citizen must be reestablished so that it can be said, as Xenophon does in describing the return to democracy after the Athenian reconciliation of 403, that " after the establishment of the magistracies, they lived as citizens" (epoliteUonto).s In fact, politeuesthai ( " to exercise one's rights as a citizen, " "to have a political system, " or, quite simply, in the accounts of reconciliation after a civil war, "to live in a city " ) denotes that thing which the return to civic unity restores to its proper function. It is the verb that in Xenophon's Hellenica is used by a democratic orator to mark the contrast with the "disgraceful, immoral, and detestable war" set in motion by the Thirty which divided the citizens against one another. Xenophon uses the word twice on his own account when he describes the return to civic and democratic norms.6 "Now, once more, politeuontai, " he concludes. And, in Nakone, a small city in Sicily, at the beginning of the third century, es ton ioipon khronon homoountas politeuesthai (to live in the future as citizens at peace) is the project for which a ceremony of reconciliation is supposed to establish a lasting foundation.7 Life in the city, in a peaceful, united, and indivisible polis, is a state exclusive of stasis, a condition readily identif-iable with the process of destruction called, in a living being, phthora. I have already tried to show elsewhere that modern historians of ancient Greece have simply taken over this model of opposition.8 What I am more concerned with here is the entirely Greek character of a diptych of this kind: a ready-made way of thinking for the immediate consumption of the citizens of any city, but at the same time an image addressed to an unspecified posterity, in which we may easily recognize ourselves.

4. On medicine and politics, see in particular the contributions of G. Cambiano, "Pathologie et analogie politique," and M. Vogetti, "Metafora politica e immagine del corpo negli scritti ippocratici," in F. Lassere and P. Mudry (eds.), Formes de pensee dans la Collec­ tion hippocratique (Geneva, 1 983) 441 -82. 5 . Aei: "always," that is, in the institutional sense of the word, "each time." It refers to the continuous succession of magistrates through a rotation of their offices. 6. Xenophon Hellenica 2.4 .22 (the speech of Kleokritos) , 2.4.43. 7. This was the decree of Nakone, published in the collection of decrees of Entella by D. Asheri (Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 12, 3 [1 982] no. 3). 8. See my "Repolitiser la cite," in L'Homme. Anthropologie, E ta t des lieux (Paris, 1986) 263-83.

36

Consciousness and Representation

III I do not wish to spend too much time over the city as a unity except to note that it sees itself both as a reality and as an ideal. Characterized by an autonomous political system, thanks to which aU citizens, whatever their social differences, are strictly equal and in the last analysis even interchange­ able, this model of the city suits enthusiasts of institutions who have little interest in cities in crisis,' j ust as much as it does the supporters of an anthro­ pology of ancient Greece, which may be described as political, as is the case with Christian Meier, or primarily social, as with the work of Jean-Pierre Vemant.lO Before taking the analysis of this model any further, and certainly before adopting it, I would like to define more closely the conditions in Greece, the place, time, and circumstances, under which it was constructed. It is important to note here that the unity of the city is most clearly defined (perhaps it is better to say idealized; in any case it amounts to the same thing) against a background of ceremonial effects. The ideal Athens of Pericles is set in a funeral oration at the center of a public funerary celebration, and his speech is reconstructed by Thucydides, the archetype of the accredited historian. The refounding by Athena of an Athens at peace with itself and free of conflict at the end of the Eumenides takes place in the theater on the occasion of a performance of tragedy staged as part of the celebrations of the Great Dionysia. I do not intend to add to comments I have made elsewhere on the funeral oration,!l and commentaries on the ending of the Eumenides are legion.J2 Nevertheless, I am going to take Aeschylus' text as my starting point. As the court of the Areopagus is set up on the hill of Ares, Athena announces that the whole city (pasa polis) must learn the rules that she lays down. Whereas the citizens of Athens remain silent figures until the end of the play, the city, in the very words of Athena Polias, is characterized as a totality. Furthermore, the city is given the power to continue as an integral whole through the phenomenon of exchange. The choral song of the Erinyes, who have been reconciled with Athens and are now kindly disposed toward the city, is well known:

9. The first of these was Aristotle for whom the Athenaion politeia could only be taken as an object for study once it was thought to have completed the transfer from one metabole to another and from one form of the politeia to another. 10. See, for example, C. Meier, Introduction a I'anthropologie politique de l'antiquite classique (Paris, 1 984); for the social dimension of anthropology in Vernant's work see, for example, his "Espace et organisation politique en Grece ancienne" (My the et pensee chez les Grecs [Paris, 1971) 1 224), on the subject of Cleisthenes' reform. This may be compared with Meier's analysis of the same episode in Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen (Frankfurt am Main, 1 980) 91 -143 id., The Greek Discovery of Politics (Cambridge, Massa­ chusetts, 1 990) 53- 8 1 . 1 1 . See The Invention o f Athens ( n . 2 ) . 12. Including a piece entitled "La pacte des Eumenides" written b y Fran�ois Mitterrand for a performance of the Oresteia by the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault in 1 955 (see the Compagnie's Cahier 1 1 , "Eschyle et l'Orestie," 9-1 3 ) . =

Loraux: Unity and Division

37

May they exchange joy for joy

in a thought of conunon love [koinophilei dianoia,l13 and may they hate with one spirit [milii phrent1 . Behind the koinophiles diano{a, the agreement ( homono{a) so precious to cities threatened by strife is not far away, but I would like to pause for a moment over the expression "hate with one spirit, " primarily because the single phren shared by all suggests that the community, endowed with a single spirit, is conceived, beyond its diversity, as a single entity. Phren is un­ doubtedly one of the most haunting words in the Oresteia, and its use at this point is certainly the result of a deliberate choice by Aeschylus.14 It should be added, however, that the word, which throughout the trilogy oscillates uncer­ tainly between a physical and a psychic sense, implies that the polis is, in a sense, an organically constituted whole. Nevertheless, it is most rewarding to compare this miJi phren{ with the formula by which Athenian ephebes swore homophr6nos ("with one accord" ) to obey the laws established by the people. is For this benign use of the phren required of future citizens is converted by the Erinyes to promote a hatred that could be directed only against the enemy of the city. Who, then, is the enemy? It cannot be a rival faction because on Athena's advice the Erinyes are celebrating the unity of the city. Perhaps he is an enemy within, of the kind whose exposure to public condemnation under the name poIemios is satisfactory because his identification as an individual, acting on his own or with others, ensures that public order can be maintained by putting him to death.16 Every citizen swears to eliminate such an individual, in the assurance that no stain will thereby fall on him. And yet this cannot be the enemy either who is meant in the Oresteia because the presence of the Erinyes should be suff-icient in itself to guard against the dangers of sedition. It must, therefore, be an enemy from outside, the enemy faced by a city in what Athena has previously called "the war at the gates" (thuraios p61emos, v.

864} P We have here the two aspects of the way i n which the city i s able to think of itself when it chooses to stress its unity. At peace within, its citizens face dangers posed from outside with one accord. Or, to quote Jean-Pierre Vernant, " Politics can be defined as the city seen from the inside, the public life which the citizens share within the domain of whatever is common to

1 3 . Or, "in a plan friendly to the conunonality." 14. Can it be purely the result of chance that Aristophanes refers to Aeschylus as the

"carpenter of the mind," phTenotekton (FTogs 820) ? 15. On the term homophTonos, which may be the old one, see 1. Robert, Etudes epigraphiques et philologiques (Paris, 193 8) 302ff. 1 6 . See, for example, the decree of Demophantos (409 B.C.) quoted by Andocides 1 (Mysteries) 96·97, and Plato, Laws 9.856b (with the commentary by Louis Gernet [Paris, 1917] 85). 17. On thuTaios see the comments of E. Benveniste, Voca bulaire des institutions indo­ eUTopeennes I (Pinis, 1969) 312-13.

38

Consciousness

and Representation

them above and beyond their individual family differences. War is the same city facing outward, the activity of this same group of citizens now confront­ ing something other than themselves, something foreign to them, in other words - as a rule - other cities." 18 We could go further and set the two faces of this image of unity aside, replacing them with the functional logic of a political community that �akes unity in the face of an enemy the surest, perhaps the only, safeguard of a stable and balanced political existence. This is what the text of Aeschylus suggests, and it is how Christian Meier, following Carl Schmitt, interprets the conclusion of the Eumenides.19 If it means thinking of war as a political insti­ tution insofar as its existence ensures the internal functioning of the city, as far as I am concerned, I would happily refer to Pierre Clastres' anthropological considerations on war as a "functional mode" of a primitive society,2° that is to say, using Clastres' definition, "an undivided society."21 It is by thus obtaining "no evil victory" (nike me kake, v. 903 ), that is, a victory that has not been obtained in stasis, that the city reinforces its internal strength and is at peace with itself.22 Such is the model presented to the audience in the theater. It is an image that lasts in the minds both of the citizen and of posterity. (In fact, when one reads Aeschylus, shared hatred does appear to be a stronger binding force than f�iendship. Although phi/{a goes hand in hand with exchange and with the idea of what one has in common with others, it is only through hatred that the city's will is united in a single phren. It is as though only hatred were strong enough to provide real unity. Are we to believe, then, that there is no price too high to ensure indivisible unity?) IV

It is easy to imagine the difficulties that a community given to idealizing itself in this way as the embodiment of unity encounters when it begins even to consider the role of conflict, or to give conflict the name by which it most commonly went in cities, namely that of stasis. 1 8 . Vemant, "La guerre des cites," in id., Mythe et societe en Grece ancienne (Paris, 1974) 40 Myth and Society in Ancient Greece (Brighton, Sussex and Adantic Highlands, New Jer­ sey, 1980) 25. 19. Meier, " Aischylos' Eumeniden und das AuEkornrnen des Politischen," in id., Die Entstehung des Politischen (n. 10) 144-246, especially 207 214 Discovery ( n. 1 0) 82-139, es­ pecially 1 1 7-19. 20. Pierre Clastres, "Archeologie de la violence: La guerre dans les societes primitives," in Recherches d'anthropologie politique (Paris, 1980) 171-207; on this subject, see also A. Adler, "La guerre et I'Etat primitif," and M. Abensour, Le Contre Hobbes de Pierre Clastres," in M. Abensour (ed.), L'esprit des lois sauvages (Paris, 1987), and N. Loraux, " Notes sur I'un, Ie deux et Ie multiple," ibid. 2 1 . Although it should be said that, in Greece, the indivision is more fantasy than reality, insofar as any problematic of power is not excluded like in Clastres' heuristic fiction. 22. Democritus expresses this idea in another way: "Sedition within a group is harmful to both sides, for the victors and for those who have been brought down by it. The destruc­ tion [phthoriJ it causes is the same." =

=

"

Loraux: Unity and Division

39

The meaning of the word stasis ranges from a "position" in politics to the horror of the murder of citizens by their fellow citizens. Yet the sequence from the act of standing up to the act of insurrection and from insurrection to civil war does not appear to be inevitable. M. 1. Finley, who looked for an explanation of the question in the society rather than in the language of ancient Greece, made a forceful remark to this effect and added the far­ reaching comment that the fact that the Greeks had no neutral term to describe the adoption of a political position was in itself an indication that politics enjoyed a very bad reputation among themP This is a strange contra­ diction, particularly since we credit the Greeks with having invented politics. But then perhaps this very contradiction was the soil in which their invention grew. The audacity of the invention of majority rule is thus muted by the fantasy of the unanimous vote, and only afterward - once the assemblies have become an immemorial part of life in the city and the moment for questioning what their existence implies is past - does the fear of the new that lies behind this daring game of idealization become apparent. Perhaps it was as well for the citizens not to concern themselves too closely with this kind of question. For in doing so, they would undoubtedly have discovered a deep underlying affinity between the politics of peace, which they professed to uphold, and the conflict, which they rejected as murder.24 Had they done so, they might have explicitly formulated something that is generally only implied and that one perceives only in some of their avoidances and hesitations. That is, how strange it was that one of the names given to the vote, diaphora, "disagreement" or " difference," should imply so close a relationship between this regulated process and the phenomenon of discord in general.2S When thought of as a disagreement, the vote runs the continual risk of dividing the citizens around two opposing arguments.26 But considered as a difference in which the balance weighs in favor of one of two sides - what we would call a majority, and the Greeks are, for us, the benevolent ancestors of this principle, which is so familiar and apparently natural to us - the vote introduces a kratos, in which one of two opinions prevails over the otherP One only has to consider the reticence of the demo23. M. I. Finley, "Athenian Demagogues,''' in id., Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974) 5-6. 24. Finley was one of the rare historians of ancient Greece to recognize clearly that "the dividing-line between politics and sedition . . . was a thin one in classical Greece" ( The Ancient Greeks [no 1 ] 60; see also Politics in the Ancient World [no 1 ] 105 6). 25. See M. N. Tod, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions II (Oxford, 194 8) no. 191 (Tyranny at Eresos, 322 B.C.) 18: tan deuteran diaphoranj Herodotus 4.138 (hoi diaphe rontes ton psephon); Thucydides 4.74.3 (psephon phaneran dienegkein) . 26. On diaphora and civic discord, in addition to the inscription at Nakone (n. 7), where a diaphora makes it necessary to hold a procedure of reconciliation, we can consider a passage in Xenophon, Hellenica 7.4.15 (where diaphora leads to stasis), or J. Pouilloux (ed.), Choix d'inscriptions grecques (Paris, 1 960) no. 2 1 (where a dispute between the citizens of Samos was settled, as was frequently the case in the Hellenistic period, by the intervention of foreign judges). 27. On kratos as "superiority," see Benveniste, Vocabulaire (n. 1 7) 11.74-77.

40

Consciousness

and Representation

crats with regard to the name of their own political system, insofar as it implied that the people had the upper hand, to suspect that in either sense of the term, the expression diaphora was disturbing. For dia suggests a configu­ ration grouped around two poles (and not three, or more), and this is the very grouping that enables conflict to occur.28 Yet at the same time, whenever they thought about politics, at least, let us say, until Aristotle's time, the Greeks thought of it as two-sided.29 Diaphora, then: disagreement or difference. In one case, the word denotes the division of the civic body into two in the assembly, along a line marked out by two conflicting opinions confronting each other. The risk in this case is that if the situation reaches a deadlock the opposition between two different opinions can slide toward civil war. Herodotus is reflecting on just such a situation when he describes the circumstances under which Miltiades was able to secure victory at Marathon: "The Athenian generals were divided into two p arties, with some advocating avoiding battle and others, including Miltiades, arguing that it should be offered." This is the first stage. Then Herodotus adds: "They were divided and it seemed likely that the weaker argument would prevail" (nikan), as though by some mysterious law an equal division, unless it produces deadlock, always leads to victory for the worse argument. Fortunately, the historian says, there was at this period an eleventh voter, the polemarch. Thanks to him, the number of voters was uneven and a decisive vote could be cast. Miltiades was able to persuade him that if it were decided not to offer battle, "great strife" (stasis ) was liable to "shake the city" and thwart the Athenians' plans (phronemata).30 And it was thus that Miltiades assumed command and won victory. Here, as in the Eumenides, fighting an outside enemy wards off stasis, though in this case it was first necessary to avert the danger posed by the division of the vote into two halves (d{kha).31 The second interpretation of the word diaphora is hardly more inspiring. It sees a majority emerging, sometimes only narrowly, but by a sufficient margin to produce kratos or n{ke. It is an important occurrence when opinions are nearly evenly divided and yet a positive outcome is still produced, particu­ larly if it turns out that the "correct" decision has been taken (gn6me, the cor­ rect piece of advice or opinion) . There is an example of this in Thucydides' account of the second debate on Mytilene.32 As there had been a perfect bal-

28. Ths is what P. Chantraine (D;ctionna;re etymologique de la langue grecque I [Paris, 1968] s.v.) calls the "distinctive" or "differentiating" quality of the word. 29. For a portrayal of democracy as an institution characterized by the multiplicity of its 16go;, see Catherine Darbo-Peschanski, Le discours du particulier. &sa; sur l'enquete berodo­ teenne (Paris, 1987) . 30. Herodotus 6 . 1 09-1 10. 31. I am not as convinced as Meier, Entstehung (n. 1 0) 127 Discovery (n. 10) 72, that the "content of many of the political decisions that were made was of less interest to the citizens than the share they had in making them" since most "of the questions that affected the citizen in his domestic, economic, or professional life were exempt from political decision making." 32 . Thucydides 3.39.1. =

Loraux: Unity and Division

41

ance between two speeches - by which we may understand two voting proposals - "the Athenians had reached a conflict of opinion [es agona tes d6xes] , and in the show of hands the vote was almost evenly divided [agkh6malotl, but the argument put forward by Diodotos - the right one won in the end [ ekrttese] . " 33 As it turned out to be the correct decision, there is nothing further to be said, but how would it be if the result were different? As it happens, after this happy outcome the Athenian assemblies in Thucydides make no further sensible decisions. So a victory - that " no evil victory" of the Eumenides - could be se­ cured within the city by a majority vote. Nfke is certainly primarily a military term (and this is the most immediate sense of "no evil victory" ), but in most uses of the word a legal sense stands between war and politics. It seems that kratos and nfke moved from the vocabulary of justice to a strictly political context, from the realm of the courtroom to debates in the assembly. If, as Louis Gernet suggested, traces of archaic legal procedures remained in the rules of political debate - the custom of having several jurors in a trial, for example, was at the origin of the vote34 - this was because - like those as­ semblies which, in the narratives of the historians, hang too evenly in the balance - a trial goes through a period of agon and is simply a controlled contest instead of an open conflict. A trial instead of an outright dispute indicates that although the judicial ag6n is not stasis, it does, nonetheless, contain strong elements of conflict. The political thinkers of the fourth century, beginning with Plato, made abundant use of the phrase dfkai kat staseis (trials and civil wars), in which political conflicts appear to be the result of judicial trials. If it turned out that a settlement by the votes of the jurors resulted in an even division into two halves according to the principle of dia (which is the case, first seen in the trial of Orestes, of the isopsephos dfke),35 this division was considered so serious an anomaly that the defendant won the case even though his opponent had received the same number of votes.36 In this way Orestes secures victory against the Erinyes - though it is an odd victory, which, at least according to Athena, does not entail the defeat of his opponents . True, she pleads for the indulgence of the Erinyes and therefore has every interest in persuading them

3 3 . In the same way, in the Eumenides (972 974), the kratos of Zeus is quite clearly seen as positive, and it is accompanied by the (good) victory of the good ens of Athena. 34. See L. Gernet, Recherches sur Ie developpement de la pensee juridique et morale en Grece (Paris, 1917) 90-2. 35. Eumenides 741 , 752-53; diagnonai diken means "to vote on a judgment by a divi sion" and differs from the krinai diken by which Athena decides on the outcome of the trial by casting her vote: vv . 709, 735. In order to avoid this kind of result, generally the number of judges was, of course, uneven. 36. It is true, however, that in opening the proceedings, the accuser took on a heavy responsibility, as the city required certain conditions to be met before a case could come to court. See A. R. W. Harrison, The Law of Athens I (Oxford, 1971) 83. In cases of an evenly divided vote the plaintiff was considered to have failed to prove his contention and therefore lost the case.

42

Consciousness

and Representation

that they have not lost a case that was settled by a judgment based on an evenly divided vote.37 Given all this, what are we to make of the famous "transparency" of Greek politics which is apparent even in the details of voting procedure? The vote by a show of hands (kheirotonia), which is seen as symbolic of democ­ racy,38 presupposes a peaceful city where tensions are not great enough for decisions to be affected by the pressure of voting under the eyes of others. Nonetheless, in an assembly cowed by terror, voting in the open in this way could constitute a weapon for a small group of determined conspirators and be turned against democracy.39 And when the old procedure of voting by acclamation is abandoned, as happened in Sparta before the decision on the war with Athens, in favor of a procedure that clearly shows (phaneros) where the opinion of the majority lies, where voters must make their choice quite obvious by "standing up and forming two groups" (anastantes diestesan), physically moving to two different places, a determined orator (and one, moreover, who enjoys the status of ephor) will inevitably see this procedure as an extremely efficient means of obtaining the majority he desires.40 And this was precisely the method by which the ephor Sthenelaidas who was urging war prevailed. I have discussed this question of the vote in some detail orily to suggest how much this civic "invention" can contribute to the eruption of the very conflicts that the use of the logos was intended to contain, and that, if seen, for example, from the perspective of an African society, the vote appears as a potentially " explosive" decision-making process. It is against a background of potentialities of this kind, and only against such a background, I think, that we can fully appreciate the strength and efficiency of the model of the city in unity. To quote an Africanist who was invited to take a closer look at the Greek city, "For a political body to be able to allow itself . . . the luxury of a

37. Eumenides 795-96. For the Erinyes to have obviously been properly defeated, would Orestes have needed to secure a majority? In any case, since the initiative lies with the accuser, they needed a majority. For this rule, see Aristode, A thenaion Politeia 59. 1 . 3 8 . S o Aeschylus suggests in The Suppliants 604 (demou kratoUsa kheir) . On the khei­ rotonia, see the remarks of M. H. Hansen, The Athenian Ecclesia (Copenhagen, 1 983) 1 04, and E. S. Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (Ithaca, New York, 1972) 83-4. 39. What part did sight play in the various voting procedures? The question is as important as it is difficult to answer; it cannot be discussed at any length here. I will, however, make two observations. 1 . In Xenophon, the postponement of debates on Arginusae until the following sitting of the assembly "because it was late and it had become difficult to see the hands of the voters" (Hellenica 1 .7.7) is surely not the effect of chance alone since the pro cedure finally settled on is a secret ballot (1 .7.9); 2. Voting with ballots is not necessarily a guarantee of secrecy (Staveley, op. cit., 84-5), since voters are sen filing by to cast their vote and can therefore be influenced. This is well known to oligarchs in Megara (Thucydides 4.74.3) and in Athens (Lysias 1 3.37). 40. Thucydides 1 .87.1-3.

Loraux: Unity and Division

43

decision making procedure as explosive as the vote, it must be quite certain of its unity. "41 Yet confidence in a unified civic body is never greater than when it can rely on imaginative constructs for support. Because division is always d anger­ ous and majorities are often only narrowly obtained, the city gathers in the theater to enjoy the performance of unanimous voting, or, as the texts put it - moving into the negative since the fear of division is so great that even its permissible forms must constantly be denied - of voting "without division into two " (ou dikhorrh6pos).42 There is an excellent illustration of this image in Aeschylus' Suppliants where the army of Argos is shown voting, and it is easy to imagine that, like the kind of dream which seems more vivid than real, the construct resisted all the contradictions provided by experienceY So before considering how cities dealt with division that was real and whose existence must be recognized for what it was, if only so that it may be rectified, I would like to consider the case of an ordinary vote that had a happy outcome, where the dream seems to have become reality and where every institutional cog performed its part in the reaching of the decision. A proposition was put to the vote (diapherein) and all the votes were blank, that is, favorable. The voting took place in the council where, as was normal in such cases, it was taken secretly. The essential point, however, is that it was unanimous. After this, the people voted on the matter by a show of hands and we hear nothing more, which suggests that the assembly gave its approval to the decision. This vote took place in the city of Gizoros in Macedonia in the second century A.D. to decide on a question concerning the management of public estates. However, even if it could be said in this connection that the "Greek institutions [of this period] function in the same way as they did in the classical era, " it is unlikely that political questions (or, to put it in Greek terms, communal affairs) generated such passionate debates at this period as they had earlier.44 In a debate on an issue involving public finances, undoubt­ edly discussion would have been considerably more heated at the beginning of the fifth century B.C. For this was a time when, although the Athenians had been prepared to claim their customary right and distribute among themselves the revenues from the new mines of Laurion, the arguments of Themistocles, who proposed using the surplus to build a fleet, eventually prevailed.45 Civic assemblies, therefore, negotiate with division - with greater or lesser success depending on the cities and on the circumstances under which the negotiations take place. In Athens it is generally considered that they were conducted reasonably well, which amounts to saying that decisions were 4 1 . Emmanuel Terray, " Un anthropologue africaniste devant la cite grecque," a paper given at a conference entitled La cite antique! (College de France, September 1 9 8 8 ) , to be published in the Actes of the conference. 42 . Aeschylus, Suppliants 605 (also 942-43: mfa psiphos); Agamemnon 8 1 5. 43 . See my "Sur la 'transparence' democratique," Raison presente 49 (1978) 3-1 3. 44. Nouveau choix d'inscriptions grecques (Paris, 1971 ) no. 28; quotation o n p . 154. 45. Herodotus 7. 1 44.

44

Consciousness

and Representation

generally taken in the ekklesia and not pushed through by force or by resort to murder. In fact, in the case of the murder of Ephialtes efforts were made to erase the crime even in antiquity, and oligarchs, in particular the Thirty, whose coup created a lasting fracture in the continuum of civic afairs, made attempts to overthrow the state altogether. Yet such incidents could be con­ sidered minor accidents, and if they are (but should they be? ) it could be said that democracy was able to protect the well-being of the city. But what are we to make of other cities like Megara, Argos, Thebes, and Mytilene, which keep reappearing in the narratives of fifth- and fourth-century historians because of the dissension that continually divided them? At this point we have to acknowledge the extent to which stasis was an integral part of their political existence.46 And since my main objective is to examine the ways in which people perceived events and experiences, I want to start looking at the ways in which cities thought about division, when division was real and violent and when the peaceful conduct of politics had been irrevocably over­ whelmed. At this point, I would like to turn to the civic discourse regarding stasis. v

The essential feature of this discourse is, I think, that it insists on identifying duality with division. It is haunted by the fear of division but perhaps also silently fascinated by duality. This is suggested, for example, by the occurrence in the writings of historians and orators and in official civic decrees of the verb dialuo and the noun dialusis to express reconciliation. Its usage is com­ mon, perhaps, but the semantics of the word should not be overlooked. For what dialuo and didlusis basically express is the idea of dissolution; dissolution, moreover, color-ed by the principle of dia. And what a city must most urgently dissolve is stasis, the division into two. Reconciliation is thus primarily a matter of undoing something that had been undone, as though only a process deriving from a division of the right kind could have the power to put an end to a division that was inherently wrong. Stasis must be dissolved or, more ex­ actly, there must be dissolution. Beneath this manner of representing reconcili­ ation in language is the admission that stasis is a dangerously strong link. And, in fact, the verb " dissolve" and the noun dialusis have no need of a comple­ ment. Used in an absolute sense, they signify a return to unity and the relief of having come close to an extreme danger and having escaped it.47 Whether or not thinkers of the city were fully aware of this idea, a certain affinity between the city in unity and the idea of duality nevertheless follows from it.

46. The multiplicity of different stdseis is considered in H . -J. Gehrke, Stasis . Untersuchungen zu den inneren Kriegen in den griechischen Staaten des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. Vestigia 35 (Munich, 1985). 47. See my "Le lien de la division," Le cahier du col/ege international de philosophie 4 (1987) 101-24.

Loraux: Unity and Division

45

It is as though the city could never envisage its breakup along the lines of multiplicity. According to the logic of multiplicity, the diversity and even disparity of diverging groups would destroy unity. As a consequence, the ability to consider the polis as a single whole might be lost, whereas, under the image of duality or through the hostile association of the two halves of a sumba/on, the city can still be united under the paradoxical and ultimately Heraclitan category of a unity in conflict with itself.48 It may be said that this is an excessively abstract model, but I do not think s o. It is endlessly replicated in a phenomenon that is a figure of both language and thought: the very widespread tendency in historical writing and in decrees of reconciliation to present stasis as the confrontation of two inter­ changeable halves of the city. Thus in Thucydides' analysis of the effects of civil war on language, there is no real difference between the language the oligarchs use and the language the democrats use. Both sides use the same expressions, snatched from their opponents and en dlessly contested in a con­ tinual exchange.49 And from Alcaeus' poetry of stasis to the inscription at Nakone, the same uses of the linguistic resources of Greek express the idea of opposition through either reduplication or repetition.so The rich possibilities afforded by the suffix -teros, which in classical Greek can describe either of two sides as "the others" (heteroi), are widely exploited in this way since the reversibility it expresses is perfect.S1 Either side can be "the others" because the separation operates along the symmetrical line of duality. The process of reconciliation at Nakone provides an example of this phenomenon that is perhaps exceptional but certainly instructive. Here the desire to produce symmetry is so great that before drawing lots for " election brothers " a list is made up of sixty members from the two sides, which are called hekateroi, with thirty names on each side, distributed in two urns to be drawn two by two.S2 Of course, no one imagines that the numbers on each side would ever have been equal in a political system in which the endless opposition of the oligoi and the polloi suggests on one side a "small number" and on the other a large one. Thus the hypothesis that such displays of symmetry were a fac;ade concealing an irreconcilable antagonism is almost inescapable. This antagonism divided the oligo; and the polloi but it also di­ vided the rich and the poor. It is the antagonism between the big men and the demos which Herodotus is careful to mention when describing stasis, and which 48. Ibid. 49. See my "Thucydide et la sedition dans les mots," Quaderni di Storia 23 (1 986) 951 34.

50. I am thinking of the terms enthen enthen, which Alcaeus uses to describe the contrary movements that make up the stasis of winds above the ship of state (Fragm. 208 Campbell, 2-3). For Nakone, see n. 7. 5 1 . E. Benveniste makes the comment that, in Homer, only one of two adjectives opposed to each other by the suffic teros is affected by the suffix since its effect is differential. The generalization of the suffix in classical Greek adds the element of reversibility to its "separative" function (Noms d'agent et noms d'action en indo-europeen [Paris, 1975] 1 16-19). 52 . Entella (n. 7) 3 . 1 1 .10-17. .

•

.

46

Consciousness

and Representation

the philosophers of the fourth century comment on almost ad nauseam (Plato, for example, in his analysis of the "two cities" within the city, but especially Aristotle). Explaining this tendency to construct symmetrical oppositions as a strat­ egy of dissimulation may seem an insufficient interpretation. It may then be argued that the analysis applied to the city in unity could be just as relevant to the divided city. Surely we must once more look for an explanation in the model of politics as a homogeneous, autonomous sphere in which all citizens are equal, indeed identical, and even interchangeable, because, politically speaking, they are all h6moioi. Such a construction, though, imposes too per­ fect a symmetry on the opposition of parties and factions when often all that can be said is that there are two of them and that they are opposed to each other. Aristotle understood this and endeavored to go beyond models of duality and to reintroduce the reality of imbalance. He understood that the civic ideal of equality was too formal because in reality it was based on a logic of excess: too much equality for some people, not enough for others. In other words, the oligoi believed that there was too much equality in a democracy, and the people thought there was not enough of it in any other political system. Under these conditions, how was the unity of the city to be preserved in the movement from one constitution to the other? Aristotle solves this dilemma by introducing a third term between the two opposing halves, which thus are suddenly revealed to be the result of a division whose exactness is only a fiction. This is not the place to discuss Aristotle's concept of the meson at length, but I will quote one sentence from his Politics. Declaring that big cities are less vulnerable to civil war because in such cities there are large numbers of citizens occupying the center ground, he writes: "In small cities, on the other hand, it is easy to divide the population into two, without anything remaining in the middle" (4.1496a 10-13). What would such a "remainder" imply? For a city, it could well be the essential element. And it is not surprising that, in contrast with Platonic models, Aristotle declares that a city is not made up of sameness but of difference: ex anomofon h e polis.53 And here, at last, we have a decisive de­ parture from the construction that organizes political positions into strict symmetry. With Aristotle the tension between unity and duality is understood but abandoned; and from this perspective the classical image of politics in Greece already belongs to the past. VI

Let us now return to the tension between the idea of the city in unity and the divided city. To illustrate what I have to say, I want to make a brief excursion into the medieval period. 53. Politics 3.1277a 5 6.

Loraux:

Unity and Division

47

In the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena there is a fresco that represents Bad Government.54 Much less well known than its counterpart, which is more popular because its subj ect is Good Government, the fresco portrays Division (Divisio ) as one of the allegorical figures seated at the left of the king of injustice.55 She is dressed in the colors of Siena in a robe divided down the middle into a white half and a black half, and she holds a large saw that she seems to be about to use on her own body.56 No doubt we are to understand that Division and Siena are one and the same figure and that Division, as both an active principle and the object on which this principle has already begun to work, is itself the very thing that it divides . This is the city itself because, clad in its symbolic colors, the city is already visibly divided and a ready prey to the saw of discord. In this way the figure exposes a profound afnity between the city and what threatens it (and what is at the same time a realization of its being) . But that i s not al l . Against the black-and-white background o f the robe, a black St and a white No stand out clearly, balancing and confronting each other on either side of the line that divides the two colors like a strange decoration. Yes /No . " Yes or no" were the alternatives that the Athenians employed to produce the divisions by which they decided questions in the popular assembly. The procedure was called diakheirotonia, and one can eas­ ily imagine how dangerous an evenly balanced result along these lines could be. But, in Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco, side by side with the allegorical figures designated, as one would expect, in Latin, the reality of division, in the opposition of yes and no, is expressed in Italian, the language of common speech. For at this period, Siena was riven by communal strife and "sl " was no longer the only cry to ring out through the city; "no" was heard just as loudly.57 As Chiara Frugoni has shown, the present breaks into the timeless sphere of allegory through this change in linguistic register, and this must be a point of capital importance for historians of the medieval Italian city.s8 I hope that a historian of the Greek city may be allowed to indulge in this game of 54 . For the contemporaries of Ambrogio Lorenzetti that fresco represented "War": C. Frugoni, Pietro e Ambrogio Lorenzetti (Florence, 1 9 8 8 ) 6 3 . 5 5 . Spectators were nonetheless obliged to se "War" first (Frugoni, Lorenzetti, op. cit., 6 3 ) : it is true, though, thaf they turned aside all the more quickly. See N. Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art: The Frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico," Journal of the WarbuTg and CouTtauld Institutes 2 1 ( 1 9 5 8 ) 1 79 89; further, E. Kantorowicz, Les deux corps du rai (French trans. [paris, 1989)) 95. C. Frugoni, Una lontana citta. Sentimenti e immagini del Medioevo (Turin, 1 9 83) 1 47, contrasts the mul­ tiplicity of sources for the representation of Good Government with the unique and circum stantial character of representations of Bad Government. Yves Hersant has pointed out to me that in Cesare Ripa's collection (Iconologia . . , [republished in Turin, 1 987]) there is the allegorical figure of the Unione civile (24 7 4 8 ) but not that of Division or Discord. 5 6 . Is she about to saw her own body? Frugoni, Lorenzetti (n. 54) 64, thinks so. If she is, the position in which she is holding the saw, pressed against her neck, would mean that she is about to decapitate herself, which is no doubt significant. On the opposition between the saw of division and the plane of concord, see ibid., 66. 57. Dante Inferno 3 3 .80. 58. Frugoni, Citta (n. 55) 1 4 6 and 1 66; Lorenzetti (n. 54) 64 . .

48

Consciousness and Representation

comparisons. It is a serious game in which "resemblances" also contain dif­ ferences. What I wish to point out is that Lorenzetti's painting characterizes division as a clash in language of contrary opinions. In other words, this is a painting - the very thing which the Greeks themselves condemned to silence or to a neverending repetition of the same themes - which makes discord speak, as though speech were the field par excellence on which political life and civil war approach one another. I do not believe that stasis was ever portrayed figuratively by the Greek cities.s9 They seem less clear on how a city is linked to the thing which divides it and on the connections between the division which they fear and debates in which either side contradicts the other. And when they do seek to assign an origin to the phenomenon of discord, they oscillate between external explana­ tion and internal interpretation. In the first case, this division, stasis, is a scourge that by definition arrives from outside, falling on the city and striking every citizen as though it were a meteorological disaster or an epidemic, advancing with the devastating irresistibility of an invading army.60 Thus, according to Solon, "Public evil enters every house, and the gates of the courtyard no longer contain it. Already it has leapt over the high fence and it seeks you out, though you flee and hide in the depths of your chamber. "61 The second case is the reverse, the figure of dissension from within. Referred to as emphUlios (within the closed group of citizens), stasis is seen as an innate principle in the city,62 undermining it from within.63 There is no need to spend much time demonstrating that the first figure is a reassuring one because it absolves the city of responsibility for an evil that arrives from outside. It is just as clear that to regard stasis as an innate force requires the courage to conceive of a city founded in conflict from its origins. The first version is more comfortable because it permits a return to the ideal image of the city (divided by circumstance, but by nature a unified entity), and this is the official version of the problem. But we have already seen that the idea of a division into two itself supposes a certain unity, at once fractured, potentially reconstructed in the confrontation between two interchangeable parts, and always destined to rebuild itself. These are the two poles of the complex oscillation that prevails in the discourse of division. On the surface, this discourse treats civil war as an accident. It is true that, if they did not have to, the Greek thinkers who concerned themselves with the city preferred not to talk about it at all, but when it did become necessary to call the thing by its name, the writings of 59. Eris is divided into two figures, a good one and a bad one, in Hesiod's Works and ( 1 1 -26). 60. The ninth Paean of Pindar places snowstorm, sedition, frost, and tidal waves on the same level. 61 . Solon 4 West ("Eunomia") 27-30. 62 . See my " Oikeios polemos: La guerra nella famiglia," Studi Storici 28 (1987) 5-35. 6 3 . The case of n6$Os is more complicated, depending on whether one considers sick­ ness as one of the states of the body or as an intrusion from outside. On the city, stasis, and n6sos see he articles cited in n. 4. Days

Loraux: Unity and Division

49

historians and the texts of civic decrees abound with euphemisms. Each city preferred to place its own divisions under the all-encompassing heading of diaphora,64 whereas the civil wars of its neighbors were categorized as stasis.65 And it takes little effort to pick from the language of a writer like Thucydides the apparently neutral terms euphemizing the bloody acts that division brings in its wake.66 But in both syntax and vocabulary, there is no shortage of signs pointing to the hidden presence of the other figure in which stasis is an evil innate to the city. What are we to make of the choice of the reflexive when Greek

writers, as they often do, in their accounts of the mutual series of blows each side strikes against the other in a civil war avoid the apparently appropriate reciprocal pronoun allelous and say instead that the city struck a blow against itself? (Thus Herodotus says of the Aeginetans that "they did themselves harm, " and Thucydides describes cities that have long been deserted because they had made war on themselves.67) This peculiar choice of formulation could be interpreted as a desire to safeguard the unity of the city at any price. What a city does to itself, ultimately, is still the doing of the city as one entity; as for the blows struck " against itself, " the citizens can still derive a strange sort of comfort from considering that the harm which they have done themselves has at least not been the result of their defeat by an outside enemy. Ironically, Plato provides an explicit example of this reasoning in the Menexenos, when he describes the final defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War: "It was our own divisions, which triumphed over us [tei hemeterai auton diaphorai

ekratethemen], no one else. " And Plato adds: "We remain unbeaten by our enemies; we ourselves have won victory because we were defeated by our­ selves. " 68 One could scarcely be any clearer, but according to good Platonic logic this is an untenable proposition, as the philosopher pretends to forget the distinction he draws throughout his work, that is, between a victory one wins over oneself and a defeat one inflicts on oneself.69 On this reading, the choice of the reflexive would aim at transcending division in order to provide what would thus be a paradoxical restoration of 64. In the inscription of Nakone (n. 7), diaphora seems to me to be a euphemism for stdsis, and on this point I do not share the opinions of H. and M. Van Effenterre, "L'acte de fraternisation de Nakone," Melanges de l'Ecole franyaise de Rome 1 00 (1988) 696·9 8. Con sider also the use of diaphora in the euphemistic declaration of the Menexenos; see below n. 68. 65. Thus in an inscription from Knossos (Pouilloux [ed. ], ChoD: d'inscriptions grecques In. 26] no. 16.1,4), the word stdsis is used in connection with events that occurred in Gortyna.

The word seldom occurs in inscriptions; cities, no doubt, did not wish it to be applied to themselves. 66. On epiudeion, see "Thucydide et la sedition dans les mots" (cited in n. 49). One might also note the use of the expression ho drasas (he who has done), as in archaic legal lan­ guage, to denote the murderer, or the use of verbs like anairein (to destroy) from Thucydides to Aristotle and beyond. 67. Herodotus 6.92; Thucydides 1 .23.2 (these are only two examples from a very rich collection) . 6 8 . Plato Menexenos 243d. 69. Particularly in the Laws; see 1 . 626e-27d.

50

Consciousness and Rep resentation

civic unity. But the reflexive could just as well be interpreted as a way of assuming the innate character of division. The city carries the potential for division within itself, and thus the use of a reciprocal term like alJelous is out of place since the city in discord strikes at its own being, just as in the fresco Siena, embodied as Division, puts a saw to its own flesh. The strategy the civic discourse adopts with regard to division is therefore complex, and it is not always easy to distinguish between choices that conflict with each other on the surface but, at least sometimes, are more closely related than may be supposed. It is as though unity and division could use, exchange, and even share the same images and metaphors.'o VII

Let us return for a moment to the use of the reflexive. When Plato draws a radical distinction between a victory won over oneself and the subjection inflicted through a defeat by oneself, he is clearly suggesting that these are two contrary operations, depending on whether the subject is active or passive. In the one case, the self dominates itself; in the other, it is dominated by itself. We can take this one step further. Does he not intend to suggest at the same time that there is a certain divergence between oneself and one's self, notwith­ standing the supposedly perfect identity that the reflexive establishes between a person and " him-" or " herself" ? This divergence would present something of an enigma were it not explained by a Platonic, and perhaps more widely Greek, practice that consisted of attributing to the city a soul, or in more modem terms, a psyche, and endowing it with several fields of authority that could be at war with each other but also, under other circumstances, at peace.71 Without wishing to speak too hastily of "metaphors " - a purely verbal solution in any case I am very much in favor of taking Plato seriously on this point, particularly since what we are considering here is the representation (or representations) that the Greek city creates of itself. This expression is quickly formulated and perhaps less easily defended, but I think it should be retained nonetheless because there are certain questions that one should be prepared to consider even if one has yet to find a formula that is entirely free of obscurity. Moreover, as it may be apparent, the most obscure element in this phrase is ultimately the word "city." What, after all, is "the city" when it functions. as the subject in this way? At the beginning of this chapter I tried to get around this problem by talking of cities in the plural and reserving the word "city" in the singular to denote a model of unity. Along the way, however, it has been necessary to blur this difference since for us - and we can only talk of things from our -

70. For the city as family, see my "La politique des freres," in F. Thelamon (ed.), Aux sources de la puisance. Sociabilite et parente (Rouen, 1989) 2 1 -36. 71 . In h i s consideration of the city as a single entity i n the Republic, Plato adopts the spirit and certain of the terms of verses 984 86 of the Eumenides.

Loraux: Unity and Division

51

own point of view - "the city" is at once a generic designation and a model for reflecting on cities. It is therefore impossible to avoid assigning it the role of the subject together with all the activities that go along with this role, beginning with the act of reflection on the self. So the formula is one we will have to accept. In ancient Greece, it is "the city" that creates the city in thought� the city that imagines the city, against a background of denial, repression, and forgetting rather more willingly than as a conscious act. The implications of this act of treating the polis as subject will have to be considered further.72

72. I have presented a preliminary sketch leading in this direction in " L'ame de la cite," I should like to thank James Macenzie and Peter

L'Eerit du temps 14-15 ( 1 987) 3 5-54.

Wilson for the translation of this chapter from French.

Rome: The History of an Anachronism

T I M OT H Y . J. C O R N E LL

k

TH E CITY- STAT E : TH E C O N S T R U CT I O N O F AN I D E O LO GY THE TIME when our main sources were being written at Rome (first century B.C. - first century A.D.), the city-state was already a thing of the past, an anachronism. Roman perceptions of it were based not on observations of contemporary reality, but on the recollections of a transformed past, enshrined in the tradition of the forefathers (the mos maiorum). The main features of early Rome, as far as they can be reconstructed from the available sources, can be briefly set out. It was a relatively small community based on an urban nucleus with a restricted agricultural hinterland. At the beginning of the fourth century B.C., for instance, it can be conjectured that the territory of Rome measured around one thousand square kilometers and that the total population numbered between 30,000 and 50,000 people.1 In this period Rome was an integrated community in which all the citizens participated in a wide range of civic functions, as farmers, soldiers, taxpayers, and voters. They took part in the city's communal religious festivals, attended its political assemblies, and served in its army, a part-time militia. In these various spheres, citizenship entailed a complex of rights, duties, and privileges,

which varied according to each citizen's place in a well-defined hierarchy based on birth, wealth, and individual merit. The rights and privileges of Roman citiz ens were carefully weighted in favor of the upper classes, in accordance with the principle of "proportional " equality. This principle was characteristic of many ancient city-states and in the technical language of Greek political thought was known as timocracy. The basis of a timocracy is that "the higher one's census qualifications, the greater are one's military and fiscal obligations and the wider one's political rights. "2 The Roman timocratic system was based on the census, which tradition ascribed to King Servius Tullius, who reigned in the sixth century B.C., al-

1. De Martino 1979, 1 1 ; Ampolo 1980, 15-31; Ampolo in Momigliano and Schiavone, eds. 1988, 233. For a different reconstruction, with figures that are to my mind impossibly high, see F. Coarelli in Momigliano and Schiavone, 3 1 8 ff. 2. Fuste! de Coulanges 1 980, 3 1 4ff.; Nicolet 1980, passim. The quotation is adapted from Gabba 1976, 20.

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Consciousness and Representation

though in the form in which it is described by our sources ( Cicero Rep. 2.39-40; Livy 1 .43; Dion. Hal., 4.19-21 ) it is certainly more recent.3 The Servian census divided the people into five property classes, from which the infantry was levied, men being required to equip themselves with the necessary armor and weapons at their own expense. The heavily armed legionaries were drawn from the top three classes, whereas members of the bottom two served as light-armed. The citizens who possessed no property at all, the so-called profetarii, were excluded from the classes and were normally exempt from military service; only in extreme emergencies would they be called upon to fight, their equipment and weapons being provided at public expense.4 The costs of military activity, especially from the late fifth century when legionaries began to receive pay to compensate them for loss of income, was met by a tax, the tributum (tribute), which was imposed on property owners, probably in varying proportions according to class .s The wealthiest citizens formed an aristocratic elite at the top of the hierarchy and served in the army as cavalrymen (equites). Members of this elite held the chief priesthoods and political offices, the annual posts of consul, praetor, quaestor, and so on. At first these magis­ tracies (as they were called) were largely, or even exclusively, confined to patricians, a hereditary group whose origin is disputed. It is also a matter of debate whether the equites were exclusively patrician.6 However that may be, by the later fourth century leading plebeians had been admitted to the ruling group, which became known as the nobility (nobilitas ),7 The nobles took turns to hold the annual magistracies and formed a permanent oligarchic council of state in the senate, a body of ex-magistrates. Political rights were carefully distributed within this elaborate structure. Officeholding and membership of the senate were confined, certainly de facto, and probably de jure, to men of equestrian standing;8 and the wealthier classes of infantrymen possessed the greatest influence in the political assemblies, which elected the magistrates, enacted laws, pronounced verdicts in public trials, and voted on major issues such as peace and war. The influence of the wealthy arose from the fact that voting was organized by groups, rather than on the basis of a simple majority of all those present and voting. In the tribal assembly (comitia tributa), which elected junior magistrates and voted on bills proposed by tribunes, the voting units were the local tribes, of which there were twenty-one in the fifth century, rising to thirty-one by the end of the fourth (the final total of thirty-five was reached in 241 B.C.). Four of these were the so-called urban tribes, and the rest were rustic tribes. The significance of this distinction is that only landowners and country dwellers

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Fraccaro 1957, 287-306; Pieri 1968; d. Brunt 1971a, 536-7; Crawford 1985, 22; etc. Ennius Ann. 170-72 Sk .; and see Gabba 1 976, 5 and 1 73 n. 2 8 . De Sanctis 1960, I I . 1 9 8 ; Nicolet 1976a, 27ff. Alf6ldi 1960 and 1 968; De Martino 1 980; contra, Momigliano 1966 and 1969. Gelzer 1 969; Holkeskamp 1987. Nicolet 1 976b.

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were registered in the country tribes, while the poorer inhabitants of the city were confined to the four urban tribes and consequently had limited voting power in relation to their numbers.9 The other major assembly was the comitia centuriata, which elected se­ nior magistrates and voted on bills proposed by them. In this assembly the voting units were 1 93 centuries, which were distributed among the five census classes in such a way that the highest classes contained the largest number of centuries. The first class comprised eighty centuries, and together with the equites (eighteen centuries) could command an absolute majority in the as­ sembly, even though the first class was probably small in numerical terms. At the opposite extreme proletarians, who fell below the minimum property qualification for membership of the fifth class, were enrolled in a single century and were therefore virtually disfranchised. The theoretical justification for this was, naturally, that the proletariat contributed nothing to the financial or military needs of the state, and they were accordingly excluded from a significant share of political power.lO An important feature of this structure, as it was perceived by the Romans of later times, was that the differences in wealth, life-style, and outlook between the various groups were not great. According to this traditional perception, the bulk of the population consisted of peasant smallholders; the proletariat was a marginal and numerically insignificant category, and chattel slaves were few in number and confined to domestic contexts. In early Rome, so it was believed, every citizen owned his little piece of land, which he worked himself in order to provide for his family and which he was willing and able to defend in time of warY The aristocrats, likewise, had simple tastes and lived a relatively frugal existence, and they too farmed their own land. Tradition related numerous tales of horny-handed senators who toiled in the fields when they were not attending to public business in the Forum. The best-known instance is the story of Cincinnatus, who was called from the plow to assume the dictatorship at a time of military emergency.12 The traditional ideology also stressed the irflportance of a broad consensus among various social classes in the state, produced by the absence of sharp differences of wealth and economic interest between the several groups and the existence of strong vertical links between them. The reference here is to the fundamental Roman institution of clientela, whereby the rich and powerful offered their protection to the weak and humble in exchange for deference, respect, and obedience. The duties imposed by patron-client relationships were regarded as sacred obligations carefully enshrined in traditional morality, if not in law. The solemn bond of clientela had been instituted by Romulus and was recognized in the Twelve Tables; it mitigated social discontent and 9. Taylor 1960. 10. Botsford 1909; Taylor 1966; Staveley 1972; Nicolet 1980. 1 1 . Gabba 1 979, 55f. 12. Livy 3.26-9; Dion. Hal . 1 0.23-5 (458 B.C.). Such stories were by Frank 1933, 23, but see Crawford 1 976, 203 n. 2 7; Starr 1980, 5££.

regarded as authentic

56

Consciousness and Representation

explained the absence of political violence in the domestic history of early Rome ( see especially Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Rom. Ant. 2. 1 1 .2-3). The foregoing account describes an idealized version of early Roman society which we can put together from sources written in the late republic and early empire. How much of it is strictly historical is open to doubt. The frugal habits of leading aristocrats, the relatively equal distribution of land, the harmonious operation of patron-client relations, and the absence of class conflict are probably all to some extent imaginary, the product of wishful thinking by later Romans who wanted to contrast the evils of their own time with the golden age of the past. To that extent we are dealing with an artificial construct, based more On ideology than On historical reality. Despite that fact, or perhaps rather because of it, the idea of the city-state in its preimperial phase exercised a powerful hold On the minds of Romans in the late republic and conditioned their responses to a rapidly changing world. It became a constant reference point, a guide for public policy, and a model for private behavior. RES P O N S ES TO C H A NG I N G REALI T I E S

' Like al l golden ages, the epoch of the city-state i s uncertainly located i n time. Some elements of the traditional structure survived to the time of the Punic Wars and beyond; according to A. N. Sherwin-White, even at the time of the Social War (91-89 B.C. ) "the city-state, though overgrown, existed in a very real sense," but he admits that "by the close of the Republic there is a complete change." 13 But whenever we date its final demise, there can be no doubt that in terms of its geographical compactness and political integrity the traditional city-state form of organization was being subjected to severe strains centuries before the Social War. Already at the end of the fourth century B.C. the exten­ sion of Rome's territory, and the size of the urban nucleus, had outgrown the confines of an integrated face-to-face community. By circa 290 B.C. the citizen population probably exceeded half a million, and the ager Romanus measured some 1 3,500 square kilometers and stretched the length and breadth of penin­ sular Italy; by 2 64 B.C. the figures had increased to around 900,000 people and more than 26,000 square kilometers.14 It follows that by that time day­ to-day participation in the affairs of the city was not a realistic possibility for the majority of citizens. Prolonged campaigning in overseas theaters in pursuit of remote political objectives, which characterized Roman military policy from the Punic Wars onwards, was scarcely compatible with the idea of a citizen militia of part­ time soldier-farmers defending their land and their loved ones. In the course of the second century, as Emilio Gabba has argued, the minimum property

1 3 . Sherwin White 1973, 169. 1 4 . Figures are from Mzelius 1 942, 1 92 ; d. Beloch 1926, 620ff.; Come1l 1 989, 403.

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qualification for membership of the classes was successively reduced.u The army came more and more to consist of proletarians, equipped at public expense and serving for a wage. By the first century service in the Roman army had become a profession for men who knew no other way of life. Meanwhile, the growth of an overseas empire, which yielded a permanent revenue through the taxation of conquered provinces, enabled the state to suspend the levying of tributum in 1 6 7 B.C. The result of these changes was that the political domination of the well-to-do was no longer commensurate with their military and fiscal contribution to the state. The timocratic system was distorted and ceased to provide any theoretical justification for the disproportionate influence of an oligarchic elite. The growth of the empire and the influx of wealth from overseas led to a polarization of society. The upper classes became richer and adopted luxurious and ostentatious habits in a pattern of competitive and conspicuous consump­ tion, while the small peasant proprietors, oppressed by the burdens of prolonged military service, were impoverished and gradually displaced in favor of large slave-run latifundia. The increasing use of slaves was itself a major factor contributing to the transformation of society. Slavery was already well devel­ oped and economically significant at the end of the fourth century, when successful wars of conquest in Italy resulted in the mass enslavement of captives . From Livy we learn that more than 66,000 prisoners of war were enslaved in a period of just five years in the Third Samnite War (297-293

B.C. ).1 6

Changing life-styles and the increasing sophistication of the elite, which were revealed in a voracious appetite for Greek culture in all its forms, served to separate the aristocracy still further from the rest of the population. This polarization, which was merely an aspect of the widening gulf between rich and poor, eventually caused a breakdown of the earlier consensus and a loosening of the traditional ties of clientela that had formerly held society to­ gether. In the wake of the tribunates of the Gracchi at the end of the second century Rome was subjected to violent class conflicts; in the first century these conflicts escalated into civil war Y Against the background of these changes, and largely in response to them, the ideology ofthe mos maiorum was formed. The city-state was a cen­ tral part of this construction, which was based on the idea of a compact and integrated political community with a high degree of mechanical solidarity. Although in many ways an anachronism, running contrary to the main forces at work in Roman society in the last centuries of the republic, the city-state concept nevertheless remained a powerful ideal and was still considered a valid model for political action. 1 5 . Gabba 1 976, 5ff. 1 6 . Figures are taken from Harris 1979, 59 n.4, cf. Cornell 1989, 3 88-9. 17. Some modern scholars have argued that the troubles of the late republic should not be interpreted as manifestations of class conflict: thus, e.g., Badian 1 972 ; but see Finley 1983, Hf.

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Consciousness and Representation

An example of this is that, in spite of its military power, the Roman government consistently passed over oppornmities for territorial expansion and the acquisition of new overseas provinces, even though it continued to wage war in a regular and persistent way. This basic contradiction, which has recently given rise to much stimulating debate among scholars,18 is best ex­ plained by the hypothesis that the Romans were attempting to conduct an imperial policy while maintaining the basic structure of a city-state form of organization, and without creating the necessary institutional framework for imperial administration.19 For similar reasons the Roman ruling class blocked moves to extend the franchise to the allied communities in Italy and resisted all attempts to found colonies of Roman citizens in the provinces. Their obstinate refusal to address the problems that could have been resolved by these measures went beyond all reason, and in the first century B.C. it led to civil war and political revolution. The practice of Roman colonization reveals another facet of the continu­ ing validity of the city-state model. As Gabba has shown, the process of Roman colonization in Italy, which continued without a break from the fourth century to the second quarter of the second, indicates a conscious attempt to extend the city-state idea by a kind of organic reproduction. Colonization imposed a structure of small peasant proprietors, often in areas where such a regime had never been seen before.2o The traditional ideal of the citizen as the father of a family, peasant smallholder, and part-time soldier was tenaciously kept alive in the second century B.C., in spite of the irresistible forces that were pitted against it. Cato the Elder was still able, in the preface to his work On Agriculture (circa 155 B.C. ) , to identify the good citizen with the good farmer and to claim that such men made the best soldiers . The observation was scarcely appropriate at the time Cato was writing; and it is notorious that the body of his treatise deals not with subsistence agriculture but with the management of a large slave-run estate. One reason for the strength and persistence of the ideology was that it appealed to all classes in the state, and not just to conservative aristocrat:;. Tiberius Gracchus won immense popularity with his agrarian law, which is best understood as an attempt to revive the class of small peasant proprietors in Italy and to increase the number of potential recruits for the army. Gracchus' rhetoric, which emerges clearly from the surviving sources, concentrates on the three basic aims of his policy: to provide a livelihood for the poor on the land, to enable them to serve in the army, and to encourage them to produce children (Appian B.C. 1 . 1 1 ) . In Gabba's view the Gracchi expressed "the needs of a large social group whose ideal was still that of the age in which everyone

1 8 . See, e.g., Badian 1968, showing that the senate resisted expansion; Harris illustrating the persistence and regularity of aggressive warfare. Both are right. 19. Toynbee 1965, II. 194ff. 20. Gabba 1 979, 36.

1979,

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had his little plot of land and was happy . "21 That this was all hopelessly anachronistic goes without saying. "There is an inherent contradiction," writes P. A. Brunt, "in the Gracchan objective of increasing the number of Rome's peasant soldiers when it was soldiering that did much to destroy the peas­ antry. "22 It was not until the empire that the Romans finally adopted the rational solution suggested by logic, namely a professional standing army. This was a complete reversal of the republican ideal of an integrated citizen body in which every man was a farmer, a soldier, and the father of a family. The imperial legionary, by contrast, was a full-time professional, who was strictly forbidden to cultivate or own land where he was stationed and legally prevented from contracting a valid marriage and begetting children. There could hardly be a more revealing demonstration of the difference between the world of the principate and the republican ideal of the city-state than this polar opposition. The contrast is only one facet of the radical transformation of society that we call the Roman revolution. This transformation can be characterized in general terms as a shift from a closely integrated society to a more differentiated one in which functions such as government, war, and religion become the preserve of specialized groups. In the earlier republic these functions were embedded in the society, and it is to be noted that this kind of " embeddedness" is seen by many historians as the most distinctive characteristic of the ancient city.23 Keith Hopkins has applied the concept of structural differentiation to the changes that occurred in the late republic and pointed to the emergence of professional soldiers, legal experts, rhetoricians, and litterateurs;24 Claude Nicolet has drawn attention to the rise of alternative institutions, such as the theater and the games, which were run by organized professional groups of actors, sportsmen, and gladiators.25 At the end of the republic the traditional civic religion, which was managed on behalf of the community by the senate and magistrates, was in a state of manifest crisis and was rapidly being replaced by autonomous personal cults which people j oined through conversion and which were run by professional priests . It Is possible to define this change as a shift from an embedded religion to a differentiated religion, and to see it as one of the clearest signs of the decay of the city-state. Since these developments conflicted with traditional ideals it is not sur­ prising that the Roman governing class' response to them was negative, to put it mildly. Whenever autonomous cults, new professional specialisrns, and alternative institutions made their appearance, they were regarded as threats to the moral well-being ofthe community and frequently quashed. As examples we may cite the suppression of the Bacchanalia in 186 B.C., the closing of the schools of rhetoric in 92 B.C., and the Romans' ambivalent attitude to the the21. 22 . 23. 24. 25.

Gabba 1 976, 160. Brunt 1971b, 92. Polanyi 1944. Hopkins 1978, 74ff.; and in Finley (ed.) 1 974, 103 20. Nicolet 1980, 361 ff.

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Consciousness and Representation

ater, best exemplified by the senate's refusal to permit the construction of a permanent theater in the city until the time of Pompey. TH E MO RAL VI EW

Naturally, what I have called the city-state ideology was never consciously articulated by the Romans themselves, because they did not think in those terms. Nevertheless I think we are justified in using the concept to analyze contemporary responses to far-reaching changes in the socio-economic structure of the Roman state. The Romans themselves viewed these matters almost exclusively in moral terms. They instinctively reacted against the forces of social change and justified their actions as necessary to preserve traditional morality. Conservative senators fulminated against the debilitating effects of wealth and luxury and were deeply suspicious of Hellenism - again on purely moral grounds. The Elder Cato above all is associated with such tendencies and is rightly regarded as the most prominent and outspoken representative of conservative opinion in the second century B.C. Cato set himself up as a living embodiment of traditional values and attempted like King Canute to stem the rising tide of immorality. It was primarily Cato who was responsible for the image of an earlier Roman society ruled by simple farmers who were content with a modest style of life and divided their time between public affairs as senators, magistrates, and generals, and a private life devoted to hard work on the farm and the raising of children. Of course Cato himself claimed to be a representative of these old ways; his house did not have plaster on its walls, and thus resembled the hovel of Manius Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of Pyrrhus, which Cato used to visit as a boy. He cooked his own turnips for his supper, and he worked his land with his own hands, as he pointed out in a speech "On His Own Virtues" (fragm. 128 Malcovati ); "I spent my whole life as a young man right from the start in thrift and in toughness and in hard work, cultivating the farm making fields out of Sabine stones and flints and sowing seeds on them." Cato's emphasis on working his own land does not necessarily mean that he was an advocate of subsistence farming or that he set himself up as a champion of the interests of small farmers against the encroachment of latifundia, as Plinio Fraccaro thought.26 Nor should we assume, with Toynbee, that his business activities and his treatise on estate management reveal him as a hypocriteP It is important to realize that Cato's pronouncements on farm­ ing are not framed in terms of socio-economic categories but have an exclusively moral content. He was concerned to emphasize the moral worth of farming as opposed to other forms of activity and to extol the simple life and the value 26. Fraccaro 1956, 4 3-5; d. Scullard 1973, 1 53ff.; this picrure in irs essentials goes back to Mommsen 191 1 , II. 327-29. 27. Toynbee 1 965, II. 196f. and 50Of. The standard work on Cato is now Astin 1978, where a balanced view is presented.

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of hard work. In the stories he told about his early life he was stressing not the smallness of the farms he was working, but rather the essential fact of having been a farmer and having worked the soil with his own hands. He never claimed to be a subsistence farmer and never disguised the fact that his

land was a large estate worked by slave labor. The most telling piece of evidence is Plutarch's Life of Cato ( 3 .2), where we learn that Cato used to work on his own farm together with his slaves. This raises the rather important point, which has been stressed by Gabba,

that the Romans did not see any contradiction in the coexistence of peasant smallholdings and large slave-worked estates, and that this can help explain the persistence of the city-state ideology into the late republic.28 G RE E K VI EWS O F RO M E AS A CITY-STAT E

At this point we may turn to the aspect of the Roman city-state to which the ancients did address conscious thought and analysis, namely its political struc­

ture. The earliest surviving discussion of the Roman constitution is that of Polybius (mid-second century B.C.), who established a pattern that was fol­ lowed by all later writers on this subj ect. The important point about his discussion is that it started from the premise that Rome was a city-state of the

Greek type, and that its institutions should be analyzed accordingly.29 This fateful decision had two consequences. First, Polybius' analysis rested on an anachronism, because at the time of writing the basic structure of the

city-state no longer existed at Rome. Polybius himself was at least half aware of this. He must have known, for instance, that his account of the annual levy of troops on the Capitol no longer reflected the practice of his time, or even

of the time (the Second Punic War) about which he was writing.30 Secondly, by treating it as a Greek city Polybius overlooked what was unique about Rome. I am not convinced by recent attempts to show that Polybius was in fact right on all essential points, that Rome really was a mixed constitution whose secrets could be revealed by an analysis of the jnteraction of consuls, senate, and people's assemblies, and finally that he was right to ignore conflicts

within the aristocracy and the vertical ties of clientela that determined the out­ come of political struggles. I cannot accept that "Polybius did not see them [the ties of clientela] because they were not there. "31 Polybius' failure in book VI to take proper account of the unique features

of Roman political organization is surprising, because in other parts of his work he shows that he was aware of at least some of them, such as the contribution of the Italian allies to Rome's military strength (2.24). The result is paradoxical because he was trying to explain to his Greek readers how the Roman system worked and particularly why Rome had been so successful, 28. 29. 30. 31.

Gabba 1 988, 46f. Walbank 1972, 1 30ff. , esp. 155; Momigliano 1 975, 25. Brunt 1971a, 625-34. Millar 1984; the quotation is from p. 2.

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Consciousness and Re presentation

but by analyzing Rome in purely Greek terms as a typical polis he failed to show what was really significant, and he inevitably missed the features that would have enabled him to answer his own question. As it is, the account of

the mixed constitution in book VI is generally recognized as a rather poor answer to the question of how the Romans " in less than 53 years succeeded

in subjecting nearly the whole inhabited world to their sole government" ( 1 . 1 .5) - indeed, it is no answer at all. Polybius' error was repeated and taken to extreme lengths by another Greek historian of Rome, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote in the time of Augustus. Dionysius did not simply believe that Rome was like a Greek city; he believed it was a Greek city. By systematically explaining away every obstacle that might have stood in the way of his unlikely thesis, Dionysius reduced his chances of saying anything useful or revealing about Rome virtually to zero. He did, however, notice one important feature that made Rome different from most if not all Greek cities, namely its practice of extending citizenship to outsiders. In particular he commented on the Roman practice of giving citizenship to freed slaves who had been formally manumitted (Roman

Antiquities 4.22.3-4).

Dionysius clearly felt uncomfortable about this Roman peculiarity, which did not help his thesis and which offended his sense of propriety. In a remark­ able passage, full of prejudice and hatred, Dionysius attacks the custom of slave manumission in his own day and urges the government to amend the

law and to abolish the right of Roman individuals to free their slaves and thereby give them citizenship (4.26). Dionysius was not himself a Roman citizen, although he would have dearly loved to be one. He could not bear to see the despised class of freed slaves enjoying a privilege that was denied to Greek aristocrats such as himself. This is an interesting example of the status

dissonance that the Roman practice of manumission produced.32 Some Greek observers, however, took a more positive view and recog­ nized that the Roman practice had advantages. In a well-known inscription

King Philip V of Macedon urged the people of Larisa in Thessaly to follow the example of the Romans, "who when they manumit their slaves admit them to their citizen body and grant them a share in the magistracies, and in this way they have not only enlarged their country but have sent. out colonies

to nearly 70 places " (SylI.J 543.32-4 ). It was the Romans themselves, however, who made a virtue of their liberality in this respect; they created a distinctive theory of citizenship that differentiates Rome from all other political communities and explains why it became the first truly universal state in history.

32. On status dissonance, see K. Hopkins in Finley (ed.) 1 974, 1 03·20.

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C I T I Z E N S H I P AN D F RE E D O M

The Romans had n o concept o f the State i n the modern abstract sense - that is, as an impersonal entity that stood apart from the individuals who composed it.)) Rather, it was simply the Roman people (populus Romanus), the collec­ tivity of the citizens . Thus Cicero (Rep. 1.39) states that a people is " an as­ semblage of people in large numbers associated in an agreement with respect to justice and a partnership for the common good. " Such an association, says Cicero, is also known as a civitas (Rep. 6.13; Sest. 91 ). Such groups are bound together by law and custom, not (or not necessarily) by descent and kinship. In the Greek world citizenship was based, almost exclusively, on descent. With very few exceptions, the only way one could become the citizen of a Greek city was to be born a citizen. In Rome, by contrast, the qualifications for citizenship were moral and cultural. This idea was enshrined in legend and tradition, as well as in law. The original Roman people was a haphazard group of wanderers, refugees, and runaways. The legend of Aeneas, the Trojan refugee, expresses this point, and the story of Romulus is even more explicit.34 Romulus' followers were brigands and wandering shepherds; their original settlement was supplemented by the institution of an asylum, at which fugitives and desperadoes could find sanctuary and were admitted into the citizen body (Livy 1 . 8 .6, 2. 1 .4, 5.53.9; Plutarch Romulus 9, etc.). This remarkable legend is certainly very ancient and expresses deeply held beliefs. The theory that it was a disreputable story made up by a hostile Greek writer cannot be sustained.35 Rather it must be a reflection of the fact that throughout its history Rome was an open city to which outsiders were freely admitted and assimilated. This phenomenon has been clearly demon­ strated for the archaic period,36 and the growth of the state from the fifth century onward was synonymous with the assimilation of conquered peoples, both through direct enfranchisement and through the manumission of the enslaved. The theory that explained and justified this process was that people acquired and retained their citizenship on merit, through services to the state. Outsiders who gave aid to Rome in time of need could be rewarded with a grant of citizensh ip. The classic instance is that of L. Mamilius of Tusculum, ' who rescued Rome frolll a siege in 460 B.C. ( Cato Orig. 1 .26 = fragm. 25 Pe­ ter; Livy 3.29.6; Dion. Hal. 1 0. 1 6.3). Other cases include Sosis the Syracusan and Moericus the Spaniard, who aided Rome in the Second Punic War.37 Loyal allies could also be enfranchised en masse, as when Marius gave citizen­ ship to two cohorts of Urnbrian cavalry on the battlefield in 101 B.C. ( Cic. Balb. 46), or when Pompeius Strabo enfranchised thirty Spanish horsemen in 89 33. 34. 35. 36.

Kunkel 1966, 9; Brunt 1988, 299. Momigliano 1 982; 1 984, 384f. Strasburger 1968; contra, Cornell 1975. Ampolo 1 970·71 ; 1976 77; 1 9 8 1 . 3 7 . Livy 26.21 .9·12; other examples are in Balsdon 1 979, 274.

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Consciousness and Representation

B.C. (Inser. Lat. Sel. 8888 ). Under the empire auxiliary soldiers automatically

received citizenship after their term of service as part of their honorable discharge (honesta missio). The same is true of communities; Augustus, for example, gave citizenship to provincial cities as a reward for services to Rome (merita erga populum R. adlegentes [Suet. Aug. 47] ). Tacitus called it a reward for virtue (virtuti pretium [Ann. 3.40] ). The belief that citizenship could be conferred only on the deserving conditioned Roman attitudes to the manumission of slaves. The idea was that a Roman could free a slave for meritorious individual service, and that manumission could be held out to the slave as a possible reward in order to ensure his loyalty and hard work. Augustus' laws to curtail the practice of manumission were undoubtedly tied to the same ideology. The explicit purpose of the legislation was not to curtail manumission as such, but as far as possible to stop frivolous and irresponsible manumission, and to prevent the "wrong sort of people" from being manumitted. Augustus was probably responding to the pressures of public opinion (and the prejudic�i of people like Dionysius of Halicarnassus), which maintained that many freedmen were thieves and prostitutes who had bought their freedom with their ill-gotten gains, or layabouts who were manumitted so that they and their masters could receive handouts from the state. It has been well said that "the main concern of Augustus was to lay down strict rules for the modes of manumission so as to limit it to the deserving. "3 8 The Augustan marriage laws encouraged freed slaves to marry and have children; they also sanctioned intermarriage between the freed and the freeborn. These measures prove that Augustus' policy was not inspired by racial prejudice or a desire to "purify the Italian race" (whatever that might mean). Admittedly some scholars claim to have found evidence of such a policy \n Suetonius' Augustus (40.3), but the facts as we know them must rather imply that Suetonius was mistaken, or, more probably, that his statement has been misinterpreted.39 In Roman eyes a slave who established a stable family rela­ tionship was doing his civic duty and thereby demonstrated that he was fit to become a citizen with full rights. Augustus' laws therefore rewarded freedmen who produced children by removing some of the civic disabilities that would otherwise have been imposed upon them. Similarly Junian Latins (informally manumitted slaves) were rewarded with full citizenship if they produced children or if they performed service in the fire-brigade (vigiles) or some other approved activity. The idea that full freedom should not be conferred all at once is inherent in the fact that there were restrictions on the citizen rights of freedmen: they had limited voting rights, they were excluded from military service, they were obliged to perform certain services for their former masters, and their testa­ mentary rights were restricted. The sons of freed slaves, however, were re3 8 . Sherwin White 1973, 327. 39. Thus, rightly, Thompson 198 1 .

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leased from these restraints and achieved full freedom and civil rights.40 The notion that integration and full civic freedom required a period of apprenticeship and preparation before a man was properly ready for them is clearly reflected in Livy's account of the beginning of the Republic (the Libera res

publica). Livy explains that the Roman monarchy was a good thing because

although under a king men cannot be truly free, the earliest Romans were not yet ready for liberty. They were a motley crowd of vagrants and runaways and at first had no real sense of community. This could not materialize "before the ties of wives and children, and the love of the soil itself (which takes a long time to take hold) , had united them in a common partnership.""1 Livy's brief essay on liberty at the start of book 2 is an extremely important text and needs to be carefully studied in the context of a discussion of Roman attitudes to citizenship and manumission. That it was written at a time when these issues were being publicly debated is highly relevant.

These facts prompt certain observations on the connection between free­ dom (libertas ) and citizenship (civitas). The two concepts are closely linked. Cicero indeed came close to identifying them, and the inference that they

signify different aspects of the same thing is true in the sense that libertas was an essential precondition of citizenship and was itself guaranteed by it."2 In its most basic sense libertas meant the absence of servitude; and as Brunt points out,

the existence of slavery and other forms of servitude implied that freedom could not be considered a natural right due to all men. Moreover, the fact

that, like civitas, it admitted of degrees, meant that it was regarded as an acquired civic right, a juridical status that depended on personal merit, service to the state, and good character . The conclusion is that at Rome any connection between citizenship and ethnicity was attenuated to the point where it was practically nonexistent.

The Romans had nothing comparable to the concept of "patriality, " a modem British neologism that is as morally odious as it is lifiguistically uncouth."l Of course the majority of Romans obtained their citizenship at birth; but this status was not automatically guaranteed for Me. A man could be wholly or 'partly deprived of his citizenship by the censors as a punishment for a variety of offenses. These offenses, which included cowardice in battle, sexual immo­ rality, or undertaking a disreputable profession such as acting or prostitution, were a reverse image of the services by which citizenship could be earned .

40. In general, Treggiari 1 969; Duff 192 8 . 4 1 . "Priusquam pignera coniugum a c liberorum caritasque ipsius soli, cui longo tempore adsuescitur, animos eorum consociasset" (Livy 2 . 1.5). 42 . Wirszubski 1 950, 3-4; Brunt 1988, 296. 43 . The term occurs in the British Nationality Act ( 1 9 8 1 ) , certain provisions of which were racially inspired and discriminatory in intent; its aim was to grant a legal right of entry to

the U.K. to immigrants from the "White Commonwealth" (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and so on) but to refuse it to black Africans, West Indians, and Asians.

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TH E C EN S U S

The role o f the censors i n the definition o f the citizen community is funda­ mental. The idea of a census, in the form of a division of citizens into categories for fiscal, military, and political purposes, was by no means unique to Rome; many other city-states had institutions of this kind. But the Roman census was unusual in its clearly defined role, its far-reaching effects, and its strongly ideological function. Moreover the frequency and regularity of the Roman census seem to be unique. Roughly every five years the censors carried out a complete review of the citizen body and defined its membership by compiling a list of al adult male citizens and assigning them to their appropriate order, tribe, class, and century. In theory every citizen's place in the hierarchy depended on his moral character, which was assessed by an examination of his private life. In practice the censors concerned themselves predominantly with the private affairs of the aristocracy, although they were careful to curtail the civil rights of freedmen, for instance, by enrolling them in the urban tribes, and of " disreputable" persons such as actors. The censors possessed a powerful armory of sanctions; they could expel men from the senate or the equestrian order, demote them to a lower class or an "inferior" tribe, and even disfranchise them altogether, if they were found to have misbehaved. Unacceptable behavior could include, in addition to the offenses already referred to, extravagance and conspicuous luxury, failure to look after one's estates, the neglect of family rites, or the avoidance of military service. These procedures were clearly designed to reinforce the basic functions of citizenship and to give concrete expression to the idea that the right of citizenship depended on moral criteria. In short, at each census the city-state was reconstituted. As the composi­ tion of the citizen body was fluid and constantly changing, it was necessary to hold a census at frequent and regular intervals. The censors determined who the citizens were, assigned them to their appropriate place in the hierarchy, and decreed how they were to behave. At the end of the process the censors carried out a purificatory ritual called the lustrum, which involved a sacrifice and a solemn procession around the assembled citizens in the Campus Martius. This ceremony, as Mommsen argued, is best understood as a symbolic refounding of the city.44 Although it was guided by an inherently conservative ideology, the census was nevertheless a highly flexible institution that enabled the state to adapt itself to changing social conditions. The Roman community can be envisaged as a living organism, composed of constantly changing elements, but its internal structure, its genetic code, so to speak, remained the same.

44. Mommsen 1 887, II. 232 and n. 1 .

Cornell: Rome: History of an Anachronism

67

TH E CITY

In some ways the most distinctive feature of the city-state - indeed one might have thought it was a sine qua non - is its topographical integrity and compactness. But this fundamental characteristic ceased to apply to Rome at a very early date. It is remarkable, and paradoxical, that anyone should think of Rome as a city-state at all, when on the most basic of definitions it was clearly nothing of the kind for most of its history. As early as 300 B.C. its terri­ torial extent was as great as that of a modern nation-state; it incorporated numerous centers of population, some of them urbanized; and even at that early date only a small minority of its citizens were "Romani di Roma. " Nevertheless, in spite of everything, we do still think of the city, the urbs, when we speak of Rome . In this we are following the lead of the Romans them­ selves. For them the city stood as a symbol of the universal community to which they belonged. Even those who originated from other cities - and let us not forget that this group includes almost all those who now speak to us in their own words - were unable to think of Rome as anything other than The City. The city of Rome, urbs Roma, is the starting point and the central focus of Tacitus' history of the empire. For Livy, the Patavian author of Ab urbe condita, the physical city is a symbol of great significance, a fact that is not at all easy to understand. What exactly are the messages contained in the great speech he puts into the mouth of Camillus ( S . 5 t -S4 ) ? Camillus dwells at length on topographical features of the city in his emotional appeal to the citizens to stay where they are rather than move to Veii. The immediate effect is striking, but Livy's ulterior purpose in composing the speech remains obscure. It may be that much of the content is taken from earlier sources, and probably a version of the speech appeared in Ennius.45 But that does not alter the fact that the theme evidently had deep resonances for Livy and his Augustan audience. Even in the high empire the city continued .to stand for the idea of Rome. In his panegyric of Rome Aelius Aristides speaks of the empire as a city-state (polis) consisting of the city of Rome and its surrounding territorium, which encompasses the whole world. For Saint Augustine too the earthly state, which embraces the whole orbis terrarum, is symbolized by the urbs. The peculiar idea that the city was in some sense present throughout the empire could be understood in terms of a model of biological reproduction. The colonies and municipalities were seen as new versions of Rome, which could be multiplied ad infinitum. This was expressed in the symbolic topogra­ phy of their physical layout; every one of these cities had its forum, its Capitolium, and its cornitium. It is also reflected in the epigraphic "charters" that set out uniform regulations for the internal administration of colonies and municipia. The most striking instance is the so-called Table of Heraclea, 4 5 . Ennius Annals 1 54 55 Sk., with Skutsch's commentary ad loco

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which sets out the internal organization of the municipal commumties in Italy, but which starts with a detailed statement of the regulations for the administration of the city of Rome. This extraordinary fact has never to my mind been properly explained. But it can perhaps be understood, in terms of the biological metaphor, as a kind of genetic code. It seems to imply that what was true of the mother city must also be true, mutatis mutandis, of her offspring. This is an area that would repay further study. For the present let us simply note that, of all the ideological messages inherent in the notion of a city-state, this was the most persistent and tenacious of all, even though it was one of the earliest to be eclipsed by the passage of historical events. Rome, the city, has always been a powerful symbol of eternal and universal values.

RE F EREN C E S

AFZELlUS, A . ( 1 94 2 ) . Die romische Eroberung Ita liens (3 40 264 v. Chr.) . Copenhagen. ALFOLDl, A. ( 1 967) . " Die Herrschaft der Reiterei in Griechenland und Rom nach dem Sturz der Kon i ge, " Festschr. K. Sche(old (Antike Kunst, Beiheh 4), Bern, 1 3 47. ALFOLDI, A. ( 1 9 6 8 ) . " (Centuria) procum patricium," Historia 17, 444-60 . J\MPOLO, C. A. ( 1 9 70-71 ) . " S u alcuni mutamenti sociali nel Lazio rra I'VIII e il V secolo," Dialoghi di Archeologia 4 5, 37-68. AMPOLO, C. A. ( 1 976-7) . "Demarato: osservazioni sulla mobiltl sociale arcaica," Dialoghi di Archeologia 9-10, 3 3 3 45 . AMPoLO, C. A. ( 1 980) . "Le condizioni m a te r i a l i d e l l a p r o d u zi o ne , " in La (ormazione della citta nel Lazio (Dialoghi di Archeologia n.s. 1 . 1 ) , 1 5 -46. AMPOLO, C. A. ( 1 98 1 ) . "I gruppi etnici in Roma arcaica: posizione del problema e fonti," in Gli EtTUschi e Roma (Festschr. M. Pallottino) , Rome, 45-70 . AsTIN , A . E . (1978 ) . Cato the Censor. Oxford. BADIAN, E. (1968) . Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic. Oxford. BA DIAN , E. ( 1 972). "Tiberius Gracchus and the Beginning of the Roman Revolu­ tion," i n Au(stieg u nd Niedergang der romischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini, I. 1, 66873 1 . Berlin. BALSDON, J. P. V. D. ( 1 979) . Romans and A liens. London.

B E LOCH , K. J. ( 1 92 6 ) . R o m ische Geschichte. Berlin. BOTSFORD, G. W. (1909 ) . The Roman Assemblies. New York. BRUNT, P. A. ( 1971a). ltalum Manpower, 225 B.C. A . D. 1 4 . Oxford. B RUNT, P. A. ( 1 971b) . Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic. London. BRUNT, P. A. ( 1 9 8 8 ) . The Fall o( the Ro­ man Republic and Other Essays. Oxford. CoRNELL, T. J. ( 1 9 75)� "Aeneas and the Twins: The Development of the Roman Foundation Legend," Proc. Cambro Phil. Soc. 2 0 1 , 1 -32. CORNELL, T. J. (1989). "The Conquest of Italy," in The Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd ed., VII. 2, ch. 8. Cambridge. C RAWFORD , M. H. ( 1976 ) . "The Early Roman Economy," in L'Italie preromaine et la Rome ripublicaine (Melanges J. Heurgon), Rome, 197-207. CRAWFORD, M. H. ( 1 9 8 5 ) . Coinage and Money under the Roman Republic. Lon­ don. DE MARTINO, F. (1 979) . Storia economica di Roma antica, I. Florence. DE MARTINO, F. ( 1 9 8 0 ) . " Sulla storia dell 'Equ itatus romano," Parola del Passato 1 9 1 , 1 43-60 . DE SANCTIS, G. (1 960). Storia dei Romani I-II: La conquista del primato in ltalia. 2nd ed., Florence. DUFF, A. M. ( 1 92 8 ) . Freedmen in the Roman Empire. Oxford.

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FINLEY, M. 1., ed. ( 1974) . Studies in An cient Society. London. FINLEY, M. 1. (1983). Politics in the An cient World. Cambridge. FRAcCARo, P. (1 956) . Opuscula, vol. 1. Pavia. FRACCARO, P. (1957). Opuscula, vol. II. Pavia. FRANK, T. (1933). Economic Survey of Ancient Rome I: Rome and Italy of the Re public. Baltimore. FUSfL DE COULANGES, N.D. ( 1 980). The Ancient City (English trans., with a fore­ w o r d by A . Momigli ano and S . C. Humphreys) . Baltimore. GABBA, E. ( 1 976) . Republican Rome: the Army and the A llies. Oxford. GABBA, E. ( 1 979). Strutture agrarie e l'allevamento transumante nell'Italia romana (III-I sec. a. G). Pisa. GABBA, E. ( 1 9 8 8 ). Del buon uso della ricchezza . Milan. GELZER, M. (1969). The Roman Nobil­ ity. Oxford. HARRIS W. V. (1979) . War and Imperi alism in R epublican Rome, 3 2 7-70 B . C. Oxford. HOLK ESKAMP , K.-J. (1987). Die Entste­ hung der Nobilitiit. Stuttgart. HOPKINS, K. ( 1 978 ) . Conquerors and Slaves. Cambridge. KUNKEL, W. (1966) . Roman Legal and Constitutional History. Oxford. MILLAR, F.G.B. (1984). "The political character of the classical Roman Republic, 200-1 5 1 BC," J. of Roman St. 74, 1-19. MOMIGLIAN O , A. ( 1 9 6 6 ) . " Procum Patricium," J. of Roman St. 56, 16 24 ( = id., Quarto Contributo alia storia degli studi classici e del mondo antico [ Ro me 1 969]

377-94). MOMIGLIANO, A. ( 1 9 69) . " Cavalry and

Patriciate: An Answer to Professor A. A1foldi," Historia 1 8 , 385 88 ( = Quinto Contributo [1975] 634-9). MOMIGLIANO, A. ( 1 975) . A lien Wisdom. Oxford. MOMIGLIANO, A. (1982). "How to recon cile Greeks and Troj ans , " Mededelingen der Koninkli;ke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen 45, 2 3 1 -54 (= Settimo Contributo [1984] 437-62).

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MOMIGLIANO, A. (1984). " Th e Origins of Rome," in Settimo Contributo [1984] 379436 ( = Cambridge Ancient History, VII. 2, 2nd ed., Cambridge 1989, ch . 3) . MOMIGLlANo, A. and SCHIAVONE, A., eds. (1988), Storia di Roma I. Tu ri n . MOMMSEN, T. ( 1 8 8 7 ) . R o m isches Staatsrecht. 3rd. ed., Leipzig. MOMMSEN, T. ( 1 9 1 1 ) . History of Rome (trans. W.P. Dickson) . London. NICOLET, C. ( 1 976a) . Tri b u tu m : Recherches sur la fiscalite directe sous la R€publique romaine. Bonn. NICOLET, C. (1976b) . "Le cens senatorial sous la Republique et sous Auguste," J. of Roman St. 66, 20-3 8 . NICOLET, C. (1980). The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome. London. PIERI, G. ( 1 9 6 8 ) . L 'Histoire du Cens ;usqu'{J la fin de la Ripub/ique romaine. Paris. POLANYI, K. (1944) . Origins of our Time: The Great Transformation. New York . SCULRD, H. H. (1973 ) . Roman Politics, 220-150 B.C., 2nd ed., Oxford. SHERWIN WHITE, A. N. (1973). The Ro­ man Citizenship. 2nd ed., Oxford. STARR, C. G. (1980). The Beginnings of Imperial Rome: Rome in the Mid-Repub­ lic. Ann Arbor. STAVELEY, E. S. (1972) . Greek and Ro­ man Voting and Elections. London. STRASBURGER, H. (1968). Zur Sage von der Grundung Roms (Sitzungsber. Akad. Heidelberg, phil.-hist. KI.). Heidelberg. TAYLOR, L. R. (1960) . Voting Districts of the Roman Republic. Rome. TAYLOR, L. R. ( 1 966) . Roman Voting Assemblies. An Arbor. THOMPSON, L. A. (1981). "The Concept of Putity of Blood in Suetonius' Ufe of Augustus," Museum Africum 7, 35 -46. TOYNBEE, A . J. ( 1 96 5 ) . Ha nniba l's Legacy I-II. London. TREGGIARI, S. (1969) . Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic. Oxford. WALBANK, F.W. (1972) . Polybius. Berke­ ley. WIRSZUBSKI, C. (1950). Ubertas as a Po­ litical Idea at Rome during the Late Repub­ lic and Early Principate. Cambridge.

The City and the "New" Saints

C H I ARA F RUG O N I

T

HE HISTORY O F THE IDEA of the city i s the history of a divergence

that from the High Middle Ages to the age of the communes continues to narrow, albeit with some difficulty. In the beginning, there were walls, buildings, and cities of stone, which men inhabited as outcasts, each man dominated by the fear of enemy attack and of war, locked in his own house, and all of them enclosed within the circle of the city walls. Later, with social and economic advancement, a progressive confluence and fusion were achieved between the human community and the urban space. The city became the natural arena for the expression of human activities, both individual and collective. Evidence of this gradual change in attitude may be discerned not only in written sources but also in iconographic ones. Initially, it was religious sentiment, which focused on a bishop, a patron saint, or important relics, that functioned as a channeling force for the idea of the city. Little by little, a secular self-awareness expressed by the transition from the civitas to the com­ mune carne into existence. The civitas, still closely linked with the bishopric, gave way to a commune that was no longer governed by fear and a concern for its own defense, but rather became a social gathering place and the scene of intense trade and cultural exchange. Lorenzetti's magnificent fresco in the · Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, which is commonly referred to as "Good and Bad Government," is evidence of a sort of fourteenth-century eulogy to the idea of a civic and purely secular communal life.1 The rise of the Italian communes produced, among other consequences, the birth of a lay religiosity that brought to the pulpit new saints whose power to influence and act on the life of the city was augmented when they were invoked by the faithful as their compatriots. This chapter will deal with this very phenomenon. More specifically, it will focus on one aspect: the existence of female saints, who, along with their male counterparts, were canonized or, when not officially canonized, were regarded as such by the devotion of the people. These saints were largely local phenomena; frequently, 1. I take the liberty of referring to my own book: Una lontana dna. Sel'lmel'l eel immagini nel Medioevo (Torino: Einaudi, 1983), translated as A Distant City (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1990).

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their cult did not spread much beyond the city walls. Nonetheless, they served as a substitute for the reassuring role that the stark city walls used to perform. They became - and this is a new development - the symbol that epitomized civic consciousness. In the emergence of these female figures, we may also detect a moderate change in the status of women, who during the new "merchant age" participated more actively in the pulse of daily life. I will discuss in particular two saints who, although they were lay persons and therefore atypical, offer excellent examples of this phenomenon: Saint Bona, of Pisa, and Saint Fina, of San Gimignano. The earliest biographies of Bona are found in a codex of the thirteenth century that is still partly unpub­ lished.I She was born around 1 1 56 and led a life fully oriented toward the external world. Bona supported herself as a weaver. She also had some talent as a practitioner of the medical arts. She was expert in resetting broken and dislocated bones. For example, Bona was said to have introduced herself to a noblewoman, who had broken her arm falling off a horse, in these terms: "I'm a medical practitioner . . . Bona di San Martino of Pisa who has come to make you well. "3 She traveled extensively, making a number of pilgrimages: twice to Jerusalem, nine times to Saint James of Compostella, and frequently to Rome. It was the economic situation of the city, which was experiencing a period of prosperity and growth due to its intense trade and relations with lands overseas, that permitted Bona such mobility. Pilgrimages and business voyages thus were naturally intertwined in urban affairs. Toward the end of her life she continued these voyages in spirit only, since her body, weakened by illness, prevented her leaving Pisa. Bona liberally granted advice, which was frankly practical. This makes her life interesting for it also illustrates customs of the era. While still alive she comforted the dying daughter of one of her followers, Sinibaldo, by appearing to her in the company of a group of saints. Bona's biographer knew that it was rare to find a living person with such a pure spirit. According to the Church, sainthood may begin only after death. The biographer considered this incident, then, a sign of the particular favor that Christ had granted Bona. For us, however, it is a sign of a new religiosity that demands the profound involvement of the saint in the life of her city. The same follower, Sinibaldo, also asks the saint whether he should initiate his son into the merchant trade. I will disregard, for now, the miracles that are considered coercive. These will be considered in detail in my subsequent discussion of the Vita (Life) of 2. The manuscript C 1 81 is located in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Pisa. For bibliogra­ phy and biographical information se the entry "Bona da Pisa" in the Dizionaria biogra(1CO degli Italiani, vol. XI, ed. E. Massa (Rome: Fondazione Treccani, 1969) and my article, " St. Bona, pellegrina 'per desiderio'" in Gli universi del fantastico, ed. V. Branca e C. Ossola (Florence: Vallecchi, 1988) 259 73 . 3. "Medica sum . . . Bona Sancti Martini Pisani, que, ut te sanem, adveni" (Ms. C 1 8 1 , f. l 1 9r).

Frugoni: "New" Saints

73

Saint Fina. Coercive miracles consist generally of acts that serve to consoli­ date the cult of the saint, for example, the punishment and pardon of those who do not wish to observe a day of rest in commemoration of the saint's feast day. Among these also are wondrous acts, whose recipients are particularly distinguished persons or nobles. The involvement of people of such high social status ensures the reliability of the witnesses' accounts. I will direct my attention instead to a category of miracles, the innovative ones, that have as their focus the ocean and its tempests. These are obviously related to the economic conditions of Pisa. In many of these miracles it is not the sailors but the ship that is emphasized and whose name is given. One story begins this way: "A boat with four galleys, named Leone, was in such great danger from a storm that the men already saw death knocking at their door."4 A similar miracle involved a boat with two galleys and one that was still anchored at the port of San Giovanni d'Acri which was protected from being shattered by the waves through the intervention of the saint.s Bona also provoked a shipwreck when she did not approve of the economic agreement stipulated without her knowledge between a fellow citizen and a woman whose goods were to be shipped: "You were wrong to have made such a deal," the saint scolded the man and then threatened him with the impending disaster. The woman, however, "scoffing at the prophetic words, made the boat weigh anchor anyway, but a thing sad yet wonderful to recount ocurred: all that Bona had predicted came about." Thus the biographer concludes that the woman and all the others learned not to scoff at the words of the saint.(j At any rate, it is plain that in a city where economic ties are extremely important, the hagiographic model adapts itself to the social reality. The attention of the saint was directed again to a means important both for communication and for commerce: a horse. It naturally was of particular value, "estimated to be worth one hundred pounds." It had fallen suddenly and was stretched out in the stall: "He lay still and did not move even if you pulled on his limbs, his ears or his tail." The entire family hovered over him anxiously. Finally, the wife of the horse's owner fell to her knees and prayed fervently to the saint, asking her, "because of the gravity of the damage, to agree to save the dying beast." All of a sudden, the horse, "ignoring all the others who continued to massage him, turned to the woman and fixed his gaze upon her alone as if to agree that Bona should be called in to help."7 A moment later, the saint made the horse jump to his feet. 4. " Quadam navi, que Leo dicebatur, cum quatuor galeis, propter commotionem maximam maris in tanto periculo constituta, quod homines existentes in ipsis iam iam mortem in ianuis estimarent" (Ms. C 1 8 1 , f 119r). s. Ibid. 6. "Que, irridens verba prophetica sancte Bone, per a1iam misit navim, sed, mirum et triste dictu, omnia, sicut &aneta Bona predixerat, evenerunt. Unusque divinitus est salvatus, qui, ad simillitudinem Job, rem gestam predicte do mine nunciaret et per consequens beatam Bonam veridicam in omnibus comprobaret" (Ibid., f. 1 1 4v). 7. "In iIIiam solam oculos direxit et fixit, quasi ei innueret ut iIIam [Bonam), cuius memorata fuerat, pro sua Iiberatione rogaret" (Ibid., f.120v). .

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Consciousness and Representation

Remembering the pained and intense gaze that Bona succeeded in elicit­ ing from the animal - which reflected the looks of her devoted followers I will take my leave from her and turn to Fina. Fina of San Gimignano was a young girl suffering from a terrible illness, which she bore with stoic patience. After her death, she not only saved and cured individual followers, but protected the entire city. On one ocasion, for example, she extinguished a fire that was threatening a neighboring city. Her works allow us to reconstruct the pace of life in a small medieval town, seen in the context of its emotional and civic sentiments, and to reawaken a time that would otherwise be unrecorded. Let us look at a short biography, written by the Dominican brother Giovanni da San Gimignano in the early fourteenth century at the request of Frate Goco, then rector of the hospital dedicated to Saint Fina.8 The saint, whose life was one of long illness and torment, was rightfully protectress of a hospital, in the same way the martyr Saint Lucy, who was blind, protected those who could not see. Fina's Vita cannot be confirmed historically; in many respects it follows the canons of the hagiographic feminine model and in particular that of a virgin. For example, her short life was spent entirely within domestic walls, where she serenely accepted her terrible physical sufferings with admirable patience. Her modesty and prudence were especially praised. From the similarity between her account and the lives of her readers, it is easier to grasp the new idea of the saint as role model, a notion proposed at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Additionally, the wealth of quotidian detail demonstrates life in a small medieval commune. We do not know the date of Fina's birth, only that of her death, 12 March 1253. Giovanni da San Gimignano simply informs us of this date, which in a saint's life is the most important, because it marks the beginning of a new life in paradise. Therefore, this is the day that is celebrated as her feast day in the liturgical calendar. Moreover, because on March 1 2 Saint Gregory the Pope is also honored, the friar can introduce both a lovely prediction and a pious devotion: eight days before her death, she dreams of the Pope, "to whom the poor girl had always been especially devoted.'" In this vision he predicts her imminent death. Giovanni had recorded that Fina was completely paralyzed as an adolescent,lo but he could not resist asCribing to her gestures -

8. lbis information comes both from the introduction that the Bollandist Fathers included in the Vita and from the actual preface to the Vita published in AA.SS. Martii, III (XII Martii) Antverpiae, 235-42. From this point on all quotations from the Latin text will furnish only the page number. 9. "Ad quem ipsa dilecta Dco singularem devotionem habuerat," 238. 10. "In puellari constituta aetate, puerilibus se iocis non miscuit, sed iuvencularum mulierum lasciviam penitus declinavit" (Having reached the first years of adolescence, she did not indulge in children's games and absolutely did not take part in the vanity of young girls, p. 237). lbis is a perfect portrait of the virgin saint who is, also naturally, very beautiful: "ve­ nusta facie tolDque corpore pulchra" (beautiful both in her face and body, ibid.), who prefers to stay at home ("domi Iibenter manens"), and if compelled to leave the house keeps her eyes always lowered, "abhorring the impure glances of men" since she is already married to Christ. Giovanni prefaces this description with the cliche, "an honest wife is good, a temperate

Frugoni: "New" Saints

75

appropriate to a devoted follower: Fina gives thanks by raising her eyes and hands to God and bowing her head "as much as she was able" toward the Pope.ll The saint herself recounted this vision to a group of women, her blood relatives or spiritual kin. After Fina's death these women spread the news of this wonder to many other people.11 This is the first hint of that net­ work of strong personal and affectionate ties that unite the inhabitants in their common citizenship. They support Fina in her moment of need; they help her and therefore feel they have the right to ask for favors and miracles from their compatriot. Fina was not only very beautiful, she was also of noble birth. All female saints must be beautiful but must also disdain this natural gift. Their hereditary nobility - and this is another topos - guarantees the nobility of their con­ duct. A further proof of her virtue was that her brother Ciardo, in Sicily, was considered, even during his lifetime, a "saint." 13 Finally, her parents gave her a name that prophesied her future destiny (nomen, omen): Fina, which may mean " quasi finem assecuta," that is, she reached the end of her ascetic experience on the earth, rising from one reward to another until reaching the blessed heavens.14 The friar suggests, making a concession to the vernacular of his public and using more practical explanations, that Fina was given this name because "that which is considered good and excellent is usually called fine or very fine. " Although her father Cambio was a nobleman, he had fallen on hard economic times ( "paupertate despectus" ) . He apparently died very early because no further mention is made of him. Her mother, Imperiera, and the saint herself must have lived in an extremely precarious economic situation. From her earliest years Fina worked assiduously - following the example of the Virgin - with a needle and a loom ( "colo et acu" ). The friar, seeking to avert the hint of what he considers to be a social stigma, remarks that this was "not to alleviate their indigence" but rather "to avoid the temptations that idleness would induce. "15 The biographer returns time and time again to the question of her pov­ erty, whether voluntary or involuntary, that- is, a result of either difficult circumstances or of spontaneous sacrifice. He resolves the question with elaborate reasoning and laudatory comments, which do not succeed in masking his discomfort with this problem. Fina, "knowing that Paradise was promised

widow is better, b ut best of all is the pure virgin" (buona e I'onesta coniugale, rnigliore la eontinenza vedovile, rna ottirna e ritenuta la purezza verginale, 237). 1 1 . "Levatis ad Dorninum rnanibus, et oculis sursum erectis, devotas et hurniles gratias reddidit Redemptori . • . . Deinde prout poterat, reverenter inclinans caput saneto Pontifici, eiusdem se devotius gratiae eommendavit, " 238. 12. "Disparuit visio quam ipsamet Dei famula, cum multa hurnilitate postea revelavit quibusdam sibi farniliaribus foerninis, et spirituali sibi farniliaritate coniunctis . . . quod totum dietae foerninae post sacrum iIIius obitum . . . pluribus retulerunt," 238. 13. We have no other information about him. 14. P. 237. (Translator's note: In Italian the etymology of the word (ina suggests both something refined or elegant and a goal or an end.) 15. Ibid.

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to those who are poor in spirit, bore her poverty with a contented heart: what necessity had imposed, became for her a voluntary choice." She accepted "with modesty and tears the alms and gifts offered by pious and charitable men and women. She would be sad when the gifts were too generous and happy if they were modest."I' (Note how much solidarity existed between the saint and her fellow citizens. ) Was this reaction related to the accumulation of charity, which she thought was excessive in light of her not extreme poverty? Her biographer, by stating that Fina was never worried about the next day, that she never saved food but was quick to give all leftovers to the poor, seems to favor this hypothesis. Or was Fina's attitude related to the fact that other people's charity made her suffer, because she felt as if she were being pushed into the typical situation of the "shamefaced poor" ?17 I tend to agree with this latter hypothesis, especially because her father had already been described with the precise technical term "paupertate despectus. " In the bustle of the life of the commune, where people's fortunes are unstable and subject to frequent and rapid change on account of famine and war, the economic situation can easily become unbearable for the poor whose needs cannot be met. In fact, society considers them a threat to its very stability. On the other hand, the sudden rise of the new merchant class and with it the consolidation of its values, which are rooted in wealth and prosperity and implied by this new and different social structure, can cause a crisis for the old ruling class, the aristocracy. However, the aristocracy remains an ideal point of reference for the merchants who wish to appropriate its ideology and values and to take its place. Saint Francis is a case in point. Before his religious conversion, he was a rich merchant who wished to become a "knight" or perhaps even a "prince." He displays the traits of a typical aristocrat: a desire to possess a magnificent palace which sparkles with armor for his noble, future bride; the desire to appear generous, even to excess, and courtly. Mter his conversion he did a complete social turnabout: he became poor and lived among the indigent. He shared their life and its discomforts with an obsessive disdain for money, an unpleasant reminder of his origins. II The second generation of Franciscans al­ ready found it difficult to understand the positive value of absolute poverty and its discomforts. Salimbene de Adam is proof of this development:19 he is ashamed to beg from door to door and shows a diffidence toward the simple, the poor, and the uneducated people who wish to join his religious order. 16. "Quod intulerat necesitas voluntarium faciebat" (ibid.). 1 7. The reflections of A. Spicciani, "La povena 'involontaria' e Ie sue cause economiche nel pensiero e nella predicazione di Bernardino da Siena" in Am del Simposio Internazionale Cateriniano-Bernardiniano (Siena, 1982) 8 1 1-34, are useful even though they apply to a somewhat later period. 1 8 . C. Frugoni, "La giovinez di Francesco nelle fonti (testi e immagini)," in Studi medioellali 25, 1. ( 1 989 ) 1 15-43. 19. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. crit. ed. G. Scalia (Bari: Laterza, 1966) vol. I, 161ff. For the young Salimbene (these are memoirs of 1 129), begng is "labor erubescibilis et intolerabilis ultra vires."

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Giovanni da San Gimignano, after a brief reflection on poverty, returns to the well-trodden path of traditional hagiography. Fina may righdy lay claim to all three qualities of sainthood since she was virgin, martyr, and confessor. She is like a white lily in her virginity, like a blood-red rose in her martyred life, and like a sweet-smelling violet in her humble demonstration of her faith.20 Even this cliched metaphor may soften, with delicate pietas, her dreadful death. As described in her biography, when Fina beomes paralyzed, she decides to lie on a hard board for the rest of her life, and, being compelled to rest on the same side, she witnesses the decomposition of her flesh. She watches worms invade it and mice devour it. After her death, as her corpse is removed, portions of her putrid flesh remain attached to the wood, from which pure and sweet-smelling flowers sprout instandy. (Naturally, the rest of her corpse also immediately gives off a soothing fragrance, as a reflection of the heavenly perfume that envelops the elected in their abode. This is typical of the destiny of saints. ) At once, "someone" picks one of the newly sprouted blossoms and carries it some distance to people not present so that they might see it and inhale its fragrance. This same person brings it back reverendy, as if it were a precious relic. The biographer does not specify who performs this gesture. However, it is important to underscore how a need was felt to organize immediately a cult for her and to share it with as many people as possible, even those who were not present at her death. The whiteness and the perfume are reminders of her purity and ensure her beatification. Iconographic conventions immortalize the saint with white flowers and violets in her hands.21 This is appropriate because March coincides with the blooming of violets - the type of flower her biographer had already symbolically associated with the saint. The yellow violets that still sprout from the city walls of San Gimignano are known as "the violets of Saint Fina." The people believe these flowers are a gracious gift from the "child" saint.22 Following her death, heavenly forces, devils and angels, gather to let everyone in San Gimignano know that Fina is ascending to paradise. The demons, in a rage at being unable to capture her, let loose a vicious storm of rain and wind that sows terror. (It was a persistent, popular religious belief that attributed to demonic forces the power to unleash the elements.) A short time before the corpse of the saint is taken to the church, all the church bells in San Gimignano start to toll. The biographer makes a point of naming the 20. P. 236. 2 1 . For information on the iconography of Saint Fina, cfr. J. Vichi Imberciadori, Fina tki Ciardi, un simbolo nella realta storiea e sociale di S. Gimignano (San Gimignano, 1979) . 22. Whereas for Giovanni da San Gimignano Fina was a young girl whose virtues consisted precisely in the fact that she resisted the temptations of adolescence, her modern-day followers have forgotten the pastoral preoccupations of another age. They maintain affection and compassion for a saint whose iconography defines her with the delicate and harmonious features of a young girl asleep on a bed of flowers. In fact, this is how Domenico Ghirlandaio painted her in the chapel built in her honor in the Collegiata of San Gimignano.

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bells of the Chiesa Maggiore and the other churches. The tolling is not due to human . effort but to the force of the angels. According to Fina's biographer, the angels, participating fully in communal life, thus become heavenly mes­ sengers, in the manner of town criers who anounce, as if they were fellow citizens, important local events. The deafening toll of the bells does not sumon the townsmen for a fire or a sudden uprising; instead they proclaim that a premature burial of Fina's remains is taking place. Public opinion demands that the tomb remain open for the admiration of the public in expectation of the miracles sure to follow. The bells mobilize the masses, who then force the church official to leave the saint's corpse on display in the choir of the Chiesa Maggiore for a short period. Two days later, a miracle ocs, "coram multorum oculis."lJ This leads us to surmise that a crowd held vigil in the church continuously. Fina's first miracle respects the hierarchy of affections. She cures Beldia, "custos et nutrix," who was a second mother to her.24 One of her last miracles is also of this type. Beldia invokes the saint's help, and obtains it, for her daughter who is suffering from a lump in her breast.2S Fina, paralyzed as a young girl, became an orphan shortly after. One day, her mother, coming home, stumbled on the threshold and died from injuries suffered in the fall. The saint, hearing the noise from upstairs where she lay unable to move, immediately sent a good-hearted woman named Bonaventura, to see what had happened.26 Our biographer tells us that this woman had volunteered to collect alms and to help the young paralyzed child from time to time. When Bonaventura exclaims, "What will you do now that your mother is dead?" Fina lifts her eyes and notices a snake wound around the beams of the ceiling, staring at her with "menacing eyes." The child immediately decides that the beast has caused her mother's death. However, it is the biographer's opinion that Fina, being as ingenuous as a dove, does not realize that the animal is no ordinary snake but the serpent from the Garden of Eden. An agitated conversation follows in which Fina asks that Maestro Guineldo come, take a ladder, and climb on the roof to kill the serpent. Guineldo, who, the biographer adds, is a neighbor, hurries over. Neither Guineldo nor Bonaventura can see the monster to which Fina contin­ ues to point. Finally, she realizes that this is not a real snake but a demonic vision inspired by God. In fact, it vanishes as soon as the saint makes the sign of the cross. The knowledge of this divine intervention enables Fina to bear the pain of her mother's death. This incident illustrates the physical arrange­ ment of a medieval street, where the houses were very small and close to one another. (The ladder Guineldo brings would have been tall enough to reach

23. P. 238. 24. Ibid. 25. P. 240. 26. The biographer is slighdy confused as to her name. At one point he calls her Bonaventura (p. 240) and at another Benvenuta (p. 241 ). Perhaps this is only a copyist's eror.

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the roof! } This proximity made for continuous contact among the inhabitants and fused them into a kind of single family. The despair and pain caused by the sudden death of Fina's mother are rationalized and explained by the intervention of the supernatural. I again emphasize that this is a manifestation of how natural it was to think of the devil as a component of everyday life, to which a death could be attributed with the same degree of plausibility as any concrete and tangible cause. Even when faced with the fact that only Fina is able to see the devil, the biographer - who is sure of the consensus of his readers - does not admit the possibility that the monstrous presence might be less than certain. After all, the exclama­ tion "it was the devil that killed her" may well have been just the expression of the unbearable grief the daughter felt at being suddenly and unexpectedly left an orphan. Notwithstanding her affectionate neighbors, the young girl, once left all alone, rapidly sinks toward death. In this final phase of her life, Fina is assisted by yet another kindhearted woman, the same Beldia discussed earlier. To alleviate Fina's pain, this woman raises the invalid's head but in doing so keeps her own hand immobile for so long that it becomes stiff and swollen. A grateful Fina dedicates to Beldia her first miracle. Although dead and laid out in her coffin, "the saint raised her arm and, in front of everybody, took the swollen hand of her nurse" - who had stayed by her side as if Fina were still in need of assistance - and healed her. Her biographer states that she takes Beldia's hand three times and massages each finger carefully { "singulis eius digitis studiosa perscrutatione palpatis " } . Perhaps I am stretching the meaning of the text, but does not such a precise description suggest that Fina was in the habit of resetting broken and dislocated bones? Would this skill not have been amplified in light of the reputation for saintliness that undoubtedly surrounded the child even during her lifetime? {With regard to another miracle, which I will discuss in greater detail later, the biographer comments that Fina "sanandis quoque vulneribus . . . exercuit chirurgiam. " } Fina's miraculous hand is next placed on the broken knee of a baby named Melina, to restore it. By then, knowledge of the miraculous powers of the deceased had spread. Her third miracle occurred in a more mediated fashion. A man named Saladuccio had to undergo periodic operations that left him close to death each time because of the severity of the pain they caused. Having heard of Fina's miracles, he vowed, if she would heal him, to fast on bread and water to honor her feast day. He also promised to gird her sepulcher with wax every yearP Of course, his prayers are answered. This last miracle is particu­ larly significant because it marks the beginning of a more structured organiza­ tion of the saint's cult. It also inaugurates a celebration of her feast day, formalized by a penitential ritual that is renewed every year. The miraculous

27. "Si eum suis [of Final meritis Dominus liberaret, sepulcrum filo cereo annualiter cingeret," 239.

powers of her corpse are replaced with another, equally efficacious power: the devotion that, now, the saint is able to command. Shortly after this, Fina's remains are finally buried. Giovanni da San Gimignano moves on to the description of the miracles that occurred "post sepulturam. " They follow one another in canonical order: First, the paralyzed and deformed are cured, then the possessed are purged, the prisoners are freed, the shipwrecked are saved, and finally, the dead are resuscitated. The biographer is careful to point out each time the hometowns of all those who requested her intervention. With the passage of time, they came from farther and farther away. He proudly cites this as proof of the saint's ever-widening circle of renown. Like ripples in water, Fina's fame spread. From all over Tuscany they came, even forming processions, carrying baners, and playing musical instruments. Some of the disabled came in smaller groups or stragled in one by one on the backs of mules or limping along on crutches. (Th� biographer has a compassionate impulse toward these unfortunate souls whom he always sees perched on "asinelli" and leaning on "crocciae," the vernacular terms used by the invalids themselves.) Giovanni reaches the point where he attributes to the devil the affection that he himself holds for the saint. In fact, Giovanni has him call her, not by her proper name, but by the afectionate nickname "Finuccia" : "Why do you torture me, Finuccia? "28 But the devil's defeat is not immediate. The person possessed had been taken to Fina's sepulcher "quasi violenter" and had found peace for fifteen days, the length of time he wore on his finger the ring that had been the saint's in her lifetime. This is a duel between two opposite types of magic: the magic of a ring that bindsl' - especially if it belongs to a saint - against the enchanting magic of evil.30 When the ring is returned to its owner, his troubles begin anew. In the end, the devil, with good-natured impertinence, declares that, as a sign of his departure, he will break a lamp and take a cap off the head of one of the bystanders. (Miracles are always attended by a large crowd. ) Having found the expedient of the lamp, the devil will have recourse to it every time he is exorcised from the body of a man or woman possessed. Evidently, he liked the noise of breaking glass and the confusion it caused. He acts the same way in the town of San Vito di Putignano in Bari. A merchant named Cino from San Gimignano, having landed in that town, went into the local abbey, where he found a young girl, recently married, who was screaming because she was possessed by the devil. (The insistence on her tender age and recent marriage suggests that her agitation had a different cause. The biographer himself seems to be somewhat con28. "Cur me torques, Fin ucia ?" 239. 29. On the magic power of rings, efr. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Polk Literature (Bloomin gton and London : Indiana University Pres 1955) vol. VI, under Ring. 30. Bona's ring, which had be given to her by Christ when they were join ed in spiritual matrimon y, was considered a relic. Giovani da San Gimignano frequendy calls Fina "Christ's bride Her ring must have asumed a special value as a symbol of the divin e union ."

and thus of virginity and purity.

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scious of this . ) Cino steps forward and engages in a battle with the devil "in the name of Saint Fina of San Gimignano" that ends with the prompt libera­ tion of the "iuvencula" from the clutches of the devil. The abbot, struck by "such a magnificent miracle," has an image of the saint painted and placed in the church.l1 The cure of other people who were possessed then continued to take place before Fina's likeness. Many men and women possessed by the devil decided to leave San Vito and make a pilgrimage to San Gimignano, to be cured in front of the very sepulcher of Saint Fina. They returned to their homes healed, with their hair and clothes changed as a tangible sign of their new liberation.12 We have here a perfect example of the exportation and diffusion of a cult. Cino makes Fina's name known even in Puglia. The miracle is the cause of the painting that becomes a site for the adoratibn of the saint. The painted image assumes the same value as that of a relic and it has the power to attract pilgrims to the saint's hometown. These pilgrims, carrying the visible signs of the miracles they received, in the strange manner of their hair and dress, become in tum propagators, during their long voyage home and within their own countries, of the miraculous powers of the saint. We can therefore see that trade routes may coincide with those of religion. Fina's miracles do not occur only in her "physical" presence (that is, before her remains or her image). The young saint descends from the sky to wherever a follower of hers, in danger of shipwreck or drowning, may call her. The biographer, carried away by his enthusiasm, compares her to Christ. He quotes Matthew (8:27), changing the language to reflect a feminine subject: "qualis est haec, quia venti et mare obediunt ei? " It is noteworthy that often the shipwreck victims are merchants, surprised by swollen river waters or faraway seas. They are also frequently from San Gimignano, which confirms the vigor of communal activity and amply justifies the expression "civic religiosity" that was coined to describe this phenomenon.ll Sacchetti, aware of this phenomenon, noted with displeasure how many "new" saints, both male and female, had been "promoted" in his lifetime and commented that this trend would relegate, to the recess of our memory, earlier saints who had a solid tradition behind them - including even the Virgin Mary and our Savior.34 These miracles, as we have already seen with Saint Bona, place the emphasis on the endangered boat. It is the craft that is the subject of the miracles. The merchant and the public to whom the Vita is directed share the

31 . "Prefatae sancte Finae imaginem in ecclesia pingi fecit," 240. 32. "Veslibus aut capillis dimissis" (Ibid.). 33. A. Vauchez, Us Iaks au Moyen Ag. (Paris: Cerf, 1987), se especially chapter XV, "Patronage des saints et religion civique dans l'Italie communale", 169-86. 34. F. Sacchetti, I Semtani evangelici, Ie lettere (Florence: Le Monnier, 1 857) 2 1 5 and following, "To come to the point . . . that is, Ghino the Marquis of Cittadella said, that these 'santi novellini' made people lose faith in earlier saints."

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same point of view. This conditions the biographer and religious man who describes with trepidation the sea in the midst of a squall that is certainly threatening to drown men, but most of all, jeopardizes the load of goods, which is at least as precious as the boat itself. Following this same line of thought - and it was discussed in conjunc­ tion with the life of Saint Bona - many animals are healed, for example, horses and mules, which are indispensable for travel and trade. Oxen also are healed and this is an indication of the interaction between the commune and the surrounding countryside. The biographer uses the prestigious example of Saint Biagio, who often cured animals. Since Saint Fina emulated his patience, it is only natural that she follow his lead in the type of miracles performed. In other instances Giovanni da San Gimignano called on the authority of even more famous saints to create a worthy backdrop for Saint Fina. For example, he mentions the virtues of Saint Cecilia and the power of Saint Agatha to put out fires. The friar describes no fewer than seven stories of shipwrecks that were prevented, the largest number of miracles in that Vita. The number is eloquent testimony to the fact that the desire for wealth and economic well-being was felt to be higher on the scale of values than the hope of recovery. Moreover, the merchants distinguish themselves by the generosity of their donations. Naturally this is due to their superior economic possibilities. Among the donations left at the tomb of the saint are a new type of votive gift: not a wax impression of an arm or a foot as a physical reminder of their gratitude for the restored limb, but a painting of a miracle in which merchants are protago­ nists ( "imaginem pro signo facti miraculi" ) .3S The painted wooden panels ex­ press the donor's desire to be remembered by his fellow townspeople as well as by out-of-towners and by his descendants. He wants to remain on center stage as the protagonist of an extraordinary event. The birth of the painted votive offering goes hand in hand with the rise of realistic portraiture and autobiography. (Unfortunately, we have only written testimony of these objects; no concrete samples have survived. ) It is part of the discovery of the individu­ ality of man and his value: a discovery that was favored, if not actually created, by the urban boom. Another interesting category of miracles involves prisoners. These recipients of the saint's help left at her tomb the chains that had bound their hands and feet. The fact that they also have a right to miracles without a word about their guilt helps us understand how the saint's cult expressed the need to redress social injustice. Prison was seen as a terrible and unjust condition, so difficult to remedy that it demanded a miracle. Having demonstrated her ability to influence men and animals, Fina measures her skills against the elements. An awful fire broke out in a village and spread very rapidly. A priest, rector of the church, who preserved as a precious relic part of a shirt that had been Saint Fina's, hoisted it on a stick 35. P. 240.

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"like a flag" and advanced courageously toward the flames. The fight began. The description of the miracle draws from a repertoire of comparisons to the hustle and bustle of communal life. The fire halted its advance, " as a living entity, retreating in terror at the sight of the enemy's flag. "36 Then the fire quickly died. The penultimate miracle also stands out from a horizon brimng with weapons and fighting. It emphasizes, with some urgency, the need to honor the saint's feast day by abstaining from work. By now, Saint Fina's feast day is solidly established in San Gimignano. It is celebrated every year and observed with a day of required rest. Once a man named Cambio, on Saint Fina's feast day in an exceptionally cold March, was urged by his wife to cut firewood. He acquiesced. Once in the forest, with the second blow of his axe, he cut his leg instead of the wood, badly wounding himself. He repented immediately and sought the saint's help, which she generously agreed to provide. From that moment, Cambio became an especially devoted follower of Saint Fina. Every time he found himself in danger, he turned faithfully to her. According to his testimony, he went into battle eleven times and was almost always on the loser's side. He always escaped with his life, even if he was exposed to great danger, and repeatedly ran the risk of almost certain death. His com­ rades, who seemed to have a better chance of escaping, wound up dead. He never doubted that he had been especially blessed by the saint.37 The last miracle was considered the most spectacular. The saint brought a baby who had died back to life. While apologizing for the brevity of his account of the saint's life, the biographer considers this the most difficult and a most worthy ending to his garland of praises to Fina. Miracles are supposed to persuade the faithful that the saint is believed in by her followers. But these miracles must be neither so numerous nor so magnificent as to deprive the public of the possibility of identifying with the saint or break the familiar tie that binds her to the faithful. The Vita was written to inspire devotion, but it also declares itself to be an example of ideal Christian living and therefore · must remain a model that is possible for its read'ers to emulate. In an appendix to the biography, Giovanni is careful to furnish the list of witnesses who gave testimony in favor of Fina. Also included is the form they were requested to follow in giving their testimony regarding a miracle they had personally experienced or of which they had knowledge. In addition, they had to provide the name of the notary who collected their information. In the presence of other notaries, then, the heritage of the saint's fame was handed down. Giovanni felt it was necessary that everything be confirmed by the fides publica. Even at the beginning of the biography, he was careful to reveal his sources, oral testimony of the elderly, and written accounts collected "in

36. "Nam statim in se rediit ignis, nec ultra processit, ut coeperat, ac si res quaedam animata fuisset, quae viso vexillo hostis territa retroisset, 240. 37. Pp. 240-1. n

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quaternis quibusdam et schedulis. " He proposed to detail the stories of the miracles and of her virtue cum ordine "so they may be learned and memo­ rized more easily" ( " discuntur facilius -et melius retinentur").J8 The Dominican was, therefore, fully conscious of the requirements of a "historical" work and of the objectives that he was trying to reach. These preocupations, rendered so explicitly, demonstrate how even the hagiographic genre reflected a new attitude toward the past and history, an attitude which would reach its climax in the wonderful chronicles of Villani and Compagni. These accounts reflect a new civic self-awareness, and for this reason the history of Florence is no longer the history of a city but the history of the men and women who live and work in it. Another noteworthy characteristic is the commitment of the mendicant orders, especially the Dominicans, to propagate and promote these new urban saints, an interest they cultivate because these new convents were located within the city walls. The new orders and the laymen have much in common; they live in the same territory, and use money as a means of exchange. They are called on professionally to function as guides to the new urban dwellers and to confront the reality in which they live. A network of memories sustains the diferent biographies because already well-known elements belonging to the lives of other saints of the order are elaborated and reinforced by the echo of this one. For example, Saint Peter of Verona, a Dominican martyr (1203-1252), puts out a fire by smothering it with his cloak. The same miracle is attributed to Saint Margaret of Citta di Castello, who belonged to the third order of the Dominican Penitents and died around 1 320. Her life seems to have been written near the end of the fourteenth or at the beginning of the fifteenth century.J' It is not a coincidence that her life story was placed in the same manuscript, next to those of two other Dominican saints, Vanna of Orvieto and Catherine of Siena. We have seen that Fina's shirt had the power to conquer flames. Giovan da San Gimignano offers as an authoritative precedent the case of Saint Agatha. In that instance, the fire covered the entire village, but the saint succeeded nonetheless in saving all of her native Syracuse. Therefore, the Dominican martyr is, in a sense, the founder of the victorious confrontation with fire. Much like the story told about Saint Fina, the corpse of Margaret of Citta di Castello had just been laid out in the Dominican church of the city, when the saint raised her hand to cure a young mute and paralyzed girl whose parents had placed her next to the casket. Similarly, Saint Catherine of 38. The biographer uses principles of mnemonic technique for memory retention culti­ vated by the mendicant orders for the transmission and reception of their sermons. Se C. Frugoni, "Das SchachspieI in der Welt des Jacobus de Ceslis," in Das Schachspkl von Jacobus tU Cesolis, ms. Vat. Pal. lat. 961 (Stutlgart: Belser, 1989) 35-79. 39. C. Frugoni, "Su un immaginario posibile di Margherita da Citd di Castello" in II movimento Teligioso femminile in Umbria nei seeoli XII-XIV (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1 984) 205-1 6.

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Siena went to kiss the foot of Saint Agnes of Montepulciano and saw it rise to offer itself for her devotion. The same biographer, Raymond of Capua, direc­ tor of the monastery of Montepulciano from 1 363 to 1366, penned the lives of Saint Catherine and Saint Agnes.40 The modest and ordinary life of Fina allows her fellow citizens to iden­ tify with her and to see in her a mirror that makes daily life brighter and more bearable. In the eyes of the devoted, Fina is right next to and may even replace Gimignano, the former patron saint of the city, who although an important personage, a bishop, was nevertheless an out-of-towner. He was in fact from Modena. Taddeo di Bartolo painted him in 1393 in the center of an enormous altarpiece.4l In it, the bishop-saint is sitting on a throne, giving a benediction. On the sides four small scenes recount episodes of his life and meritorious works. The city, unusually large, rests peacefully in his lap (fig. 1). It is de­ scribed in great detail, with its squares, city walls, gates, and green areas, but most of all, in the bundle of very narrow towers that culminate in the Palazo Comunale, which dwarfs the others in the center of the painting. The only church present is on the right side, almost in the shadow of the city walls. It is certainly not in an important location.4l By contrast, when Frederick II lay siege to Parma and was threatening to destroy it, the rich women of the city - it is important to note that they were female citizens - turned to the Virgin. So that their prayers would be more penetrating, they commissioned a miniature of the city in silver that would represent "the largest and most important buildings of the city, like the duomo . . . the baptistry and the bishop's palace and the communal palace and many other buildings that were meant to reflect the image of the city." Salimbene de Adam, who witnessed the work in progress, said that the "mater misericordiae" interceded on behalf of the city with Christ so that he ·freed Parmam civitatem suam - that is, the Madonna's city - from the enemies who were threatening it. Frederick II's army was defeated in 1247.43 The fact that religious buildings head the-list of a description of the city and the fact that it was to the Virgin and Christ himself that the people turned in their time of trouble are indications that the citizens' first recourse was to divine assistance. The novel element is the mobilization of the rich ladies of Parma and the fact that they requested a special protection from the Madonna for a city that, it was felt, belonged in some way to her.44 With the altarpiece of Taddeo di Bartolo we descend from the divine to the human. In this case man turns to other men. The bishop does not intercede for the commune by praying to God and the Virgin. It is he himself who 40. 41. 42 . 43.

C. Frugoni, "Su un immaginario," cit., 213. Localled in the Museo Civico in San Gimignano. C. Frugoni, Una fontana ana, 84 5. Salimbene de Adam, op. cit., 283. 44. In Sermoneta, one may still se the altarpiece painted by Benozzo Gozzoli that shows the Madonna enthroned with a model of the city in her lap.

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protects and blesses the spectators. He is depicted in a vignette defending the city from the invasion of Attila and, in yet another, freeing it from the highwaymen who laid siege to it in 1 342. The figure of a woman praying peeks out from among the houses and towers. A woman is the personification of the city from its earliest history. We may surmise that, in this case, the traditional iconography was reinforced by the emergence of the new patron saint's cult. Thus, it is even more appropriate that a woman embody the anxieties of the city in a setting that involves the bishop-saint inside the same city walls. San Gimignano becomes a city of towers and only towers in the magnifi­ cent painted wooden panel of 1402 that depicts Saint Fina standing in the midst of stories from her life. The city is identified by the writing in the vernacular, and Lorenzo di Niccolo Gerini places a miniature of it in the saint's hands (fig. 2).45 The city peers out from the cloak that protects her like the one of Our Lady of Mercy. The painter has grouped eight episodes that sumarize her short life history. In the first, we see Fina already paralyzed and attacked by mice while her mother kneels by the side of the bed. Maestro Guineldo is also there to help her. He is trying to chase away the animals. Fina's house is connected to her neighbor's by stairs from which Guineldo had just descended. Underlining the image of the city as more than just a collection of buildings but rather as a human presence, a woman is depicted leaning out of a window of Guineldo's house to observe the saint. The background of the second scene remains the same; however, the actors change. This time we see her mother on the floor being assaulted by an animal against which man alone is impotent: a dragon, that is, the devil. Guineldo watches in horror. Fina lifts her eyes to the beams of the ceiling where the beast is roosting. In the third scene, we see the saint still in her house, where she has expired. On the board where she lies, pure white flowers have already sprouted. Kneeling around her is a group of distinguished citizens, summoned by the chorus of church bells that angels, who are pictured in the background on the bell towers, are ringing with zeal. In the fourth scene, Fina's body is being carried in a procession, while her nurse Beldia is being healed by the saint's hand, which is miraculously raised. The other four scenes of the painting are dedicated to the miracles Fina performed " after her burial (fig. 3) ." The first scene at the top shows her tomb of stone in the church above the altar� Surrounding it, a crowd of men and women watches, in the presence of the clergy, the first exorcism. A priest with his hand in the air speaks with the Evil One, who in the shape of a bat is emerging from the mouth of the possessed. The placement of the saint above the tomb is a visual convention which explains to whom the sepulcher belongs. In the second scene, Fina descends from heaven to catch a carpenter who is falling from the scaffolding of a house under construction. He is pictured twice, at different points of descent: in the first a board has just given way, 45. This panel

can

also be found in the local museum.

Frugoni: "New " Saints

87

and in the second he is miraculously caught while falling. This rescue is not mentioned in Giovanni's biography. It suggests the power images have to spread this new type of sainthood, an image perfectly able to develop the history of the saint, independent of the written text. This scene evidently reflects the desire to involve Fina as much as possible in the life of the city and also reflects special pride in the vigor of its construction trade. The focus of the scene is the building whose roof is still being completed and around which the workers are busy. Their tools are pictured in great detail. Two citizens ­ whose elegant clothing is a sign of their wealth and importance - are witnesses to the miracle. Their social class guarantees the validity of the miracle. The third scene is dedicated to a fire that has been subdued. Much of the scene illustrates the city in flames. A crowd of people, who are kneeling, watch with trepidation while a young woman approaches the flames with confidence. She is holding Saint Fina's blouse on a long pole. Here too, there is a discrepancy with the written text. The Dominican friar wrote that a priest had taken the initiative, whereas in the panel he is replaced by a woman. The anonymous young townswoman is a way of alluding to the patron saint, who is present merely through her relic. Even Saint Clare of Assisi, who was perhaps the preeminent cloistered nun, was placed by the collective imagination of the people of the thirteenth century on the bulwarks of the city, to defend it from the assault of the Saracens, with the help of a ciborium that held a consecrated host. This gesture assigns her a priestly role. In fact, a follower of Guido of Siena painted the saint in this way in the diptych of Saint Clare around 1260.46 However, the record of her canonization states that the saint had simply placed a small box containing the consecrated host next to the securely closed doors of the monastery.47 The fourth and last scene of the panel by Niccolo Gerini depicts a shipwreck. In the boat, which is at the mercy of the waves, the men struggle to no avail. Some of them work the sails, and others lighten the boat by throwing goods overboard. The saint descends and, with a sure hand, helps two merchants who instead are seeking the only true assistance possible. She sees them with their hands joined in prayer. The fifth to the eighth scenes are a collection of four votive offerings on permanent display. The popularity of this type of icon that depicts the story of a saint's life and miracles was perhaps reinforced by the desire to preserve the painted votive offerings that are so perishable in nature. It also serves to organize them in a cohesive manner. From Taddeo di Bartolo, who specialized in painting miniatures of cities, we have an extraordinary portrait of Montepulciano ( 140 1 ) with fenced orchards and meadows within the city

46. The diptych is located in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Siena. A reproduction of it can be found in the corresponding catalogue, 00. P. Torriti (Genoa: Sagep, 1977) 37. 47. "II processo di canonizzazione di S. Chiara d' Assisi," ed. a cura di Z. Lazzeri, in Archiuum Franciscanum Historicum XIII (1920) 403-507, 471 -2.

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walls that the patron saint Antilia offers to the Virgin. Next to her Saint Agatha is depicted in the act of showing her chest.48 In the fresco of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Treviso (in the church of the Servants of Mary) painted between 1360 and 1370 by Tomaso of Modena, which is unfortunately very damaged, the eponymous saint holds the city in her hand (fig. 4).4' The words, "haec est civitas mea Tarvisina pro quam Deum meum rogo" are shown emerging from her mouth. The pulse of city life is evident in the coats of arms on the towers and in the flag of Treviso, which flutters from the highest one; in the church under construction, in the large church bell that sets the urban pace of work, prayer, and other events. A large crowd leans out from the walls in a supplicating posture. They are no longer only the symbol of devotion for the saint but have become an active part of the painting. They immortalize their faith and a request for protection. The image also expresses the new concept of the city as a strong link between man and stone, between the active presence of its inhabitants and the buildings that compose it. What I have discussed up to this point does not follow a linear and diachronic path. What is lacking is a more detailed study of the relationship between the female patron saint and her city. For now, I will be content to reach, from across the centuries, for a comment of Franco Sacchetti. When discussing the "new" saints who were displacing people's faith in earlier ones, he expressed the opinion that the female counterparts, even though saints, had not forgotten they were daughters of Eve.so

48. C. Frugoni, Una lantana citta, cit., 84 and fig. 38. (The painting is located in the cathedral in Montepulciano.) 49. Tomaso da Modena, (Catalogue) ed. L. Menegazzi (Treviso, 1979) 74. 50. He also recalls Saint Umiliana dei Cerchi, the bles Giovanna and the blessed Villana, all Dominican: "The preachers . . . have Beata Villana, who was my neighbor, a young Florentine woman, and she used to dres like the others, and now she is already feasted as a saint; St. Dominic stands aside"; F. Sacchet, op. cit., 217. Thanks to F.nlinda Campani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this esy from Italian. -

Frugoni: "New" Saints

Fig. 1 San Gimignano, Museo civico, Taddeo di Bartolo, San Gimignano (detail from San Gimignano and episodes of his life).

89

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Consciousness and Representation

Figs. 2 and 3 San Gimignano, Museo civico, NiccolI'> Gerini,

Episodes from the life of Saint Fina.

Frugoni: "'New" Saints

Fig. 4 Treviso, The church of Saint Catherine, Tommaso da Modena, Sa int Catherine of Alexandria with the model of Treviso.

91

City and Citizen: Changing Perceptions in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries ALISON BROWN

OTIDNG

SERVES BETTER to conjure up images of one's beloved city than absence from it. "I love generally all our city's men, the laws, the customs, the walls, the houses, the streets, the churches and the countryside," Francesco Vettori wrote to Machiavelli from Rome in 1513. "Nor would 1 have greater displeasure than to think this city had to suffer and these things . .. go in ruins."1 Leon Battista Alberti, born an exile from Florence, thought that the greatest of all pleasures for a civilized man was to "wander through cities and provinces" and gaze on " the temples, the theaters,

N

buildings of every kind made pleasurable to look at by man and nature."2 For Machiavelli, it was the hustle and bustle and changeability of urban life that distinguished " big cities" like Florence, Rome, and Athens from "these deserts of Arabia" in provincial Carpi;l and the same qualities also made Florence or "as it might be Rome or Pisa" - the natural setting for comedy, another of the attractions of city life.4 This provides a clue to the analogy between ancient and medieval city­ states at one level of civic consciousness, as a shared memory of city life. It was their size, their buildings, their laws, and their customs that enabled cities like Rome, Venice, and Florence to identify w�th Rome and Athens and feel

1 . 20 August 1513, ed. F. Gaeta, Machiavelli, Lettere, (Milan, 1961) 285: "Arno generalmente tutti gli huomini di quella pa cina nostraJ, Ie leggi, i costumi, Ie mura, Ie case, Ie vie Ie chiese et iI contado, ne posso havere il maggior dispiacere che pensare quella havere a ttibolare et quelle cose havere andare in ruina." 2 . De commodis IitteTarum atque ;ru;ommodis, ed. L. G. Carotti (Florence, 1976) 50: "Etenim voluptatum prestantissiina et Iibero homine digna una ilia est per urbes provinciasque vagari, multa et templa et theatra, menia atque omnium generwn edificia spectare, locaque ambire, que tum natura amenissima, grata munitissima, tum manu et ingenio hominum fuerint ad conspectum pulcra. " 3. As he told a friar disillusioned with the fickleness of prostitutes in Florence, letter to F. Guicciardini, 1 8 May 1521, Lettere, 409-10. 4. La Mandragola, in 11 Tea tro e tutti gli scritti letteTari, ed. F. Gaeta (Milan, 1977) 56: "Questa e Firenze vostta; un'altta volta sara Roma 0 Pisa," cited by H. Levin, "Notes towards a definition of City Comedy," in Renaissance Genres, ed. B. K. Lewalski (Cambridge, Mass., 1986) 131. . . •

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"homely confidence" in ancient literature.s We clearly should not exaggerate the importance of specifically classical ingredients in this generalized love of city; indeed, it is difficult to isolate them. Nearly all Italian towns were built on classical foundations, cathedrals rising from pagan basilicas, marketplaces located on ancient forums. In the fifteenth century, as earlier, classical and Christian elements were merged to form a cohesive whole.6 The locus of philosophical discussions in Alberti's dialogues is not the academy but the cathedral, which provided not only a meeting ground for citizens but "shadow enough to cover the entire Tuscan population," in his imaginative image.7 More than the walls, the cathedral thus served to unite the whole Florentine dominion in the fifteenth century. And what was true of Florence was even more true of Venice, whose basilica San Marco became the potent center of civic ritual. 8 Nor was there any conflict between citizens' patriotism, or campanilismo, love of their city'S bells, and their loyalty to the Church. Giovanni Rucellai combined pleasure in being born in Florence, "which is considered the wor­ thiest and most beautiful patria not only in Christendom but the whole world," with satisfaction that he was also born "in the middle of the faith, that is, near Rome, the residence of our most holy lord pope and his honorable brothers, the cardinals, who represent Christ with the apostles."9 Patriotism continued in this period to underpin religion as a bond to cement the antago­ nistic classes of these mobile and socially diversified cities. Remigio de' Girolami, member of an old aristocratic Florentine family as well as a Dominican teacher, does not perhaps illustrate "popular" sentiment, but his sermons on patriotism, with his well-known depiction of the citizen of a destroyed city as "a painted image or a form of stone," succeeded by the fifteenth century in creating widely shared civic pride.lO What better evidence of this than the be-

5. G. Billanovich, explaining Landolfo Colonna's "constant references to matters and places most familiar" to him in his Livy, "Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14 (1951) 167. 6. See J. Le Goff, "L'immaginario urbano nell' Italia medievale (sec. v-xv) " in Storia d'Italia, Annali 5 (Turin, 1982) 543; C. Frugoni, Una lontana cittl (Turin, 1983); A. I. Galletti, "Modelli urbani nell'eti comunale: Gerusalemme ," in Modelli nella storia del Pensiero Politico, ed. V. I. Comparato (Aorence, 1987) 89-101. 7. De pictura, preface dedicated to Brunelleschi, architect of the dome ed. C. Grayson (London, 1972) 32-33: "ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti e' popoli toscani"; cf. Profugiorum ab aerumna, Opere volgari, ed. C. Grayson, ii (Bari, 1966), esp. 1 07-9. In the Novella del Grasso legnaiuolo attributed to Brunelleschi, it was in the Duomo, on a working day, that the master

carpenter met Brunelleschi and Donatello, "che s'abdavano ragionando insieme, come era di loro usanza," ed. C. Varese, Novellieri del Quattrocento (Turin, 1977) 70. 8. E. Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, 1981), and on the Saint Mark legend, Patricia Fortini Brown, "The Self-Definition of the Venetian Repulic," in this volume. 9. Giovanni Rucellai e il suo Zibaldone, ed. A. Perosa (London, 1 960) 1 17, cf. 65-78, listing the beauties of Aorence and Rome. 10. "Unde destructa civitate remanet civis lapideus aut depictus, quia scilicet caret virtute et operatione quam prius habebat," De bono comuni, ed. M. C. de Mattei, La "Teologia politica e comunale" di Remigio de' Girolami (Bologna, 1977) 18; cf. C. T . Davis, "An early Aorentine Political Theorist: Era Remigio de' Girolami," Dante's Italy (Philadelphia, 1984) 198-

223.

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havior of Florentines in January 1409, who emerged after a memorable four days' snowfall spontaneously to construct not snowmen but the civic insignia: "a great quantity of lions - beautiful, too - on almost every corner and in the loggias"; and on the piazza of San Michele Berteldi a "six-foot Hercules."l1 By the mid-fifteenth century this patriotism was widely diffused among the citizen class, who now modeled themselves closely on classical precedent. One man who claimed "not to be very clever and to have no grasp of the important matters under discussion" repeatedly intervened in policy discussions in Florence in the 1450s with quotations from Sallust, and analogies drawn from "ancient examples" and "the fall of Rome," to urge the need for sacrifice and unityY In other debates, citizens cited Aristotle to argue for humanity in administering the republic and the use of the middle way, "Aristotelico more," and one citizen - in a confused but pleasing transference of gender roles - stood up to argue that one's patria is like a materfamilias who, having brought up and educated her children, needs protecting by them . in their adulthood.13 It was at the level of politics that the analogy between classical and medieval Italian city-states was felt most keenly. As Pocock reminds us, the theory of the polis is essentially "political theory in its purest form," and it offered a valuable paradigm to Italian communes about how to govern cities with the mixed and changeable populations described by Machiavelli: "A city composed of interacting persons rather than of universal norms and traditional institutions."14 The message of the popular Aristotle was participation by all for the sake of the common good - a high risk commitment, as Pocock says, because unless everyone loved his country more than his soul, corruption and despotism would result: "Once justice ...was identified by the distributive

11. Bartolommeo del Coraz, Diano fiorentino, Arch. Stor. Ital. ser. 5, 14 (1894) 246: "Fecionsi per Firenze grande quantili di lioni e begli: quasi in sun ogni canto ne era unOj e aile loggie, grandi e begli: e fessi in sulla piazza di San Michele Berteldi uno Hercole lungo ii braccia, e stette bene." Since Savonarola imprecated against "quelli Erculi e quelle cose vane" erected by children who "vortiano fare qualche festa," instead of crucifixes, it was clearly a custom that continued, Prediche sopra Ezechiele, ed.R. Ridolfi (Rome, 1955) ii, 208 (12 March 1497). Hercules had been represented on the communal seal since at least 12 8 1, D. Marzi, La Cancellena della Repubb/ica fioren tina (Rocca San Casciano, 1910) 377 85. 12. Donato Cocchi, ASF Cons. Prato 55, fols. 25v, 31r-v, 38v (2 4 July 1458): "cum parvi ingenii sit, res magnas quemadmodum haec sunt se non intelligere dixit," "veteribus exemplis" (38v), "excidii plurimarum urbium imprimis Romanae urbis" (31 v)j d. Coluccio Salutati's lerters arguing that "sicut Grecie civitates inter se de imperio dimicantes omnes imperio caruerunt, sic nos in defensionem discordes optatissima, quod cum dolore precogitamus, carebimus libertate," Missive la Cane. 16v, quoted by R.G. Witt, Coluccio Salutati and his Public Letters (Geneva, 1976) 50. 13 . ASF Cons. Prat. 60 fols. 14v (Domenico Martelli): "laudavit summum magistratum & decemviros Aristotelis auctoritate qui civilem administrationem humanam et clementem esse iubet et tyrannidis contrariam"j 13v (Franco Sachetti): "Paa-iam matrem familias dixit ... Itaque succurrendum esse matri censuit e proprie et ab omni iniuria et ignominiam vindicandam." (Jan. 1468); 137r (idem) : "In ea ergo medium si inveniri possit perquirendum Aristotelico more" (March 1472). 14. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975) 74-5.

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Consciousness and Representation

justice of the polis, salvation became in some degree social, in some degree dependent upon others." Greater familiarity with classical texts as they were rediscovered and translated encouraged more detailed comparisons with the structure and con­ stitutions of ancient cities.1s Bruni's 1403 Laudatio of Florence, modeled on Aristides' Panathenaica, set the pace, to be in turn imitated by Pier Candido Decembrio's De laudibus Mediolanensium Urbis in comparationem Florentiae panegyricus in 1436, and "in a kind of turning inside-out" of Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini's 1459 Gratio in laudem Rei Publicae VenetorumY; Underlying their obvious rhetoric and imitation was a serious attempt to analyze the political and legal, as well as the physical, structure of Italian cities in terms of ancient republics, culminating in Machiavelli's prolonged reflections on Roman re­ publicanism in his Discourses on the First Decade of Livy. Thus for Bruni, Florence's liberty consisted in its short-term offices and absence of a single head, as well as in the legislative sovereignty of its two councils; equality consisted in the subjection of all citizens to communal laws and the special protection afforded to commoners from assaults by the nobles - under the control of the Guelf party, which he compared to the Roman censors, Spartan ephors, and Athenian Areopagites. When he analyzed the constitution again in 1439, for the benefit of Greek visitors to the Council of Florence, he explained it in terms of Aristotle's polity or middling constitution that excluded both the highest and the lowest classes from government.17 In Venice, by contrast, the best analogy for its mixed constitution of doge, senate, and Great Council (all drawn, after 1297, from a closed nobility) was provided by Plato's Laws. Plato was not initially popular as a model for republican communes, though providing, through Cicero's De officiis an early argument for patriotism and unity. The first translation of The Republic, for the duke of Milan in the early fifteenth century served only to make a familiar moral point about how easily republics decline into tyrannies.18 It was not un­ til the middle of the century that George of Trebizond's translation of The Laws was used to provide a model of mixed government for Venice, to be developed in greater detail in Contarini's De magistratibus.19 In: Florence Plato was adopted as a model only in the second half of the fifteenth century, encour-

15. A. Grahon and L. Jardine, FTom Humanism to the Humanities (London, 1986), esp. 5 8-98, for an account of the detailed investigation of classical institutions encouraged by new teaching methods in the fiheenth century. 1 6 . F. Krantz, "Between Bruni and Machiavelli: History, Law and Historicism in Poggio Bracciolini," in Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. P. Mack and M. C. Jacob (Cambridge, 1 98 7) 131, the reference to which lowe to Julius Kirshner. 17. Bruni's Laudatio is translated in The Earthly Republic, ed. B. G. Kohl and R. G. Witt, 135-75, esp. 168-74; his 1439 On the Constitution of the Florentines in The Renaissance, ed. E. Cochrane and J. Kirshner (Chicago, 1986) 140-4. 18. F. Adorno, "Uberti Decembris prologus in Platone De Republica, in Stueli in onore eli Antonio Corsano (Manduria, 1970) 10. 19. Ibid., 14-17; F . Gilbert, "The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought," in Florentine Studies, ed. N. Rubinstein (London, 1968) 468-70.

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aged - as I have argued elsewhere - by the growing power of the Medici as unofficial rulers of the city. Then the revival of the Platonic corpus helped to project the Medici as philosopher rulers, who combined power with wisdom by using all the tricks of the ·ancient trade: bread, circuses, triumphs, exile, and penal taxation together with art, culture, and a philosophical academy.20 Above all, however, it was republican Rome that provided the most appropriate - and easily accessible - analogy for Italian communes. Most obviously it was the polarity of the senate and the people that offered com­ parison with the communes' dual councils of the Commune and the People, the popular captain acting, like the tribune in Rome, as protector of common­ ers against. the nobles. According to Machiavelli, following Livy, it was the clash of interests between the nobility and the people that preserved Rome's freedom, hence the value of the Roman model to Italian city-states. Yet not everyone interpreted the analogy in this way, as we can see from the Milanese chronicler, to whom the ideogram S.P.Q.F., inscribed in Roman letters on a shield in Florence's communal palace, immediately signified Florence's propagandis­ tic claim to be Rome's political heir, "as though Florence had been left heir to Roman liberty!" he expostulated.l1 Within Florence in the later fifteenth century, reflecting the move toward greater elitism, the contrast between senate and people was used not to distinguish nobility from commoners as two balanced poles in the constitution, but a senate of qualified officeholders from the rest of the populace - a significant shift from a polarized power structure toward a more unitary one.22 At the same time republican terminology was used to legitimize changed procedures increasing the power of the government: rogation to legitimize the use of non-notarial secretaries to draft laws and subscribe letters, and e republica 20. A. Brown, "Platonism in Fiheenth-Century Florence and Its Contribution to Early Modern Political Thought," Journal of Modem History 58 (1986) 383-413. In Bartolomeo Platina's De optimo cille (ed. F. Battaglia [Bologna, 1944)1 83), Lorenzo revealingly asks the question "Qui de republica scripsere, probaruntne ludos? .An haec consuetudo ut alia permulta irrepsit vimque legis in civitatibus cepit?" to which Platina replies that games did not replace laws in republics, since Cosimo not only liberated his city from external enemies but provided it with laws and institutions. 2 1 . A. Biglia, Historiae patriae libri nollem, ed. L. A. Muratori, RIS XIX (1723) col. 33, cited by Diana Webb in her "doctoral thesis, "Tuscan Historiography, c. 1400-c. 1360, and the Problem of Florentine Hegemony in Tuscany" (University of London, 1977) 33: "Romanis literis inscriptum S.P.Q.F. tanquam florentino nomini relicta esset romanae Iibertatis haereditas." On this claim, which gave Florence as heir to Roamn republicanism "by hereditary right, dominion over the entire world," see Bruni's Laudatio, 149-552. 22. On the use of senate for the signoria and colleges, see P. Rajna in Arch. Stor. ltal., ser. 7, 13 (1930) 189-206; on its use for the Settanta, A. Brown, Bartolomeo Scala, 1430-1497, Chancellor of Florence, (Princeton, 1979) 262, and for the Ottanta, J. Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, ed. A. Gelli (Florence, 1 858) i, 431: "'I senato cioe il consiglio deg1i ottanta." Scala uses the formula "senatus populusque" in letters and orations from 1466 (for example, ASF Missive 1a. Canc. 45, fol. 106r, letter to Ferrante of Naples, 23 September 1466) and restricts the function of governing to the senate in his 1496 Apologia, Brown, "Platonism," 403. Cf. L. Carbone's speech in Florence in 1473: "lnvero mi parse vedere una similitudine del Senato romano," cit. E. Garin, "Motivi di cultura filosofica ferrarese nel rinascimento," in La cultura filosofica del rinascimento italiano (Florence, 1961) 403. '<-J',;) J h -to;; .il cif � _..�) �.

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98

Consciousness and Representation

to legitimize the granting of unrestricted prerogative powers to individuals for the public interest.1J Other admired Roman republican practices included methods of election to office, exile "for the sake of one's country," censuses, and the system of rewards and punishments for patriotic or treacherous citizens.14 Where circumstances did not encourage active republican government, as in Rome or Milan, its ethos was kept alive by other means. The conspiracy of Stefano Porcari and the Academy of Pomponio Leto served as focuses of republicanism in Rome, where traditions of ancient games, bull hunts, and pasquinades were consciously developed as a counter-culture to clericalism.2S In Milan, the assassination of the duke in 1476 (masterminded by Cola Montano, an alienated academic) was immediately compared to the deed of "Scevola the Roman," "a worthy, virile, and praiseworthy undertaking," carried out by students of "Catalinario" "who wanted to imitate those ancient Romans and be liberators of their country." 16

TH E LI M I T S OF CIVIC I NV O LV E M ENT Influenced by all this, there was general recognition of the common ground shared by ancient and medieval city-states. This seems to suggest that the analogy between classical and Italian city-states was based on shared if -

23. Cf. Brown, Scala, 1 73-92, R. Fubini, "Classe dirigente ed esercizio della diplomazia nella Firenze quattrocentesca," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Florence, 1987) , esp. 178-82. 24. L. Bruni, Historiarum Florentini populi, ed. E. Santini, RRII XIX (3) (Citti di Castello, 1926) bk. V (1323) 122 : that the Roman system of election to office is better than the Florentine system of lot; Platina, De optimo cive, 193: "Civitas enim nostra Atheniensium morem imitata, dominatum affectantes, aut in exilium mittit aut ad tempus relegat"; Bartolommeo Fonzio's Dictionary, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, MS.152, fol. 100r: "cui quidem persimilis census noster est, quem nos catastum appellamus"; ASF Cons. Prat, 60, foJ. 159v, etc., that Lorenzo was prepared to suffer exile for the sake of his patria; F. Guicciardini, Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze, ed. R. Palmarocchi (Bari, 1 932) 1 36 : "gli antichi savi che ordinorono Ie republiche . . . ordinorono el premio e la pena, dicendo saviamente che erano el fundamento delle citta ." The public funerals and tombs of Bruni and Marsuppini and the title Pater Patriae awarded to Cosimo de' Medici followed this tradition, as Marsup p ini explained in a letter to the Bolognese on 1 July 1445 (ASF Missive la Canc. 36, foJ. 1 1 5v): "solebant antiqui eos qui patrium ex servitute in libertatem vendicassent, non solum amplissimis honoribus ornare et honestare, verum etiam statuis publicisque monumentis decorare. Cf. the speech of M . Salamonio de Alberteschi a s captain o f the people i n Florence i n 1498 comparing Florence's social structures to those of Athens, De principatu libros septem nee non orationes ad priores florentinos, ed. M . d' Addio (Milan, 1955) 10l. 25. C. L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington, Indiana, 1985) 71 -72; A. Reynolds, "The Classical Continuum in Roman Humanism: The Festival of Pasquino, the Robiga!ia and Satire," Bib!. d'Humanisme et Renaissance 49 (1987) 289-307; M. Boiteux, "Chasse aux taureaux et jeux romains de la Renaissance," in us Jeu" a la Renaisance, ed. P. Aries and j. -C. Margolin (Paris, 1982) 33-53 . 26. Storia di Milano VII (Milan, 1956) 3 07; quoting from Luca Landucci's Diario, ed. I. del Badia (Florence, 1883) 14-15; A. Rinuccini, Ricordi storici, ed. G. Aiazzi (Florence, 1 840) cxxv; E. Casanova, "L'uccisione di G. M. Sforza e alcuni docurnenti fiorentini," Arch. Stor. Lomb, ser. III, 12 (1 899) 306-7: "E studiavano el Chatilinario" ; cf. Machiavelli, Discorsi, III, 6 (ed. S. Bertelli, II principe e Discorsi sopra Ia prima deca di Tito Livio, Milan, 1973, to which all subsequent page numbers refer) 407. n

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eclectic and unclearly defined - political ideals and customs as well as on a shared experience of city life. But there are problems with this analogy on both the levels I have discussed. However warm and all-embracing Italian cities were, with their protective walls, patron saints, and sociability, it is clear from stories like that of the Grasso Legnaiuolo, who was persuaded by Brunelleschi and his friends that he was someone else, that cities also encour­ aged alienation and loss of identityP Machiavelli illustrates this other face of urban life in his poem on The Golden Ass, which escapes from all traditional models to present an original and disturbing view of city life. By contrasting the angst of city dwellers with the happier existence of Circe's "beastly" animals in the harsh countryside, Machiavelli most obviously challenges the Florentine proverb "honor does not dwell in the woods ... worthy men are made in cities," which was quoted approvingly by Gino Capponi to his sons in the early fifteenth cen­ tury.28 But the poem also offers an alternative reading of Florence's much­ vaunted urbanism in the fantasizing story with which it opens, in which, far from civilizing him, the sight of via Larga, the Michigan Avenue of Florence, opening out "so straight and spacious" before him, awakens the boy's old malady: his hair beginning to rise, he scarcely reaches the top of the street before he casts off his cloak and runs away forever.29 Nor did Renaissance cities themselves represent the civic modesty and republicanism they were once believed to represent. Rereading Florentine palaces through the eyes of contemporaries, as F. W. Kent is teaching us to do, we find they are as dominating and imperious as the medieval towers and castles they replaced. A student from Padua was stupefied by their immensity and "massive protruding stoniness," like Valhalla "fit for Jupiter and the gods." To someone else, Luca Pitti's palace suggested Caesar's Rome, while Giovanni Rucellai's, in his own eyes, was evidently analogous to that of a Roman citizen who had received "great honour ... on account of his building a most beautiful palace . . . on the Palatine Hill." And far from being reticent and utilitarian, as used to be suggested, the seale and bossy surface of the Medici palace in via Larga in fact carried scarcely concealed messages of imperialism and grandeur, setting "the stylistic terms within which most other Florentine palace builders were to work for the rest of the fifteenth century. "30

27. La nollella del Grassolegnaiuo/o, 47-82. 2 8 . Cited by F. W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence (Pri nceton, 1977) 250-5 1. 29. "DeU'asino d'oro," II Teatro, 229-302 , esp. 270-71 . The same story, located now

in Ferara ("in queUa bella, lunga et larga strada, la qual nel vero e la piu bella eli Ferrara"), was repeated in 1546 in a letter from G. GuarnascheUo to S. Magrini in Florence ed. G. Papanti, Due lettere cunose e (aute del Guarneschello non mai stampate (Livorno, 1872) 7-8. 30. F. W. Kent, "Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth-Century Florence," I Tata Studies 2 (1 987), esp. 51-2, 67. For an earlier interpretation, see C. S. Gutkind, Co sim o de' Medici (Oxford, 1 938) 220-21, quoting Vasari's life of Michelozzo. ,

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The political language of the later communal period carried similar mes­ sages of alienation and growing autocracy beneath its apparent egalitarianism and republicanism.31 The few republics that survived into the fifteenth century did so by transforming their constitutions. The dualism that had initially protected the people now only served to perpetuate factionalism, and measures were taken almost everywhere to close the political class, unify the legislative councils, and create tough police magistracies with summary powers of justice. Belied by the triumphal republicanism of their architects, the political alien­ ation of this later period provides evidence of changes that are otherwise difficult to document. The elitism of medieval communes has been a theme of revisionist histo riography for some years now. What was new in the fifteenth century is evidence of passivity and reduced participation, even within inner elites. John Najemy has already identified the beginning of these changes in Goro Dati's willingness to leave politics to others, once he knew he was part of this elite: "I have resolved and sworn to myself that I shall not henceforth invoke the aid of any or attempt to get myself elected to public office or to have my name included in new purses. Rather, I shall let things take their course without interfering."32 By 1472 someone in a consultative meeting apologized for spealcing before his turn, "because having been called on again and again, no one else would give their opinion."33 In 1490 the Medici had difficulty in finding a representative citizen to join a literary banquet for a visiting scholar.34 And even after the revolution of 1494 and the establishment of the popular Great Council of some 3,000 citizens, Savonarola found it difficult to get its new members to participate. He had to tell them that votes were more important than rhetoric: having let the leading citizens have their say, he advised, they should, if they disagreed, go to the rostrum and say "the reasons given are good, but it seems to me there are other reasons to consider" - and then give their reasons forcefully and say at the end, "So it seems to me, with due respect to opinions better than mine" - but they should not believe all they were told, however.3S 31. Referring to the inequality of a city that has become corrupt (like Thebes and Italian cities of his own day), Machiavelli said that to restore equality it was necessary "to take steps which are by no means normal," DiscoTSi I, XVII, 179: "e necessario usare grandissimi straordinari. 32. Two MemoiTs of Renaissance Florence, ed. G. Brucker (New York, 1967) 125, re­ ferred to by J. M. Najemy, CorpoTation and Consensus in F/oTentine ElectoTal Politics, 1280 1400 (Chapel Hill, 1982) 301 3 , 3 09. 33. ASF Cons. Prato 60, fol. 1 37r (Franco Sacchetti, 5 March 1472) : "cum nemo iterum atque iterum vocatus sententiam dic eret, precatus veniam quod ante locum suum diceret. On Sacchetti, see now M. Phillips, The MemoiT of MaTco PaTenti (Princeton, 1987) 59-6 1 . 3 4 . Piero to Lorenzo de' Medici, 10 May 1490, ed. W. Roscoe, The Life of LOTent;O de' Medici, ii (London, 1796) Append.lxxi, 96-7: "per torre un cittadino, et non uscire di parente et letterato, togliemmo Bernardo Rucellai," cited by R. C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance F/oTence (New York, 1 980) 446-7. 35. See my article "Savonarola, Machiavelli and Moses: a Changing Model," in F/oTence and Italy. Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. P . Denley and C. Elam (London, 1988) 6 1 . "

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His warning provides supporting evidence of a growing awareness of the limitations of communal government in the late fifteenth century and the difficulty faced by ordinary people who tried to participate in the political debate. By the early sixteenth century both Guicciardini and Donato Giannotti commented on the same problem. "In our times, and especially in our city," Giannotti wrote, " there are very few brave enough to speak before a large crowd," the greatest problem being "to get people to speak up, so unused were they to speaking before a large audience. " To overcome their diffidence, Guicciardini suggested that the Gonfalonier invite people to go up to the rostrum to give their opinions, "to make them accustomed to this way of speaking and discussion. " Not long after this, he confided to his intimate memoirs the danger of being ruled by unskilled leaders and his acerbic view of the populace at large: "a mad animal gorged with a thousand and one errors and confusions, devoid of taste, of pleasure, of stability."36 TH E US ES OF REPUB LICAN ID E O LOGY

The distance between political reality and republican ideology in this later period suggests we must investigate the function of this ideology carefully. It has generally been assumed - as it was by E. J. Bickerman, whose article we have particularly considered37 - that there was a close resemblance between the political structures of ancient city-states and Italian communes. The re­ publican features both shared were open access to citizenship (controlled in Rome by the censors, in the communes by the councils on the basis of residence and tax paying), a temporary elective headship (the consuls, soon superseded in Italy by elected external judicial officials, the podesta and the captain of the people, with a very short term elected head-of-state), and ultimate control by two citizen councils chosen by differing combinations of locality and wealth (the Councils of the Commune and of the People in Italian communes, both chosen by a combination of locality and wealth, in contrast to Rome, where the comitia tributa was based on locality and the comitia centuriata on wealth; the later comitia or consilium plebis alone re­ sembled the Council of the People in excluding the nobility). Whereas in Rome officeholding was restricted to members of the senate, who were men of equestrian standing, this was true of only Venice, after 1297, not of other communes where offices were open to all citizens. As we say, however, this was a feature of the Roman model that increasingly appealed to late-fifteenth­ century Florentines. .

36. D. Giannotti, Della repubblica fiorentina, Opere palitiche e /etterarie (Florence, 1850) 2 16-7; Guicciardini, Dialogo del reggimento, 122; Ricordi, ser. C, nos. 137, 140, ed. R. Spongano (Florence, 1951) 149, 152; translated by M. Domandi, Maxims and Reflections (Philadelphia,

1965) 75-6.

37. E. j. Bickerma n, "Some Reflections on Early Roman History," Riuista di fi/alogia e di istruzione classica 97 (1969), esp. 404-8.

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Consciousness and Representation

And although nobility/popolo (or plebs) may be correlate terms, it is not true that the political role of the popolo in Italian communes developed only in response to the closure of the patriciate, as Bickerman suggests, since the societates populi anticipated the 1297 Serrata in Venice, as well as the much later closing of the ruling group in Florence in 1494. In contrast to Rome, where the plebs were early on incorporated into the ruling group, or "nobil­ ity," in Italian communes (with the exception of Venice) the popolo played an independent role in government as members of the guilds. In Florence, ac­ cording to the Ordinances of Justice in 1293, they even managed to deprive the magnates (defined as families possessing two knights) of a direct role in government altogether. Because medieval Italian cities, unlike ancient cities, were preeminently centers of trade and commerce, the merchant class played a more dominant role in them than in ancient cities - without being able to monopolize power, however, due to the continued residence there of the nobility. The senate and people model would seem to have obvious appeal to Italian communes attempting to integrate these two divergent social groups. But now that the myth of the Roman city-state has been dispelled by Cornell as an "artificial construct, based more on ideology than on historical reality," we need to examine very carefully its function in the later medieval com­ munes.38 This is not just because of the obvious economic, social, and religious - as well as political - differences between ancient city-states and medieval communes. Interestingly Venice, the city-state that most closely resembled Rome with its closed patriciate and powerful senate, was late in developing an interest in Roman republicanism as a political model.39 The analogy be­ tween classical and medieval city-states is not straightforward for other reasons. Although the recovery of ancient models helped to create a genuine stock of shared experience by enabling communes to conceptualize and organize their history, it also encouraged artificial comparisons through the need to make the newly discovered material relevant to patrons and audiences. Moreover, the use of models was very eclectic, as we have seen. Distinguishing false from genuine analogies is not easy, especially in the later period, when republicanism carried contradictory messages about city life and its political character. Did it offer a descriptive or a prescriptive model, or did it simply serve to disguise and conceal?40

38. See Timothy Cornel's contribution to this volume. 39. Philip Jones, "Economia e societi nell' ltalia medievale: la legenda della borghesia," Storia d'!talia, Annali I (Turin, 1978) 187-372; d. Le Goff, "L'immaginario urbano, " 8-9. On Venice, R. Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (London, 1980); F. Gilbert, "The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought," in Florentine Studies, ed. N. Rubinstein (London, 1968) 4 63 500. 40. "funzione conoscitiva e funzione prescrittiva," V. I. Comparato, introduction, Modelli (note 6 above) 9. Cf. L. Bertelli, "Paradigmi platonici, " ibid., 49-87; L. Canfora, Analogia e storia. L'uso politico dei paradigmi storiei (Milan, 1982).

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To attempt to answer these questions, we must turn to the two shrewd­ est and most incisive commentators in the later period, Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Although both men are usually defined as republicans in argu­ ing for political liberty and popular participation in government, they mark a complete break with the past. In the first place, they firmly denounced as Platonic idealism the Medici's attempts to project themselves as philosopher-rulers, rejecting this mystification in the name of the new political realism, the investigation "of the real truth of the matter, not what it is imagined to be."41 More radically, they went on to undermine the foundations on which republican ideology had rested, belief in historical continuity and tradition. It was Guicciardini who declared that "the ancient days of the Romans and the Greeks exist no longer" and that it was wrong to cite the Romans all the time.42 And Machiavelli equally incisively cut off the present from the past by declaring the fallibility of memory. Not only are people's memories fallible about their own experiences in that they exaggerate the past to the detriment of the present, he wrote in The Discourses, but all records are prejudiced because they represent the views only of the conquerors.43 They also undermined commonly shared assumptions about historical continuity by describing the world "as a confidence game" and our activities as "role-playing," which should not be judged by the role but only "the quality of the performance," as Guicciardini put it.44 This systematic rejection of the basis of republican ideology by two of its leading practitioners poses the question of its function and relationship to social reality. Why do Guicciardini and Machiavelli attempt to demythologize the values they appar­ ently espouse so warmly? Rereading them on the lines they suggest, we should look very carefully at their words and images ratherthan the traditions to which their language belonged. Faced with this seeming paradox, I can do no more at this juncture than to suggest some ways in which Guicciardini and Machiavelli reappropriated the language they had apparently rejected in order to describe the changing political and social values of their day. The first has to do with religion. Christianity was here to stay, as Machiavelli acknowledged, and bodies exiled in classical and early Christian times to burial outside the city walls were back inside the city walls for

41. Machiavelli, II Principe, ch. 1 5 , 65, Guicciardini, Dialogo del Reggimento, 99; d. Brown, "Platonism," 404-5. 42 . Del modo di assicurare '0 stato ai Medici, ed. Palmarocchi, Dialogo e discorsi, 274: "non sono pill e' tempi antichi de' rornani e de' greci"; d. Ricordo C, no. 110, ed. Spongano, 1 21, tr. Domandi, 69: "Quanto si ingannono coloro che a ogni parola allegano e Romani." When Bruni had earlier declared the Romans to be long dead and buried, it was to support Florence's claim to be Rome's heir in face of Valla's criticism, H. Baron, In Search of Florentine Civic Humanism (Princeton, 1988) i, 49. 43. Discorsi, II, pref. and ch. 5, 271-2, 292-3. 44. Ricordi, ser. C, 216, ed. Spongano, 228; tr. Dornandi, 97. On Machiavelli's view of the world, see W. A. Rebhorn, Foxes and Lions. Machiavelli's Confidence Men (Ithaca and London, 1988), quoting Francesco Vettori on p. 12: "in effetto tuno il mondo e ciurmeria."

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Consciousness and Representation

good.4S Devout citizens, like Giovanni Rucellai and Matteo Palmieri, could still, in the mid-fifteenth century, reconcile the demands of their dual citizenship as members of "the republic in which one is a citizen" and "the universal republic of all Christians."'" But this dualism was already creating problems for city-states, especially after the papacy's return from Avignon and reassertion of its temporal and spiritual rights in Italy. Gradually in the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini we find the duomo displaced from the center of the stage. Instead of meeting and talking in its cool shade, they and their friends encounter each other on the Ponte Vecchio, or on benches of family palaces at the comers of streets, and they hold their discussions in the gardens of the Rucellai or outside the city altogether, an outward sign of changing attitudes to the Church and its role in the state. Early evidence of this can be seen in Gino Capponi's memoir of 1420, that members of the war magistracy should "love their country more than their soul," and Cosimo de' Medici's dictum "states are not ruled by pater­ nosters."47 In the mid-fifteenth century the chancellor Poggio Bracciolini argued that early legislators used religion for political ends, and by the early sixteenth century it was axiomatic to Machiavelli and Guicciardini that political values were autonomous.48 Both men condoned murder and cruelty for the sake of state interest. "It is impossible to control governments and states according to the precepts of Christian law if one wants to hold them as they are held today," Guicciardini said, and Machiavelli agreed with him, arguing that religion should be used, as the Greeks and Romans used it, "to be an instrument to maintain a civilized state," but it should always be subordinate to politics and never dominant, as it was for the ancients, who "when reason told them that a thing had to be done, did it even if the auspices were adverse."4� Machiavelli and Guicciardini understood, as ancient historians and the Trexlers of the Renaissance world now understand, the importance of religion and ceremony in underpinning political regimes. They also understood (as we are now experiencing) the "extraordinary authority" of religious states and their leaders, due not simply to their close contact with God but to the

45 . Discorsi, II, 2, 282: "avendoci la nostra religione mostro la verira e la vera via," etc.; Le Goff, "L'i mmaginario urbano," 9: "l'inurbamento dei morti," after earlier burial outside the walls; Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981) 40 42, quoting Saint Jerome: "movetur urbs sedibus suis." 46_ Note 9 above and ASF Cons Prato 56, fo!' 6Or v, (18 March 1460), quoted by R_ Black, Benedetto Accolti and the Florentine Renaisance (Cambridge, 1985) 159, n. 108: "duas esse res republicas: unam particularem, id est, earn civitatem in qua quis origine vel constitutione sit civis ... alteram vero esse rem publicam universalem Christianorum omnium." 47. G. Tognetti, "Amare la patria piu che I'anima. Contributo circa la genesi di un attegiamento religioso," in Studi sui medioevo cristiano offerti a R. Morghen, II (Rome, 1974) 101 1-26. 48. Krantz, "Between Bruni and Machiavelli," 147. 49. Guicciardini, Dialogo del Reggimento, 162-63, etc.; Machiavelli, Discorsi, I, 11-14, esp. 1 60-170: "quando la ragione mostrava loro una cosa doversi fare, non obstante che g1i auspicii fossero avversi, la facevano in ogni modo"; II, 2, 279-85 .

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permanence of the Church, which, unlike republics, "never dies."sO Their thoughts were prompted not only by the growing power of the Papal States but also by the transformation of Florence into a major territorial state or "empire. "sl In contrast to the medieval city-states, which were governed ac­ cording to agreed upon religious and legal norms, as the Lorenzetti frescoes Good Government in Siena demonstrate so well,52 these enlarged territorial states were governed by political laws imposed by the will or command of the central government according to new political norms.S3 To governments faced with the problem of overriding local rights and privileges, Greek and Roman city-states again offered a useful analogy, with their confident imperialism and concept of "public interest" - well illustrated by the sextet of Roman heroes painted by Ghirlandaio in the public reception room of the govern­ ment palace in Florence. Public interest, for Machiavelli, can mean many things: the right of the state to claim and redistribute booty won in wars (as the Romans wisely did), its right to minerals mined on public land, as well as its claim on a citizen's loyalty and life.s4 It can also mean that it is excusable to kill and override the laws "for the public good" and for "public utility," as the Romans did in killing whole legions and in decimation (killing every tenth man) and as Brutus did in murdering his own sons for the sake of his country; even the Roman people, when invoked as judges, were prepared to use the death 50. Gui cci ardini , Dialogo del Reggimento, 160: "Ia reverenzia ed autorira di chi Oa Chiesa] non muore mai ; d. Ricordi, ser. C, no. 29: "hanno di poi Ii Chiesa vicina, che e potente e non muore mai"; d. C. no. 48 (ed. Spongano, 34, 57, tr. Domandi, 49, 54); Machiavelli, II principe, ch. 1 1 , Discorsi, I, 1 1 , 5 0-52, 1 62-63; d. Niccol?> Guicciardini on republics' need of a "regola perpetua" to compensate for their lack of permanence, Discursus, ed. R. von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato (Turin, 1970) 396. 51 . See especially G. Chittolini, La formazione dello stato regionale e Ie istiwzioni del contado (Turin, 1979); Fubini, "Classe dirigente," n. 2 3 above. 52 . On the frescoes, Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art," }. Warburg & Courtauld Institutes 21 ( 1958) 179-207; Q. Skinner, Ambrogio Lorenzetti: the Artist as Political Phi­ losopher, British Academy Lecture (London, 1986); C. FliUgoni, Una lontana citta, ch. 6; and R. Starn, "The Republican Regime of the 'Room of Peace' in Siena, 1338 40," Representations 1 8 (1987) 1-32 . 53. On the abortive attempt to modernize Florence's statutes in 1409 in conformity with its new status, "public utility" now taking precedence over the demands of criminal justice, se Fubini, "Classe'dirigente," 15 8-63, and in his essay in this volume. The statutes are in Florence, AS, Statuti 23. The 1415 statutes restored the old system, which gave precedence to jurisdictional ma tters (Statuta Populi et Communis Florentiae, 'Fri burgi' [Florence], 1 778-83), analyzed by G. Guidi (II Governo della Citta Repubblica di Firenze, 3 vols., Florence, 1981 ). 54. Arte della Guera, ed. S. Bertelli (Milan, 1961) 455: "I Romani . . . provvidero all'uno e all'altro di questi inconvenienti, ordinando che tutta la preda appartenesse al publico e che il public poi la dispensasse come gIi paresse"; Istorie fiorentine, ed. F. Gaeta (Milan, 1962), VI, 1 and VII, 29, pp. 3 87, 495-6: "Solvano Ie antiche e ben ordinate republiche nelle vittorie loro riempiere d'oro e d'ariento Ie erario, distribuire doni nel pop olo, rimettere a' sudditi i tributi e con giuochi e con solenni feste festeggiarli," whereas in Volterra, as citizens com­ plained, "una industria trovata ne' terreni publici in privata utiliti si converta"; Discorsi II, 2, 283, A,te del/a GueTTa, 326; "in quale uomo debbe ricercare la patria maggiore fede, che in colui che Ie ha a promettere di morire per lei ?" and Discursus (lorentinarum rerum, ibid . 275 : "credo che il maggiore bene che si faccia, e i\ pill grato a Dio, sia quello che si fa alIa sua patria." "

,

1 06

Consciousness and Representation

sentence, in contrast to Florence's head of state, Piero Soderini, who thereby, in Machiavelli's opinion, ensured the destruction of the republic.ss Through Machiavelli's reiterated use of the public-private antithesis, we can see its important role in his political outlook. Hitherto Florence's standing, like that of other medieval communes, had rested primarily on commercial and industrial wealth, a system based on workshop (bottega), or market value. Its transformation into a major political power in Italy implied a change from workshop to state values. Aristotle had declared in The Politics that officeholding should "not be a source of wealth," or as the Florentines put it, one should not "make a bottega out of the stato."S6 In Machiavelli's writings, the contrast between public or state interest and private ambition and faction­ alism represents one of the main problems faced by the late medieval commune. This in turn was closely related to changing ideas about social status and the political ruling class. It was the distinction between bottega and stato that led Guicciardini to criticize the enlarged Great Council for facilitating the entry of men representing Florence's trades and workshops into "the state and the government."S7 No one thought he was a Florentine unless he had been a member of the signoria at least once, Guicciardini complained in 15 12.s8 By then, though, many city dwellers were beginning to agree with Aristotle that what they resented was not so much being debarred from office, " indeed they are glad to be allowed time to get on with their own affairs, but they do not like to think that officials are stealing public money. "s9For this reason Machiavelli proposed in his 1 520 Discourse on Florentine Affairs after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici Junior that the sixteen gonfaloniers in Florence should be deprived of all executive power and instead reside in turn with the government "as a witness" of its actions .60 This new passive role for the people marks a decisive shift from the guild-based populism of the early communes to the elitist professionalism of the later period. Symptomatic of future developments was the new title "priors of liberty" given to the signoria in 1459 to replace their old name, "priors of the guilds," which, according to the decree, suggested that "humble �d abject people, the

55. Discourses III, 3, 49 and 30, pp. 386, 504-5, 467-8; Arte della Guerra, 478. Cf. Guicciardini's defense of the death penalty against conspirators in Florence in 1497, "perche principalmente questo e delino contro alia patria, alia quale siamo pili obbligati che a' parenti, che al padre, che a noi medesimi," "Accuse," Opere inedite, ed. G. Canestrini (Florence, 1 8571867) X, 2OO. 56. Aristode, The Politics, Y, viii, 1 3 08 b; Domenico Cecchi, Riforma sanda et pretiosa (Florence, 1496), edited by U. Mazzone as "EI buon governo" (Florence, 1978) 1 87: "hanno fano bonega dello stato"; cf. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Giobbe (Rome, 1 957) ii, 446 (9 April 1 495): "fano bonega della chiesa." 57. Guicciardini, Dialogo del Reggimento, 43: "essendo el corso della citti fondato . . .

in sugli esercizi e in sulle boneghe, non sara col consiglio poca scala allo stato ed al governo. 58. "Del modo di ordinare," Dialogo del reggimento, 234, "e diventato uno pasto universale. " 59. Politics, n. 56 above. 60. Machiavelli, Discursus, in Arte della Guerra, 272-3: "non avessi a rendere partito, ma solo esere testimone della azioni loro." "

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lowest of the low," had "worked their way" into government; the old title was all right in the old days, it declared, when the city was small and had no, or a very small, empire - but no longer.61 So the workshop image was out,

republican liberty was in. Under the rhetoric more fundamental changes were taking place. Even before the 1494 revolution and creation of the Great Council, political eligibility was dissociated from tax paying. In 1491 the Seventeen Reformers instituted an innovation when for the first time they imposed taxation on certain cat­ egories of city dwellers who did not merit citizen rights, "because they are for a good part foreigners, or practice humble manual , crafts or worse, or work for the govet;nment or guilds as menial servants" ; nor should they aspire to citizenship unless they first prove themselves by their "honest trade, ability or upright behavior . " 62 And afterward, when the political class had effectively been closed, continuing attempts were made to limit government to a qualified elite. Like the early Council of Seventy, the new Council of Eighty became in effect a life office or senate, while the Great Council was limited to approving general laws and choosing officeholders. In their practical reform schemes of 1 5 1 2 and 1 520, both Guicciardini and Machiavelli specifically proposed the creation of a life senate of two hundred members, "as one sees in ancient republics, in Rome, in Carthage, in Athens and Sparta, in the council they call the senate, where many participated; like the two hundred in Venice, or rather the Pregadi, which is the same. "63 Guicciardini's attempt at mixing up and re-forming the state into new shapes, "like those who make things to eat from pasta," increased the power of a small elite at the expense of the people, whose role in government was reduced.64 Following "ancient republics" like Rome, whose grant of ius suffragii allowed citizens to appoint magistrates without being eligible for office them­ selves, he proposed allowing the popular Great Council the same restricted role in order to encourage less self-interested elections.6s By the time he wrote .

6 1 . ASF, Balie 29, fols. 118v-119r (30 January 1459) : "Quoniam dignitati amplitudini ac decori Florentine civitatis eiusque status et regiminis minime decus esse videtur, titulus dominationis ipsius qui Dominos artium priores appelIat, quasi humilibus abiectisque personis atque infimis negotiis presidere eos insinuet"; d. Fubini, "Classe dirigente," 1 8 1 . 62. ASF Cento 3, fo!. 124r (Seventeen Reformers, 2 7 July 1491 ): "perche sono buona parte forestieri 0 fanno exercitii viii manuali 0 peggio, 0 famigli d'uficio 0 d'arte, et non e bene siano anumerati tra cittadini fiorentini, fra quali nan pare conveniente alamo se ne tiri se non e prirna tirato da suo exercitio honesto, virtU 0 buoni costumi." They were to be taxed separately in a "Libro de' Taxati"; on changes in the definition of the ruling class, see Brown, "Platonism," 402-3 . 63. "Del modo di ordinare il governo popalare," "27 August 1512 in Logrogno," Dialogo del Reggimento, 241 : "uno numero di dugento vel circa. Cosl si vede neUe antiche republiche, in Roma, in Cartagine, in Atene e Lacedemone, in questa consiglio che loro proporio chamavano senato, essere intervenuti molti; a Vinegia sono dugento 0 meglio queli che e' chiamono pregati, che e questo medesimo." 64 . Ibid., 219: "a uso di chi fa cose da rnangiare di pasta. " 65 . Ibid., 224 5: "si legge tralli altri che e ' rornani davano a molci la cina cum iure suffragii, che a giudicio mio non era altro che ammetterIi alIa creazione de' magistrati, rna non ve Ii fare capaci. "

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his Dialogue of the Government of Florence in 1521-1523, he had retreated even farther from the polarized model of republican Rome. By creating two separate orders, patricians and plebs, and giving all offices and honors to the former, the Romans, he said, had effectively created a ruling and a servile class.66 In the dialogue, through the mouth of the Medicean speaker, Bernardo del Nero, Guicciardini strongly criticized the patricians/plebs model as divisive, arguing that the kings were better protectors of the people than either the patricians or the tribunate: not only were their taxes fairer to all, but they encouraged social mobility by helping the pleb leaders to enter the patriciate. After royal power was transferred to the patriciate, the plebs lost their protec­ tors as well as all hope of entering the political class, and the creation of tribunes only created further dissension. It would have been far beter, he concluded, if Rome had been united "in one single body" with no "distinction between patricians and plebs." As it was, the republic was saved from disaster only by its tradition of harsh military discipline.67 Guicciardini's argument seems far removed from Machiavelli's admira­ tion for the conflictual politics of Roman republicanism, which ensured its long survival. But in fact they shared much common ground, not only in their political realism and tough view of the state, but also in their view of man's ambitious nature and the need to create an upwardly mobile society, in which the plebs should qualify themselves for rule by their ability and not by protected guild status. 68 Here the image of the classical centaur provided Machiavelli with a new male model. Half-man, half-animal, he served as tutor to "Achilles and many other of those Greek princes" to teach that a prince must be crafty and cunning as well as humane, a political lesson that further weakened the communitarian ethos of the earlier period." Meditating in The Discourses on Roman republicanism, Machiavelli ac­ knowledged how dependent the people were on leaders and wise men to restrain them.7° He also commented approvingly on the fact that, given the right to elect themselves to the tribunate, the plebs showed their "wisdom" in electing nobles to this office.71 And in an undated ricordo he noted that arti­ sans did not know how to command when in office because they had always been used to serving, so the magistrates should be men who had served kings

66. Dialogo del Reggimento, 150: the divisions of the Romans were caused "da essere distinti gli ordini della cina: una parte pattizi, I'altta plebei donde si poteva dire che una parte della cina fussi in dominio, I'altta in serviru." 67. Ibid., 150-56: " PerC> el modo vero sarebbe stato che la cina fussi tutta di uno medesimo corpo, e quanto al participare del govemo non fussi distinzione da' patrizi a' plebei, COS! sarebbono stati uni ti " (153). 68. Guicciardini, "Del modo di ordinare," 222: "Non e altro 10 stato e 10 i mperio che una violenzia sopra e' sudditi," 219; Dialogo del Reggimento, 152; Machiavelli, Discorsi, II, 23 and 2, pp. 346, 283-4. .

69. II principe, 18, 72. 70. Discorsi, I, 3-6, 44, 54, pp. 1 35-46, 232, 252-4. 71 . Ibid. , I, 47, 237-40.

•

.

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or laws, that is, those who lived off their investments.72 In practice, then, he shared the same attitude to the plebs as Guicciardini, and for the same reasons thought that the Roman solution was not practicable in the faction­ ridden Italy of his day. Emphasis on the polarity of Machiavelli's political thinking, the conflict between nobles and people, has distracted attention from the importance of the third force, which he believed was needed both to initiate new laws and to balance and stabilize existing constitutions. In Rome, it was the consuls who enjoyed "royal power " or "the power of arbitrium," and in times of war, the dictator;73 in France it was the parlement that acted as "third judge" between the nobles and the people;74 and in Switzerland, the emperor was the "middle man" or mezuzno.7S In Milan it was the absence of a "potesta regia, " or "living voice" to enforce laws that made the nobility uncontrollable, as in other "corrupt states" where men need to be constrained by "una potesta quasi regia. "76 It is important to Machiavelli's argument that the powers of such a third power were not absolutist or "tyranous, " because they were balanced or controlled within a constitutional system. This was true even in the case of the exceptional powers of the temporary dictator in Rome, as we can under­ stand from the contrast he draws between the dictator's powers, which he admired, with those of the decemvirate, which he did not. For whereas the decemvirate replaced the senate and people and in time became tyrannical, the dictator was given only executive freedom to make decisions without conciliar approval and with no appeal, but he did not replace the senate and people, and he was appointed for a limited period of time.77 In Florence, the earlier Medici and Piero Soderini were seen potential third forces to balance the permanent nobility-people conflict?8 But it was in his 1 520 blueprint of government that Machiavelli openly conferred the "majesty" of state on a single all-powerful body, the Medici during their lifetimes, and when they died an inner elite of sixty-four citizens, who would govern in tum with a Gonfalonier of Justice 'as the third force between a select council, or senate of two hundred, and the people, the bottom class, or

72. II Teatro, "Sentenze diverse," 223 : " Li uomini che nelle republiche servono aile arti meccaniche non possono sapere comandare corne principi quando sono preposti a' rnagistrati, avendo irnparato sempre a servire. E pero si vuole torre per cornandare di quelli che non hanno mai ubidito se non a' re e aile leggi, come sono quelli che vivono della entrate loro." 73. Discorsi, 1, 2, II, 33, pp. 134, 377. 74. 11 principe, 9, pp. 77-8. 75 . Discorsi, 11, 19, pp. 335 -6. 76. Discursus, in Arte della Guera, 267; Discorsi I, 18, p. 1 82 77. Discorsi I, 34-35, pp. 209-213; and on absolute power, I, 2 5, 1 93: "una potesta assoluta, la quale dagli autori e chiarnata tirannide'." 78 . Discorsi, I, 52, pp. 246-7; cf. lII, 1, 3 8 1 -2. .

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ultimi.79 The people and the senate are still there, but the dual or, as Bickerman calls it, bicameral system of republican Rome has been transformed into a pyramidal structure: at the summit an all-powerful executive, supported by a non-noble life senate or service elite, and at the base a largely silent body of popular voters and approvers. For Machiavelli and Guicciardini, as for the later Romans, the city-state had become an ideal rather than a practiced reality.

CONCLUSION T o sumarize my argument, I began b y describing the continuity between the earlier and later medieval periods in shared perceptions of corporate city life and political participation which integrated religious and civic experience. Yet at the very moment when republican ideology seemed to have permeated the citizen classes, suggesting a close analogy between ancient and medieval city­ states, there is disquieting evidence of alienation and the distancing of city dwellers on both levels from the civic ideals of the earlier period. This alienation eroded the vitality of the concept of republicanism and prepared the way for Machiavelli and Guicciardini. It was in this context that these two men came to question the assumptions on which the old ideology was based, demystifying its idealism at the same time as they redeployed its terminology. So we have to examine carefully their use of classical analogies to understand their role in describing and justifying developments in the late communal period. As anachronistic by then as it was to the late Roman republic, the idealized model of the popular or bicameral city-state was replaced by the model familiar to us all today, that of elitist and patrician Rome in which the people, though influential, play a much less active role. By emphasizing their own novelty and role as demystifiers, Machiavelli and Guicciardini themselves encourage us to see how much had changed inside the walls of Italian cities. People still met in piazzas and voted in council chambers. Outwardly city life went on in the same spirit of civic pride and awareness as in the earlier period. Yet behind their urbane republican ' fa�ades, the old communal spirit of Italian cities had been slowly but surely eroded. The guild regimes had been replaced by new political structures and values, effectively devaluing the republican concepts of equality and what Guicciardini called "this name of liberty. "80 Liberty already seemed as am­ biguous a concept to Italian city dwellers as it did to Thomas Hobbes, when he reflected on "the word IlBERTAS" "written on the Turrets of the city of Luca

79. DiscuTSUS, in ATte della Guerra, 261-77, esp. 274-5: "considerato . . . corne repubblica e senza la vostra autoriti . . . non Ie manchi cosa alcuna . . . rna se si considera vivente la Santiti Vostra e monsignore reverendissimo, ella e una monarchia; perche voi cornandate all'armi, cornandate a'giudici criminali, avete Ie leggi in petto." 80. Dialogo del Reggimento, esp. 37-40: "questo nome della liberti"; "Del modo di ordinare, 22 3: "non e altro la liberti che uno prevalere Ie leggi ed ordini publici alia appetito delli uamini particulari. n

n

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in great characters" in the seventeenth century: a last sobering lmage of Italian cities with which to conclude.S!

8 1 . The Leviathan (Pelican Classics, 1968) ch. 21, 266: "There is written on the Turrets of the city of Luca in great characters at this day, the word LmERTAs; yet no man can thence inferre that a particular man has more Libertie, or Immunitie from the service of the Commonwealth there, than in Constantinople. Whether a Commonwealth be Monarchicall, or Popular, the Freedome is still the same."

Commentary

CARM I NE A M P O LO

�y

STUDY THAT PROPOSES to compare ancient, medieval, and Renais­ sance cities will profit by taking into consideration the work of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the founding father of ancient history in modern times. From a comparative point of view the fate of his work was unusual. All of his critical analyses and reconstructions of early Roman history were based not only on the sources then available, but also on a comparative interest that was tout azimout, very strong indeed. Niebuhr's approach, founded on constant comparison, enabled him to conduct a historical recon­ struction by analogy. However, this very aspect of his work was criticized, at times abandoned, and frequently ignored. The continual process of professionalization of history (specifically ancient history, but the phenomenon is general) led to "progress, " certainly, but also to the elimination of a specific technique of reconstructing history, which came to be considered arbitrary and even scandalous. In fact, Niebuhr's method was dubbed intuition, if not outright divination. For he dared to compare the Greeks and Romans not only with the Jews but also with the Albanians, the Abyssinians, the Aztecs, and the Indians. Above all, however, he made comparisons with medieval cities. Certainly, the role comparison played in Niebuhr's work has been " analyzed in recent studies by Rytkonen, Alfred Heuss, and Arnaldo Momigliano, but in my view, this role is actually even stronger and more pervasive than is generally believed. Niebuhr's comparative approach does not only serve the purposes pursued generally by eighteenth-century historians, which was more limited, intending only to explain or help understand a specific historical phenomenon. Rather, Niebuhr's comparative method seeks to re-create what had been destroyed by a critical analysis of the sources or reduced to single elements and isolated data by criticism of ancient reconstruc­ tions. In this way a correspondent commented - Niebuhr had founded a new Analogienmethode. And if we reread, besides the Romische Geschichte, also the Vortrage (or Collected Lectures, in a translated but different eight­ volume edition prepared by L. Schmietz [London, 1 852-53] ), as well as his letters (the published edition of which so far includes only material that goes up to 1 830), we realize the importance of his comparisons especially with -

1 14

Consciousness and Representation

medieval cities. Here, I will cite only the chapter "Die Gemeinde und die plebeische Tribus," where we find a surprising (almost Weberian) opposition between the ancient cities based on agriculture, which gave scant importance to commerce and industry, and the medieval cities in which artisans were valued members of the civic community. He added, however, that these differences did not exclude parallels between the free constitutions in the two golden ages of these cities: "Sie (sci!. die Geschichte der freien Verfassungen) ist in beiden Zeiten die des Kampfs zwischen Geschlechtern und Gemeinde." To give an example, in the sixth lecture ( Collected Lectures 1.74ff.) he briefly analyzes how the various societies differentiated between native citizens and new ones. Here we find examples taken from the United States, India (with its caste system), Jews, Greeks, Romans, and German cities (Pfahlburger). His comparative analysis involves both terminology and history, and he mentions Uri, St. Gervais, Novgorod, Florence, Nuremberg, and institutions like the Capitano del popolo and the Capitano di parte. Today, of course, we can be somewhat puzzled by such a freewheeling approach. Nevertheless, Niebuhr, although limited by the cultural parameters of that period, was the pioneer of a new path, which deserves to be retraced.t II

The first essay on the topic " Conscience and Representation" is by Nicole Loraux and focuses on the Greek city-state. It should be considered together with her two recent studies, "Repolitiser la cite" and "Oikeios polemos: la guerra nella farniglia."2 The main purpose of both articles seems to be to question the concept of the city-state as a profoundly rational entity charac­ terized by an almost geometric spirit. The representation of the polis as an institution tending to be perfect (at least in the case of Athens), almost with­ out any internal contradiction, and as a system where struggles and contra­ dictions were marginal, has been very important in France, initiated by the well-known studies by Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Leveque, and Pierre Vidal­ Naquet. More recently, in Germany, research on Greek politics and on the development of the citizens' political identity (mostly conducted by Christian Meier and his pupils ) led to further confirmation of theses that de-emphasized

1. On Niebuhr, see K. Christ, Von Gibbon %u Rostovtzeff (Darmstadt, 1 972) 26If. (ref erences to his works and to recent scholarship: 357-359); S. Rytkonen, B.G. Niebuhr als Politiker und Historiker (Helsinki, 1968); A. Heuss, B.G. Niebuhrs wissenschaftliche Anfiinge (GOttingen, 1981); A. Momigliano, Settimo contributo alia stori.l degli studi classici e del mondo antico (Rome, 1984) 37ff.; G. Wirth (ed.) , B.G. Niebuhr, Historiker und Staatsmann (Bonn, 1984); C. Ampolo, "Storia antica e antropologia. Un rapporto difficile ? " Dial. di Archeol. 4.1 (1986) 127If. For his letters, se B.G.N., Briefe 1 8 1 6-1 830, Vischer (ed.) vol. I (Bern and Munich, 1981). 2. Published respectively in L'Homme 26.1-2 (1986) 239ff., and Studi stOM 28 (1987) 5ff.

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the internal conflicts and contradictions of the city-state.3 Thus the question that is raised pointedly in Loraux' essay is whether the Greek image of a unified city reflects reality or an ideal. The representation of the city as internally united and in agreement, and as an entity whose hatred and aversion are outwardly directed, appears, for example, in Aeschylus' Eumenides in the prayer of the chorus (976-87). But Loraux notes that, even within the institutional reality, this unity was questioned by Athenian voting procedure, which di­ vided the citizens - although the cheirotonia afterwards reestablished unity within the civic community. Therefore, both division and unity were present at the same time within the Athenian assemblies, just as stasis also existed within the polis. Naturally this observation is also valid with regard to repre­ sentation. Two voting methods were used in the Athenian ekklesia: secret and hand vote. In the first case, votes were deposited in an urn and counted later. In the latter instance, a s umary estimate of the majority was made. Mogens Hansen recently studied these two methods and drew a useful comparison between them and the forms of direct democracy used in the Swiss Landsgemeinde.4 On the basis of this comparison (which is much more ap­ propriate and revealing than other parallels, implicitly or explicitly drawn with modern representative institutions) Hansen demonstrates that many pro­ posals must have been unanimously approved. Naturally, this applies to voting by a show of hands and to the ekklesia, but not to the tribunals or to those votes that required a quorum. In general, it is correct to speak of a tension between the city's united and its divided state and of stasis as something innate to the city. The unity of the city and the very identity of its citizens imply conflict and struggle both on the level of the practical functioning of its institutions and of the historical events that involved the various city-states. The large dossier collected by Hans-Joachim Gehrke and well-known examples, like Thucydides' description of the civil wars in Corcyra, demonstrate that we are dealing not simply with the pathology of the polis but rather with a manifestation of its very physiology.s This fundamental trait of the Greek city-state, civil struggle, was clearly understood by one of the great modern discoverers of the idea of the polis, Jacob Burckhardt. He observed that it was precisely because the polis was the Greeks' true and proper religion that "the struggles for it possess all the horror of religious wars" ( "so haben die Kiimpfe urn sie auch die volle 3. J. P. Vernant, us origines de la pensee grecque (Paris, 1962) The Origins of Greek Thought (Ithaca, New York, 1982) : Greek thought is the offspring of the polis; P. Leveque and P. Vidal-Naquet, Clisthene l'athenien (Paris, 1964), with Vernant's comments in his My the et pensee chez les Grees (Paris, 1965) 207ft. These are the most significant studies. Of Ch_ Meier's works it suffices to mention here Die Entstehung des Po/itischen bei den Griechen (Frankfurt am Main, 1980) The Greek Discovery of Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1990) . 4. M. H. Hansen, The Athenian Eclesia: A Collection ofArticles, 1976-83 (Copenhagen, =

=

1983) 2 07ff. 5. H.-J. Gehrke, Stasis (Munich, 1985); see also G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, 1 98 1 ) . On Corcyra, se TIlUC. 3.70-83; and in general , book 5 of Aristode's Polities.

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Schrecklichkeit von Religionskriegen" ), and civil war, although condemned and hated, remained a constant presence in the free poleis - even more so because in many cities each successive constitution was, and remained, actual dogma. Thus already Burckhardt understood how internal conflict corre­ sponded to the unity prevalent in the city's self-representation, and that, in fact, the Greek city was a "woeful city.'" If, then, internal tension is a structural fact of the Greek city-states and if centrifugal forces are an intrinsic part of their political experience, it becomes even clearer why it was necessary for the cities to reinforce unifying elements and to institutionalize minor subdivisions and partitions within the polis itself. On one hand, the city is inconceivable without its various internal subdivisions (phylai, phratriai, and so on), which are more than simply ad­ ministrative divisions. On the other hand, the political symbolism of the city­ state's unity acquires enormous prominence. This is obvious from its religious manifestations: the cult of Hestia and the Prytaneion (with the hearth and fire of the city) and the protector deities of the polis (led by Athena Polias ) provide classic examples. To cite a metaphor of Plato (Rep. 4. 423a), the city is a chessboard, a composite unity, and even its internal components are subject to tension and outright rupture (the story of the Athenian genos of the Salaminioi demonstrates the division and contrast between its two components; the Sounieis and the Eptaphylai). Precisely for this reason, it was necessary to seek out and emphasize unity and political identity, both in terms of con­ sciousness and in the representation of the city itself. Politics and religion are the sectors in which this is most clearly manifested - and not only in ancient cities. But this aspect is specifically addressed in the articles by Chiara Frugoni and Alison Brown, and the section "Symbols and Rituals" is dedicated to this topic. III

Timothy Cornell's text is important and I essentially share its theses. In particular, he is certainly correct when he calls it an "anachronism" to define Rome after the fourth century B.C. as a city-state. More over, the Roman city­ state has, both before and after 338 B.C. - the date of its victory over the Latins a tie with the nomen Latinum. This bond was certainly much stron­ ger than that which the Greek poleis maintained with the larger tribal entities they belonged to; after all, the Romans even founded Latin colonies. It is also probable that the integration between the Romans and the Latin league actu­ ally was much stronger than tradition and historians indicate (although the reconstruction we find in Festus 276L is notably different). Not only was Rome ethnically more open than the majority of the known Greek poleis, but it shared with the Latin cities several characteristic forms of integration guar­ anteed by the foedus Cassianum. In fact, such integration may be considered -

6. J. Burckhardt, Griechische Kulturgeschichte I (Basel, 1956) 8 1 f.

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the first step toward the construction of that complex system of alliances which certainly constituted one of the secrets behind the power of Rome. At least from the beging of the fifth century B.C., this privileged relationship with the Latin cities played an important role in Roman politics and served as a model in dealing with non-Latins like the Hernici. By this time, the Roman system already had two faces: on one hand, that of an open city-state, and on the other, the ties to the Latins (Greeks, like Dionysius of Halicarnassus, sought to explain this system as a kind of isopoliteia). However, this fact, which can be considered structural, as well as Cornell's other observations, does not oblige us to deny that the concept of the city­ state can be useful when applied to republican Rome even after the fourth century B.C. Nor does it lead us to believe that this concept survived only as empty ideology. The anachronism lies precisely in the fact that " the Roman Government continued to rely upon a traditional institution, the city-state, which had originally come into existence as an instrument for administering far smaller territories and populations," as Arnold Toynbee, among others, observed.7 In fact, some parts of the city-state system (a pretense that nonethe­ less performed a real function) survived even into the first century B.C., not only in the ideology but also in the decision-making process in Rome (as Fergus Millar demonstrated). I will therefore call it a "living anachronism": parts of the old system continued to thrive in new organisms, without being entirely reduced to a mere legal pretense. Setting aside for the moment the institutions and discussing solely the idea of the city and its representation in the first century B.C., I will cite two revealing examples. In January 49 B.C., Cicero wrote to Atticus and reported his opinion as well as Pompeius' opposing view on the abandonment of Rome ( Cic. Att. 7. 1 1 .3). This discussion centered on two classic topoi charac­ teristic of the city-state mentality. Although this was a private letter and not a public oration, it probably echoes opinions actually expressed (which is dem­ onstrated in Pompeius' case by the comparison with Appian, Bell. civ. 2.37). Pompeius justified the abandonment of the city by saying that it was not made of buildings ("Non est . . . in parietibus res publica" ). This is clearly an educated allusion to the concept of the city as an entity composed, above all, of men.- And Cicero replied with another rhetorical topic: the city exists in the altars of the gods and in the hearths ( " at in aris et focis" - this is an expression worthy of Fustel de Coulanges! ) . Naturally historical allusions and scholarly exempla were not lacking: ThemistocIes abandoned Athens, the Romans when defeated by the Gauls nevertheless defended the Capitol, and so on. But beyond the rhetorical leitmotifs we note that history and concepts of the past were used in this discussion, although it is the past of the city-state and not that of kingdoms and leagues that was cited. 7. 8. 7.77.7.

A. Toynbee, Hannibal's Legacy I (Oxford, 1965) 294. See for example, Alcaeus, fragm. 1 1 1 Lobel-Page; Herodotus 8.61 .2; Thucydides

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The second example demonstrates once more the force of the ideology of the city-state and its cults in the last days of the republic. On 1 5 February 44 B.C., as is well known, Mark Antony tried to crown Caesar with the symbolic diadem of royal power. But Caesar refused it, emphasizing - according to Dio Cassius (44.1 1 ) - that Jupiter was the only king of the Romans. The true king of the city-state was the divinity of the city itself, protector and, at the same time, symbol of the community. Indeed, there is no better evidence of the importance of the past than Caesar's reference to this concept at such a crucial moment. IV

With regard to Chiara Frugoni's and Alison Brown's contributions, I will comment only on one point, which is particularly relevant for historians of classical antiquity. Both articles highlight evidence indicating the ways in which the conscience of the community manifested itself through religion and civic cults (to use the terminology of these specialists). One article deals with the emergence of female or patron saints and protectors and the other dis­ cusses cathedrals. In some cases the emergence of female saints (Saint Bona, Saint Fina) with a new civic meaning signals the development of a new phenomenon; in others, this is marked by the intense relationship between other saints and their cities (for example, San Gimignano as it is pictured by Taddeo di Bartolo in 1393; Tomaso da Modena with the inscription "haec est civitas mea Tarvisina pro quam Deum rogo" ) . This is notable precisely because it occurs within a monotheistic religion very different from the polytheistic one of the Greek and Roman-Italian city-states. The citizens' awareness of being part of a community is manifested in the sacred, in the establishment of a relationship between the city and divine figures (gods and heroes in the ancient cities; saints and sometimes madonnas in the medieval and modem ones). Naturally, different divine figures derive from different religious systems. However, a specific rapport between each city and its protector is common to all and - notwithstanding the undeniable differences .:. is quite revealing. Venice, the Republic of Saint Mark, is only the clearest example, the most famous case of this privileged relationship. The schoiar of the ancient world cannot help but think of the many examples the Greek world offered, Athens in particular. It suffices to cite Solon's verses (fragm. 4 Diehl) that describe Athena holding her hands over her city, to think of the reliefs decorating many Athenian documentary inscriptions and heralding the goddess as the symbol of the city, or to recall all those coins that feature protector deities or founding heroes. I also mention the transfer to the city of a hero's bones (for example, Orestes and Tisamenus in Sparta, Theseus in Athens); this is a custom that brings to mind the travels of relics of saints. According to tradition Saint Mark's remains were brought from Alexandria to Venice in 829 A.D. (another famous example, whatever its historical authenticity).

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Naturally each case has its own story and its own specific characteristics, tied to various circumstances and to its historical and religious context. Nev­ ertheless, phenomena such as the creation of "new saints" as well as the construction of cathedrals recall, at least in part, phenomena of the ancient world. Thus, for example, the building of temples dedicated to communal divinities in various Greek cities toward the end of the eighth and the beginning of the seventh centuries was correctly interpreted by Anthony Snodgrass as a sign of the emergence of the city-state in Greece. I have used the same criterion with regard to ancient Rome. There, the construction of a temple for the Capitoline Triad - which was begun toward the end of the seventh century and dedicated toward the end of the sixth century B.C. constitutes the surest sign of the existence of the Roman city-state. We may easily compare the symbolic value of the city deity's temple with that of the cathedral, even though this analogy should not be stretched too far. In antiquity the meeting place was usually the public square with its neighboring buildings, whereas the temple was reserved for the divinity (whose abode it was) and sacrifices took place on outside altars. The temple was not -

a meeting place. At most, some Roman temples were used for meetings of the Roman senate (and some sacred groves for meetings of the assembly on special occasions ). Nor do I believe it is possible to find anything in antiquity that resembles what Alison Brown observes in Florence, namely that gradually in the writings of Machiavelli and Guicciardini we find the cathedral displaced from the center of the stage. Despite the analogies that exist and the strong republican ideology (borrowed from antiquity), society and religion were profoundly different. Furthermore, it is difficult to find in the pagan city-state anything comparable to what Brown calls an outward sign of changing attitudes to the Church and its role in the state. The ancient Greek and Roman-Italian city-states show self-awareness. They strongly represent themselves both in the sacred and in political spheres. However, the history and methods of such manifestation by religious means were obviously influenced by the lack of a Church. In Siena, the bell tower of the duomd' and the tower of the Palazo Pubblico reached the same height. One did not outreach the other because the two powers, civic and religious, had to be equivalent. An analogous fact would have been inconceivable in an ancient city-state, where the city gods' temples dominated the other buildings from the height of an acropolis or a citade1.9

9. Thanks to Ermelinda Campani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this essay from Italian.

Commentary

GIOV ANN I CIAP PELLI

o

CHOOS E A THEM E LIKE "consciousness and representation" as a way of starting a discussion on the city-state might be seen as a kind of provocation. The provocation consists, first, in leaving undefined the terms "consciousness and representation" ; and, second, in skipping over a preliminary analysis with which to ascertain the historical "realities," objects of past representations and consciousnesses. On the contrary, we enter, as it were, in medias res, when we pose as our initial questions how it was that the city-states of classical antiquity and medieval Italy viewed themselves and how they presented themselves to others. There follows a kind of reversal of the traditional relationship between "structure" and "super-structure." I agree with such a methodological choice: first, because it underlines the increasing importance that studies based on such an "inverted" approach have for achieving a better understanding of the past; and, second, because by forcing us to engage in such mental gymnastics it serves as a stimulus to rethinking our ideas. The symbolic and ritual aspects that might well have been part of this discussion will be taken up elsewhere in this book; here they will only appear as a kind of background material. Even des,eite this reduction in scope, a comparative comment on our theme, due to its abstract nature, might easily raise a series of objections. For this reason I begin by commenting on one of the two essays on ancient history. In referring to a chronologically more remote period, Nicole " Loraux's essay seems to me to have raised issues that have some bearing on the other pap ers and to offer a useful interpretive framework for our discussion. Loraux stresses the fact that although current literature written from either institutional or anthropological perspectives has tended to depict a "unitarian" view of the polis as both peaceful and edifying, the self-conscious­ ness of Greek cities, from the Archaic period to the beginning of the Hellenistic period, was actually more ambivalent. The nature of the polis was, as sug­ gested by Loraux, at once " one and dual." Its inhabitants were somehow aware of the conflicts that arose in political life, yet they needed to think of them as exceptional, as a disease brought from outside which was in no way

T

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inherent to city-life itself. For the Greeks the normal state of the polis was in­ ternal peace, while stasis (discord and disagreement) was responsible for de­ stroying the community. One important point, which the author highlights, is that the self-con­ sciousness of the Greek polis that has become a historiographical commonplace was expressed only in precise contexts and on specific occasions. Usually it manifested itself in the context of civic celebrations, and the inspiring principles of such representations are expressed well in the great tragic theater, as in the case of Aeschylus' Eumenides. The representation that prevailed on such oc­ casions was that of a united city: united internally in times of peace; in times of war, all the more united, standing as "un seul esprit" against the external challenge.1 Loraux reminds us that ambivalence is also present in the political arena of ancient Greece. While at least in theory Greek democracy might have allowed for diversification in expressing several different opinions, it becomes obvious even from the etymology of the terms describing its possible offsprings (such as diaphora, which means "difference" or "division in two" ) that this model always brings us back to a basic duality. Compared to that, unanimity was always considered preferable by the Greeks: divisions were always a sign of weakness, and any majority ran the risk of becoming indistinguishable from a minority. Unity thus furnished a better guarantee for maintaining a sense of identity, since the latter was linked to the community's ability to think of itself as a whole. Conversely, it was still divisions and the "disparity of diverging groups" which endangered and destroyed this very identity.2 Considering all this, even Loraux's "digressions" from the ancient field become quite significant for suggesting the frame for comparing the represen­ tational traditions of classical and medieval city-states. When, in the fourteenth century, a city such as Siena commissioned a symbolic representation of itself like the Lorenzetti frescoes of Good and Bad Government, its divisions were portrayed if Loraux's suggestion is right - as originating within the city.3 On the contrary, the Greek city-states debated for a long time the meaning to be given to "division." Was it to be seen as a problem external to the city or was it somehow innate to the polis? Of course, the former explanation was much more reassuring and for this reason Loraux qualifies it as the ' "official -

version."4 Such an attitude was present even in language. The Greeks used a term like diaphora to classify internal problems such as "differences of opinion"

1. 2.

N. Loraux, in this volume. Ibid. 3. On this topic se also C. Frugoni, "1\ govemo dei Nove a Siena e il loro credo politico nell'affresco di Ambrogio Lorenzetti," Quaderni medieval; 7 (June, 1979) 1 4·42, pub· lished in a reworked version in Una lontana ciUl. Sentimenti e immagini nel Medioello (Turin: Einaudi, 1983) 1 36·1 84, and the objections to such a view in Q. Skinner, "Ambrogio Lorenzetti: The Artist as Political Philosopher," Proceedings of the British Academy 72 (1986) 1-56. 4. Loraux, in this volume.

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among the inhabitants of a given city, whereas " discord" and "opposition" (stasis ) characterized all others: foreigners and those who, because they be­ longed to another community in an organic way, could not belong to this community. However, in speaking of internal discord the Greeks avoided using the reciprocal pronoun: there were no groups of reciprocally discordant citizens; there was only the city in a state of discord with itself. Even in this attitude there was a certain ambivalence based, probably, on the polis' inabil­ ity to think of itself as other than a unified whole. The conviction seems to have been that the problem of division was not an external one but rather innate to the system. This meant that the city had to strive for a unity that was conditioned by the alternatives of "dominating itself" or " being domi­ nated. "s Timothy Cornell's essay stresses a different aspect of self-representation. Cornell points out that it is paradoxical and even contradictory to continue thinking of the ancient city-state as a topographically compact entity, precisely because Rome soon deviated from this model. In actual fact, when we think of Rome as urbs we are imitating the Romans themselves (including those citizens who were not originally Roman) for whom Rome was the symbol of the entire community to which they all belonged. According to Cornell, the reason for which the city of Rome permeated the entire empire with its aura can be explained "in terms of a model of biological reproductive." This would explain the endless repetition, in different local situations throughout the empire, of the symbolical topography of plans and of statutes regulating the internal administration of outlying districts. Cornell points out that one can consider this to be a kind of "genetic code, " responsible for making the offspring cities the same as the mother city. It would seem possible, even in this case, to speak of a model of unity (the urbs) that was reproduced ad infinitum. ' The medieval experience suggests another explanation for the Roman period. One may think that both ancient and medieval dominant cities tended, in their relationships with the outlying towns they controlled, to impose and reproduce models that had been proved to be functional. This was certainly one of the main reasons for which, once they began to extend their jurisdiction to larger territories, medieval city-states modelled the statutes of peripheral communities on their own. On the contrary, the urban layout that they adopted in planning their terre nuove (i.e., the newly constituted fortified burroughs, whose goal was to colonize and occupy crucial areas of a recently acquired "regional ;' territory) was based on principles of regularity that were unprecedented for the mother cities. Such a model was mainly adopted because it was undoubtedly functional for a newly founded settlement. The self-conceptions of city-states as presented in the two papers on the medieval period are based on guiding principles that might bear systematic 5. Ibid. 6. See T. Cornell, in this volume.

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examination. Robert Lopez pointed out shortly before his death that a funda­ mental notion allowing us to recognize a city in all ages is the consciousness contemporaries both inside and outside the city have of its existence? A city can have a collective personality, be complex, have a life that is more intense than anywhere else, "but in order to translate into practical terms this potential a city must be conscious of it and must convince others to follow it."8 Structurally, the image that medieval cities had and provided of themselves was similar to that described by Nicole Loraux for the Greek polis, even though the meaning and details of the medieval image were somewhat different. The representation that the medieval city-state proposed of itself, either as an internal model or to send abroad as a signal, was very much that of a "united" city. The city was also seen as a united whole in the elaboration of its own "civic religion," as the cult of the city-based saints has been called, a process that was simulta­ neously a goal, an instrument, and a model for representation. Even icono­ graphically, this idea has a translation in the miniature cities that "civic" saints hold in their arms: such saints were meant to intercede for their town in the celestial realm as well as protect it physically on earth, and as such they were portrayed, like the Madonna of Mercy who protected those sheltered beneath her mantle. Later on, as Chiara Frugoni points out, "a secular self­ awareness expressed by the transition from the civitas to the commune came into existence, " and in the fourteenth century, "the idea of a civic and purely secular communal life" was eulogized.' This is, in fact, the historical back­ ground of the period examined by the second paper on the Middle Ages. Alison Brown, when dealing with a second level of civic consciousness,1° in a later time, naturally pointed to the role of political consciousness and to the fact that this consciousness, inspired by the philosophy and even by the political practice of classical antiquity, became an increasingly important factor in the late humanist period. She quite correctly drew attention to the turning point represented by the sense of "alienation" that men of the Quattrocento, particularly in Florence, experienced with respect to their city-state. The psy­ chological aspect of alienation was not unlike that which struck the protagonist of the Novella del grasso legnai% , who was led to question his identity. But alienation was also an increasingly common feeling at certain moments in the political development of Italian city-states (as in Florence at the time of the crypto-principality of the Medici) and was responsible for an estrangement of the individual from the mechanisms regulating the political life of his city. It seems to me that what was not sufciently pointed out in this paper was that this turning point was rooted in a still older attitude. "Alienation" from the political arena could also result both from distaste for the innateness of a city'S divisions and from a feeling of apathy born of an awareness that 7. R.S. Lopez, Inte1Vista sulla citta medievale, ed. M. Berengo (RomeIBari: Laterza, 1984) 4. 8. Ibid., 21-23. 9. C. Frugoni, in this volume. 10. A. Brown, in this volume.

Ciappelli: Commentary

1 25

one of the factions had triumphed, a sentiment already expressed in an earlier period.ll Furthermore, it must be said that anyone wanting to examine the implications and ramifications of this issue (the consciousness that the city­ state had of itself) would do well to begin with a series of distinctions. As Nicole Loraux points out in her paper, the first step is to distinguish the different types of sources from which we draw our conclusions. As for Quattrocento Florence, the main focus of Brown's paper, we begin by considering sources addressed to an exterior audience, whose purpose was to celebrate the city, and through which the city tried to transmit an idea of itself (or, as Lopez would have said, tried to convince others to "follow" ). In these sources the city is portrayed as a united entity and, pardy for rhetorical reasons, explicitly likened to the classical city-state and its mythical unity. This kind of representation can be found not only in Bruni's Laudatio - of which Decembrio's defense of a princely state is a counterpart - and his Historiae, but also in all those authors referred to since Hans Baron's pathbreaking and much discussed work as "civic humanists. " Although it is not necessary to undertake a detailed discussion here,12 we know that in the Quattrocento, especially in Florence and Venice, classical precedents were used as models in contemporary political discourse. Depending on circum­ stances, intellectuals of various extraction used variants of the classical model (the Politics of Aristotle with its "middling constitution, " the "mixed govern­ ment" of Plato's Republic, and Rome with its system based on a distinction between the Senate and the People) in order to anchor theoretical explana­ tions of their political systems. Only, as Alison Brown admits, "not everyone interpreted the analogy in this way."13 In fact, it is difficult to reconstruct a posteriori the role of rhetoric in such political models, especially since they were proposed by men involved, in one way or another, in government. However, alongside the official rhetoric of unity, there survives also a different point of view, preserved in private city chronicles. Deeply felt by those who expressed it, this less official view14 - present in Bruni's and Decembrio's day as well as in the earlier period - represented the city with a "dual" or even a multiple nature. Chronicles composed at the end of the thirteenth century (whose roots are still older) seem to acknowledge that medieval city-states were divided by their very nature, something that the inhabitants of the poleis could not admit to themselves. This lack of cohesion was due to two factors, a horizontal fracture among social groups (milites and populares, magnates and popolani, popolo grasso and popolo minuto,

1 1 . Se infra. 12. A synthesis of the criticisms leveled at Baron's thesis (above all by Kristeller and his school) can be found in Q. Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) vol. 1, 69-73 and 1 02-103. 13. Brown, in this volume. 14. The distinctive features of humanist historiography and chronicles were quite correctly

pointed out in G. Ortalli, "Cronache e documentazione," in Ciuilta comunale: libra, scrittura, documento, Acts of the Genoa symposium, 8-11 November 1988, forthcoming.

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depending on the different protagonists of conflict), and a vertical one among the various political "factions" crystallized by the institutionalization of the partes and later by other forms which perpetrated a prevalently binary polar­ ization. Thus the consciousness of medieval city-states was both similar to and different from that of the Greek cities. In fact, medieval sources (since the eleventh century at least, i.e. from the very origins of the communal period) admit, differently from ancient Greek sources, that citizens aimed their aggres­ sive behavior against each other when there was no exterior danger to contend withy In Florence, for example, one need only look at what was asserted by Ricordano Malispini,16 by Dino Compagni,t7 and later, even by Giovanni Cavalcanti, a chronicler often in the past considered unrepresentative of con­ temporary thinking, but now increasingly thought to be useful in understand­ ing Florence in his day.18 Especially in the first [storie, when writing about the years between 1420 and 1440, the period in which Bruni and Coluccio Salutati's followers were active, Cavalcanti anounces that he wants to "write about the division reigning amongst our citizens" and recount the "news and discord in our city." 19 It is true that his intent was to condemn factional behavior, but it is also true that he was admitting the inevitability of such discord. The consideration that grows spontaneously from this comparison is that there was a persistence of the dualist consciousness in medieval city­ states. This dualism was due, on the one hand, to a need for an abstract model that the city and its ruling class could believe in and, on the other hand, to a deeply rooted knowledge that the reality of things was quite different. In reality, the classical model was an ideal that could not be measured up to, a signal of the degeneracy of contemporary political afairs. It would seem that it is from this dualist perspective that we should reexamine the way in which the classical model was conceived by Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the two great historians and political thinkers of Florence. Cavalcanti's as­ sumptions will also help us understand Machiavelli who, after all, largely

1 5 . See the Milanese chronicles (ca. ad a. 1 040) in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, VIII, 16 ("Nullis itaque exterius adversantibus, in sernetipsos exercent odia dves" ) and 62 ("Quin etiam pacem cum hominibus habentes, cum iam inimici undique deficerent, g1adios in semetipsos ferentes, hostes sibimetipsis effecti sunt"), also quoted in D. Waley, The Italian City Republics, 2nd ed. (LondonlNew York: Longman, 1978) 94 . In Waley's book all of chapter 6, "Internal divisions," is of interest for this discussion. 16. See Ricordano Malispini, Storia fiorentina, dalle origini a1 1282, ed. V. Follini (Flo­ rence: Ricci, 1 8 16) ch. 75 and 101 . 17. See Dino Compagni, Cronica, ed. G . Luzzatto (Turin: Einaudi, 1978) 7. 1 8 . Same opinion in D. Kent, "The importance of being eccentric: Giovanni Cavalcanti's view of Cosimo de' Medici's Florence," The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 ( 1979) 101-132. D. Kent's article mentions (n. 2, 4) studies which have drawn attention to the importance of a critical use of Cavalcanti's texts for understanding Florentine politics in his time. 19. See G. Cavalcanti, Istorie fiorentine, ed. G. Di Pino (Milan: Martello, 1944) 3-4.

�

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based his work on this historiographic tradition.20 In both Machiavelli and Guicciardini the reference to the classical model of the city-state took on a different connotation and function from those of Bruni and his contemporaries.21 In the writings of humanist historians such as Bruni, the classical model had somehow made things look more noble and, at the same time, had "sterilized" the Florentine image, from which all that was "quotidian and communal" was removed.22 Machiavelli especially, but also Guicciardini, no longer saw the classical city-state as a kind of ideal to be imitated or to be used as a justification of internal politics, but rather as a reality of the past to be studied (particularly in Machiavelli's case) in an attempt to conceive a refounding of the city and the state that went with it. Machiavelli's relationship to the classical past is particularly clear in the program he announces at the very beginning of one of his most important writings, the Discorsi.23 There and elsewhere he adopts an approach that is quite different from that of the early Quattrocento humanistic tradition. This difference becomes apparent when he stresses, in the Proemio to the [storie, that the historiographic production of Bruni and Bracciolini did not mention the city's " divisions."24 The past "delli antiqui " (of the ancients) was, for 20. C. Varese, " Giovanni Cavalcanti storico e scrittore," in Storia e politica nella prosa se above all 104-1 05ff. See also G.M. Anselmi, Ricerche su i Machiavelli storieo (Pisa: Pacini, 1979) 125-40. 21. For a comparison of Machiavelli and Bruni see, for example, J.M. Najemy, "'Arti' and 'Ordini' in Machiavelli's Istorie fiorentine," in Esays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, ed. S. Bertelli and G. Ramakus, 2 vols. (Florence: La Nuova ltalia, 1978) vol. 2, 161-191. I am not going to examine the work produced in the period between Bruni and Machiavelli (nor does A. Brown), which was a period more heavily influenced by Medici rule. The rather more general approach adopted here is only meant to sketch the oudines of the period in question. Concerning the production of a " second level" historian like Bartolomeo Scala see, however, A. Brown's book, Bartolomeo Scala, 1 430-14 97, Chancellor of Florence. The Humanist as Bureaucrat (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) especially pp. 297-307. See also M. Martelli, "Narruione e ideologia nella Historia F/orentinorum di Bartolomeo Scala," Interpres 4 ( 1 981 -1982) 7-57, above all 47ff. 22 . Ibid., 52 . 23. "Considerando adunque quanto onore si attribuisca all'antiquiti . . . e veggiendo, da l'altro canto, Ie virtuosissime operazioni che Ie storie ci mostrono, che sono state operate da regni e republiche antique . . . essere pili presto amrate che imitate; anzi, in tanto da ciascuno in ogni minima cosa fuggite, che di quella antiqua virtU non ci e rimasto alcun segno; non posso fare che insieme non me ne maravigli e dolga." " Nondimanco . . . non si truova principe ne republica che agli esempli delli antiqui ricorra. II che credo che nasca . . . dal non avere vera cognizione delle storie, per non trarne, leggendole, quel senso che Ie hanno in se. " "Volendo, pertanto, trarre Ii uomini di questo errore, ho giudicato necessario scrivere, sopra turti quelli libri di Tito Livio che dalla maligniti de' tempi non ci sono stati intercetti, quello che io . . . iudichero essere necessario per maggiore intelligenzia di essi." N. Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, in Tutte Ie Opere, ed. M. Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971) 76. 24. " . . . ho trovato come nella descrizione delle guerre fatte dai Fiorentini con i principi e popoli forestieri sono stati diligentissirni, rna delle civili discordie e delle intrinseche inimicizie, e degli dferti che da quelle sono nati, averne una parte al tutto taciuta a quell'altra in modo brevemente descritta, che ai legenti non puote arrecare utile 0 piacere alcuno." "Le quali due cagioni . . . mi paiono al tutto indegne di uomini grandi; perche, se niuna cosa diletta 0 insegna, nella istoria, e quella che particularmente si descrive; se niuna lezione e utile a cirtadini che governono Ie repubbliche, e quella che dimostra Ie cagioni degli odi e delle divisioni delle

del Quattrocento (Turin: Einaudi, 1961) 93-13 1 ,

•

•

.

.

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Consciousness and Representation

Machiavelli, something that had to be analyzed so that one could imitate its positive aspects and not just use it as a catchword that had become increas­ ingly devoid of meaning. According to Machiavelli, the city's discord and factiousness, rather than being suppressed by its historians in their attempt to convey an ideal image of the city, had to be described and understood as functions of the forces which generated them. Only thus could one hope to understand the city's essence and its basic contradictions. These elements also constituted a kind of proof of the city's greatness since, despite these problems, the city managed to continue growing. Conscious of the principle according to which the city was united internally only when an external enemy threat­ ened2s (an idea that was practically a t6pos in the Middle Ages ), Machiavelli reversed the earlier perspective. Unlike humanist historians like Bruni, who had chosen to privilege Florence's external events, so as to exalt the city's capacity to unite when danger from external enemies threatened, Machiavelli in his Istorie Fiorentine decided to describe more fully the dialectics of " di drento" (internal) and "di fuori" (external) events. Furthermore, he chose to examine the history of Florence up to 1434 only from "di drento" (from the inside) since he thought that this approach would better isolate the crucial problems of its past.2' When considering the problem of representation and consciousness in the city-states of the past, it is thus necessary to distinguish a number of points. First, as we have seen, it is necessary to reflect upon the kind of source used, and upon its author's intentions: does the author intend to celebrate events or to analyze them? Second, it is necessary to understand that different realities (even in a single historical period) can produce varying forms of consciousness. This, for example, is the reason which distinguishes the Florentine situation from Venice, the other great republican city-state of its age. The image which Venice most commonly held of itself during the Middle Ages (and which gave rise to a rich chronicle tradition) is linked to the conviction of an exemplary and sacred origin of the city. This myth of origin allowed the city to interpret the historical process in terms of two important concepts: the first, a continuity of traditions (oligarchical in nature) and, the second, a deep-seated trust in the political order of the cityP Both Venice's self-

cina, accio che possino, con il pericolo d'altri diventati savi, mantenersi uniti." N. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, in Tutte Ie Opere, ed. M. Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1 971 ) 632. 25. Principle expressed more than once in Cavalcanti's Istorie fiorentine, as for instance

in the alleged letter by Agnolo Acciaioli ID Cosimo de' Medici and in Palla Strozzi's answer to the request to join the assembly held in San Pulinari square: "per 10 preterito e stato veduto che la salute del governo della Repubblica sta piu quieta e sicura drento, quando Ie guerre sono aspre di fuori; e quanto piu portano pericolo di fuori, tanto piu s'assicurano drento"; "Sempre, quando questa cina ha avuto guerra di fuori, dentro e seguita pace e concordia in tra i cittadini; e poi, al tempo delle paci e delle concordie di fuori, sono nati dentro gli scandali e Ie discordie tra i cittadini." G. Cavalcanti, Istorie fiorentine, op. cit., 293 and 301. 26. See N. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, op. cit., 633 . 27. Se G. M. Anselmi, Ricercbe, op. cit., 51-55.

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consciousness and the outstanding stability and efficiency of the Venetian model were responsible for producing an image that was conveyed abroad, giving rise to a contemporary "myth," adopted even by Florentine philosophers and politicians.28 These ideas developed in fifteenth-century Venice in ways that were very different from Florence, primarily because of differences in the two cities's political histories. Whereas "in Florence we are stil at the point of legally defining the possibilities of families and classes," in Venice, "where the aristo­ cratic legitimacy of power is not even questioned," also in consequence of the serrata at the end of the thirteenth century and a succession of further measures the last of which was the closing of the nobility register in 1458,29 "we are . . . at the point of defining what powers are to be exercised by members of a class whose rights are already certain. "30 The status of the Venetian ruling class produced important consequences. Even though the gulf between "the real patriciate and the legally constituted patriciate" continued to grow, the conflict between a wealthy minority of nobles and the lesser nobility was successfully managed. At least in part, this control was possible thanks to the equal opportunities which existed formally for officeholding, available to all members of the patriciate (i.e. the political class of the city).31 The cohesion of the Re­ public and the precocious formal definition of its internal political processes thus helped it to avoid other forms of "division", such as those which con­ tinually surfaced in Florence. Because of all this, Venetian political culture did not develop ideas similar to those expressed by Machiavelli at the beginning of the sixteenth century.32 Compared wih Florence, where not just laudatory views were current, Venice's self-image tended to celebrate the city and to draw attention to its unity. In this sense, it might be said that Venice was closer to the Greek polis than was Florence. The internal political situation is, then, another important factor in influ­ encing the consciousness and representation of the city-state and the way it managed the tensions between past and preseftt, and between ideal and real. Although such a conclusion has to be verified since it might be due to the 28. Se, above all, F. Gilbert, "The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought," in Florentine Studies, ed. N. Rubinstein (London: Faber and Faber, 1968) 463-500. 29. See S. Bertelli, II potere oligarchico nello stato-dna mediellale (Florence: La Nuova ltalia, 1978) 94. 30. A. Baiocchi, "Considerazioni sui rapporto tra cultura e politica a Venezia e a Firenze tra Quattro e Cinquecento," in Florence and Venice: comparisons and relations, ed. S. Bertelli, N. Rubinstein, C.H. Symth, 2 vols. (Florence: La Nuova ltalia, 1979) vol. 2, Cinquecento, 57-71 : 63. 31. In this manner "molte di quelle mete intermedie a carattere giuridico-istituzionale, che costituiscono generalmente il punto di coagulo delle rivendicazioni politiche dei gruppi esclusi dal potere" were kept away from the conflict. Ibid. 32 . At best there is Girolamo Priuli who, however, criticizes what he ses from an almost religious point of view, more similar to a Savonarolan-like positio n than it is to a "lay " view such as that expresd by Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Se A. Baiocchi, Considerationi, op. cit., 66-68 .

1 30

Consciousness and Representation

sources available to us, the main difference between the Greek polis and the medieval city seems, in fact, to have been the different relationship they had with their respective presents and consequently with their reality. The polis seems to have hidden in the background and diminished internal divisions and differences because it preferred to accentuate the expressions of its cohesion and unity in an attempt to strengthen identity through self-praise. Medieval city-states were different. Florentine chronicles reveal that citizens, especially when they did not belong to the ruling class in power, could feel the need to reflect upon, understand, and describe the internal processes of the city. Generally speaking, however, any specific image of the city-state, ancient or medieval, depended essentially on the reasons which led to the image's con­ struction and on the contemporary social context. If we consider, once again, the development of civic religion, we find that it is tom by the same opposition between ideal and reality. On the one hand, the cult of civic saints translated the city's need to identify itself as a united entity, such as the one represented by the hagiographic source as the object of intercession. A united city was the precondition which allowed the saint to take on a role as defensor civitatis and to be represented as such,33 even though such a relationship could rather find expression in a myriad of small episodes. When there was a proliferation of saints (several saints for just one city) there also was both a multiplication and a diversification of protectors, each of whom had different attributes and functions reminiscent of those exercised by the many pagan gods of the polis and urbs. The object of their protection, however, was only one: the city. On the other hand, and this happens at a later date, particular expressions of the cult of late saints could even be criticized by individual citizens. Chiara Frugoni has pointed out that Franco Sacchetti expressed some unflattering opinions regarding the " santi novellini" (the new saints) who were one of the most direct expressions and main vehicles of the city'S need to identify with transcendent forces. For a man like Sacchetti it might have been enough to identify himself with a "superior" ideal, such as the cult of the Virgin and of Jesus Christ, but his " average" contemporary did seem to be satisfied with such an identification. This becomes obvious when one notices the need to create new saints who were more "real" only because they were physically and chronologically closer to the community they were meant to p'r otect.34 Basically, we also encounter a "relative" behavior towards the same object even in the case of Machiavelli. When Machiavelli examined the reality of the city, he used "diversity" or even "multiplicity" as a kind of key with which to understand events; and this, in turn, led him to write the cedi drento" history of Florence, which was, of course, the history of the city's internal

33. Even though also a good many realistic descriptions can be distinguished above and beyond the hagiographic model proposed. See C. Frugoni, passim. 34. Concerning this see my unpublished essay: "Un santo del Trecento visto dai fiorentini del Quattrocento: Sant'Andrea Corsini, la sua Vita e la battaglia di Anghiari."

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struggles. But when he did not need t o find a precedent, like Bruni, but rather a model from which to learn, Machiavelli also had to propose a more united image, in which the city's ever-present divisions were no longer the innate and almost irrational differences he had described when writing about his fellow citizens but rather became the rationalized and somehow necessary expression of an inherent political dialectic.35 As is obvious from the preceding pages, I began my considerations with Nicole Loraux's idea according to which the representation of the classical city-state was more complicated than what we had thought. I then tried to see whether her idea was applicable to late medieval city-states. The results show, quite clearly, that despite the overt references of Quattrocento Venetians and Florentines to the classical model, consciousness and representation in classi­ cal and medieval city-states were very different from each other. I have also tried to point out that both classical and medieval city-states had a complex model of civic consciousness that went hand-in-hand with an equally compli­ cated representation. The various forms assumed by both civic consciousness and civic representation were dependent on a variety of circumstances. Hence, one must look at the authors who produced the texts, whether they were lay or religious intellectuals, participating or not in the exercise of power, writing on commission or on their own initiative. One must also examine the objectives pursued by these authors, whether they were trying to create instruments for analyzing reality or whether they were expressing an idealized model. In the latter case one must also seek to identify the receiver of the message, since all idealizations contain a message. This, in a certain sense, is a necessary limit even of this section of this book, precisely because we have yet to find the methodological keys with which to carry out rigorous comparative analyses of city-states in antiquity and the Middle Ages. However, we can hope that, in the future, interpretive models beginning with the ones considered here, will provide us with precisely such methodological keys, with which to compare different historical periods, different realities, and different subjects. •

35. Consider especially DiscOTSi, I, 4 ("Che la divisione della Plebe e del Senato romano feee libera e potente quella repubblica"): "10 dieo che coloro che dannono i tumulti intra i Nobili e la Plebe, mi p are che biasimino quelle cose che furono prima causa del tenere libera Roma; e che considerino pill a' romori ed aile grida che di tali tumulti nascevano, che a' buoni effetti che quelli partorivano; e che e' non considerino come e' sono in ogni republ i ca due umori diversi, quello del popolo e quello de' grandi; e come tutte Ie leggi che si fanno in favore della liberti, nascano dalla disunione loro, come facilmente si PUQ vedere essere seguito in Roma." N. Machiavelli, Tutte Ie Opere, op . cit, 82. -Thanks to Allen Grieco for his transla­ tion of this essay from Italian.

Norms of Citizenship in Ancient Greece

D AV I D W H I TE H EAD

I N T RO D UCTI O N O N F I DENTLY S PURN ING a question mark ( or any other intimations of unease), the title of this chapter, assigned by the City-States Conference Advisory Board, risks promising a good deal more than it can deliver. Before attempting to identify the norms of citizenship in ancient Greece let alone to offer them for comparison with those of republican Rome or medieval Italy (as is essayed later) one must first assess the adequacy of the database involved. Even if such norms existed, are they ascertainable? In crude statistical terms, plainly not. The "colonial" expansion of the archaic period established independent city-states (poleis) across southern Europe, from the Crimea to the Costa Brava, while the Hellenistic era, inau­ gurated by the conquests of Alexander the Great, later saw chains of Greek (or Greco-Macedonian) cities founded as far east as Pakistan.1 The total num­ ber of discrete civic communities embraced by these far-flung geographical limits defies calculation, but beyond doubt it was a four-figure one; "mindestens 750" is Eberhard Ruschenbusch's current estimate for the core area alone.2 And if we ask what substantive information survives about citizenship in these countless places, the only candid answer can be: in the overwhelming majority of instances none at all. Manifestly, then, citizenship norms are not matters open to determination by independent empirical means. Instead, the framework for such literary and epigraphical data as do independently survive has to be an empirically oriented study undertaken in antiquity itself, in the third quarter of the fourth century: that of Aristotle. The precise chronological and methodological relationship between Aristotle's Politics and the collection of 1 5 8 individual constitutions

C

•

1. The conventional periodization of ancient Greek history is archaic, c. 800-c. 500; classical, c. 500 323; Hellenistic, 323 30. (All such dates, here and throughout, are B.C.). 2. Eberhard Ruschenbusch, "Die Bevolkerungszahl Griechenlands im 5. und 4. ]h.v.Chr.," Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik 56 ( 1984) 55-57, at 55, and "Die Zahl der grie­ chischen Staten und Arealgrosse und Biirgerzahl der Normalpolis' ," ibid. 59 (1985) 253-63, at 257, revising his earlier figure (Untersuchungen zu Staat und Politik in Griechenland vom 7.-4.Jh.v. Chr. [Bamberg, 1978] 6) of "etwa 700." Compare Daniel Waley, The Italian City­ Republics, 2nd ed. (London, 1978) 1 1 , on northern nd central I taly at the end of the twelfth century: "Some two or three hundred units existed which deserve to be described as city­ states. "

a

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(politeiai) attributed to him - but more probably a collaborative project with pupils and associates - is irksomely complex.3 In general terms, nonetheless, the very nature of Politics, implicit as well as (at Ethics 1 1 81b) explicit, is that of a databased work of synthesis; and the discussion of citizenship in the third of its eight books may be taken, accordingly, as normative in character and intent. Ideally, of course, we would have wished to verify (or falsify! ) Aristotle's analysis for ourselves, by studying the politeiai before rather than after their absorption into Politics; but the collection is almost completely lost. Later writers' quotations from or citations of it are occasionally instructive, as are instances where it rises to the surface in Aristotle's own exposition. However, the only politeia to survive entire (or virtually so) is the Athenian one - and just how " normal" was Athens? Since information about Athenian citizenship is vastly superior to that for any other individual polis, that is no rhetorical question but a real one, which inevitably looms large over this chapter as a whole. I will argue that at least some of the main features of Athenian citizenship should indeed be seen as norms for the Greek world as a whole. Yet the essential atypicality of classical Athens, at any rate, must be borne constantly in mind and is most graphically illustrated by its sheer size. A "Normalpolis " (Ruschenbusch) occupied a territory of 25-100 square kilo­ meters and its citizen population - adult males, as we will see - numbered no more than 1 33-800.4 In the case of Athens the corresponding figures are circa 2,600 square kilometers and, in Aristotle's time, at least 30,000 citizens (and many more a century earlier).s Even of this order, such disparities in scale will not necessarily have produced an atypical kind of citizenship in Athens, but associated factors such as the presence of a substantial body of free immigrants' may well have erected abnormally strong procedural and psychological defenses around it, thereby contributing to one's perception, in this area, of "a distinct sense of siege, of barricades being maned, of determined resistance to constant pressures from outside. "7

3. Se in ful Raymond Weil, Aristote et I'histoire: Esi sur Ia Politique (paris, 1960) 179323; in brief Peter J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian AthenlJion Politeia (Oxford, 1981) 5 8-59. 4. Ruschenbusch, "Die Zahl" (n. 2), esp. 258 and 263; the population figure is again a revision of the one in Untersuchungen, but this time downward. 5. Mogens H. Hansen, "Demographic Reflections on the Number of Athenian Citizens 451-309 B.C.," American Journal of Ancient History 7 (1982) 172-89, and Demography and Democracy: the Number ofAthenian Citizens in the Fourth Century B.C. (Herning, 1985) . In the fifth century (before the Peloponnesian War) the figure had perhaps be as high as 60,000: M. H. Hansen, Three Studies in Athenian Demography. Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabemes Selskab (The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters) Historisk-filosoflSke Meddelelser 56 (198 8) 14-28. 6. See below, at n. 22 . 7. John K. Davies, "Athenian Citizenship: The Descent Group and the Alternatives," Classical Joumal 73 (1977) 105-21, at 1 1 0.

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ARISTOTLE

To hold - correctly, in my view - that Aristotle should be taken seriously as a historian8 entails no disregard for the danger, when reading Politics, that "it is easy to think he is being empirical when he is not.'" Yet in recognizing and avoiding this we may run the equal and opposite risk of assuming he is not being empirical when in fact, and certain appearances notwithstanding, he is.lo So what can the historian extract, by way of norms, from the discussion of polis citizenship in Politics 3.1-S ? There i s n o call to rehearse here the series of fits and starts b y which the analysis endeavors to proceed.H Nor for present purposes need we share Aristotle's underlying preoccupation with the ethical dimension of citizenship - notably the likelihood, as he saw it, that not all those eligible for citizenship in theory would be able and/or willing to exercise it in practice.l2 Viewed from a political and historical angle the discussion raises two major clusters of relevant points: 1. "The citizen is not a citizen through residence somewhere, since im­ grants and slaves share in that" ( 1 27 8 a 7-8) . A negative contribution toward definition, plainly, but crucial in any search for norms. As John Davies has observed, no ancient society was prepared simply to equate the citizens of a particular community or area with the totality of its inhabitants; "the perpetual challenge was therefore to define a subsection of [the latter] such that it and [the former] could be mutually defining categories."u Davies means by this the practical "challenge" confronting those societies themselves rather than the intellectual one facing Aristotle, but in either case the subsection was delimited, implicitly if not always explicitly, by three criteria: sex, age, and (above all) legal status. a. Sex. Aristotle evidently considered the exclusion of women too obvious to mention; and in the actual practice of the poleis it was all but universal.l4 Women may (and indeed should) be seen in a broad perspective

8. Thus, e.g., Geoffrey E. M. d e Sre. Croix, "Aristode on History and Poetry," i n The Ancient Historian and his Materials: Essays in Honour of C.E. Stevens on his 70th Birthday (Farnborough, 1975) 45-58; d. idem, "Political Pay outside Athens," Clasical Quarterly n.s. 25 (1975) 48-52 for the correct approach, I believe, to the generalizations in Politics. 9. Richard Robinson, Aristotle's Politics Books III and IV (Oxford, 1962) xv.

10. For the degree of empiricism underpinning even the "theoretical" books, VII VlI, George L. Huxley, On Aristotle and Greek Society (Belfast, 1979), and "On Aristode's Best Stare," in Crux: Essays Presented to G.E.M. de Ste. Croix on his 75th Birthday (Exerer, 1985) 139-49. 1 1 . Curtis Johnson, "Who is Aristode's Gtizen?" Phronesis 29 ( 1984) 73-90 is a sensible guide here. 12. See on this Qaude Mosse, "La conception du citoyen dans la Politique d'Aristote, Eirene 6 (1967) 17-22, and " Citoyens actifs et citoyens 'passifs' dans les cites grecques: une approche theorique du probleme," Revue des Etudes Anciennes 81 (1979) 24 1 -49. 13. Davies (n. 7) 1 1 4 . 14. For citizenship (politeia) granted to women se Suppiementum Epigrapbicum Graecum 1 5 (Leiden, 1958) no. 384 (from 370-368) but this was citizenship of the primitive Molossian federation in Epeiros, not a polis. se

"

-

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as having "an inherited, communal and familial connection" with a polis;ls but their link with its citizenship in an active and a political sense was purely vicarious, by virtue of their being the wives and mothers of citizens; see 2, below. b. Age. Aristotle does allude, albeit briefly, to the idea of full citizenship as excluding both youths and old men (1275a 14-19; 1278a 4-6 for the former only). It is difficult to judge the normality of the second of these exclusions in particular. However, if the notion is of the actual diminution of citizen rights beyond and stemming from the end of military service (usually at sixty?),t' rather than merely such military superannuation itself, we can confidently say that this did not occur in classical Athens and may legitimately doubt whether it was widespread elsewhere, given that, overall, "the Greeks were unsure whether the oldest citizens should have their political powers increased or reduced. " 17 On the other hand the active exercise of citizen rights, as distinct from their merely latent possession, clearly did presuppose adulthood, normally reckoned to begin at age twenty.18 c. Status. Operating alone, criteria a and b would obviously have defined the ancient Greek citizen as an adult male; but Aristotle, as we have seen, went considerably further than that, and so did the poleis themselves. "Poleis are doubtless bound to contain large numbers of slaves, metics and foreigners," Aristotle declares in Politics 7 ( 1 326a 1 8-20); and provided "large" is under­ stood in relative terms, there can be no quarrel with this. Slavery - or in Moses Finley's broad formulation "dependent labour . . . performed under compulsions other than those of kinship or communal obli­ gations"l' - was ubiquitous in the Greek world, as he repeatedly demon­ strated. The Solonian crisis in sixth-century Athens reveals that in the archaic period the concepts of citizenship and servitude were not yet incompatible. However, Solon's resolution of that crisis ( "henceforward no Athenian would ever again be a slave in Athens: there would no longer be any internal

1 5 . Cynthia B. Patterson, "Hai Attikai: the other Athenians," in Rescuing Creusa: New Methodological Approaches to Women in Antiquity, HeliO$ 13.2 (1 986) 49-67 (quotation from 50).

16. A 1 6-65 levy of the citizens of Pontic Herakleia by its tyrant Klearchos in the 350s comes across (from Polyaenus 2.30.3) as something extreme, even malign. 17. Peter J. Rhodes, The Greek City-States: A Source Book (London, 1986) 163; d. generally Pierre Roussel, "Etude sur Ie principe d'anciennete dans Ie monde helIenique," Memoires de l'Institut National de Prance (Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres) 43 (1951) 123-227. At Politics (IV) 1 297b 12-16 Aristode uses the past tense when mentioning the limitation of officeholding to those still of military age in Malis, a smallish area of north­ central Greece. l8. In fourth-century Athens formal access to citizen rights came at age eighteen but, semingly, their practical exercise two years later: Rhodes (n. 3) 495; David Whitehead, The Demes of Attica, 50Sn-ca. 250 B.C.: A Political and Social Study (Princeton, 1986) 1 04. For the significance of the age of twenty in, for example, Sparta, with its elaborate age-group structure, se Douglas M. MacDowell, Spartan Law (Edinburgh, 1 986) 1 59-1 67. 19. Moses I. Finley, "Was Greek Civilization Based on Slave Labour? " Historia 8 (1959) 145-64, at 145 ( id., Economy and Society in Ancient Greece [London, 1981] 97) . =

�

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subjects" ) shows u s how, i n poleis with a basic impetus toward sociopolitical development generally, they sooner or later became SO.20 As to Aristotle's "metics and foreigners" (metoikoi and xenoi), both are categories of free - if not necessarily freeborn - aliens. The distinction arises from a snapshot, so to speak, of their juridical standing in the eyes of a polis at any given instant in time: metics being reckoned residents (that is, immigrants ), and foreigners merely visitors. Passages like this have prompted some scholars, notably Claude Mosse, to suggest that Aristotle's whole treat­ ment of citizenship is conditioned by, indeed extrapolated from, what he saw around him in fourth-century Athens.21 The terminology ( "metoikoi" espe­ cially) does, to be sure, cal Athens to mind. Athens' metoikoi were probably the largest concentration of free immigrants (Greek and non-Greek) in classical Greece and are certainly the best known,22 and it is unlikely that every polis either regulated the lives of its resident aliens in as much detail or difrentiated so rigorously between them and (mere) xenoi. Nevertheless the basic demar­ cations of status here are not purely Athenian but normal (classical) Greek ones. "We must not call politai (citizens) everyone without whom there would be no polis, " warns Aristotle at 1278a 3; and indeed no polis did so, even within its population of free adult males. Instead, like Athens, it first evolved a fundamental distinction in law between citizen and alien and subsequently, within the latter category, a judicial and fiscal means of isolating residents from visitors.23 2. In what then did this fundamental status distinction consist and how was it sustained? As Robinson observes, "to call a person a citizen is to ascribe to him certain political privileges and duties. Hence two different but connected questions arise: What are these privileges and duties; and to whom do they belong?"24 This is true enough; and part of the problem with Politics 3.1-5 is that the focus of the inquiry shifts unsystematically between the one question and the other. The first of them - what the citizens do rather than who they are comes across as Aristotle's chief preoccupation; and he attempts to meet it in terms of participation in deliberative and judicial office. Yet he candidly admits ( 1275b 5ff.) that this criterion holds good necessarily only for democ­ racies, and his eventual formula ( 1278a 36) adopts the much more broad­ brush idea of a share in "honors" (tima;), a term left undefined but evidently 20. Quotation from Michel M. Austin and Pierre Vidal Naquet, Economic and SodaI History of Ancient Greece (London, 1977) 72, cf. 70-71 , 94. Thomas W. Gallant, "Agricultural Systems, Land Tenure, and the Reforms of Solon," Annual of the British School at Athens 77 (1982) 1 1 1-24, is the best recen t discussion of the Solonian crisis and the status complexities of those involved; and se generally Finley, Economy and Sodety (n. 1 9) chap. 9. 21 . Refs. above, n. 12. 22. Se e i n general David Whitehead, The Ideology of the Athenian Metic, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, suppl. vol. 4 (Cambridge, 1977) . 23. David Whitehead, "Imigrant Communities in the Cl assical Polis: Some Principles for a Synoptic Treatment," L'Antiquite Classique 53 (1984) 47-59. 24. Robinson (n. 9) 7; d. Emil Szanto, Das griechische Biirgerecht (Freiburg, 1 892) 4 5. -

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one that encompassed all possible political prerogatives and perhaps eco­ nomic and religious ones tooP In this way, without doing appreciably more than touching on such complicating issues as degrees of participation (such as assembly membership but not eligibility for individual office), he presumably satisfied himself that he had solved the dificulty of having to take into account generic differences between democracies and oligarchies (1275a 2-5, and so on) and particular permutations of citizen rights in specific poleis. But amidst al this, at 1275b 22ff., he abrupdy switches to what W. L. Newman called "a rival definition" which is, rather, the second Robinsonian question: who shall the citizens actually be?26 "In practice a citizen is defined as he whose parents were both citizens, not merely his father or his mother" ( 1 275b .22-23). The phrase "in practice" (pros ten chresin) deserves emphasis, as half of a methodological distinction between theory (gnosis) and practice (chresis) introduced in book 1 ( 1258b 9-10). Here in short, is one of Aristode's most unequivocal claims to be presenting citizenship norms that rest upon foundations of empirical observation. So do they? A basic principle of kinship can certainly be accepted as normal. Once any citizen body was in existence (and Aristode characteristically spares a thought for the initial chicken-and-egg dilemma: 1275b 32-34 ) it became a self-renewing descent group, the descent criterion being either suffi­ cient or - in conjunction with a property qualification, for instance merely necessary. One wishes, however, to know the precise rule applied. In the passage quoted above ( 1275b 22-23) Aristode obviously suggests that it was full, double endogamy. Yet in the very process of doing so, as we shall see, he raises the suspicion that enough states may have been content with a criterion of simply patrilinear descent (like fourth-century Siphnos: Isocrates 1 9.9) to undermine his generalization. The criterion of double endogamy is most familiar to us from Athens, where it was introduced by Perikles' law of 451-450,27 reafrmed (after ir­ regularities during the Peloponnesian War) in 403-402, and further buttressed during the fourth century by ancillary legislation28 and procedural innova­ tion.29 Aristode, though a metic in Athens,Jo cannot but have been intimately acquainted with this whole apparatus. Did he then merely extrapolate a generalization from it? The charge is, or would be, a grievous one; and although Aristode cannot in my view be proved guilty of it he does make the validity of his generalization hard to assess. The two later passages ( 1278a 26-34 and 1 3 1 9b 6-1 1 ) where double endogamy is mentioned posit three important and interconnected qualifications as to its universality: that it is 25. Whitehead (n. 22) 70. 26. William L. Newman, The Politics of Aristotle III (Oxford, 1902) 141. 27. Se Cynthia B . Patterson, Pericles' Citizenship Law of 451-50 B.C. (New York, 1981). 28. Douglas M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (London, 1978) 87. 29. Whitehead (n. 1 8) 97-109. 30. David Whitehead, "Aristotle the Metic," Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society n.s. 21 (1975) 94-99.

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especially characteristic of democracies; that it represents, in them, the final of a screw, which has already been progressively tightened; and that in radical or "ultimate" democracies (of which Aristotle heartily disapproved) this final stage is reversible, if only temporarily, as a political and/or demo­ graphic regulating mechanism. Jean-Marie Hannick's discussion of all three Politics passages is a sensible one - pointing out, for instance, that the question of legitimate birth and bastardy is a further complicating factor to which Aristotle alludes without clearly distinguishing it from the matter of citizen descent as such.31 But Hannick is probably overcautious in estimating the prevalence of double endogamy outside Athens. He allows, as certain, only three instances: Byzantium, Arkadian Orchomenos, and Rhodes (where matroxenoi, men with foreign mothers, apparently had a species of "second-class" citizenship) . He is doubtless right to disregard Epeiros;32. and the common inference drawn from Demosthenes 23.213 about Oreos (Euboia) is, as he says, obscured by the bastardy issue. On the other hand there is at least one known case of double endogamy that Hannick overlooked, Hellenistic KOS;33 and in general terms his entirely proper stress on the twofold inadequacy of our sources - their paucity overall and the "manque de clarte' of what little there is (about Sparta, for example) - ·seems to me to place the onus of argument more on anyone who would doubt or reject Politics 1275b 22-2334 than on those in­ clined, with all due qualification, to accept it. Nor should one discount the possibility of conscious emulation and trend-following as a spur to natural sociopolitical evolution. In the Funeral Speech of 431-430 Thucydides' Perikles roundly declares that the Athenians' constitution does not mimic the laws of their neighbors: "Rather than copying others, we ourselves are their model" (Thuc. 2.37. 1 ) . Conceivably the historical Perikles did not say this or anything like it; but if he did, his own citizenship law, passed twenty years earlier (and the earliest known measure of its kind), might well have been among the paradigms he had in mind.35 tum

C LAS S I C ( AL) G REEK C I T I Z EN S H I P

The discussion of citizenship in Politics 3.1-5 i s of course implicitly synchronic. As elsewhere in the work, Aristotle alludes in passing to changes and develop31. jean-Marie Hannick, "Droit de cite et mariages mixtes dans la Grece ciassique: A propos de quelques textes d'Aristoll:," L'Antiquite Classique 45 (1976) 133-48. 32. Cf. above, at n. 14. Against Jakob A. O. Larsen's repeated insistence that these documents indicated double endogamy, se Hanick (n. 31) 139-41 and, on different grounds, F. David Harvey, "Those Epirote Women again (SEG XV 384)" Clasical Philology 64 (1969) 226-29. 33. See Susan M. Sherwin-White, Ancient Cos (GOttingen, 1978) 15 3ff., esp. 1 53 54. 34. E.g., implicitly, Moses I. Finley, The Ancient Greeks (London, 1963) 48; in more muted (and acceptable) form, id., Economy and Society (n. 19) 8 8 . 3 5 . For others, i n the sphere o f civic organization, se e Nicholas F . jones, Public Organi­ zation in Ancient Greece: A Documentary Study, Memoirs of the American Philosophical So­ ciety 1 76 (Philadelphia, 1987) pasim.

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ments over time and to phenomena no longer extant, but his essential concern is to characterize Greek polis citizenship in his own day, the second half of the fourth century. To grasp anything of the eight-hundred-year evolution of citizenship from its origins until the Roman conquest one must perforce appeal primarily to evidence other than his, as well as - hard evidence aside - making a more sustained effort than he did to adopt a diachronic perspective. This will be essayed, as far as space allows, in the final section of the chapter. First, though, let us have a more considered delineation of citizenship in the classical period.

Defining the Citizen Body The matter of who the politai were - that is, how they marked themselves off from the other adult male inhabitants of their polis - has been sufficiently aired. A kinship criterion, and thus a citizen body as a descent group, was the norm. Although Aristotle reveals that double endogamy was particularly characteristic of democracies, his fourfold typology of oligarchies in book 4 ( 1292a 39-b 10, elaborated at 1293a 12ff. ) includes two types based in part on patrilinear descent,36 and in book 5 (at 130Sb 2ff.) he cites Massalia, Istros, Herakleia and Knidos as examples of this. We are admittedly ignorant of the prevalence not merely of a descent criterion (with or without others) in oligarchies but also, at bottom, of oligarchy itself. (When Chester Starr writes that "modem books with title 'Greek Democracy' or the like are seriously misleading, for almost all states by 500 were oligarchic in character and remained so," this is an admirable and necessary warning - until the last three words.)37 But in practical terms the inheritance of property - under constitutions where this was relevant to citizen rights - and of citizenship often were elements in the same process. In any event, under oligarchies and democracies alike the prerogatives of a citizen, as we shall see, were such (at least in normal circumstances) as to keep the realities of access to citizenship in close accord with the rules. The precise mechanism for examining and validating citizen credentials on a kinship basis is attested in detail only for Athen·s. There, in a polis so large that no citizen could hope to know all his fellows (Thucydides 8.66.3, d. Isocrates 15.172), the protagonist's role fell to local subdivisions: the 1 39 demes given constitutional recognition by Kleisthenes in the late sixth century. Central government monitored the operation (and stood by to prevent its abuse), but it was quintessentially one of small peer-group review.38 In poleis whose entire citizen membership did not exceed that of one of the medium or large Attic demes the procedure was probably less elaborate yet similar in 36. See Leonard Whibley, Greek Oligarchies: Their Character and Organisation (Cam bridge, 1 896) 107-1 1 . 37. Chester G. Starr, Individual a nd Community: The R ise o f the Polis 800-500 B.C. (Oxford, 1 986) 93. 38. See Whitehead (n. 18) 97-104, 258-60.

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kind: open scrutiny of the men concerned. Access to citizenship was held to be a matter for the public domain, not private initiative. The citizen body itself, in other words, not only laid down the general ground rules but saw to it in each individual case that they were either followed or else - exceptionally, and by sovereign decision to "naturalize" - breached.J9 Why? In Politics 7 (at 1326b 2ff.) Aristotle claims disadvantages in a polis' being either too small (from the standpoint of autarkeia, economic and psychological self-sufficiency) or too large. If too large, he asserts, its constitu­ tion will . be unmanageable: "For who will be general of its over-swollen multitude, or who but a Stentor its herald?" Given that boards of generals, in Athens and elsewhere, might perform important civil duties in addition to their military functions,40 these two rhetorical questions may actually merge into one; but in any event they both reflect the desirability of a citizen-body's being "easily surveyed at a glance" (eusynoptos: 1326b 24; also in Isocrates 15.172, above). Thus the clear message conveyed by both Aristotelian precept and discernible polis practice - even in mega-Athens41 - is that citizen num­ bers needed to be limited because otherwise the nature and exercise of citizen­ ship itself would be impaired. Why and how this would happen emerge plainly enough if we now contemplate the following:

The Citizen's Rights (and Obligations) Citizens monopolized the economic privileges of owning landed property and house-property in Attika, of inheriting property from Athenians, of purchasing the leases of the silvermines, of being the recipients of regular or windfall distributions of money or com which came through the state, or of participating in tribal feasts or in the maintenance associated with performing in some public festivals. Again, even more obviously, citizens monopolized the political privileges of voting in lawcourts and Assembly, of speaking in Assembly, of pleading in court (with a few exceptions), of holding office, and of holding public priest­ hoods and other honours.42

The prerogatives (Aristotle's timai) enumerated here by Davies for classi­ cal Athens - prerogatives that as he says made its citizens "not merely a descent group but also � interest group " - had their analogues, in general terms if not always in detail, in every polis, large and small alike. 39. For Athens, see Michael J. Osborne, Naturalization in Athens III-IV (Brussels, 1983). 40. Athens: see Peter J. Rhodes, The Athenian Boule (Oxford, 1972) 43-47. Elsewhere (e.g.) fihh-century Syracuse: lbucydides 6.41; fourth-century Histiaia: Marcus N. Tod, A Se­ lection of Greek Historical Inscriptions II (Oxford, 1 948), no.141; third-century Argos: Schwyzer, Dialectorum Graecarum Exempla Epigraphica Potiora (Leipzig, 1923; repro Hildesheim, 1 960), no. 90; second century Lesbos: Inscriptiones Graecae XI 4, no. 1 064b ( XII Suppl., no.1 36b). 41 . For actual attendance levels at the Athenian assembly - restricted not least by the capacity of the successive auditoriums - se Mogens H. Hansen, The Athenian Assembly (Oxford, 1987) 8-19. 42 . Davies (n. 7) 1 06. =

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When Davies writes of the citizens' political monopolies (broadly under­ stood) as standing out "even more obviously" than their economic ones, that is fair comment. They are the matters that most preoccupied Aristode, and they claimed pride of place in the ancient Greek mentality in general:13 Oligar­ chies - not to mention a polis like Sparta, which defies constitutional classification - often devised different degrees of political participation,44 and property qualifications for certain offices are known even from egalitarian Athens:15 Nevertheless, whatever the principles for allocating specific political rights and functions within a citizen body, the global demarcation between citizens - all citizens - and others - all others - was conceptually para­ mount. A polis was not a place but a people, a body of politai (Aristode Poli­ tics 1274b 41, paralleled in numerous Greek poets and prose writers before and after him), each of them possessed of politeia in the sense of "citizenship," and thus all of them together embodying the politeia in the sense of "constitu­ tion."46 To us it might seem an exercise in tautology to insist that the essence of politeia (in either sense) was political participation, but no Greek would have thought so; and therein, indeed, lies the ineradicable difference between Greek politeia and Roman civitas, or at any rate the point that vitiates any simple, one-to-one comparisons between them. Long before Roman citizenship had developed (under the late republic and the empire) into a "world fran­ chise,"47 its possession had become, for all but a small and ambitious elite, much less a matter of political rights than of civil ones, among them the ius provocationis, the right of appeal against ill treatment by Roman civilian or military officials. Already in the fourth century there were more than 1 50,000 registered Roman citizens, and more than 5,000 square kilometers of ager Romanus.48 Why Rome embarked upon territorial (and thus numerical) ex­ pansion, as opposed to the classic Greek model of hegemony, control without absorption, is not germane to this chapter. How - in an institutional sense - it did so, however, is; and at least one cardinal fact must be that the votes in the several Roman assemblies had since time immemorial been cast by groups, not by individuals - a system unknown in Gre�e.49 Furthermore, the nature of the groups meant that they could increase in size without increasing in number (the number of centuries in the co"";tia centuriata remaining static at the 1 93 fixed in [probably] the fifth century, and that of the ,tribes in the

43 . Paul A. Rahe, "The Primacy of Politics in Classical Greece," American Historical Review 89 (1984) 265-93 . 44. Oligarchies: Whibley (n. 36) 139ff. Sparta: Austin and Vidal-Naquet (n. 20) 78ff., esp. 82-84. 45. See Rhodes (n. 3) 145-46, 550-5 1 . 4 6 . Cf. Victor Ehrenberg, The Greek State 2nd ed. (London, 1 969) 38-39. 47. Adrian N. Sherwin-White, "The Roman Citizenship: A Survey of its Development into a World Franchise," in Hildegard Temporini and others (eds.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der rOmischen Welt I. 2 (Berlin, 1972) 23-5 8 . 48. Peter A . Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C. A . D. 1 4 (Oxford, 1971 ) 13, 30. 49. E. Stuart Stave!ey, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London, 1972) 121-42 . -

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comitia tributa and the concilium plebis sticking, after 241, at 35 ) .50 Elsewhere in this volume Keith Hopkins calls attention to the significance of the Roman assemblies and their proceedings in the area of political ritual, and the point may be readily conceded - for those able to attend and participate. Yet otherwise the progressive enlargement of the voting units cannot but have dissipated any conviction, on the part of the ordinary Roman civis, that the political dimension of his civitas was in any way as valuable as the civil (and material). To deny him a political metier altogether would be extreme, as Nicolet warns.Sl Nor - as even Aristotle realized - was every Greek citizen active in his role. To my mind, nevertheless, the differences between Greek and Roman citizenship remain, in Philippe Gauthier's words, "pas de degre mais de nature."Sl How far then can either profitably be compared with the citizenship of the medieval Italian communes? For my part I find the points of disparity to be more striking than the points of similarity. For example, if in both Greece and Rome the idea of citizenship without officeholding was entirely acceptable (in both theory and practice), that of officeholding without citizenship, as in (e.g.) Padua,SJ would not have been. However, on the view (which I have espoused here) that there are actually major qualitative differences between Greek and Roman citizenship, the question of comparativeness with medieval Italy is not so much an all-embracing ancient versus a medieval one as a matter of perceiving which of Greece or Rome furnishes the closer ancient analogue. In my judgment (shared, mutatis mutandis, by Walter Eder elsewhere in this volume) it is Rome. This is not to deny that from the standpoint of scale there can seem a natural line of continuity between the typical polis and the typical commune, a line that Waley and others (with appeal to Aristotle) have customarily drawn; or that the psychological manifestation of polis self­ sufficiency is the ancient counterpart to medieval (:md later) campanilismo. Yet in Weberian terms - and notwithstanding the economic facets of Greek citizenship noted in the quotation from Davies and examined later - could it not be that in medieval Italy just as in ancient Rome the economic, civil, and 50. In addition to Staveley (n. 49), see in full Lily Ross Taylor, Roman Voting Assem blies (An Arbor, 1 966); iIi brief Michael H. Crawford, The Roman Republic (Brighton and Adantic Highlands, 1978) appendix 1. 5 1 . Claude Nicolet, Le metier de citoyen dans la Rome Republicaine (paris, 1976), esp. 36-39, 322. However, the preface to the English version (The World of the Citizen in Republi­ can Rome [London, 1 980]) concedes the gulf between ideal and reality. See further Moses I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983) 17 1 8 and chap. 4; and, on Nicolet's lines, Fergus G.B . Millar, "The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 2 00-151 B.C., " Journal of Roman Studies 74 (1 984) 1-19 and "Politics, Persuasion and th e People before the Social War (150-90 B.C.), " ibid. 76 (1986) 1-1 1. 5 2 . Philippe Gauthier, "'Generosire' romaine et 'avarice' grecque: sur I'octroi du droit de cire," in Melanges d'histoire ancien offerts a William Seston (Paris, 1974) 207-15 (quota­ tion from 207), and "La citoyennere en Grece et a Rome," Ktema 6 (1981) 1 67-79; d. Ernst Meyer, "Vom griechischen und romischen Staatsgedanken," in Eumusia: Festgabe fur E1"1t Howald zum sechzigsten Geburtstag (Zurich, 1947) 30-53 . 53. Waley (n. 2) 1 04.

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legal privileges of citizenship generally loomed largest, whereas for the Greek citizen (especially though not exclusively in a democracy) such nonpolitical benefits of his status flowed from, were corollaries of, the political ones? (Or again, as regards the channels through which political rights were exercised, does not the role of the medieval city guilds beg comparison more aptly with the centuries and tribes of the Roman assemblies than with the fully individu­ ated character of Greek citizenship ? ) Such questions I can only pose and leave others to contemplate - together, perhaps, with the following suggestion of Peter Riesenberg: The primary concern of citizens then [by the trecento] was not for rights that could allow political participation. To be sure, such participation was positively viewed, but it was considered just a part of complex personal or family strategy. What the medieval citizen was more concerned with were those benefits of citizenship which advanced his and his family s social status, facilitated his business life, gave him an edge over the resident non-citizen wihin the walls, and protected him as he maintained banking or commercial operations abroad.54 '

An ancient historian reading these words would find scant similarity with Greece, but a good deal to put him in mind of Rome. Let us return to classical Greece. Of the Greek citizen's economic mo­ nopolies, landownership deserves particular emphasis - considerably more emphasis, indeed, than ancient writers (Aristotle included) explicitly gave it both as an abstract concomitant of citizenship and because of the inescapably rural and agricultural nature of a state where the majority of the citizens actually lived not in the city at all but in the surrounding countryside, the chora. (See, for instance, Thucydides 2.16 on Athens, a polis whose urban center, asty, held more attractions than most. The important point, however, is that even if this pattern of residence had been very different it would have had no bearing on eligibility for citizens' rights, only on the ease of exercising them; the polis had no equivalent of the medieval commune's contadini. ) That the right to own land - even as little land as a house stood on - within the confines of a polis was exclusively the prerogative of it� politai was undoubt­ edly a norm, in a double sense: no polis is known to h ave departed from it as a general stipulation;ss and it was a stipulation that only a sovereign, ad hominem decision of the whole polis, not a private transaction, could circum­ vent;S6 that is, a decision of the same constitutional order as a grant of citizenship itself. Given that "most people in the ancient world . . . recognized the land to be the fountainhead of all good, material and moral,,,s7 this mo­ nopoly was all-pervasive in its impact upon classical polis society. To be sure, eligibility to own land and actually owning any were two separate matters. 54. Peter Riesenberg, "Citizenship at Law in Late Medieval Italy," Viator 5 ( 1 974) 33346, at 335. 55. Cf. Moses I. Finley, The Ancient &anomy (2nd ed., London, 1 985) 48. 56. For Athens, se Jan Peefrka, The Formula for the Grant of Enktesis in Attic Inscrip­ tions (Prague, 1966). 57. Finley (n. 55) 97.

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The Athenian case reminds us that the de facto boundary separating land­ owners from non-landowners might fall within a citizen body rather than at, and as, its periphery; and this was presumably true of other democracies where citizenship embraced the landless (and which never took steps, by way of land redistribution, to prevent their remaining so). Other poleis, though, chose to merge their landownership and citizenship criteria, with inevitably reinforcing effects on them both. As regards other economic distinctions between citizens and (free) aliens, norms present themselves less strikingly. One's impression nevertheless is that what Xenophon remarked in the middle of the fourth century about Athens' imigrant population ( "so far from drawing a wage, they pay a tax" [Ways and Means 2 . 1 ] ) is as good, and revealing, a formula as any that can be contrived. Irrespective of what Xenophon himself may have meant by it, we can regard it here as implying, in crude terms, that noncitizens were obliged to put more into the polis than they took out, given the citizens' unassailable position to ensure that they themselves did the opposite. In the literal sense " drawing a wage" ( by office-holders and those performing other civic duties) is most fully attested for Athens,58 but there are scraps of evidence from elsewhere that lend credence to Aristotle's fragmentary picture of this - in no fewer than seven diferent passages in Politics 4 and 6 - as characteristic of democracies in general, particularly (no doubt) but not solely the larger and wealthier ones;S9 and even a moderate oligarchy is found paying the expenses of its officials (Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 1 1 .4, Boiotia) . More broadly, economic divi­ dends might fall, routinely and/or fortuitously, to politai not by virtue of any­ thing they had done or were likely to do but simply as a corollary of who they were. An Athenian instance of this, the Egyptian grain distribution of 445-444, played a crucial ( and evidently bitter) part in underscoring, in an entirely tangible way, the status demarcations recently adumbrated in Perikles' citizenship law.60 The extent to which comparable benefits accrued on anything like a regular basis to the citizens of other poleis, smaller and/or poorer than Athens, may be doubted, however. The annual·viritim share-out of gold and silver amongst the citizens of ore-rich sixth-century Siphnos (Herodotus 3.57.2 ) has rightly been regarded as making an important conceptual statement about the equation between the wealth of a polis and of its politai.61 Yet in practice how often was such wealth, other than from the occasional fruits of war, there to dispose? 5 8 . Se Rhodes (n. 3), general index s.v. "payments"; Hansen (n. 41) 46-48. 59. De Ste. Croix, "Political pay" (n. 8); d. Rhodes (n. 17) 165. 60. Davies (n. 7) 1 1 1 ; Whitehead (n. 22) 151; Whitehead (n. 18) 99-100. 6 1 . Austin and Vidal-Naquet (n. 20) 193-94, pairing this passage with Herodotus 7.144 (for other versions, se Rhodes In. 3] 277-80) on Themistokles' naval exploitation of the Athenian silver surplus of 483-482, which would otherwise have gone in viritim distributions. For a distribution of the (massive) proceeds of confiscated property, cf. [Plutarch] Moralia 843D-E; and on Greece in general Kurt Latte, "Kollektivbesitz und Staarsschatz in Griechenland," Nachrichten der Akademie der Wissenscha{ten in Gottingen, philologisch-historische Klasse (1946-47) 64-75 (id., Kleine Schri{ten [Munich, 1968] 294-312) .

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Xenophon's declared aim in Ways and Means that all Athenians might be maintained at public expense (4.33), was unachievably utopian, even for the polis with, as far as we can tell, much more of a welfare state ethos than most. The point to notice, though, is the degree to which his detailed proposals to that end pivoted on a more eficient economic exploitation of noncitizens: slaves (in the silver mines) and free aliens, whether residents (the metoikoi) or merely transitory visitors, temporary users of the commercial facilities of the Piraeus.62 In certain respects, indeed, a distinction in any polis between "resi­ dent" foreigners and visiting foreigners was wholly arbitrary and bureaucrati­ cally inspired/iJ but the likelihood that most poleis did draw it nonetheless64 is readily understandable in fiscal terms: once aliens were deemed resident, they became taxable.6S Citizens were taxable too of course, and ex hypothesi; but they, unlike noncitizens, were in a position to shape and control the taxation systems of their states and, as far as possible, build their own preferences and prejudices into them. How far this was, in reality, possible is unclear in one basic area. The general consensus among scholars has long been founded upon a perception of deeply ingrained hostility on the part of the Greeks toward direct taxation, which, where it existed at all, was accordingly imposed on (free) aliens rather than on citizens." Harry Pleket, however, has voiced doubts as to whether a "normal" polis - that is, one without income from maritime commerce and! or mineral deposits; a small and purely agricultural polis, in effect - could actually have allowed itself the luxury of sustaining this attitude, and he hypothesizes that such communities "may well have felt obliged to levy regular direct taxes on the landed property of their citizens."67 Yet these two scenarios are perhaps more simply reconcilable than at first sight they appear, on two counts. First, while the orthodox picture stresses what we still legitimately infer to be (in Greek eyes) the ideal, Pleket is calling due attention to the (probably) actual.'8 And second, the key phrase in his formulation is "landed property" : for the signs are that direct levies, regular or irregular, on the property of citizens (and for that matter noncitizens) were both more wide­ spread and, within limits, more palatable than direct taxation of their persons. "By contrast there was no hesitation in taxing noncitizens,"" not only insofar

62 . Cf. Finley (n. 55) 163. 63. Whitehead (n. 22) 1 60-61. 64. Se above, at n. 23. 65. Whitehead (n .23) 56-57. 66. E.g. Andreas M. Andreades, A History of Greek Public Finance I (revised and en­ larged edn., tr. Carroll N. Brown, Cambridge Mass., 1933) 126 30, d. 1 85; Moses 1. Finley, "The Freedom of the Citizen in the Greek World," Talanta 7 (1 976) 1-23, at 18 Economy and Society (n. 1 9) 90; Austin and Vidal Naquet (n. 20) 121. 67. Harry W. Pleket, "Economic History of the Ancient World and Epigraphy," in Akten des VI. intemationalen Kongressu fur griechische und lateinische Epigraphik. Vestigia 17 (Munich, 1972) 243-57, at 251-52. 68. Cf. Finley (n. 66) 18 n. 32 262 n. 32. 69. Austin and Vidal-Naquet (n. 20) 121 . =

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as they incurred indirect taxes (which by their nature did not normally take account of status distinctions)70 but also, and especially, by subjecting them to forms of taxation that did not so much take account of status, merely, as embody and express it. Anyone convicted of evading the ungraduated poll tax (the metoikion) payable by the metics of Athens, for example, was sold into slavery. The severity of this penalty would be bafing in purely fiscal terms (the tax being set at quite a modest leve� and inevitably so if immigration was not to be deterred altogether and render it self-defeating) but becomes intelligible once we reflect that not paying it, or anything like it, was the jealously safeguarded preserve of the citizen.71 (One might compare, for a punishment exceeding the notionally fiscal crime, the emancipation of serfs in Bologna in 1256-1257, whose "first act as free men was to register them­ selves upon the commune's tax-rolls, a duty which they were commanded to follow upon pain of the penalties for homicide." rn In economic as well as political spheres, then, it is plain at every tum that "the citizens possessed a larger share of the bundle of claims, privileges, powers and immunities than anyone else. "73 Sometimes, within the economic and fiscal domain, the ways in which this manifested itself could contain elements of paradox, generated by the conflict between (from the citizens' standpoint) a wish to divert the burdens of taxation and public expenditure toward others and a reluctance to forgo the credit for retaining and shoulder­ ing them themselves. This is most conspicuously the case with the so-called liturgies (the financing and supply of public services, regular or irregular, by the rich).74 Discharging a liturgy, or preferably a succession of them, boosted not only social but also political prestige enormously;7S and the result, in Ath­ ens at least, was that noncitizens were restricted to the margins of the system.76 Military service too was an ideologically complex area, with conceptions of privilege and obligation subtly interwoven77 and the position of the noncitizen duly ambivalent. (Witness, for instance, the interplay of pride and prejudice in Xenophon, Ways and Means 2.2-5. ) Yet here as elsewhere the creation and maintenance of the overarching legal framework of polis life as a whole, the most all-encompassing citizen monopoly of all, was inescapable. Once again inadequacy of detailed evidence inhibits generalizations, but an Athenian example shows what was politically possible. From the last quarter of the seventh century, cases of homicide within the citizen body, thitherto a source of blood feuds and vendettas, became matters for resolution in a court of law. 70. For an Athenian exception , the foreigners' market tax, see Whitehead (n. 22) 77 78 . 71 . Whitehead (n. 22) 75-77. 72. John Lamer, It4ly in the Age of Dante and Petrarch 1216-1380 (London, 1980) 159. 73 . Finley (n. 66) 6 8 1 (adding the necessary rider that "not all citizens had equal shares"). 74. Se Andreades (n. 66) 130-33 . 75 . Documentation in John K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600-300 B.C. (Oxford, 1971) xvii-xviii. 76. Whitehead (n. 22) 80-82. 77. See briefly Finley (n. 66) 15-1 8 88-90. =

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Subsequently, perhaps in the late sixth century, the legal protection inherent in this was extended to noncitizens (metics, xenoi, and even slaves) as well, but in a maner - through the particular courts involved and the maximum penalties they could impose - that enshrined in the law code itself a lower valuation on their lives.7S C H A N G E A N D CO N T I N U I T Y

The problems attendant upon our perceiving norms of citizenship on a delib­ erately synchronic plane increase exponentially if one then ventures to locate "the citizenship rules in their classical formulation"79 in the broader context of their evolution before, during and after the fifth and fourth centuries . Within the confines of this chapter it must suffice to sketch a general perspective and some specific illustrations of it (mostly Athenian) where they are to hand. What should this general perspective be? I would suggest that we regard as normal John Davies' overview of the shifts, in citizenship definition, between (late) archaic, classical, and Hellenistic Athens.so At the risk - a considerable one - of oversimplifying what is already no more than a broad-brush schematization, the model envisages that over the course of the three epochs as a whole the rigor and clarity with which the definition was devised and applied first intensified and then, after the rigidity of the classical period, diminished, but only slowly. For the archaic era, indeed, such a process can in large part be taken for granted, as a concomitant of the evolution of the polis as such, that is to say, as poleis themselves took on discrete physical and institutional form and as their members grew in consciousness of their collective identity and of the collective and individual benefits beginning to flow from it. Access to such benefits, we may suppose, would sooner or later need to be denied to others (whether inside the community or beyond it), even if there is room for differing interpretations of the detailed stages of this in the few instances where they happen to have left any imprint in the record. Davies and Osborne, for example, are inclined to regard the early Athenian citizenship law attributed to Solon (Plutarch Solon 24.4) as one designed to facilitate "naturalization" (whatever precisely that amounted to in the early sixth century); in my opinion it restricted it and thereby stepped up the pressure, in the long run, for a clearer defmition - indeed any definition, of a legal kind - of the status of (free) noncitizens.81 This definition was eventually provided, I have argued, by Kleisthenes in the late sixth century, as one component of a legislative program that marked the watershed between archaic and classical Athens: priming the 78. Emily Grace, Status Distinctions in the Draconian Law," Ei,ene 11 (1 973) 5-30, developed in Whitehead (n. 22) 93-94, 146-47. Compare William S. Bowsky, "Medieval Citizenship: The Individual and The State in the Commune of Siena, 1287-1355," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 4 (1967) 193-243 , at 236, for medieval Siena. 79. Davies (n. 7) 114. 80. Davies (n. 7) 1 14-15, expanded at 1 1 5-2 1. 8 1 . Davies (n. 7) 1 15; Osborne (n. 39) 141; Whitehead (n. 22) 141 -47. "

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main organs of the constitution to develop along radically democratic lines, and also, at a deeper societal level, reinterpreting the whole area of kinship and descent as determinants of polis membership. For indeed descent - still patrilinear only, at this stage - was evidendy too cherished a principle to abandon, and the 139 Kleisthenic demes (membership of which, rather than of the ancestral phratries or brotherhoods, was now to be the qualification for and guarantee of citizen rights in the larger community) were territorial units only at the instant of their creation; thereafter they became, in Nicholas Jones' felicitous phrase, personal associations with regional centers.82 "At very varying dates, most states went over to a territorial principle; but when they did so they were apt to retain for their new kind of division terms, especially 'tribe', which originally belonged to the kinship system."83 More important, though, than continuity of terminology was continuity of essence: the hereditary nature (through the male line) of deme membership,84 which even without the subsequent buttressing provided by the law of Perikles, would have amply borne out Aristode's observation about mere residence constituting an inad­ equate litmus test for citizenship. If there are reasonable grounds for regarding Athenian development, including the development of citizenship, in the archaic period as paradigmatic in a general way, those grounds shrink significandy by the second half of the fifth century, for reasons both internal and external to Athens itself. Within that community, the emergence of fully participatory democracy further sharpened the boundary between citizens and the other groups in the popula­ tion; and Athenian imperial hegemony over 300-400 other poleis heightened perceptions, both inside the community and beyond, of "the Athenians" (hoi Athenaioi) - irrespective of their socioeconomic diversity when considered in isolation - as a cohesive, exclusive and psychologically buoyant elite. Else­ where, smaller agglomerations (both in absolute terms and, generally, propor­ tionate to the citizen body) of free immigrants and/or slaves, more modest economic and fiscal resources, more frequent political upheavals, and the overall back cloth of life under the shadow of stronger powers with a penchant for constitutional interference often combined to produce a situation less entrenched, in status terms, than the Athenian one - without, however, preventing the citizens of these more typical poleis, Greek history's great supporting cast, from nurturing their own campanilismo and giving expres­ sion to it in the collective articulation of their own civic space8S even (or espe-

82 . Jones (n. 35) 6. 83. Antony Andrewes, The Greeks (London, 1967) 77; full documentation now in Jones (n. 35) passim. Se also, on "this paradoxical phenomenon of linguistic survival and institutional innovation," Oswyn Muray, "Cities of Reason," European Journal of Sociology 28 (1987) 32546, at 333-36. 84. For Athens, Whitehead (n. 18) 67-6 8, 352. For the same, normally, in the constituent units of other poleis, Jones (n. 35) 4-7 and passim. 85 . Se (e.g.) Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions (n. 40) 1 (1933) no.34, a judicial treaty (of c. 450) between two small Lokrian poleis scarcely more than 10 kilometers apart.

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cially?) when they were denied a larger role beyond it.8' In the fourth century, though, there are many telltale signs of "a crisis of the polis and its institutions as they had existed til then,"87 a crisis from which even Athens enjoyed only partial immunityB8 (and thus tended, within limits, to become once again more like - or less unlike - poleis as a whole). Its contributory elements were many and various, but not the least of them was a widespread shortage of public money, a widening gap between expenditure and income - first acute, thanks to the long and financially ruinous Peloponnesian War (431 -404), and chronic thereafter with (for instance) the acceleration of the shih toward mercenary warfare. In Economics 2.2.3 [Aristotle] lists a multiplicity of fiscal stratagems by which on various occasions the citizens of Byzantium sought to augment their revenues, and two of them in particular are noteworthy for the light that they shed on a polis' willingness, by now, to transgress its own rules for monetary gain. One is the retroactive granting of landownership rights to some immigrants who had improperly lent money on the security of landed property (that is, a penalty they would have been legally unable to enforce), for a fee equivalent to one-third of the loan. The other, of special note, is the waiving of doubly endogamic citizen­ ship qualifications for those with one citizen parent only - presumably the father, though the writer's phraseology is less than conclusive on the point on payment of thirty mnai a head (a very large sum, several times the anual income of a skilled workman) . This is an early example of the simple, direct sale of citizenship, a practice that, with varying tariffs and criteria for eligibility was to become widespread in Hellenistic Greece,8' and also finds analogues in medieval Italy.90 But is it anything more than the logical, unvarnished extension of preexisting, tacit tendencies? "The idea would certainly have been accessible at least to fourth-century Athens," observes Davies, citing instances of Athenian citizenship decrees as a virtually straight quid pro quo for financial and economic services rendered;'l and the same construction - where it is not explicit anyway - may fairly be put upon the great bulk of similar decrees

86. For autcmomia as a conceptual response to force majeure, see Martin Ostwald, Autonomia: Its Genesis and Early History. American Philological Asiation, American Qas­ sical Studies 1 1 (1982); for a specific illustration, David Whitehead, "'Aliens' in Chalkis and Athenian Imperialism," Zeitschr. fur Papyrologie und Epigrllphilt 21 (1976) 251-59, esp. 258-59. 87. Austin and Vidal-Naquet (n. 20) 1 3 1 , elaborated at 1 3 1 -55. 88. Jan Pearka, "The Crisis of the Athenian Polis in the Fourth Century B.C., " Eirene 14 (1976) 5-29. 89. References (to Louis Robert and others) in John K. Davies, "Cultural, Social and Economic Features of the Hellenistic World," in The Cllmbridge Ancient History VU.1, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge, 1 984) 257-320, at 309 n. 323, to which ad now Jacob Stem, "A propos de la vente du droit de cite: les heXlmntlioi d'Ephese," Chiron 17 (1987) 293-98 . Eventually the Athenians, at least, were forbidden this by the emperor Augustus: Casius Dio 54.7.2. 90. Examples in Bowsky (n. 78) 206-9; Waley (n. 2) 106-7. Julius Kirshner points out to me that the term "sale" oversimplifies a variety of arrangements whereby cities in need of specific people or groups came to a mutually satisfactory accommodation with them. Much the same is true of ancient Greece. 91 . Davies (n. 7) 1 1 9-20.

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enacted by other states.92 Nor was the sale of citizenship (whether overt or concealed) a transac­ tion to be understood on a purely material level. Aristotle characterized the citizen's prerogatives as "honors" (timai), and for any polis wishing to honor outsiders, individually or in groups, full citizenship was obviously the ultimate honorific grant it could make.93 Many, probably most, such grants were issued on the assumption that the honorands were unlikely ever to implement them (which may be contrasted with the residence-housebuilding obligation upon new citizens in medieval Italian communes);94 and that fact, allied with an overall volume of grants large only by comparison with earlier and more austere times, meant that the Stentors of Hellenistic Greece stood in no greater need than had their classical predecessors of an ancient precursor of the public-address system. In short, the floodgates remained closed. To apply to Greece in general what Michael Osborne has written of Athens, "the idea of naturalization . . . has to be quite divorced from any notion of increasing the citizen numbers or extending the franchise. "95 So how long was it before the basic demarcations created in the classical period were not merely circum­ vented, ad hominem, but fundamentally modified? As far as Athens is concerned it is perhaps no great surprise, given the highly developed character of classical Athenian citizenship, that the answer is: well into the Hellenistic period. From 322 onward the Athenian constitu­ tion in the narrow sense underwent periodic convulsions, and various changes in the franchise (involving property qualifications ) were imposed by Macedonian fiat, yet signposts on the road to relaxation of the rigorous descent-group criterion of citizenship were a long time looming up: a simplified procedure for, and more " liberal" attitude toward, naturalization no earlier than the 220s;" " la reconnaissance officielle de la validite du mariage d'un citoyen avec une etrangere . . . dans les premieres annees du lIe siecle ou plus tard;"97 Polybius' remark, in the context of the year 167-166, that the Athenians were going against their traditions and making their patris common to all;'8 and the probability, by analogy with other tities, that later in the second century the ephebate - by now a rather etiolated version of the fourth­ century compulsory military training for eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds became a standard avenue to citizenship for xenoi."

92 . Some documentation in Osborne (n. 39) 149 n. 5 l . 93 . See generally Philippe Gauthier, us cites grecques e t leurs bienfaiteurs (IY'-I'" siecle avant ].-C.), Bulletin de Co"espondance Hellenique, suppl. vol. 12 (Paris, 1 985). 94 . Bowsky (n. 78) 204 and passim; Waley (n. 2) 105-6. 95 . Osborne (n. 39) 149. 96. Osborne (n. 39) 204 9, esp. 207. 97. Claude Vatin, Recherches sur Ie manage et la condition de la femme manee a l'epoque hellenistique (Paris, 1970) 125-26. 98. Polybius 30.20.6 (the Athenian embassy to Rome), as (? over-) interpreted by Davies (n. 7) 1 1 9; d. Osborne (n. 39) 205. 99. Davies (n. 7) 119. The probability is strengthened by the cessation of citizenship decrees at this time: Osborne (n. 39) 205.

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For most other Hellenistic poleis, even evidence of this skeletally modest order is lacking. We do find documented1OO a nexus of developments that in­ cludes, besides the sale of citizenship discussed earlier, "the ever wider spread of potential dual citizenship via proxeny grants to individuals or isopoliteia treaties between communities, royal pressure on cities to confer citizen or semi-citizen status upon soldiers, residents, or courtiers, and honorary citizenships being lavished on successful athletes, benefactors, and royal officials . . . . [Yet] the citizenlnon-citizen boundary still rigidly excluded slaves and non-Greeks. " lOl In other words, as indicated earlier, many of these novelties can be judged relatively superficial in the context of underlying attitudes, which exhibit continuity quite as much as change. A familiar epigraphical vignette is revelatory of both this continuity in general and the fact that "slaves and non-Greeks" were by no means its only victims.t02 In or around the year 217 King Philip V of Macedon responded to an embassy from the Thessalian polis of Larisa, sent to bemoan the inadequate number of its inhabitants, by ordering it - with Roman "liberality" explicitly in mind103 - to grant citizenship to "the Thessalians and the other Greeks resident" there. The city promptly passed a decree to that effect but subsequently rescinded it; and it took a second letter from the king, two years later, to have his will enforced. "That it is best of all for as many as possible to share in citizen­ rights, the polis to be strong and the land not, as now, to lie shamefully deserted, I believe none of you would deny, " Philip's second letter declared. But manifestly the Larisaians had in vain sought to deny precisely that, refusing to share their timia (line 19; d. Aristotle's timai) with other polis resi­ dents; and in doing so were displaying a mentality, whether rooted in economic­ agrarian104 or in strictly political narrow-mindedness, which Aristotle would have understood perfectly.

1 00. The (relative) profusion of documentation now is immediately evident from Ivana Sa valli, "I neocittadini nelle cina ellenistiche," Histona 34 (1985) 387-43 1 . 1 0 1 . Davies (n. 89) 309, d . 258; I have somewhat altered his emphasis. 102. Dinenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum II, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1917) no. 543; d. Jones (n. 35) 8 1 . 1 0 3 . Gauthier, " Generosite" (n. 52) 208-9, 2 1 0, 2 14. 1 04. Davies (n. 89) 268-69.

The Legal Definition of Citizenship in the Late Middle Ages

D I EGO Q UA G LI O N I

T

I S W E LL KN O W N that i n the late Middle Ages the legal definition of citizenship differed from city to city. In the fourteenth century, thanks to the literature of cons ilia and commentaries which were produced by doc­ trine, a certain uniformity was finally achieved. This diversity - as has been authoritatively discussed - does not allow us to treat medieval citizenship using the outline of a few standard and "institutional" models.1 I have chosen here, rather, to evaluate in what terms and to what extent the Middle Ages can be considered heir to a juridical formulation of citizenship that has its origin in the political and legal experience of the world of classical and late antiquity. The ideal way to proceed would be to outline a profile, a mise en per­ spective similar to that recently presented by Claude Nicolet in Citoyennete fratJfaise et citoyennete romaine, regarding the notion of "Roman" as some­ where between citizenship and universality.2 Nicolet asks whether the Roman conception of citizenship played the role of a "conscious model" or an "ob­ jective starting point" for many of the regulatory and doctrinal solutions that came about when French law was codified.3 The question he poses so lucidly

I

1 . I refer in particular to the observations of J. Kirshner, "'Civitas sibi faciat civem': Bartolus of Sassoferrato's Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen," Speculum, XLVIII (1973) 69471 3 . For an introduction to the status civitatis of Roman tradition and an ample bibliography, see the entries " Cittadinanza (Diritto romano)" by G. Crifo and " Cittadinanza (Diritto intermedio) by E. Cortese in the Endclopedia del Diritto, VI (Milan, 1 960) 127-1 32 and 132140. For information on Roman law in classical antiquity, we must at least mention A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship (Oxford, 1973) (republished in 1980) . For a more cur rent picture see also P. Catalano, Populus Romanus Quirites (Torino 1974). Of general usefulness, although they deal specifically with the "other," are the articles collected in L'etranger, I-II (Brussels, 1958) ("Recueil s de la Societe Jean Bodin," IX-X); see especially J. Gilissen, Le statut des etrangers a la lumiere de l'histoire comparative, I, 5-58, J- Gaudemet, L'etranger au Bas-Empire, ib id., 209-236 and W. Onclin, Le statut des etrangers dans la doctrine canonique medievale, II, 37-64. 2. C. Nicolet, " Citoyennete fran�ise et citoyennete romaine: essai de mise en perspec­ tive," in La nozione di "romano" tra cittadinanza e universa/ita. Proceedings of the Second In­ ternational Seminar on Historical Studies "Da Roma alia terza Roma," April 21-23, 1982 (Naples, 1984) 145-173 . See also, in the same volume, the contribution of H.-P. Benoehr, "Le citoyen et I'etranger en droit romain et droit fran�is," 175-193. 3. C. Nicolet, " Citoyennere fran�aise et citoyennete romaine," 145. "

,

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Citizens and the Political Classes

may appear pointless when applied to the late medieval juridical experience. When Jean Domat in the seventeenth century and Robert-Joseph Pothier in the eighteenth century discussed the anti-Romanist fracture produced by the advent of the Humanist juridical system in France, they again theorized that Roman law had provided a sort of repository of legal reasoning. However, even if we reject the idea of medieval jurisconsults as merely obsequious exegetes of the rule of ius scriptum, we could say that they considered justinian's code an imperfectible monument of legal wisdom, outside which there could not be nec lex nec ratio/' The relationship between the ancient and the medieval city has never seemed so implicit as in the case of this set of norms. The very idea of "civitas" refers to a legal ordering and normative experience of Roman origin, whether viewed in the collective form of its dves or in the individual condition of a civis.S Is it not true that the status civitatis of Roman and medi­ eval law was one of the fundamental prerequisites for the complete fulfillment of man? In this sense Alberico da Rosciate could observe in his Dictionarium iuris: "Civitas Romana, id est plena libertas.'" Naturally, the Roman law of Domat, Pothier, and French lawmakers was no longer the Roman law of medieval tradition. Similarly, to us, the medieval tradition no longer appears as it did to the polemic connoisseurs of the Mos Gallicus. Medieval exegesis developed through the constant pressure of administering the law. Today, we are ever more conscious that this exegesis, at its most advanced stage, used the textus as little more than an authoritative point of reference for solutions which were largely original. Stil� we are left with an open question: What, historically, was the relationship between the norms of citizenship under Justinian law and the juridical, normative, and doctrinal experience of the Middle Ages ? Several aspects of this problem have not been sufficiently investigated; for example, the criteria that determined one's membership in the community, the statutes, and the definition of citizen. It is possible to apply Claude Nicolet's observation to our discussion. According to Nicolet, whoever seeks to understand the link between Roman citizenship and its concept in modem codes of law has to understand that Roman law never felt the need to give citizenship a global, coherent definition - in other words, to codify it. When Rome finally began to plan or to draft its codes of law, ceil y a beau temps que Ie monde est uilifie et qu'on n'a plus a distinguer Ie Romain du veritable etranger."7 Obviously, as Nicolet added, it was still necessary to define the conditions of access to citizenship. However, in the same moment, citizenship had ceased to be linked to the idea of Roman origin: "Elle a change de signe.'" 4. Se regarding this point the perspicacious observations of R. Orestano, Introdu%ione

allo stJ«lio del diritto romano (Bologna, 1 987)

62.

5. For a brief but comprehensive and dense profile of the question, se the entry " Civitas," by U. Coli, in Novissimo Digesto Italiano, III (Turin, 1 957) 337-343. 6. Alberici a Rosate Dictionarium (Lugduni, 1548) sub v., fol. e[vi]vB. 7. C. Nicolet, " QlOyennere fran�se et citoyenne romaine," 165. 8. Ibidem.

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The rules regarding citizenship that belong to the Roman tradition must then be viewed as the result of a long process of sedimentation. They constitute a sort of deposit accumulated throughout the centuries both from custom and from written texts. At the moment of the renovatio of Roman science, the me­ dieval world was aware only of the end result of this process. In it, the concept of citizenship that was part of classic Roman law had become largely diluted. Analogously, Gaudemet spoke of an "ambiguite de la citoyennete au Bas-Empire";' this concept includes the civitas, a society of persons united by a legal tie, that is, according to Cicero's celebrated expression, the iuris societas (De Republica 1 .49). At the same time, it is also a collection of rights due each Roman citizen. It is almost a trait of his sovereignty. In fact, it is a sort of universal grant that was provided by the constitutio Antoniniana of 212 A.D. for which, however, "la qualite de civis a perdu beaucoup de sa valeur."10 The granting of Roman citizenship to those who in orbe Romano sunt must have progressively blurred every distinction between civitas and municipium, making uncertain and incoherent later jurisprudence. Ulpianus himself (D. 50,1, 1,S 1) wrote that "nunc abusive municipes dicimus suae cuiusque civitatis cives. " "The truth is that, by now we say there is no difference between municeps and civis and that civitas is a common name for all the urban settle­ ments of the Empire. Therefore, one does not feel any contradiction between being a civis of a specific civitas and being at the same time a civis Romanus since the Roman state is no longer a civitas even if its members continue to call themselves civis. Rome is the communis patria. "l1 It is, therefore, essential to determine what function and importance the notions of citizen and citizenship held during Justinian'S time in order to recognize the link between this heritage and its incarnation during the Middle Ages. Fausto Goria recently noted that, in the Justinian compilation, the terms civis and civitas, "if not accompanied by the qualifier, Romanus/a, usu­ ally indicated by this time, membership in one of the Empire's many cities. " However, the expressions civis Romanus or civitas Romana had, under Justinian law, "an exceptionally limited application. With the exception of two Latin constitutions - which provided for the possible loss of freedom or citizenship or both - and a Greek novella that incidentally mentions the constitutio Antoniniana, references to civitas Romana concern exclusively manurnissions and are normally related to the abolition of the status of Latinus Iunianus (or Aelianus) and of dediticius. "12 Nor do we obtain a differ­ ent view when we examine the constitutions collected in the Codex Iustinianus: " Those that mention Roman citizenship discuss questions regarding

e

9.

J. Gaudemet, "Les Romains et les autres, in La nozione eli "romano" tra cittaelinanza

universalit.J, 7-37: 8 .

".

Ibid., 9 . 1 1 . U . Coli, " Civitas," 340-341 . 12. F. Goria, ''Romani', cittadinanza ed estensione della legislazione imperiale nelle costituzioni di Giustiniano," in La nozicme di "romano" tra citadinanza e universaliu, 277-342: 285-2 86. 10.

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Citizens an d the Political Classes

manumissions and, at any rate, controversies involving status libertatis. They otherwise provide that citizenship may be lost as a consequence of sentencing for a crime. However, they are completely silent as to how citizenship may be acquired (excluding naturally the case of manumission). Only one law consid­ ers Roman citizenship a prerequisite for a juridical act (specifically, the capa­ bility to appear as a witness in a legal proceeding)."13 Very littl� else is gar­ nered by reading the Institutiones, or the Digest, " although they contain, naturally, some passages that reflect to a greater degree, the larger issues dealt with by classical jurists."14 Goria's conclusion is significant: "It is a fact that the entire range of .

.

•

questions relating to the relationship between Romans and foreigners, to the status of the latter who were residents of the Empire and to the acquisition of Roman citizenship by free men, is absent from Justinian legislation."ls All of this may appear odd, and it has led to a doubt as to whether the distinction between citizen and foreigner held any legal relevance during Justinian's time. Similarly, it led to the corollary that the concept of citizenship itself held insignificant legal relevanceY' This is precisely the complex of norms faced by a medieval doctor. It constitutes a complicated authoritative reference point at once for the establishment of a doctrine of citizenship, and for those statutes and rules which defined a specific right that Roman law should have shaped and clothedP It would be all too easy to suggest that legal thinking on the question of citizenship in the late Middle Ages was fragmentary and asystematic, especially if we place it in direct relation to the fragmentary and sparse character of the total number of normative auctoritates present in corpore iuris. Such thinking would impede a thorough understanding of citizenship in the legal experience of the Middle Ages. Another thought of a general nature suggests itself at this 1 3 . Ibid., 286. Se also footnotes 40-42 for the sources cited (especially C.6, 23, 2 1 ) . 14. Ibid., 2 87; se e also footnote 44, 2 86-287, which directs the reader t o the entries "Civis" and "Civitas" in the Vocabularium iuris prudentiae Romanae (Berlin, 1 894ff.). Goria emphasizes, however, that " if . . . we discount the texts that refer to the civis as a component of the populus and those that refer to manumissions or to the loss of citi zenship (on account of sanction, or wartime imprisonment or for some other reason not specified), not much is left. " 1 5 . Ibid., 287, and footnote 45: "Even the constitutio Antoniniana is cited in the Nov. 78, 5 not in relation to the question of Roman versus foreign, but rather as one ·example of the provisions of the Empire that granted to all a right that had formerly be granted to individu­ als only after formally requested." 16. Ibid., 288-2 89; see also his final reflections on p. 342, where he observes that the universalist conception of law, which was characteristic of justinian's, " may help to explain the ease with which foreigners were accepted into the po/iteia, and at the same time the lack of interest that the Emperor demonstrated for questions regarding the relationship between Romans and foreigners: his goal in fact, was not to define the legal status of the latter within the Roman system, but rather to act - in the political, military and cultural spheres - in such a way that they became participants in the Roman po/iteia and its rights." 17. For a discussion of the principle " ius commune informat statuta et vestit," declared by Baldus in his commentary on the LibeT Extra (c. 1, X, 1, 2), se B. Paradisi, "II problema del diritto comune nella dottrina di Francesco Calasso," in Id., Studi sui Medioevo giuridico, II (Rome, 1987) 1009-1 112: 1 061-1062. (This appeared earlier in 11 diritto comune e la tTad;z;one giuridica eUTopea. Studi in onaTe di Giuseppe Ermini. [Perugia, 1980], 1 69-300).

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point. In order to try to understand what contribution the Middle Ages made to the legal concept of citizenship, we must begin by tracing its tendency to develop definitions. This was a characteristic of the legal schools of the late Middle Ages and was first expressed in the Gloss and commentaries on the sedes materiae, of the title Ad municipalem et de incolis in the Digest (D.50, 1 ). It was noted, again just recently, that among ancient jurists there was a striking absence of the use of definitions,tB and that for a long period there was a total 'absence of definitions.' Late Roman j urisprudence essentially proceeded case-by-case, issue-by-issue and tended to avoid definitions of basic concepts. Riccardo Orestano has cautioned: "We should not be misled by phrases that discuss etymologies or categories that are called definitiones. This last group includes regulae and statements of principles that have very little to do with actual definitions. " 19 The well-known expression of Javolenus (D.50,17,202 ), Omnis definitio in iure civili periculosa. . . , gives us an idea of this basic attitude of Roman jurisprudence, which, Orestano again observed, "left many fundamental concepts of their law" - whether they involved the public or the private sector - "without a true definition. " 20 The medieval doctores, then, were faced with evidence of a world that had viewed legal questions from a different perspective. But this was the raw material with which they had to work. "The majority of the texts of the Corpus iuris . . . preferred to discuss, reflect, and rule on what men did or should do. They chose to deal with the concrete rather than begin with an abstract principle, dissect it and develop a rule of law based on it. They preferred to grasp activities, as they unfolded, and regulate them in a fluid situation rather than establishing a rule at the beginning that remained fixed, closed, static. This is what medieval jurists found in the Corpus iuris, and it was the result of a mental attitude that no longer corresponded to their cultural formation. Thus glossators and, to an even greater degree, commentators replaced the cautious judicial parsimony of the ancients with an ever-growing tendency toward the substance of relations and toward definitions." 2 1 It is this quest for substance that leads to the accumulation, in the legal world, of definitions and procedures that have as their objective a quest for the essential. "In the pressing search for the substantia rei . . , distinctions be­ tween the 'essential,' 'natural,' and 'incidental' characteristics of the institutions emerge. "22 What role does citizenship play in the activity of the jurists that tends to give preference to substance and, consequently, to institutions ? Is there a definition of citizenship and of the citizen in that legal dimension that, to quote the suggestive words of Orestano, "is peopled with an ever-increas­ ing number of 'figures,' each with its own, fixed role, that compose a sort of .

1 8 . See in this regard R. Orestano, IntrodMzione allo studio del diritto romano, 148f. His comments take up an earlier view of Brugi. 19. Ibid., 148·149. 20. Ibid., 149. 2 1 . Ibid., 149·150. 22. Ibid., 150.

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Citizens and the Political Classes

Nativity scene " ?2J What trace is there of the civis and civitas in the translation of this Roman heritage into the new forms of legal thought, into the new scientia iuris of the Middle Ages ? There is no doubt that the Middle Ages, legal and otherwise, received a concept and an ideal of civitas from antiquity, which extends from Cicero, Augustine, and Isidore up to the jurists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and even beyond. The emergence of what Gaudemet called "un vocabulaire nouveau,"24 in which civis and civitas are frequently replaced by incolatus, origo, and patria, does not hinder the persistence of "l'idee d'nne civilitas, qui implique organisation politique (polis = civitas), moeurs 'civilisees,' culture d'inspiration classique"2S - despite the fact that it takes place within a process that identifies Empire with Christianitas. We do not have to wait for the " dis­ covery" of the major works of Aristotle in order for the political and social concepts of cives to reemerge from a period when presumably the subditus dominated. Isidore's definition (i.e., "civitas non saxa sed habitatores vocantur" [Etymologiae 15,2, 1 ] ) constitutes a point of reference for a long tradition. He viewed the civitas as an association of free persons, founded on a common juridical organization. The ius civile originated from this united body. A single passage from Brunetto Latini, Dante's teacher, offers ample evidence: "The city is a gathering of people formed to live justly. Thus they are not called citizens of the same commune because they were accepted together inside the same walls, but rather citizens are those who have agreed to live justly under one law. "2 6 It is possible to add many other examples, including Bodin's Six livres de la Republique, where the saying of Pompey, transmitted by Cicero, is mentioned: "Non est in parietibus res publica."27 The juridical Middle Ages, which preserved intact the late-Roman link between "citizen" and "subject, " are the same urbanized and communal Middle Ages that inspired the consilia of the learned jurists, their reflections on the Justinian textus. (Recently, Accursius's maxim was appropriately re­ called: " Cives Romanos dico omnes subiectos imperii. " )28 The j uridical Middle Ages, then, felt the need for a technical definitioJ.l of citizenship. Its es­ sence was seen as the configuration of the rights and duties of the individual to be an active participant in the city's social and political life. The need for

23. Ibid., 1 5 1 . 24. J . Gaudernet, "Les Romains e t l es autres," 1 1 . 25. Ibid., 37. 26. Reno,., 10-19; corresponds to Li livres du T,esor, DI, 72: "cites est uns aslemens de gens a abiter en un lieu et vivre a une loi." 27. Les six lill1'es de /a Republique de I. Bodin Angeuin. Ensemble II1U! Apologie di Rene Herp;n. A Paris (Chez lacques du Puis, 1583) 76 (I, chap. 6); Se I sei libri dello Stato of Jean Bodin, I, edited by M. Isnardi Parente (Turin, 1988) 277. For Cicero's passage, see Ad Atticum, VII, II, 3. 28. G. Post, in his review of W. Ullmann, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, Maryland, 1966), Speculum, XLIII (1968) 3 87-390: 389. For these two guiding lines of critical thought on the concept of citizenship, se E. Cortese, "Cittadinanza (Diritto Intermedio) " 1 32 .

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definition was prompted by renewed interest in Aristotle and by the fragmen­ tary and fluid situation of the rules, both of ius commune and of ius proprium.29 An understanding of the status civitatis during the communal age is ac­ quired only by looking at the contractual genesis of the Commune itself, at the oath taken by individuals or groups of people: "It is the active adherence to this contract, and not the passive membership in the urbs, that originally defined the genuine civis." "The terms of the pacta or contractus cictadinaticus, which designated the act of acquiring citizenship, then, reflected this relation­ ship. "30 City statutes imposed obligations - which took the form of oaths both negative ones (for example, obedience to city officials and the prohibition against menacing the goods, peace, and honor of the civitas) and positive ones such as military service and the purchase and care of real property. These guaranteed the fulfillment of the duties assumed with the community and symbolized the mandatory presence of the individual within the city walls, a point which underscores the convergence of the habitatio and the sta­ tus civitatis. The citizens with optimo iure status were granted the right to participate in the life of the communal government, "that is, the power to take an active role in assemblies and consequently to approve laws and to swear in magistrates, to elect or become elected to city office, " as well as "to generally enjoy the numerous benefits deriving from that communal solidar­ ity that, in many ways, tended to protect the persons and goods of all those who were associated."31 Generally, the statutes also contemplated means by which citizenship could be obtained as well as lost. Native citizenship was granted either by iure sanguinis, that is, by being the son of a citizen, or by iure loci, that is, by being born within the territory of the commune. Naturalized citizenship (ex privi/egio or de gratia) instead was "the result of a grant by the Commune, made on the petition of individuals or entire groups of people. Since the granting of citizenship was one of the Commune's most solemn acts it was originally promulgated by its most powerful official body, the 'Parliament, but soon this power passed only to the most exclusive councils elected by the assembly. "32 On the other hand, the loss of ·citizenship was generally the consequence of duties assumed under oath and later left unfulfilled. Citizenship could also be revoked as a penalty for certain crimes, as in the case of a bannitus. According to different times and places, a great pluralism existed in these rules. This was due to varying interests, which were dictated more by specific situations than by " rigid theoretical principles . "33

29. See the early study that is still the only one to synthesize the juridical experience of the late Middle Ages with regard to citizenship in intermediate law, by D. Bizzarri, "Ricerche sui diritto di cittadinanza nella costituzione comunale," Studi Se1U!Si, XXXII (1916) 19-136, and then in the collection of Studi di storia del diritto italiarw (Turin, 1937) 63-1 58. 30. E. Cortese, " Cittadinanza (Diritto Intermedio)" 137. 3 1 . Ibidem. 32. Ibid., 138. 33. Ibidem.

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In particular, Peter Riesenberg, in a relatively recent study, Citizenship at Law in Late Medieval Italy, sought to describe the meaning of being and acting as a citizen in an Italian city-state of the late Middle Ages. He claimed that the main interest of a citizen was not citizenship as a precondition for the exercise of political rights. In fact, according to Riesenberg, political rights were only a part of a "complex personal or family strategy" that was directed toward achieving the benefits of citizenship; that is, "those benefits of citizen­ ship which advanced his and his family's social status, facilitated his business life, gave him an edge over the resident noncitizen within the walls and which protected him as he maintained banking or commercial operations abroad." In his view, citizenship is " something tangible," an objective associated mosdy with "materialistic motives. "34 I do not intend to dispute Riesenberg's "realistic" interpretation, although I am not in full agreement with it, for I would favor assigning a broader meaning to the social and economic foundations of communal citizenship.3s Nonetheless, the juridical and political doctrines we are discussing were born within an ideological framework which would be a mistake to limit to the narrow confines of the legal or theological-political cultures. Within this framework, the value of citizenship was greater than purely "material benefits," for it implies an identification of the status of the civitas with that of its citizens. It also implies the submission of the citizens to a potestas that, to quote the very suggestive words of Bartolus, is "maior quam potestas patris in £ilium. "36 The text of Bartolus's commentary on the 1. corporatos, C. de Alexandruie primatibus ( C. l l,29 [28 ], 1 ) is truly illuminating: "Nota quod melius est quem esse ciuem mediocrem vnius .nobilis ciuitatis et honorabilis, quam esse maiorem ciuem vnius mediocris ciuitatis. Et sic facit pro popularibus istius nobilis ciuitatis, qui magis debeant honorari quam alij magni alterius ciuitatis. "37

34. P. Riesenberg, "Citizenship at Law in Late Medieval Italy," Viator, V (1974) 333-346: 335-336. See also by the same author, "Civism and Roman Law in Fourteenth Century Italian Society," uplorations in Economic History, VII (1969-1970) 2 37-2'5't 35. See for this matter W. Bowsky, "Medieval Citizenship: The Individual and the State in the Commune of Siena, 1287-1355," Studies in Medieval and Renaisance History, N (1967) 193-23 8. Se also J. Kirshner '''Civitas sibi faciat civem': Bartolus of Sassoferrato's Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen," p. 694, at foomote 2, where he manifests full agreement with Bowsky's methodological approach. This approach tends to overcome a mere politological or legal-historical vision of the problem of citizenship. It places it in relation to the socio-eco­ nomic conditions and the governmental structures of the civitas. 36. Tractatus represaliarum, q. V, ad 3, n. 8 in Consi/ia Q uaestiones et Tractatus, Bartoli a Saxo Ferrato, Venetiis, Apud Iuntas. MDLXX., f. 124vB. The vigor of Bartolus's expression is not diminished although it is an argumentum that is part of a dialectic exposition. In fact, he discusses the civitas originis against which a fortiori no retaliation would be granted since the power of the podesta was · superior to that of the paterfamilias, against whom "auxilium extraordinarium non datur." For Bartolus this is true only when the civitas "bene gerit, vel iustitiam facit, non cum aliquem spoliat, vel facit iniustitiam." In this case, in fact, "quando ciuitas facit iniustitiam ciui suo, non vtitur potestate, quam habet in eum" (ibid., n. 9) . 37. In I. un., C. de Alexandriae primatibus (C. 1 1 , 29 [2 8], 1) nn. 1 -2, in Bartolus a Saxo Ferrato, In tres Codicis libros. Venetiis, Apud Iuntas. MDLXX., f. 35rA.

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In an attempt to understand the degree to which important ideas such as

civis and civitas contained elements of a concept of state and of a Roman culture which survived during the Middle Ages, we must overcome any initial reluctance to apply to our analysis sociological concepts. It is important to keep in mind the fundamentally aristocratic structure of medieval society as well as the peculiar characteristic of social mobility that was favored by the basic nucleus of the familia, where, to quote Karl Bosl, "the forms of paternal authority associated with the family are fused with those of the social and economic situation and with those of the religious community and its cults. "38 In the urban world of the late Middle Ages something of the collective and communal sentiment survived, based on socio-economic principles and as­ sumptions regarding authority and power that were typical of feudal society, with its archaic and patrimonial system. This collective sentiment of communitas, first developed in the familia, later seemed to be transferred to the medieval concept of civitas.39 Individual nobility and honor were measured against those of the civitas to which one belonged, somewhat akin to the ius honestioris familiae. We should remember that in the ideal expressed by Bartolus himself in his De regimine civitatis, good city government is achieved "quando . . . per regentes consideratur bonum commune principaliter omnium secundum statum suum, " that is, "quando honores et munera equaliter dividuntur secundum debitos gradus. "40 Let us, however, not forget Gaines Post's strict - and justified - admo­ nition to display a greater sobriety, "something of the spirit of the Carlyles and of Mcn wain, in interpreting medieval legal and political theories. "41 In that spirit, and taking into consideration recent studies, our theme can no longer be proposed within the perspective of a "civis-fidelis dichotomy " or "oppositon," which in a metahistorical diachrony and in Walter Ullmann's vision of medieval politics and law was really "very much a black and white matter. "42 Certainly, in humanistic and Renaissance political thought, the 38. K. Bosl, Modelli eli societiZ medievale, Italian translation by G. Todeschini (Bologna, 1979) 1 42. 39. Se ibid., 150-151 . 40. Banolus de Saxoferrato, Tractatus de regimine civitatis, I, 24-25 and 3 1 32, ed. in D. Quaglioni, Politica e eliritto nel Trecento italiano. II "De tyranno" eli Bartolo da Sassoferato (1 3 1 4-1357) . Con l'edh;ione critica dei trattati "De Guelphis et Gebellinis, " "De regimine civitatis" e "De tyranno " (Florence, 1983) 150. 41 . See G. Post in his review of W. Ull man, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, Maryland, 1966) 390. 42 . "Ibis is the well-known and incisive opinion of P. F. Grendler in his review of the collection of miscellanea, Aspects of the Renaissance: A Symposium. Papers Presented at a Conference on the Meaning of the Renaissance, ed. A. R. Lewis (Austin, Texas, 1967), Renais­ sance Quarterly, XXI (1968) 442-443: 442. The pages cited refer to the text of W. Ullmann, The Rebirth of the Citizen on the Eve of the "Renaisance" Period, contained therein on pp. 5 25. On Ullmann's concept, se O. Capitani, "A proposito eli un libra recente di W. Ullmann," in StucU Medievali, s. III, 1lI (1962) 297-314 (with regard 10 Principles of Politics and Govern ment in the Middle Ages [London, 1961]); see also the more recent srudy of F. Oakley, " Celes­ tial Hierarchies Revisited; W. Ullmann's Vision of Medieval Politics," Past and Present, LX ( 1973), and of C. Dolcini , "Prolegomeni alia storiografia del pensiero politico meelioevale, in II

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citizen-subject dialectic had a broader dimension and was more sharply char­ acterized than in medieval times. Nonetheless, this dialectic does not offer a completely satisfactory key for a historical understanding of the phenomenon and concept of citizenship in the political and legal experience of the Middle Ages. In a tour de force of synthesis regarding the contribution of medieval doctrines on citizenship Ennio Cortese wrote that For Accursius it sufficed to explain that birth meant both one's own and that of one's father. (Accursius was commenting on a Roman clause which stated that one becomes municeps by birthright.) With this explanation he sanctions an equivalence between ius loci and ius sanguinis with regard to the conferring of native citizenship . Whereas, by Bartolus's time the granting of a non-native status civitatis was readily accepted, a new status that was considered the result of an actua l contract between the individual and the Commune. Baldus, philosophizing as usual, explained further that citizenship was a quid factibile and therefore fell within the province of both natural occurrences and artificial acts.43

This is not the proper forum in which to enumerate the contents of the juridical doctrines of the Middle Ages. However, I must make an exception for a topic that is the most important theoretical contribution the Middle Ages left as a legacy to the modern and contemporary world: the parity established between acquired and native citizenship as a fictio iuris.44 Recent studies have dealt extensively with this subject. This parity, however, created both theoretical and practical everyday problems. Julius Kirshner wrote, "Confusion about the validity of acquired citizenship occurred when statutes dealing with the legal status of new citizens were ambiguously worded, utterly equivocal, or in conflict with one another. "4S It sparked the rapid emergence of a vast production of consilia, in which Roman principles came to clothe and shape the norms of statutory rights. As a result, medieval doctrine was faced with a double-faceted question regarding both the power of the civitas to create new citizens and the status of these citizens. Kirshner, better than most recent scholars, has understood and illustrated the, meaning of this set of problems in the thought of the great medieval jurists and greatly clarified the theoretical context within which the issues were debated.46 With regard to pensiero politico del Basso Medioevo." An anthology edited by C. Dolcini (Bologna, 1983) 9-

1 1 7: 1 1-12.

43. E. Cortese, " Cittadinanza (Diritto intermedio) " 1 39. 44. Ibidem. 45. J. Kirshner, "'Civitas sibi faciat civem': Bartolus of Sassoferato's doctrine on the Making of a Citizen," p. 696. It is Bartolus himself who recognizes in his margin notes (D. 50, 1, 1, S 1), echoing Ulpian's words, that "hodie vtimur isto vocabulo large, et improprie, vt quilibet ciuis ciuitatis dicatur municeps" : in I. municipem ff. ad municipalem et de incolis (D. 50, 1 , 1), in Bartolus a Saxo Ferrato, In secundam ff. no"; Parum, Venetiis, Apud Iuntas. MLXX.,

f. 230vA.

46. Beyond the study already mentioned in footnotes 1 and 35, "'Civitas sibi faciat civem': Bartolus of Sassoferrato's Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen," se also Kirshner's other contributions to the subject: " Paolo di Castro on "cives ex privilegio" : A Controversy over the Legal Qualifications for Public Office in Early Fifteenth-Century Florence," in Renaisl

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doctrine, Bartolus especially represents, to this day, a model to be consulted attentively. As Kirshner demonstrated, Bartolus's interest in the civilitas {icta and the civilitas ex receptione, was not accidental; nor was it exclusively re­ lated to commentary on the sedes materiae (D.SO, l ), but it acquired specula­ tive dignity in light of the quest for " substance" mentioned earlier. Aside from the commentaries over the title ad municipalem et de incolis discussed by Kirshner, the definition of citizen as a species stands out with re­ spect to the generic condition of the municeps. In addition, native and natu­ ralized citizenship are seen as a subspecies of the civis.47 This constitutes more than a reprise of the Roman pattern ( " ipso iure facit aliquem municipem natiuitas, manumissio, et adoptio" ) . The repetitio in l. si is qui pro emptore, {f. de usucapionibus et usurpationibus (D .4 1,3, 15), which is impressive for the rigor of its reasoning and for the innovative power of its definitions, provides a good example. In this early piece, Bartolus, opposing Cino da Pistoia's definition of {ictio, explained, for the first time in scriptis, his concept of citi­ zenship. He saw it as an institution based on ius gentium and on civil law, not natural law. This is particularly true of acquired citizenship, which he estab­ lished, against every ambiguity of statutory law, in the definition of the {ictio inductiva as a " quae naturam et veritatem imitatur" and that "fingit esse id, quod non est""8 or that, more exactly, " est in re certa non existente possibili, pro existente a iure facta assumptio."'" To this solution, Bartolus remained faithful throughout his teaching career, and he wanted it reproduced without any modification in the definitive recension of his lecturae.5o We could not synthesize his views any better than he himself did in the extraordinary doctrinal consilium, edited by Kirshner. It does not require any comment: "Est . . . constitutio iuris civilis que facit aliquem civem propter origin em vel propter dignitatem vel propter adoptionem . . . . Unde non est dicendum quod quidam sunt cives naturaliter, quidam civiliter. Immo est dicendum quod omnes sunt cives civiliter: aliqui tamen propter naturalem originem, aliqui propter aliam causam. Unde si civitas facit statutum quod quicunque

sance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, edited by A. Molho and J. A. Tedeschi (Florence, 1971) 227·246; "Messer Francesco di Bici degli Albergotti d'Arezzo, Citizen of Florence (13501376)," Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law, n.s., IT (1972) 84-90; '' 'Ars imitatur naturam': A Consilium of Baldus on Naturalization in Florence," Viator, V (1 974) 2 89-331; " Between Na­ ture and Culture: An Opinion of Baldus of Perugia on Venetian Citizenship as Second Nature," The Journal of Medieval and Renaisnce Studies, IX, 2 (1979) 1 79-208. 47. In I. municipem, ff. ad municipaiem et de incolis (D. SO, 1, 1 ), f. 230vA. The same definition, which has already appeared in Accursius's gloss on C. 1 0, 40, 7, is cited by Bartolus at the same point in the text: in I. cives quidem C. de incolis (C. 10, 40, 7) n. 1, in Bartolus a Saxo Ferato, In tres Codicis libros, f. 21vA. Se J. Kirshner, "'Civitas sibi faciat civem': Bartolus of Sassoferrato's Doctrine on the Making of a Citizen," 698-710. 48. In I. si is qui pro emptore, ff. de u.sucapionibus et usurpationibus: (D. 41 , 3 , 1 5) n . 25, in Bartolus a Saxo Ferrato, In Primam ff. novi Partem, Venetiis, Apud Iuntas. MDLXX., f. 104rA. On the repetitio se once again J. Kirshner, "Civitas sibi faciat civem, " 69 8. 49. In I. si is quo pro emptore, ff. de u.sucapionibus et de usurpationibus (D. 41 , 3, 15) n. 26, f. l 04rA. 50. Ibidem., n. 72, f. 106vA: "Fuit prima lex quam meis auditorib. in scriptis tradidi: et earn prout tunc compo sui, nullo addito hic transcribi feci."

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habet ibi domum sit civis, vere erit civis ; et vere proprie civis est, quicunque recipitur, ut munera subeat. "51 This is, perhaps, the first complete theoretical expression of the voluntaristic principle in the historical evolution of the institution of citizenship, no longer strictly connected to the principles of ius sanguinis and ius loci. Later theorizing added little, introducing at times new philosophical rea­ soning. This is in accordance with the tendency that emerged especially with Baldus, to reject the self-sufficiency of the scientia iuris and establish the law on a philosophical and theological basis. This theorizing, however, does not diminish the crisp power of Bartolus's definition. His syllogistic solution ( "True citizens can be made by statute. X is made a citizen by statute. X is therefore a true citizen," to use Kirshner's scheme)52 is maintained and devel­ oped in Baldus's consilia to the point where civilitas ex privilegio becomes second nature.S3 Based on new historical and doctrinal foundations, a mature humanistic jurisprudence, in changed historical, political, and social conditions, would undertake the revision of the fourteenth-century system, which, however, it inherited consciously. No matter what Rousseau thought,54 it was Bodin's definition of citizen as a "free subject dependent on the sovereignty of others," that opened a new season of legislation and legal and political thought. Bodin placed his emphasis on the common subjugation of all persons to the will of the king: .

.

•

11 s'appelle citoyen: qui n'est autre chose en propres tennes, que Ie franc subiect tenant de la souuerainte d'autrouy . . . Or entre les subiets l'vn est naturel, soit franc, ou esclaue: l'autre naturalise . . . Or tout ainsi qu'entre les subiects esclaues l'vn est naturel, l'autre non, aussi entre les citoyens l'vn est naturel, l'autre naturalise: Le citoyen naturel est Ie franc subiect de la Republique Oil il est natif, soit de deux citoyens, soit de l'un ou de l'autre seulement . . . Le citoyen naturalise est celluy qui s'est aduoue de la souuerainete d'autruy, et y a este receu . . . De plusieurs citoyens, soyent naturels, ou naturalises, ou esdaues affranchis (qui sont les trois moyens que la loy donne pour estre citoyen) se fait une Republique. "55 51. Critical edition of the text by J. Kirshner, "Civitas sibi faciat civem, 71 3. 52 . J. Kirshner, "'Ars imitatur Naturam': A Consilium of Baldus on Naturalization in Florence," 310. 53. J. Kirshner, "Between Nature and Culture: An Opinion of Baldus. of Perugia on Venetian Citizenship as Second Nature," p. 201 : "The specific problem of dual citizenship which Baldus was asked to resolve was a variant of an invariant grid of categorical oppositions - nature versus culture, will versus necessity, and truth versus fiction - which had dominated juristic conceptions and discussions since the Roman Empire." Again regarding Baldus, see J. P. Canning, "A Fourtenth-Century Contribution to the Theory of Citizenship: Political Man and the Problem of Created Citizenship in the Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis," in Authority and Power. Studies on Medieval Law and Government Presented to Walter UHmann on his Seventieth Birthday, editors B . Tierney and P. Linehan (Cambridge, 1980) 197-212 (now included and incorporated in the larger study The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis [Cambridge, 1 987] . Se e especially 159-1 84) . Thi s study i s i n accordance with mlmann's views. 54. Se again C. Nicolet, "Citoyennere fran\41ise et citoyennete romaine," 1 50-151. 55 . Les six livres de la Republique de 1. Bodin Angeuin, I, chapter 6, 68, 71 and 72; see I sei libn dello Stato di Jean Bodin, I, 265, 270, and 271 . -Thanks to Ermelinda Carnpani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this essay from Italian. n

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Finally, citizenship has come to signify merely the juridical status of those who are part of a state.

Who Rules? Power and Participation in Athens and Rome WA LTE R E D E R

T

HE GREATER THE NUMBER of people who are entitled to participate in

power, the more difficult it is to give an answer to the question "Who rules?"1 In a monarchy or tyranny, the answer is reduced to naming the ruler. When dealing with an aristocracy or oligarchy, however, it does not suffice simply to define the group that clearly distinguishes itself from the rest of the population by its reputation, experience and wealth. Rather, there are additional problems, such as how to control access to that upper class and how to guarantee equality within it. As even elites have to organize themselves efficiently and thus cannot do without advisory and executive bodies, the question of participation in aristocracies is twofold: first, within the aristocracy, there is the problem of how to keep a balance of power if inevitably member­ ship in council and successful leadership in magistracies entail an increase in influence and power; second, outside the aristocracy, there is the question of how those parts of the population that do not belong to the elite should participate. The stability of this kind of social order is based on consensus within the upper class, and such consensus is formed by personal relationships among a limited number of families. In the democracies and republics discussed here, the problem of power and participation becomes apparent also in· a twofold way, though at a broader and therefore more complex level. In Athens and Rome, as well as in Florence and Venice, in principle, final decisions on the distribution of power were the responsibility of all citizens. Consequently, we are dealing with membership not in a small elite, but in a much larger body, too numerous to be easily surveyed. As a result, citizenship and its political significance became the most important criterion of participation. Because of the number of potential holders of power, the problem of its equal distribution among the citizens 1. This is a shortened version of the paper prepared for the conference at Brown University. It had been written in the stimulating atmosphere of the Instirute for Advanced Srudy at Princeton and owes much to the criticism and helpful comments of those 'who were kind enough to read it in advance: Christian Habicht, Knut Norr, Peter Pareto and Peter Rhodes. I am very thankful to them, as well as to the commentator Christiane Klapisch-Zuber and to all those who tok part in the discussion at the conference, although I did not always follow their advice when formulating the present version.

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primarily became a question of how to control efficiently the working of councils and magistracies. The stability of this form of political organization depended less on personal relations than on the citizens' ability to develop an efficient system of controlling themselves in order to avoid arbitrary decisions and actions. Thus law and legal provisions played the most important role among the guiding principles of political action required for securing continu­ ity in spite of a permanent change of public officials, councilors, and participants in the popular assemblies. In democracies and republics, security of state means security of law. With that in mind, in attempting to answer the question "Who rules? " we wil l focus on three main issues. First, citizenship as the basis for participation in power; second, the role of the magistrates and institutions in preparing, executing, and controlling the will of the people, as well as the people's control over these authorities; and finally "the rule of law." In order to concentrate on areas of greatest personal competence, this study deals only with Athens and Rome; there again, the emphasis is laid on epochs during which Athenian democracy and Roman republic were fully developed, namely the fifth and fourth centuries for Athens and the third and second centuries for Rome. Earlier stages in the history of these societies will, of course, not be omitted completely; the differences between the two city-states, which will become increasingly apparent during this analysis, cannot be explained other­ WIse. To explain means to compare.2 Looking at a single society may provide us with an exact description of the mechanisms used for distributing and con­ trolling power. Only by comparing different societies, however, are we enabled to explain the specific character of political action in each case. In this process of comparison, it is as useful to look for similar, parallel solutions as it is appropriate to contrast different, alternative solutions of the same problem, in the present case that of power and participation. By discovering clear parallels, we are able not only to test hypothetical models of explanation, but also to verify them within the limits of the available evidence. On the other hand, by finding alternative and therefore apparently "incomparable" answers, we are forced to ask why a particular solution - and not any other - was chosen. The question "Why not?" which emerges only in a comparative approach, may turn out to be more productive than "Why?" which is the historian's usual question. The analysis of opportunities "missed" by a given society searching for a solution to a problem allows us to recognize the actually chosen solution as something specific to a particular pattern of social action; it allows us to comprehend more clearly a social and political system and its components.

2. "The comparative method is essentially a tool for dealing with problems of explana­ tion"; thus W. H. Sewell, "Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History," History and Theory 6 (1 967) 208.

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By comparing Athens with Rome we will discover that fundamental differences existed between them in spite of common traits that one may find in Cicero's definition of the res publica as res populi or Aristotle's allusion to the "sovereignty of people," claiming that every citizen had to be prepared to rule and to be ruled.3 Such differences are visible at first glance, for example in the fact that Athens paid daily allowances to the councilors, the jurors, and the citizens in the assemblies, whereas Rome never thought of doing that; thus the wealthy upper class in Rome increasingly became an indisputably dominating factor because they either enjoyed the advantage of living in town, at the place of political decision making, or could afford easily the expensive and frequent trips to the capital. As far as the appointment of the councilors (bouleutai) is concerned, Athens very early made an effort to mini­ mize the contradiction between the claim that all citizens had equal political opportunities and the fact that differences in the place of residence resulted in extremely unequal chances for political participation; for since the end of the sixth century B.C. the Council of the Five Hundred consisted of citizens living all over the Athenian territory. By contrast, in Rome no attention was ever paid to formally connecting the appointment of senators with the concept of representation, that is, to making the senate a body consisting of members who lived in all districts (tribus) of the ager Romanus. As we will see, fundamental distinctions between Athens and Rome were hidden behind these seemingly superficial differences. Thus we must not expect to find a common "ancient" answer to the question "Who rules ? " that could be contrasted with a "medieval" answer to the same question. WE TH E P E O P LE: C I TI Z E N S H I P AN D P A RTI C I PATI O N

It i s a common trait of ancient and modem concepts of state that power originates not from the entire population but from the people in a more narrowly defined sense, where the "people" is the community of citizens in full possession of citizenship. Citizenship bestowing participation depended either upon birth or upon a formal grant. Living within the sphere of legal protection that a state offered did not per se entitle one to participate in political decision making. Therefore, neither unfree persons nor free foreigners played any role in politics, even if they were permanent residents in a community, such as the Athenian metics. Although they were afected by political decisions and could be called upon for adminis­ trative and military tasks, they were not allowed to influence political decisions officially, that is, within the constitutional framework. In the ancient world, active citizenship regularly was further restricted by age and sex. Most important, even if there was no minimum age required for holding office, only those who were able to serve in the army could fully exercise their citizen's rights. As being citizen meant being soldier, full citizen3.

Arist. Pol. 1277b 10-1 6; 1291b 30-38; Cic. Rep.1.25.39.

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ship was provisionally denied to all male youth and definitely to all women, because the female, so to speak, could never reach the age to be enlisted for active duty. Nevertheless, it is misleading to mention slaves, foreigners, and women in the same breath; for in sharp contrast to slaves and metics, free women enjoyed civic rights and fully participated in the performance of important rites of state religion.4 Only free and adult male citizens .formed the politically significant part of the population. Their number might not have exceeded one fifth of the total population in either Athens or Rome. The two cities, however, differed significantly in defining the preconditions of citizenship and in evaluating the individual vote in political decision making. In Athens, admission to citizenship was handled in an extremely restrictive way: it depended on descent from a male citizen and, since 45 1 B.C., from a female citizen as well, on acceptance by a phratry, and on enrollment in a list kept at one's ancestral residence (demos). If registration was denied, it was possible to initiate legal action in order to raise a claim to citizenship. Finally, the entry into full citizenship was marked by an oath taken by the young Athenians (epheboi) to confirm their availability for active military duty. That oath is to be regarded as a citizen's oath initiating a sworn community of all citizens in times of war and peace.s In Rome, admission to citizenship was, in principle, not based on descent from Roman parents. What is more, it was left to every citizen to increase the number of citizens by freeing his slaves. To do this, it was sufficient either to cal in private individuals to witness the manumission or to make a testamentary provision. Although it was common to be registered on citizens' lists by the censors, enrollment was not a necessary precondition of citizenship, as is clearly shown by the de facto abolishment of the census by Sulla the dictator. In Rome, there was no oath of citizenship comparable with the oath of the Athenian ephebes. The Romans took a military oath only in case of war and not to the state but to their commanding magistrates. Roman citizenship was, like Roman marriage, a " social fact" : the individual ci*en was expected to use his right of creating new citizens responsibly, because every freed slave

4. To deny the citizenship of free women means to ignore the fact that being a citizen was not necesrily identical with possessing equal opportunities in politics. In Plato's concept of the best state, peasants and craftsmen are citizens without playing any military or political part (Rep. 415 a<, 443 cod). Aristode, to, contrasts the peasants and craftsmen with the other citizens (Pol. 1 32 8b 1 - 1329a 35), but he does not mention the exclusion of women belonging to the upper strata of the population from the ranks of full citizens. As he only concedes priesdy functions to his full citizens (Pol. 1 329a 27-34), and because female priest hoods are customary in Greece, he obviously has no doubts about conceding citizenship to women, too. With regard to the cillis femina in Athens, there is some evidence in Plautus Persae 474f. About Rome, se L. Peppe, PosiziOM giuridica e !'Uolo sociale della don ramana in eta repubblicana (Milan, 1984). 5. Cf. P. Siewert, "The Ephebic Oath in Fifth-Century Athens," J. of Hell. St. 97 (1 977) 102-1 1 1 .

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Rules?

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became a member of the popular assemblies; while in Athens, freedmen became metics and remained outside the ruling demos.' Nevertheless, the fact that slaves were easily turned into citizens by individuals and that the assembly granted citizenship even to whole communi­ ties, regions, and finally to the whole free population within the borders of the empire, was never considered an urgent political problem by the Romans. By contrast, except for Samos and Plataea, both due to extraordinary circum­ stances, the Athenians denied citizenship to even the most faithful allies. In Rome, obviously the number of citizens was of no importance; thus in Cicero's political writings we look in vain for a paragraph dealing with the number of citizens in a state, whereas Plato and Aristode pay much attention to this problem. The restrictive handling of citizenship points to a certain elitist and aristocratic exclusiveness among Athenian democrats. Aristocratic traits gen­ erally were not untypical of Athenian democracy: for example, they lived on in the practice of proxeny and liturgy, and even the democratic concept of political equality resulted from an older aristocratic ideology of equality on the one hand, and the reduction of the political influence of the aristocrats during the tyrany of Pisistratus and his sons on the other hand.7 But it would be rash to discern democratic traits in the Roman wilingness to grant citizenship almost lavishly. The reason for that should be seen in the political insignifi­ cance of the individual Roman citizen, because enjoying the same legal status of citizenship did not necessarily mean possessing the same political rights and opportunities. In fact, there is no society that offers all citizens the same chances and opportunities to participate in political decision making. Beyond the limits set by social and economic diferentiation, the political significance of each citizen can in principle be manipulated by the following measures: first, by setting the terms of voting; second, by emphasizing hierarchy, personal relations and social dependencies in a system of patronage; third, by controlling public opinion through handling the right of assembly restrictively; and, finally, by restricting eligibility to offices of high political relevance. In Rome, the system of group voting considerably reduced the weight of the individual vote, for the number of votes did not depend on the number of persons present. Since the third century B.C., only thirty-five votes could be cast in the assemblies organized according to residential areas (comitia trihuta and concilia plebis), and not more than 193 votes could be given in those subdivided into military units (comitia centuriata). Thus the political importance of citiCf. Timothy J. Cornell in this volume, at notes 39ff. Cf. below, at n. 23. On the aristocratic elements in Grek democracy, se G. Herman, Ritllised Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge, 1 987). In the sixth and even the fifth century B.C. there were aristoctatic-minded condottieri in Asia Minor who displayed their succes in military service abroad by putting up statues in their home cities: O. Masson and J. Yoyone, "Une inscription ioniene mentionnant Psamtique I-," Epigraphica Anawlica 1 1 (1988) 171-179, esp. 1 73 (l owe this reference to Christian Habicht). 6.

7.

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zenship decreased with the increase in number of citizens, because the number of votes did not increase at the same time. Furthermore, the structure of political representation hindered the effective expression of group interests in two specific ways: first, representation by military units could not take into account interests possibly held in common by citizens living in the same area; second, voting on the basis of geographically defined districts, where each district possessed only one vote, led to political underrepresentation of the lower classes since the poor and propertyless people crowded together in Rome were enrolled in the urban districts (tribus urbanae) and thus could vote in only four out of thirty-five tribes. In Rome, therefore, citizenship provided a necessary, but in no way sufcient, condition for participation in govern­ ment and power. The depoliticizing effect of group voting was even further reinforced by the hierarchical structure and segmentation of Roman society. Since the early republic, the free population of Rome was split into two large segments of different social origin: an economically homogeneous and politically unified group of patrician families who formulated and defended their claim to mo­ nopolize power and rule, and on economically widely differentiated plebs, which was not integrated in the clientship of the patricians and achieved political unity in the fifth century B.C. as a sworn community under a sacred oath (lex sacrata) and under the guidance of sacrosanct ("untouchable" ) tri­ bunes of the plebs. It was characteristic of the ensuing "struggle of the orders," which lasted about two hundred years, that because of the external military threat neither of these two communities could do without the other without risking its own existence. Thus neither the patricians nor the plebeians had the power to decide whether they wanted to make any efforts at conciliation; they could only choose how their different interests should be reconciled. As a result, this conciliation was a sum of many compromises and provisionally accomplished by the end of the fourth century B.C, 8 It was in the nature of this provisional arrangement, achieved under external pressure and internal tensions, that segmentatiop of society continued. Since the fourth century, however, Roman society was divided differently: into a new politically leading class, that is, the "nobility" in which patricians as well as wealthy plebeians worked together; and into a new plebs that increasingly proved to be the part of the population not able to fill public office due to its low economic means. With the formation of this new nobility the principle of descent as a precondition of power was abandoned in favor of a principle that made holders of the highest office, the consulship, a ruling

8. On all these questions, se now the contributions in K.A. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders (Berkeley and Los Angelos, 1986), and in W. Eder (ed.), Staat und Staatlichkeit in der {rUhen rOmischen Republik (Stuttgart, 1990).

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class.' As access to office depended on social prestige and wealth, this prin­ ciple was, first of all, timocratic. In Athens, the timocratic principle was introduced or at least reinforced by Solon (594 B.C.), who divided the citizens into four census classes and gave each class a proportionate amount of influence on politics. In 508 B.C. Cleisthenes emphasized the place of residence as a basic element of a new system of political participation. Both reforms had politically significant con­ sequences: first, a representative system was developed, as residents of all districts gathered together in the Council of the Five Hundred; second, the leading group continuously grew because the census rates needed for entering the highest offices were gradually lowered. In Rome, there was a completely different effect: the new nobility was neither an enlarged patriciate nor willing to be expanded; rather, it turned out to be a plutocratic oligarchy consisting only of current or former top magistrates and political leaders, and not even including al patrician families. The border­ line between the citizens able to be or to become nobles by holding superior offices and the rest of the population, which was not able to arrive at the top, was actually fixed by the census rate of the wealthiest nonsenatorial class, the "knights" (equites), because candidacy for office depended on prior eques­ trian service in the army. In theory, every citizen had the chance to qualify as a potential candidate by means of accumulating a fortune but, in reality, the nobility displayed a clear tendency to form an inner circle of families who tightly controlled access to the prestigious offices, especially the consulship. Thus, they only reluctantly made use of the personnel resources available in the wealthy class of the equites (homines nov ,). 10 In order to demonstrate the various levels of political influence that Roman citizens exercised, it may be useful to visualize two graphic models. The first consists of several concentric circles. In the very center is a small inner circle of nobiles directly involved in governing and ruling. Even if the composition of this circle varies over time, there will always be a high amount of political continuity, because wealth and socia' prestige are inherited by the members. Outside this small center is a circle of nobiJes whose families have already accomplished important tasks for the res publica and/or are members 9. On the clase dirigeanu in Rome, se now K. J. Holkeskamp, Die Entstehung de, NobilitiJt (Stuttgart, 19 87); on the ceto dirigente in Florence, d. J. M. Najemy's contribution to this volume, at notes H. 10. 1be exclusive character of the nobility has ben questioned by P. Brunt, "Nobiliw and Noviw, " ,. of Rom. St. 72 (1982) 1·17, and F. Mi l lar, "The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic," ,. of Rom. St. 74 (1984) 1-20. Certainly, the Roman nobility was no closed group because it depended on being partly revitalized from outside just like any other aristocracy that wanted to stay successful. This should not serve, however, as an argument to connect the Roman Republic with a democratic concept. This tendency is clearly shown by Millar, op. cit. and in ,. of Rom. St. 79 (1 989) 1 38-1 50, as well as by J. A. North, "Democratic Politics in Republican Rome," Past iJnd P,esent 126 (1990) 3-2 1 . For a discussion of this "new wave" se D. R. Shackleton Bailey, "Nobiles and Novi reconsidered," Am. ,. of PhiloL 1 07 (1986) 255260, and L. Burckhardt, " 1be Political Elite of the Roman Republic: Comments on Recent Discussion of the Concepts nobilitas and homo noUNS," Histori4 39 (1990) 77-99.

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of the senate. Another, wider circle consists of the equites, who in principle are considered suitable for office by reason of their wealth and their military career. They were often linked by family relations or financial connections to the nobility forming the two innermost circles. Then follows a thick, almost impermeable line representing the strict social separation of citizens eligible for office (honesti) from people de facto excluded from offices (humiles, plebs). The subsequent and outermost circle by far exceeds the three previous ones in diameter. It encloses the remaining part of the populus which, in election, leg­ islation, and jurisdiction, formally legitimizes the distribution of power among the persons within the inner circles. According to the slogan pauca per populum, this final circle is not able to influence the shaping of political will and decisions in an independent and efficient way. The system of checks and balances works in practice - though not formally - only within the two or three inner circles.ll The second model, reproducing and emphasizing the segmentation as well as the vertical structure of Roman society, represents the Roman people as divided into numerous pyramids. At the top there are the patroni, the heads of prominent families with large clientelae at their disposal and obliged by re­ ligiously sanctioned custom (fides) to protect their clients. Whether or not these clients are economically dependent on their patrons, they in tum are obliged by social and moral duty and religious sanction to support their patrons' political will (obsequium). The fides of the patronus and the obsequium of the clientes created a strong vertical link within the pyramid connecting the patronus with his family, his freedmen, and finally all freeborn citizens (ingenui) who had entrusted them­ selves to him. The strong coherence within the pyramid - whose structure was based on social power and influence that was partly inherited by the patronus from his ancestors and partly created by himself through personal achievement - had two important effects: on the one hand there emerged within the res publica a kind of "small state," which, by relying on the patria potestas and patronage used by the pater familias to rule his kin and clients, efficiently helped to safeguard discipline and social order in the state at large. On the other hand, it was not left to the private will of the pater, or even to his arbitrary decisions, to shape law and order in this small state witl"in the state. For the individual noble's behavior had to correspond to the moral values and the general code of conduct adopted by the nobility as a group and controlled by the censors. Consequently, the consensus among a few nobiles at the top of these pyramids, who met in political groups (factiones) or offi­ cially in the senate, was easily multiplied in the citizen body due to the verticality of social relationships; thus the opinion of a few naturally became the obligatory consensus of a great number of citizens forming the bottom of 1 1 . G. Brucker, in The Civic World of Early Renaisnce Florence (Princeton, 1m) 252f., suggests a similar model of concentric circles with regard to the citizens of Florence. That model may also be applied to Venice and other city-states, but surely not to Athens . •

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the pyramids. Necessarily, these vertical structures hampered the formation of horizontal relations among citizens who found themselves in the same economic or social situation but were linked as clients to different patrons in different pyramids.12 Combining both models, we can clearly see that in Rome the possession of citizenship was no suitable criterion to determine participation in power. As there were, in addition, no measures that could have compensated for the disadvantage of a distant residence, citizenship as a means of political partici­ pation became almost meaningless if it was not supported by wealth. For the well-ta-do citizens, however, the advantages of both a residence in the capital and their wealth added up to an almost unchallenged position of political strength. For the poor citizens, by contrast, even the advantage of living in Rome was greatly reduced, because they could vote only in the four urban tribes (out of a total of thirty-five tribes); the disadvantage of living far from the capital, combined with small means, at 'least politically rendered citizenship almost useless. The pyramid model in particular demonstrates, however, that the question of how the individual citizen's right to participate is guaranteed by legal provisions may not be adequate with respect to a society based on social power and bonds of loyalty. For here, the socially dominating patrons are obliged to consider their clients' interests. Thus, even after the conflict of the orders had ended, conditions remained similar to those which during the conflict had made compromises and reconciliation between the classes possible: in deciding political matters, the leading group had to anticipate the people's presumed interests and wishes in order to avoid violent and destabilizing reactions of the plebeians and their ambitious tribunes. This system of respon­ sible anticipation worked extremely well as long as consideration for the interests of all Romans was accepted by all no biles as their common task. But when, as it happened in the late Republic, responsibility for balancing the interests of upper and lower classes was no longer perceived as a joint task and was left individually to the various heads of the pyramids, the consensus of the upper class disintegrated, and consequently, the process of decision making in the assembly was destabilized.13 The fundamental differences between Athens and Rome in the citizens' political participation and share in ruling are best shown when we try to apply the models that are valid for Rome to Athenian conditions: as there was neither group voting nor any social institution comparable with the 12. About the preconditions and effects of patronage, see now A. Wallace-Hadrill (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (London and New York, 1989); particularly the contributions by P. Millet (lSff. on Athens), the editor (63ff.), A. Drummond (89ff.), J. Rich (117ff., all dealing with Rome) . 1 3 . Pyramid-shaped models of this kind may also be applied to Florence and Venice. There, however, the difference in reputation between the highly estemed guilds and the ones of low repute plays an important role, if political dependencies are to be analyzed. For this see G. Brucker, op. cit. (n. 1 1 ) 39-59, and David Whitehead's remarks in this volume, at n. 51, as well as the commentary by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber.

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Roman clientship, neither model is applicable. In obvious contrast to Rome, each citizen in Athens counted as an individual whose vote - according to the principle "one man, one vote" - had full and equal weight in the Council of the Five Hundred as well as in the procedures of election, legislation, and jurisdiction in the assembly and the law courts. Because Athens handled naturalization restrictively, the number of citizens entitled to full political rights was sharply limited, but within this elitist democracy, equal participation in power was guaranteed to everyone. Contrary to Rome, in Athens it was left neither to the councilors nor to the magistrates to s umon the assembly or to formulate exclusively the agenda in question, for the assemby (ekklesia) met regularly on dates fixed in advance. Moreover, some very important items on the agenda, such as the decisions on banishing a prominent citizen for ten years ( ostracism), on the supply of grain for the city, or in the fourth century B.C. on the yearly review of the existing laws by a special procedure (nomothesia), were planned for meetings that were scheduled on fixed dates and treated there in a strictly regulated sequence. The most outstanding characteristic of the Athenian as­ sembly was exactly this "automatization" of the process of decision making. Regularity and rapid succession of meetings - about forty a year - forced the magistrates and the councilors routinely to face the assembly and, in par­ ticular, to bring up and deal with important agenda items each time. Thus the procedure also determined the contents dealt with; this may explain the infinite variety of items treated in the Athenian assembly. In contrast to Athens, the range of issues dealt with in Roman assemblies appears conspicuously small. The topics were almost exclusively limited to the regulation of the affairs and the conduct of the upper class in general and of the magistrates' duties and performance in particular; this included even elections and jurisdiction that mostly referred to the members of the nobility. In addition, the Roman citizen did not know any fixed dates or agenda for the public meetings, which means that he was in a way taken by surprise or disturbed in his daily routine when sumoned to the assembly. To the Athenian citizen attendance at public meetings was part of daily life. Because the sched­ ule and agenda were set up in advance, the involvement expected of him was calculable and he could prepare ahead of time for attending as well as for discussing the respective items. Thus the disadvantage of a residence far away from the city was reduced even for less afuent citizens. For being able to plan a visit to the city meant being able to combine politics and business. The network of roads, improved and extended by the tyrants in the sixth century B.C., conveniently met the increased desire for mobility and participation in the following centuries. Regularity and rapid succession of meetings as well as the possibility of using the common right to speak freely in the assembly (isegoria) produced an invaluable political education. The Athenians' well-known readiness to try everything, constantly to dare the new and to decide very quickly, might have

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been both the cause and the result of such permanent exercise in "thinking politics. " This busybody attitude (polypragmosyne) sometimes turned out to be dangerous for the city, as we can see when reading Thucydides' comments and the complaints of Pseudo-Xenophon.14 By cooperating regularly in this way the citizen body enhanced the individual citizen's interest in the affairs of the polis of Athens as well as the individual's political value in a way never experienced by the mass of Roman citizens who attended the rather sporadic assemblies in Rome. The model of concentric circles delineating the extent of political influ­ ence is not even applicable to the process of decision making in fifth- and fourth-century Athens. For, at the latest after the Areopagus Council was deprived of its political power by Ephialtes in 462 B.C., such a model would have at its center the Council of the Five Hundred, a committee preparing public meetings, surrounded by a second circle consisting of the citizens frequenting the assembly. As any citizen, however, was allowed to make a motion in the ekklesia, proposals determining the contents of laws originated in both the Council and the assembly; moreover, each citizen was able to cause a refusal of the councilors' suggestion, compelling them to reconsider the issue and to resubmit it to the assembly in an altered form. The only advantage remaining to the council was the opportunity to present a bill first. According to general political wisdom, unless the motion is rejected in toto, the first initiative largely determines the discussion and decisively influences its outcome. The Roman citizens had only the choice to refuse, or to accept in toto, a text thus hardly a "proposal" - presented by the magistrates. Typically not a single rejection of a magistrate's proposal is known. For yet another reason the model of concentric circles cannot be applied to Athens. For the Roman model actually combines the scheme of four concentric circles with that of numerous pyramids, the peaks of which meet in the innermost circle just like the slices of a round tart. The circles depicting political influence decreasing from the center to the periphery illustrate the governmental and political consequences of the 1:ooperation among the heads of the pyramids in the innermost circles, whereas the single pyramids showing connections from the top to the bottom depict the relationships among citizens that are based on clientsp.ip and thus the economic and social preconditions of homogeneity and stability within society. Such a model can be used only to a very limited extent to represent and explain the social structure and its political consequences for the organization of power and participation in Athens after the fall of the tyrants. In principle, however, the development of pyramidal segments within society, that is, of strong vertical relationships between powerful aristocrats and dependent parts of the populace, is a characteristic common to Rome and Athens in similar stages of their history. In Rome, from the eighth century 14. Thuc. 1 .70.8-9, 2 .63.2-3; Pseudo Xen. Ath. Pol. 3.4-6.

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precious findings in tombs indicate an increasing economic differentia­ tion.IS At about the same time, a new onomastic system came into being in central Italy: the traditional combination of personal name and patronymic was replaced by a form of name that emphasized one's belonging to a larger unit, namely the gens.I6 Stated in historical or anthropological terms, a single family had reached a dominating position within a group of families consisting of cognate and agnate relatives;I7 therefore, it appeared more advantageous even to those members of the group that did not belong to the dominating core family to emphasize their political status within society by naming them­ selves after the pater familias of the core family and to neglect their own patronymic. ( Consequently, it is useless to look for a pater gentis, because the pater familias of the core family is identical with the pater gentis.) In Greece as well, precious gifts found in tombs prove that an economically powerful class started to develop in the archaic era, and archaeologists presume that already before the reforms of Solon the population had been classified according to property classes.18 Although we canot discover an onomastic change comparable to that in Central Italy we see a growing interest in genealogies and hero cults, which were probably used by some proud families to enhance their reputation among fellow citizens.19 If we rely on the evidence given by Solon and Aristotle, segmentation of population began to pose a threat to the community at the end of the seventh century B.C.20 The tendency to establish a tyranny grew rapidly, because the aristocrats' competitive struggle for fortune and followers was continued, on the political level, in the strife for p'ower in the polis. According to Aristotle, the whole Athenian population ended up being dependent on a few families. Thus Athens came to have a structure similar to that in Rome, even if the pyramids were probably not brought about by the same causes: in Athens, segmentation was based not on the suppression of cognate families but primarily on the economic exploita­ tion of people who had never been kin. The tensions resulting from the competitive attitude shown by powerful aristocrats was resolved differently in Athens and in Rome. In Rome, in the second half of the seventh century, a monarchy was established. The so-called Latin kings, although of little political importance, at least succeeded in coor­ dinating the interests of the strong gentes. These gentes continued to exercise B.C.,

15. Cf. C. Arnpolo, "Die endgiiltige Stadtwerdung Roms im 7. und 6. Jh. v. Chr. Wann entstand die Civitas?," in D. PapenfuB and V. M. Sttocka (eds.), Palast und Witte (Mainz, 1982) 32 1 . 16. H. Rix, " Zum Ursprung des romisch-mirtelitalischen Gentilnamensystems," i n Aufstieg 14 M Niedergang der romischen Welt 1.2 (1972) 700-758. 17. B. W. Leist, Alt-arisches ius civile I Gena, 1 892) 242f. 1 8 _ Cf. E. L. Smithson, "The Tomb of a Rich Athenian Lady ca. 850 B.C.," Hesperia 37 (1968) 8 3 and 94ff. Compare Arist. Ath. Pol. 7.3. 19. On heroes and hero cults, see recently E. Stein·Holkeskamp, Adelskultuf' und Polisgesellschaft. Studien zum griechischen Adel in archaischer und klassischer Zeit (Stuttgart, 1989), with rich bibliography. 20. Arist. Ath. Pol. 2.2, 4.5, 5.1 3.

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fully their political and social role, and even survived practically unharmed a hundred years of being ruled by strong Etruscan kings. The system of dividing society into powerful gentes remained untouched even in the republic, be­ cause the long-established upper class, the patriciate, succeeded in gradually integrating the leaders of the plebeian movement into a new classe dirigente, the nobility. In Athens, however, history took a different path. There, competition among the prominent aristocrats threatened to lead to a self-destructive struggle. The homicide laws of Draco, stopping the suicidal feuds among aristocrats, eased these conflicts; and shortly thereafter, Solon severely hurt the old network of relationships by canceling all existing debts and eternally forbidding all borrowing on the security of the person. In thus banning debt bondage he cut off strong vertical connections in society that were based on personal depen­ dency. It was, of course, not in Solon's power to abolish the real causes of indebtedness, such as bad harvests, death in war, and shortages of land due to division among several inheriting sons. Thus after Solon the poor farmer needing financial support did not have any choice but to repay his debt to his rich fellow citizen by supporting him politically in the assembly.21 Basically, Solon's reforms created all the prerequisites for the development of a new form of dependency, comparable to the Roman clientship, by which economic differences were turned into political obligations. Therefore, in Athens, we might expect the formation of pyramids, each led by a wealthy and well-born "patTonus" from the highest census class (pentakosiomedimnos), followed by several less wealthy friends (hippeis), some farmers (zeugitai), and by many poor citizens belonging to the lowest census class (thetes) as his obedient "clients."21 In fact, as we know, Athenian society of the fifth and fourth centuries was radically different from Roman society of the third and second centuries B.C . That difference was caused, on the one hand, by the political effects of the tyranny and, on the other hand - I am walking on very thin ice here - by the Athenians' reluctance to develop lasting loyalties, or, to put it more 2 1 . As Solon's reforms concerning land only restored a prior state of affairs, his political refonns did not succe in fully achieving the intended effects either: they failed to prevent a temporary anarchy and to block attempts to extend the archonship beyond the usual period of one year or to reorganize it completely (resulting in the enigmatic "ten archons," cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. 13.lI.). Pisistratus' success in gaining tyrannical power shortly thereafter demonstrates most clearly how unimportant the political refonns were in structuring the immediately subse­ quent period of Athenian history. 22. This might be the kernel of historical truth hidden in the "quarrels of the three parties" (Herod. 1 .59-63; Arist. Ath. Pol. 13.1 -4). The hoplites, situated as zeugitai between the rich and the poor, must not be expected to have played an important role in politics. For they did not have an opportunity to develop a collective identity as a middle class: first, since Athens did not wage any noteworthy wars in the sixth century the hoplite army was hardly used; second, according to the Solonian stasis law, all citizens had to join one of the opposing sides in times of civil strife; third, in times of peace the por thetes held the majority in the as­ sembly. Therefore, it is hardly justified to refer to the hop lites as an efficient political force in the sixth century (as does P. Spahn, Mittelschicht und Polisbildung [Frankfurt et a1., 1977]), or to lay much stress on the economic and political independence of the Athenian citizens in post­ Solonian times (as does E. M. Wood, Peasant-Citizen and Slave [London and New York, 1988]) .

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positively, by their untamable propensity to spontaneity, creativity, and indi­ viduality. During the almost forty years of tyranny, decisive foundations were laid for the development of democracy and of a close relationship between citizen and state. First, the idea of equality was discovered. When leveling the political influence of all citizens outside their own family, the tyrants made inefficient the timocratic structure on which political participation had been based since Solon. Realizing that noble birth deserved a certain reverence, but did not necessarily entail a monopoly on political power, the citizens gained a new experience of equality which could not be undone after the expulsion of the tyrants. Second, the idea of unity of the polis was discovered. Having experienced the tyrant's autocratic or monocentric power that had replaced the polycentric structure of power exercised by many aristocrats, people became well aware of the fact that a polis could act like one man, in spite of strong distinctions between rich and poor, noble and common. Furthermore, as the Athenian tyrants identified their interests with those of the polis Athens, they became somewhat like the "incarnation of the polis." As a consequence, via the tyrant's person the citizens could also identify themselves with the city. The bond between polis and politai, city and citizens, replaced former relations, which had existed among the nobles or between nobles and the common people but which now became politically ineffective. Because the citizens' identity was focused directly on the figure of the tyrant as a symbol of unity and, therefore, on the city-state personified by him, it was easy to detach that identity from the tyrant's person and to focus it directly on the state after the end of tyranny. One might conclude that tyranny actually became the founding act of the stateP The Romans never experienced either the concept of equality or the idea of unity as intensively as the Athenians did. As soon as the Etruscan king's power seemed to become autocratic - possibly as a consequence of the effects the military and social reforms of King Servius Tullius had on the relations between king and community - the king was expelled by the patricians, and monarchy was abolished forever. In Rome, equality meant not equal rights for al Romans, but equal opportunities only for citizens belonging to the same social class; there were differing equalities in Rome. SI milarly, the Roman concept of unity of the state related not to an abstract idea of the state, but primarily to unity and consensus within the upper class. This distinction between the conceptions of the state in Athens and Rome is best shown by the fact that in Athens the constitution ofYthe polis could be portrayed as "Demokratia" in stone and, perhaps, in paintings, whereas the Romans never created pictures of the "Res publica. "24 23. For this se my remarks in T. Yuge and M. Doi (eds.), Forms of Control and Subor­ dination in Antiquity I (Tokyo and Leiden, 1988) 465-475, esp. 469f. 24 . On the pictorial representation of demos and demokratia in Athens, see O. Plagia, Euphranor (Leiden, 1980) 57-64 . On the beginnings of the cult of the demos, se U. Kron, �

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T H E ADMI N I STRAT I O N O F POW E R O R TH E , POW E R O F ADM I NISTRAT I O N ? In democracies and republics, the mechanisms of handling power are not only and not even most clearly visible in the decisions of the people's assemblies, but also and most clearly in the committees and institutions that prepare such decisions and in those persons who put the decisions into political practice. Therefore, important criteria for the analysis of the distribution of power are both the role granted to the councils (the Roman senate and the Athenian boule) and the competences conceded to the magistrates. As the significance of citizenship as a basis for participation greatly differed in Athens and in Rome, the role that magistrates and councils had to play in politics differed markedly as well. The ratio between the number of citizens and the number of magistrates already reveals an astonishing discrepancy. Although neither in Athens nor in Rome the number of public officials was proportionally linked to the nunlber of citizens to be administered, the numerical development in these two societies hints at a fundamental distinction in their concepts of public service. In Rome, the number of citizens rose quickly, the number of magistrates hardly at all. The Athenians, on the contrary, did not hesitate continuously to create new magistracies to match growing needs, while they jealously kept the number of citizens at a low and stable leveUs Romans and Athenians obviously placed quite different value on the magistracy as a position of power and a source of reputation. In Rome, the emphasis was laid on the person and the social prestige acquired by holding an office. In Athens, the center of interest was the specific duty to be done efficiently for the polis. To put it differently, the Romans looked for an office to be given to a particular person, while the Athenians needed a person to accomplish a particular function. In Athens, the priority given to the function inherent in an office brought about not only an increasing number of position�, but also a widening of the range of persons eligible for office. For that purpose, restrictions by census "Demos, Pnyx und Nymphenhiigel," Mitt. Deutsch. Arch. [rut. (Athen) 94 (1979) 49·75. An inscription found on Samos snoWs that already by the early second century B.C. in Greece the populus Romanus (demos ton Rhomaion) was personified: C. Habicht, "Eine samische Weihung," forthcoming ibid. (I am grateful to Christian Habicht for kindly allowing me to use the article before publication.) In Rome, personifications like that were not to be found before the principate, and then representing not the populus Romanus, but the genius populi Romani and the genius senatus. 25 . In Rome, the number of citizens increased from ca. 300,000 in the third century B.C. to more than 4 million at the end of the Republic, whereas the number of magistracies included in the cursus honorum hardly grew; including the tribunes of the plebs it stayed below 50. In Athens, the number of officeholders multiplied from several dozens at the end of the sixth century B.C. to allegedly 1,400 in the fifrh century ( Arist. Ath. Pol. 24.3) and we may sup pose it to have ben around 1 ,000 in the fourth century B.C. (but see the cautious remarks by P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia [Oxford,1981) 304f.). Dur­ ing the same period the number of citizens fluctuated between 30,000 and 40,000, with a tendency to decline in the fourth century.

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were gradually abolished and most appointments were made by lot. Drawing lots, however, is not a priori characteristic of democracy; nor does it further democracy, even if Aristotle says so. The random character of drawing will have a democratic effect only if the circle of those who can be chosen by lot is very large and includes the greatest possible number of citizens. This was the case in Athens in the middle of the fifth century.16 Drawing and widening the circle' of citizens capable of filling offices favored the priority of function and simultaneously weakened the prestige associated with holding office. The person applying for office became less important. Thus the fact that after 487 B.C. even the highest magistrates, the archons, were selected by lot could indeed diminish not only the archons' reputation, but also the political authority of the famous Areopagus Council, exclusively composed of former archons. In practice, however, neither ex­ panding the circle of potential officeholders nor drawing lots seems to have affected the principle of filling the most important positions with citizens who belonged to the highest census classes. Thus the richest citizens appear in the lists of generals (strategot) and, perhaps, of the archons still in the fourth century. The Areopagus Council, too, succeeded in expanding its political influence after the Persian Wars until its power was taken away by Ephialtes, whose constitutional reforms (462 B.C.) were directed against and probably caused precisely by the Areopagus' strengthened political impact. Neverthe­ less, that council had another brief heyday in the fourth centuryP It was precisely the emphasis on function and advantage to the polis that enabled the Athenian democrats to tolerate some aristocratic flourishes. On the whole, democracy was not fetishistic about drawing lots and general eligibility for office: offices demanding special ,abilities, such as the strategoi, were never exposed to random drawing; another office, the treasurers of the Delian League (hellenotam;ai), bearing the highest financial responsibility in the empire, always remained a prerogative of the first census class in order to prevent bribery and thus any decrease of state revenues. In Rome, other priorities prevailed. Here, a person of the upper class was provided with an office and thus given the opportunity to present himself, although within the framework of aristocratic equality, as an outstanding member of society. As the prestige gained by officeholding decreases to the same extent that the number of positions increases, the number of offices had to be kept as small as possible. Furthermore, as personal prestige grew by virtue of holding an office, it became more important to the applicant to be 26. Florence and Venice show how little democracy and drawing lots have in common: in Florence, the candidates' names were drawn out of full bags, whereas in Venice a compli­ cated system of slips of paper hidden in wax balls was used. In both communities, the number of eligible persons elected by this kind of random procedure stayed very small; in Florence, this number was further and quite arbitrarily restricted by the so-called ammoni;:ione. 27. On the Areopagus' additional role of watching over the citizens' behavior, see now R. W. Wallace, The ATeopagos Council to 307 B.C. (Baltimore and London, 1989) 62, 66, 1 1 0f., 208.

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accepted by his fellow senators or nabiles than to be favored by the mass of the people who finally elected him formally in the assembly. The different emphases and priorities - in Rome the importance of the person holding an office, in Athens the significance of the function inherent in an office - make it almost impossible to compare the role of magistrates as elements of the constitution. The Roman constitution of the republic was centered on the magistracy. It formed the only active part of the constitution. The activity of the top magistrates, in particular, was needed not only to put into effect the senate's and the people's decisions, but also, in principle, to keep the gears of the republican political system moving. The magistrates s umoned the assembly, presided over discussion in the senate, accepted and rejected applications of candidates for office, and presented the applicants to the senate and voters. Even the results of elections and the content of decisions took final effect only if announced in front of the citizens by the presiding magistrate. The Athenian constitution, on the other hand, used the magistracy exclu­ sively for executive purposes. Decision making functioned even without the magistrates' coordination: by regularly changing the managing committee and its presiding members (prytaneia, prytaneis), the Council of the Five Hundred created its own organization; both the number and the schedule of the meetings of the assembly were determined; the meetings were presided over by members of the council; the people's decisions took effect either immediately or after the result had been published; publication was laid down as an obligatory part of the decision. Thus the ability of an Athenian magistrate to influence politics derived not from the competence given to the office but from his personal capability to persuade the councilors as well as the citizens in the assembly; and in this respect the magistrate was equal to every other citizen. All in all the political authority of a Roman magistrate seems comparable to the power of a Venetian doge rather than to the function of an Athenian archon. In Athens as well as in Rome, the higher magistrates belonged to the upper class. But belonging to the same class did not mean having the same opportunities for political activity. In Rome, origin from the circle of no biles narrowed the scope for independent political action, whereas in Athens descent from a respected and wealthy family increased the chances of extending one's political influence by using personal relations and social clubs (hetaireiai), generosity (liturgies), education, and connections to eminent persons in foreign cities and states. This discrepancy, again, was due to differing coherence within the upper classes and to the institutional procedures provided for preserving such cohesiveness. Although the Roman upper class changed during the conflict of orders, it managed to maintain and to strengthen its unity. In the senate, the nobiles had at their disposal an authoritative body in which political and military experts met for life. Here, the will of the upper class was stabilized and formed. The censors watched over the private and public conduct of all

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members; through their sanctions they rendered anyone found guilty of devi­ ant behavior politically ineffective and thus exerted strong pressure for COn­ formist conduct on both potential candidates and active officeholders. The Athenian upper class of the fifth and fourth centuries did not have at hand any of these means to preserve its inner coherence. The aristocracy, probably never having experienced the strong cohesion of the Roman patriciate, had changed its composition since Solon's reforms by which the privilege of birth had been replaced by the advantage of wealth, and had totally lost its political coherence during the tyranny. In the eighth and seventh centuries, Athenian aristocrats might have had an appropriate instrument for coordina­ tion, namely the Areopagus. But obviously, as the lamentable state of affairs at the end of the seventh century proves, this opportunity was not used at all. Since Solon, the Areopagus had to compete with the Council of the Four Hundred, and since Cleisthenes' time (508 B.C.), with the Council of the Five Hundred. In these councils a considerably extended spectrum of the aristocracy had to cooperate with nonaristocratic citizens, and therefore had to accept criteria of political thinking, debate, and conduct quite distinct from those the Areopagus used to apply in its closed sessions. Before long, the Areopagus had to cede its military authority to the stTategoi now managing military af­ fairs (about 500 B.C.), and some years later (462 B.C.) it lost its political influ­ ence as well. That decline did not leave its censorial function of controlling public morals unaffected, though that function never completely disappeared. In addition, the emergence of political groups (hetaireiai) and the competitive attitudes their leaders showed intensified this process of disintegration. Where, then, could the aristocracy as a group or class have formed its collective political will ? The "dismembering" of the Athenian aristocracy eventually led to the Pisistratid tyranny, which further accelerated that process and made it irre­ versible by the time Cleisthenes had finished his reforms. For Cleisthenes, profiting from the solid economic base that had developed during the period of peace guaranteed by the tyrants, made operational the revolutionary ideas of equality and unity which originated in that very era. He had been appointed archon under Pisistratus and had recognized, and taken seriously, its leveling and simultaneously homogenizing effect On society. Hence, by his reforms a play of forces was set in motion that was neither defined by stable aristocratic factions nor determined by vertical dependencies. Every single aristocrat now had to follow Cleisthenes' example, if he aimed for political success; that is, he had to gain the people's support by using convincing arguments.28 The degree of coherence established within the upper class had consider­ able influence On the social conduct of members applying for offices, both toward their peers and to the people as voters. In Rome, the candidate could improve his chances primarily by turning to his peers . He would make friends with powerful nobiles who controlled large groups of clients, adjust his per28. J. Martin, "Von Kleisthenes zu Ephialtes," ChiTon 4 (1 974) 5-42 . l

Eder: Who Rules? 1 87 sonal and political attitudes to the image expected by the senate's majority from the very beginning of his career (cursus honorum), and submit to the pressure for conformity exerted by his class. The Athenian applicant wishing to pursue a public career had at his disposal neither a cursus honorum nor friends followed by many clients. Instead, he would demonstrate his generosity to the people, emphasize popular achievements ranging from Olympic to military victories, and improve his chances by showing rhetorical and political ingenuity when arguing coram publico. In other words, Rome was ruled by conformity, Athens by creativity. But conformity also implies continuity in politics, while creativity may lead to political instability. Therefore, in the two societies the means of control intended to prevent abuse of power by magistrates had somewhat different purposes: in Rome, they were designed to stabilize the existing continuity, whereas in Athens they were to prevent instability that was perma­ nently threatening. In Rome, due to the oligarchical structures and the priority given to the person, control was exercised by the peers and preferably before the elections. In Athens, it remained for the people to control the magistrates, who were examined and supervised primarily after they had been elected. In Rome, the candidate for a prominent office would already have been examined several times during his career, and would be admitted to candidacy (nominatio) only after a further examination (professio) by the presiding magistrate. Nor did control end here. The aristocracy's idea of equality did not allow the candidate to court the people, as usually was done in Athens, in order to avoid any undermining of the senate's preselection in the electoral assemblies. The eye-catching white toga (toga candida) of the candidate attracted attention not only by the voters but also by his peers and rivals who would carefully observe him. An extraordinary talent for rhetoric generally aroused suspicion. Financial generosity was forbidden during the election campaign and was liable to prosecution as a crime (crimen ambitus).29 In Athens, no such crime existed, precisely because electoral campaigns focused on winning public popularity. Moreover, the Athenians, when exaning the applicants for offices ( dokimasia), only formally checked citizenship, age limits, census class, and the clean record of the magistrates, who in most cases had already been chosen by lot or by vote. Once the candidate entered office, however, conditions changed. After being elected, the Roman magistrate could be directly controlled neither by the people nor by the senate. He was now supervised by his colleagues of equal rank in office or by the tribunes of the plebs, both of whom could veto any planned action or any motion he proposed (intercessio). Furthermore, su­ perior magistrates were allowed to issue directives to minor ones. Finally,

29. According to L. Fascione, Crimen e quaestio ambitus nell'eta repubblicana (Milan, 1984) 15-59, the long story of electoral corruption culminated in 1 59 B.C., when allegedly a permanent court (quaestio perpetual dealing with bribery conunitted by candidates was estab­ lished.

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religious arguments could be used to stop the actions of an officeholder. But these controls often failed, particularly with the most powerful magistrates, because they conducted many of their tasks outside the city limits of Rome. The magistrate was not accountable to his voters, but usually justified himself in front of his peers in the senate after ending his one-year term. Control by the people was not out of the question, but depended on the willingness of the magistrate's peers to make an accusation before the assembly. Even if in rare cases rewards were offered to witnesses and accusers to proceed against a wrongdoer, a trial usually took place only if a magistrate had exceeded the upper class' limit of consent and toleration, and was no longer in favor with his peers. Even then, however, class solidarity protected the accused from being hit with the full consequences of a verdict, because in Rome a death sentence in practice did not mean much more than an order to leave town. In Athens, in sharp contrast, wrongdoing by an official was, in fact, a matter of life and death, because misdemeanor was considered not personal misconduct but an assault against the polis. It was, again, the concept of giving priority to an office's function that led to the permanent control of officeholders during their whole term. The assembly could intervene at any time, as well as order the magistrate to render an account after his year in office. Every citizen was entitled to file a complaint or accusation. Thus in Athens, direct control by the citizens rendered intercession and veto by colleagues redundant. Because no single magistrate could unilaterally veto the actions of his colleagues, it could unfortunately happen that all magistrates serving in the same office and rank were severely punished for majority decisions.30 The Roman principles of restricting office for one year (annuity) and of excluding continuous reelection (iteratio) were basically ob­ served in Athens as well. Contrary to Rome, however, these rules did not aim to prevent the accumulation of power by specific individuals - this problem was dealt with through ostracism. Nor were these principles intended to ensure an equal distribution of prestige, as is demonstrated by frequent reelec­ tions of military experts, the strategoi. Rather, the motive behind these mea­ sures was to disperse public burdens equitably and to tie as many citizens as possible closer to the polis by supplying them with administrative duties. In Pericles' words, an inactive citizen was a bad citizen (Thuc. 2. 40. 2). In Athens, the emphasis on function resulted in multiple divisions of administrative tasks; therefore, the power granted to magistrates was split into small pieces.31 This is best exemplified by the strict separation of civil and 30. This is illustrated by the trial against the conunanding officers in the battle of Arginusae. On the trial, see A. Mehl, "Fur eine neue Bewertung eines Justizskandals," Zeitsch,. f. Rechtsgesch. Rom. Abt. 99 (1982) 32-80 esp. 42-48. 31 . The fact that priority was given to function and not to person may explain why in Athens in the stable democracy of the fourth century B . C . there developed a sort of oligarchy of functionaries, in which political, military, and financial authorities were distinguished, and why mercenaries instead of citizen-soldiers became important in Athenian warfare. It seems to me premature to identify symptoms of political crisis in this context. On the contrary, using mercenaries - and, by the way, paying attendance fees for frequenting the assembly - shows �

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military authority in Athens. By contrast, in Rome, administrative and mili­ tary duties were mixed and concentrated in the responsibilities held by the consuls, the praetors, and even, to some extent, the quaestors. Had Athenian functional logic been applied, the consuls' supreme power (imperium) includ­ ing both command in war (militiae) and the execution of civil law at home (domi) could and should have been abolished as soon as the first praetor was elected and entrusted with special responsibility for the administration of justice in 366 B.C. In Athens, already by the seventh century, the government was split up into different functions separately assigned to the nine archons; after Cleisthenes' reorganization of the government this division hardened, resulting in a strict separation of administrative functions from military tasks. In Rome, since the number of offices to be filled by popular election was deliberately kept small, widely disparate competences were assigned to a single official. Moreover, in order to meet the exigencies of public administra­ tion, by an improvised procedure that was not without problems but soon became customary additional officials were appointed by the senate without formal approval by the assembly: magistrates whose year of office had expired were frequently allowed to keep their power - though not formally their office - and execute their functions on special assignment (promagistrates). In addition, magistrates were allowed to appoint their private friends and helpers as members of their staff, that is, as legati, entrusting to them military and administrative duties.32 In the Athenian democracy, such privatization of power never became an issue, whereas it played a fatal role in the last generations of the Roman Republic. Athens, however, had to struggle with a different kind of privatization of politics unknown to the Romans: the role of individuals capable of manipulat­ ing citizens' decisions by mastering the art of persuasion and purposely stimu­ lating mass instincts. In the Roman assembly, no discussion was allowed; nor was it necessary, because the motion proposed by a magistrate had already been discussed in the senate. In fact the senate's advice (senatus consultum) was like a prearranged compromise, based on the win of the senate's majority and the anticipated opinion of the clients closely associated with that majority. The proposal presented by the Athenian council, on the other hand, was an unfinished and open compromise. Admittedly, the Athenian council did not consist only of members of the upper class, as was the case with the senate, and therefore offered a more representative profile of society; nevertheless, a majority vote in the council did not necessarily correspond to majority opin­ ion in the assembly. By swinging majority opinion in the assembly, demagogues at any time could alter or even reverse major decisions - and thus sometimes the very course of history. After the Persian Wars, this dangerous tendency to a logical continuation of administrative and political thinking already visible in the fifth cenrury that values performing special functions useful to the polis more highly than the persons who served these functions. 32. On /egati in Rome, se B. Schleussner, Die Legaten tier rOmischen Republik (Munich,

1978).

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political individualism grew with the Athenians' rising self-confidence, and finally was systematically justified by the doctrine of some Sophists, who postulated a general law of nature that the strongest should rule. As democracy does not mean only government by the people, but also and above all control of the rulers by the ruled, that is, of power by the people, the most urgent problem democracy in general, and Athens in particular, had to cope with was how the ruling assembly could control itself. In the second half of the fifth century, an efficient means to institutionalize such self­ control was created by introducing a procedure that made proposing an unconstitutional law liable to prosecution (graphe paranomon).33 Henceforth, whoever brought forward a motion in the assembly had to harmonize its specific contents with all the existing norms and rules. The development of such a procedure represents an impressively high standard of legal and consti­ tutional thinking: every decision of the assembly passing laws and decrees henceforth was linked to the traditional and valid principles of law, and the individual statute was associated with the idea of justice and security of law. Athenian democrats had thus created a "basic law" (Grundgesetz), which was to take its full effect as an instrument for stabilizing politics and the constitution in the fourth century B.C. The Romans, on the other hand, never managed to set up a similar general provision with regard to public laws (leges publicae). Due to the social and constitutional realities of the Roman Republic, the most important problem to be dealt with was not control of people's legislation by the people but control of the nobles by the nobles. When this control failed at the end of the republic, the feverish efforts made to solve the resulting political difficulties and to stabilize the situation by massively increased legislation proved to be rather ineffective. In Athens and Rome, law and laws obviously had quite a different impact on the problem of stabilizing the constitution and securing the continuity of those institutions that were involved in distributing and controlling power. This striking difference makes it necessary to examine the question of "Who rules ? " also from the point of view of the significance of law as an instrument of power. TH E RULE O F LAW

In this section, I will focus only on written law, which in all societies serves to maintain social order. In addition, there always are various forms of unwritten law helping to stabilize order, such as norms of behavior, morals and customs, religious rules and taboos, social bonds, and even forms of personal authority or charisma. Being more recent than such traditions and customs, written law only fills a gap that cannot or can no longer be filled by the traditional means of preserving order and peace. 33. On the graphe paranomon, see P. J. Rhodes, op. cit. In. 25) 378 and 434; R. K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge, 1988) 68, 155f., 2 1 t . 1:

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The more that social order relies o n proved traditions, the smaller this gap will be. (Hypothetically, in a model society, there is no gap at al and, therefore, no written law. ) Societies that have no written law are neither lawless societies nor necessarily free of rule, for government requires order, but order does not require laws. The more that traditional patterns of life begin to totter, the larger the gap to be filled by written law becomes. But even if written law is supposed to ensure order and peace within a constantly changing society, the gap can never be completely filled by such laws. For the definition of the contents of law as well as its application in society requires a prerequisite standard lying outside the sphere of positive law, namely justice or morality. If the mere letters of the law were the only standard used in defining justice, as is recom­ mended by the approach of legal positivism, then the law cannot be adapted to changing conditions. It may even degenerate into an inflexible instrument of power, making "legal injustice" possible. The law then lacks morality: summum ius summa iniuria! If the contradiction between positive law and justice becomes too obvious, the power structure and the constitution will collapse. To understand the importance of written law for maintaining order in society, two criteria for analysis are at hand: first, the inner coherence of a society as shown by the intensity of communication among its members and the degree of loyalty among groups and classes. The greater the coherence, the fewer laws are needed, and vice versa. The second criterion is the question whether citizens have a realistic chance of actively determining the content of laws. The larger the circle of those involved is drawn, the more reliably law works as an instrument of maintaining order in society. Using these criteria to compare Athens with Rome, we recognize how differently laws contributed to ensuring social and political order: both societ­ ies relied intensively on legislation when in serious political crisis, though with opposite results. Having sufered bitter experiences with oligarchical and quasi­ tyranical regimes, at the end of the fifth century, Athens created a new law code and intensified the permanent revision of laws by strictly applying the graphe paranomon and by establishing a new legislative procedure (nomothesia).34 Consequently, society quickly stabilized and was able to pre­ serve its political system until it was finally destroyed from outside, that is, by the Macedonian monarchs. Since the beginning of the second century B.C., the Romans also tried to keep control over a rapidly changing society by substi­ tuting laws for morals. After the turmoils caused by the Gracchi they reacted to the increasing crisis by passing a flood of laws, although without succeeding in stopping the demise of the republican constitution.3S

34. On the procedure and aim of the rwmothesia, se R. K. Sinclair, op. cit., 83f., 2 1 1 . 35. Th e growing number o f laws an d the legalism apparent i n th e late Roman Republic are carefully analyzed by J. Bleicken, Lex publica (Berlin and New York, 1975) 396-508.

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The causes for this discrepancy must be sought in the distinct social structures of the two societies. Roman society was highly coherent. The consensus of the nobiles was communicated to the people via the strong so­ cial bonds typical of clientship. There was little opportunity or need for incorporating into law the guiding principles of maintaining public order, because the upper class organized political activity through oral communication between its members, who were closely tied to one another by a traditional network of relationships and obligations. Sanctions, imposed by censors or society as a whole, prevented disruption of this system. In Rome, written law was therefore hardly required to establish internal peace. Social harmony was based not on laws, but on a set of precedents and customs (mos maiorum) and on a general agreement that order should be regulated and upheld by personal authority, that is, by the pater familias and the patronus. Thus written public law never became an important force for preserving order in Roman society; nor did society as a whole ever come to accept written law as authoritative, that is, demanding obedience. As a consequence, a state of instability and disorientation developed in the population as soon as the consensus within the upper class began to dissolve, and the egoistic, irresponsible conduct of its members weakened the loyalty of the clients. The mass of the people, who were never allowed actively to engage in the formulation of public opinion and, consequently, were accustomed to orienting themselves to high-ranking persons, now looked for other personal bonds to create for themselves some new orientation and identity. Because they had never learned to identify themselves with the state and its laws, they turned either to successful military leaders, forming the so-called client armies (Heeresklientel), or to ambitious and promising tribunes of the plebs.J6 36. Sulla the dictator was probably the first to realize that the crisis of a society whose stability relied on a social balance of power could be resolved only by the restoration of social power. Thus he tried to enable the upper class to reachieve consensus by incorporating the equites, the class second in wealth after the senators, into the senate, and by pushing the mass of the people out of politics. In order to carry this out he tried to pro�de the senators with a monopoly in controlling their peers by reorganizing the standing courts, henceforth exclusively filled with senatorial jurors, and he made it impossible for the tribunes of the plebs to develop their own policy by subjecting the tribunes' activities more direcdy to the senate's agreement. This attempt failed, however, primarily because in 70 B.C. the tribunes' power was fully re­ stored. Thereafter, a wedge could again be driven between the upper class and their clients in the lower classes. Caesar also used the social power of amicjtia and clientship. The extraordinary power concentrated in his person, however, destroyed the essence of the Roman order based on the particularized structure of the res publica, that is, on the wide distribution of political influence among all leading families and their proud heads. It was Augustus who first managed permanendy to put an end to the conflict between personal authority and republican order and values: by increasing the senate's reputation, he reminded everyone of the republican tradition. At the same time, without severely altering existing patron-client relations, he created a higher level of patronage, thus encouraging the people to orient themselves toward his prominent person, which represented in a way he incarnation of the state (comparable with Pisistratus' position in Athens). Augustus success­ fully stopped the crisis because he managed - sengly in full accordance with republican tradition - to found his authority on a broad social basis and at the same time to pretend that

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The Romans' failed attempt to give the rule o f law priority over the power of persons in times of crisis contrasts sharply with Athens' successful attempt to solve the constitutional crisis by an intensified application of laws. Was it really the law instead of the people, though, that ruled in Athens?37 Here again, the reasons for success are to be found in the structure of soci­ ety.3S The inner coherence of Athenian society was minimal in comparison with the Roman. As we know, Aristotle criticized, and Pericles praised, the fact that in a democracy everyone can live in his own way and do what he wants.39 Without any doubt, the greatest advantage of democracy was to have eliminated the restraints that forced obedience and dependency on the individual. By inevitably implying the destruction of the social bonds and values that had previously held society together, this elimination of restraints was, in fact, not only a result of, but a necessary precondition for, the development of democracy - while at the same time posing a serious threat to its survival. For democracy can develop only if, on the one hand, power and violence - in whatever form - are demystified in order to grant each individual the opportunity to make independent decisions, regardless of descent, social position, wealth, or family relations. On the other hand, society must be split up or even atomized into individuals in order to avoid any constella­ tion of persons that could once again create powerful blocs within society. Consequently, all forms of dependency must be destroyed or at least heavily restricted, be they reverence for the powerful, the mutual bonds be­ tween patron and client, or the power of parents over their children. Societies that never completed this process of atomization, such as the Roman, the

his power was based exclusively on the senate's will and decisions. A similar pattern of combining traditional values with the authority of a powerful prince may explain the success of the "principate of the Medici" in Florence. 37. This question is clearly answered positively with regard to the fourth century B.C. by M. Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty to the Sovereignty ef the Law (Berkeley 1986), and R. Sealey, The Athenian Republic. Democracy or the Rule ofLaw? (University Park, Pensylvania, 1987) . 38. The different priorities given to function and person i n politics a re mirrored, o n a more sophisticated level, in Plato's and Aristode's political philosophy and in Cicero's writings on the state: the Greeks, starting with a definition of justice, developed standards for judgment independent of the actual situation of the polis which allowed - comparable to a "polycletic canon of political art" - the evaluation of the political and moral quality of existing as well as future states. By stark contrast, the Roman author looking for standards by which to classify states and societies started by idealizing the structure of the existing Roman state, thus trans forming the achievements of former generations (maiores) and the bulk of Roman experiences (exempla) into a "natural law" for which general validity was claimed. In other words, the Greeks started by defining justice in order to come closer to an understanding of society, whereas the Romans set out by analyzing the actual state of society in order to arrive at a definition of justice. In Athens, therefore, it was possible to use law and laws in an acute political crisis as a promising remedy because the idea of justice was not linked with daily politics; in Rome, however, a political crisis simultaneously led to a weakening of the ability of law to maintain order and stability because the very yardstick used to define a just order was weakened by the political crisis itself. 39. Thuc. 2.37.2·3; Arist. Pol. 1317b 11-1 3.

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Near Eastern, the Jewish, the Florentine, and the Venetian, never reached the point where they could have developed democracy. But there is another side to the coin. Such necessary splitting up of social nuclei in order to prevent any private power constellation implies the danger of continuously destroying social values: the weak lose protection by the strong; the powerful neglect traditional economic and legal obligations toward the powerless; security fades away with growing distrust in religious rites and in rules followed and monopolized for ages by mighty clans; families may break apart. A society that is not only politically atomized but that has also lost the social and moral cohesion that might otherwise glue it together, may contain the seeds of its own destruction. The greatest danger to democracy is the social chaos that democracy itself potentially creates: democracy has its price, too.40 Solon's reforms pushed Athenian society into a process of dissolving social bonds, which continued during the tyrany. The tyrants, however, were able to direct the centrifugal forces stirred up or at least accelerated by Solon toward a new center of identification, namely the tyrant's person. As soon as tyranny was abolished, it Once again became necessary to offer the citizens a focus for personal identification that was not linked to a specific person. A way had to be found to maintain a state of internal peace in a society that had largely eliminated most forms of social bonds and mutual obligations. The authority that provided a new focus for identification was the state, and the means of keeping social order was the law, given to the people by the people. Solon and the tyrants had prepared the groundwork for both. By splitting up society into individuals, they encouraged the concept of the state as an abstract unity of citizens. However, a real chance to "invent" democracy emerged only when this abstract concept of unity was combined with the idea of equality for all citizens. This equality was founded on the emphasis laid on the single individual, as well as On the realization since Draco and Solon that social order was not a gift received from the gods, but something that could actively be shaped by man through statutes and laws.. In the democratic

40. The differences in family coherence become apparent in a few examples: family quarrels essentially were the stuff of Greek myth. Personal strife and murder of relatives dominated action in the Greek family of gods, starting with Uranus and ending with Zeus, as well as in fifth-century tragedy when dealing with the mythical tradition of the kings' families in Thebes or Mycenae. Significandy, the Romans did not adopt these myths from the Greeks, although they borrowed from them many gods and religious concepts. In Rome, it would seem unimaginable to pass laws in order to remind parents and children to take care of each other (as did Solon in Athens); trials among brothers (as described by Hesiod) were unknown in Rome, nor a son's charges against his father (as reported by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphron) . Not even in drama would a Roman raise his hand against his father, a conduct perfectly familiar to the Greeks through the plays of the poet Aristophanes. The legend of Romulus' fratricide was based on Greek models of the fourth century B.C.; the records of disputes in the king's family dealt only with foreign rulers immigrated from Etruria. In order to prevent misunderstandings I want to state clearly that I am not decrying democracy here; but there is no denying the fact that there are differences between societies and therefore specific dangers threatening a democracy due to the very conditions which allowed it to exist.

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1 95

constitution arising from these concepts, constitutional form is inseparably intertwined with law as a means of chaneling and controlling the decisions made by a multitude of sovereigns: law is the essence of democracy, not its altemative.41 In Athens, therefore, democracy could gain stability only when each individual law stood in full accordance with the traditional order and when the procedure of legislation was not disturbed by accidental influences. In Athens, this state was achieved fully in the fourth century, due to graphe paranomon and nomothesia. The alleged crisis of democracy existed only in the imagination of oligarchs who rightly feared that they would have to give up any hope for changing the constitution after political stability had been established by growing respect for the sanctity of law. But even then there was no rule of law in the sense of an exogenously imposed structure ruling over the people. Rather, the people as a whole met their responsibility to use the available instruments of control over the legal structure, and they did so through their "basic law" as well as through the annual judicial review.42 WHO REALLY RU LES ? As our investigation has revealed there is no clear response to the clear

question, "Who Really Rules? " A somewhat satisfactory answer can be given only to the question of who in practice had the greatest opportunity to exercise power in Athens or Rome. In Rome, we may point to the senate and the superior magistrates, that is, the consuls, who could exercise power by formulating the guiding principles in politics and by establishing consensus among the leading class. In case of a crisis, however, the tribunes of the plebs seriously disrupted this governing "trust" and partly controlled the political scene. The people in their assemblies, however, ordinarily served only as voters instrumentalized to distribute power among the upper class. They were never autonomous actors defining the political agenda. Written law alone proved inadequate to stabilize power and political structures. In Athens, the situation was even more complicated. The Council of the Five Hundred certainly had the best chance of determining the political agenda and direction because of its continuous involvement in shaping political deci­ sions, and because it had the opportunity to present a bill first to the assem­ bly. But contrary to the senate, the members of the Athenian council were in office for only one year and were obliged to respect the assembly's directives; to be more precise, the council depended on the individual citizens' initiative. In fact, the question of who predominated must be examined separately in

41. See, for example, R. Sealey, op.cit. (n. 37). In this way, however, democracy ap­ proaches the lawless rule of the riffraff. The law seems to be completely dissociated from its social foundations and, last but not least, from morality. Seeing law as an alternative to democracy does not se to be productive in the analysis of either democracy or law. 42 . Se above at note 34, and d. J. Bleicken, Die athenische Demokratie (Paderbom et al., 1985) 11 8-120 and 349-351 (against M. H. Hansen, "Nomos und Psephisma in Fourth­ Century Athens," Greek Rom. and Byz. St. 19 [1978] 31 5-330).

196

Citizens and the Political Classes

each particular case. The magistrates, though, stayed in the background unless they were as successful in the assemblies as Pericles or eleon. The role of written law must be considered crucial. Although it did not itself "rule," it played a decisive role in maintaining stability and order, especially in times of crlSlS. This conclusion might appear disappointing. Not only does the question "Who rules ? " remain unanswered, it also becomes evident that there are hardly any parallels between Athens and Rome. If, however, the ancient cities had so little in common, what benefit should we expect from comparing them with medieval cities? Here, the answer is easier: the act of comparison reveals the peculiarities of each individual case. "The unity of place makes no center," as R. Bloch said, "only the unity of the problem makes the center."43 In the present case, the unity of the problem consisted of the question about power and participation. Perhaps Rome's as well as Athens' peculiar political condi­ tions have become more comprehensible by the attempt to answer this question in a comparative framework. Why should a comparison between, let us say, Rome and Florence not help to sharpen our eyes for the particular structures of both these cities, too?

43. Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale 6 (1934) 81.

The Rulers of Florence, 1 282-1530

DAV I D HERLI H Y

:e

KE THE ROMAN REPUBLIC i n antiquity, the republic of Florence in the late Middle Ages called to its offices significant numbers of its citizens.

In this chapter, I attempt to survey Florence's governing class from the

commune of the popo/o in the thirteenth century to the establishment of the grand duchy of Tuscany in 1530. As I hope to illustrate, the numbers of citizens considered for office increased continuously, even spectacularly, from the early fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries. This observation is by no means new. Many historians have noted that the size of the officeholding class grew in Florence from the latter half of the fourteenth century.l This growth has proved puzzling, particularly because the city's population was simultaneously in drastic decline. How could the number of citizens consid­ ered for high office constantly increase in a shrinking or stagnant city, under regimes commonly regarded as oligarchic? By measure of the sources illuminating its citizenry, Florence for this period may well be the best-served city in Europe. It claims several large surveys of its inhabitants, dating from 1352 and including the famous Catasto of 1427-1430.2 The Florentine state archives further possess numerous regis.

1. Se, for example, Gene A. Brucker, 1962, who, after reviewing the legislation of the 1340s that aimed to limit the numbers entering office, notes (p. 123) that "In 1 350 the trend actually shifted in the opposite direction, toward a more popular regime." Brucker, 1977, 73, ses a reinforcement of aristocratic rule after 1393, but even this is questioned by Guidobaldo Guidi, 1 981 , I, 240. Kent; 1975, notes a continuing expansion through the end of her study, up until 1449. Roslyn Cooper, 1984-85 , accepts these conclusions but argues that only the expulsion of Piero de' Medici in 1 494 led to a partial closure of the officeholding class; however, even by her figures the si2e of the class remained large. For further discussion of the changing complexion of Florentine governments (a subject of semingly limitless fascination for historians), see, besides Brucker, 1962 and 1 973, and Guidi, 1971; Anthony Molho, 1968a and 1 968b; Ronald Witt, 1975; and, more recently, John Najemy, 1982, though the last work is more concerned with the general character of Florentine government than its personnel. Felix Gilbert, 1965, depicts the changes at the end of the republican regime and offers a masterful analysis of their effects upon Machiavelli and Guicciardini. Sergio Bertelli, 1978, provides a useful overview. 2. The so-called Libro del Sega, ASF Estimo reg. 306, names the head and assigns a tax estimate for 9,899 households of the city. Our own study of the Catasto, first published in French in 1 978 and in English in 1985, has recendy appeared in Italian translation, David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, 1988.

198

Citizens and th e Political Classes

ters of guild matriculations and of elections to guild offices and huge deposits of fiscal records and collections of notarial chartularies. Especially valuable for the prosopographical study of the city'S rulers is the deposit known as the Tratte (drawings). From November 1328, Florence chose nearly all of its governing officials - its policy makers, its "inside" administrators serving within the city, and its "outside" administrators resident in the subject territo ries - by lottery or sortition.J Our interest is confined here to the policy mak­ ers and specifically to those who filled the three highest offices of the Florentine government, called traditionally the Tre maggiori.4 The most prestigious and powerful office was that of prior; the priors numbered three, six, twelve, or most commonly eight, and they bore the title domini or signori (the priorate itself was the signoria). The priors were assisted by a notary and presided over by the standard-bearer of justice, the titular head of the Florentine state. The priors, the standard-bearer, and their notary all served for two months. Two colleges, made up of "twelve good men" (dodici buonuomini) and of sixteen " standard-bearers of the companies" (sedici gonfalonieri delle compagnie) respectively, advised the priorate and approved its decisions. The dodici held office for four months and the sedici for three. When set and stable from 1343 the system called each year a minimum of 150 citizens ( 1 56 if the notary is included) to high office. I can summarize only briefly the complex and evolving methods by which the Florentines by lottery chose their governors. Special commissions first carried out a scrutiny (squittino) of the adult male citizens. The commis­ sions were composed of incumbent officials, representatives of the guilds, and specially appointed adjuncts (arroti), and they sometimes numbered more than two hundred persons. The commissions voted on the qualifications of each citizen; to be successful, the scrutinized citizen usually needed a two-thirds majority of the votes cast. He could not be a magnate and had to be enrolled in a guild, even when he was scioperato, that is, he did not practice the par­ ticular art. From some year, perhaps 1406, the eligible citizen also had to own shares in the Florentine public debt, that is, he had to be a creditor of the government. The government frequently collected sums of money from its citizens, but it regarded payments above a certain amount as loans (even if forced), . entitling the citizen to shares in one of the several funded debts. Poorer citizens who paid less than the threshold amount gave their money ad perdendum, "to be lost." The government sometimes allowed even those wealthier citizens who could not meet their full assessment to contribute a reduced sum ad perdendum.s 3. Guidi, 1972, surveys the government's provisions (provuisicmi) regarding elections. The chief chronicle source for the reform is Giovanni Villani, 1823-25, X, 1 12. 4. 'The many complex regulations governing these offices are reviewed in Guidi, 1981, II, 129-344. 5. The contemporary chronicler Iacopo Salviati mentions "una legge, che era fana, che chi non havea pagato Ie sue prestanze, non potesse esre imborsalO, per la qual legge moltissimi huomini buoni e guelfi venivano ad essere esclusi." The law was then revised the same year to give the delinquents further time to pay, "per forma che quasi ogniuno pago." (The passages 1!

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence

199

Scrutinies of this sort were first held at short intervals, but after 1382 rather regularly every five years. The selected names were written on slips of paper (poliue, cedole) and entered into purses, one for each office and for each electoral district (the urban quarters for the priors and the dodici; the sixteen gonfaloni or wards for the sedici). Members of the seven greater and fourteen lesser guilds also had their names entered into separate purses. In May 13 87, four special officials known as accoppiatori, in collaboration with the standard-bearer of justice, chose from those citizens who had passed the scrutiny for the priorate the names of the ones they regarded as especially qualified for office. These names they entered into " little purses" (borsellint). Two (later three) of the priors were chosen from the "little purses," the remaining six (or five) from the "general purse. '" At the intervals set by the city statutes, in the presence of the sitting government, the podesta (in this period always a foreigner called in to serve as an impartial judge) read names drawn from the appropriate purses, beginng with the oldest and continuing until the offices were filled. The signoria and the colleges then determined whether or not the candidate should be given the office. The government might decide that the candidate was subject to a divieto, or disqualification, from the office. The exclusions might be either temporary or permanent; in the first case, the slip was returned to the purse (rimesso); in the second, it was destroyed (stracciato ). Reasons for temporary exclusion included insufcient age (those selected had to have completed thirty years ) or recent service in the same office (within two years for the priorate, six months for the two colleges, according to the regulations of 1328 ). Also, close relationship with a recent incumbent was reason for tempo­ rary exclusion; a father, brother, or son could not have served within one year as prior or within six months as a member of the two colleges. The slip could be destroyed for several reasons. The candidate might be dead, an enemy of the Guelf regime (a Ghibelline), a cleric, a magnate, exiled, imprisoned, bankrupt, or in tax arrears (in speculo, "in the mirror," in the language of the registers). During the plague year of 1 374, the signoria ruled that even those citizens who had fled the city should have their slips destroyed if their names were drawn from the purses in their absence.7 All the citizens whose names were publicly considered before the signoria and the colleges were regarded as vedut� " seen," and those awarded the office were seduti, "seated. " The public pronouncement of the name showed that the citizen had are cited in Guidi, I, 254.) I take this to mean that the citizens who could pay only the small sums ad perdendum were not represented in the purses. Guidi, 198 1 , 1, 1 06, notes that in 1404 those citizens whose fathers or grandfathers had not paid the prestatlZe ("notare solo Ie prestanze," he adds) should not be admitted to office. The law of 1406 surely represented a change in policy (why otherwise would so many citizens have be taken by surprise?). Payment of grallezze (taxes in general) alone was not enough to qualify for office; candidates must also have given money to the Monte (pTestatlZe). The law of 1406 sems to be the first excluding the noncreditors even from the purses. 6. Se Guidi, 1981, 1, 220-23, for this reform. 7. Marco di Coppo Stefani, 290.

200

Citizens and the Political Classes

been judged worthy in the original scrutinies, was represented in the purses, and (unless his slip was destroyed) was likely to be called to office at some future date. To be seen even if not seated was an honor. As Giovanni Rucellai about 145 7 explained to his two sons, " [It pleases] me that you are in the purses and honored as the other citizens, if only for the reason that it shows that you are not under suspicion by the government but are accepted and in the good grace of the citizens."8 For my purposes, these veduti define the circle of active Florentine citizens. The complicated manipulations of the electoral system form an integral part of the Florentine political history from the system's origin in 1328 to the end of the republic in 1530. The manipulations affected at various times the preliminary scrutinies of the citizenry, the composition of the purses, and the drawings themselves. Several scholars have followed this history in close detail. For the fifteenth century, in a classic study, Nicolai Rubinstein has meticulously reconstructed how the Medici through fine-tuned management over the years between 1434 and 1494 sought to assure themselves of friendly governments.' But as his book also shows, at least until the year of the Pazzi conspiracy against Medici hegemony in 1478, the Medici did not do real violence to the electoral system. Management more than muscle marked the Medici manner. The years between 1 328, when election by sortition was first adopted, and 1478, the date of the Pazzi conspiracy, may well be regarded as the golden age of Florentine republicanism. For some years now, I have been editing selected Tratte registers and other related deposits into machine-readable form. To my knowledge, the original giornali, or registers, recording the scrutinies for the three greater offices begin in June 1376.10 I have partly edited these registers for computer processing (to lighten the labor, I did not enter names excluded without a stated reason). The machine-readable edition has been carried forward until 1530, but gaps remain in the 1460s and 1480s. The parallel series of elections to the guild consulates until 1530 has been finished in its entirety.u In August 1429, the government also required that candidates for office ( or their fa­ thers) present for official registration proof of age, usually in the form of entries in the father's book of ricordi, or memoirs. These "confirmations of age" (approbationes etatum) have also been rendered machine-readable, giving us the birth dates of Florentine citizens of the officeholding class from 1429 to 1530. Finally, I have the registrations of emancipations, based on tran­ scriptions of the original registers supplied by Thomas Kuehn. The total number of assorted observations on Florentine citizens so far collected amounts to well over 150,000 names. As should be apparent, the 8. Giovani Rucellai, 1960, 39. "Non dico che non mi piaccia che voi siate nelle borse e onorati come gli altri cittadini, se non fosse per altro che per mostrare non esser a sospetto al regmento, ma esser accetti e in gratia de' cittadini." 9. Nicolai Rubinstein, 1 966. 10. ASF, Tratte 193, with entries dated from 1 376 to 1 3 8 1 . 1 1 . These registers form part o f the MeTcant:ia deposit i n the ASF.

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence

201

difficulty in studying the Florentine ruling elite is not the collection of infor­ mation, but its efficient analysis. Even with the help of computers - and this project would be inconceivable without them - the task of linking all these many observations into a coherent and readily usable data bank is formidable. Here, I only attempt to skim the surface of this sea of data. I will make particular use of still another archival series, which is internally coherent and thus more easily analyzed than observations drawn from many different sources. Although they are late compilations, apparently redacted in the seven­ teenth century, registers eight through eleven in the Tratte series yield infor­ mation very useful for our purposes. That information is of two kindsY The registers first give lists of priors and members of the colleges for the period 1349 to 1374 for each of the city's four quarters. The names are entered in a clear and elegant script and were probably meant to serve as a formal record of officeholders. These registers of seduti (those awarded office) are followed in the same volumes by much longer lists of veduti, the citizens whose names were drawn from the purses and considered for office. The redactors of the registers collected their names from the original giorna/i, or day books, of the Office of the Scrutiny (Tratte). They were evidently seeking to determine who were members of the officeholding class at various times. To do this, the compilers divided the time between 1349 and 1478 into twenty-four periods, from one to more than ten years in duration, as shown in Figure 1. Under each of these periods, they entered the names of those " seen" for high office in a rough alphabetical order. For each of the twenty-four periods, the compilers recorded only the first appearance of an individual citizen and not the total number of times he might have been viewed for offices. The dates appended to the names accordingly cluster strongly under the early years in each of the twenty-four periods. Some years are altogether missing from the series. For example, the years from 1375 to 138 1 are skipped for three of the four quarters; only the lists from San Giovanni include those years. These were troubled times for Flo­ rence, during which the city fought a disastrous war against the papacy ( 1375-1378) and then endured an uprising of wool workers (called the Ciompi) and a short-lived popular regime ( 1378- 1382). It is hard to know whether the redactors of the lists of the three missing quarters did not have the original registers before them or simply had no interest in these years of political turmoil. The compilers of the lists of veduti often added comments to the names. They occasionally allude to missing folios in the giorna/i. In seeking to avoid repetitions of the same name, they sometimes added, when two names in the same period looked alike, "non e il medesimo" (it is not the same). They place an F perhaps for "fatto" (made), in front of some names, presumably of those awarded an office. The redactors also mark a cross in front of other 12. ASF, Tratte, reg. 8 (quarter of Santa Croce), 9 (Santo Spirito), 1 0 (Santa Maria Novella) and 11 (San Giovanni).

202

Citizens and the Political Classes

Figure 1 Florentine Citizens Viewed for Office

Quarters of Santa Croce and Santo Spirito, 1349-1 4 78 Period of citizens

Number name

With family families

148 1 349 1351 129 1352 1354 155 1355 1356 151 1 357 1358 130 1358 1359 188 1362 1 363 176 1363 1 364 125 1 365 1366 204 1366 1367 189 1367 1368 1369 138 1370 140 1370 1371 177 1373 1374 1 3 81 646 1 392 65 1 1392 1401 544 1402 1409 1410 803 1417 1417 1097 1428 1428 1557 1435 1313 1435 1444 1444 1530 1454 1454 Mar . 1 655 Mar. 1464 Apr. 915 1464 Aug. 1470" 1474 Feb. 975 1478 Aug. "Santa Croce only Source: ASF Tratte reg. 8 and 9.

Aug. Sep. Mar. Dec. Feb. Dec. Feb. Apr. Jun. Jun. Feb. Jun. Jun. Dec. Apr. Feb. Feb. Feb. Apr. Dec. Feb. Apr. Jun. Mar. r. ar. Apr. Sep. Dec. Sep. Feb. Dec. Feb. Dec. Dec. Mar. Mar. Mar. Apr. Mar.

�

Number of New families inthx (1) & members

Cluster index (2)

Cluster

36.49

32.42

34.25

37.98

95

74

97

73

74 95 25

109

85

14

36.47

35.48

94

74

11

37.84

31 .79

88

64

8

32.81

34.62

131

85

15

30.59

35.11

122

88

13

31 .82

35.23

86

63

12

33.33

35.20

145

95

10

28.42

35 .78

148

100

9

28 .00

39.68

102

69

3

27.54

37.68

101

72

9

30.56

36 .43

124

82

7

28 .05

35 .59

361

168

79

22 .02

28.17

422

166

31

1 8 .67

32.57

381

147

26

19.73

35 .29

596

162

24

20.99

37.36

807

198

33

18.69

37.19

1248

214

43

17.78

40.27

1 1 32

237

62

14.78

43 .18

1312

220

33

1 5.00

43.53

1520

244

36

14.34

46.52

729

146

29

15.09

45 .77

904

234

32

17.52

46.6

�

Herlihy:

Rulers of Florence

203

names, presumably indicating that they were then deceasedY Often, they place after the name the comment, "morto" (deceased), together with a date when the death was noted in the original registers. They also single out citizens who were subsequently viewed for the government's highest office, the standard­ bearer of justice. The redactors of these registers make a concerted effort to identify the persons named more precisely than in the original giornali. They quite frequently add a family name, the name of an occupation, or of an ancestor, and even cite the basis for the emendation. The emendations are valuable, as the redactors of the list were clearly devoting close study to the citizens' names and recognized those that were incomplete or in error. The registers, in sum, show rather well the number of individual citizens who formed the officeholding class of late-medieval Florence. True, the count of citizens viewed for office is defective for the last years in every period, because the compilers were not interested in repeated names. On the other hand, the counts for early years in each period yield a fairly complete picture of the numbers actually considered in filling the offices. In spite of faults, it is reasonable to assume that the copyists accomplished what they sought: the drawing up of reasonably comprehensive lists of citizens viewed for high office for each of the twenty-four periods between 1349 and 1478. These compilations, though not contemporary, have a special value for two reasons. They include some years (1349-1374) for which no original registers for the three great offices have apparently survived. And their emen­ dations of the names facilitate what is always the most difficult task in research of this kind: the linking of records, the tracking of the same persons over vast documentary runs. The work of converting these lists of veduti into machine-readable form has been completed for two quarters of the city, those of Santa Croce and Santo Spirito, and the work moves forward on the remaining two. Even the two quarters provide abundant data concerning our principal interest: how the Florentine political class changed from the middle fourteenth to the late fifteenth century. The analysis of Florentine electoral lists is both aided and obstructed by the period's naming conventions. The greatest help is the Florentine practice of supplying for citizens both a patronymic and a family name; sometimes, particularly in the late-fifteenth century, the names of grandfather, great­ grandfather, and even more distant ancestors are given. Ambiguities, however, remain. Names are still unstable, particularly in the early decades; the same person may be Gianni or Giovanni, Giacomo or Iacopo, Geri or Ruggieri, Goro or Gregorio. The same occupations, even when given in Latin, have different forms: beccarius (butcher) or tabernarius; camps or (money changer) or tavoierius. As many of the lists are in Latin, it is impossible to determine whether a Nicolaius is a Niccolo, Nicola, or Niccolaio in the vernacular (I •

13 . But the deaths of

later.

some

citizens marked

with a cross

seem

to have occurred only

204

Citizens and the Political Classes

treat them al as Niccolo ). Standardization of name spellings is nearly indis­ pensable if the computer is to link observations efficiently. Very often, the grandchild bears the same name as his paternal grandfather, even the same patronymic. It is easy to mistake grandson for grandfather and to attribute to one citizen the life span of two. On the whole, however, Tuscan personal names, which usually carry short genealogies, are more easily linked than medieval names anywhere else in Europe. From the origin of the priorate in 1282, until at least the 1 340s, high offices in Florence were dominated by a narrow even if shifting oligarchy. 14 It is hard, of course, to arrive at firm conclusions regarding the first ten years of the priorate, between its beginnings in 1282 and 1292, the date of the Ordi­ nances of Justice, which redefined eligibility for office. In that decade, 267 citizens filled the 445 terms of office, an average of 1 .6 terms for each incumbent-not an easy figure to interpret, as ten years is much shorter than the duration of an average political career. 1S Bartolo di messer Iacopo di Ricco Bardi, from the great banking house, served five times as prior ( 1283-1291 ). 1 6 His younger brother Cino was elected three times between 1285 and 1290; and two other brothers, Simone and Giovanni, also served one term each. The Bardi family was clearly a presence. The Ordinances of Justice in 1292 excluded some seventy magnate families from the priorate, the Bardi among them, and the oligarchy seems to have been somewhat loosened.17 The num­ bers of citizens serving for the first time as priors can be used as an index of the relative openness of the office. Figure 2 gives the result of such a count by decades, from 1290 to 1409. Figure 2

Florentine Citizens Elected to the Priorate for the First Time, by Decade, 1290-1409

(count includes notaries, and after 1292, the standard-bearers of justice) 1290-1299 1300- 1309 13 10-13 19 1320-1329 1330-1339 1340-1349

248 28 1 268 222 154 345

1350-1359 1360-1369 1370-1379 1380-1389 1390-1400 1401-1409

402 300

511 519 475 196

Source: Rastrelli, 1783. 14. The continuing oligarchic character of communal governments in the late thirteenth century even under regimes of the so-called popolo was emphasized by Onokar, 1926, as op­ posed to Salvemini, 1 899. 15. This count includes the notaries serving the priorate. Molho, 1 968b, counts 223 persons serving as priors from 1282 to 1292 and arrives at the figure of 1.8 terms per incumbent. 16. The names of the priors are taken from the published priorista in Rastrelli, 1 783. 17. For the later history of a magnate lineage, see the recent study of the Buondelmonti by Roberto Bizzocchi, 1982.

Herlihy:

Rulers of Florence

205

The priorate did become relatively more open to new men over the roughly two decades following the Ordinances of Justice, but for several decades after 1 310, its composition swung strongly in the direction of re­ stricted access. The grip that relatively few citizens exerted on the priorate and other offices was in fact a principal motivation for the reform of 1328 and the recourse to selection by lottery. But the new method seems not to have opened the priorate to many new men; rather the contrary. In the 1 330s Florence lived under the narrowest government it had ever experienced since

1292.18 For the entire period between 1282 and 1328, 1 ,217 citizens filled the 2,295 available seats in the priorate (including notaries) - an average of slightly less than two terms per citizen. Many citizens 682, or 55 percent of -

all who served - were priors (or notaries) for only a single term. But this group was outweighed by many who returned frequently to office. The record for service belongs to Boninsegna di Agnolino Machiavelli, twelve times prior between 1283 and 1 326; his extraordinary political career ran over 44 years. Anselmo di Palla di Bernardo Anselmi served eleven times as prior between 1304 and 1338. The notary Ser Matteo Biliotti was three times notary of the priorate and eight times prior, between 1297 and 1 316. It seems not unrea­ sonable to assume that these long-serving and experienced officials dominated the government. Those who served three terms or more account for 53 percent of all the incumbencies. From December 1328, lists of the membership of the colleges also survive and allow us to judge the number of citizens who actually served in the high councils of government. Between that year and August 1342, the number of offices filled was 2,153, and the persons who filled them were 675.19 The av­ erage number of terms the active citizen filled within a period of eleven years was slightly more than three. Florence in the 1330s had a population that I would estimate at 120,000. If we assume that men over thirty constituted 20 percent of the population, then the number of adult male citizens seemingly eligible for election was 24,000.20 But only 675 actually served. Two citizens, Spinello di Primerano da Mosciano and Vanni Donnini, each served thirteen terms in various offices - in apparent defiance of the rules governing the dill;eto.21 Unmistakably, the 1330s were the decade of tight oligarchic govern­ ment in Florence.

18. This anal ysis is in substantial agreement with the study of the priorate by Molho, 1968.

19. The members of the dodici and sedic; are given in I1defonso di San Luigi, 1770 1789, 12 and 13, as notes to his edition of the chronicler Marco di Coppo Stefani. 20. See our discussion on the population of Florence in Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, 1988, pp. 236-43. In 1427 men aged 30 or over membered 8,112 (including 43 5 men for w ho m no ages are given but who were presumably adult). The population of the city was 38,027. Men aged 30 or over thus constituted 2 1 .3 percent of the population. 2 1. Vanni Donnini was chosen a member of the dodie; on 24 March 1337 and again on vols.

21 September.

206

Citizens and the Political Classes

From the 1340s on the political pendulum swings in the direction of open governments. The early signs are, to be sure, not auspicious. The chroni­ cler Giovanni Villani describes a scrutiny held in 1 343, immediately after the expulsion of the despotic duke of Athens. A commission of 206 men scrutinized 3,346 citizens, but, says Villani, "not a tenth remained."ll He implies, in other words, that the names of fewer than 340 citizens reached the purses. From 1349 on we can take advantage of the surviving lists of veduti. Fig­ ure 5 shows, for two of the city's four quarters (Santa Croce and Santo Spirito respectively), representing about 45 percent of its population, the raw count of citizens viewed for the tre maggiori (but not for the office of notary). Figure 3 shows the number of citizens viewed in the first complete years of various periods. Figure 3

Citizens Viewed for the Three Higher Offices Quarters of S. Croce and S. Spirito

(Initial Complete Years of Various Periods) 1373 1350 65 1382 69 1353 1393 83 1355 1402 132 1357 1410 99 1358 141 8 153 1362 1428 203 1363 1435 1364 84 222 1367 1444 1454 109 1369 1475 1366 165 1370 159

163 109 157 156 220 277 399 282 340 452 354

Source: ASF, Tratte, regg. 8 and 9. The numbers of veduti surges from 65 in 1 350 to nearly 400 in 1428. It is notable that the hegemony of the Medici family from 1435 had no visible impact on the numbers of citizens considered for the greater offices. Indeed, the high point in the entire series is reached in 1454, when 452 citizens from these two quarters had their names read out before the signoria. The pro­ j ected number for the entire city is 1,000 names, viewed for a maximum of 150 offices, in this single year. This expansion in numbers of the veduti is all the more surprising, as the governments, before and after the Medici period, had instituted several poli­ cies clearly aimed at reducing the number of candidates for office. The cre22. Villani, 1 823, VII, 72. "E andarono a1lo squittino tremilatrecentoquarantasei uomini,

rna non rimasono iI decimo."

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 207

ation of the special "little purses" for the selection of some priors in 1387 was followed by other limitations on the admission of names into the purses.23 After 1434, in the Medici period, those preparers of the purses, the accoppiatori, were authorized to select a portion of the priors a mano, that is, without re­ course to drawings with their uncertain outcomes.24 But, as Figure 5 suggests, these restrictive policies did not reduce the number of veduti. Perhaps these limitations were not strictly imposed. It may also be that the lineages that could pass these tests had so many branches and offspring that they alone could supply this surfeit of eligible candidates.

Figure 4 Dates of Purses Supplying Names of Citizens Considered for the Three Great Offices, Entire City'"

1348 1351 1354 1357 1360 1363 1366 1371 1378 1381(2) 1391

226 795 694 1027 904 842 123 13 719 5079 6660

1393-98 1400 1406 14 1 1 1416 1421 1433 1434 1439 1444 1471

1766 184 1 19 51 28 2 300 2743 2227 2203 70 1

"'Dates are in Florentine style (year begins on March 25)

Sources: ASF, Tratte, reg. 192 and ff.

It would be useful to know the size of the purses supplying these names. Unfortunately, the Ciompi regime in 1378 burned the contents of all existing purses, and the slips in its own purses were similarly burned in 1382. Both the exile of Cosimo de' Medici in 1433 and his return in 1434 led to similar purges and reconstitutions of the purses. Nonetheless, the original giornali of the Tratte office frequently cite the date and type of purse from which the name was drawn. These references we can count. It must be emphasized, however, that our edition of the original giorna/i does not include disqualifications for office when no reason was stated. Sometimes, in a practice known as rimbotto, younger purses were simply emptied into the older ones, confusing their true dates. Thus, a citizen named Agnolo di Bartolomeo Carducci came to be represented in the combined purses of 1393 and 1398, though he was not

23. Guidi, I, 106, for the requirement from 1404 that a father or grandfather in the male line had to have made loan payments for at least 25 years. 24. Rubinstein, 1966, considers the work of the accoppiatori the cornerstone of Medici effort to pack the governments with their supporters.

208

Citizens and the Political Classes

born until April 8, 1403.25 Many other factors influenced the numbers of ap­ pearances. Purses prepared right before purges were necessarily poorly represesented in the elections, as their years of use were few. At best, the sums reached by adding the references to purse dates in the actual drawings do no more than identify years when a major change in electoral policy occurred. The scrutiny of 1382 registers a kind of quantum jump in the admission of citizens' names into the electoral purses.26 The purses of 1391 seem to have been even larger. The governments that took and held power after the Ciompi uprising are traditionally regarded as oligarchic, but the term does not accurately represent their electoral policies, at least during the first decade after the suppression of the wool workers. Seemingly shaken by the Ciompi uprising, these regimes may well have been trying to coopt into the government as many middle-class and presumably conservative citizens as possible. Moreover, after 1391, the size of the purses seems to decline, only to grow again in the middle years of the fifteenth century. In 1427, according to the Catasto, 6,283 out of 9,780 households, or 64 percent, held shares in the public debt; their adult male members were pre­ sumably eligible for office. Although these richer households contained more members than the poor, it seems not unreasonable to estimate that 64 percent of the 8,112 males age thirty or over were eligible for office. In this small city of fewer than 40,000 inhabitants, the potential active participants in govern­ ment numbered as many as 5,200. When the government, in 1429, insisted that those who wished to claim eligibility for office had to register and prove their true ages, 5,414 names were enteredP Many of the males registered were of course underage at the time; the conclusion must be that many, but not all, of the well-to-do Florentine citizens viewed government office as a possible career for their sons. There is no indication that the circle of those competing for government jobs grew smaller under Medici rule, at least up to 1478. It may even have grown larger. According to the chronicler Benedetto Dei, Florence in 1472 boasted 365 "houses or family alliances," each with 200 "or more" citizens

25. His birthday is given ASF, Tratte, reg. 1093, f. 42. 26. The antiquarian friar Ildefonso di San Luigi, in the late eighteenth century, pub­ lished an unfornmately incomplete copy of the scrutiny of the city's male population in 1 3 82. See Ildefonso di San Luigi, 1 770-89, XVI, 125-2 60. The first two gonfaloniers of the quarter of S. Spirito are missing; the third gonfalonier of the quarter, Ferza, lists 443 names. According to a survey of the city made only two years before, in 1380, Ferza, with 4,929 bocche, or resi­ dents, accounted for 9 percent of the city's population of 54,747. (These figures are also from Ildefonso di San Luigi, p. 123.) The complete scrutiny must have contained 4,900 names and could be compared with the figure of 3,346 citizens scrutinized in 1343, in a city then two times larger than in 13 82. (For the reference, se n. 21). It is difficult to know from the scrutiny of 1 3 82 which citizens were entered into what purses, or how many were excluded altogether. The surviving entries give numbers after the names, apparently registering the votes of the scrutinizers, and letters, chiefly 0 and R, in front of some names, the exact meanings of which are to me inexplicable. 27. These represent the combined totals of ASF, Tratte, 1 093 and 3 9. I have tried to exclude duplicated entries.

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 209

able to bear arms and, presumably, stand for office.28 While clearly a boast, his estimates imply an active male and adult citizenry of perhaps 7,300 citizens. Figure 6 illustrates by year the numbers of citizens who proved (or their fathers proved for them) their ages and had their claims approved by the "conservators of the laws."H The figure shows that with every important change of regimes, citizens, or their fathers for them, rushed to register and to claim for themselves or for their sons eligibility for office. Figure 6 displays rather well when regimes changed in Florence. It shows even better the growing competition for posts in the government. Who were these throngs of office seekers? The Tratte registers allow us to view the family connections of the veduti. The total number of families ap­ pearing in the two quarters is 638. To be sure, the count cannot be perfectly exact. Although the compilers were committed to identifying families, ambi­ guities remain. The names are given in Latin, and it is sometimes hard to distinguish a patronymic in the genitive case (e.g., Iohannes Rossi) from a true family name (Giovanni Rossi). On the other hand, the size of the lists usually allows us to see many examples of the same name and hence to make a reasonable determination as to whether it is or is not a true family name. Were the growing numbers of office seekers "new men," in the sense of new arrivals in the city? Were they the newly successful, vertically mobile individuals who succeeded in penetrating the officeholding class? Figure 1 identifies for each of the twenty-four periods the "new" citizens. They are new only in the sense that their family names do not appear in the lists for any earlier periods. The data do indicate a strong infusion of "new men" into the governing circles in the late fourteenth century. This influx reaches its apex in the period 1381 to 1392. Nearly one-half of the family names (79 out of 168, 47 percent) then appear for the first time, and these families account for nearly one-third (117 out of 361, 32 percent) of all citizens who carry a family name. In the wake of the Ciompi uprising (1378), the Florentine government does seem committed to broadening its political and social base. But thereafter the number of new families markedly declines, as the figures in Figure 1 trace out. By the decade 1454-1464, when the citizen body had reached its largest recorded size, new families constituted only 15 percent of all families represented (36 out of 244), and they accounted for only 3 percent (46 out of 1520) of the citizens who show a family name. By the middle of the fifteenth century, those viewed for office seem to have been drawn chiefly from the proliferating branches of older houses. To illustrate this phenomenon, Figure 1 shows two "cluster indices," which measure the tendency for a smaller number of families to provide greater numbers of veduti. The indices are initially constructed by arranging the fami­ lies for each period in descending order on the basis of size. It can then be calculated how many of the larger families account for one-half of the total 2 8 . Benedetto Dei, 1 984, 80. He calls them "chasati e parentele." 29. The chart represents the citizens registered in ASF, Tratte, reg. 40,41, 43, and 44.

210

Citizens

and the Political Classes

population of veduti with family names. Thus, in the period 1349-1351, 27 larger families out of 74 include one-half of the population. This is 36.5 percent of the set of families, and this is our first cluster index. These same families provide 32 percent of all citizens viewed for office, including those without a family name. This is our second cluster index. Over the period of our interest, the number of the greater families needed to account for one-half of the population sharply declines. The index drops from 36.5 in 1349-1351 to only 14.3 percent (35 out of 244 families) by 1454-1464. Between the same two periods, the percentage of veduti drawn from the larger families grows from 32.4 to 46.5. By then, the big houses were providing nearly one-half of all citizens viewed for office. Rather oddly, even as the governing class was growing larger, it was becoming socially more restricted. The growth in the citizens competing for office (even if drawn from fewer families) canot but surprise. For the liberal admission of citizens to office inevitably undermined the ability of any oligarchic clique to hold on to power. The rotations in office in 1434 led directly to the overthrow of Rinaldo degli Albizzi and his faction, after only one year of seeming domi­ nance.30 Why had he allowed this to happen? What factors pried and kept the offices open? To answer these questions we must first ask another: why was the Florentine government encountering such difficulties in finding among the veduti citizens eligible for office? Why were 800 drawings required in 1428, or 1,000 in 1454, to fi11150 seats? We must look at the divieti, the disqualifi­ cations that barred office to many veduti, and in doing so opened them to others. One common reason for disqualifying candidates was age: they had not yet attained the thirty years required for most high positions. The electoral purses were seemingly stuffed with the names of underage citizens. As early as 1387, an anonymous chronicler reported that "many youths of little age" had been introduced into purses of 1382.31 The government never strictly and consistently prohibited the inclusion of underage boys in the purses but regu­ lated the practice in complex ways; the regulations imply that some of these many youths had barely reached five years of age when their fathers persuaded those conducting the squittino to place their names in the purses.J2 It can fur­ ther be shown that many young Florentines pretended to be older than they really were, in order to pass the threshold of thirty years, which qualified them for the most important offices.JJ The government attempted to counter this fraud by insisting, from 1411 and several times thereafter, that candidates 30. For a close analysis of the contending factions, se D. V. Kent, 1980. 31. Guidi, 1981, I, 300, citing the Cronaca !lolgare di anonimo fiorentino of pseudo­ Minerbetti .

32 . Ibid I, 300-03, for these regulations. 33 . For examples of male citizens younger than 30 who pretended that they were above that age, see Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber, 1988, 486-89. .

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 211

declare under oath their true ages. In August 1429, as mentioned, it set about systematically compiling a register of its male citizens showing their ages, and the practice was continued across the fifteenth century.34 Figure 7 shows for the entire city the numbers of citizens viewed for the three great offices who were disqualified for reason of insufficient years. The number soars after 1427, and thereafter it was not unusual for 200 and more citizens to be barred from office in one year because of their youth. The picture is rather bizarre. The august signoria in solemn session hears and ponders the qualifications of boys who will remain ineligible for decades; the same names are pronounced aloud again and again, as the slips of the underage candidates were returned to the purses only to be drawn again at future sessions. Why was the signoria wasting so much of its time? Figure 8 shows the numbers of underage citizens excluded in the elec­ tions of the captains or consuls of the guilds. Here, the exclusions for reason of insufficient years were even more numerous than with the communal offices. Fathers seem to have matriculated their sons into the guilds and to have had their names entered into electoral purses soon after birth. One citizen, Andrea di Benedetto Bonsi, was viewed 36 times between 1472 and 1497 for the consulship of the wine merchants' guild.3s He finally was awarded the office on 24 April 1509. He must have been entered into the guild purses soon after his birth. Why did the officials of the guild not become bored with hearing the name of this flagrantly ineligible candidate for more than 25 years? But seemingly not here, nor in the communal councils, was the exclusion of the underage citizens required. This seems an odd procedure. However, there is an apparent reason for the government's toleration of padded purses. The mature men who sat in the government wanted the names of their own sons read aloud before the council, and often. And why were Florentine fathers so eager to have their young sons viewed for offices that they could not possibly attain? This paternal zeal is the more puzzling, as in the culture of Florentine merchants a marked antagonism existed toward the statuali, those who held government office. The sage Giannozzo Alberti, as represented in Leon Battista Alberti's Books on the Family from the late 1430s, reckons that gifts of fortune (a family, property, honor, and friendship) constitute happiness-but not state offices. Officeholders were public slaves, and the life of such officials was molestissima. "Imagine yourself in office," he demands from his young interlocutors; "what good do you gain apart from this: to be able to rob and coerce with some freedom?"36 Officeholders are mad, haughty, bestial, and cruel little tyrants. "My children," Gianozzo exhorts, "let us remain happy

34. ASF, Tratte, reg. 1 093, is the original rough draft of these proofs of age, subse­ quendy copied with additions into ASF, Tratte, reg. 39. 35. Based on ASF, Mercanzia, reg. 86 to 88. His first appearance is 22 December, 1472. 36. Alberti, 1960, I, 179-180. "Eccoti sedere in ufficio. Che n'hai tu d'utile se none uno solo: potere rubare e sforzare con qualche licenza?"

212

Citizens and the Political Classes

with our little family, let us enjoy the goods that fortune bestows on us, sharing them with our friends, for that person is sufficiently honored who lives without vice and dishonesty."37 The Alberti were, to be sure, exiles, and had reason to hate statuali. But even Giovanni Rucellai, in instructions on the "civil life" written about 1457 to instruct his two sons, borrows passages from Alberti in composing his own diatribe against the officeholders.38 Do not seek public office, he advises his sons, and perhaps his advice had some influence. His two sons, Bernardo and Pandolfo, seem not to have served as communal officers though they were consuls in the money changers' guild (Cambio).3' But perhaps the pressures to enter government eventually worked on this lineage, too. Bernardo's son Palla was chosen standard-bearer of justice on 20 February 1520.'10 As the fifteenth century progressed, few citizens apparently wished (or could aford) to limit their lives to their "little families," in Giannozzo's idyllic phrase. Rather, they were scrambling to gain for their sons' representation in the electoral purses. Why? Florentine merchants in the heroic age of the city'S commercial expan­ sion, up to the troubled 1340s, seemingly could ignore government with impunity. Florentine merchants of the fifteenth century could not. As even the diatribes against the statuali confirm, government by then controlled important patronage and wielded destructive powers. Patronage, in the form of paid offices, became ever more attractive, for two reasons. The jobs in the government's largess had multiplied, even as the state expanded its sway over a large part of the territory of Tuscany. Indeed, the chief means by which Florence exploited its subject territories was to impose on them governors and stafs, the salaries of which the subjects had to pay. And the bigger Florentine state nurtured a bigger bureaucracy at home. The second reason was that in troubled economic times, the great families had no assurance that careers as long-distance merchants could engage and support all their usually numerous offspring. Government service offered alternative careers that could not be dismissed out of hand. Jobs in the government were secure and reasonably remunerative. But they were not easily obtained without visibility and influence. To have one's name read

37. Ibid. I, 1 82: " Figliuoli miei, . . . stianci lieti colla famigliuola nostra, dodianci quelli beni ci largisce la fortuna faccendone parte alii amici nostri, che assai si trouva onorato chi vive senza vizio e senza disonesta." 38. Rucellai, 1 960, 39-43, "La vita civile ." 39. Bernardo on 12 August 1479 was viewed for the sedici but disqualfied for reason of being in specula (ASF Tratte, 203, unpaginated). He was elected on 27 February 1490 to be a member of the "Six of the Mercanzia," a powerful office that oversaw Florence's commercial situation, and on 19 August 1491 he was chosen as consul of the money changers. Pandolfo was viewed twice for the priorate, on 12 December 1454 and on 28 April 1469, and his name bears an F in the latter entry. He was elected consul of the money changers twice, on 16 December 1467 and on 16 August 1469 (ASF Mercanzia, reg. 85, f. 167 and 274). 40. ASF, Tratte, 342, f. 93.

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 21 3

aloud before the signoria and the colleges and regarded for high office con­ ferred visibility; to be chosen brought influence. The destructive powers that the government could wield were chiefly associated with taxes. We can measure the fiscal burdens of the citizen by counting, for the entire city, the number of citizens excluded from office for reason of tax arrears. Figure 9 illustrates, for the entire city, the numbers of citizens barred for this reason from the three great offices. Figure 10 shows the same exclusions in regard to elections to the guild consulships. The exclu­ sions show a marked upsurge in the period of the first Catasto, and a second period of acute fiscal difficulties at century's close. State expenditures and, necessarily, revenues had grown enormously from the mid-fourteenth into the fifteenth century.41 Locked in frequent and costly wars, the state was desperate for funds, and, to facilitate their collection, it offered concessions to the citizenry it was bleeding. As mentioned, those who were assessed and who contributed sums above a threshold amount were promised repayment with interest on their moneys, when peace and prosperity returned. And, in a kind of trade off, those who paid the high assessments were offered access to public offices, the ones that paid salaries and the ones that did not. The desperate fiscal needs of the government thus prompted it to open its offi.ces to all who could pay. Fiscal policy worked in another way to enlarge the government. The shaming mirror of tax delinquency caught the faces of large numbers of citizens. Many high dignitaries are, at one time or another, found among them: Palla di Nofri Strozzi, the city's richest citizen in 1427; and even Cosimo when he supposedly dominated the government.42 These exclusions, even when temporary, inevitably made room in the offices for new citizens, with new moneys. The prospects of ruin through high tax assessments weighed upon all citizens. The prudent Florentine paterfamilias could not relax, as Giannozzo recommended, in domestic tranquility. He had to defend both his property and his family against the voracious demands of�ovemment. He must cultivate the statuali, or, perhaps better, join their ranks. He thus could influence who assessed the taxes, and how much would be imposed upon him, his relatives, and his friends. The power to tax is the power to destroy: this was never more true than in fifteenth-century Florence. 4 1 . A phenomenon noted by many. Marvin Becker saw the growing fiscal weight of government in Florence a decisive factor in changing the political, social, and even cultural life of the city. Se his older now but still interesting works, Becker, 1966-67, and our own comments, Herlihy and Klapisch·Zuber, 1988, 21· 24. 42 . Palla was listed in specula in a drawing fur the Sei della Mercanzia, ASF Mercanzia reg. 83, f. 1 33 on 30 August 1431, and again on September 29 in a drawing for the same office. He was still in tax arrears on 29 August 1434 in a drawing fur the sedici (Tratte reg. 198, f. 1 63). Cosimo was also found to be in tax arrears on 28 April 1 436 in a drawing for the sedici (ASFTratte reg. 199, f. 22) ; on 28 April 1440 (ibid., not paginated, office of the sedici); on 12 December 1440 (ibid., office of the dodici); and on 20 December 1448 ( ASF Mercanzia reg. 84, f. 28, office of the Sei della Mercanzia).

214

Citizens and the Political Classes

Between the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, the government made unprecedented tax demands upon its citizens, but also offered to them the opportunity to share in the benefits and powers of office. Inevitably, govern­ ment loomed ever larger in the lives of the people. Some years ago, Marvin Becker sensed this change and attributed to it major cultural repercussions. The terms he used to describe this cultural shift - from "gentle paideia" in the earlier age to "stern paideia" in the following - are problematic, but his basic instinct was not faultedY To survive in this world, young Florentines had to learn to live and interact civilly. In his memoirs written for his descen­ dants, Giovanni Morelli does not envision that they will pursue political careers, but they still must learn how to interact with the statuali and how to ingratiate themselves to them. They must acquire the skill to cultivate all factions, while joining none. Be agreeable, he tells his descendants, be pleasant, evasive if you must, invite the powerful to dinner, cultivate them "even if it costs you a little." And "always hold with whoever possesses the palace and the Signoria."44 In a social environment where government counted for so much, sons had to be trained to function effectively in a tumultuous world, to parry, if not to participate in, political power. Giovanni Rucellai, while serving with the humanist Donato Acciaiuoli on the priorate in 1463, engaged him in a discussion on the topic of "whether it was more difficult to do good or evil. " What seems to us an idle issue clearly concerned Giovanni, as he further elicited from Giovani da Viterbo, a Dominican friar, an answer to the same question. He incorporated both answers, from the friar and from the humanist, into his Zibaldone, for the benefit of his sons.45 The friar averred that it was more difficult to do evil than good, but Giovanni clearly preferred the humanist's answer, that evil behavior was both easier and more common. The pervasive penchant of men to do evil had cultural repercussions. It required that the state through education instill "good customs" in its citizens; if the state failed to do so, the paterfamilias must take on this charge and train his children in appropriate moral behavior. Implicitly, he must educate them for the active life, teach them the good customs but also ,Instruct them how to counter the machinations of the evil majority. Fra Giovanni's argument was rejected, because it did not offer logical support for education in moral phi­ losophy. Giovanni regarded such education as critical for Ils age. The moral counsels of Morelli and the educational philosophy of Rucellai are echoed many times in the vast didactic literature of the Florentine Renais­ sance. These counsels were meant to promote survival in the active life. Do not their goals and their content reflect the essence of what we now call civic humanism? One had to vivere civile if one was to live at all. 43. Becker, 1966-67. 44. Morelli, 1 969, 274. 45 . Rucellai, 1960, 85 ff., with th e Latin version o f Donato's statement, dated 15 August 1464, 125-33.

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 215

But if the unprecedented intrusion of government into private afrs recommended new standards of behavior and, beyond them, new educational goals, there were practical costs too in keeping powerful offices accessible to the many. How could high officials with limited experience manage the many crises that Florence confronted in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries? The creation of the special, small purse for priors, the bo rse/lino, in 1387, could be interpreted not as an oligarchic ploy but simply as a method of bringing more " suitable, " that is, experienced, citizens into the priorate. Recognition of the need for experience seems, however, best reflected in the repeated creation of ba/ie, committees usually of ten members, who served for six months, one year, or more. Between 1363 and 1478, forty-one committees of this sort served for six months, one year, or longer.46 Clearly the composition of these ba/ie put an emphasis on experience. They included magnates, who, though excluded from the three great offices, often served the commune as delegates and ambassadors to foreign states. Citizens viewed for the commune's highest office, the standard-bearer of justice, were also favored, even if they had never actually served. And the committees routinely included one or more doctors of law, to provide legal expertise. Over this long period of time, 357 citizens held the 574 places on the forty-one ba/ie, an average of 1.6 terms per citizen. But several citizens appeared with much greater frequency. Messer Lorenzo di Antonio Ridolfi, decretorum doctor, served on ten commissions from 1396 to 1440, over a long political life of 44 years. Tied with him for most appearances was Cosimo di Giovanni Medici, who also served on ten ba/ie between 1427 and 1453. His father, Giovanni di Bicci, served twice ( 1414 and 1423). His son Piero served three times (1453-1468), and his grandson Lorenzo, "11 Magnifico," twice in the brief period between 1471 and 1478. Cosimo also served twice in the dodici, twice in the sedici, twice as prior, and three times as standard-bearer - a total of two years in elected office. Quite clearly, the rule he exerted over the Florentine state was based more on service on balie than in the three great offices, and that service too earned him his eventual title of pater patriae. After 1478, a central issue in Florentine political thought was the very survival of its republican government. The chief argument that theorists ad­ vanced against it, and in favor of the Medici principate, was that traditional republicanism bred instability and civil war; only a principate could ensure peace at home and the pursuit of effective policy abroad.47 A Venetian ob­ server, Marco Foscari, in 1527 offered a perspicacious s umary of the

46. The names of the citizens serving on these balie are given in I1defonso di San Luigi, 1770-1789, XIV, 2 84 ff. The practice was older than 1 363 but never used as frequendy as in this period. 47. The literature on Florentine political speculations in the last years of its republic into the Medicean principate is of course vast. I cite here only the works regarded as classic, Rudolph von Albertini, 1955, and Gilbert, 1965.

216·

Citizens and the Political Classes

Florentine political experience:18 Florence in the past had either been subject to various princes (the Medici preeminendy) or been free. But when the Florentines were free, they were battered by civil wars. He goes on to describe the parties or factions of the city. He notes that the Medici supporters, called the "grays," or bigi, were few in number but composed of politically experi­ enced persons. He thus links support of the principate with a premium placed upon experience in government. And experience in office was the one quality that fifteenth-century Florentine republicanism, with its programed high turnovers in powerful positions, could not supply.

48. Cited and disucssed in Giovanni Silvano, 1985,170-71.

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 217

Figure S Veduti, Quarters of Santo Spirito and Santa Croce 1349 -1478. 500 4 50 4 00 350 300 250

Citizens

200 1 50 100 50

o 134 9

1359

1369 1379 1389 1399 1409

14 19 1429 1439 1449 1459

1469

Year

Figure 6 Citizens Disqualified for Reason of Age, Drawings of the Three Great Offices, 1363 -1500. 300 250 200 150 100 50 o

1363 1373 1384

1394 1404 1414 1424 1434 144 1454 1464 1474 1484 1494 Year

218

Citizens and the Political Classes

Figure 7 Citizens Disqualified for Reason of Age, Drawings for the Guild Consulates, 1391-1500. 300 250 200 1 50 1 00 50

1391

Figure

1401

1411

1421

1431

1441 1451 Year

1461

1471

1481

1491

8

Citizens in Tax Arrears, Three Great Offices, 1350-1530. 300 250 200 150

Citizens

100 50

1350

1375

1400

1425 Year

1450

1475

1500

1525

Herlihy: Rulers of Florence 219

Figure 9 Citizens in Tax Arrears, Guild Consulates, 1394 -1530. 900 800 700 600 500 Citizens

400 300 200 100

o 1394

1404

1414 1424 1434

1444

1454 1464 1474 1484

1494 1504 1514

Year

Figure 10 Citizens Presenting Proof of Age,

1429-1530. 900 800 700 600 500 Citizens

400 300 200 100

1429

145 5

1465

1475

1485 Year

1495

1505

1515

152S

220

Citizens and the Political Classes

stati italiani. Fonti e studi, 1. Florence: Papafava.

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HERLIHY , DAVID AulERTI,

LEON BATI15TA. 1960. Opere

volgari, I: I Iibri della famiglia, Cena fami­ liaris, Villa, ed. Cecil Grayson. Bari: Laterza. ALBERTINI, RUDOLF VON. 1 955. Das flcrentinische Staatsbewusstsein im Vbergang von der Republik zum Prinzipat. Bern:

Francke. ASF Archivio di Stato di Firenze. B ECK ER , MARVIN. 1965. "A Study in Political Failure: The Florentine Magnates, 1280-1 343." Medieval Studies, 27: 246-308. . 1966-67. Florence in Transition, v'I: The Decline of the Commune; II: Studies in the Rise of the Teritorial State. Baltimore: johns Hopkins University Press. BERTELLI, S ERGIO. 1 9 7 8 . II potere o/igarchico nella stato-ciua medievale. Flo­ rence. BIZZOCCHI, RO BERTO. 1 9 82 . " La dissoluzione di un clan familiare: i Buondelmonti di Firenze nei secoli XV e XVI ." Archivio Storieo Italiano, 140: 3-46. BRUCKER, GENE A. 1 962 . Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378. Princeton: Princeton University Press. . 1977. The Civic Warld of Early / Renaisance Florence. Princeton: Princeton University Press. CoPER, ROSLYN PESMAN. 1984-85. "The orentine Ruling Group under the Govemo Popolare" . In Studies in Medieval and Re­ naissance History, 7: 71-1 81. GILBERT, FEUX. 1965. Machiavelli and

J

--

�

!Guicciardini,

Politics and History in Six­ teth-Century Florence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

1972. "I sistemi elettorali agli uffici del comune di Firenze nel primo Trecento: il sorgere delle elezioni per squittino." Archivio Storieo Italiano, 130: 345-407. . 1 977. "I sistemi elettorali agli uffici della citti-repubblicana di Firenze nella prima meta del Trecento ( 1 329-1 349}. " Archivio Storieo Italiano, 1 35: 373-424. --. 1 9 8 1 . II governo della citta­ GUIDI, GUIDOBALDO.

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repubblica di Firen;:e del primo quattrocento, I: Polilica e diritto PubblU:; II: Gli istituti "di dentro" che componevano il governo di Firen;:e nel 1415; III: II contado e dUtretto.

Biblioteca Storica Toscana, 20. Florence: Olschki. D EI, BENEDETTO. 1 984. La cronica dall'anno 1400 all' 1500. Ed. Roberto Barducci. Istituto per la storia degli antichi

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CHRIS1. 1988. I toscani e Ie lora famiglie. Uno studio sui catasto fiorentino del 1427. Traduzione di Mario Bensi. Bologna: il Mulino. (. HIBBERT, A. B. 1978. " The Origins of the Medieval Town Patriciate." Towns in Societies, ed. P. Abrams and E. A. Wrigley. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 91104. ILDEFONSO DI SAN LUIGI. 1 770 -89. Delizie deg/i eruditi tos ni. 24 vols.; flo­ rence. V JONES, P. 1965 . "Communes and Des­ pots: The City-State in Late Medieval Italy."

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Ser. 5, vol. 15: 71 -96. . 1 9 7 8 . "Economia e societa nell'Italia medievale: la leggenda della borghesia." In Storia d'Italia. Annali. 1:187361. II"'"KENf, DALE V. 1975. " The Florentine Reggimento in the Fifteenth Century." In Renaisance Quarterly, 28: 575-638. . 1978. The Rise of the MedU:. Faction in Florence, 1 426-1434. Oxford: Oxford University Press. /MOLHO, ANTHONY. 1968 a . " The Florentine Oligarchy and the Balie of the Late Trecento." Speculum, 43: 23-51. . 1968b. "Politics and the Ruling Class in Early Renaissance Florence." Nuova Rivista Storica, 52: 401-20. MORELlJ, GIOVANNI. 1969. Ricardi, ed. V. Branca. New edition. Florence. J NAJPMY, JOHN. 1982 . Corporation and

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Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Caro lina Press. NOBILTA. 198Z. Nobilta e ati dirigenti

in Toscana nei secoli XI-XIII: strutture e concetti. Comitato di studi sulla storia dei

ceti dirigenti in Toscana, Atti del IV. con­ vegno, 12 dicembre, 1981. Florence. OrOKAR, NICHOLAS. 1926. II Comune di Firenze alia fine del dugento. Florence. RAsTRi!L1, MODI!5TO. 1783. Priorista (wrentino istorieo pubblicato e iIIustrato. 3 vols. Florence: Giuseppi Tofani. RAVEGGI, S. ET AL. 1 978 . Raveggi, Sergio; Tarassi, Massimo; Medici, Daniela; and Parenti, Patrizia. Ghibellini, Guelfi e

Popolo Gras: I detentori del potere po­ litico a Firenze nella seconda meta del dugento. Florence. ROMANO, DENIS. 1 987. Patricians and

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Popola,,;: The Social Foundations of the Ve­ netian Renaisance State. Baltimore. RUBJNSmN, NICOlA I . 1966. The Gov­ ernment of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1 49:4) . Oxford: aarendon Pres.

SALVFMINI, GAETANO. 1 897. Magnati e popolani in Firenze d41 1280 al 1295. Flo­

rence and Venice. Comparisons and Rela­ tions. Ed. Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai Rubinstein

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-- . 1979. " Oligarchy and Democ­ racy in Fifteenth-Century Florence." In Flo­

and Crai g Hugh Smyth. Florence. 99-1 12. RUCELlAI, GIOVAN . 1960. Giovanni

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From Social to Political Representation in Renaissance Florence

R I C CARDO F U B I N I

ACHIAVELLI,

reviewing one hundred and fifty years o f Florentine history in his Disamus Florentinarum rerum, accuses the city of not having known how to be either a republic or a principate. He notes specifically of the pre-Medici era: "There was still in this state a kind of disorder of no small significance; private citizens were to be found in public councils, maintaining private reputations at the expense of public ones and detracting from the authority and reputation of the magistrate, which is contrary to all public order."l It is easy to note here an anti-aristocratic atti­ tude, sustained in the following observation, pointing as the ulterior cause of

M

disorder the fact that "the people did not have their part." 2 And yet in Machiavelli's statement there is something more surprising and profound than a simple politico-social preference. Certainly he was judging his stan­ dards against those drawn from his own country's history, but also against a set of political traditions of more universal application. The two requisites mentioned as basic to good civic order, the high reputation of the magistrate and the satisfaction of the popular vote, do not seem to leave space for that intermediate sphere in which consensus would be elaborated around the proposals of the sovereign body, and which can be subsumed in the act and meaning of the verb "to counsel" (consulere).3 The Florentine Consulta is none other than the form and materialization on a community scale of that process by which consensus is elaborated around a legislative formulation or at any rate a political deliberation, which has been thus defined, although in an apparently diverse context: "The formulation of law is taken for granted to be a matter of 'just definition,' a process of knowledge and reasoning neces1. N. Machiavelli, Arte della guerra e scritti politici minori, a cura eli S. Bertelli (Milan, 1961) 262: "Era ancora in quello stato un disoreline eli non poca importanza; qual era che g1i uomini privati si trovavano nei consigli delle cose pubbliche; iI che manteneva la reputazione agli uomini privati e la levava a' publici, e veniva a levare autoriti e reputazione a' magistrati: la qual cosa e contro ogni ordine civile." 2. Ibid., "II popolo non vi aveva dentro la parte sua." 3. The richest contribution to the argument is perhaps by Y. M.·]. Congar, "Quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus tractari et approbari debet, n Revue historique de droit franfais et etranger, 4" ser., 36 (1958) 210-259; but se now more generally A. P. Monahan, Consent, Co­ ercion, and Limit. The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy (Leiden: Brill, 1987).

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sarily carried on through the collective deliberations of the king's council, culminating in a consensus on what is substantialy right."" Thus, the very manner in which the figure of the sovereign as unique holder of legislative prerogatives is seconded (not as written law prescribes, but as universally accepted custom demands) by various councilors and representatives; the same is true in the smaller and collective sphere of the city, where the actions of officials are necessarily integrated with the less formal participation of the sapientes, the credenza's councils being nominated ad hoc according to criteria of professional competence or civic representation.5 It is significant that the basic principle Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus comprobari debet recurs, be­ yond various ecclesiastical and secular contexts, in the thirteenth-century manual of citizen podesta, Oculus pastoralis, where "the small councils that assist the sovereigns are set against the larger ones of the comunitates locorum, and the principle Quod omnes tangit is used to justify this more ample par­ ticipation of the people in the government."6 Let us abstract ourselves for the moment from specific local customs; the medieval Italian city canot be considered (as a kind of Sismondian happy island) independently from the general contemporary principles of representa­ tion, and therefore from a close relationship between politics and society. The quite general convictions, "that important decisions should be made publicly, that customs should not be changed without general agreement, that consent was necessary when the superior needed extraordinary additions to his income, that 'what touches all, should be approved by all,"'7 were certainly recogniz­ able here. Thus, in the Consulta (or colloquio) there developed a close tie be­ tween the political and social spheres ( "colloquium, " by the way, is the Latin term, later supplanted by "parlamentum"; it remained in use, for instance, in Lucca); the Consulta, I may add, could easily be included in Maitland's defi­ nition of the English parliament, as "an event rather than an institution."8 4. E . Lewis, "King Above Law? 'Quod principi placuic': in Bracton," Speculum 39 (1954) 263; quoted in D. Wyduckel, Princeps Legibus Solutus. Ene Unu1'suchung %141' frUhmockrtren Rechts- und Staatslehre (Berlin, 1979) 161. 5. Se in general S. BertJelli, "II potere nascosto: i 'Consilia sapientum,''' in Forme e

ucr#che del pome nella citta (secoli XIV-XVII), Annali della Facolta di Scienze Politiche ckll'Unillersita di Perugia, N. 16 (1979-1980), (but Perugia, 1 982) 1 1-31 ; and further A. Gherardi, Introduzione to Le Consulu della Repubblica fio1'entina dall'anno MCCLXXX al MCCXCII, vol. I (Florence, 1806) x-xxvii; B. Barbadoro, Introduzione to Consigli della Repubblica fio1'entina, 1101. I (Paru prima 1301-1307) (Bologna, 1 921) xv-xxv; E. Conti, Introdu:done to Le RConsulte" e "P1'atiche" della repubblica fiorentina nel Quattrocento, I

(1401) (Pisa, 1981) (Universitl di Firenze, Fonti di storia medievale e umanistica) v-lxxiv. 6. P. S. Leicht, "Su alcuni passi di giuristi italiani del secolo XIV riguardanti i parlamenti provinciali," in Studi storici in onore di Gioacchino Volpe, vol. I (Florence, 1958) 537; and also, for a reminder of the maxim Quod omnes tangit in a Florentine consulta of 1284, idem, "Un principio politico medievale," now in Scritti lIari di storia del diritto italiano, vol. I (Milan, 1943) 136-1 3 8; A. Marongiu, II Parlamento in ltalia nel Medio EIIO e nell'Eta Moderna (Milan, 1962) 44. 7. J. R. Strayer, On the Mediellal Origins of the Modem StaU (Princeton, 1 970) 65. 8. Quoted in M. M. Cam - A. Marongiu - G. Stold, "Recent Work and Present Views on the Origins and Development of Representative Assemblies," in X Congresso Inmnazionale di Scienze Storiche, Re/azioni, vol. I (Florence, 1955) 36; on the term colloquium se Marongiu,

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Machiavelli's decrying of unjust private interference in the public sphere, in light of traditional political doctrine, then, has a flavor of deliberate provo­ cation about it. But what are the historical foundations of his denunciation? Where are the roots of such a crisis of the very notion of consensus? The problem encompasses, besides Machiavelli's thinking, the historico-constitu­ tional evolution of Florence, just in the period discussed in the Discursus, at the end of which the ancient and fundamental notions seem to have lost their significance. Recent historiography has only partly answered the question. Hans Baron, as every scholar knows, restricted himself essentially to the cultural sphere and assumed a unity of purpose on the ground of the humanists' patriotic celebration.' Marvin B. Becker has insisted on the passage from the "decline of the commune" to the "rise of the territorial state," but still from the point of view of a somewhat old-fashioned Kulturgeschichte, being thus inclined to global definitions.tO Gene A. Brucker has described political life from 1 343 to 1434 with analytical attention to the "political style" of the elites and to other aspects of social reality, but he does not always pay attention to institutional dynamics.l1 Nicolai Rubinstein, in his investigations of the Medici era, though dealing particularly with institutions, has paid attention chiefly to electoral techniques and compromises, rather than to functioning mechanisms and governmental practice. U A somewhat similar in­ vestigation of an earlier period (1280-1400) is conveniendy presented by John Najemy, which toward the end touches on the question of consensus. He maintains that at the sunset of the old corporatism and passage to a regime of elites, "there was no contradiction in the coexistence of consensus and elitism," in the sense that a compact and solid ruling group knew how to guarantee citizens' support "with the power, majesty, and benevolent paternalism of the state. " But is this true? And is it true that only Machiavelli, "a century later," could reject the aim of that which Najemy defines as "consensus politics" ?13 In effect, strange as it may seem, discussions of consensus have been based primarily on assumptions tending to solicit consensus (from the tribune " of the Pratica, if not indeed from propaganda) and not on the evidence of a more detailed examination of decisional and legislative processes in the fre­ quendy uneven passage from proposal to council voting and subsequendy, on occasion, to debate by the Pratica. The Pratica (thus I will call, according to

II Parlamento, 72; on the colloqui of Lucca, se S. Polica, "Le famiglie del ceto dirigente luchese dalla caduta eli Paolo Guinigi alia fine del Quattrocento," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Florence, 1987) 374ff. 9. H. Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaisance, Revised One Volume Edition

(Princeton, 1 966). 10. M. B. Becker, Florence in Transition. I, The Decline of the Commune (Baltimore, 1967); II, Studies in the Rise of the Tertorial State (1968). 1 1 . G. A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 (Princeton, 1 962); idem, The Civic World of Early Renaissana Florence, ibid. (1977). 12. N. Rubinstein, II gOllemD di Firenu sotta i Medici (1434-1494) (Florence, 1971) (first English edition: Oxford, 1966). 1 3 . J. M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280. 1400 (Chapel Hill, 1982) 301-317.

I

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the common usage, that which perhaps should more properly be termed Consulta) represents an important and eloquent moment, but only a moment in complex and not rarely latent decisional processes, which in any case must be dealt with in order to interpret correctly each individual intervention. And above all, there is the usually overlooked (except as regards the later era of the Savonarolian Consiglio Maggiore) problem of the composition, procedures, and comportment of the city's two councils (the Consig/i opportunt): these were excluded from proposing legislation, monopolized by the signoria, yet their consent was indispensable. It is worth repeating that examination of the question of representation and consensus means directing. our interest to the moment of council approval and its rapport with civic debate in a broader frame of time. The following observations have this scope in view. A necessary aspect of the proposed picture is the progressive affirmation of sovereignty by the Florentine commune. This must be understood in a double sense, or perhaps with two facets: the freeing of the commune from external conditioning, in fact from jurisdictional ties with the Church and empire, and internally the progressive growth of the prestige of the priorate, the shift from the Priorato delle arti to the "Lordship" (signoria) . For the first, it is sufficient to remember the political evolution after the expulsion of the duke of Athens, as described in Brucker's reconstruction.!'1 The increasingly bitter rivalry between aristocratic groups of the Guelf party and the guilds has as one of its principal objects collaboration ( requested and denied) with the pontifical legates engaged in submission of the Church's states. Finally there was the sudden break with the Church itself, the vast war and propaganda effort under the balia of the "Eight Saints," the reemergence and the admoni­ tions of the Guelf party, the social turbulence of the tumulto dei Ciompi, which this instigated, and finally the restoration of civic unity on the basis of both the successive parlamento and balia of September 1378 and February 1382. (Parlamento should be explained as the forced congregation of all able citizens in order to obtain consensus to exception bills; balia is the extraordinary council authorized by the parlamento in order to approve legislation eluding an ordinary council's vote.) If these parlamenti initiated regimes characterized by discordant social groups (and in this sense that of 1382 marks the reemer­ gence of the "optimates" over the then-prevailing Arti minori), they were, from -a more strictly institutional point of view, not lacking in a certain logic and complementary quality. It is in fact in such circumstances that a precedent was created (pregnant with future consequences) for the establishment of a regime ( or regimen, reggimento), conceived as the whole group of names ap­ proved in the scrutiny of the Three Major Offices ( or, briefly, I Tre Maggiori, that is, the Lords and the two Colleges of the Twelve Good Men and the Sixteen Gonfalomeri di Compagnia ). This regime owes its origin to (and is thereby legitimated by) a plebiscite forced by a parlamento, and therefore, by this means, to sovereign popular will ( "quod ea que expediunt nullo modo 14. Brucker, Florentine Politics, op . cit.

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exequi valent sine plenaria, libera, totali et absoluta potestate et auctoritate totius populi Florentini " ).1S The reggimento then is seen as the result, even if indirect (by way of the commission of scrutiny under control of the parlia­ mentary balia), of a plenary resolution. This assumes real constitutional rec­ ognition ( " novus status novumque regimen, " as will be stated in 1382), and participation in it is enlarged as never before.16 "The nominating process for the scrutiny of 1378 thus resulted in a momentous expansion of the outer perimeter of the Florentine political class. In strictly numerical terms, this expansion became a permanent feature of the Florentine political system, as nominations for subsequent general scrutinies never again fell under five thousand and in 1411 and 1413 went over six thousand. " 17 Now, there is a close connection between the institutionalization of the reggimento and the growth of the priorate's prestige, as well as between each of these and the assertion of the city's sovereignty. In this regard, one should note the proclamation of the "prominence and dignity" (excellentia et dignitas) of the signori and colleg� as affirmed on 9 December 1378.18 This was corol­ lary to the decision which unified the signori and collegi in one deliberative body, "for every business and cause, however important and weighty it may be, even if at other times it was forbidden to deal with" ( " pro quolibet negotio . . . et super et de quacunque re et causa etiam quantumcumque ardua vel gravissima . . . vel alias fieri devetata" )jl' it correspondingly ac­ corded full legislative power (the prime attribute of sovereignty) to the republic as embodied in its councils, themselves defined in terms that look like the civil law's principle of the princeps legibus solutus: "soluta (consilia) omnibus legibus . . . prohibentibus aliquid fieri vel disponi . . . et quilibet in eis vel eorum altero proponens . . . intelligantur esse et sint libera et liberi et soluti," that is, there was no limitation at all in proposing a bill.20 The councils, it is well to remember, remained bodies headed by the foreign rectors, the capitano del popolo and the podesta, whose names they carried. According to medieval legal doctrine it was the magistrate, imperial representative in the city, who legitimated mumcipal legislation. Alberto da Gandino, theoretician of statutory law, prescribed the presence of the podesta in the councils, "cum potestas habet quod eo presente fieri debet propositio, quia nisi esset presens non valeret."21 Contrarily, with no other explicit moti­ vation besides the premise " bonis respectibus ut asseruerunt moti," the Lords on 28 November 1396 set the revolutionary principle that from then on the 15. Se Najemy, 268; and also D. Kent, "The Florentine 'Regimento' in the Fifteenth 28 ( 1975 ) 575-620. 16. Najemy, ibid. 17. Ibid., 236. 18. Ibid., 248 . 19. Provision of the parliament, September 1, 1378, quoted in R. Fubini, " Classe dirigente ed esercizio della diplomazia neJla Firenze quattrocentesca," in I uti dirigenti, op. cit., 143 . 20. Ibid. 2 1 . See P. Costa, ,,]urisdictia. " Semantica del poure politico nella pubblicistica medievale (1 1 00-1433) (Milan, 1969) 156. Century," Renaisance Quarterly

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councils would be convened "pro parte dominorum Priorum et Vexilliferi Iustitie, et non pro parte domini Capitanei et seu domini Potestatis vel alterius Rectoris" and would themselves be guarantors of their decisions' validity { "valeat et teneat et pro solemniter et legitime facta habeatur et sit" ),1l This was no less than corollary to "totalis, plenissima, et integra auctoritas et potestas populi Florentini, " as proclaimed in 1378; and it is for this reason that Leonardo Bruni's humanistic prose could shortly afterward compare the au­ thority of the signoria, even though collectively exercised, to royal authority ( " supremus magistratus, qui quandam vim regie potestatis habere videbatur" ) and clothe it with the sovereign attributes of political decision, legislative monopoly, and full judicial capacities {"rei publice consulunt, iura sanciunt, equitatem decemunt").1l I have said that the image of the priorate took on the guise of a true sovereign power to the extent to which the reggimento became institutional­ ized: the signori, after all, were none other than the beneficiaries of the scruti­ nies controlled by the balie, and the real act of foundation was considered the balia and the scrutiny of 1 382.2.4 Such a constitutional implication had its in­ fluence on the future of Florence. The growing importance of the nominations to the Three Major Offices compared with the ordinary citizens' status con­ tributed to widening the break between these executive offices and the more broadly based councils. Research by Rubinstein and Brucker has brought to light the increasing resistance of this conciliar base to the Lords' bills. The situation can be quickly exemplifi.ed with the following: If in the beginning the priorate functioned in virtue of an authorizing vote (or balia) from the councils for each important decision, and the councils until the Medici era approved the expenditure report by each outgoing signoria ( "expense mense dominorum"), the contestation of the 1416 finances seemed, according to one speaker to the Consiglio del Popolo, which was reluctant to approve the re­ port, to be "dishonorable behavior" ("est inhonestum non obtinere" ), since, as was said on repetition of the episode, "cadit in diminutionem honoris Dominationis."15 And thus the renowned physician Galileo Galilei, in an analogous circumstance of strong council resistance to ia: proposal repeatedly put forward and rejected, expressed his and his own quarter's disappointment: "Quod non obtineatur, et quod gubernati debent complacere gubematoribus."l' 22. Archivio di Stato di Firenze (hereafter ASF), Provvisioni, Registri (hereafter Prow.) 35, f. 225r. 23. Laud4tio Florentine urbis, edited by M. Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni (Chicago, 1 968) 259; se also Najemy, 215. 24. Se N. Rubinstein, "II regime politico di Firenze dopo iI tumulto dei Ciompi," in II tumulto dei Ciompi. Un momenta di stana fiorentina ed europea (Florence, 1981) 105-124. 25. ASF, Libri {a baru m (hereafter L. (ab.) 51, ff. 120r, 230r. Refers, respectively, to in­ terventions to the councils of the popolo and of the comune of 30 December 1416, and 27 Oc­ tober 1418. 26. ASF, L. {ab., 51, f. 221v; intervention to the council of the comune, 23 September 1418. Incidentally, we met again the same concept in the polemical context of Giovanni Cavalcanti, Seconda storia (da1 1441 aI 1447), ed. F.L. Polidori, vol. II (Florence, 1 839) 201: "Che differenza e dal governatore al governato, se non che il governatore comanda, e il

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The rapport between the executive and the councils was transforming itself, irrespective of principles of civic equality, into that of sovereign and subject, or more to the point, governors and governed, as it can be found expressed, though only rarely, among the voting statements of the council of the commune. It was a question not so much of formal relations among offices, as of a real power struggle inside the reggimento and among those competing to for­ mulate the political will. In fact, regimes have their origin in an act of political will, a violent act that marks a turning point with respect to the past and continues to condition public life even beyond the normal process of the turnover in the offices. The matter is even further complicated, and largely determined by the general air of conflict which, far greater than the Florentine case, hovered over late medieval Europe. Consider the schism in the Church, the crisis of the Angevin monarchy in Naples, the dynastic battles in and expansion of the Visconti state, the difficulties of the French kingdom in the on-again, off-again One Hundred Years' War. All of these factors influenced Florentine politics and contributed to enlarging opportunities that would allow the formulation of an ever clearer and more knowledgeable program for the conquest of a territorial state: from the acquisition of Arezzo in 1384 to that of Pisa in 1406, from that of Cortona in 141 1 to Leghorn in 1421. The state of war, now declared, now insinuated, was a constant element, inherent to the politics of territorial enlargement at least until the Peace of Lodi in 1455. A state of emergency became, so to speak, the norm and conditioned internal politics, offering justification for institutional changes. Thus, as the creation of the Eight on Security ( Otto di Guardia), whose power increased with succeeding regimes, responded to the turbulence . of 1378, so did that of the Ten on War (Died di Bafta) respond to the acquisition of Arezzo in 1384. This committee of the war, an extraordinary commission created with the "Eight Saints" as its precedent, was now regulated on the basis of statutory norms in place of more ephemeral committees of the BOOs, in order to guarantee in its restricted membership a military and politico­ diplomatic continuity. Common to the Eight and the Ten was their quality of elective body (the Eight at least until 1406, and thereafter in special circum­ stances) as well as some other capacities (the Eight replaced the Ten in some instances during its absences),27 and as such they were the seat of direct access to power for more restricted groups of people than those who qualified for the priorate. Thus institutional chanels for access to recognized power positions were opened, collateral to the systems of scrutiny and extractions. This did not ocur without embittering the internal conflict, and without a theoriza­ tion of narrow governments (govern; strett;) even in ordinary circumstances,

governato e fatto ubbidire? " Se now the new entire edition of this quite important teXt: G. Cavalcanti, NIiOlla opera. Chroniqlle florentine in/dite tiM XV siecle, critical edition introduc­ tion and notes by A. Monti (Paris, 1990) . 27. I refer to observations made in "Classe dirigente," op. cit., 166f. ,

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expressed in new terms with respect to the political language of tradition. Najemy has rightly emphasized the importance of the introduction of the borsellino (or "little bag" ) in 1387 as the initiation (consecrated by the parlamento of 1393 ) of a proper regime within the regime. Correspondingly, the borsellino established a discrimination within the body of the priors, seting two (then three) of these in positions of greater prestige beside the standard-bearer of justice, who, in turn, was to be elevated above the other priors and efectively, not only symbolically, become head of state. Thus read the institutive law: "Et fiat talis imbursatio de prudentioribus ex imbursatis predictis, secundum quod crediderint prudentiores esse qui huiusmodi imbursationes facere habuerint." These men were defined (together with those selected as standard-bearers), as regards internal relations in the reggimento, as "apt and faithful" (ydonei et confidentes), or "very faithful to the regime" (molto confidenti allo stato loro).28 In other words, entirely subjective and dis­ cretional criteria were used to choose the "more prudent" from those legiti­ mately qualified for the office, so that underlying these criteria a political will capable of conditioning the functioning of the offices themselves was at work. "Faithfulness" - and those claimed to be most adept at guaranteeing it was not to the Commune and its governing bodies, but in the broader sense to the regime, which in this manner gained institutional recognition. To the degree in which the regime - and in its name an apex that may be identified with particular names and political groups - aimed for political and even institutional control, conflict spread and deepened in the city: a sign of the by then endemic constitutional crisis that did not find resolution. Thus we find the "men faithful to the regime" (uomini confident; allo stato, or uom;ni dello stato, statuali, as the term would become) in contrast with the "good citizens" (huoni cittadini), who were spokesmen for that broader and more traditional public opinion that, for example, opposed the instituting of the borsellino, "saying that such a thing was never done" {"dicendo che simile cosa non era stata fatta mai piu" ).2' There was in deed a conflict between" tra­ dition and innovation, "innovation" being here a very negative term referring to those political groups suspected of wanting to establish illicit forms of control that would usurp or overturn the good customary norms. A different conflict, even if, as we will see, it is somewhat difficult to define, divided endemically the very membership of the reggimento. The theme is well known and obvious: suffice it to mention the "purge" of the Alberti and Aciaiuoli, opponents to Maso degli Albizzi, or the more substantial one effected by Cosimo de' Medici. Such purges, as in revolutionary processes, helped to solidify loyalty to the regime in their recognition of a public adver­ sary. There are, however, more subtle and covert aspects. The Albizzi regime, though not lacking in ambition, did not really replace the regime of 1382. 2 8 . Se Najemy, 284, 286, 289. 29. Ibid., 283; quotes are from the Cronaca lIo/gare di anonimo, ed. E. Bellondi, Rerum ltalicarum Scriptores, II ed., XXVII, 2 (1915) 34.

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Ambiguity remains, and historians have not always been able to unravel it, in the behavior of men on the one hand bound to agreement in their common membership in the reggimento, and on the other engaged in bitter reciprocal competition for ever-higher and more restricted positions of power. This situation was destined to repeat itself in the Medici regime, despite the violence of its inception, and despite the ever-increasing concentration of personal power. Governments entrusted to the assemblies of the baIia, which attempted to elude ordinary councils' decisions by means of authorizations in exception to the statutory law, were the mark of polarization of internal conflict. First and foremost was the so-called ba/ia "of the Eighty-one," formed after the coup d'etat of 1393 and composed of a number of offices (Signori e Collegi. Capitani di Parte Gue/fa. Sei di Mercanzia. Otto di Guardia. integrated with a repre­ sentative group of the twenty-one Consuls of the Guilds), and among whose principal functions was that of guaranteeing the financing of the Visconti wars.3D Largely attributable to its extended period of power is the dizzying increase in the public debt, which leapt from one million florins in 1380 to about three million.31 The expiration of its authority in 141 1 coincided with the creation of a new corrective body, the Council of the Two Hundred (del Dugento), which I will discuss later. What bears emphasizing now is the indubitably regimelike character of the Eighty-one. Among its constituent offices, in fact, the signoria's membership was shaped by the recently instituted borsellino, the Eight were elective (until 1406), and the twenty-one Consuls of the Guilds were chosen by the Lords; besides that, the Eighty-one was the electoral body for the Ten on War, functioning almost steadily in this period. But there was still another task attributed to the Eighty-one - very important, yet only recently noticed because of its ebsive nature. The assembly usurped the ordinary councils' prerogative of approving new statutes, which the regime as interpreter of public sovereignty and therefore of the fundamen­ tal faculty to make laws ( "leges condere") intended to promulgate shortly after the coup (the initiating provision is in fact trom 23 December 1394).32 In a solemn program transparently inspired by Justinian's declarations and in­ tended to revise all former legislation, the new statutory codification surrepti­ tiously introduced principles that could bring real constitutional modifica30. Se A. Molho, "The Florentine Oligarchy and the 'Balie' of the Late Trecento," Speculum 43 (1968) 23-51; and also C. Guidi, II gOllemD della citta-repubblica di Firen;:e nel primo Quattrocento, vol. II (Florence, 1981) 145-147; and my "Classe dirigente," op. cit., 167f.

3 1 . Se A. Molho, "L'amnistrazione del debito pubblico a Firenze," in I ceti dirigenti, op. cit., 191; se the provision of 12 December 13 80, then intended to "gradually extinguish the public debt," in N. Rodolico, La democrazia fiorenti"a al suo tramonto (1378-1382) (Bologna, 1 905) 458475. 32. Se my "Classe dirigente," 156; I have also written in this regard in "La rivendicazione di Firenze della sovraniu. statale e iI contributo delle 'Historiae' di Leonardo Bruni," forthcom­ ing in the volume Leonardo Bru,,; cancelliere della R epubblica di Firen;:e, ed. P. Viti (Florence: Olschki, 1990).

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tions. In substance, its end was to perpetuate in ordinary form the discretional and centralized governmental types of the epoch of the balia. The statutes were completed only in 1408-1409 by a commission of ten eminent citizens headed by Maso degli Albizzi with the consultation of the jurist Giovanni da Montegranaro. Yet, by means unknown to us, the process of drafting them was blocked, removed from the Eighty-one's jurisdiction and taken up again only after the expiration of their term in 1412-1415 . In comparison to the 1409 original, the statutes approved on 12 December 14 15 (as we read them in the eighteenth-century edition) carried profound modifications and struc­ tural changes; even so, despite their formal approval of 12 December 14 15, the entire substantial section concerning the offices did not go into effect. After successive delays, they were definitively rescinded in a new provision of 17 February 1417, because they were seen as carrying "variations" arbitrarily contrary to the city's statutory tradition ( "ordinamenta disponentia de officiis observentur prout ante nova statuta fiebant" ).33 Thus once again tradition and innovation were in conflict, as we have already seen in the case of the borsellino, causing a divergence in images and in political language and creating an enduring confrontation that effectively divided the city from its government. On one side were the participants in power, "qui inter ceteros cives Florentinos nobilitate, prudentia et ingenio singulari atque gubernande rei publice non mediocri scientia usuque prediti habebantur," as the Ten promoters called themselves, using terminology that foreshadowed Guicciardini's oligarchic projects ("uomini savi e esperimentati" ) a century later. On the other side were the "good and serious citizens, yeaming for universal peace," who in a context no less official and as representatives of the citizenry had remonstrated justly with the Lords ("Auditis quam plurimis civibus bonis et gravibus, quietem cunctorum cupientibus, cum magna caritate narrantibus quod . . . ex dispositione novorum statutorum . . . multa videntur variari a continentia et effectu veterum ordinamentorum . . ., et quod eiusmodi variatio talis posset esse nature quod, nisi presto occurreretur remedio, multa rem publicam tangentia possent per viam confusionis . et periculi faciliter i . inclinari," and so on).34 Parenthetically, it will not surprise us to find the chronicler Giovanni Cavalcanti, a characteristic representative of citizens' resentment, juxtaposing images of the good citizen and the rapacious governor; or, again, to note in Vespasiano da Bisticci the subtle distinction between the "first citizens of the city" and, indicating them with a note of blame, those " of the government."3S These were not problems peculiar to the time of Maso degli Albizzi, but 33. "Classe dirigente," 162. 34. ASF, Prow., 1 06, f. 306 v 1 7 February 1417; the poem to the statutes of 1409, entitled De origine iuris, can be read in ASF, Statuti eli Firenze, 23, f. 1 r. 35. Se particularly "Vita di ser Filippo di ser Ugolino," in Vespasiano da Bisticci, Le vile, ed. A. Greco, vol. II (Florence, 1 975) 252f.: "Fatta e vinta la lege, e fatti i Conservadori de' primi della dna, subito i primi del goventO, contro a chi veniva questa lege, dando loro nel capo come ella faceva, subito pensorono anulalla" (the italics are mine) . •

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structural factors of longer duration and continuity. Maso's program was revived directly by Cosimo de' Medici, who as standard-bearer of justice, on 19 October 1445 named a commission to resume the suspended statutory revision. On this subject the chronicler Giovanni Cambi made the following polemical statement: "Feciono otto ciptadini a rivedere Ie Riformagioni per potere aconciare 10 stato a suo modo, et vedere se v'era nulla dessi loro noia per ripararvi con loro balie, per condurre la cipta a poco a poco a la tirannide sua. "36 Whether his interpretation is exact is of relative importance; it is important that contemporary observers help us to grasp elements of the nexus between the Albizzi and the Medici eras, and to see in the Medici balie and then in the Councils which they established the development of seeds already present in the project of the late Trecento for radical resetg in the institutions. Among the motives that alarmed the citizens and provoked the sudden rescinding of the statutes was the recognized project for reformation of the two statutory Councils ( "cum presertim imutata videntur multa circa modum deputandi consiliarios tam Populi quam Communis" }.37 Probably this was the very project that the signoria shortly afterward presented once again to the Consiglio del Popolo, receiving a decisive rejection, notwithstanding the inter­ vention of figures such as Niccolo da Uzzano and Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi.38 It is interesting to note that in order to circumvent this obstacle, one of the voting declarations proposed an extraordinary intervention of the newly instituted Council of the Two Hundred: "Et si non obtineretur, fiat proposita in consilio Cc, quod recolligi possit omni modo," that is a change in the method of voting would be authorized.39 The ever more evident break be­ tween, in Maestro Galileo's terms, rulers and the ruled seemed to make this an opportune moment for examining, as historians generally have not, that relevant constitutional innovation, the Consiglio del Dugento. As I have al36. G. Cambi, ]storie, in Deljzie degli eruditi toscani, vol. 20 (Florence, 1785) 250; ASF, Provv., 1 36, f. 186 v: "Autocritas in Dominos et Collegia eligendi doctores, cives et notarium, qui una cum presenti Officiali Reforrnationum revidemt et examinent leges, provisiones et statuta. " The passage and the provision are noted in D. S. Peterson, Archbishop Antoninus. Florence and the Church in the Earlier Fifteenth Century, Ph.D. thesis (Cornell University, 1985) 48; but see now by the same, "An Episcopal Election in Quattrocento Florence," in J. Ross Sweeney and S. Chodorow (eds.), Popes Teachers, and Canon Law in the Middle Ages (Ithaca and London, 1 989) 305, 306 n. 29. 37. ASF, Provv., 106 f. 302 r, 11 February 1417. This is a suspension that precedes the abrogation by some days. 38. ASF, L. fab., 51, ff. 153 v, 154 r, Council of the Popola , 9 and 12 Jane 1417: "Novam formam deputationis et electionis et extractionis consiliorum Populi et Communis." A further proposal for reform of the councils was put forward by the Albizzi balia on 23 September 143 3: "Tutti i veduti ai Tre Maggiori che erano imborsati per il Consiglio dei 200 dovevano anche esserlo per i Consigli del Popolo e del Comune;" the law was then rescinded by the Medici balia on 4 October 1434, referring to the preexisting tradition: "Imbursentur . . . eo modo et prout fiebant" (se Rubinstein, 11 gOVemo, 142). However, the Albizzi project was taken up again in similar form by the balia of 1452 (ibid.) . According to the disapproved statutes of 1415, "Ia Signoria e i CoUegi qualificavano i candidati e la nomina finale dipendeva dal sortego " (ibid.). 39. ASF, L. fab., 51, f. 1 54 r, Council of the Popolo, 12 June 1417, statement of Geri di Testa Girolami for the Capitani di Parte Guelfa. ,

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ready noted, the new council was formed in the context of the suppression of the Eighty-one, after the declaration of peace of the first of two wars with King Ladislaus of Durazzo. This was not, as has been affirmed, a sort of civil conversion, " by natural evolution," of the balia of the war's time, but a body of very different configuration, intended to check arbitrary procedures current until then, thus carefully enumerated in the instituting provision: make war, alliances, campaigns, or more generally launch military initiatives, extend loans to third parties, stipulate pacts of protection or in anyway make agree­ ments of foreign policy, and so on. In any of these instances, to which fiscal decisions were soon added, the Lords' proposals had to be approved by the new body before being reproposed and voted on in the ordinary councils.40 The new council, and this is its most interesting element, was formed from those chosen for the Three Major Offices from the 1382 scrutiny of candidates who were at least thirty years of age (thus with the same qualifica­ tion as for the priorate), in order to form a body that was representative of the larger reggimento almost the Estates-General of the reggimento itself and as such act as a filter for decisions of more relevant and general importance. (A procedural reflection of this broad representative quality is notable in the fact that in this council one spoke only in the name of the Quarter where the electoral bags were formed, and not as individuals, or for the Gonfalone's dis­ trict, or for single offices or corporations, as in the two Consigli opportuni and in the Pratica of the richiesti; in other words, one was present as a qualified member of the reggimento only.) In this manner the Two Hundred constituted an intermediate body between the two colleges of the signoria (the older territorial representatives of the Dodici buonuomini and the Sedici gonfalonieri di compagnia) and the two statutory councils of the popolo and the comune. Politically speaking, the new institution denoted the constitutional need for a mediating organ in the growing crisis of consensus, and also represented a further step, which would be rife with future developments, toward the insti­ tutionalization and closure of the reggimento. One can wonder whether in its original purpose, and then in fact, this institutionalized body of the reggimento was intended to facilitate the passage of proposals by the reluctant ordinary councils, or vice versa, to operate with respect to the Lords as an organ of control and restraint. An inquiry, even if only for the first years of its existence, weighs decisively toward the second hypothesis.41 Of forty-seven convocations in the years 1412-1419, only in sixteen cases were all proposals passed (34 percent); of the thirty-six proposals in question, seven were rejected ( 19 percent); of those approved, only twenty (56 percent) were approved at the first convening; and, among these, fifteen -

40 . Se the provision of 4 February 141 1 in F.C. Pellegrini, Sulla Repubblica fiorentina a tempo di Cosima il Vecchio (Pisa, 1 889) ix-xiii; and also G. Pampaloni, "Gli organi della Repubblica fiorentina per Ie relazioni con l'Estero," Rivista di studi po/itici intemazionali 20 (1953) 276£.; Guidi, II gOllemo, op. cit., 147-149; and my "Classe dirigente," op. cit., 168f. 4 1 . I refer to the records of the Libri fabarum 50 and 5 1 , for the period 5 August 141219 February 1419.

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(52 percent) passed with less than a ten-vote majority. It is difficult then to draw a clear dividing line between the orientation of the Two Hundred and that of the other two councils; furthermore, the Two Hundred had motives of their own for recrimination. I allude to the case which gave rise to much scandal: resistance to the reconfirmation of the Dieci di Balta during the war with King Ladislaus, unless the Two Hundred were allowed to participate as electors of the Ten themselves. The question was really quite delicate, since there was a desire to avoid reviving the Eighty-one, to which body the nomination of the Ten had just been delegated. What is more, Maso degli Albizzi was seen with much suspi­ cion, for the election would have been held during his term as standard­ bearer of justice, in May-June 1414.42 This, I think, may be a reasonable inter­ pretation of the Council's claim. Without question, from a formal point of view, this claim was incorrect, since the enabling legislation foresaw the possibility of their voting on the advisability of creating the Ten, but did not make provision for them to vote in this, or in any other election. The dispute was resolved by Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi's exceptional intervention in the name of the colleges, which turned the decision over to the Pratica ( "faciant congregare [the Lords] consilium del CC et alios cives prudentes et solemnes . . ., et dicatur quod illi del CC consuluerunt et petierunt velIe intervenire in electione Decem balie " } .43 The Council's demands were then partly satisfied in that there was a compromise decision to add to the electoral body a delegation of eighty citizens to be drawn " de hursis de quibus solet extrahi consilium del Dugento."44 But it is of great interest that in this instance the Pratica gave rise to a solemn condemnation of the Two Hundred, whose members, while members of the reggimento ("regimen habent" ), had violated in a dishonest manner ( "non honestis modis" ) one of its principal principles, that of unity. This, among others, was the authoritative statement of Matteo Castellani: " Et licet in consilio CC sint notabiles cives, tamen inter eos sunt iuvenes et alii non cum matura discretione, et in multitudine confusio est. Et licet putandum sit quod homines sint discreti, tamen [magis] utiliter providetur per illos qui ad aliquod singulariter deputantur quam qui ad multa, et qui causa sunt discordie. Unitatis principium esse debet eos [ad] unitatem hortando. "45 There was an even more radical divergence in language between repre­ sentative opinion as expressed by the Two Hundred and that of the principal exponents of the regime. These, from the tribune of the Pratica, imputed to themselves the role of spokesmen of the Lords' authority and of the public interest, and this at the moment when the Council had refused to consent to a 42 . See "Classe dirigente," op. cit., 169. 43. ASF, L. {ab., 50, f. 117v, 18 April 1414: statement of Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi "pro utroque collegio" to the Council of the Two Hundred. 44. ASF, Proll., 104, f. 4r, April 20, 1414. 45. ASF, Consulte e Pratiche (hereafter CP) 42, f. 128 r, 19 April. Above I quoted from the comments of Piero di Giovanni Firenze.

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levy intended to maintain a standing army of 1,000 lancers and 1 ,500 infan­ try, which would guard the subject territory after the peace and subsequent death of King Ladislaus. On the occasion the Two Hundred, as well as the Consigli opportuni, had behaved in complete conformity with the spirit of representative assemblies of the epoch.'" It was not only citizens who thought that the military presence was justifiable for defensive purposes alone; that one must beware of mercenaries and not "waste" money on them; that forced loans to the commune should be seen as exceptional measures, and that, in any case, they had more than satisfied existing needs; that any tax should be tied to a specific end ("quod imponetur ligetur taliter quod in aliud non convertatur" ); that, in conclusion, the commune should subsist on its own and not the citizens' monies ( "et quod placeat habere considerationem ad gubemationem gabellarum, et si fiet poterit Comune de suo gubernari et non de bursis civium" ).47 Similarly in these very years, the French Estates-General refused further requests for Aides to the Crown, which, as in ancient feudal custom, was bound to maintain itself "on its own" except only under agreed­ upon circumstances of need.48 When called upon by sustainers of the proposal before the Council of the Two Hundred ("fiat consilium magnum requisitorum" ), the Pratica pronounced itself in a diametrically opposed manner.49 The first to speak, Antonio Alessandri, branded the Two Hundred as insubordinate ("qui obedientes esse nolunt et que debita sunt non gerunt"); the expenditures were inherent in the status achieved by the Florentine state ( "sine expensa standum impossibile est" ); and, mindful of republics and principates recently ruined by improvidence, one must provide in the right "order" ("in ordine . . . et cum potentia ordinaria" ). Alessandri and other speakers added that peace imposes its own need of arms, no less necessary to defend the domain than to conquer it ( " nam facile imperium retinetur via eadem qua pactum est," according to Filippo Corsini's sentence). In conclusion, the pu�lic interest, as opposed to the private, should be safeguarded ("licet cives ad hoc respicere non deberent sed ad utilitates et salutes publicas" ). Once again, men of the government spoke in a language challenging the customs of the city, tending to consider as permanent, and inherent to political life, what had been accepted only as a state of necessity. 46. For the characteristic reluctance to agree to the expenses for the militia, se the case of the Savoy parliament, by H. G. Koenigsberger, "The Parliament of Piedmont during the Renaissance, 1 460-1560," in idem, Estates and Revolutions. Esys in Early Modem History (Ithaca and London, 1971 ) 19-79 (especially p. 66). 47. ASF, L. (ab., 51, if. 277r, 233r, Council of the Two Hundred, 21 October 141 8 declaration by Michele Castellani for the Santa Croce's quarter; Council of the Popolo, 1 1 No­ vember 1418, by Filippo Salviati, still for Santa Croce. 48. See M. Rey, Le tiomaine du roi et Ie finances extraordinaires sous Charles VI, 13881413 (Paris, 1 965) 325, on the Estates-General of 1413; and idem, Les finances royales sous Charles VI. Les CIISlIS tIM lUrldt, ibid. (1965) 14. 49. ASF, L. (ab. , 50, f. 1 31r, 1 August 1414, Council of the Two Hundred's fourth negative vote on the proposal to impose "onus per viam accatti," intervention by Niccolo Benoni for the Santo Spirito quarter; ASF, CP, 42, f. 160 r-v, August 3.

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One must note, however, that the Two Hundred fulfilled a larger role than their explicit institutional duties called for. As a representative organ of the regime, the Council was called upon, even if exceptionally, to resolve questions direcdy concerning the reggimento itself. I allude to the extraordi­ nary intervention requested by the Two Hundred in order to authorize modi­ fication of the Councils' electoral procedures (in fact to render the secret vote open), which would facilitate approval of controversial measures. This was the case of the provision of 17 June 1417, which imposed new taxes but above all gave the Lords and other offices the ability to elect the Eight on Security and a Captain of balia with five hundred infantry (a measure that should probably be seen in direct relation to the tension arising from the above-mentioned reform of the Councils). The proposal to hold elections according to the discretion of the Lords passed the Two Hundred by a simple majority, and that facilitated its difficult passage in the Councils of the Popolo and the Comune, respectively by three and five votes.so Another case, protracted for more than two years without breaking Council resistance, was a project regarding the preparation of scrutinies for extrinsic offices. This would have put all those chosen in the past and present in a single electoral bag, beginning, it seems, with the scrutiny of 1393.51 As Brucker observes, the motives for dissidence are not clear,52 but certainly they were serious and inspired by questions of principle. The proposal, in fact, provided for an exception to the current law ( "suspensio ordinamentorum" ) and a reintroduction into the bags of those who had already been extracted. Prime among the sustaining motives was the civic pacification ( "pax civium" ) and the good of the reggimento ("in ea proposita est omne bonum"). Another end was, according to the thrust of one speech, that the scrutiny be definitive, "taliter quod qualibet die non fiat scruptiniunl, " and a special commission proposed that the Lords take an oath to this end: "Provideatur ne ullo modo in futurum deveniri possit ad nova scrutinia. "53 One could therefore suppose a sort of closure of the reggimento, which too as its point of reference the

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50. ASF, L. [ab., 51, f. 155v, Council of the Two Hundred, 1 7 June 1417: "Quod dicta provisio possit proponi et recolligi partitum super ea separatim et prout videbitur dominis et collegiis"; and se also ff. 156v, 157r. Cpo further f. 240r, 26 November 1418: "Quod in Con silio Communis ipsa (i.e. proposita dimidii displicentis) . . . durante officio presentium dominorum [possit proponi] et recolligi per quarteria et vexilla et per alios modos, de quibus et prout per ordinamenta disponitur," the proposal having been approved by the Two Hundred 1 05 to 90. The November 28th proposal of "dimidium dispiacente pro satisfaciendo stipendiariis pedestribus et equesttibus et provisionatis Pisarum et portus" passed at the council on the sixth presentation by only one vote (ff. 237r-241r). The infraction of the secret vote would come later, in 1458, motivating the intervention of Archbishop Antoninus; see Rubinstein, II govemo, 1 1 8f. 51 . ASF, L. [ab., 5 1 , f. 103 r, 15 October 1416. 52. Brucker, The Civic World, 415. 53. ASF, L. Fab., 5 1 , f. 125 r, Council of the Popalo, 21 January 1417, intervention by Sttozza Rinaldi for the Santa Maria Novella quarter; and f. 127 v, Council of the Comu"" January 27; ASF, CP, 43, f. 102 r, report by Rinaldo Gianfigliazzi, "pro etiam omnibus deputatis ad praticam," 26 September 1416. The committe was composed of twenty-six jurists and eminent citizens.

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year 1393, and consequently, excluded those for whom the appropriate year of foundation was 1382 (so we may interpret a proposed amendment to the council of the popolo: "'Quod, detractis his qui fuerunt ab anno 1378 ad 1 381, ceterum qui fuerunt omni tempore etC."').S4 Of course this reference could be used as a precedent, not only for extrinsic offices. However, the request to the Council of the Two Hundred, "super licentia recolligendi fabas quolibet modo," was decisively rejected: "Quod si esset possibile obtinere obneste [sic] bene quidem, et per alium modum non."55 And so, at least this time, the Two Hundred established a barrier against the undermining of constitutional hon­ esty, and the bill, whatever its particulars and motives, was defeated. Many years later, in 1458, the Medici regime referred to the old Council of the Two Hundred in creating the new Council, called "of the Hundred" (del Cento), which suppressed and replaced the former. The comparison was specious: rather than constitute a barrier provided by enlarged representation, the new organ was composed of an elite chosen inside of the new regime, inaugurated in 1 434 (essentially its nucleus was an assembly of ex-standard­ bearers of justice), to stand beside the old statutory Councils and deliberate in the first instance (thus preventing opposition) in any and all questions of major political importance: "Statum seu bursas aut scructinea aut . . . onera vel conductas gentium armigerarum. "56 And yet there exists a feature of effective constitutional continuity over a long period: the tendency to limit and contain the city's political representation within the reggimento and to make the fundamental institutions coincident with the reggimento itself. (In this sense the apex of the process is not a Medicean foundation, but the Savonarolian Consiglio Maggiore.) But this also means that membership in the reggimento was by itself a decreasingly clear sign of partaking of political power: rather, it was a sign of a social class whose members could hold political-administrative office, and on whose more or less enforced consensus the men of the inner cilde of power relied. Besides the "men of the state" (uomini dello stato) the "principal men" (uomini principali) became ever more conspicuous, a group formed around the medi­ ating figure of a recognized leader, even if their relationship to him was not devoid of tensions or of enmities. The Medici performed precisely this ro'e, a necessary point of reference of the regime's partnership , and power. In this highest level of power, the principle of cooptation prevailed and superim­ posed itself over the tradition of choosing office holders on the basis of electoral qualifications. As a result, there emerged entirely political criteria of representation, as distinct from and raised above the customary institutional and social context. The process, which as we have seen had a long history, was crystalized in the Medici balie and culminated in Lorenzo de' Medici's 54. ASF, L. (ab., 5 1 , f. 1 01 v, Council of the Popolo, 12 October 1416, intervention by Filippo Arrigucci for the Six of the Mercanria. 55. Lorenzo Ridolfi answers the question posed, in the name of the Santo Spirito quarter: L. (ab., 5 1 , f. 222 v, Council of the Two Hundred, 24 September 1418. 56. Se Rubinstein, II governo, 1 36ff.

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institution of the Council of the Seventy. The Settanta was not really a new legislative council, nor a balia that functioned exceptionally in its place, but a Pratica, with closed and stable membership, which was chosen by nomination and cooptation on the basis of political precedents and of a clear understanding within the regime. It exercised the prerogatives of proposal and approval, of election of bodies, and of implementation through delegated organs, but legitimated itself by relying on the formal authority of the signoria and of the legislative faculties which now were essentially concentrated in the Council of the Hundred, the old statutory councils having by now been practically emarginated.57 A political directorial body had been grafted on to the old institutional order, adapting and controlling it. It is hard to define it as an oligarchic or a princely order. Without a principate the senate could hardly have been made legitimate; under a principate, it would have been difficult for the oligarchs to preserve continuity, which, nonetheless, was basically maintained, with the republican Pratica. The Laurentian arrangements were not reversible since they responded to a prolonged historical process; yet, to those who would inherit them, they left open fundamental questions of legitimacy. Power restored to a plenary assembly of the reggimento like the Consiglio Maggiore proved , unwieldy; a proposal such as that to reestablish the senate (a permanent ' political representation that would assume, in Guicciardini's words, "il timone di questa barca" ) proved incompatible with the politico-social realities. Guicciardini's close analysis, examining the principle of political representa­ tion in all of its involvements, reaches and stops at the principal objective: the legitimization of a "lifelong senate" (senato perpetuo) in the context of the city's society and of its republican regime. The author finally in his life accommo­ dated himself to the Medici principate. As everyone knows, Machiavelli's solution, with which this discussion began, was diverse. Not exactly a partisan of the popular party, in the sense of being a zealous advocate of conciliar prerogatives, and yet proudly op­ posed to oligarchical control of government (That is, to the Quattrocento principle of the state-regime), he was keenly aware of participation and con­ sensus. Excluding all politico-social mediations typical of medieval tradition ( " un monde penetre par Ie principe des conseils et du consentement,, )/e he de­ cisively merged the social into the political. Debate is still open regarding the disruptive consequences of such a position. But at least in theory, we are beyond the moment of change from social to political representation, and we thus end our examination with the very point with which we began.

57. Ibid., 241ff.; and also my "Classe dirigente," op. cit., 1 85f. 5 8 . Congar, " Quod omnes tangit," op. cit., 244. -Thanks to Ermelinda Campani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this essay from Italian.

Commentary

CHRISTIANE KLAP I S C H - Z UBER

the essays in this volume give rise to the following questions: Is a comparison between the cities under discussion really possible, as the sizes of their involved populations were strikingly different? At what level are our four cities comparable? An urban agglomerate of four million people, as Rome was at the end of the republican period, it was one hundred times the size of Florence at the eve of the principate, and Florence itself was the only city of its size in Tuscany where only two other cities may have had more than 1 0,000 inhabitants during the fifteenth century_ The typical Greek city-state was not Athens, but a city numbering 500 citizens, one hundred times fewer than Athens_ We therefore have enormous discrep­ ancies, afecting social and political structures. Also, Rome and Athens were not only regional leading cities involved in international exchanges like Florence and Venice, but true metropolises, heading large empires of confederations. While analyzing the definitions and uses of citizenship, we must remember that the city-states' major common characteristic was its abnormality, or atypicality. It may be that principles and general definitions of citizenship given by the various city-states help us evaluate the place ptch actually gave its citizens. From that viewpoint, Rome seems rather isolated, between Athens and the medieval communes. Athenians developed a very complex conception of citi­ zenship - and tried consistently to root it in theory and experience, as the collection of 158 constitutions by Aristotle demonstrates, as well as the legists and statesmen of late medieval Italy. Roman law, however, particularly its late codes, does not bring a clear, global definition of the bases of citizenship. It rather proceeds by an accumulation of cases, by successive approximations. Diego Quaglioni insists rightly on the fact that medieval commentators and glossators had to construct their own doctrine on this very absence of general definition they inherited from Roman law_ If the issue of manumissions - no longer a problem in our Italian city-states during the Tre- and Quattrocento - was referred to in the Justinian code in the context of principles of citizen­ ship, its existence was clearly a challenge for medieval and Renaissance think­ ers who were asked to find solutions for the very common problem of inte-

M

ORE THAN ONCE,

242

Citizens

and the Political Classes

grating foreigners in the city. How did they expain the process by which such an integration took place? A common trait characterizing these four city-states was that political activity and decision were located within the city. However, a citizen was not necessarily an inhabitant of the city living within its walls. He could have been a peasant who lived outside, sometimes far from the political center. Medievalists repeatedly emphasized the typically medieval opposition between cittadino and contadino. Would this constitute a major distinctive feature contrasting citizenship in antiquity with that of the Middle Ages? Quaglioni reacts strongly against such a commonplace and insists that medieval legal thinkers refused to have civitas - that is, the citizens' body - and city walls coincide. We shall soon refer to the fact that residence in the city was not a sufficient condition of citizenship . Neither was it necessary to determine the quality of citizenship. Bartolo and his followers located the founding principle of citizenship in the free will of people who chose, thinking that such a decision was based at once on reason and right, to live within a community and submit themselves to its constraints. The idea of a contract negotiated, and often sworn, between those partners and the idea of freedom allowing the contracting parties to accept its terms dominate the conceptions of citizenship in city-states before tyranic or princely regimes. Republican cities certainly were prepared by such legal doctrine to assimilate foreigners when they granted them citizenship. That does not mean, however, that concessions of civilitas were easily given. In Florence, for instance, individual privileges of civilitas gave rise to sharp discussions and became decreasingly numerous in the second half of the fourteenth century; however, there does not seem to exist any theoretical or ideological new obstacle to citizenship by acquisition, though the exercise of some specific professions - the notaryship, for instance - and access to political positions were becoming more restricte!i for new citizens. But the city continued to be open to cultural "digestion" of newcomers and followed the lesson of Bartolo: if, by creating new citizens, it "imitates Nature and Truth," it has consequendy to grant as many privilege � and capacities to the new citizens as to the older ones, to the originarii. This "legal fictio" allowed the absorption of newcomers in the general population with9ut altering its basic purity and continuity. In classical Athens, double descent unambiguously differentiated citizens from noncitizens. The citizens' body, thus, is an extended descent group, where kinship in both lines, with citizens born from citizens, remained the main criterion. The citizens' body, therefore, was numerically limited by the natural increase of the original population. More precisely, the polis was a closed body of adult male citizens, of politai, from which some people, de­ pending on gender, age, or status were excluded. With similar exclusions, the situation was more open and more vague in Rome. Here the private act of enfranchisement by a master had the immediate effect of introducing the

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freed individual into the ranks of the citizens, of the populus, without requir­ ing the formal and ritual processes of control, acceptance, or inscription required for, let us say, the young Athenian free citizen. Quaglioni emphasizes the fact that particular criteria for medieval citi­ zenship varied infinitely from one commune to another, from one moment to another. Because any society defines itself by excluding, and by its particular ways of excluding, it may be useful to dwell on some of those exclusions. Everywhere in our cities, gender was fundamental, and democracy was built with this primary exclusion at its base. In Aorence, a citizen's daughter was a citizen by birth, and she became a citizen of another city if her father and legal guardian acquired a new citizenship. Unlike men, however, a female foreigner became a citizen of the city where she married a citizen, in Florence as well as in the northern European cities that Martha Howell recently studied.1 There was still an important limitation in her quality of citizenship: A woman was not allowed to convey her own citizenship, inherited by birth in another city, to her husband and children. More generally, a Florentine or a Tuscan woman did not determine the citizen status of her child, who inherited status only from his or her father. The descent criterion, therefore, was central in determining the quality of civis originarius; still in medieval Tuscan cities, patrilinear descent only - and not double descent, or double endogamy, as in Athens - was taken into account. I note, however, the tendency of Florentine men to marry in the city, and to take Florentine wives, even when they had lived abroad for many years, a state of afairs which reveals a latent tendency toward double descent, referred to in more explicit ways from the fifteenth century on. In such conditions, what did it mean for a woman to be a citizen? In Florence, her condition may not have been very different, theoreticaly, from that of a sottoposto, a worker deprived of political expression, who neverthe­ less was protected by Florentine law and institutions and of course had obligations toward the community - fiscal, ptilitary, religious, and who, obviously, was expected to respect public order. Other criteria of status were still more radical than those based on gender. I need only refer to the persistence of slavery in Italian medieval communes, or of personal bonds considered incompatible with a citizen's free will. Also, there was a criterion for citizenship in the medieval commune which should be discussed and compared to conditions prevalent in the ancient city: shared religion, an absolute criterion that excluded the infidelis, Jews, Muslims, or deviant heretics.1 Shared religion certainly was insufficient to en1. Martha C. Howell, " Citizenship and Gender: Women's Political Status in Northern Medieval Cities," in Women and Power in the MkJ.dk Ages, ed. by Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens and London: The University of Georgia Pres, 1 988) 37-60. 2. For Venice, se D. Jacoby, "Les Juifs It Venise du XIV' au milieu du XVI' siecle," in Id., Recherches sur Ia Miditeranee orientale du XI!" au XV, siecle (London: Variorum Re­ prints, 1 979) 163-216, spec. 177-8.

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sure freedom and citizenship, but conversion and baptism were necessary to proceed 'in this direction. Integration in a parish, a popolo, was the first step toward integration in the popolo fiorentino. Within the citizens' body in medieval cities some criteria distinguished and temporarily isolated citizens who no longer fulfilled or had not yet satisfied certain conditions such as age, the effects of which, however, remain somewhat vague. The situation of a filius familias, aged more than eighteen, twenty-five, or thirty years, was ambiguous: here we find no formal ceremony - as, more generally, in Western Europe, where this rite of passage was less ritualized than marriage - indicating clearly the young citizen's entrance into the adult male society and the body of his active fellow citizens. Criteria indicating a separation between foreigners and natives appear to be still less sharp. David Whitehead emphasizes the role of a personal tax paid by resident foreigners in Athens: this tax aimed clearly to distinguish the rest of the city's inhabitants from the citizens, who did not pay it. In Florence, one could hardly find such fiscal discrimination. Rather, there was a tendency to assimilate the forestieri from a fiscal point of view: it was the persistence of a foreigner in contributing to the fiscal needs of the commune that prepared his final integration into the citizens' community, after twenty or thirty years of fiscal presence, in exchange for which he would receive the concession of civilitas. His new status meant access both to professional and political ex­ pression and to ownership, and his obligation to acquire land and/or a house reveals one of the deepest roots of the sense of community and fellow citizen­ ship. For, as in ancient times, the ability to possess real property indicates an autochtonous birth, or at least a fictive birth as a new citizen. Concluding on issues which distinguished citizens from noncitizens, I would like to emphasize the medieval incapacity to draw sharp lines of division between clearly defined statuses, including citizenship and foreign status as well. There was a wide variety of status from one individual to another, in fiscal, civil, and political obligations and rights. Among foreigners, one should distinguish between distretli, citizens of allied cities, permanent or semipermanent residents; among citizens, between nobles, artisans, sottoposti, women, and new citizens, who did not share the same rights; and among new citizens, most were granted various exemptions and some limitations in their status of popolani and of ful citizens. Can we therefore better define the obligations and privileges of citizens? Whitehead and Walter Eder point out a fundamental opposition between Athens and Rome. In Athens, citizenship meant first the exercise of political rights, whereas in Rome citizenship was a matter of civil rights. In Whitehead's terms, it is more a difference of nature than of degree. This contribution also suggests that medieval citizenship conforms more to the Roman than to the Greek model. In other words, economic, civil, and judicial privileges occupied center stage in Rome and in the medieval Italian city-states, whereas the Athenians expected those benefits only as a corollary of political rights.

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Whitehead suggests interestingly that the guilds in medieval communes might have been used, as the tribes and centuries of Roman times, to channel political expression, both permitting it and attenuating the citizens' individual commitment. The most attenuated, obviously, was that of the sottoposti in the Florentine guilds, whom law considered as popolani, but political practice considered as minors deprived of corporate matriculation and professional, therefore political identity. Whitehead's suggestion opens again a debate reformulated fifteen or twenty years ago by Peter Riesenberg, on the nature of the benefits expected by people applying for a concession of eivilitas. Denying that political partici­ pation had been their main expectation and a basic concern in their quest for civic identity, Riesenberg argued instead that material advantages were sought by foreigners. For instance, the important problem of reprisals discussed by many eonsi/ia was direcdy related to the citizenship of people whom a com­ mune had to protect: those eonsilia which addressed the problem proved the primacy of economic and commercial concerns in applications for citizenship.3 I am less convinced by the argument that people aiming to obtain citizenship wanted to avoid taxes by receiving temporary fiscal exemptions usually granted to new citizens. Those exemptions were not as frequent as it is commonly thought, and they were granted to foreigners called to migrate in order to exercise specific professions. In fact, foreigners obtaining citizenship had been assiduous taxpayers for many years, and they were credited with remaining so. Although obtaining political visibility may not have been the aim of humble artisans, it was nevertheless the major privilege of a full citizen, and, for this reason, citizenship was sought by people used to political action and commitment in other cities. Therefore, the question "Who rules ? " or "Who has the best chances to exercise power, " as Walter Eder puts it, was of great interest both to eives and to novi ewes. Of course, political life in medieval city-states differed considerably from situations in the large ancient cities which Whitehead and Eder describe. Nevertheless, we may consider various problems in light of these situations. They concern the notion of council, the authority of magistrates, the delibera­ tive and decision-making processes, the identification of citizens, the formation of ruling groups al problems that we find at the very center of the political debate in medieval city-states. In examining these issues, it is appropriate to emphasize the following points. One hesitates to think that there existed an ideal size or numbers which rendered a body politically able. In the case of Florence, as both David Herlihy and Riccardo Fubini describe it, full citizens might be defined as those who were scrutinized and recognized as capable of ocupying a position in -

3. P. Riesenberg, "The Consilia Literature: A Prospectus," Manuscripta, 6 (1962) 3-22. Id., "Citizenship at Law in Late Medieval Italy," Viator, S (1974) 333-346.

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one of the three major Colleges of the government. Paradoxically, while around the year 1400 barriers were set to slow access to governmental posi­ tion, one observes an increase in the number of qualified persons, and particu­ larly of citizens qualifying for the first time to be members of the Three Colleges. This "political class" thus grew from 3,000 citizens in the middle of the fourteenth century to 5,000 or 6,000 citizens in the last decades of the century and the beginning of the fifteenth, while the general population was only one-third its previous size. Is this evidence of "democratization" ? Fubini shows that it was not, as the oligarchy reinforced its power at the core of this political class. The problem, therefore, becomes that of the constitution of ruling groups . Fubini discusses not only the notion of council, but the various tasks assigned to, or relationships maintained between, the traditional councils of the city and new institutions which acquired legitimacy around 1400. Besides the traditional - local or foreign - personnel of the Consigli opportuni and the magistrates related to them, there emerged what was later called the reggimento, which was legitimized - and thus institutionalized - by the Parlamento of the years of crisis following the Ciompi revolution. Certainly an important step was taken in the constitutional history of the Florentine city-state with the institutionalization of this regimen: a body of citizens scrutinized and approved to become part of the government. Permanent committees were installed during this period and introduced the idea and the practice of a necessary continuity in diplomatic or military matters. On this point, we find discrepancies between the respective interpre­ tations of Herlihy and Fubini. Should we interpret the growing power of these committees as resulting from the lack of experience among an enlarged body of politically active citizens, or from ability of these committees and of their members to ensure duties requiring continuity? Contradictory images arise out of these redistributed functions and institutions: On the one hand the "good, and prudent citizens," able to direct wisely communal politics through the traditional town councils, and on the other, secretive, expert, but also rapacious and inhonesti "statuali." In conclusion, I would like to make two last points. The boundaries of the ruling groups, composed of citizens qualified to share political power at various levels of responsibilities and for determined magistracies, are not defined by strict fiscal requirements in Florence. Rather than mere levels of wealth or of taxes, it is the duration of the contributive capacity that becomes an important criterion, opening, or closing, access to supreme magistracies and participation in the reggimento, as the laws of 1404 show. Is it that Florentines believed more in the assiduity and fidelity of taxpayers, in their rooting in Florentine soil, than in the amount of paid taxes and the contributive power? Herlihy makes another important point when he expresses his amaze­ ment before the ritual and useless reading of names performed in a solemn way in the presence of the Priori: These were mostly names of children, sons

Klapisch-Zuber: Commentary

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of qualified citizens, included in the electoral purses on occasion ever since their infancy. When drawn, they had obviously to be put back into the purses, and the reading went on, . . . only to be repeated some months later! This boring ceremony defined the ruling class, which, by the public reading of a series of names of political citizens-to-be, fixed its future boundaries, thus affirming its permanence, as well as its specific status and "distinction" among less valued citizens. At least, child citizens whose names were read participated symbolically in politics, and the civitas projected itself into the future. Like with new citizens expressing their attachment to the fortune and the physical permanence of their city by paying taxes and buying a house or land, we should not ignore the civic concern behind this public performance; apparently meaningless or obsolete political rites shaped the traits of the future body of citizens.

The Exercise of Power in the Roman Republic

ERICH S . GRUEN

ESPLENDENT ELITE X

governed the Roman Republic. They exhibited their distinction to the public with regularity, through dramatic display at funeral ceremonies. A son or relative of the deceased would deliver a stirring eulogy that recalled his public achievements. And his funeral train included not only a lifelike image of the person, but similar images of all his ancestors who had attained state honors, decked out with insignia of rank and dignity, emphasizing family continuity in public service. The celebratory oration set the deeds of the dead man in the direct line of his forefathers' glorious accomplishments.1 The hold exercised by illustrious families with a long record of magisterial office and state leadership was powerful. As Cicero remarked, a man like L. Domitius Ahenobarbus had, in effect, been consul designatus at birth.2 And he twisted the compliment into an insult against L. Calpurnius Piso: "You sneaked into high office by mistake on the recommen­ dation of smoky imagines . . . the people elected a Piso, not that Piso; the praetorship was conferred on your ancestors."3 The oligarchy was neither strictly hereditary nor rigidly exclusivist. Recent studies have reminded us that the ranks of the nobility did admit new men, that individual families rose and fell, that gaps existed in their political success over generations, that many new men achieve·d offices out of reach to their fathers and unattained by their sons.4 Nobilitas was a flexible term, not con­ fined to a closed caste with a fixed membership of privileged clans.s Neverthe-

1. Polyb. 6.53 54; d. Sallust lug. 85.4. 2. Cic. Ad An. 4. 8a.2 : "qui tot anos quot habet designatus consul fuerit." Cf. Cic. Pro Mur. 15-16, 53. 3. Cic. In Pis. 1 ·2: "obrepsisti ad honores errore hominum . . . Piso est a populo Ro­ mano factus, non iste Piso; praetura item rnaioribus delata est tuis." 4. See P. A. Brunt, "Nobilitas and Novitas," J. of Rom . St. (henceforth JRS) 72 ( 1 982 ) 15-17, and the lengthy treatment by K. Hopkins and G. Burton, "Political Succession in the Late Republic (249-50 B.C.)," in K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983) 3 1 ·1 19. On the entrance of novi homil1l/s into the late Republican senate, see T. P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 BC 14 A.D. (Oxford, 1971), passim. 5. The view of M. Gelzer, The Roman Nobility (New York, 1969) 27 40, that nobilitas was technically confined to those with consular ancestors, is plainly too restrictive. Modifica­ tions by A. Afzelius, "Zur Definition der romischen Nobilitat vor der Zeit Ciceros," Clasica et Mediaevalia 7 (1945) 150 200, who supposes a change toward exclusivity, are inadequate. -

252 Politics and Conflict

less, a general hierarchy of privilege prevailed. The Roman social system assumed it, fostered it, and perpetuated it. Chances of success corresponded closely to the offices obtained by ancestors. Consular families held highest esteem. Their members possessed principal advantage in seeking honores and wielding power. Similar but lesser advantage went to those whose relatives had gained praetorian status. Accessibility to newcomers increased in the lower magistracies and the lower echelons of the senate. Romans respected gradations of rank. The higher the position reached by a family, the greater the likelihood of its continuity in leadership.' The relative availability of lesser senatorial status should not obscure the fact that an inner elite maintained itself in power and carried heaviest weight in councils of state. Newer families, even when rising on the magisterial ladder, often claimed noble lineage and assimilated their houses to the great clans of the past. That practice only reconfirmed and solidified the ethos of a traditional nobility. The authority of Rome's inner elite withstood challenge throughout most of the Republic. Its experience has generated countless studies. The nature of upper-class politics in Rome retains its fascination, stimulating debate, dis­ agreement, and divergent interpretations. Amidst the voluminous literature, however, surprisingly little attention has been paid to a matter of the most central importance: the means whereby the ruling class exercised power. Insofar as the question has been addressed, a single answer seemed to sufce. Ties of patronage and clientage linked the upper and lower levels of society. A network of interlocking relationships and mutual obligations guar­ anteed protection for dependents and ensured ascendancy for the powerful.7 The existence of such ties is clear and unequivocal. But the impact that they had on the actual workings of politics and the exercise of power on the public scene can be questioned - and has been increasingly questioned in recent

The nonteclmical character of the term is righdy sen by Brunt, "Nobi/itas and Novitas" (n. 4) 1-17. Gelzer's view is defended, most recendy, by L. Burckhardt, "The Political Elite of the Roman Republic: Conunents on Recent Discussion of the Concepts Nobilitas and Homo Novus," " Historia 39 (1990) 80-84. 6. The findings of Hopkins and Burton, "Political Succession" (n. 4), despite exagger­ ated claims of novelty, essentially confirm standard assumptions. So, for example, two-thirds of consuls in the last two centuries of the Republic had immediate consular ancestors (p. 56); sons of consuls were more successful than sons of praetors (p. 59); a father's high status improved his son's likelihood of political succes (pp. 62-63); sons of mere senators had a lesser chance of improving status than sons of praetors, and sons of nonsenators had a greater chance of becoming mere senators than of becoming praetor or consul (p. 67); sons and grandsons of senators had betr prospects of a political career than mere newcomers (p. 1 12). The study does, however, perform a valuable service in quantifying the data and in calling attention to the large numbers of men who did not follow the path or failed to achieve the distinction of their fathers. 7. The pioneering work is Gelzer's Roman Nobility (n. 5), passim and esp. 62-123 . For other representative treatments, se L. R. Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley, 1949) 41 -47; H. H. Scullard, Roman Politics, 220-150 B. e. (Oxford, 1 950) 8-30; E. Badian, Foreign Clientelae, 264-70 B.e. (Oxford, 1958) 1-13; and the full-scale study of N. Rouland, Pouvoir politique et dependance personelle dans I'antiquiti romaine (Brussels, 1979), pasim, and esp. 94-1 10, 223-343. Se now Burckhardt, "Political Elite" (n. 5) 93-98.

Gruen: Exercise of Power 253

years. B The doubts are justified. Attainment of high office sufices as an example: humble clients could hardly bring much clout to the comitia centuriata, which elected the top magistrates and whose structure gave decisive voice to the wealthy. Yet even if clientela is made the linchpin of political power, it serves only to highlight rivalry and divisiveness among the governing classes, and not the means whereby they controlled public affairs. The scholarly literature, in fact, has concentrated almost exclusively on aristocratic competition, that is, on what drove the nobiles apart, rather than on what held them together. The picture is skewed and the focus misplaced. Debate on the nature, objectives, and instruments of political competition in the Roman Republic has exercised ingenuity and imagination for more than a century. Prevailing opinion through most of that period saw an ideological conflict, a fundamental cleavage between "the senatorial party" and "the popular party," or, by borrowing - and misapplying - ancient terminology, between optimates and populares.' Nor is this approach by any means dead. More recent and more sophisticated reformulations regard the state as funda­ mentally divided between those who sought to protect senatorial control and those who held a brief for popular interests, a split, if not in ideology, at least in political discourse. to In reaction to the more simplistic dichotomy of an earlier scholarship, a different model gained favored status. Researchers conceived the operation of Republican politics in terms of aristocratic factions, major groupings of sena­ torial families linked by kinship, marriage, and amicitia to gain office and au­ thority for their members, while thwarting the parallel aims of rival blocs. Whether the factions were postulated as continuous and enduring groups or as short-term arrangements, fluid and shifting in personnel, the "faction thesis" claimed numerous adherents.ll That approach has now come Under heavy

8. C. Meier, Res Publica Amisa (Wiesbaden, 1 966) 24-45 and passim; M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983) 41; F. Mjllar, "The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic, 200-151 B.C. , " JRS 74 (1984) 16-1 7; M. Beard and M. Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (Ithaca, 1985) 62-63; R. Develin, The Practice of Politics at Rome, 366-167 B.C. (Brusls, 1985) 127-1 31. Wholesale criticism now by Brunt, The Fall of the Ro­ man Republic and Related Esys (Oxford, 1988) 30-32, 382-442. 9. The classic formulation is T. Mommsen, Romische Geschichte (Berlin, 1903·1904), esp. Boks IV and V. 10. Cf. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (London, 1971) 92-95; C. Nicolet, Les Gracques (Paris, 1967) 109-1 12; Finley, Politics (n. 8) 98-1 1 3; Beard and Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (n. 8) 68; Brunt, Fall of Republic (n. 8) passim. As a variant applicable to the third century B.C., F. Cassola, I gruppi politici romani nel III secolo a.C. (Trieste, 1962), pasm, postulated a running contest between mercantile-expansionist interests and agrarian conservatives. 1 1 . The fountainhead for much of this work is F. MUnzer, ROmische Adelsparteien und Adelsfamilien (Stuttgart, 1 920). Landmark publications in English include R. Syme, The Ro­ man Revolution (Oxford, 1939), and H. H. Scullard, Roman Politics, 220-150 B.C. (Oxford, 1951). Among more recent works, se D. C. Earl, Tiberius Gracchus: A Study in Politics (Brussels, 1 963); E. S. Gruen, Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 149-78 B.C. (Cambridge, Massachuset, 1968); J. Briscoe, "Eastern Policy and Senatorial Politics," Historia 1 8 (1969) 4970.

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fire in recent years as too schematic, lacking in evidence, and neglectful of the larger issues facing Roman society,11 Some offer an alternative model that has political ambitions channeled through smaller groupings centered on power­ ful individuals or particular families.u But a growing consensus shifts the em­ phasis altogether, from organization among aristocrats to popular sovereignty and the influence of popular interests on the workings of politics.14 That con­ sensus bids fair to become orthodoxy. The several contributions, however diverse and discordant, address a common issue: the nature of political competition in the Roman Republic. This holds also for the present preoccupation with popular influence in state decisions, for that influence is seen largely as the outcome of contending interests competing for popular favor. Insofar as attention concentrates on the ambitions and rivalries that divided the upper classes, it becomes more difcult to explain their long-term dominance and their exercise of power. A different investigation needs to be pursued: how did the nobiles sustain solidarity, hold a collective purpose, and maintain political ascendancy? The stimulus to unity rather than the mechanism for fragmentation demands inquiry. That task is formidable, but a logical subject suggests itself as a start: the relationship of aristocratic politics to the pressures of popular interest. Con­ verging opinion now focuses on that relationship as the key to understanding Republican political behavior. The theory will benefit from scrutiny and reevaluation. To be sure, the populace could make its needs felt - and not just as clients of individuals or factions. And Roman leaders had to take those needs into account, at least on occasion. But the postulate that nobiles framed policies and actions to cater to that constituency misses the mark. It will be more fruitful to adopt a different mode of analysis: the exploitation of popular discourse to entrench the authority of the establishment. Space permits only a partial treatment even of this subject. The study proposes to examine a few select instances of ostensible popular pressure in legislation, in institutional change, and in public policy. Emphasis falls not on 12. Se for example, Meier, Res Publica Amissa (n. 8) pasim; BrUnt, "Amicitia in the Late Roman Republic," Proc. Cambr. Philo/. Soc. 191 (1965) 1-20; Millar, "Political Character" (n. 8) 15; and the extensive asults by Develin, Practice of Politics (n. 8) pasim and Brunt, Fall of Republic (n. 8) 36·40, 443-502. A good summary of the controversy and recent literature may be found now in J. A. North, "Democratic Politics in Republican Rome," Past and Present 126 (1990) 1 -1 6. 1 3 . Cf. Wiseman, Roman Political Life, 90 B . C. -A . D. 69 (Exeter, 1985) 3-19; Develin, Practice of Politics (n. 8) 96-102, 307-315. 14. Finley, Politics (n. 8) 70, 98-1 01; Millar, "Political Character" (n. 8) 1 -1 9; Beard and Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (n. 8) 51-52, 64-65; Hopkins and Burton, "Political Succession" (n. 4) 107, 1 1 3-114; P. J. J. Vanderbroeck, Popular Leadership and Collective Be­ havior in the La� Roman Republic, ca. 80-50 B. C. (Amsterdam, 1987) 161-1 73; Millar, "Poli­ tics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (1 50-90 B.C.)," JRS 76 (1986) 1 -1 1 ; Brunt, FaU of Republic (n. 8) 19-23; A. W. Lintott, "Democracy in the Middle Republic," ZeitschT. fUr Rechtsgesch. (Savigny-Stiftung), Rom. Abt. 104 (1987) 34-52; Millar, "Political Power in Mid­ Republican Rome: Curia or Comitium?" JRS 79 (1989) 142-149. For North, "Democratic Politics" (n. 12) 1 8-21 , the popular will served as ultimate arbiter in the most controversial and important public matters.

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the turmoil and upheaval of the late Republic, but on a more stable and setled era, primarily the years from the Hanibalic War to the Gracchi, thereby the better to discern established political practice. The examples provide serviceable test cases. They can be interpreted as fostering popular goals or, less obviously but perhaps - more accurately, as promoting aristocratic solidarity.

AMB ITUS Electoral proceedings and electoral reform may serve as a beginning. The assemblies' right to vote men into office was a cherished prerogative, identified by Polybius as a feature of popular sovereignty and stressed in recent works as an expression of the people's voice.15 The proposition needs testing. Malpractice in elections worried Romans from an early stage. Record survives of a few leges de amb;tu in the pre-Gracchan era, designed to curb illegitimate influence in the process. Did such measures aim at protecting the interests of the commons and assuring them determination of the results? The bills' contents do not survive in detail, but important clues remain. Livy records the first lex de amb;tu under the year 358 B.C., a tribunician law but one promoted by the authority of the patres.1' The measure targeted particular practices and practitioners. Livy analyzes it properly: the sponsors sought to curb the aspirations of nov; homines who canvassed the markets and rural villages.17 Far from advancing the interests of the plebs, the statute reinforced the traditional system. The solicitation of votes would be restricted largely to Rome, thus enhancing the advantage of the old political class who knew those voters and limiting the opportunities of new men to gather support outside the traditional areas.18 The attitude receives striking confirmation a

15. Polyb. 6.14.4, 6.1 4.9; Beard and Crawford, Rome jn the Late Republic (n. 8) 64; Millar, "Political Character" (n. 8) 11. 16. Livy 7.15.12: "Et de ambitu ab C. Poetilio tribuno plebis auctoribus patribus tum primum ad populum latum est." An earlier tribunician measure, allegedly designed to eliminate ambitio, is placed by Livy in 432 and seen as part of the patrician-plebeian struggle: 4.25.9-14. But the only provision reported is a ban on whitened togas for candidates I That prohibition, if it ever existed, obviously did not last. The authenticity of the notice has itself be called into question: R. M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on LillY. Books 1 -5 (Oxford, 1965) 574-575. And the measure, even in Livy's eyes, failed to qualify as an ambitus law. That it provided any advan­ tage for the plebs can also be doubted. The tribunician authors may well be consular tribunes rather than tribunj plebis; so L. Fascione, Crimen e quaestio ambitus nell'eta repubblicana (Milan, 1984) 20-24. 17. Livy 7.15.13: "Eaque rogatione novorum maxime hominum ambitionem, qui nundinas et conciliabula obire soliti erant, compressam credebant. " P. Fraccaro, "Catoniana," Stud; Storid 3 (1910) 24 8, denies the authenticity of the law, without good reason. Others have questioned the assertion that it had now homines as its targets: G. De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani II, 2nd ed. (Aorence, 1960) 222; R. W. Husband, "The Law of Poetelius on Corrupt Practices at Elections," Clas. Joum. 10 (1914-15) 376-377. Even if that interpretation is anachronistic, however, it discloses the understanding of second· and first-century annalistic writers. which is the more revealing. 18. Cf. Develin, Practice of Politics (n. 8) 1 30, 135; Fascione, Crimen e quaestio (n. 16) 24-27.

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half-century later. In 3 1 4 the dictator C. Maenius conducted a sweeping investigation into a variety of offenses, including charges of illegal collusion in obtaining magisterial office.19 Roman nobiles, sumoned on these charges, reacted with sharp indignation and with cogent reasoning. They denied that such accusations were even applicable to members of their class: only novi homines had to resort to electoral malpractice; nobiles had ready access to high office, unless fraudulently obstructed.lo That statement conveyed the stance of the aristocracy candidly and accu­ rately. Honores constituted their birthright. Legislation against illegitimate canvassing aimed to hamstring those outside the inner circle, not to promote the principle of free elections. The motivation can be presumed to have persisted. Two leges de ambitu stand on record in the second century, in 1 8 1 and 1 59, but there is no evidence on clauses or content.l1 Scholars cite them to show that personal connections and ties of dependence were inadequate to ensure election to the upper magistracies.ll That misses the main point. Novi homines lacked such a network of relationships and hence needed to engage in more aggressive campaigning. Nobiles had no comparable needs. Ambitus laws, by creating difficulties for the parvenus, enhanced the political security of the powerful. There is no reason to doubt that the second-century measures had similar objectives.l3 Controversy and public debate swirled about the issue of electoral malpractice in that period. Cato the Elder delivered a speech, "De Ambitu," perhaps in connection with one or the other of the two leges. Only a single fragment survives, unhelpful in discerning substance.14 Common assWIlption has Cato as proponent of the measure in 1 8 1 , in accord with his general moralistic posture. But, quite apart from the absence of chronological context, it would be hazardous to infer that Cato advocated ambitus legislation that might ar­ rest the advance of novi homines.ls That the issue provoked dispute is, in any 19. Livy 9.26.9: "coitiones honorum adipiscendorum causa factas. " T. Mommsen,

RCimisches Strafrecht (Leipzig, 1 899) 668 (n. 3), argued that the notice was unreliable and influenced by later experience with the quaestio de ambitJt; d. De Sanctis, Stona dei Romani II

(n. 17) 22-23. If it does reflect second- and first-century attitudes, however, that makes it the more valuable for our purposes. 20. Livy 9.26.10-1 1 : "Negare nobiIium id crimen es quibus, si nulla obstetur fraude, pateat via ad honorem, sed hominum novorum. " 2 1 . !.ivy 40.19.11; Per. 47. 22 . MiHar, "Political Character" (n. 8) 1 1 ; Develin, Practice of Politics (n. 8) 130. 23. Observe !.ivy's notice that the law of 181 was sponsored by the consuls /IX aUl:tontate .senatus: 40.19.1 1 . 2 4 . Cato, 1 3 6 Malcovati (E. Malcovati [ed.J, Oratorum RomanoTNm frarmenta liberae rei publicae, 4th ed. [Turin, 1 976J, henceforth ORp). 25. Cato's stance on ambitus and his spe opposing amendment of the IeJc Baebia, which prescribed four and six praetors in alternating years, have often be combined. Since one of the two consuls of 181 was M. Baebius Tamphilus, it is tempting to amalgamate the two bills, with the provision to reduce the number of praetorships as part of an efrt to curb ambitus; so Fraccaro, "Catoniana" (n. 17) 241-249. But the hypothesis is unproved and uncertain; d. A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor ( Oxford, 1978) 329-33 1 . D. Kienast, Cato der Zensor (Heidelberg, 1955) 92-93, building on Fraccaro's position, attractively suggests that reducing praetorian numbers would have hindered the advancement of novi homines. But it is hard to imagine that

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case, plain. An unusual amount of illegal electioneering, so it was claimed, took place in 1 66, causing the senate to hold a session on the Capitoline.I' And, at some point in this period, a capital penalty was attached to the sanctions against electoral briberyP References to ambitio can be found in the comedies of Plautus, thus attesting not so much to the frequency of the practice as to its prominence in political argument and accusation.18 Campaign excesses evidendy became a familiar feature of public discourse. Enforcement of the ambitus laws may have been less than rigorous.29 That was of second­ ary importance. The issue lent itself to pious and moralistic pronouncements, giving opportunity for nobiles to declare their commitment to free and fair elections - while ensuring their own hold over the traditional voting citizenry.30 THE B ALLOT LAWS Secret ballot was reckoned as a cornerstone of democracy. Voice voting characterized Roman assembly procedures until the later second century, thus allowing intimidation and control by the powerful. A series of leges tabellariae then secured passage in a single generation, reversing previous practice and establishing the written ballot as a permanent institution. The lex Gabinia of 1 3 9 inaugurated the reform with a measure that applied to the electoral assembly. There followed a lex Cassia in 1 3 7 on trials before the people, a lex Papiria in 1 3 1 on legislative assemblies, and a lex Coelia in 107 on perduellio hearings.31 To the ancients, this reform represented the quintessential founda­ tion of libertas for the people. The nobiles, we are told, looked on secret bal-

a reduction from six to four in alternate years would have had much impact on that score. Cf. Develin, Practice of Politics (n. 8) 136. 26. Obseq. 12: " Comitia cu m ambitiosissime fierent et ob hoc senatus in Capitolio . haberetur." 27. Polyb. 6.56.4. 28. E.g. Plautus, Amph. 69-78; Poen. 36-39; Tnn. 1033. The passage in the Amph;tryon that appears to make reference to a specific lex has ben «djudged by some a later interpola­ tion dating from the 150s; H. B. Mattingly, "The First Period of Plautine Revival," Latomus 19 (1960) 237-240; M. McDonnell, "Ambitus and Plautus' Amphit'fUo 65-81," Am. J. of Philol. 107 (1986) 564-576. That would not affect the case made here. 29. Cf. Plautus, Tnn. 1033: "Ambitio iam more sanemst, liberast a legibus." 30. Mention might be made in this connection of the series of leges sumptuariae passed during the second century B.C. In the view of W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republi­ can Rome, 327-70 B.C. (Oxford, 1979) 89, they had as objective the curbing of illicit influence in elections. If so, such measures might also be directed against nouveaux riches who offered larges as an electioneering device. It is suggestive that the leges sumptuariae appeared in close chronological proximity to two ambitus laws, namely the lex Orchia of 1 8 1 and the lex Fannia of 161. Bu� the purpose of sumptuary legislation remains in dispute. For other explanations, se D. Daube, Aspects of Roman Law (Edinburgh, 1969) 1 1 7-128; I. Sauerwein, Dis Leges Sumptuariae als riimische Massnahme gegen tkn Sittenverfall (Berlin, 1 970), passim; G. Clemente, "Le leggi sul lusso e la sociera rornana tra III e II secolo a.C.," in A. Giardina and A. Schiavone (eds.), SociBra romana e produzione schiavistica II (Bari, 1981) 1-14, 301-304; M. Bonamente, "Legi suntuarie e Ie loro motivanoni," in M. Pavan (ed.), Tra Grecia e Roma (Rome, 1980) 67-91. The matter requires separate treatment. 3 1 . Cic. De Leg. 3.35-36. Other references are in T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (henceforth MRR) I (Qeveland, 195 1), under the relevant years.

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lot as the destruction of their auctoritas, a means whereby the populus was es­ tranged from the senate, and the most important afs became subject to the whims of the mob.32 The people, by contrast, adjudged the tabella as vindex and a symbol of popular sovereignty.33 Those are strong statements. Descendants of the men who sponsored the measures and others celebrated the deeds on their coinage, basking in the glory of statesmen who claimed to have brought libertas to the Roman people.34 Modern scholars have followed suit. Almost without exception they hail the ballot laws as a turning point in the exercise of popular prerogative and as a major item on the agenda of those who advocated the interests of the people against the stranglehold of the oligarchy.35 The consensus will benefit from reassessment. One might note at the outset that the advocates of these bills, insofar as they are known to us, were hardly radical reformers with a commitment to reshape the political structure. L. Cassius Longinus Ravilla, author of the measure on iudicia populi, came

libertatis

from a consular family, rose through the consulship and censorship himself, and developed the reputation of a harsh judge and severe censor, a man known not for generosity but for rigorous integrity.3' Among the victims of his censorship was young C. Gracchus.37 Cassius, moreover, received strong and decisive support for his ballot measure from Rome's most formidable political figure, P. Scipio Aemilianus, overbearing the opposition of a tribune and seeing the bill through the assembly.31 Scipio made a point of cultivating his image as popularis but hardly qualifies as a genuine champion of popular interests.3' The lex tabellaria itself was certainly advertised as a democratic milestone and earned Cassius the repute of a popularis even, in hostile ret­ rospect, as a dissenter from his family and class.40 But the rest of his career belies that attribute. C. Papirius Carbo, author of the ballot law for legislative -

32. Cic. De Leg. 3.34: " Quis autem non sentit oqrnem auctoritatem optimatium tabellariam legem abstulisse? " De Amidt. 41: "Videre iam videor populum a senatu disiunetum, multitudine arbitrio res maxumas agi"; Pro Sestio 103. 33. Cic . De Leg. Agrar. 2.4: "tabellam vindicem tacitae libertatis" ; Pro Sestio 103: "Tabellaria lex ab L. Cassio ferebatur; populus Jibertatern agi putabat suam"; Pro Plane. 16: "Populo grata est tabella . . . datque earn libertatem ut, quod velint, faciant"; Schol. Bob. 135 St.; d. C. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during. the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge, 1950) 50. 34. Se the discussion, with photographs, of L. R. Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies from the Hannibalic War to the Dictatorship of Caesar (An Arbor, 1966) 35-39. 35. Se the list of works cited by Rouland, PaUl/air politique (n. 7) 240 n. 66. Add also J. A. o . Larsen, "The Judgment of Antiquity on Democracy," Class. Philo/. 49 (1954) 1 0-1 1 ; Brunt, Social Conflicts (n. 1 0 ) 65-66; Finley, Politics (n. 8 ) 112-113; Millar, "Political Charac­ ter" (n. 8) 1 8 . 3 6 . Cic. Brutus 97; Veil. Pat. 2 . 1 1 0.1; Val . Max. 3.7.9; 8.1. damn.7; Asconius 45-46 C . 37. Plut . C.Gracch. 2.4. 38. Cic. Brutus 97; De Leg. 3.37. 39. Cf. D. C. Earl, "Terence and Roman Politics," Historia II (1962) 477-485; A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford, 1967) 26-34, 1 82-1 84. 40. Cic. De Leg. 3.35: "a nobili homine lata, L. Cassio sed pace familiae dixerim, dissidente a bonis atque omnis rumusculos populari ratione aucupante." The characterization, it is important to remember, comes in an extended conservative tirade. Cf. also Cic . Brutus 97. ,

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assemblies in 131, also belonged to a prominent political family. The Papirii had members in Rome's highest civil and religious offices from the earliest years of the Republic. Carbo's branch of that gens became especially con­ spicuous in his generation, and Carbo himself reached the consulship in 120. In addition to the lex tabellaria, he took other popular positions as tribune, expressed strong backing for the Gracchi, became a member of the Gracchan agrarian commission and a fierce opponent of Scipio Aemilianus. That should be enough to undermine any notion of a continuous "reform party." Indeed Carbo, after reaching the consulship, defended C. Gracchus' slayer at his trial and, like Cassius Ravilla, cannot be typecast as a consistent radical.41 The other two ballot measures were sponsored by novi homines, A. Gabinius in 139 and C. Coelius Caldus in 107. Of the former nothing further is known; the latter went on to a distinguished career, the first in his family to reach the consulship. It would be hazardous to ascribe Coelius' political success to his promotion of a lex tabellaria, any more than Gabinius' failure to attain high office should be ascribed to his lex tabellaria. To be sure, an aspiring politician might take up a popularis posture as tribune and subsequendy follow a more conservative line. But posture is not to be confused with substance. More fundamental matters were at stake than the advancement of individual careers . The ballot laws gained approbation and acceptance. No evidence suggests efforts at repeal or any public challenge to the new system. H indeed these statutes struck at the auctoritas of the patres, they do not show discernible ef­ fects. Gabinius' law on secret ballot for electoral assemblies entered the books in 139. What impact did it have? Consular elections in the next quarter century offer revealing results. Of the fifty-one consuls elected, forty had predecessors with the same nomen and cognomen in that office. Nine others belonged to consular gentes.41 One could claim senatorial ancestry.43 And only one qualifies as a novus homo: P. Rupilius, cos. 132, who attained that office with the active assistance of Scipio Aemilianus.44 Plainly, the written ballot did nothing to shake the ruling class' hold on the voting populace. That fact needs to be confronted, not ignored or denied. Few have faced up to it. How does one account for the ostensible discrepancy between a measure designed to open up the political process and results that perpetuated traditional patterns? One possible approach offers itself: to argue that the leges tabellariae dealt a blow to the nobiles, but that the latter found ways to circumvent the legislation and to prolong their ascendancy. Cicero's text in the De Legibus gives support. He proposes a compromise measure in his set 41 . On Carbo, se particularly Cic. Brutus 1 03-1 06. On his actions as tribune and con­ sul: Broughton, MRR (n. 31) I, 502, 523. Further discussion and references are in Gruen, Roman Politics (n. 1 1 ) 64-66, 99-100. 42. Namely M'. Aquillius, cos. 129; T. Anus Rufus, cos. 128; L. Cornelius Cinna, cos. 127; M. Plautius Hypsaeus, cos. 125; C. Sextius Calvinus, cos. 124; C. Fannius, cos. 122; Q. Marcius Rex, cos. 118; L. Licinius Geta, cos. 1 1 6; M. Aemilius Seaurus, cos. 1 1 5 . The fifty one include one suffect consul. 43 . M. Perpema, cos. 1 30, had a relative who was a senatorial legate in 168. 44. Cic. De Amicit. 73 .

260 Politics and Conflict

of suggested laws: the written ballot will be retained but must be shown on request to leading citizens; hence the people will have their libertas and the boni will retain their influence.45 In elaboration of this idea, Cicero explains that it would do away with al statutes passed afterward (that is, after the leges tabellariae) designed to close loopholes and protect the suffrage - namely, statutes that forbade anyone to inspect a ballot, question a voter, or intervene in the process, culminating in Marius' law of 1 1 9 which narrowed the voting bridges and left less room for men to intimidate or influence the electors.'" That passage clearly implies that efforts were made to dilute the effectiveness of the secret ballot by exerting pressure at the ballot box. Hence Cicero's proposal intended only to restore in legitimate form that prior practice.47 On this analysis an explanation can be offered for continued dectoral success by the aristocracy: patrons exercised surveillance of their clients at the balloting through agents who examined voting tablets, browbeat electors, and helped to determine the outcome.48 In this fashion the obligations of clientage survived the introduction of the secret ballot. The analysis seems plausible. But fundamental problems stand in the way. The reconstruction presupposes that elections were normally decided through the mobilization of clientelae for leading figures, families, and factions. That presupposition is shaky and unproved.4' The comitia centuriata, which elected men to the higher magistracies, guaranteed a preponderance of weight to substantial landowners, men of wealth and standing.50 Such persons did not normally belong to cadres of clients committed to particular houses of the nobility.51 Nor would they be readily intimidated by custodes peering at their ballots or pressuring their vote. If clientela did not determine elections anyway, then how would ballot reform afect them? An altogether different analysis is worth considering. Introduction of the secret ballot had a decidedly popularis ring. Hence political leaders could gain 45. Cic. De Leg. 3 .38-39: "Habeat sane populus tabellam quasi vindicem libel'tatis, dum modo haec optimo cuique et gravissimo civi ostendatur ultroque offeratur . . . quam ob rem lege nostra libertatis species datur, auctoritas bonorum retinetur." The model for this proposal probably lies in Plato's Laws; cf. C. Nicolet, "Ciceron, Platon'et le vote secret," Historia 19 (1970) 39-66. 46. Cic. De Leg. 3.38: "ut omnes leges tollat, quae postea latae sunt, quae tagunt omni ratione sufagium, ne quis inspiciat tabellam, ne roget, ne appellet; pontes etiam lex Maria fecit angustos." On Marius' law, se further Pluto Mar. 4.2-4. 47. So, e.g., Wiseman, New Men (n. 4) 4. 48. Rouland, Poul/oir politique (n. 7) 309-317. 49. Se above at n.8. SO. On the operations of the comitia centuriata, se Taylor, Voting Assemblies (n. 34) 85106; E. S. Staveley, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London, 1972) 123-129; C. Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome (Berkeley, 1980) 219-224, 264-281. Of course, the centuries in the top echelons might occasionally divide over certain candidates, thus extending the process of decision to those of lesser property qualification. But there is no reason to believe that that possibility would be increased through the secret ballot. 5 1 . Livy 2.56.2-3 has the patricians complain in 472 that to give electoral power to the tribes would cheat them of electoral support from their clientes. The term here, however, refers to voters in the comitia centuriata, thus hardly dependents from the lower orders-if the claim has any historicity at all.

Gruen: Exercise of Power 261

credit for reform proposals and advance their own careers. But voting pat­ terns underwent no noticeable change - as the nobilitas undoubtedly antici­ pated. Written balots gave the electorate a sense of libertas, but the choices available to them were generally men from the same established families who had run the state for many generations. Candidates, for the most part, presented themselves in predictable patterns, and a large number of elections were, in effect, uncontested.52 When not �bject to outside influences, the voters would naturally gravitate to familiar names and traditional gentes.53 Insofar as inter­ ference with the electoral process occurred in the years following the lex tabellaria of 139, it may have come from elements outside the political elite. Subsequent measures were evidently directed at ambitus, not at optimate in­ fluence over c1ientes.S4 The closing of loopholes therefore reinforced the old order. The divide between rhetoric and reality claims attention here as elsewhere. Secret ballot became an exemplum for Iibertas, trumpeted by advocates and advertised on coinage.55 Political theorists in antiquity might deplore it as compromising the aristocracy and giving license to the mob. But the facts speak differently. The voting measures gained passage with little resistance and remained in force without recorded efforts at repeal.s, By closing off the electorate from external influence and new pressure groups, they gave advan­ tage to the traditional political class, as evidenced by the results. Leges tabellariae represent neither the democratization of the process nor a response to popular clamorP The institution manipulated the impulse for libertas while ensuring the ascendancy of the nobiles.s8 52. Cf. Develin, Practice of Politics (n. 8) 89-192. 53. Note the argument by those opposed to requiring at least one plebeian consul each year in 368: if left to their own devices, the people would elect two patricians; thus Livy 6.40.19: "Timeo," inquit, "ne si duos licebit creari patricios, neminem creatis plebeium." 54. Cic. De Leg. 3.39. Note that Marius promoted his bill on the voting pontes in the same year that he successfully blocked a lex frumentaria: Pluto M4r. 4.4. He was not engaged in advancing a popular movement. The paradoxical suggestion of P. Bicknell, .. Marius, the Metelli, and the lex Maria Tabellaria," Latomus 28 (1969) 327-348, has Marius act on behalf of the Metelli, who sought to facilitate bribery of voters. This not only contradicts Qc. De Leg. 3.39, but presumes that bribery determined the electoral success of the Metelli a family whose preeminence in these years made them least likely to require such means. 5 5 . J. Bleicken, Lex Publica (Berlin, 1975) 278-279, se the ballot laws primarily as instruments for the advancement of individual ambitions. 56. Opposition to Cassius' lex ta bellaria on trials before the asbly carne from a trio bune in 1 37. But he dropped his objections, so it was said, when Scipio Aemilianus urged its passage: Cic. Brutus 97; De Leg. 3 3 7. Only Marius' bill to narrow the voting pontes created controversy and generated vigorous resistance. But that measure too applied to judicial assem­ blies, not necesily to electoral comilia. And in the end it also received senatorial approval: Pluto Mar. 4.2-3. Pliny's generalization about contentiones engendered by a lex tabellaria lacks specific reference: Ep. 3.20.1 . 57. One might observe that the most celebrated popular measure of this period, the lex agraria of Ti. Gracchus, secured passage by the tribes in 133-two years before the introduc· tion of secret ballot into legislative asbliesl 58. It should be noted that the mid-second century also witnessed pasge of the leges Aelia et Fufia. Among the provisions of these leges was a ban on legislation during he trinundinum just prior to the anual elections: Schol. Bob. 148 Stangl; d. Macrob. 1.16.4; Dio .

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THE P O P UL US AND THE COURTS The assembly of the populus could also gather as a court. Roman magistrates had the authority to sumon the people into session to hear major criminal cases, an authority normally exercised by tribunes at the comitia tributa and in cases of political import. That function has been pointed to as yet another manifestation of popular sovereignty, a means whereby the commons could hold its officials to account.s, How valid is that interpretation? A flurry of accusations occurred in the second decade of the second century. Victorious Roman generals returned from foreign wars laden with booty and honors, only to face carping and criticism at home. Not all by any means came before a iudicium p op uli. But a few instances stand on record and can serve to test the hypothesis. Q. Minucius Thermus, consul in 193, campaigned with mixed success against the Ligurians and returned to Rome in 1 90, requesting a triumph and alleging extensive losses inflicted on the enemy. The fierce moralist M. Porcius Cato ridiculed his assertions and assaulted his character. Cato's speech, "De Falsis Pugnis," shattered the claims on a triumph, and a second speech tore into Thermus for ruthlessness against his foes, unjustified executions, sexual offenses, savagery, and perfidy. Whether the latter speech was delivered at a criminal hearing before the populus is not clear from the fragments of Cato's oration, the only surviving evidence.60 If there was a trial, Thermus must have escaped with an acquittal. In the following year he turns up again as one of the senate's decem legati sent to administer the Asian settlement after the Antiochene War. 61 Cato himself came under fire at or near this time, in 190 or 189. An accusation before the people raked up some supposed misdeeds in Cato's consulship of 1 95, inducing him to deliver a speech, "Dierum Dictarum de Consulatu Suo." Several fragments survive, most dealing with the Spanish campaigns of his consulship, but none offering a due as to the charges leveled against him. One fragment, however, suggests a motive for the prosecution: a reference to forthcoming censorial elections. This mat imply an effort by Cato's political opponents to derail his campaign for the censorship of 1 8 9.62 36.39. The aim may well have been to discourage the cultivation of voters who flocked in from the countryside to participate in elections. Cf. the analysis of-A. H. Bernstein, Tiberius Sempronius G,acchus: T,adition and Apostasy (Ithaca, 1978) 97-100. For recent bibliography, see L. A. Burckhardt, Po/itische Strategien der Optimaten in der spiJten ,iimischen Republilt. (Stuttgart, 1988) 1 8 1 . The traditional nobilitas would benefit from such discouragement. 59. Millar, "Political Character" (n. 8) 5-6; Brunt, Fall of Republic (n. 8) 20, 340-342. 60. Cato, ORF (n. 24) 59-63. Scullard, Roman Politics (n. 11) 133-134, amalgamates this with the speech "De Falsis Pugnis" (ORF 58), but they are almost certainly separate orations: Kienast, Cato der Zenso, (n. 25) 50-51 . Scullard doubts that there was a trial; Kienast asserts that there was; Astin, Cato the Censor (n. 25) 59, 63, is nonconunittal. 61 . Livy 37.55.7. 62. Cato, ORF (n. 24) 50. The fragments of the speh generally can be consulted in ORF 21-55. See P. Fraccaro, "Le fonti per il consolato di M. Porcio Catone," Studi Storid 3 (1910) 144-154. A reference to the battle of Thermopylae places the oration after 191: ORF 49. Se the comments of Scullard, Roman Politics (n. 1 1) 134; Kienast, Cato der Zenso, (n. 25)

Gruen: Exercise of Power 263

If so, the maneuver succeeded. Cato failed to be elected and had to wait another five years before standing again. But he certainly suffered no conviction at the hands of the people. 63 Another prosecution marred the fierce electoral campaigning for the censorship of 1 89. M'. Acilius Glabrio, victor over Antiochus and the Aetolians at the pivotal battle of Thermopylae in 1 9 1, returned to a hero's triumph and then offered himself, though a novus homo, at the censorial elections. But ru­ mors emerged, politics intervened, and two tribunes lodged an accusation against him. Glabrio, it was alleged, had seized booty and cash from Antiochus' envoys which had neither appeared in the triumph nor been deposited in the treasury. Cato, who had been military tribune under Glabrio at Thermopylae, spoke up as witness at the trial, noting that he remembered some gold and silver vessels taken at the camp which had not reappeared in the triumph. Glabrio, his electoral chances now irreparably damaged, dropped his candidacy. The trial advanced through two stages, but once Glabrio withdrew from the election, the populus showed reluctance to condemn him, and the tribunes abandoned their case. Cato enjoyed only a brief satisfaction. His own candidacy tainted his testimony and compromised his integrity. He too was defeated at the elections.64 Political considerations obviously infected proceedings from start to finish. The sovereign people in assembly did not even have the oppor­ tunity to render a judicial verdict. The trials of the Scipios present one of the most complex and perplexing problems in Roman Republican history. An attempt to sort out the myriad conflicts and discrepancies in the available testimony and to offer a full reconstruction would be quite inappropriate.6S This is not the place for hy­ potheses on the inconsistent evidence, the legal bases of the accusations, or the nature of the political factions that might have lined up on one side or the other. The present inquiry limits itself to the role of the iudicium populi in rendering verdicts on the Scipios. Even here the going is tough. Sources diverge on the courts before which the brothers pled their cases. L. Scipio was the first target. Charges against him involved moneys captured or exacted from Antiochus the Great and 54-56, although there is no evidence that the "Scipionic faction" was behind the prosecution; the Censor (n. 25) 60, 64-65, 69-70. 63. Cf. Plut. Comp. Arist. et Cat. 2.4; Pliny, NH 7.1 00; Vir. Il. 47.7. 64. The story is told by Livy 37.57.9-37.58 .2. A fragment of Cato's speech is in ORP (n. 24) 66 . Cf. the analysis of Kienast, Cato tkr Zsnsor (n. 25) 52-54. The precise charge re­ mains disputed. I. Shatzman, "The Roman General's Authority over Booty," Historia 21 (1972) 191 -192, rules out the accusation of fraudulent disposal of boty on grounds that the general had full discretion over the spoils of war. So also Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy, Books XXXIV-XXXVII (Oxford, 1981) 391 . But that interpretation ignores the fluidity of the issue. Much public debate in these years centered precisely upon the limits of the imperator's author­ ity over boty. Se Gruen, Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Leiden, 1990) 133-137. 65. The fullest treatments of the subject, with discordant results, are in T. Mornmsen, ROmische Porschungen II (Berlin, 1879) 41 7-510; P. Fraccaro, "I processi degli Scipioni," Stum Storici 4 (1911) 217-414; Scullard, Roman Politics (n. 11) 290-303; G. Bandelli, "I procesi degli Scipioni: Ie fonti," Index 3 (1972) 304-342 . d. Astin, Cato

264

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lands under his dominion, as well as questionable allocation of booty." In neither case did Rome possess established, regular criminal procedures. The version of Valerius Antias has two tribunes, both named Petillius, under the prodding of Cato, present a bill to the tribal assembly which authorized the senate to set up a special tribunal to try the case. The patres, after debate and controversy, duly installed the quaestio extraordinaria, which proceeded to convict Asiagenus and two of his legates.67 An altogether different tradition, however, derived from Nepos and is preserved by Aulus Gellius. In that account, a tribune, C. Minucius Augurinus, brought accusation before the assembly and imposed a fine on L. Scipio.68 No compelling reason argues a preference for one or the other version. That two trials were held before two separate bodies in two separate years is unlikely. Perhaps the quaestio delivered a conviction and Minucius proposed a fine before the assembly. On any reconstruction, the role of the populus is marginal and secondary. The sequel is enveloped in drama and rhetoric. L. Scipio suffered convic­ tion and a heavy fine, which he stubbornly refused to pay, claiming that he possessed no public property and little private property. The college of tribunes, with one exception, approved the decision to haul the convicted defendant off to prison. Intervention by a single tribune, Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, spared him that ignominy. Gracchus put aside his personal enmity toward the Scipios for the good of the state: it would be unseemly for Rome to incarcerate the hero of Magnesia." L. Scipio thereby emerged a free man. The story of his financial hardship warrants litde credence. He proceeded to celebrate lavish games in 1 86 and to stand for the censorship in 184.70 The acusations in 1 8 7 tarnished his reputation but did not derail his career.71 Africanus was obliged to defend himself before the people. So, at least, our entangled tradition appears to suggest. Valerius Antias preserves a suspi­ ciously familiar account, which begins with the Petillii bringing charges at Cato's instigation and concludes with Ti. Gracchus intervening against the wishes of his fellow tribunes, to bring a halt to proceedings against the great man. In the meantime, Africanus had already disarmed the opposition by yet 66. Livy 3 8.54.3, 38.55.5-8; Gellius 4.18 .7-8, 6.19.8; Zon. 9.20; Val. Max. 5.3.2c, 8 . 1 . damn. 1. 67. Livy 38.54.1-38 .55.7. 68. Gelus 6.19. 69. Livy 3 8 .58-60; Gellius 6.19; cf. Cic. De Provo Cons. 1 8; Plut. Cato 15.2; Vir. Ill. 53 .2; Val. Max. 4.1.8, 5.3.2c, 8.1. damn.1. A variant version has Africanus burst in at the last moment, arrive just as his brother was being dragged off to jail, and even attack the tribunes physically: Livy 38 .56.8-9. 70. Livy 39.22.8-10, 39.40.2. Antias' story of a fine paid by Asiagenus' friends and relatives because his resources were too meager is probably a romance: Livy 38_60.8-1 0. 71 . There is no reason to question 187 as the date. Antias puts the case in that year, and no other sources offer a date. It was a logical time, now that the eastern wars were over, to raise questions about the appropriation or misappropriation of funds. Antias eroneously places the trial after the death of Africanus (which did not come until 1 84 or 1 83): Livy 38.54.1 -2; cf. Polyb. 23.12-14; Livy 39.50.10-1 1 , 39.52.1-9; Cic. De Sm. 19. The mistake may be due to the structure of the account that Antias followed, which gives a sequence of P. Scipio's trial, his death, and the trial of L. Scipio.

Gruen: Exercise of Power 265

more histrionics: after a grandiloquent speech to the people and an anounce­ ment that the day marked the anniversary of Zama, he marched the assembled throng to the Capitol, sacrificed to the gods amidst thunderous applause, and induced the crowd to forget about a triaWl The narrative is obviously replete with doublets: the same instigator, the same prosecutors, the same defiant resistance, and the same final rescue by Ti. Gracchus as in the case of L. Scipio. That does not mean that the entire tale should be j ettisoned. Polybius confirms the undertaking of a trial before the people. His brief notice has Mricanus respond to a vociferous accuser by observing that it was not fitting for the populus even to hear charges against a man to whom his opponents owed their very freedom of speech. That dictum dispersed the crowd and left the accuser to commune with himself.7J That a proper trial ocred may be doubted. Polybius reports only that someone undertook or attempted to bring charges before the assembly/4 Even those sources which do believe in a trial accord no issue to it, just Scipio marching off to the Capitoline to mark the anniversary of Zama, with a large citizenry in his wake, and all further proceedings canceled/s That hardly re­ sembles a formal hearing before the populus?' More likely, the episode oc­ curred at a contio during the proceedings against L. Scipio, at which charges were hurled against both brothers and met with disdain by Africanus. What meaning then should be ascribed to this perplexing and entangled combination of events? The idea that the popular will expressed itself in any significant sense through judicial verdicts canot be taken seriously. The cases discussed above, all clustered in the early 180s, give little reason to believe in popular initiative, effectiveness, or authority. Charges leveled against Minucius Thermus, Cato, Glabrio, and the Scipios were dropped before they reached the populus, dismissed at that level, or ineffectively implemented. The affair generated more rhetoric than results. Similar findings would emerge if the net were cast more widely.n Cato, we are told, was defendant in no fewer than forty-four cases, whether in civil or criminal proceedings, and never once suffered condemnation.78 Those results compe1 an obvious conclusion. The significance of such cases lay in the realm of politics, not as illustrations of the people's judicial authority.

72. 73 . 74. 75. 76.

Livy 3 8 .50.4-38.53.8. Polyb . 23.14.2-4. Polyb. 23.14.2: en men tOi demoi krinein tinos epibalomenou; 5.81.1 . Livy 3 8 .51 .7-14; Val. Max. 3 .7.1c; Gellius 4.1 8.3; Appian, Syr. 40; Vir. II. 49.17. Plutarch, knowing of no result, states simply that Cato dropped the case: Cato 1 .2. Only Zonaras 9.20 mentions a conviction, but he has both Lucius and Publius convicted together, and he reverses himself in the next sentence, afrming that Publius withdrew before any vote was taken. 77. So, for example, T. Flamininus incited tribunes to bring accusation against Cato in 184 and to impose a stiff fine, but the effect came to naught: Pluto Cato 9.2; d. the discussions of Kienast, Cato der Zensor (n. 25) 79, and Astin, Cato the Censor (n. 25) 86. 78. Pliny, NH 7.100; Vir. III. 47.7; Pluto Cato 1 5.3; Comp. Arist. et Cat. 2.4; d. Livy 39.44.9.

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The trials of the 1 80s fit into a broader pattern of criticisms leveled against returning commanders. Successes abroad in these years gave incentive for generals to overstep conventional bounds and claim unusual authority, wealth, and distinctions. The Scipios were most conspicuous. The invidia of the Scipios receives mention more than once in the texts, as does their superbia, their potentia, and their regnum in senatu.7' But they were by no means alone. The trials or would-be trials in this period take their place with other attempts to chart the boundaries of power exercised by representatives of the state abroad. That includes efforts to set clearer criteria for triumphs, to limit prerogatives on disbursements of moneys obtained in war, and to challenge the excesses of imperatores in foreign lands. The extraordinary opportunities for gloria ex­ ploited in these years presented a stiff challenge to the aristocracy. They were compelled to strike a balance between the rewards of merit available to individuals within their ranks and the need to maintain an equilibrium in the corporate entity of the ruling class. Prosecutions or threatened prosecutions served that end. None of the charges lodged against Thermus, Cato, or Glabrio resulted in conviction. But they cost Thermus his triumph, forced Glabrio to forgo his censorial candidacy, and helped defeat Cato at the elections. Neither of the Scipios suffered formal penalty. But L. Scipio failed to win the censorship of 1 84 and gained no further office, while P. Scipio retired to Liternum and withdrew from public life.80 The process allowed only a passive role to the populus. The prospect of a trial before the assembly may have given a sense of empowerment to the people and may have left an impression of popular authority. But the real potentes manipulated that im­ pression to other purposes. Overseas adventures brought wealth, power, and prestige. The rewards increased competition, heightened aspirations, and intensified that drive for honares that characterized the leadership of the Roman state. Yet this devel­ opment also threatened to elevate a few too far beyond the rest, to encourage abuse of privilege, and to put a strain on the concert of the nobiles. The sena­ torial class in the early second century struggled to define limits without choking off ambition. Judicia populi supplied a useful medium for that pur­ pose. They served not as a voice of the commons, but as an instrument to establish boundaries for individual achievements within the . aristocratic collec­ tive. C O N C LU S IO N S Although the episodes touched on here represent only a small sample, they contribute to an understanding of how the Roman elite exercised power with little effective challenge in the century before the Gracchi. Standard interpre­ tations that concentrate on aristocratic competition obscure that understanding. 79. Livy 3 8.50.8, 38.51 .3-4, 3 8.52 .4, 38.54.6, 38.54.10, 38.59.7, 38.60.10. 80. Livy 38.53.8, 39.40.2-3. That Africanus languished in semiexile or disgrace, however, is pure invention: Livy 39.52.9; Val. Max. 5 .3.2b; ViT. II. 49.18.

Gruen: Exercise of Power 267

This chapter draws attention instead to means whereby the ruling class pro­ tected its solidarity and assured its prominence. The now fashionable emphasis on popular influence in the decisions of state needs more careful scrutiny. This study endeavored to throw a different light on developments usually taken as advancement of popular interests: laws on electoral corruption, the institution of the secret ballot, and trials before the assembly. The Roman nobility, in fact, exploited and cultivated those developments. Its aim was not to secure legitimation from the populus but to employ popular rhetoric to check challenges from novi homines or curb the ambitions of individual nobiles. Pressure by the populace played little part; the ruling elite fostered the impres­ sion of a broader public interest while pursuing its own ends. The fa�ade of popular advantage screened the promotion of aristocratic ascendancy.

The Dialogue of Power in Florentine Politics

J O H N M. NAJ E MY

ODERN HI STORIOGRAPHY on medieval and Renaissance Florence is nearly unanimous in emphasizing the continuous and decisive role in the city's political life of an elite or oligarchy or patriciate, usually identified with the republic's great families. The terminology varies and can indeed be tricky, crisscrossed as it is by hidden polemics and ideological subtexts. For some this elite was a ruling class and for others a dominant class. Stil others avoid the notion of class altogether and prefer Nicola Ottokar's "ceto dirigente." One can always use the terms employed by contemporaries (grandi, ottimati, or even just famiglie). Despite these differences and nuances of language, the standard wisdom among historians of republican Florence now sees a continuity of elite power over several centuries, and over and beyond the formal configuration or rhetorical proclamations of particular regimes. According to this view, governments, revolutions, institutions, and even new classes and gente nuova came and went, but the great families (in­ deed some would stress the extent to which they were the same great families) always remained as a controlling force in political life, even if not always in positions of official power. Ottokar was the first to demonstrate this continuity, for a limited period of approximately two decades at the end of the thirteenth century but across the boundaries Salvemini had established between periods allegedly dominated by different social classes.1 Prosopographical investiga­ tions of later periods of the city's history have yielded comparable results,2 and

M

1. Nicola Otkar, II comNne di Firenu alia fine del DNgento (Florence, 1926; reprint ed. Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1962). In bro ad agreement with Onokar is the prosopographical study of the Florentine elite for the period 1260-1300 by Sergio Raveggi, Massimo Tarassi, Daniela Medici, and Patrizia Parenti, Ghibellini, gwelfi e popolo grfJSso: i detentori del potere politico a P;rem:e nella secorula meta del DNgmto (Florence: La Nuova lealia, 1978). 2. 'The perception of a fundamental continuity of elite power underlies the work of Dale Kent: se The Rise of the Medici: Paction in Plorence, 1426-1434 (Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Pres, 1978); also "The Florentine Reggimmto in the Fifteth Century," Renaissana QNlJrterly 28 (1975): 575-638; and "Dinamica del potere e patronato nella Firenze dei Medici," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del QNlJttrocento (Florence: Francesco Papafava, 1987), 49-62. Roslyn Pesman Coper offers a compatible vision of Florentine politics through the years of the restored republic and the Great Council after 1494, in "The Prosopography of the 'Prima Repuhblica,'" ibid., 239-255, and in "The Florentine Ruling Group under the 'govemo popwlare,' 1494-1512," Stldies ;n Medieual and Renais.sana History 7 (1985): 69-1 8 1 .

270 Politics and Conflict

most studies of Florentine politics from the late fourteenth to the early six­ teenth century share in the general perception that a restricted and durable elite from wealthy families of respectable lineage always formed the inner circle of real power and influence.3 Some general interpretations of late medi­ eval Italian history also advance as their central contention the persistence and power of oligarchies and aristocracies.4 More recently, however, certain claims for the power of elites in Florence and other Italian city-states have gone beyond the views s umarized here to assume a degree of aristocratic hegemony so enduring and so complete as to constitute in effect a permanent and immovable structure. It is now asserted that the Florentine elite enjoyed a virtual monopoly of power, and indeed that politics itself was always and inevitably an affair of the elite. According to Dale Kent, "almost all politically effective activity took place within the confines of a single class - the patriciate."s In her discussion of "the three major entities involved in the political process" in the Florence of the 1430s, Kent defines the largest of .these entities as "that group of several hundred families" with a long tradition of participation in the chief offices of govern­ ment, a group that she calls the "traditional classe dirigente. " 6 Within this group she finds the other two entities: a more restricted group of families (or of individuals from families) that held important offices with great frequency, and - at the center, after 1434 at least - the Medici party. But the important point here is that, according to Kent, the outer perimeter of the Florentine "political process" introduces us to no more than a few hundred families. Roslyn Pesman Cooper, viewing the matter from the vantage point of her study of the officeholding cadres of the republic of 1494-1512, begins a recent summary of her findings by claiming that "contemporaries and later historians concur in the view that always in Florence effective power rested in the hands of a small elite. "7 A similar assumption underlies George Holmes's assertion that "political division within Florence [in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries] was primarily a matter of family feud," it being understood that the families in question were those of the elite.8

3. Se, for example, Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434 to 1494) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1966); Gene Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1977), a work that never­

theless also acknowledges the "dialogue" with which this esy is concerned; and H. C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth Century Florence, 1502-151 9 (Oxford: Qarendon Press, Oxford, 1985). 4. Se especially Sergio Bertelli, 11 potere o/igarchico nello stato-ciua medievale (Florence: La Nuova ltalia, 1978), and Philip Jones, " &onomia e societi nell'ItaIia medievale: la leggenda della borghesia," in Storia J'Italia. Annali 1: Dal feudalesimo al capitalismo (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1978), 1 85-372. 5. Kent, The Rise of the Medici, 7. 6. Kent, "Dinamica del potere e patronato," 50 (my translation). 7. Coper, " The Prosopography of the 'Prima Repubblica,'" 239. 8. George Holmes, Florence, Rome and the Origins of the Renaisnce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986), 1 65.

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271

Perhaps the most radical statement of the view that politics, let alone power, belonged entirely to the elites of the Italian cities comes from Sergio Bertelli, who declares that "the extreme narrowness of its political nucleus was a constant characteristic of the medieval and Renaissance city." "The constitutional edifice of the city-state," continues Bertelli, "was such that it impeded - contrary to the idealizations of nineteenth-century historiography - any democratic participation in political life." Bertelli obviously oversim­ plifies the problem by implying that the alternatives were narrow oligarchy and participatory democracy: if the city-states did not allow for the latter, he seems to be saying, then they must have been characterized by the former. Thus, a judgment that no one would dispute - namely, the inappropriateness of any notion of participatory democracy for these cities - becomes the basis for asserting that "political struggle in the city-state takes place exclusively in the very restricted world of the cives optimo jure. Outside this world there is nothing, the nihilism of the jacqueries Whenever the lower classes [Ie classi subalterne] burst into the political theater . . . , this happens because a part of the oligarchy appeals to the masses, breaks with the constitutional framework, and makes use of the masses in order to settle differences that could not be resolved within the world of the cives." Here too we have city-states reduced to just two components: on the one hand the oligarchy, and on the other the masses, who can only "burst into" the oligarchy's "political theater" when provoked to do so by the oligarchy itself. The argument depends, of course, not only on a dismissive view of the so-called masses, but also on suppressing the notion that between these masses and the oligarchy there existed a class (or coalition of groups ) with purposes, policies, organization, discourse, in sum, a politics of its own. And, in fact, Bertelli declares that the popolo was not a class but a party, and that in the movements that go under this name "what is happening, in reality, is a redistribution of power inside the oligarchic group which manages its own [otherwise] irresolvable differences with an appeal outside itself, involving the cives never admitted to power in the oligarchy's own struggles." According to Bertelli; "it was not even a case of certain nobles detaching themselves from their own class [as another historian hypothesizes], but rather a rearrangement among themselves [un diverso porsi di e.SSI]. "9 Exactly the same formula - oligarchs manipulating other groups in order to settle their own quarrels - is invoked for both the "masses" and the popolo in order to safeguard the notion that all politics originated with the oligarchy/nobility even when it was not in fact limited to that class. The recent tendency to emphasize and indeed to insist on the elite's virtual monopoly of both power and the very terrain of politics has generally •

.

.

•

9. Bertelli, II potere o/igarchico, 7-8, 168, 63 (my ttanslation). Bertelli has also studied the ways in which the manipulation of consultative committes enabled oligarchies in several cities, including Aorence, to compose their differences and establish firm conttol over the decision-making proces; se his n potere nascosto: I consiIia sapientum," in Forme e tecniche cUI potere nella ana (secoli XIV-XVII) (Perugia: Universiti di Perugia, Anali della Facolti di scienze politiche, 1979-80), 1 1-31 . ..

272 Politics and Conflict

been accompanied by a particular view of how this elite exercised power. Grounded in the assumption that the politics of late-medieval city-states was fundamentally personal, local, and immediate, this view holds that power was generated, accumulated, and exercised through personal and family bonds of blood, marriage, and friendship, through ties of patronage, obligation, depen­ dence, and protection, and in neighborhood and factional networks that organized these various links into recognizable groups with the capacity to influence or modify the behavior of both their own "members" and those of other groups. Dale Kent articulates the underlying assumption of this approach to Florentine politics: "The actions - whether public or private, political or personal - of the majority of Florentines were broadly governed by consider­ ations of personal interest and of obligation toward that group of associates to which they constantly refer: 'relatives, neighbors, and friends.'" If the behavior of the "majority of Florentines" was "governed" by such consider­ ations, on what grounds can it be claimed that the "political process" or politics was confined to an elite of no more than a few hundred families? The answer, presumably, is that only upper-class families were large enough to have a quantity of links, bonds, and connections sufficient to contribute to the formation of a network or visible group. Implicitly, the raw material of politics - personal bonds and obligations - was everywhere, but only the large and wealthy families of the elite had the resources to
Najemy: Dialogue of Power

273

adds the wish to avoid notions of class and class conflict, the combination of elites as ineluctable structures and politics as patronage may become irresistible. This cluster of views and assumptions has lately become something of an orthodoxy, according to which only the study of patronage, neighborhoods, personal ties, the informal distribution of favors and patterns of influence can give us the inner workings of Florentine politics where it really - and exclu­ sively - took place. Just how quickly a valuable hypothesis about the behavior of the elite can become an allegedly exclusive truth about the nature of Florentine politics emerges from a recent essay by Bertelli. Sumarizing the significance for political history of the studies of social networks and neigh­ borhood ties by Dale Kent, Francis William Kent, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, and Ronald Weissman,l1 Bertelli concludes that "neighborhood ties would seem to be, then, within the patriciate, the true mainspring for the control of political power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. " But within two paragraphs even the hint of caution ("would seem to be" ) falls away as, suddenly, a whole theory of city-state politics is assumed on the basis of the hypothesis about neighborhood networks: "At this point it remains to be asked: how long did this network of territorial relationships remain at the foundation of the city's political life ? Did neighborhood links still govern the Florentine political system after the overthrow of Piero [de' Medici in 1494] ? " 11 The point of the emphases added to these sentences is to show the ease with which Bertelli equates neighborhood social networks with the "city'S political life" and the "Florentine political system." For him the question is no longer whether it was so, but for how long it remained so. In fact, however, no one has demonstrated any such thing for the fourteenth century, and even for the fifteenth century it remains at the level of an intriguing hypothesis. Orthodoxies, even new ones, usually limit vision, and in this essay I explore some of what seem to me the limitations of the currently fashionable approach to Florentine politics that I have outlined. I should say at the outset that I do not for a moment doubt that there was an elite of great families in Florence, that it was both resilient and powerful, and that it (or some part of it) did indeed function as a ruling class or oligarchy for much of the republic's history. Nor do I doubt that the study of patronage and neighborhood networks tels us many important things about how these families extended their influence 1 1 . In addition to the studies of Dale Kent cited earlier, Bertelli refers to the following: F. W. Kent, Household and Uneage in Renaisance Florence - The Family Ufe of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); D. V. and F. W. Kent,

Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaisance Florence: The District of the Red Uon in the

Fifteenth Century (Locust Valley, New York: J. J. Augustin, 1982); Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, '''Parenti, amici, e vicini': il teritorio urbano d'una famiglia mercantile del XV secolo," Quademi storici 33 (1976): 953-982 (now in English translation as "'Kin, Friends, and Neigh­ bors': 'The Urban Territory of a Merchant Family in 1400," in her collection of essays Women, Family, and RitNal in Renaisnce Italy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 68-93); and Ronald F. E. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaisance Florence (New York: Aca­ demic Press, 1982). 12. S. Bertelli, " Ceti dirigenti e dinamica del potere nel dibattito contemporaneo," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento, 4 1 (my translation).

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and built factions that played a major role in city politics. What I do doubt is the usefulness or accuracy of thinking of elites and their networks of patronage as the sum and substance or as the "governing" structures, foundations, or underlying "realities" of Florentine politics. The first of the limitations imposed by such interpretations is the loss of any sense of the historical alternative or alternatives against which the Florentine elite established its power as a ruling, and sometimes as a dominant, class. If the political supremacy of the elite is accepted as inevitable and permanent, then obviously there can have been no alternatives. But, in fact, throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the relationship between the elite of great families and the rest of Florentine society was always turbulent and frequently one of open confrontation. Until about 1400 the elite faced repeated challenges to its power, and at certain times it even ceased to be a ruling class at all - in the sense that it occasionally lost its leadership role and had to endure the control of government by popular movements that defined them­ selves explicitly in terms of their antagonism to (and determination to do something about) what they saw as the intolerable privileges, propensity for violence, contempt for law, exploitation of the communal fisc, and the general arrogance and prepotenza of the class they called the "grandi."13 Historians who see only aristocratic hegemony in Florence will insist that these challenges from the popolo were brief and unstable. This is certainly true of the separate periods of actual popular government, but not of the movement as a whole, once its resilience and consistency over a century and a half come into focus. Popular governments came to power and stayed there for some years on four different ocasions between the middle of the thirteenth century and the end of the fourteenth century, and each of these governments attacked elite power and privilege in ways that the great families never forgot or forgave.14 The primo popolo of 1250-1260 upset the rationale of an entire generation of upper-class politics by declaring a neutral course between Guelfs and Ghibellines. If in the end the regime was unable to maintain such a course in foreign policy, in domestic politics it did so with a vengeance by destroying or limiting the height of the towers of aristocratic houses, by keeping the repre1 3 . A good place to begin on the wider Italian phenomenon of the popolo is Lauro Martines's POweT and Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Vintage, Ran­ dom, 1979), esp. chapters 4 and 5. This book has been reprinted by Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988. 14. For the developments summarized in this paragraph, see Gaetano Salvemini, Magnati e popo/ani in Firenze flal 1280 al 1295 (Florence, 1 899; reprint ed. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan, 1966); Marvin B. Becker, Florence in Transition, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967-68); Armando Sapori, La crisi delle compagnie mercantili dei Bardi e dei Peruzzi (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1926); Niccolo Rodolico, La democraz;a (wrentina nel suo tramonto, 1378-1382 (Bologna, 1905; reprint ed. Multigrafica Editrice, Rome, 1970); Gene Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-1378 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), and his Civic World, cited in note 3; my Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Elec­ toral Politics, 1280-1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), and my Aumant Omnes Artes: Corporate Origins of the Ciompi Revolution," in II Tumulto dei Ciompi: un momento di storia fiorentina ed europea (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1981), 59-93. II

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sentation in offices of members of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties roughly even and at low levels, by abolishing the association of knights (the universitas militum) that had been a part of the structure of government before 1250, and by promulgating a new constitution in which representatives of the military and professional associations of the popolo elected the commune's chief mag­ istrates. After two brief attempts to reorganize communal government along essentially similar lines in 1266-1267 and again in 1282-1283 - attempts that failed in their larger purposes but that left important legacies in terms of strengthened guilds and the new magistracy, continuous after 1282, of the priorate of the guilds - the second popolo came to power at the end of 1292 and the beginning of 1293 with a more radical program, enunciated in the Ordinances of Justice, for the containment of upper-class violence. This gov­ ernment designated first thirty-eight and later seventy-two families of the elite, for a total of perhaps 1,500 males, both Guelf and Ghibelline, as magnates and inflicted special penalties on all the members of a magnate house in the event of a crime committed by any one of their number against a popolano. It entrusted the election of the priorate to representatives of the guilds and barred the magnates from the councils of the popolo, the consulates of the guilds, and, most important, the priorate. In 1343 another popular government symbolically reis.sued the Ordinances of Justice and instituted new electoral procedures that brought more minor guildsmen and nonelite major guildsmen into office while sharply limiting the representation of great families in the priorate until 1348. lbis regime supplanted its oligarchic predecessor of the 1330s largely because the latter proved itself incapable of dealing with the looming crisis in communal finances and with the potentially disastrous bank­ ruptcies of some of the largest merchant and banking companies. The popular government directly contributed to the collapse of much of the old economic elite by forcing the banks to satisfy their creditors from the liquidation of landed assets, by halting the repayment to communal creditors (prominent among them the same threatened banking companies) of loans to the govern­ ment, and by limiting interest payments (after tbe debt was funded in 1 345 ) to only 5 percent, instead of the 10 or even 15 percent for which many loans had been contracted in the 1330s. A significant portion of the elite never recovered either its former economic might or the political power that had accompanied that wealth. The last popular government (1 378-1382) again reissued the Ordinances, reformed the electoral procedures, drastically limited the presence of elite families in high office, brought a new wave of nonelite major guildsmen and minor guildsmen to the priorate, and reduced interest payments on the debt once again to 5 percent. But in addition this regime undermined the traditional structure of the woolen cloth industry by permitting, even after the defeat of the Ciomp� the existence of two independent guilds of skilled artisans formerly subject to the jurisdiction and regulation of the Wool guild. These events are well known to historians of Florence and late-medieval Italy, but there is a curious tendency to minimize their import: either to

276 Politics and Conflict

diminish their novelty and impact by claiming that these governments never intended anything very radical and by observing that in many cases such policies had precedents; or by arguing that, whatever the intentions or degree of originality, the actions of popular governments never really changed things very muchY Both arguments have been used to support the thesis of perma­ nent, structural oligarchic supremacy, and I believe both are wrong. Certainly the elite believed that these governments were very real threats to its survival as a ruling class of wealth and power. The hostility of the great families toward the popular regimes, their guild-based constitutions, and the waves of "new men" that they promoted into office emerges forcefully from a variety of sources: from literary evidence (for example, Compagni's account of assaults on the guild consuls by magnates and grand; in the 1290s, Dante's derision of the institutions and discourse of the popolo, Villani's angry denunciation of the government of the mid-1340s, Giovanni Cavalcanti's report of Rinaldo degli Albizzi's harangue - nearly fifty years after the events in question against "those forty damned months" from September 1 378 to January 1382 when the guilds and their consuls "kept this people in bondage" );16 and from legislation and other political responses through which the elite sought to undermine the power of these popular governments (for example, the so­ called antiforeigner laws of 1346 and 1379 that challenged the eligibility of "new men" for communal offices, the temporary halving of the number of minor guilds by the balia of 1 348, and the gradual but systematic elimination of the electoral autonomy of the guilds by the balie of the 13 80s and 1390s)P We may legitimately doubt that Piero degli Albizzi and the other conspirators against the popular regime in 1 379 actually intended to destroy the guilds, as Coluccio Salutati accused them of planning to do in the letter he sent in 1380 to the Pope explaining why his government executed the conspirators; but, even if it was a political and rhetorical exaggeration on Salutati's part, its force must have rested on its verisimilitude - on the apparent likelihood that angry elements of the elite of great families, given what the government ot the guilds meant for them, would indeed have wished to destroy the institutions that stood at the base of that whole alternative conception of Florentine politics. The alternative was real and sufficiently threatening to the Florentine elite to make Salutati's accusation believable. 1 8 15. Se, for example, the views of Philip Jones in the essay cited in note 4, where, on p. 3 19, he writes that "nella storia generale dei comuni, pero, iI movimento popolare segna phi che, altro un episodio, un intermezzo, tanto di aspirazioni, quanto di realizzazioni, tra due fasi di dominio aristocratico 0 monarchico." 16. D. Compagni, Cronica , I, 21; Dante, Purgatorio, VI; G. Villani, Cronka, XII, 42; G . Cavalcanti, Iswrie rrorentine, ed. F. Polidori (Florence, 1 838), 1, 82, 84-85. A dramatic example of the hostility of the elite families toward the guilds is the murder by the Benelli family in 1377 of a member of the guild of the Medici, Speziali, e Merciai, in a dispute over a failed marriage. This episode reveals the powerful persistence of class antagonisms even in the circumstances of a marriage link and all the resulting face-to-face contacts between the two families. On this event, se my "Audiant Omnes Artes," 86-91 . 17. Se Corporatism and Consensus, 153-162, 254-56, 263-300. 1 8 . On Salutati's letter, se my "Guild Republicanism in Trecento Florence: The Suc-

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The second weakness of the current conventional wisdom on Florentine politics flows inevitably from the first: lacking any sense of the durable alter­ native with which elite power contended, it obviously misses the extent to which the elite was shaped and even transformed by that regular and almost permanent conflict. Is it conceivable that a century and a half of sustained rivalry and confrontation with so tenacious a competing class would not have left a profound imprint on the elite? That the long encounter with the popolo's institutions and discourse of politics, its vision of the republic and its reading of history, and most of all its formidable critique of oligarchic power and misrule would not have conditioned the ways in which the elite sought to protect and exercise its power? The elites-and-patronage view of Florentine politics has little room for such notions; insofar as this view stresses one particular mode of the political behavior of the elite and then, typically, argues that this mode reflects the structures of clientage and patronage found throughout Florentine, communal, Italian, or even Mediterranean society, it tends to promote a static picture of the elite and its politics. In fact, the Florentine elite underwent a veritable metamorphosis between, roughly, 1250 and 1450. At the beginning of this period it was a warrior class of wealthy families (its two most prominent institutional faces until 1250 were the asso­ ciations of knights and of Calimala merchants) who frequently fought among themselves and used the city and its streets as their battleground. Chronicles and diaries abound with tales of violence and vendetta; whatever the literal truth of the legendary Buondelmonti murder, here again we can say that the story's popularity and force surely rested in its verisimilitude. Insofar as we have any sense of the political style of the great families in the thirteenth century, of the ways in which their members normally expected to exercise power, two notions prevail: the politics of intimidation and grandigia of a Corso Donati; and the uncomplicated elitism according to which decisions in family, party, and commune could safely be entrusted to a few prestigious elders.I' By the early fourteenth century, the elite's image had taken an economic tum. Powerful men from great families were now more likely to be, and to be seen as, influential bankers and merchants, as heads of family firms rather than family armies. The change was, to be sure, one of perspective and perception, for upper-class families had been involved in business and trade ces

and Ultimate Failure of Corporate Politics," American Hist. Rev. 84 (1979): 66 7. 19. Two versions of the Buondelmonti story are in the CTorUca fjorentina compilata nel ueolo XIII, in Tuti (WTenti,,; tkl Dugento II tUi prj"'; del TTecento, ed. Alfredo Schiaffini (Flo­ rence: Sansoni, 1954), 1 1 7-19; and in Compagni, Croniea , I, 2, where it is used to foreshadow the similar eruption of upper-clas violence between Black and White Guelfs in the years around 1 300. Compagni's purpose was of course to highlight the almost gratuitous, and in any case irrational, recourse to violence that characterized the elite families. His famous portrait of Corso Donati is in CTora, II, 20. Se also the excellent English translation by Daniel E. Bomstein, Dina Compagni's Chronicle of Florence (Philadelphia: University of Penn­ sylvania Press, 1986). For an exp resion of the thirteth-century elite's confidence that deci­ sion making should be leEr \0 a handful of "prudent men privately consulted," se Corporatism and Consensu, 13.

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for a long time before the fourteenth century. But now, under the influence of the idea, whose origins lay with the popolo and the guild community, that good citizens were successful merchants and that successful participation in some business or trade ought to be a prerequisite for political office, members of the elite too began to present themselves more as prudent merchants than as valiant fighters. Giovanni Villani's celebrated description of Florence in the 1330s was in part a justification of the city's great wealth and the elite's economic leadership. He praised all this wealth because, as he saw things (or wanted to see them), it was widely distributed to the benefit of workers and consumers. Good merchants, he implies, were those who put their wealth to work for the whole city; those who used their money for their own conspicuous consumption - the example he gives is that of wealthy families building sumptuous houses on the hills overlooking the city - were "committing sin." In essence, Villani was providing a rationalization for the elite's wealth in terms of what we might call the moral economy of the popolo.20 The shift in self-perception generated modifications in behavior as well. Although the great families remained hostile to the notion of guild government, and especially to any increase in political influence for the minor guilds or for the . nonelite elements of the major guilds, the members of such families nonetheless joined guilds, partly because they wanted and needed to exert influence within these associations, but also because they themselves came under the influence of ideas that emerged from the guild community. By joining guilds and seeing themselves as part of a community of merchants and guildsmen, even as they and everyone else knew perfectly well that vast differences in wealth and power and in the nature "Of their economic activities and interests separated them from the other guildsmen, the elite families joined a system of discourse that changed them as they changed it. By the end of the fourteenth century, they had deprived the guilds of their former political autonomy and eliminated even the fiction, quite useful to popular govern­ ments, of the equality of the guilds. But in the process the elite had also come to accept as normal and normative the notions - all derived from the long political experience of the guilds as universitates of consent and representa­ tion as the foundation of legitimate republican government, of officeholding as a public trust, of the supremacy of law, and of the delegated quality of all formal power: fictions all, to be sure, but ones that deeply affected the political style of the Florentine elite, modifying the means and forms of its power. To deny the influence on the elite of these elements of the political discourse of the popolo and the guilds is to miss the universe of difference between the way Corso Donati exercised power in the age of Dante and the way Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Cosimo de' Medici did so in the age of civic humanism. This is not to say or even to imply that the great families of Florence naively converted to the ennobling myths of civic humanism or that they actually exercised power according to its standards of good government. The -

20. G.

Vilani, Cronica, XI, 94.

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power of the Florentine elite, especially in the fifteenth century, was to a considerable extent grounded in the systematic manipulation and behind-the­ scenes control of the institutions of government and society: the guilds them­ selves; the electoral system; the pratiche, or advisory sessions; and the fiscal system. In each case the measure of oligarchic power is the distance between the official ideology of how things were meant to work and the way they in fact did work, between - to take the example of electoral politics - the official ideology of universal eligibility among guildsmen, the equal hope of attaining high office, and the leveling effect of sortition, and the reality of preferential treatment for an inner elite, weighted appointment of the scrutiny committees, and the power of the accoppiatori to shift, exclude, and add name tickets to and from the pouches. But the very fact that elite power now had to go through the complex institutions of elections and scrutinies, of guild councils and courts, and of systems of consultation and representation demonstrates how far the political practice of the popoJo had transformed the means and mechanisms of upper-class political power. It was owing to the popolo that those institutions b ecame part of government, avenues and necessary instru­ ments of power. And, precisely because power resided in the distance between ideology and practice, the elite could hardly pretend that the ideology was irrelevant or nonexistent, as many modern historians do. Its power depended on taking that normative ideology seriously, on getting the rest of Florentine society - but especially the rest of the guild community - to believe that they, the members of elite families, believed that the legitimacy of their own power rested on the mechanisms of elections, consent, and representation of the popular will, to believe that Florentine institutions worked to guarantee, as Bruni wrote in the Laudatio, that "in Florence it has always happened that the majority view has been identical with the best citizens. "21 As Gene Brucker has shown, two generations of Florentines from the 1 380s to the 1420s believed as much, enough of them at least to make possible the coexistence of elite power and civic humanism and to give the elite the kind of broad-based support that it had lacked in the fourteenth century.ll No doubt aware of the irony, the oligarchy cultivated that support by admitting large numbers of nonelite guildsmen into office, by making the consultation of citizens a regular part of the ritual of decision making, and by proclaiming, as the balia of 1382 did, that the legitimate exercise of power derived from "the full, free, total, and absolute power and authority of the whole Florentine people."23 When 2 1 . Text in Hans Baron, From Petrarch to Le01f4rdo Bruni (Chicago: University of Chi­ cago Press, 1 968), 250: "Sed in aliis quidem populis maior pars sepe meliorem vincit; in hac autem ci vitate eadem semper videtur fuisse melior que maior." The translation is B. G. Kohl's, in The Earthly Republic, ed. B. G. Kohl and R. G. Witt (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1 978), 158. 22. Brucker, Civic World, esp. chapter 5, 248-318. 23. Quoted in Corporatism and Consensus, 2 68 The balia went on to assert that its au­ thority required the convocation of the "whole Florentine people in a general assembly, especially in view of the custom heretofore observed among the Florentine people [maxime cOflSiderato more in populo florentiflO hactenus observatoJ" an excellent example of the .

-

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members of great families, now close to the power of a true oligarchy, began to use notions of popular sovereignty to affirm and legitimate their authority, two things happened: on the one hand, the popolo lost control of its political language, which oligarchs were now using for their own purposes and, in­ deed, as a way of controlling the popolo; on the other hand, the two-century challenge of the popolo forced the elite to speak, behave, and govern in ways that were closer to the popolo's conception of politics than to the elite's own original governing style. The popolo never succeeded in taking power away from the elite (or at least not for very long), and it was never able to diminish the elite's social prestige. But it did change the elite's political style and its mode of exercising power. The long competition between these two political cultures thus produced some curious results. Each class modified the behavior of the other and can thus be said to have exercised power vis-a.-vis the other. The competition was a dialogue in which both interlocutors acted and were acted upon. By 1400 the popolo had acquiesced in the elite's leadership and emerging dominance; after this point organized challenges from the guild community no longer materialized. But the other side of the coin is that this now dominant elite ruled and governed to a great extent in the image (and language) of the popolo. There is no need to exaggerate the point by claiming too much: no one was likely to miss the enormous difference between a Maso degli Albizzi and a Giovanni Morelli, between a Buonaccorso Pitti and a Gregorio Dati, between a Benedetto Alberti and a Filippo Bastari, or between a Palla Strozzi and a Matteo Palmieri. But when Maso degli Albizi found, to his surprise, that knighthood and foreign military adventures provoked suspicion and even hostility in the Florence of the late 1 380s, even among fellow members of great families; when Buonacorso Pitti abandoned the gambling, horse trading, and risky wheeling and dealing that kept him abroad until the early 1390s and settled down to a career as a cloth manufacturer and regular officeholder in the communal government; when Benedetto Alberti discovered, to rus dismay, that the magnificence and splendor of the Alberti family's "private" celebrations of Charles of Durazzo's coronation as king of-Hungary in 1386 aroused the resentment of many members of the ruling elite who thought that a single family ought not to rival the commune's ritual pageantry - a resent­ ment that no doubt made it easier for the enemies of the Alberti to inflict exile on them, beginning in the next year; and when, a generation later, Palla Strow refused to lead a rebellion against the newly drawn pro-Medicean signoria of September 1434 and then accepted, with dignified resignation, what many considered an unjust exile - these political leaders from elite

emerging oligarchy's tactic of appealing to the traditions and political principles of the popolo (in this case the notion of consent) while implementing reforms that moved in altogether different directions. General assemblies of the "whole Florentine people" were not, in fact, part of the popolo's vision of the republic as a federation of guilds held together by systems of representation.

Najemy: Dialogue of Power 28 1

families were exhibiting, or experiencing the impact of, standards of political behavior that one century earlier would have had little or no effect on their class. The normative discourse of 'politics that emerged within the elite at the end of the fourteenth century became routine in the fifteenth, as the ottimati became the most conspicuous defenders of the republican constitution.14 In fact, both the Medici regime and the opposition it encountered show the imprint of this normative discourse in their respect for constitutional tradition and the limits of formal power. But at the end of the thirteenth century such attitudes were not only exclusively the property of the popolo; they were actually the targets of contempt and abuse from the elite families. How did this metamor­ phosis happen? By what processes did the elite of great families come to tolerate, adapt, and appropriate a political style that it had originally repudiated and derided? I say "political style" - and not program or policy - in order to avoid the implication that the elite in any way accepted or acquiesced in the specific objectives promoted by the popolo. The decentralized federated republicanism of the popular governments of the 1290s, 1340s, and late 1370s, with its notions of the equality and autonomy of all the constituent guilds of the federation, was never tolerable to the elite, for the simple reason that such systems of government neutralized the influence of large families and placed their members in a clear minority vis-a.-vis the nonelite guildsmen in crucial magistracies and councils. There was never any question that he elite families would accept this constitutional system. But guild republicanism, never powerful or stable enough to supplant the elite altogether, was indeed powerful enough to create certain institutions that endured and slowly transformed the discourse, attitudes, and behavior of those who lived, sometimes reluctandy, in or next to them. The priorate itself (as its full name, priores artium priors of the guilds, tells us) was originally an institution of the popolo; created in 1282 by a movement that opposed the hegemonic pretensions of the elite by building political strength in an expanding community of guilds, it soon became the republic's chief magistracy and remained so for two and a half centuries (although by the middle of the fifteenth century its old link to the guilds was largely forgotten as its name was changed from "priors of the guilds" to "priors of liberty"). The union of the guilds, first attempted in 1266-1267 by those associations later designated as major guilds, and revived in 1293 as a formal federation of twenty-one guilds, all with constitutional rights, also became part of the Florentine political landscape and, like the priorate, so remained in a formal sense (long after the guilds ceased to play any political role) for the duration of the republic. Another institution produced by the popular government of 1293 was the office of the standard-bearer of justice, similarly destined for a long life. Both the union of the guilds and the standard-

24. Se especially Rubinstein, The Government of Florence, and his "Aorentine Consti­ tutionalism and Medici Ascendancy in the Fifteth Century," in Florentine Studies, ed. N. Rubinstein (London: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 442-462.

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bearer of justice came into being with the Ordinances of Justice, the collection of decrees issued by the first priorate of the popular government of 12921295 that also contained tough laws against the elite families designated as magnates. The Ordinances too remained on the books (except for one brief attempt at abrogation by a particularly reactionary regime in the summer of 1343 ) until their partial incorporation into the statutes of the commune in 1415. Even the office of the Executor of the Ordinances of Justice and what became the advisory college of the sixteen standard-bearers of the militia companies both originated as part of an effort in the early-fourteenth century to revive the popolo's antimagnate policy. Although the effort and the policy failed, the office of the Executor lasted until 1435, and the college of the Sixteen until the republic's demise. Thus, much of what came to be thought of as the republic's political constitution - its ordini in the sense in which Machiavelli was to use the term - had its origins in the movements of the popolo that sought to limit the elite's power and curtail its abuses. And the same can be said of other characteristic Florentine institutions as well: the office of the Capitano del popolo and the councils that assembled under his authority, which went back to the primo popolo of 1250-1260. Popular regimes lasted only a few years, mainly because of the elite's hostility to their political aims. But the institutions to which they gave birth lasted in many cases for a very long time, and the reasons for this endurance are not, perhaps, quite so obvious. An old and rather odd view of the institu­ tional history of the Italian city-states holds that the communal regimes went on adding new institutions in response to new circumstances and needs without clearing away the old ones, with a resulting haphazard accumulation of offices that makes it difficult to tell at first sight which institutions were relevant and functioning at any given moment. The notion that institutions can become empty shells is only a step away from a recent assumption of the elites-and-patronage school of Florentine historiography: namely, that formal institutions and constitutional and legal arrangements never tell us very much about how politics and power actually worked. Here is the third limitation of the current orthodoxy: a tendency to dismiss institutions 'as a kind of fa�de, with little or no correspondence to the underlying "reality" of personal ties and patronage networks, and to relegate them to the realm of the merely prescriptive. But this will get us nowhere in trying to understand why the institutions of the popolo proved so durable, despite the long-term failure of its program. Florentines did not collect institutions and keep them on the shelves for show; nor did they just forget to discard ones that were no longer useful. And, certainly, governments controlled by the elite had no reason to be overly fond of institutions that originated in movements that took direct aim at the power of great families. Yet many of the institutions of the popolo survived into the subsequent periods of elite dominance and became, as it were, fixtures of the constitution. To explain this, we need a completely different model of what these institutions were, what they represented, and

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28 3

how they functioned in the Italian city-states. The cluster of institutions that emerged from the popolo's contestation of elite power constituted a compelling collective discourse, a way of talking and thinking about politics that raised and answered questions about the exercise of power that had never even been formulated in Florence prior to the popolo's challenge. In the agreements by which some Florentines entered guilds, endowed the consuls, councils, and committees of these guilds with authority and jurisdiction based on the legal fiction of representation, then extended this practice of associational authority and representation to groups or federations of guilds and ultimately - in the Ordinances of Justice - to an alliance of guilds that claimed itself coterminous with the power of the commune, the popolo was, for the first time in the commune's history, posing the question of how - by what practice and in what terms - the exercise of power could be legitimated. That question rarely gets posed unless and until prevailing power is contested, and it is hardly surprising that it should be posed first by the challenger. The popolo's answer - in four words, consent, representa tion, delegation, accountability - was embedded in that cluster of agreements and institutions. Implicitly, it denied that the great families of Florence had any answer to the question of how their power could be made - or be made to seem - legitimate, rational, or just less than arbitrary. The popolo's an­ swer drew on the prestigious traditions of Roman law and presented striking affinities to the corporation theory of medieval canon law. And once the theorists of this discourse discovered Aristotle's Politics, they appropriated this greatest of philosophical authorities as a kind of unimpeachable underpin­ ning. For a variety of reasons, therefore, the popolo's discourse of politics was compelling, but most of all because, once the question of the legitimacy of power had been posed, it could not be dismissed, forgotten, or shoved aside. The Florentine elite, even in those periods in which it retained and consolidated its power, had to offer some answer to the question of legitimacy, either one of its own devising or some version or adaptation of the popolo's answer. In the long run, its answer was mostly the latter: a sanitized version (divorced from the political program it had once justified) of the idea that power is legitimate because it represents the will of the people. Such a legitimation of the power of the elite would have seemed absurd to Farinata degli Uberti in the mid­ thirteenth century; to Corso Donati, around 1300, it was a threat that needed to be met and neutralized; the oligarchy of the 1 330s acknowledged it in theory and ignored it in practice; the powerful families of the 1350s and 1360s made compromises with it; after 1382, and certainly after 1400, it became the reigning and sustaining fiction of oligarchic power. And that fiction was in tum sustained by the institutions of the popolo. By the fifteenth century this borrowed and transformed discourse of the popolo had become the elite's second natUre, just as many of the popolo's for­ mal institutions were absorbed into the constitution of an aristocratic republic. The long, slow metamorphosis of the Florentine elite must be understood in

284 Politics and Conflict

terms of this dialogue between classes, the process by which the elite learned from the popolo to speak the language of popular sovereignty, representation, and consent as the surest foundation of its own leadership role. The historical phases and mechanisms of this process have yet to be grasped in their relation to the exercise and practice of power and to the evolution of the very notion of power - its origin, purpose, limits, and legitimacy. Power itself had a history in Florence that will bec()me clear only when we take seriously the way in which institutions emerging from the dialogue between the elite fami­ lies and the popolo transformed the discourse and practice of politics. Marvin Becker has interpreted the history of the funded public debt, the Monte, in such terms,lS and my analysis of the commune's electoral institutions also stresses the importance of this dialogue. Both fiscal and electoral institutions emerged repeatedly as focal points of controversy and competition between the elite and the popolo; both were objects of reform and counter-reform in that interclass dialogue; and both, it has been claimed, changed attitudes, assumptions, and behavior within the elite and among the nonelite guildsmen. Among the Florentine institutions whose role in this dialogue has not received much attention, the Mercanzia is of particular importance.26 Founded in the early fourteenth century, the Mercanzia was a formal association (an universitas, or corporation) of merchants and bankers who did business across the borders of the Florentine dominion - in effect, the economic elite. The commune, largely controlled by the great families of the Black Guelfs at this time, recognized the new association's claims to jurisdiction over commercial cases involving such "international" merchants: over the settlement of bank­ ruptcy proceedings, claims from creditors, reprisals; and much of the litigation that periodically resulted from crises in the complex loan and investment economy of Florence. The Mercanzia also acquired broad powers of supervision over the business activity and commercial practice of the entire guild commu­ nity, including the authority to legislate and to enfc;>rce its own decrees. That kind of power in the hands of a single association dominated by the companies of elite families had no precedent; each of the separate guilds had formerly exercised these powers of jurisdiction and regulation ovec'its own members. Thus the unified jurisdiction of the Mercanzia notably increased the power of the elite by removing the guilds to a considerable extent from the settlement of major litigation involving the elite's own business interests. The Mercanzia subsequently b ecame the elite's chief instrument for neutralizing the political and electoral autonomy of the guilds. As the exclusive preserve of the great 25. Se Becker's Florence in Transition, vols. I and II; and uThe Florentine Territorial State and Civic Humanism in the Early Renaissance," in Florentine Studies, ed. N. Rubinstein, 109-139. 26. The argument sketched over the next three paragraphs sumrizes an interpretation of the Mercanzia and its links to the guilds that I intend to pursue in more detail elsewhere. For bibliography on the Mercanzia, most of it from two or more generations ago, se my uAudiant Omnes Artes," 66·7, n. 1 8 .

Najemy: Dialogue of Power 285

families and protector of their business interests, the Mercanzia represents a crucial moment in the elite's response to the popolo. Indeed, arising as it did only some fifteen years after the formation of the popular guild federation of 1293 , the Mercanzia was, in effect, an announcement that the elite was now prepared to settle its internal differences (after several generations of civil war between Guelfs and Ghibellines and between the Black and White factions of the Guelf party) and to present itself as a class defined by economic and institutional responsibilities: a momentous collective decision that simply would not have occurred - because it would not have been necessary - without the challenge from the popolo in the previous decade. The popolo's republi­ can constitution, based on the federation of equal and autonomous guilds, had dispersed the elite into a number of separate guilds, in most of which it was a minority. The popolo's insistence, in other words, on the institutional­ ization of a multiplicity of political voices demanded an answer. The Mercanzia provided part of that answer by circumscribing and overriding the autonomy of the separate guilds - not all at once, of course, and not without a fight that lasted for much of the fourteenth century. On the one hand, it established a clear boundary between the economic elite and the rest of society, a criterion that cut across the constituencies of the major guilds and offered an apparently objective justification for the creation of what was in effect unprecedented political power in the hands of elite business interests. But at the same time it achieved these aims by presenting the great families as a mercantile elite, as in some sense an extension of the guild community, and thus as part of that commercial and civic culture that just a generation or two earlier had been no part of the favorite image of the great families. It is important to avoid possible misunderstandings here: the Mercanzia did not bring the elite into the guild world. Quite the reverse, in fact, for it actually lifted the international trading and barlking elite out of the guilds and brought it under a protective jurisdiction of its own making and under the umbrella of a powerful corporate body with coercive, judicial, and legislative powers over not only the merchant elite but the whole of the guild community as well. But it did this while the perception that the merchants of the Mercanzia were, for al their power and wealth and - now - relative autonomy from the individual guilds, fundamentally compatible with the peaceful virtues and civic values of the local traders, shopkeepers, and artisans. That perception was, at best, flawed; but it was nonetheless a compelling notion with all sorts of political consequences. For the first time the Florentine elite was defining itself as a class with responsibilities of leadership and power within the guild community. The Mercanzia both separated the elite from the guilds and reconnected it to those same guilds in a new hierarchical relationship legitimated by the Mercanzia's absorption of some of the underlying assumptions of the guilds: corporate jurisdiction, mercantile accountability, the solemnity of judicial procedure, the sanctity of contract - in short, the set of practices by which guilds

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protected their members by guaranteeing that they would and could render justice against any member who failed to honor his promises and obligations to clients or creditors. In creating the Mercanzia the elite was not merely accepting these notions as legal principles for the resolution of commercial litigation, something it had done long before; it was refashioning its collective

image as a class in the language of the custom and law of the guild community - the usus mercatorum and consuetudo mercantie that were so large a part of the culture of the popolo. The popolo's acquiescence in the increased power that the Mercanzia gave the economic elite was possible because the new institution gradually generated among nonelite guildsmen a perception of the elite's willingness to play by certain rules that had been devised and codified by the popolo. It was this perception that allowed Gregorio Dati in the early fifteenth century - perhaps the best example of the general acquiescence among the guildsmen of his generation in the consolidating power of the elite - to praise the governing committee and court of the Mercanzia, which he

himself says was controlled by a narrow elite ( "pochi, rna solamente quelli che sono i vantaggiati" ), for its "excellent judgments and memorable decisions [bellissimi giudicii e notabili determinazionW' on great commercial suits and cases from all over the worldP The political impact and success of the Mercanzia can be measured in Dati's willingness to describe this instrument of elite power in such laudatory terms. As the Mercanzia became one of the chief institutional representations of the elite to the community of nonelite guildsmen, the physiognomy of this elite - its collective face - underwent a transformation that facilitated the emergence of different relationships of power between the two classes. The appeal of the elites of both classical and Renaissance city-states has been profound and enduring in scholarly traditions that have frequently ad­ mired and even idealized them as the collective architects of ideal spaces, protectors of culture, and, above all, as wielders of benevolent and enlightened power.28 To imagine that these elites monopolized all real power and politics, and that on the whole they used their power well enough to create much that we still admire, is a favorite combination in recent idealizations of Renaissance elites. The general tendency to see the "aristocracies" and "patriciates" in such favorable terms may have emerged from the influ�nces under which these scholarly fields were first constituted, and perhaps also because of subtle interactions between historical scholarship and certain popular myths about these cities and the roles assigned to them in larger stories about "civilization" and "the West." But one wonders whether such idealizations persist, some­ times in new dress, mainly because they neutralize politics and ennoble the very idea of power. Power that is held to be in the very nature or structure of things is power above the fray, beyond struggle, negotiation, and contesta-

27. Istoria di Pirenze (Norcia, 1904), 1 57. 28. On this tendency and some of the reasons for it, se Roberto S. Lopez, lntenlista sulla citta medievale, ed. Marino Berengo (Bad: Laterza, 1984).

Najemy: Dialogue of Power

287

tion, removed from the daily necessity of limitation and compromise. And the perception that such power is well used - exercised with restraint and with beneficent consequences over those who do not share it - consecrates the inevitable with an aura of moral dignity. To the extent that structural inter­ pretations of the inevitability of elite power imply such idealizations, they are themselves implicated in the process of legitimating those elites. There may be forms of power that fit this model, but political power in republican Florence was not one of them. In this city-state at least, power was more negotiated than exercised; power relationships were a locus of exchange and dialogue in which alternatives were always present and sometimes tested. That is precisely what Dante could not tolerate as he contemplated the fractious instability of Florentine politics (as, for example, in Purgatorio 6) and yearned for a source of virtuous and uncontested power: a nobility - in both senses of the word - that Cacciaguida (Paradiso 15 and 16) identified with the elite families of old Florence, even as Dante's most famous expression of this notion of ideal power was the fiction of the all powerful and incorruptible emperor of the Monarchia. The civic humanists were notoriously reluctant to acknowledge the dialogue of power in Florentine politics. What Dante con­ demned, they pretended not even to see. But their resistance was itself part of the dialogue: it enhanced the oligarchy's legitimacy by removing any memory that the elite had ever been other than the civic-minded aristocracy it now claimed (and wanted) to be, any notion that the popo/o or the guilds had dragged a kicking and screaming elite into a new sense of itself. Bruni's interpretation in the Laudatio of the role of the Parte Guelfa in Florentine politics makes clear the utility of ignoring the Parte's stormy and disruptive place in the contest between the elite families and the pOpOIO.29 Forgetting cer­ tain things made the emerging oligarchy seem even more inevitably anointed in its power and responsibilities. But a certain thread of Florentine political discourse - from Compagni and some of the other chroniclers of the fourteenth century to Cavalcanti and on to Savonarola and Machiavelli - did acknowledge, and even accept as normal and natural, the notion that Florentine politics was and always had been a contest for power between an elite of grandi or nobili and a popolo of guildsmen: an acknowledgment they were willing to make even when they judged the results of that contest less than good. But it was Machiavelli who put his finger directly on the role of the popolo in the metamorphosis of the elite. In the first chapter of the third book of the Florentine Histories, he el­ evated what he called the "grave and natural enmities between the people fgli uommi popo/arJ] and the nobles, caused by the desire of the latter to com­ mand and of the former not to obey," into an organizing principle for the interpretation of politics in city-states: these enmities, he wrote, "are the cause of all the ills that occur in cities." Machiavelli goes on to say that in Rome this contest actually had beneficial results, whereas in Florence the struggle 29. In Baron, From Petrarch to Leonardo Bruni, 260-62.

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between the nobili and the popo/o had less happy consequences; but he insists that it was nonetheless decisive for both the city and its "noble" families. Even though he considered, in this passage at least, the Florentine popo/o's aim of excluding the "nobility" from politics "damaging and unjust" because it led to more desperate countermeasures from the elite and thus to bloody confrontations and the expulsion of many citizens, Machiavelli argued that the popo/o emerged victorious from this struggle and transformed the "nobil­ ity" in the process. "As the popo/o gained its victory [vincendo il popo/o]," he wrote, the "nobles" were deprived of political offices, and if they wished to regain them, "it was necessary for them not only to be, but to appear, similar to the popo/o in their governance, their spirit, and their way of life [era loro necessario, con i govern;' con 10 animo e con il modo del vivere, simili ai popolani non solamente essere rna parere]," from which came all the changes in coats of arms and family names that the nobles made "in order to seem like the popo/o [per parere di popo/o]" and which caused the extinction of "military valor and generosity of spirit" among them.30 lt is important to bear in mind that Machiavelli was not romanticizing the popo/o in this interpreta­ tion whose governing assumption seems to be that only by demythologizing both the popo/o and the elite is it possible to hear their dialogue.

30. Niccolo Machiavdli, TNtte Ie opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971), 690. Christiane Klapisch·Zuber has analyzed this phenomenon in "Ruptures de parente et changements d'identtte chez les magnats florentins du XIV· siecle," Annales: &cmot, Sociites, Civilisations (1988): 1205-40.

A TYiYology of Social Conflict in Greek Poleis

T H O MAS J. F I GUEI RA

of social conflict has seldom formed a subject in its own terms for scholarship in ancient history is owed to the influence (sometimes unacknowledged or even unperceived) of various deter­ ministic theories of historical causation.1 Under this influence, all conflict be­ tween factions is generated from underlying phenomena: classes, characteristic forms of "surplus" and of the organization of labor, exploitation, or particular types of property. As can be seen from this list, economic factors are usually held to be prior and determining, as in the historical materialism of Marxians, Marxists, and Marxist-Leninists (-Stalinists).2 The extent to which these eco­ nomic conditions are themselves volitional is seldom addressed. A deeply concealed premise in such determinism is the direct derivation of the economic order from environmental phenomena.l In an attenuated form, determinism appears in the propensity to apply a single evolutionary model for all city-states even where one cannot specify why one sociopolitical phase follows another (Forrest 1966; Parain 1 963.78). In archaic Greece, however, a powerful engine for development existed in the simultaneous presence of many compartmentalized political units, accom­ panied by differing social orders, within the s�e generalized cultural matrix.

T

HAT THE TOPIC

1. A significant exception is Finley 1983, esp. 97-12 1, for which se nn. 1 1 -15. I would like to thank Ronald Weissman of Brown University for his remarks on this chapter. The uSefulness of comments entirely iMocent of any real knowledge of clasical history cannot be underestimated, as they are particularly helpful in eliciting the preconceptions with which the work of a historian is approached. 2. Note the admirably concise survey of Berlin 1978. For the arcana surounding discussion on this subject, se, for example, Cohen and Acton 1970. Parallel deterministic systems do inde exist with influences on the discipline of ancient history. Ethnic or racial determinism was influential unti l overthrown by the horrors of twentieth-century genocide, for which se Will 1956; cf. MUller 1 844. Determinism based on differences betwe gender roles and on patterns of sexuality is also possible (note Keuls 1985). 3. The clasical historian would be in II difficult predicament if this "environmental­ ism" had to be consciously faced. To avoid ethnocentrism, he must then adopt a reductionism in which an aesthetic or subjective appreciation of the unique products of Graeco-Roman culture (his professional raison d'me) has . to be sacrificed to an insistence on the parallel creation of equally valuable artifacts by al cultures with the same material basis. For an opening toward such a methodology, se DetieMe 19n.

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Differentiation of social organization exhibited an adaptation to a range of ecological settings (which range or diversity itself was conditioned by the size of political units). Therefore, not only did these polities offer limited fields within which institutional innovation could appear, but cross-cultural mecha­ nisms for communication (like panhellenic festivals, guest friendships, and poetic specialists) supported the dissemination of what proved adaptively successful. Archaic colonization (especially in its aspect of the manipulation of political status) and coining of money were two such innovations, which were soon widely disseminated.4 Linear progression along a single channel of social evolution is both empirically false and incomprehensible in its dynam­ ics.

S OCIAL C ON F LICT Economic determinism afects the investigation of social conflict in Greek poleis through the mediation of two influences, which, in truth, cannot be separated from each other. One is the pervasive effect of vulgar Marxism (whether consciously acknowledged or not) on the investigation of ancient society.s Such an ideological perspective tends to deny that economic behavior, 4. For instance, the adoption of coinage by the Aeginetans in the sixth century is not entirely understandable in relation to indigenous conditions but must be examined against the background of a rather different early history of coinage in Ionia. See Figueira 1982.65-149. 5. My concentration on vulgar Marxism does not mean that any less skepticism would be owed to orthodox Marxist analysis, but such treatments are hardly practicable. The original works of Marx and Engels were based on such limited information about the ancient world, and their theorizing occurred within so limited a body of comparative historical and anthropo­ logical data, that it is scarcely surprising that they retain little explanatory power in the present state of our knowledge. My conclusion is valid despite the additional material found in Marx 1 857-58 .471-514 (first published in 1939-1941 in Moscow), representing a side branching in the evolution of Marx's views, which is extraordinarily extrapolational in any case. Engels 1 8 84 is a document of considerable historical interest, but only for a study of the history of antiquity (note the heavy dependence on G. Grote in the section on Greece). In general�' note, most recendy, the patient synthesis of Lekis 1988 on Marx on classical antiquity. Consider also the skepticism concerning orthodox Marxist views of antiquity in Finley 1983a.19-23, who is especially critical of Hindess and Hirst 1 975. As for major Ma rxist thinkers after Marx and Engels themselves, little that was original was generated on classical antiquity, as may be sen from Kolakowski 1978. For an example of Marxist historiography on antiquity, which is informed by classical scholarship, Anderson 1974 may be considered:Here we find that what is true is not new and what is new is untrue, as may be judged from the curious mixture of styles of analysis exhibited by these three successive clauses (p. 30): first, the banal (on the tyrants): "These autocrats broke the dominance of the ancestral aristocrats over the cities"; then, some mildly skewed modernizing: "they represented newer landowners drawing on the economic growth of the preceding epoch"; finally, pure ideological fantasy: "and reached power to a much greater extent on concesions to the unprivileged mass of city-dwellers." A detailed discussion of "Marxism and the Qassics," A,elhusa 8 . 1 (1975), would yield the same result. The volume is almost never cited except in special contexts such as my own. Most of its pages were provided by scholars no longer active in our discipline or writing on subjects other than their usual research specialization. Much of the discussion stands in a recapitulatory rather than an applicative relationship to previous Marxist work. Specifically de Ste. Croix 1975 is a forerunner of his work of 198 1 . The serious analysis of Cardedge 1975 is not essentially Marxist, and of a piece with his post-Marxist scholarship (e.g., Cardedge 1987) . Se most recendy Garlan 1989.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflia 29 1

which is characterized by common patterns of purposive opportunism, is grounded in human nature, a chief legacy of classical economic theorizing since Adam Smith ( "vulgar economics" ).' Efforts, however, to replace this line of interpretation on account of its supposed "historicism" by a Marxist or Polanyian economic anthropology founder on their own inconsistencies (note Figueira 1 984a; d. Meillassoux 1 972). Instead of societies that balance individual appetition and group self­ interest against the needs (or wishes) of everyone (mediated through many social mechanisms ), determinist scholarship finds only a single pattern: ex­ ploitation by one specific class of another class or classes, as though this alone stood in the way of the achievement of some idealized state. In an extreme formulation, purportedly Marxist, like that to be found in Geoffrey de Ste. Croix's work on the class struggle among the Greek poleis, differences in income and property are almost entirely traced to exploitation, as if nothing were affected by differential rates of saving, different levels of labor inputs, various degrees of risk taking, and differing amounts of personal initiative, as well as by every sort of intervention by chance (see de Ste. Croix 1 98 1 ) . Add naivete regarding the pricing mechanism wherein attempts are made to evalu­ ate prices in terms of estimates of the historical values of inputs, and one is left with a historiography to which economic (and consequently social) trends become opaque: scholars need only try to establish which party wore the white hats and which party had black hats and express suitable affinities. Yet, to render this perspective even partially viable for the archaic and classical periods we would need to make free and slave, rich and poor (taken in global terms), represent classes based in Marxist terms on productive relations, and that can never have been true (d. Parain 1963). The second influence involves a selectivity in the facets of social evolution to be studied. The very style of social criticism that has just been characterized is typified by a search for crises as the mechanism for social change rather than for an evolution that is strongly affected both by autonomous self­ representation and volitional political acts. Even a sensible, if rather insular, discussion of the food supply in antiquity places a disproportionate emphasis on periods of crisis (almost all created by supervening military or political factors) and the methods of obviating them, as though they were, at least, as typical as the business arrangements for food supply that dominated procure­ ment at most times.7 As a consequence, history becomes a series of crises only through the resolution of which institutional change can take place. Hence, for one commentator, Hesiod's normative and normalizing advice to farmers, generic in the tradition that produced the Works and Days, becomes indica­ tive of an agrarian crisis (Detienne 1963 ). In this context "crisis" means little

6. Note von Mises 1963 for an "Austrian school" restatement of the classical eco­ nomic tradition. 7. Garnsey 1988 with three out of four parts featuring the word "crisis" in its tide, by an author who believes that famine was not all that prevalent.

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more than "period of social tension" or even "expression of social tension."8 The concept of crisis can indeed become so undervalued that it is hypothesized for any situation where there is a discrepancy between aspirations and out­ comes. And the very intractability of physical survival lies ready to hand whenever one needs to find a crisis.' Little work has been done in the categorization of institutions and institutionality once determinism has been eschewed, and a single empirical and historical model (almost invariably Athens, sometimes contrasted with Sparta) is given up. For those who are not determinists there has been an inclination to see social conflict in isolation, treating all the conflicts in one sequence (for instance, between helots and Spartiates), or subsuming conflict into a broader heading such as violence (e.g., Lintott 1 982). What follows is an attempt to tie social conflict much more closely to explicit exploitation, and, in turn, to understand it in terms of perceptions of injustice. To create a typology of conflict, self-representation by groups becomes a critical topic, for only by a treatment of how an aggregate of individuals achieved a common identity can the investigator move to a determination of the grounds for conflict with others.to Much of my exposition will appear to consist of truisms; that is deliberate. Naturally, I have also depended heavily on my own research on specific topics. It is, however, the level of generalization applied to what many would accept in detail and intuitively that will, I hope, break new ground. Let us start with social conflict. Clearly, not every public confrontation deserves this denomination. Social conflict must be differentiated from political conflict in that it entails preexisting and coherent groups united by aspects of interactive behavior rather than merely involving constituencies divided by discrepant views over policy alone. In a political confrontation, adherence to one position or another is facultative from the standpoint of an individual's status within the institutional matrix. Nevertheless, as the classifier moves beyond matters of immediate policy, the characterization as political conflict of situations where the access to authority or civic rights is disputed becomes more problematical. The particular difficulty is that the claimants to these entidements may be activated by changes in the constitution of groups or by shifts in their material or symbolic situation vis-a-vis each, other, changes that affect the balance of political power. When the circulation of all goods is 8. Note Pearka 1963 on the fourth-antury Athenian economy: "A crisis of traditional land tenure. . . . At the end of the fifth century B.C. conditions for this crisis were created in the economic and social development of the Athenian city-state. Therefore the destructive influences of the war and plague remained permanent." 9. Asheri 1963 suggests that the Spartan economy entered a demographic crisis be­ cause of the breakdown of the "one heir" system, which supposedly allowed allottnents to be transmitted between generations without division. Cf. Figueira 1984.100-1 for doubts on the biological feasibility of such a replication of generations. 10. A reconstruction of civic symbolism in the manner of Loraux 1986 would be inconceivable in Marxist terms, which makes its discussion of ideology (328-3 8) especially inapposite.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflia 293

considered, influence in politics may be viewed as one of many forms of currency in exchange within society. Political conflicts have socioeconomic ramifications, and social tensions inevitably spill over into the forum of politics for setement by various means.u Thus a sharp line of demarcation between political and social conflict is impossible. Instead a spectrum of political confrontation between groups exists, with the poles pure political conflict and s ociopolitical conflict, which, although nonexistent historically, become taxonomic conveniences.12 In order to envisage the nature of this spectrum, I will present four Athenian examples of conflict along with speculations about their place on my continuum of conflict. Well-attested Athens needs no special justification as the source for such exemplary material. (Please consult the table for a schematic representation of the cases to follow.) AI . Most commentators would accept the denomination "social conflict" for the Athenian situation that Solon faced during his archonship in 594-593. A class of large landowners, visualized as creditors, were opposed by a depen­ dent rural class, the hektemoroi and peletai and other segments of society (Aristode Politics 1273b 36-39; Athenaion Politeia 2.2-3; 5.2-3; Plutarch Solon 13.4-5; d. Solon, fragm. 4 and 36 West: d. Figueira 1985.147-48). Solon enacted changes not only in political rights (through his census system: Ath. Pol. 7.3-4; Pluto Solon 18.1-4), but in land tenure (the uprooting of the mortgage stones), the nature of debt (forbidding personal security for borrowing), the economic balance between segments of society (the abolition of current debt), and the conditions of trade (the prohibition of the export of grain; for all: Ath. Pol. 6.1-2; Solon 14.2-15, 24. 1 ). Yet, it is just as evident that this conflict must have had political dimensions. The subjugation (and later sale) of the hektemoroi depended on a political definition of the alienability of rights and could be changed expeditiously by legislative act. If Solon's sumptuary legisla­ tion is any indication (Plut. Solon 2 1.3-7), the creditor group, roughly equiva1 1 . An approach along these lines must receive an emphasis in order to save us from reductionist interpretations of the allocation of goods within society, such as the "subsistence crisis insurance," which Finley 1983.47 offers as an explanation for the movement in Athens from aristocratic patronage to populist disbursals. For one thing, subsistence, strictly under­ sto, is at issue in none of the contexts that he describes. Nor can we accept without strong conditions the following: "This was a world dominated by low technology hence always on the edge of disaster in the countryside and of fo shortages in the cities" (p. 1 07). In reality, the issue of written law codes and an abolition of debt bondage which this quote introduces cannot be explained entirely in terms of material needs. Witnes archaic Greek appeals from different economic strata to a co mmon value system involving dilce, "justice." 12. It must be remembered that our subject is the archaic and clasical polis, in which social conditions are strongly influenced by the small size of political units. Most poleis possessed a limited capacity to II>lerate military setbaCks or any other type of external shock. Defeat in war usually triggered conflict and often constitutional change. A particularly clear example is Argos. The Argives engaged in warfare with the Spartans on a cycle of thirty-five to fifty years between the late eighth century and 400 B.C. and came the worse for the most part. A succesion of regimes can be associated with this cycle of hostilities. In contrast, viclI>ry could have the effect of a "windfall." Yet, we ought not follow Finley 1983.60 in tracing stasis II> the size of political units. .

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.

294 Politics and Conflict

lent to the Eupatrid (perhaps self-styled) aristocracy, was aspiring to a closed oligarchy (like that of the Bacchiads of Corinth) over the nonexploited segments of the community. Any fundamental struggle over the nature of society is almost inevitably played out in the political arena.1J Opponents of material exploitation include not only direct victims, but also those whose political power is lessened if dependent relationships are established in the community. N. The struggle between Isagoras and Cleisthenes less patently reflects a perceived basic clash between social groups. Judging from the mixing effect attributed to Cleisthenes' tribal reform by Atthidographic tradition (Ath. Pol. 21 .2: anameixai), one could assign to him an intention to disable the constitu­ encies of the older regional "parties" (Eliot 1962; Lewis 1963 ). Hypotheses such as that of Peter Siewert suggesting a military advantage in the tribal order as it eventuated belong to the same type of political rationale for items in the Cleisthenic program (Siewert 1982). In addition, ostracism looks like a purely instrumental political innovation (although a particularly elegant one). Yet, the tribal reform also had the effect of cloaking the status of those who had less than the strongest claim to citizenship because of mixed extraction or recent arrival (Ath. Pol. 21.4: tous neopolitas; Arist. Pol. 1275b 34-39: xenous kai doulous metoikous). These people may be seen as the poorest Athenians, those without demonstrable standing in phratries, new immigrants attracted to Athens during the sixth century in order to practice trades, "enfranchised" slaves, or the descendants of liberated hektemoroi. Nevertheless, their status as members of discrete social classifications warrants our detecting features of a social conflict in the agitation leading to the Cleisthenic reforms. These groups might have feared that the review of the rolls ' of citizenship, which was probably in the course of implementation by Isagoras, might worsen their ability to resist both exclusion from civil rights and exploitative behavior by groups within the upper class (cf. Ath. Pol. 13.5). N. When the debate over the naval legislation of Themistocles is consid­ ered, the political character of the conflict appears to predominate (Herodotus 7. 144. 1-2; Ath. PoL 23.7; Pluto Them. 4.1-4: Figueira 1988.83-87; 1986a.27475 ). The income from the silver mines would be either distributed among all male citizens or diverted to subsidize the building of triremes. The attractive1 3 . Finley 1983.2 again provides a contrast: M [SolonJ had ben assigned the task of refonning Athens in order to reduce the power of the rich to act in their self-interest, and he claimed to have done so without transferring so much power to the poor that they in turn could act one-sidedly in their interest. He thus acknowledges the centrality of classes and class­ conflict." 1be passive voice of the verb of the first clause glosses over support for the election of Solon across class boundaries, a fact casting considerable doubt on the substantiality of these classes outside of self-definition. Elsewhere (p. 1 3), we may note that MSolon . . . divided the citizenry into four wealth categories . . . the qualification for each of the four Solonic 'clas' was defined sOlely in terms of agricultural yield." Yet, these clas, conditioned by apostrophes, are no les substantial or coherent for that than the shadowy groups participating in the struggle before Solon: both rest on social consensus and not on some cohesiveness magically worked by supervening material factors. In the first quote Mdass" in Finley's last sentence can be replaced by MgroUp," whereupon the banality of what Solon is supposed to be acknowledging shines forth.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflict 295

Degree of Exploitation �- -- ------ ------------------ -----� M�

�

Primitive Polis

I I N I1 A2 I

51 Sociopolitical

53

Political

I I I

N

:A'

Articulated Polis ness of the latter proposal could be contingent on how the voter perceived the threat from Aegina, the proximate cause of the measure, or the danger from Persia, a background anxiety. Moreover, there is no hint that poor Athenians tended to oppose Themistocles (quite the contrary), so that there was no attested feeling that the bill would alter an equilibrium between economic strata about the enjoyment of common resources. Nevertheless, the new sys­ tem for the procurement of warships superseded the long-existing naucraric system. So it would disturb whatever networks of patronage (to the benefit of the prytanies? ) that were mediated through the naucraries. What is more, the assignment of state funds and final responsibility for completed ships to well­ to-do Athenians was the germ of the later liturgic system (as the garbled account in Ath. Pol. 22.7 suggests; d. Labarbe 1957.43-44). As such, it in­ creased the individual financial and psychological burden on those members of the elite made answerable for ships. Many of these would have been landowners who, although attracted by his program, might have resisted Themistocles. In this sense the Atthidographic "tradition could at some point have treated Aristides as the leader of the gnorimoi, " aristocrats" (Ath. Pol. 28.2) just like that earlier opponent of Themistocles, Miltiades (Plut. Them. 4;.4; d. Ath. Pol. 28.2), although elsewhere he is seen as a demotikos, "popu­ list" (Ath. Pol. 23.3). Political factors do seem to predominate in the decision. N. The struggle between Pericles and Thucydides Melesiou over the application of tile reserve fund of the Delian League to building projects in Athens also seems to belong toward the political pole of the spectrum of conflict (Plut. Per. 1 1.1-12.1). Overtly political aspects of the controversy in­ volved the question of whether the Athenians were indeed breaking faith with their allies by their nonmilitary use of the common treasury. Yet, aspects of the situation more deeply rooted in the social matrix show how the rivalry of the aristocrats Pericles and Thucydides could appear to later commentators as part of a social conflict between elite and demos. Thucydides, a relative of Cimon (Ath. Pol. 28.2; Pluto Per. 1 1.1), is treated in that tradition as a cham-

296

Politics and Conflict

pion of upper-class opinion, and his membership in an international athletic and aristocratic milieu (through his father, Melesias: Pindar Olympian 8.54; Nemean 4.93, 6.65) cannot be doubted. Members of Athens' traditional leadership maintained their prestige not only through the deference paid to them by their fellow citizens, but also through their acceptance as peers, and sometimes patrons, by the aristocrats of allied cities. Aggrandizement by Athens threatened to expose the nature of the status of the allies to be, in fact, subjection to Athens, and that, in turn, threatened to earn the hostility of the allied elite for all Athenians (note the position of Phrynichus in Thucydides 8.48.5-6). Concomitantly, the Athenian demos could only benefit from the Periclean position that all tribute was available for any use by Athens, once the condition of protection from Persia was achieved (d. Pluto Per. 12.3). If we place these four episodes of confrontation on our spectrum spaning the range from sociopolitical conflict to pure political conflict, an interesting phenomenon emerges: as time progresses conflict in Athens becomes less social (between already constituted groups) and more a matter of individual decisions over choices in policy. A reconstruction of the debate in Athens on the eve of the Peloponnesian War concerning the crucial response to Sparta's ultimatum cannot be analyzed in terms of the social situation of Pericles' supporters and enemies (Thuc. 1 .139.1-146.1), at least to the best of my knowledge (AS; Figueira forthcoming). Even the rather fanciful polemics con­ tained in Pluto Pericles 29.7-32.6, which motivate Pericles' "instigation" of the war, cannot easily be resolved into the terms of social conflict. Is this then a case of political conflict pure and simple? In these Athenian examples, the progression to the political pole of the continuum parallels the progress of Athenian power and wealth. This obser­ vation can be examined from two perspectives. In the first place, the relief of deep-seated tensions between groups might have contributed to the Athenians' ability to cope with external threats and might, as well, have freed the energies of individuals to exploit economic opportunities (like the mining industiy at Laurion). This conclusion (at least in military terms) is in the same spirit as Herodotus' remark that the Athenians became a match Boeotian and Euboean enemies only after they had achieved freedom from tyranny (Herod. 5.78 ). Second, one must recognize how military success and successful hegemonism strengthen its practitioner.14 Just as economic growth relieves 14. Yet, care must be taken in order to avoid the view that the social integration of hegemonic states like Athens lay predominandy in successful imperialism (note Finley 1 983 .6063, 106-7, for the concept of "conquest-states"). The tribute exacted by the Athenians was not pure expropriation, because the protection afforded by the a,k.he had considerable and unique real value. 1be unpopularity of the Athenian empire lay in the discrepancies between the Athenian valuation of that protection and the estimation of its cost (much of it symbolic and psychological) by groups among the allies. An emphasis on "conquest-states" leads to the conclusion that "what passed Cor politics in subject cities is, as I have already said, uninteresting" (Finley 1 983 .116). This judgment impoverishes our understanding of ancient political life, unles it could be shown that the inhabitants of these cities were similarly uninterested in politics.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflict 297

interclass friction because everyone's lot is palpably improving, military vic­ tory in Greek poleis increased the stock of goods (some of them nonmaterial) to be divided among citizens. Minor imbalances in their distribution were offset by an incremental inflow. However, there is more involved here than merely the achievement of stability and quiescence (d. Finley 1 983. 108-10). The creation of the political institutionality of the classical polis moved in parallel with a progress in economic output and differentiation of economic roles. Down to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, flare-ups of social conflict ocurred against a backdrop of increasing institutional complexity and often in response to new problems rather than to an exacerbation of long-existing grievances. Two sorts of parallel (serving as tests) can be applied to the hypothesis that I just offered. One is to consider the status of social integration after Athens' international status began to worsen. From as early as the Peace of Nicias, a tendency existed for the propertied social stratum (and especially its agricultural component) to favor peace, whereas the urban, maritime class, involved in providing and maning the fleet (the nautikos okhlos, "mob"), supported imperialistic ventures (N). The incidence of the wartime eisphorai on the wealthy and the likelihood that the equipping and dispatch of expeditions would direct resources toward the poor could be cited in explanation of this disagreement. In the dangerous military circumstances of the Decelean and the Corinthian Wars, risks overshadowed potential benefits, and the distribu­ tion of costs was (and is) always more problematical than a division of spoils (seen most explicidy in Hellenica Oxyrhynchia 6.2-3 [Bartoletti] ). A rough, but sound appraisal would see in this dispute between imperialists and quietists much more of a social conflict than anything during the Pentecontaetia. At the same time, this stasis is not so distinctly embedded in societal structure when compared with the sixth-century cases. A large part of our difficulty in drawing "party" lines after the Syracusan debacle among "radical democrats" (like Hyperbolus), "moderate democrats" (like Thrasybulus), "moderate oli­ garchs" (like Theramenes), and "oligarchs" (like Antiphon) is that the allegiance of factions and presumably the nearly invisible constituencies lying behind them were shifting on issues such as the toleration of oligarchies among the allies, the status of Alcibiades, and the diobelia. Another way to approach the characterization of conflict in Athens is to evaluate a situation that lies chronologically between two of the other cases. Observe then the conflict between the Attic regional parties of the 560s and 550s (N: Herod. 1 .55.3; Pluto Solon 13.1-3, 29.1; Ath. Pol. 13.4-5; Schol. Aristophanes Wasps 1223). Although the regions of Attica doubdess differed from each other economically, when compared with the situation that Solon faced, these political differences appear less deeply based and more the result of ordinary factional partisanship. The occasional alliances of twd factions against a third points in the direction of this conclusion. The undeniable aspects of social conflict were perhaps twofold: one represented by Pisistratid

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Politics and Conflict

championing of the demos, which here signifies an effort to satisfy those who felt the Solonian reforms did not go far enough or who still felt vulnerable (Ath. Pol. 13.4-14. 1 ; Pluto Solon 29. 1 ); and another by residual Eupatrid aspi­ rations for a narrow oligarchy (Figueira 1984b.469-71 ) . The " social" aspect of this conflict seems attenuated when juxtaposed both to the situation that Solon faced and to the struggle between Cleisthenes and Isagoras. Thus, in any polis, social conflict waxes and wanes beneath the continuing ferment of partisan politics as society varies in its success in dealing with friction among groups. The social aspect of conflict at Athens became less marked after Cleisthenes, only to revive in the last, war years of the fifth century. This pattern can probably be paralleled in many leading poleis. They emerged from the archaic period having established a sociopolitical consensus, of which Athenian democracy is exemplary, although it is scarcely characteristic consti­ tutionally.lS The Peloponnesian War saw a recrudescence of stasis, as the hostilities between Athens and Sparta became reconceptualized as a struggle between democratic and oligarchic ideologies to be fought by classes within the cities. In contrast, cities like Megara that could not transcend the intergroup frictions of the early archaic period did not fare well either militarily or culturally (Figueira 1 985.150-58). Indigenous institutions became extinct only to be replaced by imitations of their "advanced," that is, successful, neighbors. Sparta, so often treated as the polar opposite of Athens, looks in this case quite similar. Sparta was notoriously wracked by stasis in the early archaic period (Herod. 1 .65-66; d. Pluto Lycurg. 5.1 ), of which the crisis that led to the dispatch of the Partheniai to found Taras may be taken as exemplary ( Sl: Antiochus, FGrH 555 F13; Ephorus, FGrH 70 F2 16; Arist. Pol. 1 306b 30; Diodorus 8.21; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 19.1; Heraclides, FHG 2.220; d. Strabo 6.3.2-3, C278). Yet, the characteristic Lycurgan order inte­ grated Spartan society so well that social conflict of such a nature is not found between 600 and 465 or even 424 (if we discount the helots). RatIier, political conflicts had socioeconomic ramifications. Here let us propose the ambivalent reaction at Sparta to the misdeeds of PausaniBs' as commander of the alied fleet in 478 and thereafter (S2: Thuc. 1 . 128.3; 132.1 , 5; 134.1; Nepos PIlUS. 5 . 1 ) . The prospect that elite Spartiates would abuse service abroad to transgress the diaite must have been troubling to the ordinary citizen as it 15. As recognized by Finley 1 983.106-7, but with emphases, distorted to my mind, that are characteristic. First note that lithe long years of transformation from the aristocratic monopoly to the classical city-state structure necesy required moments of sharp struggle, even civil war, separated by longer and quieter periods of agitation." We se not only an undue emphasis on crises in institution building, but also an excessive stress on partisan, political activity in achievi ng the structure of the clasical polis. A recognition needs to be given to the extrafacrlonal proces of social integration, which are eventually subsumed into the political order. For example, the development of dramatic genres in sixth-century Artica contributed to the normative consensus of the Athenian people, as was subsequendy recog­ nized by the inclusion of dramatic competition in politically oriented public festivals. For subsistence insurance and conquest states, se nn. 1 1, 14.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflict 299

admitted the possibility that an untoward degree of social differentiation might be introduced (d. Thuc. 1.130. 1 ). At the same time, to those like Pausanias, to whom a major effort to curtail nascent Athenian power seemed necessary, an emendation of the social order in order to admit upward mobil­ ity for a favored section of the helots must have appeared attractive (Thuc. 1.132.4; Nepos Paus. 3.3; d. Arist. Pol. 1307a 2). After the damages sustained by the Laconian economy at the hands of the Athenians during the Peloponnesian War, however, social conflict came to predominate in politics. The conspiracy of Cinadon is one example where a few particulars have survived. That the plot activated or purported to activate wide sectors of the perioec� hypomeiones, and helots indicates amply the depression of the Spartan economy and progressive breakdown of Sparta's overall integration of classes (53: Xen. Hellenica 3.3.4-1 1; Figueira 1986.196-99, 202-6). EXPLOITAT ION

When the source of the tensions that underlie social conflict is sought, exploi­ tation is likely to be involved. A perception of injustice (of victimization or deprivation) may motivate group hostility and efforts for redress; so, too, an aggressive group seeking advantages that are perceived as unfair can provoke a defensive reaction among its victims (AZ) or among those who fear an incre­ ment to the power of their political rivals, the exploiters (At ). Conversely, a ri­ valry for power without exploitation will usually be classed as purely political conflict. An exploitative interchange is one in which one party is forced by some instrumentality to supply more (or receive less) of some good than he judges commensurate. If we were to imagine a social environment entirely lacking in coercion, one where all interactions were purely volitional, there could be no exploitation. l' Although there is a temptation to denounce certain volitional situations as exploitative on the ground that social conditioning compels acquiescence, this approach leads to a thorough subjectivity and ethnocentrism. There is no way to evaluate the nonmaterial goods in social interchanges without imposing a modern appraisal of their value. Although anyone is entitled to observe that his own life-style could not be accommodated within a particular culture, that judgment is a far cry from a demonstration of exploitation. For instance, an Athenian commentator like Isocrates might find the Spartiates' treatment of the perioeci harshly exploitative (Isoc. 12.178-8 1 ), but the historical record seems to urge that the perioeci were, for the most part, content with their lot. Another factor must be present to justify the concept of social conflict: exploitation must be sanctioned by some group. When this is not the case, the 1 6 . Contrast a Marxist position that approaches the question of exploitation not from standpoint of the degree of constraint applied to choices but from group claims to aggre­ gates: most notoriously, struggle over the control of "surplus labor" (the engine to social conflict in early Rome, according to Hindes and Hirst 1975.82-88). the

300 Politics and Conflict

exploiter becomes a sociopath (or even a criminal). The same logic necessi­ tates that the victims of such exploitation must belong to a victimized group. Otherwise an act of exploitation becomes penal, because its justification stands in the individual characteristics of the victim. It is, of course, of considerable interest to the social historian to investigate the causes, prevalence, and patterns of deviant behavior, but such exploration does not have as its subject exploi­ tation and social conflict as it has been envisaged here. Antisocial behavior (defined without anachronism) may be attributed by scholars to poor or deteriorating economic conditions which themselves are linked to imprudent policies. But exploitation is victimization, which is justified in terms of mem­ bership in groups. Consequently, still another criterion must be met for social conflict to exist: there must be an awareness on the part of the victims that it is their membership in a group that is determinative. Without such conscious­ ness, exploitation may not be posited on modem criteria. At this distance, the historian is bound to miss nonmaterial goods in exchange and see exploitation where there is actually only social integration (however distasteful in our eyes). Economic classes are notoriously elusive entities. A sound typology must base itself on self-definition, the ethos of a group and its ideology within an ancient society. In recognition of the relationship between exploitation and social con­ flict I have just described, another way is open to classify social conflict. The scale of exploitation could be gauged, and, in some contexts, it is even possible to speak quantitatively about some features of exploitation. The 600 talents of tribute (Thuc. 2.13.3) - and this ignores the remainder of Athenian revenues from the empire - drawn by the Athenians from their allies would be equivalent to approximately 72,000 metric tons of wheat (if 1 medimnos of wheat costs 3 drachmas [ef. Aristoph. Ecclesiazusae 547-48]).17 Only a per­ centage of this taxation could be considered exploitative inasmuch as the Athenians were providing the allies with protection from the Persians and were bearing the cost of the empire's administration (however much the allies may have resented aspects of this jurisdiction). So this amount provides a high ceiling for the sum that might have been extracted exploitatively. The Spartiates, by way of comparison, were drawing natural goods from their kleroi equivalent to, at least, 34,000 metric tons of wheat, some of which may have been recirculated to the helots (Figueira 1 984.99-100). The degree of exploitation represented by the slave labor of Attica, in juxtaposition, can be calculated roughly as follows. Minimum subsistence lies in the area of the equivalent of 250-300 kilograms of wheat-equivalent per annum, a figure, if anything, lower than what ancient views held, when the attested rations for slaves are considered (Figueira 1982.55-56). Total per capita consumption in classical Greece probably lay around 500-600 kilo17. For the use of kilograms (or metric tons) of wheat-equivalent as a measure of economic output and consumption in primitive economies, se Oark and Haswell 1970.57-62; other ancient applications are in Figueira 1982.43-45 wih nn. 6-9; 1984.90-95 .

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflict 301 grams of wheat-equivalent annualy. Consequently, 300 kilograms of wheat­ equivalent on average is the very most that could have been extracted exploitatively from each slave. This calculation ought to set to rest the baleful influence on modern scholars of the ancient slave owner's fantasy of the slave as an animate instrument of his master's will, what might also be called the fantasy of total domination or total exploitation. On the average, masters probably extracted no more than 50 percent (and that is probably an overesti­ mate) of their slaves' output, an amount comparable with the rents on Sp artan kleroi, the maximum rents paid by tenant farmers in other cultures, and the level of exploitation reached by other slave owning societies (Clark 1977.6566 ). Multiply 300 kilograms of wheat-equivalent by one's estimated slave population of Attica in order to create a sum for servile exploitation. Quantification is useful in expressing the ramifications of the qualitative evaluations that a social historian might frame. Here it helps to understand that from the standpoint of the scale of the transfer of material goods, the Spartan system of kleroi, helots, and rents was not comparable with the Athe­ nian tribute system. In a parallel maner, one would have to posit slave numbers in Attica over 250,000 before the degree of exploitation of servile labor began to approach the magnitude of the system of phoros as a mecha­ nism for shifting resources (300 kilograms of wheat-equivalent (maximum material exploitation of the average slave] x 250,000 slaves = 72,000 metric tons of wheat-equivalent). This calculation casts an interesting light on characterizations of imperial Athens as a "slave" society rather than a society with slavery. It subserves a qualitative recognition that for most states within the classical and archaic Greek world the majority of production could have been generated only by smallholders, who were less dependent on slaves (even in a place like Athens) than were their fellow citizens engaged in extractive industries and the crafts (see Finley 1 959; d. Jameson 1977-78 ). If the quantitative argument on the servile character of the ancient economy or society is thus rebufed, an argument is still left that the extraction of "surplus" through slavery permitted the creation of a leisured class, which created classical culture.1s The answer is simple. Nothing suggests that slaves represented an appreciable segment of city-state populations before circa 600 at the earliest. Therefore, much of the

1 8 . Stated with characteristic vigor and dogmatism by Anderson 1974.35 (the italics are mine): "But by itself it would have tended to arest the political and cultural development of Gre civilization at a 'Boeotian' level (that of Hesiod and Pmdar, I suppose), by preventing the growth of a more complex social division of labour and urban superstructure. Relatively egalitarian peasant communities could congregate physicaly in towns; but they could never in their simple state create a luminous city-civilization of the type that Antiquity was now for the first time to witnes. For this, generalized and captive surplus labour was necesry, to emanci­ pate me ruling stratum for construction of a civic and intellectual world." Parain 1 963 .9 argues that slavery sustained civic equality. Vemant 1976 attempts to sidestep the centrality of ancient slavery for class struggle by finding the characteristic "contradictions" of the ancient economy in land tenure and usage and the pre-monetary orientation that flowed out of it.

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cultural and institutional order of the polis was already in place at the dawn of the great age of slaveholding. Yet these crude estimates are useful for our purposes only in the limited sense, which has just been presented. One need only read Thucydides to understand that panhellenic hostility to Athens derived from transfers of resources from the arkhe to Athens through the system of phoros. The restive­ ness of the helots under Spartan rule was likewise virtualy proverbial. Slaves never represented a cohesive group either in their masters' or their own minds so that for all their exploited situation they did not engage (for the most part) in social conflict (cf. Parain 1 963.15-16). If quantification of the scale of material exploitation adds an interesting dimension to intuitive evaluations of the balance between social classes, it must inevitably fail to act as a probative criterion. That is because society is much more than a machine for the circula­ tion of material goods: there are many other ways for individuals to contribute to the commonwealth than by the creation of products. As early in the line of Greek social comment as Homer, Sarpedon is found justifying the material privileges of a basileus on the basis of his service to the community as a warrior (Iliad 12.309-29). Hence a central criterion for gauging the intensity of social conflict must remain a judgment on statements of victimization, of outraged dike, by those who purport to be exploited. An understanding of the quantities of material interchange can only help determine whether the substance of such claims is to be admitted. For example, we can accept the injustice of the system of tribute or reject the rhetoric about Athens as the tyrant city of Greece and describe the phoros of the allies as a fair payment for noninterference from Persia, but only when both a weighing of the value of the personal service by Athenian soldiers and an estimate of the cost to Athens of the hardware of its military establishment is made. An awareness of economic realities can only help us reject the assumption of justice by the poets of the Megarian Theognidea on behalf of a vision of society without meaningful social mobility (Figueira 1985. 143-53). One option would be to tie our spectrum of conflict to our judgments on the scale of exploitation so that the greater the exploitation is judged to be, the more deep-seated, the more "social," conflict is seen to be. This conjec­ ture probably works for the six Athenian examples I have chosen. The level of exploitation, however quantified or estimated, was truly highest before Solon. The danger of potential exploitation at the hands of Isagoras' faction, which was legitimately feared by those who turned to Cleisthenes, looks larger than the fihh-century cases. Yet such a schematization must ultimately rest on an analysis of the portrayal of the situation by the participants in the confrontation itself. We must gauge their characterization of their status and actions and probe the ideology that justifies their and their contemporaries' behavior.

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303

C ON FLICT AN D T H E EVOLVED POLI S

While a consideration of self-representation allows us to isolate the mecha­ nisms of exploitation, as long as social (especially economic) conditions remain our focus, we are partially stymied in close analysis. That is because there is nothing fundamentally "economic" about the involuntary and coercive com­ ponent to exploitative exchange (at any rate, not in the same way as supply and demand or the money supply is conceptually economic). Let us consider chattel slavery. I must emphasize that the slave owner's absolute control over the slave is in the nature of a fantasy: no coercion can disable an individual's self-interest, however it might be disguised. This fantasy of the slave owner resides in his attempt to actualize a metaphor, man as domestic beast or tool. Although the metaphor, in its turn, is obvious, especially for an agricultural society (hence the appearance in a number of different cultures of chattel slavery), there is nothing in economic conditions per se that necessitates that chattel slavery exist. For every level of technological sophistication, of differ­ entiation of labor and production, and of output, there are both exploitative and nonexploitative social orders (as the varying degrees of prevalence of chattel slaves in various Greek poleis demonstrates). Therefore, it is an unac­ ceptable generalization to characterize ancient Greek society by a particular form of exploitation.1' The existence of chattel slavery depends on a political decision that certain persons are so lacking in rights that they may be treated as though they were equivalent to inanimate objects or domestic animals (cf. Hindess and Hirst 1975. 1 1 3-16). That decision must be backed by an elaborate legal apparatus both to implement the master's "ownership" and to reconcile the institution of slavery with the practical conditions under which slaves like everyone else attempt to maximize their own benefits. The contradiction in terms of the peculium, legally recognized servile property, is exemplary of this insight. Therefore, returning to our example of the Solonian crisis, one might observe that it involved the adjudication of th� question whether anyone of Athenian birth could be a fair target for enslavement, for it is that degradation from hektemoric status to slavery abroad which exemplifies the acute stage of this exploitation. , In fact, the more complex the society, paradoxically, the greater the likelihood that coercion is politically sanctioned and that the groups involved are social classes that have been redesigned politically (like the oligarchic 5,000 or 3,000 in late-fifth-century Attica). The complexity of an ever-changing matrix of interaction among institutions within the developed polis cannot be mediated by a few rules or customs, sanctioned by long tradition, but rather 1 9. Hindes and Hirst 1 975.84: "a social division of labour betwe a clas of direct producers and a class of non-labourers"; "appropriation of surplus-labour by right of ci�en­

ship."

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Politics and Conflict

legislation must continualy update a cultural vision of equity.20 Thus the self­ assertion of political activity will always be vulnerable to being tainted with self-interest, which may seek to create a political mechanism for exploitation. It is hardly surprising that taxes and what are now caled transfer payments are implicated in many patterns of exploitation after the late archaic-early classical polis had emerged (and spread), with its money economy, taxes, and apparatus for state expenditure. The social ferment surrounding democracy and oligarchy in the late fifth century (like our example N) is basically of this nature. The onerous eisphorai, "capital levies," were especially significant in supporting the war efort, and the practice of payment for governmental service provided a central issue during the oligarchic agitation of 4 1 1 . Inequi­ table or extortionate regimes of taxation may be flagrantly oppressive as well as grotesqudy destructive of an economy (the Roman Dominate is the classic example), but they hardly illustrate the "class struggle" (d. de Ste. Croix

1981 .453-503). In my analysis up to this point (as is customary among scholars ), preex­ isting social groups were assumed to have been in confrontation. It is, how­ ever, perhaps just as appropriate to see such groups as called into existence in their latest form by legislation on the transfer of resources. After all, it makes a great difference to the class valence assigned Athenian military policy in the fourth century whether 1 ,200 or only the richest 300 individuals were respon­ sible for the trierarchy (Demosthenes 18.102-4; 21.154-55; Aeschines 3.222; Harpocration s.v. symmoria). If we forget these conditions of historical analy­ sis, we become prey to deterministic explanations wherein the organization of production and system of property holding are treated as constants with conflict held rigidly contingent. The variety of political and economic orders represented in Greek poleis ought to warn us against such a mechanistic perspective. These latest considerations urge that there is a second spectrum across which political and social conflict is to be classified. Conflict must be placed along an axis on which the strength and/or articulation of political institutions is measured. When political institutions are weak, as in early-archaic Greece (at one extreme of the scale), victimization may OCCur in a boundary zone between crime and exploitation, where force is quasi-political, for it is not inhibited by true political authority. The distinction betwee'n political authority exercised by an aristocrat through an office and the same person's nongovern­ mental influence had not yet been established clearly. Toward the other pole of this spectrum exploitation is merely the implementation of a political 20. Hence we cannot follow Runciman 1982, although his is an interesting application of curent comparativist research to the subject of the formation of "states" in archaic Greece. Our emphasis ought to fall on not "the conditions for a cumulative accretion of power available to the incumbents of prospective governmental roles," but on the formation of a sense of community (partly through religion and myth) and the legitimization and authoriza­ tion of holders of power.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflict

305

formula (as so often in the classical polis). The question then left before us is whether these two spectra of conflict may be made to intersect in our histori­ cal analyses. As portrayed on the table, the Athenian cases AI-AS (with A7) lie along a diagonal that runs from deep sociopolitical conflict in an undifferentiated polis at the upper left to political conflict in the articulated polis at the lower right. Example A' is characteristic of ideologized political conflict with eco­ nomic complications characteristic of the late fifth century, showing the awakening of sociopolitical conflict typical of its period. That trend is repre­ sented visually by a horizontal movement on the same level of political articu­ lation. The Spartan cases 51_53 depict the same sort of development in a less differentiated sociopolitical order. If the situation of the helots vis-a-vis the Spartiates is treated as a permanent state of social conflict (51), it would have to lie to the far left of the table (by virtue of its highly socioeconomic nature) and toward the top, because the rigidity of the political specifications of economic activity hampers differentiation of political organization. Moreover, it may be possible to use this representation of conflict to distinguish between classes of political phenomena that may not ordinarily be separated, that is, archaic Peloponnesian tyranny and Ionian tyranny. For instance, the stasis that many of us associate with the expansion of hoplite tactics pitted smallholders and lesser nobles against a governing aristocracy, and often led to a tyrant in the eighth- and seventh-century Peloponnesus (T). Such conflict is sociopolitical and, because citizenship is at issue, belongs to the nondifferentiated polis. Late-archaic tyranny in Ionia emerges from poleis already more articulated in political institutionality and more economi­ cally differentiated. The examples that form this category deserve a different place in any scheme of classification, one where the effect of external military conditions on the economic status of different classes receives emphasis (-P). If classical Sicilian tyranny were added to the same scheme, it would lie farther along in the political evolution of the polis, and the conflict that served as its spawning ground would be placed even mote in the direction of purely political conflict (T3). Hence in terms of this analysis of tyranny, at least three subclasses would have to be admitted. CONCLUSION

Social conflict proves to be elusive and varied, once deterministic systems of historical causation are discarded. Not only are we forced to admit the existence of conflicts virtually without socioeconomic ramifications, but we are con­ fronted with cases where politics determines the social order to the extent of creating friction between groups. My analysis of conflict along two axes is admittedly crude. It does, however, have the advantage of dramatizing the variety of the phenomena. That empiricism wil be indispensable if we are ever to confront the "adversarial mode" in the investigation of classical antiq-

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uity, � W. Robert Connor has aptly named it: "By emphasizing the flaws, failures, and pettiness of the subject matter, critics exalt themselves as the true arbiters of cultural value. . . . The new adversarial mode abandons the old emulation of the classics and its elimination of critical distance. In its place it substitutes an exaltation of the remote critic over the benighted text." This adversarial stance is sustained by deterministic, ideological interpretation, and not by the application of autonomous methodology. Daunted by the mental costs of approaching the complex and unique lives of his subjects which the historian must sustain, the ideologue retreats into a reductionism of pat cat­ egories, never tragic causations, and smug evaluations. Not only is such an approach analytically sterile, but, by virtue of its deliberate alienation from its human subjects, pedagogically bankrupt.

REFERENCES

ANDERSON, P . 1 9 74 . Passt1ges from Antiquity to Peudalism. London. ASHERI, D . 1 9 6 3 . "Laws of Land In­ heritance, Distribution of Land and Political Constirutions," Historit1 12, 1 -2 1 . BERLIN, I . 1 9 7 8 . Karl Mt1"": His Life lind Environment (4th ed.). Oxford. CARTLEDGE, P. 1 9 75 . "Toward the Spartan Revolution," Arethusa 8, 59-84. -- 1 9 8 7 . Agesilaos and the Crisis of Sparta. London. ClARK, C. 1977. Population Growth lind Land Use (2nd ed.). London. -- and HASWELL, M. 1 97 0 . The

Economics of Subsistence Agriculture (4th

ed.) . London. COHEN, G. A. and ACTON, H. B . 1 9 70 . " On Some Criticisms o f Historical Materialism," The Aristotelian Society, Suppl. vol. 44, 121-56. C O NN O R , W . R . 1 9 8 9 . " After Smashing the Wedgwood , " American Scholar 58, 533-4 1 . D E SU. C RO I X, G. E. M . 1 9 75 . "Karl Marx and the History of Classical An­ tiquity," Arethusa 8, 7-4 1 . - 1 9 8 1 . The Clas Struggle in the

An&ient Greelr. WQrld from the ArchfJic Age to the Arab Conquuts. London. DETIENNE, M. 1 9 6 3 . Cnu agra;re et t1ttitude religieuse chez Hhiode. Brusls.

-- 1 9 77. "Les grees ne sont pas comme les autres," in id., Dionysos mis a mort, Paris, 14-47.

ELIOT, C. W. j. 1 9 62 . The CotlStt11 Demes of Attict1. Toronto. ENGELS, F. 1 8 8 4 . The Origin of the Pt1mily, Prillat. Property, and the Stt1te: In Light of the Reset1rches of Lewis H. Mor­ gt1n. FGr:H. JACOBY, F. Die Frt1gmenu der griechischen Historilr.er, 3 parts in several vols., 1923ff. Berlin, then Leiden. PHG . MOLLER, C and T. F,agmenta Historicorum Grt1ecorum, 5 vols., 1 841-70. Paris. FIGUEIRA, T. j. 1 9 8 2 . Aegina . New York. -- 1 9 8 4 . "Mess Contributions and Subsistence at Sparta," Trans. Am. Philol. Ass. 1 1 4, 8 7-109: -- 1 9 8 4a . "Karl Polanyi and An­ cient Greek Trade: The Port of Trade," An­ cient World 10, 1 5 -30. -- 1 9 8 4 b . "The Ten Archontes of 579/8 at Athens," Hesperia 53, 447-473. -- 1 9 8 5 . "The Theognidea and Megarian Society," in Figueira and G. Nagy, Theognis of Megara, Baltimore, 1 12-5 8 . -- 1 98 6 . "Population Patterns in Late Archaic and Classical Sparta , " T't1ns. Am. Philol. As. 1 1 6, 1 65-2 1 3. -- 1 9 86a. "Xanthippos, Father of Perikles, and the Prutaneis of the Nauk,aroi," Histori4 35, 25 8-79. -- 1 9 8 8 . "The Chronology of the Conflict between Athens and Aegina in Herodorus Bk. 6," QUt1d. U,bint1ti Cult.

Figueira: Typology of Social Conflict

Class. 2 8 , 49-89.

-- forthcoming. "Autonomoi spondas (Thucydides 1 .67.2)," Bull.

tas Class. St.

IuJta 1nst.

FINLEY, M . I . 1 9 5 9 . "Was Greek Civilization Based on Slave Labour?" Historia

8, 145-64.

-- 1 9 8 3 .

World. Cambridge.

Polities in the Ancient

-- 1 9 8 3 a . "Ancient Society", " Sla_ very " in T. B. Bonomore, A Dictionary of Marxist Thought, Cambridge, 19-23, 440-4 1 . FORREST, W . G . 1 9 6 6 . The Emer­

gence of Greek Democracy: 800-400

B.C.

New York.

GARLA N , Y . 1 9 8 9 . Gue"e et eco P ari s. GARNSEY, P. 1 9 8 8 . Famine and Food Supply in the Greco-Roman World. Cam­ bridge . HINDESS, B . and HIRST, P . Q. 1 975 . Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production. Lon­ don. J AMESON, M. H. 1 977-7 8 . "Agricul­ ture and Slavery in Classical Athens ," Clas J. 73, 122 -45. KEULS, E. 1 98 5 . The Reign of the

nomie en Grece ancienne.

Phallus: Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens. New York.

KOLAKOWS K I , L. 1 9 7 8 . Main Cur­ rents of Marxism, vols . 2-3. Oxford . LABARBE, j. 1 9 5 7 . La loi navale de Themistocle. Paris. LEKIS, P. 1 9 8 8 . Marx on Classical Antiquity: Problems of Historical Methodol­ ogy. Brighton, Sussex. LEWIS, D. M. 1 96 3 . "Cleisthenes and Attica," Historia 12, 22 -40.

307

LINTOTT , A. W. 1 9 8 2 . Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Classical City. London. LORAUX, N . 1 9 8 6 . The Invention of Athens: The Funeral Oration in the Classical City. Cambridge, Massachusetts. M A R X , K . 1 9 5 7 - 8 . Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (tt. M. Nicolaus), New York 1 973 (from Grundrise der Kritik der politischen Okonomie) . MEILLASSOUX , C. 1 972 . "From Re­ production to Production: A Marxist Ap­ proach to Economic Anthropo l ogy , " Economy and Society 8, 93-1 05. VON MISES, L. 1 9 6 3 . Human Action (2nd ed.). New Haven. MOLLER, K . O. 1 8 4 4 . Geschichten hellenischer Stamme und Stadte. Berlin. PARAIN , C. 1 9 6 3 . " Les caracteres specifiques de la l u tt e de classes dans I'antiquite c1assique," La pensk 108, 3-25. PE(!IRKA, j. 1 9 6 3 . "Land Tenure and the Develop me nt of the Archaic Polis," Graeco-Latina Pragensia 2, 1 8 3 -201. RUNCIMAN, W. G . 1 9 8 2 . "Origins of States: The Case of Archaic Greece," Com ­ parative Studies in Society and History 24, 351-77. SIEWERT, P. 1 9 8 2 . Die Trittyen Atti­

kas und

die Heeresreform des Kleisthenes.

Munich. VERNANT , j . - P . 1 9 7 6 . " Remarks on the Class Struggle in Ancient Greece," Cri­ tique of Anthropology 7, 67- 8 1 . W ILL, E. 1 9 5 6 . Doriens et loniens. Paris.

Social Structure and Conflict in the Medieval City

G I O RG I O CRACCO

l

OWE THE INSPIRATION for my involvement in the debate on medieval urban society to the remarks of the deceased and sorely missed Elias J. Bickerman. In 1969, reflecting on Les origines de la republique romaine and especially on the relationship between patricians and plebeians, he intro­ duced a bold comparison between Roman society and the medieval city-state. Bickerman based his work on the contributions of the following scholars: Antonio Marongiu, Gina FasoH, Ernesto Sestan, and myself. With regard to my book Societa e Stato nel Medioevo Veneziano, he added that it "also deals with other Italian cities."l However, we were in the sixties then; it was more than a quarter of a century ago, and historians' concerns were very different. The main problem in those days, at least in Italy, was to establish an effective tie between the state and society in light of the increased role of the masses, and therefore to pinpoint the most suitable means for accomplishing this. Should those means be peaceful, violent, or in any case conflictual? A majority of scholars feared the resulting wounds and conflicts. It is true that Gaetano Salvemini's old interpretation of the social struggles in the Florence of the late thirteenth century was still.,accorded a certain measure of respect: on the one hand were the landowners, the "magnates," and on the other were the new and "progressive" forces of the mercatores the "p opolo grasso " which "may be called the stomach of the city. "2 Salvemini's ideas were quickly besieged with criticism. Nicola Otokar objected that the struggle referred to was directed not against the "magnates" as a social class " but rather against abuses and excesses of their power. " The conflict was merely the reflection of internal contrasts in the oligarchy. However, the oligarchy remained dominant or only slighdy threatened by "opposing groups who aspired to become oligarchies in their own right." In this view, there was no class struggle, only a struggle between factions that never changed the essential -

-

E1ias J. Bicken, "Some Reflections on Early Roman History," Rivista di Filologia 393-408. See especially n. 1 page 402. 2. Gaetano Salvemini, Magnati e papala,,; in Pirenze dal 1280 al 1295 (Turin: Einaudi, 1960) 48, 65ff. 1.

e

di lstnu:ione Clas 97 (1969)

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homogeneity and continuity of the ruling class.l Later came the contributions of Gina Fasoli, "Ricerche sulla legislazione antimagnatizia, " and Emilio Cristiani, Nobilta e popolo nel Comune di Pisa, which effectively ended all hypotheses on class struggle and replaced them with the so-called criterion of the faction ( Cristiani's study was a harsh criticism of Gioachino Volpe's opinion, according to which a profound social change occurred in Pisa in the late thirteenth century).4 Thus, an essentially moderate view of Italian history prevailed in that period. This view exorcised social conflicts by giving preference to the hypoth­ esis of a uniform and compact development of the ruling class rather than to that of sharp clashes and outright divisions caused by the rise of alternative and subordinate forces. Scholarly reaction was not long in coming: if this hypothesis were correct, whom should we blame for the failure or decline of the city-state? According to Giuseppe Galasso, who studied Le citta campane nell'Alto Medioevo, it was the landowning class that dominated. He was referring specifically to that class which, for different reasons, migrated to the city, controlled the urban scene, and lived off the income from those lands. Within this group were also those who provided ships and finance, who nurtured and exploited to the point of usury: the subordinate mercatores. For these reasons, in Galasso's view, the construction process of the city-state was fundamentally mutilated and was, in the end, "interrupted by the establishment of Norman feudal structures. "s According to Angelo Ventura, the equilibrium that supposedly existed between the aristocracy and the people within the Venetian society of the Terraferma was upset well before the Venetian con­ quest. This event only served to confirm the aristocratic composition of the councils and the overwhelming success of the noble class that ocred between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.6 The same result, in the same period, can also be seen in "a small but still vital urban republic: Lucca." Thus Marino Berengo points to it as "an example of the crys�allization which, from the mid-sixteenth century, blocked the entry of new groups into Italian political life."7

3. Nicola Ottokar, II comune di Firenze alia fine del Dugento (Florence, 1962) 1 02 (se also p. vi of the Introdudone by Emesto Sestan). 4. Gina Fasoli, "Ricerche sulla legislazione antimagnatizia nei Comuni dell'alta e media ltalia," Rivista di storia del diritto italiano 12 (1939) 86-1 13, 240-309; Emilio Cristiani, NobiltlJ

e popolo nel Comune di Pisa dalle origini del podestariato alia signoria dei Donoratico

(Naples: Istituto italiano per gli studi storici, 1 962 ). 5. Giuseppe Galasso, "Le cina campane neIl'A1to Medioevo," in id., Meuogiorno medievale e moderno (Turin: Einaudi, 1 965) 63-1 35. The quotation comes from Ovidio Capitani's Introduzione in the Italian version of Henri Pirenne's Le Qna del Medioevo (Bari: Laterza, 1971) xlvii. Angelo Ventura, NobiltlJ e popolo nella societlJ IIeneta del '400 e '500 (Bari: Laterza, 6. 1964). 7. Marino Berengo, Nobili e merCIJnti nella Lucca del Cinquecento (Turin: Einaudi. 1965); id., "ll Cinquecento," in La storiografia italiana negli u/timi IIent'anni I (Milan: Marzorati, 1970) 493.

Cracco: Social Structure and CantUa

31 1

Under this approach, which tends to underline the role of the urban nobility as a conservative and braking force, we may also include my book Societa e Stato. Although my research deals strictly with "unique" Venice, a city famous for its social harmony (cum cives illi in agendis suis omnibus adeo

ad communitatem respiciant, ut Veneciarum nomen iam habeant quasi numen, as Rolandino wrote), it did not seem incongruous to discern internal fractures within the different categories of persons involved in commercial trade. Sus­ tained by the wave of expansion achieved through the Fourth Crusade, this segment of the city grew and towered over the traditional aristocracy. The consequences of this growth were the broadening of the ruling class and the configuration of the state as a sufciently faithful synthesis of society. The synthesis remained true until the obstruction of all dynamism between the social classes, which took place in the late thirteenth century following the reduction of economic opportunity and the emergence of a stable patrician government that paralleled this phenomenon.s The preceding contribution and the others I have discussed, although expressing diferent opinions, share a perspective that can be defined as urban­ centered: that is, they view social struggle as involving only or principally urban groups, or rather the "best" ones - the nobility and the people. However, at the same time other perspectives, which fatally complicated the whole picture, were taking hold. Already at the . beginning of this century Romolo Caggese had written that the commune - and not the city - marked "the peculiar aspect of Italian history and not only the urban commune but also the commune that was born in the countryside. " His opinion served as an invitation, to examine the rural society from within and suggested profound connections between it and the urban world.' In 1934, Johan Plesner took for granted the idea that the ville libre of the thirteenth century, far from confining itself to the city proper and its suburbia, tended instead to identify itself with the civitas of an­ cient Rome. Further, he upset prevailing opinion by declaring that it was not that the city conquered the countryside but rather that the countryside con­ quered the city through the migration to it of free landholders, with all the consequences for the social dynamic of the city that derived from this process.tO In 1 953 Cinzio Violante, although discussing Milanese society before the era of the city-states (or perhaps it is precisely for this reason), offered a new key for approaching social conflict. He emphasized the effect of these struggles on 8. Giorgio Craca>, Societa 1/ Stato Plel Mtldierlo veneziano (secoli XII-XIV) (Florence: Olschki, 1967). Se Rolandino's quote on 206. 9. Antonio I. Pini, "Dal Comune cina-stato a Comune ente amnistrativo," in Storia d'Italia, ed. Giuseppe Galasso, IV (Turin: UfET, 1981) 449-587. Se especially pp. 451-452. 10. Joban Plesner, L'brtigration de 14 CIlmpagne lJ 14 ville libre de Florence au XIlIe siecle (Copenhagen, 1934) (Italian translation: Florence: Papafava, 1979). On Plesner, se Paolo Camosano, "Cittl e campagna: rapporti politici ed economici," in Societa e istituzioni dell'Italia comunale: I'esempio di Perugia (seoli XII-XIV) (Perugia: Deputazione di storia patria per l'Umbria, 1988) 303 349. See in particular p. 338f. This is also a usefu l study in other respects.

312 Politics and Conflict

the "development," "liberation," and "ferment" that carried everyone in their wake: nobiles, milites, negotiatores, cives, servi, clerics, and lay persons, the forces of the city and the country, Catholics and heretics ("the evolution of feudalism as the need for liberty"), rather than the grim effect of exclusion and annihilation.ll The idea of an objective "contamination" between the world of the city and the world of the country, or even of an "organic unity between the urban and rural ruling class" (as Rosario Romeo wrote), was not long in presenting itself to historians.u Already Giovanni Tabaco, in a review of Cristiani, hy­ pothesized that the communal age represented "not so much the triumph of collective forces in the face of the supposed hierarchies of the aristocracy, but rather a process of definition of all of the forces involved. "13 In the same year Gino Luzzatto, studying the castle communes and the small urban communes of the Marches and Umbria, disputed the idea that the birth of the commune signified the "sunset" of "feudalism." Even after the victory of the "people," the communal regime was not at all "democratic" and continued to be accessible to the stronger members of the "old aristocracy. "1. In fact, Carlo G. Mor did not hesitate to speak of feudalism with regard to the communes.u Tabacco again observed, using much documentation and many examples, that "l'etude du plein developpement seigneurial et feodal dans Ie 'regnum Italiae' exige d'etre abordee desormais comme un probleme specifique de l'epoque des Communes." He did not see elements of feudalism in the commune as a prelude nor as a "residue." And he was referring mainly to Piedmont, an area that contained many consortiums of signori and communes of seignorial origin.16 The projection inside the city, or rather the communes, of the institutions and mentality of feudalism took place, not coincidentally, in a period when a rediscovery of the force and values of the rural world, at least in certain circles, was occurring. In 1965, Chinese leader Lin Piao identified the country (understood as those areas of the world where an agricultural economy preYails) - and not the city (understood as those areas of the world where an industrial economy prevails) - as the true epicenter of revolution: Indeed, the great revolutions of the modem era - from the American to the Chinese, from the Algerian to the Cuban - developed as a "slow and gradual assault on the 1 1 . Cinzio Violante, La societa miianese nell'eta flTecomunak, 2nd ed. (Bari: Laterza, 1974) . 12. Rosario Romeo, "La signoria deIl'abate di Sant'Ambrogio di Milano sui comune rurale di Origgio nel secolo XIl," Rivista storictJ italitma 69 (1957) 340-507. Se especiaIly p. 340. 13. Giovani Tabacco, "Interpretazioni e ricerche suIl'aristocrazia comunale di Pisa," Studi medievali 3 (1962) 707-727. Se especiaIly pp. 726-727. 14. Gino LuzzatlO, "Tramonto e sopravvivenza del feudalismo nei comuni italiani del Medio Evo," Studi medievali 3 (1962) 401 -419. 15. Carlo G. Mor, "Leg feudali," in Novissimo Digesto italiano, IX (Turin: UTET, 1963) 711 -714. Se especially p. 712. 16. Giovanni Tabacco, "Fief et seigneurie dans l'Italie communale, L'evolution d'un theme historiographique," Le Moyen Age (1969) 5-37, 203-218. See particularly p. 212.

Cracco: Social Structure and Conflict 31 3

city by the country."17 There was a certain tendency to extol the "happiness" of the farmer who lived on the land and worked for himself, as compared with the alienation of the worker who lived in the city, worked in someone's factory, and was dependent upon others.18 For Marxist scholars who special­ ized in medieval Italy, it was natural to show sympathy for the peasant and in general for the lower classes of the city and the countryside. Victor Rutenburg, for example, studied the "people," whom he understood to be workers, living "in modest conditions, often on the verge of indigence." He also spoke of an urban "pre-proletariat" oppressed by its masters, which fact justified the uprisings against the rich, in particular the Ciompi revolution, which due to its "anti-feudal direction" gave Florence "a splendid period of popular de­ mocracy."l' liubov A. Kotel 'nikova emphasized the importance of serfs and peasants, leaseholders and sharecroppers - the world of the Italian peasant in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries - who sufered the double exploitation of the feudal lords and the urban ruling classes.2o These perspectives, which lead one to consider the forces at the base of society, were not readily accepted in the West.21 Studies like that of Elio Conti, which produced an avalanche of data on the agrarian structure of the Florentine countryside, were practically isolated.22 Interest for workers in the city contin­ ued to languish - if one excludes the brief period tied to the activism of 1968,23 Most of the attention, if not all of it, was devoted to the world of the signor; (the "feudal" world, as Marxist historians used to say). This approach also had the advantage of linking Italian to European history on the basis of a common aristocratic background (Otto Brunner's influence is obvious).24 At that point it was no longer enough to have discovered the world of the signoria transplanted in the heart of the city. This perspective held open the issue of the conflict or lack of conflict among classes that were different or in opposition. Instead, it was important to appraise only that world, to know and analyze it from the inside by utilizing the one structure that distinguished 17. Giorgio Galli, "La ricomparsa delle 'campagne nel mondo' come epicentro rivoluzionario," in 11 fenomeno "cilta " nella vita e nella cultura d'oggi, ed. Piero Nardi (Flo­ rence: Sansoni, 1971 ) 127-136 at 135; Martin Ebon, Lin Piao, The Life and Writings of China's New Ruler (New York: S�n and Day, 1970) 228-229. 18. Ugo Spirito, "Vita Urbana e vita rurale," in 11 fenomeno "citra", cit., 63·71. 19. Victor Rutenburg, Popo/o e mouimenti popolari nell'Italia tkl '300 e '400, Italian translation (Bologna: II Mulino, 1971) xviii. 20. Liubov A. Kotel 'nikova, Mondo contadino e cina in ltalia dall'XI al XIV secolo, Daile fonti tkll'Italia centrale e settentrionale, Italian translation (Bologna: II Mulino, 1967). 21 . Studies like those cited in the two preceding footnotes remained "out of the sight of historians." Raoul Manselli, Introdutione all'edizione italiana of V. Rutenburg, p. xiv. 22. Elio Conti, La formazione tklla struttura agraria motUrna nel contado fIOrentino, I (Le campagne nell'eta precomunale) (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per i1 Medioevo, 1965). 23. Se, for example, Michel MoUat-Philippe Wolff, Ongles bleus, }tlCques et Ciompi. Les rwolutions populaires en Europe awe XI� et XV, siecles (Paris: Co1mann-Levy, 1970). But later the centennial of the Ciompi uprising was scarcely remembered in Italy. Se II tumulto dei Ciompi. Un momenta di storia flOrenUna ed europea (Florence: Olschki, 1981). 24. Ot Brun, Vita PIObiliare e cultura europea, Italian translation (Bologna: II Mulino, 1972).

31 4

Politics and Conflict

it: the family. Thus, the family became the true protagonist of social history. Conflicts, when they arose, could be only among families, groups, or family clans, or even between domus and civitates.2S In fact, a close reflection "sur les structures internes des groupes familiaux parentaux ou consortiaux" meant investigating under another form the subject of "stratification" and "mobilite sociale. "26 In effect, the family as a composite reality - made up of "tant de feudataires et de seigneurs que de proprietaires terriens et de personnes exer�ant une profession liberale comme les notaires, juges ou marchands" - rendered useless the traditional oppositions like nobility versus people, or feudal lords versus merchantsP The family as an autonomous reality, capable of establish­ ing processes and proper means of social cohesion and always able to influence the city government (either by allying itself with or against it), made the old distinction between communal forces and those of the countryside ineffectual (the Da Gorzano family, who were able to polarize the military aristocracy in the Asci territory, is a case in point).28 However, in the meantime, Paolo Cammarosano also illustrated the problems that the families faced in trying to preserve their unity and continuity within the urban landscape. This was true both for aristocratic and bourgeois families. The nuclear family was favored, notwithstanding all the strategies that sought to restrict it. These were evident in contracts of consorteria and those involving a joint fraternal venture (fraterna). The vicissitudes of the nuclear family show that urban life was nonetheless able to afect and modify even the hard kernel of the family structure.29 Therefore, the discussion, chaneled through the study of families, returned to the city-state in its role as a gathering place and also as a force for the assimilation of groups of different background and origin. From this, historians felt the need to reformulate the question, to ask themselves again what the origins of urban society were: what were the classes that actually shaped it, while shaping themselves at the same time? Otto of Freising, in his Gesta Friderici, had already expressed this clearly: there were three ordines that constituted the center of the Italian cities that were obstinately rebellious toward the empire around the mid-twelfth cen­ tury: capitane;, valvassores, plebs.30 But it took Hagen Keller's interpretation, which culminated in his book of 1 979, to save them from the vagueness of 25. Jacques Heers, Le clan familial au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses Universiraires de France, 1974). 26. Cinzio Violanu:, " Quelques caracterisciques des structures familiales en Lombardie, Emilie et Toscane au XI" et XII" siedes," in Pami/le et parenti dans l'Occidem midial, Actcs. . , ed. Georges Duby and Jacques Le Goff (Rome: Ecole Fralse de Rome, 1977) 87-147, at 87. 27. Gabriella Rosset, "Histoire familiale et structures sociales et politiques a Pisa au XI" et XII" siecles," in Pamille et parenti, cit., 159-180, at 1 86. 28. Renato Bordone, "L'aristocrazia militare del ll:rtorio di Asci: I signori di Gorzano," Bollettino stonco-bibliografico subalpino 69 (1971) 357-447, at 41 1£.; 70 (1972) 489-544. 29. Paolo Camrosano, "Les structures familiales dans les villes de l'ltalie communale, Xlle_XJVe siecles," in Famille et parenti, cit., 181-194, at 192-1 93. 30. II, 13, in MGH, SS, 20, 396-397. .

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literary evidence and define their characteristics. The capitanei was a specific and cohesive class, already formed during the tenth century through the control of signorie bannali and bishops' feudal holdings, and simultaneously relocated to the cities and in the territories. The valvassores, which had a more variegated and less noble origin, after having lived in the shadow of the capitanei, as their vassals, came to the fore as an independent class through the Milanese revolts of 1035, which were quelled by the imperial constitution two years later, which consolidated the whole urban aristocracy. The plebs included merchants, money dealers, and other popular forces who, in a climate in which ecclesiastic power was increasingly weak and the civitas was progres­ sively spreading to the detriment of the places and territories that bordered it, were able to ally themselves with or against the nobiles as ocasion dictated. In this way, they created their own niche and rooted themselves in the land.J1 The directness of this approach had the advantage of applying the model of the ordines, which had already been accepted in the European context, to Italy (see the work by Georges Duby on the region maconnaise). This ap­ proach was confirmed not only by a number of sources explored ex novo, but also through an important current of Italian historiography that had already emphasized in a considerable number of studies the feudal origins of urban society.32 Nevertheless, criticism and even alarm once again resulted. How was it possible, they asked, to deny all novelty and even originality to Italian urban history and see it as merely an extension or appendix to feudal society? An opposition - and I refer not only to the one that which came about later within the city-state between Adel und Volk surely had existed previously between the Adel und Burgentum.JJ The criticism and alarm became more urgent with regard to another contribution that appeared almost simultaneously with Keller's: the work "Economia e societa nell'Italia medievale: il mito della borghesia" by Philip Jones. Yes, the bourgeoisie as a pleasant fairy tale; the social conflict between the "two Italies " was anything but "absolute." Together with the feudal (or feudalized ) seignorial and courtly South, therewas a North (Friuli, the Tyrol, and most of Piedmont) with characteristics that were not significantly different. The cities, with few exceptions, "although organized as communes, with guilds and popular groups," were dominated by a nobility that "resided both in castles and in cities." As in ancient Rome, the cities themselves remained essentially " agrarian," "heterogeneous communities of nobles and rentiers (nobiles, milites, gentiluomint1, of shopkeepers, craftsmen, peasants (plebei, pedites, popo/ani), " "whose wealth or whose means of sustenance came from the earth. "34 -

3 1 . Hagen Keller, Adelsherschaft utld stitische Gesellschaft in Oberita/ien, 9. bis 12. Jahrhundert (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1979) at 36f. 32 . In this regard se the Literatu, used by H. Keller in his above-cited work, 411-434. 33. Here I allude to the work of Berthold Stahl, Adel utld Volle im florentine, Dugento (Koln-Graz: BOhlau, 1965). 34. Philip Jones, "Economia e societi nell'ltalia medievale: la legenda della borghesia,"

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An hypothesis of this sort was not completely new. Already in 1965 the same author considered the dominant class of the communes "a heterogeneous social group composed of small feudal lords and merchants" and felt that the "fratricidal fighting" unleashed in the cities was only "partly of social origin, and more often of a political and personal nature"3S Nevertheless, this opinion was seen as "scandalous," capable of canceling, like Keller'S, the urban uniqueness of Italian history, especially because some scholars had already begun, on their own, drastically to revise, in an urban perspective, their own conceptions. In effect, starting in 1 976 Tabacco had shelved the idea implicit in Fief et seigneurie dans I'Italie communale in order to examine in a new light the urban organism.3' It seemed to grow spontaneously from itself, so to speak, from the continuity of a body of cives, which although organized within the larger structure of a res publica and locally controlled by a bishop, at a certain point developed into a "new political nucleus. " This later phase sometimes occurred precociously, as in Cremona. The involvement of the bishop, with his temporal power, did not count because the urban commune "was never precisely identified, whatever its religious fervor, with the Church of the bishops. " The presence of the capitanei was not a determining factor either: in fact, cete,; homines also existed in the city. At any rate, the bishop and the capitanei could not prevent, in the end, the city from becoming "an entity of people. " Thus, the pattern of the approach to the study of urban society was no longer res publica, bishops, and feudal system, but rather res publica, bish­ ops, and city. The necessary disclaimer to this statement is that the city was the original and undisputed "before" and "after" of the other two, as if the res publica and, to an even greater degree, the bishops were an interlude on the way or a parenthesis in the uniformly urban continuity of Italian history.37 The breadth and depth of the debate elicited further research and contri­ butions, which led to further progress in studies on urban society. New monographic studies, dedicated to individual cities, appeared; for example, Pierre Racine on Piacenza in 1979 and Renato Bordone on Asti in 1980. They added to the already existing and not insignificant body of work.38 New studies with different perspectives appeared. Antonio I. Pini, using Carlo Cattaneo's vision of the city-commune as an "ideal beginning" of Italian in Storia d'italia, Annali I, nal feudalesimo al capitalismo (Turin: Einaudi, 1 978) 1 85-372, at 206-207 and 222-223. 35. Philip Jones, "Comuni e Signorie: la cittA-stato nell'Italia tardo-medievale," in id., Economia e soQeu MIl'ltaw medieuale, Italian tr. (Turin: Einaudi, 1980) 503-526, at 507. 36. Se n. 1 6. 37. Giovanni Tabacco, "Vescovi e oomuni in ltalia, " in I pateri tempOf'ali de; Vescovi in ltaw e in Gnmani4 1181 Medioevo, ed. Carlo G. Mor and Heinrich Schmidinger (Bologna: II Mulino, 1979) 253-282, at 262-265. 3 8 . Pierre Racine, Plaisance du X- a la fin du Xlll- siecle. &sai d'histoire ..rbaine (Lille-Paris, 1979); Renato Bordone, Cina II tertorio Mll'alto medioevo. La societa astigiana dal dominio de; Franchi all'affnmazione co_nale (Turin: Deputazione subalpina di storia patria, 1980).

Craceo: Social Structure and Conflia 317

history, immediately distanced himself from it to affirm, following the trail of Caggese, that the commune, even the commune born in the countryside, and not the city, was the true "ideal beginning." This view implied a subsequent reevaluation of those "fundamental rural and 'feudal' dimensions of Italian history that centuries of cultural, aristocratic and urban-centered tradition had obstinately sought to ignore." However, in 1974, Galasso had already found "in that tendency to emphasize local and individual interests - no longer in one city alone or in one commune alone - the true distinguishing thread of Italian history from the pre-Roman age to Unification. "3' On the other hand, Bordone, examining a broad range of studies on Piacenza, Asti, Parma, Bergamo, Lucca, and Pisa, concluded that " the city is never undifferentiated from the country; rather, it displays its own unmistakable originality." He also stated that it would be incorrect to reduce the city to "purely a place of transit or a place for the establishment of the 'feudal nobility' that already controlled and governed the territory of the country­ side." Furthermore, he felt that the communal movement could not be con­ sidered the "product of a single force, the aristocracy of the territory, feudal or in any case not 'bourgeois,'" being precisely the "fruit of a society that was above all urban and therefore socially multi-faceted." This is true, even if "generalized models, whether aristocratic, feudal, or 'bourgeois,' involve making dangerous accommodations and do not respect the true physiognomy of each city's reality."40 Here he raises a prudent objection that is not always present in his later works. Bordone, intent on repulsing the assault on the " bourgeoisie" and the correlative "return to the land," insisted on the originality of the urban experience. He felt that "the specific social components of each individual urban reality" were "above all urban, distinct and different from analogous forces that operated in the country." They, however, were not necessarily mercantile, as Robert S. Lopez asserted with excessive certainty: "in the twelfth century the Italian communes had essentialy merchant governments, created by merchants to further the interests of merchants. "41 Perhaps I should cite other studies that havt appeared in recent years for the additional clarification they have added to the theme of the Sozialstruktur of the Italian city-state, not the least of which is John Koenig'S. His research d�als with the "people" of northern Italy "at the time of its greatest splen­ dor," that is, the "communal bourgeoisie" of the thirteenth century that, "having organized itself as a 'people' revitalized the old commune" (that of the milites), "and gave it a second life. "41 I have on purpose not spoken of a 39. Se n. 9. 40. Renato Bordone, "Tema cittadino e 'ritomo alIa terra' nella storiografia comunale recente," Quademi storiei 18 (1983) 255-277, at 272-273 . . 41. Roberto S. Lopez, La rillOlMz:ione commerciale tkl Mediowo, Italian translation (Turin, 1975) 91; Renato Bordone, La societa cittadina del Regno d'lta/ia, Pomr4Zion e wilNppo tklle caratteristiche UrbaPUl M seoli Xl e XlI (Turin: Deputazione subalpina di storia pattia, 1987) 196-197. 42. John Koenig, II "papolo» tkll'ltalia tkl Nord PUll XIII secolo, Italian translation (Bologna: II Mulino, 1986) at 409, 412. Se especially Paolo Castignoli, "In margine all'opera

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whole group of important studies that involve mainly Florence and Venice and thus, rather than dealing with medieval city-states, touch upon the civic world of the early Renaissance (to use Gene Brucker's words), a world that "Machiavelli would have found familiar. "43 If on the one hand a reference to other studies confirms the vitality of the interest in the cities, on the other hand it does not significantly modify the panorama of the various tendencies. This panorama is seen to be rather interrupted, as a very recent debate demonstrated. The discussion was dedicated to the evolution of Italian cities in the eleventh century and was not inclined to concentrate on actual social conflict because it tended to consider the city a place where sufficiently united classes - whether bourgeois or noble dominated.44 Given the current state of research in this field, does not the possibility exist of reconsidering the "urban issue" and therefore of better understanding the mechanism of social conflict that characterized it? An answer to this question should be furnished by one of the excellent scholars of urban history mentioned above (for example, Keller, author of another recent and important study) and not by the present author who investigated, many years ago, only the Venetian case.4S And with scanty results because my conclusions, which appeared to be specific to the city-state, not to the "maritime" city, and which, thus, seemed linked with the afairs of other urban societies, did not sufficiently undermine the myth of Venice's unique­ ness.'" Yet, the conviction that Venice is not only a phenomenon apart, that it should be linked (while retaining its peculiar characteristics) with the world that surrounds it encourages us to enter the debate, and even to begin with Venice, as offering some suggestions for reflection. The first and most arduous problem is that of the origin and initial development (eleventh and twelfth centuries) of the urban city. It would be a mistake, in this case, to adopt Machiavelli's opinion according to which in Venice, "not availing itself of the land" and where everyone was involved in "trade," "the serious and natural animosity amongst the nobility an'"d the people caused by the desire of the first to command and the second not to obey" was lacking - in contrast to the situation in ancient Rome and Flo-

di John Koenig:

una

contrastata interpretazione del 'populus' piacentino nel XIII secolo,"

BolletllO swrico piacentino 82 (1987) 1-19. 43. Gene Brucker, Dal ComUM alia Signoria. La vita pubblica a pj"em:e MI primo Rirrascimento, Italian translation (Bologna: II Mulino, 1981) 21. 44. L'evo/uzione delle a ua italiane MII'XI seoow, edited b y Renato Bordone and Jorg Jarnut (Bologna: II Mulino, 1988). 45. Hagen Keller, Kommune': Sta dti sche Selbstregierung und mittelalterliche 'Volksherschaft' im Spiegel italienischer Wahlverfahren des 12.-14. Jahrhunderts, in Person und Gemeinschaft im Mittelalter, Karl Schmid zum funfundsechzigsten Geburstag, ed. Gerd Althoff, Dieter Geuenich, Otto G. Oexle, and Joachim Wollasch (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1988) 57361 6. This work is also to be consulted for further bibliography. 46. This is the same bifurcation that was also observed with regard to Pisa: Marco Tangheroni, " Famiglie nobiJi e ceto dirigente a Pisa nel XID secolo," in I ceti dirigenti dell'eta comunale nei seooli XII e XIII (Pisa: Pacini, 1982) 323-346, se especially p. 325. "'

"

Cracco: Social Structure and Conflict 31 9

rence.47 Machiavelli's opinion is not valid here not only because the direct or indirect possession (through ecclesiastic organizations) of real estate was the absolute condition for social prominence and political influence48 in Venice or because the groups interested in trade were very different and often in opposi­ tion to each other (on the one hand the stantes or lenders of mumi ad negotiandum at a high rate of interest; and on the other hand the procertantes, that is, the actual merchants);49 but also because on that basis it would not be understandable why at a certain point we find that the "nobility" and the "people" appear in Venice as well. Let us try to reconstruct this process: Venice was a society supported by too few land resources and therefore obliged to turn to commerce. The landholders invested their capital in it. The power of the dux, which had al­ ways guided Venice, was absolute even though exercised in accordance with the ecclesiastic authorities (patriarch, bishops, abbots) and iudices (the "uni­ verse of the people" was relegated to the background). This power later proved inadequate to administer the new economic situation. Thus the dux was gradually replaced by a new political group composed of maiores, iudices, and sapientes (these were to a great extent the same persons financing com­ merce) who shared amongst themselves the seats and duties of the councils (Bickerman commented that "as in ancient Rome, this aristocracy was counciliar " ).50 These people were only interested in taking the place of the dux and inheriting his absolute power. That is why they demanded that the populus swear an oath of obedience to them and no longer to the dux.51 It is evident that until then an urban society did not exist. There existed only a state of transition from a monarchy to an oligarchy, from the domination of a single family (that of the dux) to the domination of a handful of families. Society, instead, began to take shape in its different components as soon as the populus, used more and more in its capacity as labor and as military force and therefore valorized, began to make headway in seeking to imitate the "great" ones and to place itself on the same level. Some succeeded (for example, Sebastiano Ziani, who from an obSC\lre man of the people was elected many times judge and even doge in 1 172). More often this attempt was rejected or restrained, and these people were even obliged to fight to defend their own positions; a good example occurred in 1 177, when the antiqui populares (as chroniclers called them), already uneasy because of the losses suffered through the Byzantine repression, induced the nobiles to re­ nounce their project of a privileged agreement with Barbarossa, a quo nihil

47. Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentiPle, 1, 29; III, 1 . 4 8 . For example, se the possessions o£ only one family: Inngard Fees, Reichtum und Macht im mitulaltMlichen Ven8dig. Die Pamilie Zia,,; (Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1980) 103£. 49. Gino Luzzatto, "Capitale e lavoro nel commercio veneziano dei secoli XI e XII," in id., Sludi di storia economica IIenezUma (Padua: CEDAM, 1954) 89£. SO. Elias J. Bicken, "Some Reflections," cit., 402. 5 1 . Giorgio Cracco, "Venezia nel Medioevo: un altro mondo," in Storia d'Italia, ed. G. Galasso, cit., VIII1 (Turin: lTfET, 1987) 43-44.

320 Politics and Conflict

unquam habuimus.Sl More must be said: the politically active populus forced the nobiles to transform themselves, at least partly, from the "rulers" of the dukedom, from lower distributors on behalf of their own families or the family clan, to instruments of a public organism with authority over everyone: the commune.53 At this point, a conclusion seems to impose itself: Venetian society was born from the people, and thanks to the people - a people that consisted of actual merchants. But this would be a rather lame conclusion: what would the people have been without the "greats," without their political shift (the overcoming of the ducal monarchy), without their commune, without their capital? Therefore, it would be better to say that Venetian society was first born from the "greats," first born from the capitalist landowners and then, later, from the merchant people. From this we may also deduce the nature of conflict in Venice. It was not destructive of the social system (as when one class tends to anihilate the other), but rather it preserved it, in the sense that it sought to recover and maintain an equilibrium that had been upset. This was because the nobles needed the people and the people needed the nobles, at least as long as the structure that justified that type of social relationship was not radically changed. One may verify the usefulness of this conclusion by extending the discus­ sion to various other coastal cities. It holds true for Genoa, where great landowning families, having detached themselves from feudal subjugation, began to invest in trade and fit out ships. As a result they drew from their ranks a people made up of sailors and merchants (the crews consisted not only of cives but also of leaseholders taken from the lands of the persons who were fitting out the ships). This people, notwithstanding its obscure origins (cuius nomen et cognomen non aliter vidi, as an historian noted), grew in the course of the twelfth century to the point of entering into conflicts with its own "masters."54 In Pisa, a sufficiently stable equilibrium between the inter­ ests of landowners and merchants, to which the maiores, medii pariterque minores were dedicated under the guidance of the bishop and the viscount, also delayed the outbreak of serious conflict until the start of the thirteenth century.55 However, Bari is a case apart. There, in vain, elements of the landhold­ ing aristocracy encouraged a people composed of merchants to make the "dream of a sea-faring republic" to rival Venice come true (to that end the body of Saint Nicholas, seized in 1 087, had been kept, and the construction

52. Inngard Fees, ReichtJIm und Macht im mittelalterlichen Venedig, cit., 236ff.; Giorgio Cracco, Societa e Stato, cit., 51·52. 53. Roberto Ces, DeliberaDoni del Maggior Consiglio di VeneriI, I (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1950) 245-247; se especially p. 246 (where the document makes a distinction between the bona comunia and the suum velie). 54. Giovana Petti Balbi, "Genesi e composizione di un celO dirigente: i 'populares' a Genova nei secoIi XIII e XIV," in Spazro, Societa, poter/l nell'ItaUa dei Comu"; (Naples: Liguori, 1986) 85-103, se especially p. 91. 55. Gabriella Rosset, "Histoire familiale et stru�res sociales et poIitiques Ii Pise," cit., 169.

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of a new cathedral had been started). Soon after, Norman rule began.56 Nor is an analogy possible with the cities in Campania, because an authentic dialec­ tic relationship between the nobility and the people never occurred there.S7 This was due to the overwhelming domination of the landholding aristocracy and capital over trade. However, a comparison with the non-maritime cities is much more attractive. This is especially true of those in Lombardy whose social structure has been amply studied. And with good reason, because here - as Machiavelli would say - the "land, " that is, territory, is also involved and consequently so are the forces linked to it, which are seignorial and feudal or, in any case, "comitatine. " It is well known that the social panorama of many of the urban centers in Langobardia were dominated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by capitanei and valvassores. We have this information not only from the scan­ dalized accusations of Otto of Freising, but also from the patient research of scholars who have indicated significant "absences" from this panorama (Turin, Asti, Verona, and other centers).58 However, something may be added regard­ ing the means that brought those ordines to the summit of power in the cities. Sestan emphasized, for example, the mention made of Guglielmo, marquis of Monferrato, by Oto of Freising, qui pene salus ex ltaliae baronibus cjvitatum effugere potuit imperium, and, advised us that he was not the only one. Other "barons," though not many, in North-Central Italy remained a "force impos­ sible to assimilate" into the cities and preserved either wholly or in part their "principalities" (the Biandrate counts, the Estensi family who later established themselves in Ferrara, the Guidi counts, the Aldobrandeschis and the Malaspinas, and so on).5' But if a few survived, how many actually suc­ cumbed? Undoubtedly, the success of the capitanei and the valvassores was accompanied by a decided reduction in magni homines, that is, of feudalism in general. Furthermore, there were the bishops - even if Oto of Freising did not specifically discuss them in his famous passage - who were already firmly established in the cities. Whether or not they were counts, they were, in fact, the signori of a large part of the territory and were "more powerful than the lay officials," especially, as in the case of the rulers of the northeastern Italian cities, when they were actually emanations of the emperor.60 Thus Ariberto, an 56. Nino Lavennicoc "CittA e pattono, Bari alIa ricerca di un'identira storico-religiosa," del eNlto, S. Nicola Am Ieonografia e religiositQ popolare (Bari: Edipuglia, 1987) 927, se especially pp. 16-19. 57. Giuseppe Martini, "Bas Medioevo," in La storiagra(ra italiar neg/; ultimi lIent'an, cit., 382f. 58. R. Bordone, La societQ cittadina del Regno d'Italia, cit., 162f. 59. Emesto Sestan, "La citra comunale italiana dei secoli XI-XII nelle sue note caratteristiche rispet al movimento comunale europeo," in Forme di potere e stn4ttJ4ra sociale in ltalia nel Medioevo, ed. Gabriella Rosset (Bologna: II Mulino, 1977) 1 75-196, se especially pp. 188-189. 60. Vito Furnagalli, "II potere civile dei vescovi italiani aI tempo di Ottone I," in I poteri temporali dei lIeseovi, cit., 77-86, se especially p. 82. in II segno

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extraordinary example of a "feudal lord," 61 was shaken by a revolt by valvassores (in the meaning of this term as clarified by Keller).61 In 1 123 we also find the case, in Vicenza, of a bishop who acted on the consilium and ortatus of the capitanei and the valvassores. 63 Therefore, we may deduce that bishops were also victims of the rise of capitanei and valvassores and that they lost their possessions, their jurisdictional authority, and in some cases even their lives (as did the bishop of Vicenza, Giovanni Cacciafronte, who was assassinated in 1 1 84 for having defended his church and protected the "poor" from the attack of divites et nobiles et magnates).64 At this point the sense of a struggle unleashed by the capitanei and the valvassores against the great lay and ecclesiastic authorities of feudalism is abundantly clear. They wished to replace them in the control of the terra, territoria, and comitatus (not without reason did Otto of Freising observe with amazement, "tota illa terra intra civitates ferme divisa," that the territoria became united to the civitates, which in tum claimed them as their own comitatus).lis They wished to establish themselves as lords of the land and of the castles, as "miniature kings," according to the practice and ideals of the feudal world that had given birth to them.li6 Feudal world? This seems to be a contradiction. Otto of Freising himself considered capitanei and valvassores "citizens," or better, heirs to the antiqui Romani in the art of the civitatum dispositio and the rei publicae conservatio. He regarded them as dynamic members (consules) of a collegial city govern­ ment whose main concern was the city. To that end they promoted even mere artisans to the militia, in order to subdue the diocesani and the viri magni of the territory to their will. � He was certainly not mistaken. The phenomenon of the massive migration to the city by capitanei, valvassores, and comitatini (people from the country) in general during the eleventh and twelfth centuries is well known. In Arezzo, as Jean-Pierre Delunleau has demonstrated, many landholders and heads of castra came to the city and there reinforced leur im­ plantation. 68 In addition, the boni homines of Vicenza - the leaders 01 the commune - declared their territorial origins through their names (da Sarego, 61. Cinzio Violante, La societa milanese, cit., 247. 62. Se the conunent of Fran\X>is Menant, "La societe d'ordres en Lombardie. A propos d'un livre recent," Cabiers de civilisation mUievale, X'-XII' mcles 26 (1983) 227-237, see es­ pecially pp. 232-233. 63. Giorgio Cracco, "Religione, Chiesa, pieri," in Stona di Vicenza, L'eta medievale, ed. Giorgio Cracco (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1988) 359-425, se especially p. 386. 64. Giorgio Cracco, "Ancora suUa 'Saintete en Occident' di Andre Vauchez (con un'Appendice sui Proces Cacciafronte del 1223-1224)," Studi medievali 26 (1985) 889-905, se especially 905. 65. Se n. 30. 66. Giovanni B. Verci, Stona deg/i Ecelini, I (Baso: Remonelini, 1779), cited in Giorgio Cracco, "Da comune eli famiglie a cina satellite (11 83-13 1 1 )," in Stona di Vicenza. L'eta medievale, cit., 73-1 38, se especially p. 80. 67. Se n. 30. 68 . Jean-Pierre Delumeau, "Des Lombards de Carpineto aux Bostoli," in I ceti dingenti dell'Italia comunale, cit., 67-99, se especially pp. 98-99.

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da Sossano, da Breganze, da Trissino, da Santorso, da Vivaro, and so on)." Equally well known, but considered less important, is the fact that although the capitanei and valvassores converged upon the city and established them­ selves there, they remained, more than ever, firmly anchored to the territory, to their castles, and to the holdings of the comitato. Thus, it is not possible to speak of an actual migration. Rather we must speak of a gigantic phenomenon of interaction, or rather, a type of "commuterism" between territory and city and city and territory.70 The migration to the city, then, was only a means that the capitane; and valvassores used to free themselves and acquire more power in the territory. It occurred in the cities that these groups were already accustomed to visit regularly as members of the bishops' or the count's curia. But it was only by uniting and creating a commune, not by acting separately, that it was possible for them to conquer the lay and ecclesiastic feudal author­ ity and truly become the "masters" of the territory. Up to that moment, then, the city really was a "place for transit and for establishing" the feudal forces in the territory, who were determined to gain more control of the territory itself.71 The types of conflicts that occurred in the city were consistent with this. They were conflicts that placed in opposition not social classes, but rather the partes, or political groups, that were normally an integral part of the feudal world: the bishop and his clientele against rebel­ lious vassals or against the count and his followers; one faction of nobles against another with the possible insertion of a number of the populus who were scattered among the different factions (the catalogue of potential partes in opposition could vary from city to city). These were also conflicts that arose not from interests, but rather from "certaines questions d'actualite.'>71 This is the reason for the great fluidity and precariousness of these alliances. We may find an echo of this formative phase of urban society in the later writings of the chroniclers. They spoke from within a social system that was by then clearly centered on the nobility and the people (as we will see), but they were not able to explain why, in some cities like Piacenza, divisions existed within the same class. On one hand, iIi fact, were the "milites . . . et illi de populo qui ad milites attendunt, " and on the other, ·populus . . . et illi milites qui ad populum attendunt."73 This is confirmation, however indirect, o£ the continuity of the feudal world within the heart of the city - at least until a certain era (which obviously varied from city to city). 69. G. Cracco, "Da comune di farniglie a cina satellite," cit., 73·74, 79·81. 70. Renato Bordone also agrees with the observation regarding "the simultaneous presence in the city and in the countryside" of the Milanese C4pitann demonstrated by Hagen Keller. Se La sockta cittadina del Regno d'ltali4, cit., 161. 71 . Se n. 40. 72. Jacques Van Ooteghem, "Optimates·Populares," Les Etudes Classiques 31 (1963) 406. In "Economia e societi," cit. (se n. 34) 320; Philip Jones, in order to define the conflict between nobiles and pOPNlares, "like that between patricians and plebeians in Rome," cites the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, Dimocratie en Amerique, 1111, chap. 15: "une querelle intestine entre les cadets et les ainl�S de la meme famille." 73 . Giorgio Cracco, Sockta e Stato, cit., 103·104.

324 Politics and Conflict

However, another era arrived. Through the interaction, the "com­ muterism," between the city and the surrounding territory, the capitanei and valvassores, comitatini in general, began to change. In the city they were obliged to leave the isolation of the territory and live among other people. This resulted in a loosening of blood ties and the ties of the family clans . In the city they had to be not only milites, able to fight, but also "politicians," able to speak and debate in the councils. Essentially, we are witnessing a process that - to borrow an expression from Norbert Elias - we may call the "civilization of the warrior."74 In order to govern they also had to surround themselves with experts in law and administration, in particular notaries and judges ("the only nonfeudal class . . . effectively involved in the government of the commune" ) ,15 They also had to tum to a number of operators, especially merchants, in order to supply their needs and the products necessary for urban life. As a result, the merchants began to constitute a separate category; for example, to cite just two, the ordo negotiatorum of Milan and much later, the domus mercatorum of Verona?' An urban world began to emerge. It was made up not only of nobiles but also of elements of the people who, taking advantage of favorable conditions, got ahead and became rich through their professional work; their trade, or their loans - even usurious ones (the nobility needed money for their expensive political activity). They succeeded in entering the domus of the maiores: in Vicenza, the son of a judge not only married the daughter of an aristocratic family, da Sossanos, but also assumed their name, becoming a da Sossano.77 They even infiltrated city office: in Milan, in 1 1 30, of twenty-three consuls, ten were capitane� seven valvassores, and at least five cives.78 This frightened the nobles, and they reacted by trying to close or undermine the councils as an institution and by inventing a regime unified under the podesta. This new regime was mistakenly called "foreign" but it was, in reality, art expression of the persistent solidarity between the great domus of the Po valley cities in Italy.� The people were, however, by now uncontainable. They tried to assert themselves even by using force. The "popular" uprisings that exploded above all in the early thirteenth century, for example in Vicenia�(1206), in Piacenza ( 1 21 9), in Milan, and in other cities, bear witness to this reaction.ao At this point, the city was no longer merely a place. for transit and for confirmation of feudal forces. Rather, it had become the permanent place for 74. Norbert Elias, Potere e civilra. II processo di civi/izdone, II. Per uno studio tUlia genesi sociale della civilra occidentale, Italian translation (Bologna: II Mulino, 1983) 341-343.

75. Giorgio Cracco, "Da comune eli famiglie a cina satellite," cit., 84. 76. Renato Bordone, La sociera cittadina del Regno d'Italia, cit., 1 59; John Koenig, II "popoloH delNtalia del Nord, cit., 1 86f. 77. Giorgio Cracco, "Da comune eli famiglie a cina satellite," cit., 84. 78 . John Koenig, II "popoloH dell'Italia del Nord, cit., 97. 79. Emilio Cristiani, IntrodMdone to I uti dirigenti tUll'era comunale, cit., 1 -12, se es­ pecially pp. 2-3. 80. John Koenig, II "popoloH tUll'Italia del Nord, cit., 33f., 53f., l00f.; Giorgio Cracco, "Da comune di famiglie a cina satellite," cit., 86-88.

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confrontations between forces who, by then, identified themselves as "belong­ ing to the city" or as being predominandy urban (if not actually " bourgeois" ): the nobles on the one hand and the people on the other. We may infer that the conflicts of the first phase tended to preserve the urban system almost as if the people did not want to destroy the acistocracy but simply stand by it or create a place for themselves under it. However, we decisively enter a new phase when the people organized themselves in societates or in their own communitates and demanded a part or even all of the city posts. To explain at least in a preliminary way (because available research is too scacce) this "second phase" - that of the "emergence of sepacate plebeian bodies," to quote E. J. Bickerman81 - reference to the case of Venice is helpful only up to a certain point. In Saint Mack's city, thanks to the oudet provided by the Fourth Crusade and the growth of a society that was homogeneously mercantile in nature, neither a comune populi (as in Pisa) nor open conflicts between populares and nobles (as even in Genoa) appeac.12 However, certain aspects of the vicissitudes of many cities of the Terraferma ace significant in themselves and worthy of comment. First, it is extremely difficult to distinguish within any of these urban centers conflicts that can be described as a "classic confrontation between the bourgeoisie - which was compelled to find an alternative to the old commune since it had been denied any actual political role in it - and the leading class of nobles."83 No "classic confrontation" existed; but not because conflicts themselves were nonexistent or because the nobles and the people were not continually the protagonists of them (the sources assure us of this), but because the physiognomy both of the people and the nobles (at least for most of the thirteenth century) still remains to be determined. It has been written that "it was not always and everywhere easy to recruit the major merchants, the money changers, and the judges to populac movements, detaching them from the old consulac acistocracy to which they had belonged for many genera­ tions. "84 This means that the people involved in the struggle were those who had not yet acquired social success or gained a political role. And in fact, in checking the lists of the people's representatives, we note that names of "new people" abound (as documentation on Piacenza has revealed ).8S It is true then that the men who, in vacious cities, organized themselves to fight against the nobles were usually pact of the people. But not al of the people were in­ volved. Certainly a portion of them - the successful - did not participate in the struggle against the nobility. This may seem pacadoxical, but the rise of

8 1 . Bias J. Bickerman, "Some Reflections," cit., 404. 82. Se the works of E. Cristiani, G. Cracco, G. Petti Balbi, cited in nn. 4, 8, 54. 83. John Koenig, Il "popolo" dell'lulia del Nord, cit., 56. ' 84. Gina Fasoli, Raoul Manselli, Giovani Tabacco, "La struttura sociale delle cina italiane dal V al XII secolo, " in Untersuchungen zur gesellschtlftlichen Struktur der mittelalterUchen StiJdte in Europtl . . . (Konstanz-Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 1 966) (Vortrige und Forschungen, XI) 291-320, se especially p. 307. 85. John Koenig, Il "popolo" dell'lulia del Nord. cit., 56.

326 Politics and Conflict

the people in many cases ocurred at the expense not only of the nobility but also of the people themselves. Furthermore, we find that members of the nobility were leaders of popu­ lar societies and that they represented the people on the urban councils. This fact, far from having merely episodic or personal relevance, is symptomatic of the changes taking place with the noble class. Even though extensive prosopographic research is lacking, it is difcult to state that an automatic continuity of the noble class existed in the first commune during the thirteenth century. Obviously, not an inconsiderable number of families declined or became impoverished and fell into anonymity, through the constant commut­ ing between city and territory. Other families, unable to adjust to urban life, ended up returning to their homes in the territory. Meanwhile, a newly successful nobility came into being. This class, through the founding of a societates milieum, seemed to be the most active to collectively defend its own privileges. The urban nobility that confronted the people was not the whole nobility but only the most advanced and in some ways the most " bourgeois" part of it. Luigi Simeoni hypothesized with regard to Verona even the existence of a "noble-merchant" party. a6 If we examine the interests at stake, it is equally difficult to distinguish a clear division between the people and the nobility. For example, the people is not at all identifiable with the mass of artisans on the one hand or with the groups of merchants on the other. Even though the people existed also in cities, where the above-mentioned groups were not important (as in Vicenza), the distance that separated the merchants and the members o{ the art; maggiori (major guilds) -the so-called popolo grasso from artisans and members of the art; minor; (minor guilds), "who earned their livelihood with the labor of their own hands" is well known.'7 Therefore a conflict within the people itself began to take shape. It would be, however, a mistake to identify the nobility as a class of land- and house-owners who parasitically exploited the work of citizens and peasants by taking advantage of their ability to influence the commune. There were also nobles directly involved in trade and in the trade guilds (even, perhaps, in surprising numbers).88 Theref6t it is correct to sur­ mise that differences also existed within the noble class (l have already men­ tioned the fact that nobles headed popular movements). .' The fluctuation or variety of the social formulations led to an extreme fragility of the commune, which was constantly shared out among the various groups. A new factor of primary importance, the reemergence of certain powerful domus in the territory, further aggravated the fragility of the com­ mune. In the Verona and Treviso Marca, the rival factions of the da Romano and Estensi families (it was actually Ezzelino II's dream that his domus be more powerful than the Paduan commune) established themselves in the city and -

86. Quoted in J. Koenig, II "papolo" dell'1talia del Nord, cit., 199. 87. Se n. 84. 88. Philip Jones, "Economia e societ&, cit. (n. 34) 328 and passim. n

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actively participated in its internal struggles. In Pisa, the Visconti family allied themselves with the people in order to fight the Gherardeschi family.89It is not surprising, then, if persons from the great feudal tradition appeared in the ranks of the podesta. All this leads us to reject the possibility that actual "class" conflict ­ that is, the people on one side and the nobles on the other - may have occurred in the city-state of the early thirteenth century. Instead, the struggles that were differently and inconsistently structured between groups at the top of society lead one to think of "party" conflicts (partes in the sense given to this term by contemporary sources). Consequently, there was no victory either of the people or of the nobles. Rather, the struggle resulted in the birth of a broader ruling class, made up as much of nobles as of " successful" people who, by that time, were on an equal footing with regard to divitiae and bonoTes. The mixture was extremely volatile. Beneath them, only the people involved in the trades remained on the margin, but the more dynamic the political and economic situation of the city (and this is the case of Florence), the more this class made great strides within the society of magnates.90 And yet, immediately after the beginning of the second half of the thir­ teenth century, the scenario changed unexpectedly. Guild members ended up in the highest ranks of the city-state and even identified with it: comune et populus was the formula typically adopted. Its leaders were the antiani (obvi­ ously men of the people). Parallel to this, representatives of big magnate families appeared as urban podesta: in Cremona Uberto Pallavicino, in Parma Ghiberto da Gente, in Verona Mastino della Scala. In Milan, even though the podesta was someone else, the actual leader was Filippo della Torre. In Vicenza the leader was the bishop himself, Bartolomeo. Even in Venice, an idyllic situation between the guild members and the doge, Lorenzo Tiepolo, was formed. The well-known case of Bologna - where the Geremei family held the city under its domination - need not even be mentioned.91 The reasons for this change are complex and still need investigation. Let us think, for example, of the enormous presSures placed on the city-states from 1230 to 1250 by the struggle between the empire and the papal regime, which caused a consequent aggravation of internal conflicts. We should also bear in mind some of its other effects: the enormous loss of men and re89. Michele Luzzatti, Firenze e I'area toscana," in Staria d'Itali«, cd. G. Galas, VIY 1, cit., 700-701. 90. In Florence w e ma y note a certain delay in the nobility-people conflicts (se ibid., 706-707). lbat the popolo did not coincide with the trade guilds but was rather "a movement organized i n armed societates with a neighborhood-based recruitment and having estially "

elitist and political characteristics" is also evident. Se Roberto Greci, "Fonne di organizzazione del lavoro nelle cina italiane tra eta comunale e signorile," in La dna in Italia e in Germarria nel MedWevo: cultura, istituzior, vita religiosa, ed. Reinhard E1ze and Gina Fasoli (Bologna: n Mulino, 1981) 81-1 16, se especially p. 89. With regard to Perugia se Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, n Comune popolare," in Societa e istituzioni dell'Italia comunale, cit 41-56. 91. John Koenig, II "popolo" dell'Italia del Nord, cit., 296-297, 373-374; Giorgio Cracco, Societa e Stata, cit., 243f.; id., "Da comune di famiglie a cina satellite," cit., 114-1 16. "

.,

328

Politics and Conflict

sources (in Florence Frederick IT's support made possible the triumph of certain families that were allied with the guild members; in Venice, the hostility of Frederick himself caused the fal of Giacomo Tiepolo's government).91 Let us think of the destructive and leveling action by Ezzelino il da Romano against the large and middle-sized families of the Marca.'l Moreover, in this period economic growth started to slow down and signs of a crisis to be perceived. There no longer was enough room for everybody. The stronger people pushed aside the weaker. The mercatores tended to exploit the artifices, and the entre­ preneurs the wage earners. The city, in many ways, tried to subjugate the countryside (the liberation of the serfs was one of these ways).'" The combination of these factors, together with the endemic instability of the urban world, caused a contraction in the ruling class. Many families fell. Others returned, beaten, to their castles and their possessions in the territory from which they had originally come (later sources still contain traces of this sizable reduction)." Not many families were able to survive. Those that did eventually became masters of the city and the territory, thereby exhibiting a power never seen before, which was frequently abused: these were the families of magnates. In the late-thirteenth century, when the large and varied ruling class had been reduced, and the growth of the so-called (and, we might add, improperly called) urban democracy had been interrupted, the social landscape seems notably simplified: on the one hand the magni homines and on the other the people." Thus the focus of the conflicts became obligatory: people versus mag­ nates and magnates versus people. At first or at certain pojnts the people seemed victorious. The /upi rapaces were thrown out and laws against the magnates proliferated everywhere.'7 Was it the "triumph" of the "plebeians," as Bickerman wrote, over the aristocracy?" Actually, the rise of the people did not determine at all the eclipse of the "magnate class" but, instead, installed a more rigid selection process for the forces that ruled society ( "reguntur per paucos divites," wrote Bartolus di Sassoferrato with regard to Venice and Florence). It caused society to become f · C -.

92. Se n. 89; Giorgio Cracco, Sociera e Stato, cit., 173f. 93. Giorgio Cracco, "Da comune di famiglia a cina satellite," cit:, 104f. 94. Regarding the problem of the liberation of the serfs - but not for the economic

crisis, which remains an open problem - se Francesca Bacchi, "La cina e I'organizzazione del territorio in eta medievale," in La citra in [talia e in Germania, cit., 51-80, se especially pp.

74-75. 95 . Giorgio Cracco, "Da comune di famiglie a cina satelllite," cit., 137-138. 96. I would like to recall the definition of "magnates" of Philip Jones, "Economia e societA," cit., (n. 34) 322: not a social category but a political and changeable one that

contained only partly nobles and only a part of the nobility. 97. Se n. 4; Gina Fasoli, "Oligarchia e ceti popolari nelle cina padane ira iI XII e iI XIV secolo," in AristocTtWa cittadina e ceti popolari nel taTOO Medioello in [talia e in Germania, ed. Reinhard Flze and Gina Fasoli (Bologna, 1984) 1 1-39, se especially p. 23 f.; Silvana Collodo, "Magnati e c1ientela partigiana nel Comune Padovano del Duecento," Museum Patavinum 4 (1986) 103-1 18, se especially pp. 108-1 1 1 . 9 8 . Flias J. Bicker, "Some Reflections," cit., 404-405.

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more and more aristocratic." The popolo minuto (lower class) lost irrevoca­ bly in the long run. Under the rule of the "greats," they had been able to riot and could even obtain power (a case in point is the Ciompi in Florence), but in the end, they were forced to submit: "They had nothing with which to sustain themselves. " lOO In light of the processes that I have outlined here (notwithstanding at­ tempts to rationalize, every city remains an individual case that, in addition, always needs to be studied in connection with the social sphere of the territory), a different conclusion seems to be indicated: a complex urban society emerged from the conflicts that arose within the feudal world.lOl On the other hand, those conflicts that arose within the urban society gave rise to a state that was not completely closed or lacking mobility at its summit but that, at its base, did not allow any dialectic.lOl The era of the communitas, with all its turbid and confused aspects, which were often also conflictual, gave way to the era of the auctoritas, which was supremely and mercilessly equalizing.1OJ

99. Philip Jones, "Economia e Societa," cit. (n. 34) 332; G. Cracco, Societa e Stato, cit., 399; James S. Grubb, "Patriziato, nobilta, legittimazione: con particolare riguardo al Veneto," in Istiturioni, societa e potere nella MaTca trevigiana e veronese (secoli XIII-XIV). Sulle tracee d; G. B. Verci. Atti (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medioevo, 1988) 235-251, se especially p. 235. 100. Victor Ruttenburg, Popolo e movimenti POPl1lari, cit., 258. 101. Se, for example, besides Paolo Cammarosano, "Citti e campagna," cit. (n. 10), .

•

.

Jean-Claude Maire Vigueur, "Les rappo�ts viUe-campagne dans I'Italie communale: pour une revision des problemes," in La ville, la bourgeoisie et la genese de l'etat moderne (XIl"-XVIIl" f;ecles) (Paris, 1988) 21-34; Gerard Rippe, "n 'Catastico di Ezzelino' e la storia del Veneto medioevale," in II Catastico d; S. Giustina di Monselice detto di welina, ed. Luigi Caberlin, Fonti per la stOM della Teraferma Veneta, 1 (Padua, 1988) ix-xxiii; S. Bortolami, "Comuni e heni comunali nelle campagne medioevali: un episodio della Scodosia di Montagnana (padova) nel XII secolo," MEFRM 99.2 (1987) 555-584, se especially p. 557 (where the author recalls the words written by Gaetano Salvemini in his Un comune 1J4rale del secolo XIII: "If the trunk of our civilization greens and flowers in the large inhabited centers, the sap that nourishes the tree is almost all sucked drop by drop from the countryside"). 102. Anthony Molho, "Politics and the Ruling Qass in Early Renaissance Florence,"

Nuova Rivista Storica 52 (1968) 401-420. 103. Denis Romano, Patricians and "Popolani," The Social Foundations of the Venetian Renaisance State (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, -1987), se especially pp. 141ff. Se also Mario Ascheri, "Siena nel Rinascimento: dal govemo di 'popolo' al govemo nobiliare," in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento, Monte Oriolo (Ro­ rence: Papafava, 1987) 405-430. -Thanks to Ermelinda Campani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this esy from Italian.

Commentary

H A R RY W. P LEKET

�CIENT

HISTORIANS used to invest most of their time in the study of Rome and Athens. The reasons are obvious. The combined literary, epigraphical, and archaeological sources are numerous and fertile, and a slight classicistic bias is perhaps never absent. The result is that if later preindustrial historians look back at the ancient world at all, they look back at Rome and Athens and, it must be admitted, often do not find problems raised and answers provided that are relevant to their own studies. Not that there is something wrong with these cities, but there is a problem: they are rather abnormal, atypical cities, at least in their fully developed shape. Economically they are conquest states and derive most of their wealth from what Weber so nicely called "Raubimperialismus" and, in the case of Athens, from the inconceivably lucky find of lots of silver. Politically they are centers of an empire, which cannot be said of many ancient cities; moreover, Athens is completely atypical, nay, even unique in developing a radical de­ mocracy that made life for the elite more difficult (and rightly so) than in any other preindustrial European city. So at first sight these two ancient cities do not seem to offer the best cases for comparative purposes. Florence was a booming Weberian produc­ " tion city (one of the "famous weaving towns, . to use Arthur H. M. Jones' expression),! and Venice was an equally booming commercial, maritime center, though the importance of landed estate as a respectable investment is not to be underestimated, and consequently the modem, historiographical image of these cities as (proto) capitalistic entities may have to be played down some­ what. Marvin Becker's words deserve to be quoted: "Businessmen remained country proprietors at heart; their patrimonies were frequently diversified among rustic estates, city shops, and townhouses. Their status system was still profoundly agrarian and therefore a substantial share of profits from trade and manufacture went back into the land." 2 Richard Rapp showed for Venice that at least in the seventeenth century the Venetian elite increasingly invested

1 . Arthur H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy: Studies in Ancient Economic and Ad­ ministrative History, ed. Peter A. Brunt (Oxford, 1974) 355. 2. Marvin B_ Becker, Florence in Transition I (Baltimore, 1967) 1 4-15.

332 Politics and Conflict

their money in land and country houses. The security and the satisfactory level of the revenues of landed estate prompted them to divert their money from the invariably risky, insecure investment in commercial enterprise to land. Admittedly Rapp argues that the elite's decision reflected a mentality of rational decision making rather than a "Rentner" mentality, but this rational­ ity is a far cry from the rationality of modem capitalistic, industrial, and commercial entrepreneurs.3 Though both cities disposed of a large territory, their economic position is not to be compared with that of Athens and Rome, which were truly imperial states. Comparison with Athens and Rome in their pre-imperial stage seems more obvious, but for those periods there is a dearth of evidence. Rome certainly never was a production city; nor was it ever an important commercial, wealth-generating harbor, transit or otherwise. Ostia admittedly became Rome's harbor. But through Ostia mainly imports were channeled toward Rome: imports that were partly the profits of "Raubimperialismus," namely taxes in kind; partly they were paid for from the profits of empire, that is, from imperial and aristocratic wealth, derived from huge landed estates, spread all over the empire, and from indirect involvement in manufac­ turing, commerce, and real estate business. Athens did have an important commercial harbor, but the problem with Athens remains that we still do not know exactly enough how Athens paid for its considerable imports. Quite apart from this focus on Athens and Rome, it looks as if compara­ tive ancient history so far has been mainly comparative economic history or rather comparative history of the economic mentality and global economic systems of Greece and Rome. Whether we take Michael Rostovtzeff or Moses Finley, they both implicitly or explicitly identify (Rostovtzeff) or contrast (Finley) the ancient world with stages of the later preindustrial European world; an intermediary group Gohn D'Arms, Keith Hopkins, Thomas Schleich) seems to narrow down the gap somewhat, but in the end they either argue that the diferences were still substantial or simply fail to give an ultimate judgment.4 If anywhere, surely here is a very fruitful artd--rewarding complex of problems for comparatists. For our present purposes it may suffice to state in a rather apodictic way that the study of medieval �d Ancien Regime society and economy badly needs a less modernizing and teleological approach that ceases to interpret the economy systematicaly as a forerunner to modem capitalism. Long-distance trade and flourishing weaving towns have nothing 3. Richard T. Rapp, "Real Estare and Rational Investment in Early Modem Venice," Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979) 269-290; d. also Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly, Poverty and Capitalism in Pre-Industrial Europe (Adantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1979) 61 -62, for an analysis of the reasons why merchants and entrepreneurs regularly decided to

put some of their capital into real estate. 4. For the references, d. Hary W. Pleket, "Urban Elites and the Economy of the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire," Munstersche Beitrilge %ur antiken Handelsgeschichte 3.1

(1984) 3-35.

Pleket: Commentary

333

to d o with modern capitalism. Post h oc i s not propter h oc . Whether w e take transport systems, technology, organization of production, markets, or farming techniques, A. R. Bridbury's words deserve to be pondered: "The most striking feature of the economic institutions of medieval life is how like they were to those that we find both earlier and also later in European history." This is not to deny change, especially in relation to the situation in the Dark Ages, but "many things can change without anything developing. " Those who prefer to believe in commercial capitalism are well advised to realize that "the extraor­ dinary achievements of such international marketing ventures did nothing to rescue them from ultimate sterility. "s Alain Caile recendy caled this commerce a "commerce d'aventure. '" In short, the medieval world should be less "mod­ ernized," the world of the Roman Empire made less "primitive" .7 As far as I know, in political history litde comparison has been practiced. In his recent Politics in the Ancient World, M. L Finley seems to have extended the comparison of his Ancient Economy into the field of political theory: he contrasts the entire ancient world with the late-medieval successor insofar as the former is said never to have raised the question of the legitimacy of political rule, whereas the latter did.' Unfortunately, this thesis is rather ab­ stract and very general. I believe, as I once wrote in a review of another publication of FinleY, that the thesis possibly is extreme.' The main problem, however, lies elsewhere: Finley operates with a definition of "city " and "political system, " which strangely enough betrays a rather classicistic bias and moreover is not conducive to comparison: it is mosdy Athens, a couple of other classical poleis, and republican Rome that comply with the most important criterion, namely, that of political participation. In this way the entire world of Hellenistic and Roman cities is excluded a priori; this entails the unfortunate view, possibly not realized by Finley himself, that true cities did not exist in the Middle Ages and Ancien Regime; for in those periods active political partici­ pation of the citizens surely was negligible in most cities. A more functional approach toward the phenomenon of the city, in which matters such as size, economic role, outward appearance, and political structure play an essential role, clearly is to be recommended.tO Turning to the essays in this section of our volume, I do not claim to have succeeded in bringing them all under one common denominator; but I

5. A. R. Bridbury, "Markets and Frem in the Middle Ages," in B. L. Anderson and A. J. H. Latham, The Market in History (London, 1987) 79-1 19, especially pp. 91, 95, and 98. 6 . A. Cail, "L'emprise du marche, in M. Aymard et al., Lire Braudel (paris, 1988) 93n

132, especially pp. 112-1 1 3. 7. For this thesis d. H. W. Pleket, "Wirtschaftsgeschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit, in Handbuch der EuropiJischen Sozial- und W;,tschaftsgeschichte I (Sruttgart, 1990) 25-160 pasim. 8. Cantbridge 1983, to be read with C. Meier's detailed review in Gnomon 58 (1986) 496-509. 9. Cf. H. W. Pleket, Review of M. I. Finley, Authority and Legitimacy in the Clasical City-State (Copenhagen, 1982) in Gnomon 55 (1983) 459-461 . 10. Cf. Frank Kolb, Dil Stadt im AlterIJ4m (Munich, 1984) 15; d. Jan de Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800 (London, 1984) 1 1 . n

334 Politics and Conflict

do believe that most touch upon basically identical problems, although the differences, in terms of concrete political institutions, magistracies, and eco­ nomic infrastructure, are manifest and manifold. One of the themes that deserves to be singled out for discussion is the phenomenon of the ruling elite and its composition: what does ruling elite mean; who constitutes that elite and to what extent, if any, are its political color and mentality affected by the incorporation of new men (homines novi)? Whether one reads Erich Gruen, John Najemy, or Giorgio Cracco, one is struck by the fact that they agree on the clearly oligarchic character of power. This is true irrespective of whether we talk about the beginning of the Roman Republic, Florence, Venice, or later stages. When we take the beginning of urban history we can say about the medieval Italian city-republics at large and probably also about Venice and Florence that the Picenne thesis, insofar as it is at all designed for and applicable to the world of northern Italy, is out of favor.11 In his brief survey Daniel Waley emphasizes the predominance of landowners in the elites of the nascent cities.12 In his contribution Cracco defends the same view: it was the feudal landlords (capitanei), their vassals (valvassores), and the plebs of arti­ sans and traders who made up the incipient city well before the twelfth century A.D. The extramural feudal landlords, or at least a number of them, decided to settle in the eclesiastical-administrative centers and began to SUPpOl.i: local traders financially. Conflicts within the group of rural, feudal magnates caused some of them to settle in the towns; such conflicts thus lie at the root of the city. In origin these cities do not seem to have foreshadowed later mercantile capitalism, let alone modem capitalism. Gradually traders, who borrowed money from the urbanized landlords, became richer, managed to penetrate into the elite, and began to develop a sort of "imitatio domini" behavior: they adapted themselves to the political culture of the landed magnates. It is already in this early stage that, according to Cracco, the political style of the elite in the emerging cities began to change: "the civilization of the warrior" took place. It is, I think, not so much the piecemeal incorporation of wealthy novi homines of the popolo that brought about this politicai 'domestication of the rural magnates. Imitatio domini implies a noninnovative behavior on the part of the imitators. Rather, it is taking up residence in towns and the confrontation with the popolo that were responsible for the change from feudal warlord into something like representative of the commune. Najemy does not seem to describe this political style exactly along the lines of Cracco; in fact he describes 1 1 . Cf. Lis and 5oly, Poverty and Capitalism (n. 3) 9: "The rise of new towns and the expansion of the old was clearly not the result of the revival of international trade, as Henri Pirenne postulated"; Pirenne's view "ignores the decisive importance of the rural economy"; d. also Adriaan A. Verhulst, "The Origins of Towns in the Low Countries and the Pirenne Thesis," Past and Present 122 (1989) 3-35. 12. Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics, 2nd. ed. (London, 1978) 3-15, 65-67, 95. Jacques Heers, Le clan familial au Moyen Age (Paris, 1974) throughout his book emphasizes the rural origin and interests of early medieval urban elites.

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the Florentine oligarchs of circa 1250 as a warrior class of wealthy families, characterized by frequent vendettas, violence, intimidation, and grandezza. In his view it was not until the fourteenth century that the elite abandoned the warrior ideology in favor of that of the good citizen. In Najemy's view this change was due to the influence of ideas of the popolo. A compromise seems possible here: the domestication of the tenth to the twelfth century A.D. was much more superficial than that of the fourteenth century A.D. Admittedly, the feudal lords of the former period began to adopt an urban life�style. From time to time they saw themselves even confronted with demands and riots of the popolo, but essentially the " civilization" was a rather thin veneer, under­ neath which the original features of the independent, rural warlord soon became visible. It was not until the rise of intense and persistent popular movements and ideologies in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries A.D. that the veneer began to develop into a solid crust of urbanized and civilized political behavior. Whatever ORe may think of this compromise, Cracco and Najemy seem to have two points in common: first the view that oligarchy was the only possible political system, and second the insight that occasionally the popolo made its restrictive but benign influence felt on the elite, which re­ sulted first in the urbanization and politicization of the elite, and later in its democratization. Incorporation of novi homines led to occasional conflicts within the elite; it hardly led people to question the system of elite rule as such, except perhaps for a few brief periods of popular government in Florence. Cracco points out that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. it was not necessarily always the homo novus who acted as representative or champion of the interests of the popolo; members of the old nobility did not shrink from playing that role as well. What matters is that, in spite of occasional sympathy of new men or old nobles for the popular cause, oligarchy continued to reign supreme. The ancient historian is familiar with this political configuration. Is he also familiar with the violence that the oligarchy showed against the people, and with the internal vendettas, as emphasized by Najemy? In fact, we find ourselves confronted here with the important problem of the relation between the private and the public: to what extent was the Florentine city as a public entity capable of imposing its monopoly of violence ("Gewaltmonopol" ) upon its citizen members; to what extent were private families capable of discounting this public monopoly and choosing their own system of self-help and private violence? The question, of course, is with which stage of Roman republican history this configuration is to be compared: the stories about violence and intimidation, about members of the oligarchy using their own armed clientelae, and of piecemeal incorporation of homines novi into the elite remind me of the early republic between, let us say, 500 and 300 B.C.13

13. Cf. Kurt A. Raaflaub, "The Conflict of the Orders in Archaic Rome: A Comprehen­ sive and Comparative Approach," in id. (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspec­ tives on the Conflict of the Orders (Berkeley, 1986) 28.

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In Greece we have parallels for oligarchic violence, private armies, and vendettas in the cities of the early archaic period, in which the public sphere admittedly existed but depended too much on the benevolence of powerful clans instead of being capable of rapidly imposing public rules and procedures upon al citizens, wealthy and poor.14 Similar features emerge again in the pe­ riod of the demise of the senatorial Roman Republic, when the border line between private potentes and res publica became increasingly vague. A common feature of both the Italian city-republics and early republican Rome is the rise of nouveaux riches, of homines novi, who originally did not belong to the patriciate (equites) and the urbanized rural landowners (the group of knightslmilites pro comni, the societas militum, as Waley has it), but managed to penetrate it.15 Waley mentions the category of ennobled wealthy popolani, a striking parallel to wealthy Roman plebeians who managed to acquire membership of the Roman senatorial ordo. Since the 7IOvi happily adapted themselves to the noble life-style, it was only the composition of the oligarchy that changed, and hardly the political culture. What change there was in mentality may have been due, along the lines set out by Najemy, to the confrontation with the popolo/plebs. From Cracco's chapter I infer that in an early stage the popolo began to offer military support to the urban elites (the militia of the vile artigiani); Waley refers to the infantry of urban and rural non-nobles. This irresistibly reminds me of the early republican plebs, who in addition to large numbers of debt-ridden, small subsistence peasants and tenants, also comprised a number of farmers and craftsmen, wealthy enough to serve as infantrymen in the legions. Cracco and Najemy share one important point of vie�: the impact that confrontation with a political alternative, or at least with an adversary, exerted on the social behavior and political mentality of the elite. In this respect Oto of Freising's picture of the capitanei and valvassores as citizens, heirs of the antiqu; Romani and masters in the art of civitatum dispositio and res publicae conservatio is very relevant. Taking up residence in the city and being con­ fronted with the common people meant that the elite exposed itself to the civilizing influence of the urban cives. The same procesfis described by Najemy for thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Florence, with greater intensity and

14. B ut in the end, as Raaflaub points out (d. n. 13) aristocracy changed considerably and lost much of its total conttol of the community; in comparison with Rome, from early on the Greks began to question the superiority of the aristocracy; the latter engaged in factional striCe and showed a god deal of arbittariness in jurisdiction and abuse of their power, but ultimately they were subdued to a more democratic, popular system. 15. Waley, City-RepNblia (n. 12) 17-20, 42 . It is worthy of note that in Florence newcomers were regularly stigmatized as being "from the trowel and the plough-their minds filled with insatiable avarice and pride" (Boccaccio, quoted by Marks, art. cit. [no 26] 79). In Rome new men were generally described as infimNS. humi/is. obscunu. The psychology of the Florentine and Roman establishments is the same in this respect. Needles to say, as son as noll had managed to entrench themselves in the nobility, they adopted this habit of slighting newcomers. CE. T. P. Wiseman; New M4m in the Roman Ser.au 139 B.c.-14 A.D. (Oxford, 1'971) 65-94 (obscuro loco ""IUs), especially p. 82.

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more democratization.Preindustrial elites seem to have been subject to waves of homines novi and of domestication due not to these novi but rather to con­ frontation with alternative organizations. It is the crest of the waves that differs: obviously the crest of Craco's wave of the "civilization of the warrior" and of Freising's wave of "republicanized" rural lords. (d. conservatio rei publicae) is less high than that of Najemy's wave a couple of centuries later, but basically it is the same sort of political wave. I have two questions concerning the economic background of the above­ mentioned movements.First, what was the reason that rural, feudal landown­ ers began to settle in the early-medieval city in northern Italy? As far as I can see it was primarily discord among the rural nobility that prompted some of them to leave the world of those nobles and to try to acquire power with the help of the inhabitants of the urban nucleus. The urbanized nobles were not attracted by prospects of mercantile or artisanal wealth; nor did they become merchants and entrepreneurs themselves. They setded in a city for political reasons, but in the long run this political decision resulted in better prospects for the nonagrarian component of the urban population. Slowly, very slowly, a few merchants or artisans managed to acquire some wealth, supported by the urban landowning elite, who needed their help against their feudal col­ leagues in the countryside.In their turn some of the urban landowners became involved in nonagrarian activities. In short, a political decision by landowners gradually brought about the rise of wealthy, nonagrarian nov� who wanted to share political power and to occupy political functions. This brings us to our second question: how do we explain the fact that, whereas in medieval northern Italy the novi seem to originate in the world of merchants and successful artisans, in Rome the wealthy plebeian nov; generally are held to have been agrarian nouveaux riches. I quote Raaflaub: "Equally wrong is the related assumption that the early republican plebeians (and accordingly the plebeian hoplites) were mosdy petty craftsmen, traders and workers, in the city."i' Even Chester Starr, whose main thesis is that Rome in the fourth century B.C. developed into a busy·center of crafts and trade and that in its foreign policy the Roman elite was at least pardy influenced by commercial factors, concedes that "the new families ...were surely agricul­ turally based"; the view that "they rose out of commerce and industry is an unwarranted importation of modem concepts of the bourgeoisie."17 I do not accept the view that in this period Rome had to export nonagrarian products in order to be able to pay for substantial grain imports, in other words that Rome was a sort of Weberian production city; conquest rather than import will have solved most logistic problems.18 I do find it likely, however, that in Rome a substantial nonagrarian sector must have come into 16. "From Protection and Defence to Offence and Participation: Stages in the Conflict of the Orders," in Raaflaub, Social Struggles (n. 1 3) 223. 17. Chester G. Star, The Begi",ngs of Imperial Rome: Rome in the Mid-Republic (An Arbor, 1980) 57. 1 8_ Cf. my review of Star in Mnemosyne 36 (1983) 442-446.

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existence, whose main function was to cater to the needs of the growing Roman market; but somehow this does not seem. to have produced any numbers of commercial nouveaux riches. I subscribe to Starr's view that the nov; homines were "drawn from rural elements who took advantage of the increasingly market-oriented economy";l' this must imply that they derived their wealth from the marketing of their agricultural surpluses. The explanation for this difference in background of the nov; in medieval Italy and in ancient Rome may perhaps be found (a) in the clearly imperialistic character of Rome, which enabled both the ruling elites and those just below them to acquire much land at the expense of the conquered and as a source of increasing wealth, and (b) in the strong focus on indirect participation of the elite in commerce and industry. By indirect participation I mean both lending and the habit of setting up slaves or freedmen in workshops or commerce. In this respect I wonder whether the sons of freedmen whom Appius Claudius proposed to admit to the senate may have had fathers who obtained their wealth both from the financial support of their former masters (as Trimalchio did later) and from their own commercial andlor entrepreneurial activities.10 Subsequently the sons did what was indispensable to become not only wealthy but above all respectable: they bought land - thereby in a remarkable way anticipating the later preindustrial European "law of the three generations," as described by Pirenne and further elaborated by Braudel and Hexter.11 If that is acceptable, growth on the nonagrarian side of the economy was not auto­ matically translated into the birth of a mercantile andlor entrepreneurial elite; on the contrary, the growth both reinforced the agrarian elites who derived additional revenues from the activities of their slaves and freedmen and created at best a pseudo-bourgeoisie of wealthy freedmen. There is, however, a diference between Rome and the medieval northern Italian cities: whereas in most of the latter small numbers of the nonagrarian rich themselves could penetrate into the elite and in some exceptional cities Weberian production cities - gradually even came to dominate the elire, in Rome nonagrarian wealth did not manifest itself directly in social status and corresponding membership of the socio-political elite, butiiltely did provide the basis for membership in the second or third generation. It must be emphasized that not every North Italian ptedieval city was a Florence or Venice, that is, a city with strong entrepreneurial and commercial features. Waley rightly points out that most cities were small, face-to-face towns with well under 20,000 inhabitants,l1 caught in a narrow circuit of eco-

19. Starr, op. cit. (n. 17) 46. 20. Cf. Starr, op. cit. (n. 17) 35. 21. Cf. Henri Pirenne, "Les periodes de I'histoire sociale du capitalisme," Bulleti" de l'Acadbnie royale de Belgique, CI. des Lettres 1914; for Hexter (and Braudel) cf. J. H. Hexter, Reappraisals i" History: New Views on History and Society i" Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 1961). For a good survey cf. Ma Prak, ArislOa'atisering," Spiegel Historitul23 (1988) 226232. 22. Waley, City-Republics (n. 12) 3-4, 15. II

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nomic activities with their contado and with trade mainly being a modest overland interchange of grain, oil, wine, salt, and cheap, local textiles. In most of these towns smallholders constituted the majority; most of them were just local markets for local commodities, and they were nourished by the agricultural resources of the surrounding countryside, just as was the case in most towns in the Roman Empire. Those artisans who were active in the average small medieval town used to combine several occupations and to own some land as well: hardly the representatives of a nascent capitalism but rather a return, after the demise of the Roman Empire, to average Roman city life. As to the larger medieval cities like Florence and Venice, the rural roots of commercial and entrepreneurial elites are not to be discarded. I find confirmation for this approach, which narrows the gap usually assumed to have existed between primitive antiquity and the commercial and capitalistic Middle Ages, in R. Burr Litchfield's recent Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790 (Princeton, 1986). Admittedly, Litchfield points to the continuity of a nonagrarian business elite of merchants and bankers, but there is also the question of a growing reinvestment of profits in the countryside and of "a shift in patrician investments toward land." When Florence came under the sway of the Medici and their court, sons of commercial families increasingly appeared "as silent investing partners" and preferred "a safe investment" in land that "promised a steady but smaller revenue than could be obtained from trade."23 I permit myself one final excursion in the field of economic history, which is meant somewhat to elaborate and to support my thesis: in recent historiography the differences between the ancient and medieval world have been exaggerated and overemphasized. Future conferences should focus on systematic comparison of the economic infrastructure, not only of specific cities but also of the entire Mediterranean world of the Roman Empire and that of later preindustrial Europe. It is only within the context of an overall view of these two worlds that the study of specific cities or themes can be fruitful. My excursion concerns the city of �lorence. I refer to two recent articles by Richard A. Goldthwaite on Florentine local and international banking.14 These studies emphasize the relatively small size of banks, the discontinu­ ity of their operations, the small amount of capital at their disposal, and the strongly consumptive and short-term loans made by them. In short, Goldthwaite draws a picture of Florentine economic "primitivism" that would have appealed to Sir Moses Finley, were it not for the fact that he admittedly drew a similar primitive picture of ancient banking but precisely contrasted the latter with the allegedly modem, capitalistic structure of medieval banking. 23. R. Bur Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureilacy (as cited in the text) 23 ("the cluster of fanns that their prudent reinveslment of profits had gradually enlarged") 36 and 43. 24. Richard A. Goldthwaite, "Local Banking in Renaissance Florence," Journalof Euro­ pean Economic History 14 (1985) 5-55; id., "1he Medici Bank and the World of Florentine Capitalism," Past and Present 114 (1987) 3-31.

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A recent study by W. C. Jordan strikingly confirms Goldthwaite's results.2S These studies provide a good antidote to some of Raymond de Roover's "modernistic" studies of medieval banking and financing. I return to the main theme of politics and social conflicts, now focusing on the period covered by Najemy for late Florence (thirteenth- to fourteenth century) and by Gruen for the later republic. It is not easy to decide whether or not they have much in common. Both scholars accept the idea that over the centuries a relatively narrow oligarchy managed to continue its rule and that basically the nov; were imitators rather than innovators.26 Both use a comparable vocabulary, which mirrors the same approach toward politics: patronage, clientel, networks, and factions seem to have been the mechanisms of political power and to have constituted the essence of politics. Gruen seems to demur at least in one respect: in his view the use of concepts like faction and clientela suggests too much divisiveness among the elite and too little unity and ascendancy. Najemy's objection to the excessive use of concepts like patronage, clientela, and (actio is different: it reduces politics to an ulti­ mately personal and local afir, with ideology and real political issues left out. In other words, for Gruen excessive reliance on the political mechanisms mentioned above means underestimating the essential unity of the elite; for Najemy it means underestimating the contents, the ideology of politics. Pre­ sumably, Najemy would agree with Gruen's point but not vice versa. Because Najemy accepts the ultimate control of power by the oligarchy he will probably also accept the view that factionalism within the oligarchy did not essentially undermine the elite. In fact, in both periods factionalism played a crucial role in determining who should occupy the top magistracies. Here interesting parallels can be found. Gruen points out that in Rome newcomers had their best chances in the lower echelons of the senate and its magistracies, which is another way of saying that the top positions were preferably held by persons with respectable ancestors, a pedigree of at least two or three top magistrates, rather than by novi of the first generation. This reminds me of Litchfield's recent statistics, which show that 75 percent of the Florentine houses that provided four or more priorates in the fifteenth century'atready had priors in the fourteenth century. As to the members of the senate or the Council of Two Hundred, under the Medici 87 percent of the 426 houses that regularly ocupied the priorate in the fifteenth century managed to maneuver their members into those two councils and to the list of people eligible for officeP It is less easy to ascertain whether Najemy and Gruen agree on the ultimate influence that popular discourse and popular institutions exercised 25. William C. Jordan, "Women and Credit in the Middle Ages: Problems and Direc­ tions," Journal of European Economic History 17 (1988) 33-62. 26. Cf. L. F. Marks, "Fourteth-Century Democracy in Florence," Past aM Present 25 (1963) 77-84 ("The history of Florence - even at its most democratic - remains in large measure the history of her principal families"). 27. Litchfield, Emergence o f a Bureaucracy (n. 23) 16-20, 25-30.

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on the ruling oligarchy. Gruen believes in the "exploration of popular dis­ course to entrench the authority of the establishment" and correspondingly rejects the view that such popular discourse was taken up by (part of) the elite to advance popular interests; in fact, he writes about a fa�ade of popular advantage, screening the promotion of aristocratic ascendancy. The diference with Najemy lies in the assessment of the influence that popular political culture had on the nature of the aristocracy. Najemy explicitly and correctly maintains that in the long run Florentine oligarchy, though not losing its power, slowly but definitely was affected by the political discourse and institu­ tions of the po puli. The problem in Gruen's essay is that he hardly addresses himself to this problem in Najemy's terms. His main theme is the question whether or not Roman senators or part of the senate ever consciously decided to foster the advancement of popular interest by legislation or institutional innovation, thereby diminishing the power of the oligarchy. His answer rightly is at one time he admits that "Roman leaders had to take popular needs into acount, at least on occasion." But on the whole his point of view is that the senate at best manipulated or exploited popular voices, that is, popular political culture, and in doing so ultimately strengthened its oligarchical position. The latter is true, and Najemy is also of the opinion that ultimately the Florentine oligarchy likewise managed to hold its dominant position. But whereas Najemy explicitly asks whether the entrenched Florentine oligarchy perhaps was afected in its political behavior and style, Gruen seems to hold that an entrenched elite basically is an unchanged elite, that is, un­ changed in terms of political ideology and political style. This view is not likely to be true; it is what I would like to call the extremist prosopographical view of political life, inaugurated by Sir Ronald Syme: the oligarchy cared not about political ideology - except perhaps for some vague catchwords like virtus, res publica, libertas (mainly senatorial) but only about power; in the power game, factionalism played an essential role, in two variants: some believe in large, semi-permanent (actiones, others in rapidly changing groups of amici formed in res}fonse to the problems at hand. Gruen adds the dimension of the unaltered unity of the elite, which did not suffer from divisiveness, or at least not much. He does not deny the existence of popular needs, popular discourse, popular voices, or popular clamor, but in the end the united, entrenched senatorial elite merely manipulated popular impulses "while assuming the ascendancy of the nobiles." I leave aside the problem of sincerity versus sheer manipulation and exploitation of popular discourse. In fact, once in his essay Gruen himself admits that ocasionally the elite "had to take those [popular] needs into account." This little sentence, which is completely overshadowed by the vo­ cabulary of political cynicism and lust for power, constitutes a bridge to Najemy's view that the exposure to popular ideology and institutions, which formulate the needs of the popolo, in the long run may have affected the po­ litical culture of the elite.

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In the course of three or four centuries both oligarchies, the Florentine and the Roman, saw themselves confronted with the rise of popular organiza­ tions, whether we call them guild councils or popular assemblies (comitia tributa). In the field of elections the oligarchy had to get used to the idea that those who did not rank as members of the elite decided who was to be elected. True, in Florence the impact of popular concepts probably was stron­ ger than in Rome. Najemy's catalogue of institutions, procedures, and results during the various years of popular protest and government contains elements that remained unknown in ancient Rome; one such element is the admittedly temporary appointment of major and minor guildsmen in the priorate. I cannot think of anything similar happening in Rome, namely, the temporary election of minor artisans in the senatorial top functions or, for that matter, in lower magistracies. In a general sense, however, one may say that the oligarchy of Rome in 133 behaved differently from that of 495: less violence, more protection for the common man, more influence on legislation by the common man in the comitia tributa, more influence possibly on the contents of legisla­ tion. The introduction of the leges tabellariae may not have been a challenge to senatorial dominance, but it did afect the possibilities of manipulating the votes in the comitia. In this connection Cicero's famous remark in De Legibus about written ballots to be shown on request to leading citizens should be interpreted as wishful thinking rather than as a reflection of actual practice. Senatorial diehards did not like the idea that common citizens made up their own minds, but it did happen, however much they were subject to the influence of patroni.l8 In the end the demise of senatorial rule in Rome may well have been due to the fact that the senatorial elite's political culture had not responded sufficiently to popular needs and discourse. Leges agrariae and {rumentariae were grudgingly accepted and, if needs arose, expanded by the senate, but ultimately P. A.Brunt may be right in his thesis that senatorial unwillingness to distribute land among the veterans, that is, the plebs in military disguise, was the major factor in the fall of the senatorial republic.l' It is significant that the princeps quickly solved this problem; he also solYed the problem of feeding the Roman populace. The senate admittedly promulgated leges {rumentariae, but in their political culture these distrib\1tions continued to smack too much of imdesirable gifts to a lazy, parasitical plebs. Najemy argues that "the great families of Florence became a stable ruling class only when they learned to speak the language of the popolo and the guild community, a language embedded in institutions that were far more durable thart the regimes that originally promoted them." This may·be some­ what exaggerated; these families remained a stable ruling elite, inter alia, by absorbing and accommodating elements of the people's discourse. The same 28. Contra Gruen. 29. P. A. Brunt, "The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution," J. of Roman St. 52 (1962) 69-86.

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can be said about the behavior of the senatorial Roman elite in the years between 500 and 133 B.C. Both in Florence and in Rome ultimately a princeps emerged who in both cities continued to utilize the services of the elite for administrative purposes. I leave it to others to decide whether in both cities the elites had perhaps not accommodated enough popular discourse or whether different mechanisms were at work in these cities.

Commentary

RONALD F" WEISSMAN

T

HE HISTORY OF THE STUDY of political organization and power,

whether conceived of as political science, anthropology, or sociology, has had no richer laboratories than the classical and medieval city­ states that are the subject of this conference. From Machiavelli through Karl Marx, Henry Maine, and Max Weber the cities of Mediterranean antiquity and the Middle Ages have served as a fundamental p.oint of reference for the development of theory. Even today, the Mediterranean town, broadly con­ ceived, serves as the laboratory for much contemporary theorizing by poiitical anthropologists. I raise the issue of formal theory because the chapters in this book share a sense of unease about many of the theoretical assumptions commonly used to explain those processes which helped to organize ancient and medieval urban communities. Thomas J. Figueira is, for example, critical of what he calls "vulgar Marxism," which, in his words, is deterministic, finding in the social order "only a single pattern - exploitation by one specific class of another class or classes," to which he contrasts a sound appreciation of all "societies that balance individual appetitiveness and group self-interest against the needs (or wishes) of everyone (mediated through many social mechanisms)." For Figueira, then, even more than economic interests, it is the political tensions between individuals and the group or groups and the state that create conflict. He asks that scholars establish a spectrum from social to "purely political cotlBict" and argues further that "as time progresses in Athens conflict becomes less social (between already constituted groups) and more"a matter of individual decisions over choices in policy." Figueira concludes by distinguishing the primitive and the fully evolved polis, the latter characterized by more socio­ economic differentiation and more complex political organization. Social con­ flict characterized the early polis; a more purely political conflict characterized the politically mature polis. Finally, for Figueira, it is not the existence of features of the social structure that occasions social conflict, but, rather, the intervention of the state. While denying that ancient slavery created social conflict, since he believes that slavery was a political rather than an economic

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instrument, he asserts that the power of the mature state to levy taxes was one of the truly significant causes of exploitation and conflict in ancient society. Figueira's essay makes unusual and, to my mind, unnecessary distinctions between political and economic conflict and focuses on the state as a cause of social conflict that is "political." For Figueira, political conflict is somehow logically prior to other kinds of conflict, constructing but not contrasted by the social order. Unlike Figueira's essay, which deals with many kinds of conflict, the contributions of Cracco, Najemy, and Gruen deal to a greater or lesser extent with problems relating to the nature of oligarchy and elites in Roman and late-medieval society. Theorists from Marx through Weber and onward have charted the rise of late-medieval urban communities, generally understanding them as mod­ ernizing phenomena, the triumph of city over countryside, and bourgeois over feudal values and sensibilities. Social conflict, in such a world, reflected the antithetical interests of town against countryside, freedom against feudal bondage, urban capital against agrarian landowning. In contrast with this tradition of sharp cleavage and neat "feudal" forms of social organization versus "modern" ones, for Giorgio Cracco much of late-medieval urban history exemplified, in its origins, traditional patterns of feudal conflict. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was not the town that exercised a kind of sociocultural domination over towns. Rural elites came to view control of towns as essential to their continued domination of the coun,tryside. Moving into towns, feudal elites brought with them the patterns, habits, and conflicts of the countryside. Assimilating into the urban community and becoming civilized by it, the formerly rural nobility - maintaining all the while its strong ties to the countryside -became less of a warrior clan that fought to gain power and more of a group of urban politicians who debated and used '. the nascent forums of public discourse to dominate the commune. For Cracco, social groups within the dominant political classes were, no matter how conflictual, hard to define. With the strength'Crig of a commercial economy, a self-conscious and proud popolo emerged, contesting the privileges of the older, now half-feudal, now half-mercantile, urban nobility. But, for Cracco and for others, such groups or classes are exceedingly hard to define. To gain factional advantage, some members of the older urban aristocracy patronized elements of the parvenu popolo. At the same time, older members of the popolo, having acquired aristocratic sensibilities and having enjoyed many of the privileges, honors, and political authorities and rights of the ancient consular elite, rallied to the defense of noble factions against the baser elements of the guild community. In Cracco's analysis, here, too, conflict took the form of elite factionalism rather than clear-cut, unambiguous class conflict. A curtailment of economic opportunities after the middle of the thirteenth

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century placed class antagonism in greater relief, and a rift grew between all sectors of the ruling elite, old and new, on the one hand, and the popolo minuto, the lesser guildsmen and working classes, on the other. For Cracco, then, from the conflicts within the feudal world emerged a complex urban society, but from urban conflicts emerged a neofeudal state, run by an oligarchic elite. In analyses such as those Cracco offers, the concepts of city and country­ side, feudal and mercantile, urban and rural, are, at best, ambiguous and blurred, and medieval urbanization is altogether something different from the modern, neat, and rationalizing processes imagined by those who have posited that late-medieval and Renaissance Europe witnessed the transition from feudalism to capitalism understood in Marxist or Weberian terms. Erich Gruen and John Najemy locate their unease with contemporary theoretical formulations in a common source: a recent emphasis on informal sociability, on friendship and patronage. In a sense, that ancient and medieval historians have been animated by common COncerns with sociability and patronage is not as surprising as it may appear. Syme's Roman Revolution, though not inventing the methods of prosopography, had a decisive impact among ancient historians, establishing prosopography as the key to the untan­ gling of politics and power. Syme has had no less of a historiographic influence on recent Anglo-American medieval and Renaissance urban history. Through prosopographic analysis, the relations among members of an elite are thrown into detailed relief, as patterns of kinship, friendship, partnership, and clientage emerge from a mass of rich detail; and with that detail has often emerged what anthropologists have called the unofficial, "little" tradition of the social order, One committed more to personal loyalty than to abstract principle, one particularly vexing for the liberal tradition, because it expresses more faith in individuals than in humankind in general, one skeptical of universals and abstract ideologies. Through prosopographical study aild through the parallel discovery of the work of Mediterranean anthropologists, ancient and medieval historians had a rich set of data and theoretical models that were mutually supporting. And such methods and models were seen to add depth and analytical rigor to the work of earlier scholars. Work by Ottokar, for example, some sixty years ago had impressed upon Italian scholars the importance of personal networks of �ssociation in explaining the rise of the Medici in Florence. And patronage studies of the last two decades have provided a more explicit model and a vast accumulation of data to support and explain Ottokar's Florence - the late medieval community that has been studied in greatest sociological detail. Gruen's concerns about studies of Roman patronage and friendship are rooted in the use of such studies to emphasize conflict and faction among the ruling senatorial elite. For Gruen, patronage clientela may explain the shifting composition of factions, but it does not explain what for him is more striking and far more important, the "stimulus to unity." "How did the -

-

348

Politics and Conflict

nobi[es sustain solidarity, hold a collective purpose, and maintain political ascendancy?" Gruen's essay deals not so much with the mechanisms by which Roman elites gained ascendancy, as with the mechaniSms by which they legitimated their rule. In addition to his skepticism about the relevance of patronage studies for the study of Roman elites, Gruen contests another trend in recent historiography, denying that elites owed their longevity to their ability to satisfy popular constituencies, their ability to respond positively to popular pressure, or their ability to curry popular favor. In Gruen's analysis, several facets of Roman politics are generaly seen to be evidence of popular influence: electoral practices, secret ballots, and the calling of popular assemblies having the authority of criminal courts. Examining the results of such practices, Gruen finds that elite power remained intact, despite them. Indeed, by com­ bining the relative invulnerability of Roman elites to any deleterious effects with the elite's public praise of such practices as evidence of the quality of Roman government, Gruen is led to conclude that those practices which were ostensibly popular were fac;ades for aristocratic rule - one might even say, though Gruen does not, mechanisms whereby popular discourse served to legitimate the hegemony of entrenched elites. It is appropriate, I think, to ask Gruen: if popular pressure is not a significant factor in republican history, why did the senatorial elite feel compelled to seek this kind of legitimation? And what threats to its own authority did such legitimation seek to curtail? Gruen's and Najemy's chapters come closest to addressing a common set of issues - the nature of political power, the character and composition of elites, and their relationship to alternative, particularly popular, ideologies and urban traditions. Like Gruen's analysis of Rome, Najemy begins his study with the examination of elite power in Florence. Like Gruen does for Rome, Najemy, too, disputes the relevance of the current fascination with systems of patronage, friendship, and informal social relations for the under­ standing of Florentine political behavior. Unlike Gruen, who appears to dt)miss the study of patronage, Najemy does not deny the importance of these relations for the study of mid-fifteenth century Medicean Florencfc:- What he does do is offer a corrective to whathe perceives as the claim by the patronage school of thought to have identified the single key to unlocking Flor,entine urban history and the history of Florentine elite behavior� What patronage and the study of informal relations do not do, he argues; is throw into adequate relief the enduring importance of formal institutions and explicit, conscious, articulated political ideologies derived from the Florentine civic tradition. In what I argue is one of the finest essays in Florentine history of the past decade, Najemy treats elite ascendancy, to use Gruen's terminology, not as inevitable but as contingent. Elite ascendancy is always possible, but it is often threatened by the guild community and by lower-class violence. Upper-class solidarity is not, as it appears to be for Gruen, taken for granted. Following Gene Brucker, Samuel Cohn, and others, in Najemy's Florence aristocrats

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learned from a century of real and potential w()rking-class discontent and violence the dangers of sectarian splits among the members of the ruling elite. For Najemy, in a manner thoroughly compatible with the view offered by Giorgio Cracco, elite identity, sensibility, and political style at the beginning of the Florentine communal experiment suffered from all of the characteristics of t.'1e traditional feudal aristocracy, recently emigrated to the city; they were exclusive, prepotent, violent, and contemptuous of the claims and aspirations of the guild community. By the end of the fourteenth century, during the beginning of long-term elite ascendancy, the Florentine patriciate had learned, after one hundred years of conflict and collaboration with the guild community, to express its aspirations in the language of the corporate commune. Like Gruen's Roman elite, the Florentine elite used rather than opposed the symbols and institutions of popular sovereignty and guild government to legitimate its own rule, becoming, as Cracco has also described, civilized and urbane. I offer only two correctives to Najemy's splendid history of elite political sensibilities. First, it should be noted that few historians have made patronage, as Najemy claims, the exclusive or universal principle animating "real" politics. Most Florentine historians, the Kents certainly among them, accept the histo­ ricity of patronage and the chronology Nicolai Rubinstein and Gene Brucker have provided for the rise of patronage systems in Florence. Always a competing tendency in Florence, patronage systems began to dominate only at the end of the fourteenth century, due to complex transformations in institutional and social relations. The chronology of elite sensibilities proposed by Najemy is one that most Florentine historians would readily accept, including those, like myself, who believe that face-to-face interaction is critical to understanding urban identity and that urban identity is much more complex than simple membership in a guild or adherence to Florentine - or any other - civic ideology. The second corrective I offer, and I suggest this to both Gruen and Najemy, is to see systems of patronage as neither necessarily divisive (as does Gruen) nor necessarily opposed to class-based interpretations of urban societ­ ies (as do both Gruen and Najemy). Some of the best work in Mediterranean anthropology, for example, has demonstrated how patronage has served to unify ruling elites and, at the same time, to fragment other social classes into cliques and factions, preventing effective opposition to elite rule from devel­ oping. Patronage often offers a personalized view of the universe in which it appears that one canot trust institutions as much as friends and protectors, and one in which it appears that social action is dangerous because the pow­ erful usually dominate. Patronage need not conflict at all with class-based interpretations of elite power. Indeed, systems of patronage may be part of an ideology that legitimates patronage and promotes the notion that collective action to change the status quo is either impossible or doomed to fail. In reviewing the materials presented here, it appears that in contrast with Athens, where oligarchical elites were less well entrenched, in ancient Rome and in medieval Italian city-states such as Florence, a clan-based honor elite

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ruled, an elite increasingly sensitive to the existence of mechanisms of popular sovereignty and to popular modes of political discourse. We know, too, that in these socially intimate, face-to-face societies, complex social relations and realities are not easily reducible to simple formulas emphasizing class, status, power, or patronage to the exclusion of other elements, cultures, and tendencies. Much remains to be done if we are to benefit from a truly comparative discourse about power and conflict in those Meditteranean societies under our review. There are problems with the points of view presented here. First, with the exception of Figueira, our discussion of power and conflict has involved almost exclusively and essentially the study of elites, and even here, such studies have generally been conducted from the perspective of elite aspirations and sensibilities. To limit our study of politics to the political classes - to those holding official power - is also a mistake, given the diffusion of behaviors and attitudes throughout urban society that are undeni­ ably political and potentially conflictual, particularly given the need to form relations between persons and groups over long distances. Many merchants, notaries, and priests in the medieval world had access to their own forms of patronage or power, given their positions as mediators between different social systems. As Peter Schneider, Jane Schneider, and Edward Hansen re­ mind us, in the regions of the Western Mediterranean the fragmentation of power ex­ tends, by and large, throughout the social system. Everywhere power seems to be in different but overlapping domains. This is an area in which individuals at all levels are politicians: they calculate, wheel and deal and intrude themselves into widely divergent spheres of action. They are celebrated for their initiative and drive, notorious for their capacity to store information about political debits and credits, and remarkably skiled at interpersonal relations. The would­ be entrepreneur in this context is always alive to opportunities for forming coalitions with others.

It is only by appreciating the extent to which the political permeated many kinds of institutions and facets of urban society � its social exchanges, its corporate relations, its interpersonal relations, its inter- and intragroup conflicts, its methods of forming political alliances - tha.t we can appreciate the true depths of political behavior and conflict in ancient and medieval city­ states. Unlike Figueira, I make little distinction between the political and the social in the study of premodern urban society. This book has not even begun to address problems of social structure and stratification beyond the limited circle of those who ruled or those who - like the new men of ancient Rome or medieval Italian towns -- could reasonably expect a chance someday to join their ranks. About those below the ruling elites, those beyond or beneath the guild community - the sottopost� the miserabili who constituted a sizable proportion of medieval and ancient urban populations, marginals such as Jews, those in formal or informal condi-

Weissman: Commentary

35 1

tions of dependency such as slaves or debtors, to name just a few groups we know very little. We have been reminded of the weakness of older forms of sociological analysis, whether such forms are based on traditional modernization models, on simple rural-urban contrasts, on simplified notions of class, or on more contemporary theories of patronage. I often feel as if we inhabit, in our own fields, two or more simultaneous worlds, in which, for example, proponents of corporate or class views of the social order admit that familial and patronal systems are important but fail to integrate such perspectives into their research, while scholars emphasizing patronage fail equally to come to terms with class or other macrosocial concerns beyond the level of interpersonal relations and dyadic or clique interactions. This blending of perspectives is especially im­ portant for those who see in medieval and ancient societies a strong corporate ordering or presence, for corporate groups, too, were often animated by intragroup pressures and factions and were themselves made up by personal patterns of recruitment. One need only recognize the frequency with which Florentine confraternities were suppressed for their meddling in politics and their transformation into patronage cliques manipulating elections for friends, to recognize how fuzzy the distinctions between patronage and corporation were, at least at times of political turmoil. We must begin to reconstruct a complete sociology of city-state and not confuse parts for wholes. We have not said, for example, that patronage, class, political institutions, civic ideologies, patrilineage, corporate identity, personal honor, or social status is irrelevant or unimportant for the study of ancient and medieval urban society. What we have said is that each, of itself, offers only a partial window into the past, and that a complete view of medieval or ancient city-states must seek to integrate each of these facets into a more coherent explanation of belief, practice, and experience.

The City of Athens: Space, Syr.nbo� Stnlcture

TON IO H O LS CHER

I NTRODUCTION CIlY is the most important focus of cultural life.1 As such it serves three purposes.2 First, it satisfies all basic needs of communal and personal life. Second, it gives this life an explicit meaning. Third, it shapes and mirrors the general structure of life. These three aspects are in­ separable and must be viewed in relation to each other: the city is simulta­ neously a natural space and a structure that provides meaning, an essential condition and an all-embracing symbol, a total environment and a monument of society. On the one hand, the city provides the necessities: a place to live, shelter from weather, streets for communication and transportation, food supply, acces to fields and pastures, market places, water supply through wells or pipelines, removal of refuse and garbage, places for handicrafts in houses and workshops, supply and transport of materials, and protection from outside enemies. These functions mark the city as a living-space: they are the subject of descriptive sociology. On the other hand, there are the institutions and monuments that the community uses in reminding itself of its own identity: shrines and temples of

1. lbroughout this chap1le1', I use the following abbreviations: Boersma, Building Policy J. S. Boersma, Athmilm B"ilding Policy from 561/0 to 405/4 I.e. (Groningen, 1970); Camp, Agora J. M. Camp, The Athenian Agora (London, 1986); Judeich, Athen = W. Judeich, Topographie IlO1l Athen. tlandbuch der Altertumswissenschaft m.2.2 (2 nd ed., Munich, 193 1); Kolb, Agora = F. Kolb, AgOra Nnd Theater, Volks- fInd Pestv.,stmlmlNng (Berlin, 1981); Kolb, "Peisistratiden" F. Kolb , "Die Bau-, Kuhur- und Religionspolitik der Peisistratiden," in Jahrblldl tks Datschen Archaologisehen Insti",ts 92 (1971) 99ff.; Thompson-Wycherley, Agora = H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Agora of Athens. The Athenian Agora XIV (Princeton, 1972); Travlos, PD J. Travlos, Pictorial Dictionary of Anc:ient Athens (Tiibingen and New York, 1971). For bibliographical references on individual monuments and buildings I mostly give only Travlos, PD, where earlier literature is listed; more reoendy, se the sumry in R. E. Wycherley, Th. StarNs of Athens (Princeton, 1978). Important is the following new edition with commentary of Pausanias' description of Atca: PaNS",w" GNw tUlia Grecia I: L'Anica, ed. D. Musti and L. Beschi (1982). Maps illustrating the topography of Athens .in the archaic age and Agora in the 4th =

=

=

=

century B.C. are at the end of this chapter.

2. For similar aiteria concerning a clasification of the functions of the city, U. &0, La stn4tla asu (Milan, 1968) Chapter C .

d.

also

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Urban and Architectural Forms

various gods that provide the city and its individual parts with a kind of religious topography and thereby contribute to an ideological interpretation; public buildings and squares that reflect power structures; monuments at central points that express the contents of the community'S collective self­ consciousness, keep its past alive, and help to shape the present norms of behavior. Through al these elements, the life of the community is meaningfully formed in rituals and public actions. This is the city as a symbol of life. These aspects of the city are the subject of sociological semiotics. Finally, the total structuring of social life, as it is reflected in architectural forms, can be approached by questions such as whether the citizens live in large or small families, in common or separated rooms; whether there are large or small differences in the way the aristocracy and the commoners, the rich and the poor live, and whether they live in mixed or separated neighbor­ hoods; what role meeting places play, whether one meets often and lives an active social life or leads a solitary existence with little communication; and if people meet, whether they do so at political, religious or entertainment events, whether in sanctuaries, in the agora, in the gymnasium and palaestra, in the theater or in the baths, and whether they meet in places that serve as catalysts for the whole community or only for single groups. These categories define the city as a structure; these aspects of the city are the subject of structural sociology. When focusing on these classifying criteria, the questions of whether, when, and how a setlement can be defined as a city become secondary.3 This is not to say that such a discussion would not produce enlightening insights, but it entails the danger of reducing the problem to the simple alternative between city and "non-city" and of ignoring the plurality and complexity of the phenomena involved. In the following analysis, which is but a first attempt, I will use the notion of city in neutral terms. It is my goal to sketch the basic structures of settlement forms in the context of, community life during the different periods of the history and development of Athens. Thus for my present purposes the classification as a "city" is of seco¢ary importance. T H E EMERGENCE OF T H E EARLY ARCHAI C CIT)": MON UM ENTS OF MYTH

In Athens as in other places, the basic precondition for the emergence of the polis was the destruction - or at least disappearance - of earlier compact power structures. The preceding form of city, in the Mycenaean civilization, was, like all other cities of that period, centrally organized and hierarchically focused on the king! In Max Weber's terms, we are dealing with a 3. For more information on this problem, concerning both Greek and Roman antiquity, se F. Kolb, Die Stadt i", Altertu", (Munich, 1984) 1 1 ff. 4. For Athens in the Mycenaean period, se I. Travlos, PoleodomilU exelixis ton Athenon (Athens, 1960) 20ff.; I. Thallon Hill, The Ancient City of Athens (London, 1953) 8ff.; Sp. Iakovidis, He mykmaike akropolis ton Athenon (Athens, 1 962); id., Late Hel/adic Citatkls .,

Holscher: Athens: Space, Symbol, Structure

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"Fiirstenstadt" with a diferentiated economy of crafts and trade that was concentrated primarily around and on the king's palace. The palace, as the center from which power, religion, and politics emanated, was also the most important object of politics and administration. The acropolis where the palace was located was the only fortress; it was both a bastion of rule and power and a shelter for the community. The populace lived in the surrounding countryside, probably in loose settlements; some concentration is found in the southeast in the area of the later Olympieion, which fits the information given by Thucydides on the location of old Athens before the time of Theseus.s Those settlements probably had no close connection among one another; unity was established through the common orientation toward the palace. At various sites in the area covered by the later city, religious life is attested through cults that must date back to Mycenaean times. Two types of cults are characteristic: on the one hand, the old natural landmarks in the area of the Olympieion that were sacred to Ge Olympia, Kronos and Rhea, Zeus and Eileithyia;' on the other hand, the cults of the necropolis in the area of the agora that, acording to their particular characteristics, were located at the fringes of the residential area.7 Both these groups of sacred places clearly reveal their subordination to the center, that is, the palace. There probably was neither opportunity nor space for a "public" life which would have brought together the people independently of their ruler. The image of the city densely clustered beneath the king's fortress must have clearly impressed upon everybody the hierarchical nature of their relationships. Although Athens seems to have escaped capture and destruction, here as in other places the end of the Mycenaean period around 1200 B.C. marked the end of the traditional rule of kings and of a culture focused on the palace. The subsequent centuries, in which the archaic polis emerged, are characterized by an increase in population paralleled by a decrease of central power. There is no doubt that Athens at that time, in accordance with Weber's categories, changed economically from a type of "Fiirstenstadt" to that of a "Marktstadt" whose inhabitants bought what they needed and earned their living in a market system independent of the ruler. The changes of this period undoubt­ edly oced in a process of many small steps over a long period of time. It is not possible to fix individual stages of this development chronologically; the on

Mainland GruCil (Leiden, 1 983) 73ff.; S. Immerwahr, The Athenian Agora XIII: The Neolithic and Bronze Ages (Princeton, 1971) 147ff. On the relationship between Athens and

other places in Attica in the Mycenaean period, se S. Diamant, "Theseus and the Unification of Attica," in Studies E. Vanderpool, Hesperia Suppl. 19 (Princeton, 1982) 41H. Generally on the wanax-ideology and palace culture, se K. Kilian, "The Emergence of wanax Ideology in the Mycenaean Palaces," Oxford J. of Archeol. 7 (1988) 291ff. (citing earlier Iiu:rature). S. Thuc. 2.15. Travlos, PD 289ff. (listing earlier literature). As described by Pausanias 1 .18.5 and 7. For attempts at localizing these cults, se 6. R. E. Wycherley, "Pausanias at Athens, II: A Commentary on Bok I, Chapters 18-19," Greek, R0m4n, and Byzant. St. 4 (1963) 1 57ff.; id., Stones ofAthens (n. 1) 164ff.; Travlos, PD 290, 325. 7. The sanctuary of Dionysos Lenaios (with esehara and black poplar), Leokoreion, and others: se Kolb, Agora 29ff.

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

phenomena can only be blended together into a model that can serve as an "ideal type." Yet the characteristic shape of the new political and urban structures most likely was developed relatively late, that is, in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.8 On the one side, first the power of the rulers was strongly reduced until finally they were replaced by a plurality of magistrates whose term of office was restricted, eventually to one year. On the other side, the city developed new political strength. Beginning already in the eleventh century, an increase in population, due perhaps to an influx of foreigners, and the need for new setement space become apparent in the spreading of dwellings across the area of the later agora and in the establishment of a new necropolis farther out at the Eridanos river. In general, people seem to have lived in loose and scattered groups of settlements in the wider vicinity of the acropolis.' Probably in the eighth century, all of Attica was united in a process that as synoikismos received a quasi-mythical interpretation.10 Athens became the capital of a ter­ ritorial state which, except for Sparta, was larger than any other Greek polis. In that period the city was probably fortified by a new wall, which, although not comparable with the enormous Mycenaean fortifications on the acropolis, enclosed a much larger area.ll The economic and cultural prosperity is mir­ rored in the highly sophisticated and widely influential pottery production. The self-confidence of the leading aristocracy expressed itself in the most luxurious sepulcral monuments typical of that time. What were the conse­ quences of all this for the appearance of the city? The weakened kingship could not hold its position on the acropolis. The palace must have been given up; some sub-Mycenaean tombs might indicate a short period of settlement, but after that for two centuries the citadel yields no finds;12 only the cult of the palace goddess seems to have been continued in one form or another (see below). This change is reflected in myth as well: while the old kings, following the example of Erechtheus, are supposed to have lived on the acropolis, Aegeus' house is said to have been below near the Olympieion, in the area close to the llissos river, which formed the heart of the earliest urban settlement.13 This location, which ciimot have been funda­ mentaly diferent from that of the residences of the aristocratic families, is For an interesting, though in many respects hypothetical attempt at reconstruction,

8.

se I. Morris, Burial and AncU!nt Society: The Rise of the Greek City-State (Cambridge, 1987),

esp. 17t H. 9. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 9, 1 6f. Cf. the plan of Athens' necropoleis in the 9th to 8th centuries in A. Snodgras, Archllic Greece: The Age of ExperimDft (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980) 29 fig. 5. 1 0 . On Theseus' syneocism, se Diamant (n. 4 ) 38H.; Snodgras (n. 9 ) 34f. 1 1 . Cf. E. Vanderpol, "1be Date of the Pre-Persian City Wall of Athens," in Phoros: TribNte to B. D. Meri" (Locust Valley, New York, 1974) 156H. (tennus post quem non: second quarter of the sixth century); H. Lauter and H. Lauter-Bufe, "Die vorthemistokleische Stadtmauer Athens nach philologischen und archiologischen Quellen," ArchiJologischer APlUiger (1975) 1 H ; F. E. Winter, "Sepultura intra urbem and the Pre-Persian Walls of Athens," in StJ4dies Vanderpool (n. 4) 199H. 12. Inunerwahr (n. 4) 154. .

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Symbol, Structure

359

symptomatic of the king's position as a primus inter pares, as it can be dis­ cerned in the Homeric epics. The value of such mythical traditions might appear questionable but a similar development can be observed in Eleusis: around the middle of the eighth century, the old Mycenaean seat of the sovereign, in an elevated location, was transformed into a temple; since then, the family of the ruler and priest lived at the bottom of the hill.14 The shift from the life-long rule of a king - no matter how weakened his position was - to the colleges of magistrates with shorter tenure must have stimulated the formation of new centers. As a result - at least in the long run - the identity, typical of the monarchy, of personal residence and seat of office or government could not be maintained. The establishment of permanent seats of office doubtless enforced the awareness of, and the confi­ dence in, impersonal institutions and also quickly provided them with a strong sense of tradition. At the same time, clear consequences concerning spatial arrangements were drawn from the distribution of royal power among diferent officials: each received his own seat. We know of a Prytaneion, the seat of the Archon Eponymos, which must have had a particularly centralizing effect on the new polis community because it was the place of the municipal hearth; we also know that the Archon Basileus, the Archon Polemarchos, the Thesmothetai as well as the Phylobasileis had their own buildings. IS New dis­ coveries indicate that the Prytaneion must have been situated east of the acropolis,16 outside the old center (around the Olympieion) which probably expanded northwards at that time; the other officials' buildings most likely were in the same general area without, however, forming an architectural and spatial unity. Thus the magistrates' powers were not even cumulated topo­ graphically. Such division of political power meant, however, that in early archaic times the city did not have a strong political center. This corresponds to the site of the agora. The location of the place where people met before the later agora was established canot be identified archaeologicaly, and can be deduced from the evidence of written sources only with- great uncertainty P Yet all at­ tempts to locate an early agora in the "old city" in the southeast or near the magistrates' buildings are pure speculations without any support in the texts

13. Plutarch, TheseJU 12; Travlos, PD 83. 14. J. Travlos, "Athens and Fleusis in the 8th and 7th Century B.C.," Armuario della Scuola Archeologica di Alene 61 (1983) 323ff.; id., Bildlexiir.on :t:Mf' Topographie des aratiir.en Attilr.a (Tiibingen, 1988) 91f. 15. Judeich, Athen 297ff. (with sources) . On the location of the Prytaneion and the buildings, se S. G. Miller, The Prytaraeion (Berkeley, 1978) 38ff. On the other early significance of the communal fire and hearth and of Hestia for family and state, se J.-P. Vernant, Mythe el pensle chez I4.s G,ecs (3rd ed., Paris, 1985) 1 53ff. On the Boukoleion (of the Archon Basileus) se S. G. Miller, "Old Discoveries from Old Athens," Hesperia 39 (1970) 227ff. 16. G. Dontas, "The True AgIaurion," Ht!$fJeri 52 (1983) 48ff., whose conclusions confirm the location suggested by Miller (n. 15). 17. The only source on the "old agora" is Apollodorus in Harpokration s.v. Pandemos Aphrodite, FG,Hist 224 FI13.

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

or archaeological evidence.IS On the contrary, the site of the meeting place must have been precisely in the opposite direction, away from the heart of the settlement: according to an uncertain source, it was immediately west of the acropolis near the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos;I' possibly it was even further to the northwest, in the area where the agora is attested from the sixth century.20 The square served numerous purposes: people met for religious celebrations, for political assemblies, perhaps also to muster the army. Politics did not yet dominate, and the agora on its peripheral site was not yet an obvious center of the community's life. The fact that there was no strong replacement for the palace after the Mycenaean period must have created a vacuum that is hard to imagine. In the times of cultural depression from the eleventh to the ninth century, the lack of a center of communication corresponded to the economic and social reality. Beginning in the eighth century, however, the growth in population, increasing economic prosperity, and the unification of Attica must not only have brought about new tasks for government and administration, but also stimulated new forms of cultural interaction among the citizens. In this situation it is understandable - actually, difficult to imagine otherwise - that the search for new focal points of communal life centered on religion and the sanctuaries. Everywhere in Greece, panhellenic as well as local shrines experienced an enormous rise in popularity as centers not only of religious but also of economic, political, and social life.21 In Athens, as the most obvious symbol of this development, the acropolis was transformed into a citadel of the gods and isolated from the residential areas;l the same pattern can be observed in that period in other places, too, even on the Capitol in Rome.23 While previously the old palace goddess had been worshipped in the Icing's domestic sanctuary, in Homer the mythical hero Erechtheus has be­ come a fellow ocpant of the temple of Athena.24 The political power that had collapsed was replaced - in a concrete topographical sense - by religious power. As a consequence, the gods assumed the role of providing the weak1 8 . Above all, the attempt of A. N. Oikonomides (The Two Ag�ras ;n Ancient Athens [Chicago, 1964]) to locate the old agora south of the acropolis must be considered a failure. 19. This is the location that is traditionally asumed; se for example, R. Martin,

Recherches 514r l'agora grecque (Paris, 1951) 255ff.; id., L'urbanisme 'dans la Grece antique (2nd ed., Paris, 1974) 294; R. E. Wycherley, "Archaic Agora," Phoenix 20 (1966) 285ff.; Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 19; Travlos, PD lE.; J. N. Coldstream, GeonuJt,;c Greece (New York, 1977) 315. 20. P. Siewert, review of Thompson-Wycherley, Agora, in Gnomon 49 (1977) 392 n. 58; Kolb, Agora 20ff. 2 1 . Snodgras, Archaic Greece (n. 9) 49ff. 22. The chronology of this proces is unclear. According to the archaeological finds, Mycenaean habitation on the acropolis ended in the twelhh century; after that, the earliest

datable testimonia of new life come &om the ninth century, apparendy from a sanctuary: B. Graef and E. LangiolZ, 1M antiken Vasm lion tier Alcropolis %I Athen I (Berlin, 1925) 4ff., 23ff.; J. N. Coldstream, Greelc Geometric Pottery (London, 1968) 1 3, 55, 399. 23. Being an acropolis, the Capitol in Rome was not included in the four regions of Servius Tulius, which only oovered the inhabited areas of the city: Livy 1 .43.13. 24. Iliad 2.546ff.; a slighdy different version in Odyssey 7.78ff.

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ened kingship and the short-term magistracies that succeeded it with much­ needed legitimacy. At the same time, many other sanctuaries must have become focal points of communal life. The center of gravity of the emerging polis at first remained in the south and southeast, toward the llissos river - where, apart from "Aegeus' house," many old cult sites are known to have existed - but the city must soon have expanded toward the north and northwest, with new sanctuaries and rich necropoleis.Is In the course of time, these sanctuaries in­ creasingly' became important meeting places, where the citizens developed new forms of religious and social communion. Initially, the citizens must have experienced their common identity primarily as a religious community. In this context, it was decisive that, for the first time, the appearance of the city came to express a collective memory. Everybody remembered the "Mycenaean" period as a great past. This memory was tied, on the one hand, to the colossal architecture of past ages, such as the "Pelasgian" fortress walls that could not be equalled by the present; on the other hand, perhaps even more importantly, this memory focused on the sanctuaries which not only served the need of worshipping timeless divine powers but often pointed at events and situations of the mythical past. Thus, for example, the temple of Athena on the acropolis had once been Erechtheus' palace; the sanctuary of Aglauros occupied the site where she had thrown herself off a cliff after opening the basket that contained little Erichthonios; the cleft near the Olympieion was the opening through which the last remains of the great flood had drained after Deucalion had been saved; and the temple of Apollo Delphinios had just been erected up to the roof by Aegeus when Theseus arrived in Athens.26 It does not matter how much "historical" memory and how much creative "reconstruction" has been preserved in these myths. Rather, what is most crucial is the new consciousness with which the life of the city was shaped: in this way the city received a mythical topograppy which made the dimension of the past accessible. The structure of this past is no continuous "history" that step by step led from the beginnings to the present; rather, it is the great time of origins, a mythical founding period which is separated from the present by long and quasi-empty centuriesP Cults, sanctuaries and "monu­ ments" serve as cariers of this mythical memory. The present moves within 25. The site of the Prytaneion provides an indication: se above, at n. 16. 26. Temple of Athena and palace of Erechtheus: see n. 24. Sanctuary of Aglauros: n. 16. Cleft at the Olympieion: Judeich, Athen 385. Temple of Apollo Delphinios: ibid. 387; Travlos, PD 83ff. 27. On this, se Holscher, "Tradition und Geschichte. Zwei Typen der Vergangenheit am Beispiel der griechischen Kunst," in J. Assmann and T. Holscher (eds.), Kultur und Gedihtnis (Frankfurt am Main, 1988) 1 15ff.; K. Raaflaub, "Athenische Geschichte und miindliche Oberlieferung," in J. von Ungem-Sternberg and H. Reinau (eds.), Vergangmheit in mundUcher Vberlieferung. Colloquium Rauricum I (Stuttgart, 1988) 197ff., esp. 208-2 1 1 (see also other contributions to this volume, esp. that of J. von Ungem-Sternberg on the early Roman tradition, 237ff.).

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this framework, which is totally shaped by the mythical past but filled by contemporary religious rituals. This mythical-religious horizon of life, how­ ever, must have been of great importance for shaping the identity of the polis, as it was not a general past of humankind, or even of all the Greeks, that was created here, but a specific past of an individual city. Thus through these sanctuaries and rituals the polis gave itself an individual profile. Beyond that, however, the existence of such "monuments" is in itself a highly significant historical phenomenon. The community of citizens puts up "signs" which it uses to establish and express its identity. Such signs attest to a state of communal development, in which the community exceeds the simple execution of concrete ways of living by achieving an active awareness of the meaning and structure of communal life. It is certainly not appropriate to conect a new definition of "city" with this development, but there can be no doubt that such transformation of the city into a semantic structure repre­ sents a decisive step toward more complex forms of life and settlement. THE ARCHAI C CITY: MON U M E N TS OF NOMOS

It took a long time and required a fundamentaly new impulse for the slowly growing and changing settlement to be structured as a whole. This was achieved only in the fuly developed aristocratic order of the sixth century B.C. Various circumstances must generaly have led to a more conscious shaping of the environment: through trade and colonization people were familiarized with the possibilities of urban planing in the highly developed civilizations of the East; at the same time they became more aware of their own particular ways of life. Moreover, trade extended the financial possibilities, which in tum made it possible to realize new concepts. Finally, the social and political crisis of the seventh and sixth centuries, which brought forth sages and lawgivers as well as ambitious tyrants, must generally have sharpened the idea of public order. In the history of the city of Athens, the periods of Solon and of the Pisistratids belong together; in this respect as wel� tyranny proves to be a special form of aristocracy. Being an old and "organically grown" city, Athens canot, however, document all the possibilities of archaic city planning. Cities are to a high degree bound to their past. Free planng according to the new principles of the archaic age was only possible in the newly founded colonies.28 There the ability to organize urban space rationally expressed itself in orthogonal street systems. But in some cases, even in older, grown cities, the same tendencies brought about considerable changes in urban structures, particularly concern­ ing public buildings. Athens probably was not the earliest example of this

28. Se, in general, F. Castagnoli, Orthogonal Town Plamring in Antiquity (Cambridge, Massachuset, 1971 ); E. Greco and M. Toreli, Stona thll'l4rbtmistica I: II ",ondo gr«:o (Rome, 1983) 149ff.

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process, but the changes occurring there are especially marked and more easily understandable in their historical context than anywhere else. The archaeological evidence surviving from that time does not allow us to observe the conditions of life or the social differentiation of individual houses and of larger districts in Athens. In general, the differences in dwelling forms must have increased: the richer houses probably often possessed dining rooms, a luxury poor people did not enjoy.'" At best, it might be possible to distinguish a social classification in the district of the Kerameikos with its concentration of craftsmen. A series of new public construction projects, including an extensive water pipeline with many well houses in different parts of the city, served the needs of the whole popuiation;30 on the acropolis, votive offerings were dedicated not only by the aristocracy but also by members of the working class.31 This was the time when the aristocracy built its sports grounds outside the city, which are the scene of many late archaic vase paintings: at least the academy, maybe the Lykeion as well, seems to have been established by the tyrants already in the sixth century.31 Thus the living spaces of the social classes must partially have become separated. On the whole, this development introduced into the layout of the city of Athens a strong element of structure and monumentality. Most important was the decision to move the agora into the center of communal life.33 For centuries, the flat zone northwest of the acropolis had been the site of graves and chthonic sanctuaries, and more recently of increasing numbers of houses and poters' workshops; if it served, in addition, as a meeting place for the assembly, it did so only in the midst of this conglomerate of diverse spheres of life. But after around 600 B.C. no more houses, graves or wells were built in a fairly large area between three important streets; the space was levelled, and a couple of wells were refilled. Up to the middle of the sixth century, the open space was extended, particularly toward the east. This can only have been achieved through considerable expropriation of privately owned land, partly at the expense, and perhaps against the will, of influential families. Thus indeed, this was a measure that reflects not only forceful urban planning but 29. On the general development of the Grek house in the archaic period, se H. Drerup, "Prostashaus und Pastashaus," MarbNrger Winclulmannsprogramm (1967) 6ff.; C. Krause, "Grundformen des Griechischen Palasthauses," ArchiJol. AfIZ. (1977) 164ff. 30. Cf. J. M. Camp . The Water SllPply of Ancient Athens from 3000 to 86 B. e. (Princeton, 1977) 62ff.; R. Tolle-Kastenbein, "Kallirrhoe und Enneakrunos,"Jahrb. des Deutschen ArchiJol. Irut 101 (1986) 55f£. 31. A. E. Raubitschek, DedicAtions from the Athtmil Acropolis (Cambridge, 1949) 464f. 32. Se J. Delorme, Gymnasia" (Paris, 1960) 36££. Confirmation is found in the rapid increase of palaestra scenes on late archaic vases; for a preliminary study, se A. Bruckner, PalitTailarstellungen auf frNhrotfigurigen attischen Vasen (Basel, 1954). 33. R. Martin, R«herches (n. 19) 261££.; Boersma, Building Policy 15ff.; Thompson­ Wycherley, Agora 19££.; Kolb, "Peisistratiden" 1 06ff.; T. L. Shear, Jr., "Tyrants and Buildings in Archaic Athens," in Athens Comes of Age: From Solem to Salamis (Princeton, 1978) 4ff.; Camp, Agora 37ff.; Th. Lorenz, in Perspelctiven tI Phi/osophie. Neues JahrbNch 13 (1 987) 395f.; H. von Steuben, "Die Agora des K1eisthenes - Zeugnis eines radikaIen Wandels?" in W. Schuller, W. Hoepfner and E.L Schwandner (eds.) , Demolcratie 14M Architelctur (Munich, 1989) 81-87. .

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

also the precedence of central institutions over particular interests. The inten­ tion obviously was to give an unrestricted place of public character both to the assembly and to the trade that was increasing rapidly. Equally, it must have been the result of conscious planning that other political institutions were concentrated there. The first public building seems to have been erected in the second quarter of the sixth century at the site of the later Bouleuterion (although it remains unlikely that this was the meeting house of the archaic boule}.14 Soon thereafter, a building was added to the south that has the characteristics of a representative house with a central court and two porticos. Its interpretation as the palace of the Pisistratids, though uncertain, is supported by the similar location and structure of the Regia at the forum in Rome, which was a relic of the old royal palace.35 Further to the north, the Stoa Basileios, that is, a seat of office of the Archon Basileus, has been identified beyond any doubt; in this case, however, chro­ nology is stil controversial, the proposed dates ranging from the middle of the sixth century to after 480 B.C.36 If the early date were true, this would be highly significant for the character of the archaic agora. One has to keep in mind that this most traditional of all Athenian offices since the earliest times had its building, the Boukoleion, in the diametrically opposite part of Athens. Usually such official buildings remain firmly established at their old sites, and in this particular case the traditional Boukoleion continued to be used for some ancient religious purposes. Taking al this into account, one can imagine the amount of conscious planning that was necessary to achieve the construc­ tion of a new building for this official at the agora. The new cOncept of the agora as the heart of communal life was reinforced by the establishment of new cults that corresponded to that concept. An archaic sanctuary, which must have already been dedicated to Zeus, is situated underneath the later Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios.37 Next to it is the temple of Apollo Patroos, that is, the god of the archaic aristocratic family groupS.38 The old religious stratum of the necropolis with its cults of chthonic gods- and 34. Thompson Wycherley, Agora 25ff. The archaic boule probably met not here, as has often been asumed, but on the areopagus: Judeich, Athm 299f. Or else, one might think of the Thesmotheteion where Solon brought together the archons who had so far used separated buildings: Aristode, Ath. Pol. 3.5. 35. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 27f. Interpretation as palace of the tyrants: Boersma, Building Policy 1 6f., with support by Camp, Agora 44f. Kolb, "Peisistratiden" 104££., follows the traditional opinion in placing the mansion of the Pisistratids on the acropolis. For a comparison with the Regia in Rome, se C. Arnpolo, "Ana1ogie e rapporti Era Atene e Roma arcaica. Osservazioni sulla Regia, sui Rex Sacrorum e sui Culto di Vesta," La parola tiel pasato 26 (1971 ) 443££., who, however, interprets the Athenian building as the Prytaneion, which is hardly tenable. 36. T. L. Shear, "The Athenian Agora. Excavations of 1970," Hesperia 40 (1971) 243ff.; id., "The Athenian Agora. Excavations of 1973-1974," ibid. 44 (1975) 365ff.; Thompson­ Wycherley, Agora 83ff.; Kolb, "Peisistratiden" 1 07f.; G. Kuhn, "Untersuchungen zur Funktion der Siulenhalle in archaischer und klassischer Zeit," Jahrb. des Deutsch. Archaol. Inst. 100 (1985) 200ff.; Camp, Agora 53ff., 100f.; von Steuben (n. 33) 82f. 37. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 96. 38. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 136£.; Camp, Agora 161.

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heroes thus was overlaid by a newer stratum of state religion. In those sanctu­ aries the city consciously articulated its character as a political organism and celebrated it in public cults. The central position of the agora is most strongly symbolized by the Altar of the Twelve Gods built by the tyrant's son, Pisistratus the Younger, in 522121 B.C.39 The fact that all Olympian gods were thus united in one place attests to the highest possible religious concentration. The distances to all villages in Attica were measured from this spot; the erection of the famous Herms halfway between Athens and the other settlements in the country - a measure introduced by the tyrant's brother, Hipparchus, as a deliberate step toward political centralization - did not refer to the acropolis but to this altar on the agora.40 It is generally characteristic of this period that the agora in its function as the public center remained open toward the surrounding city. Deep into the classical period, craftsmen and traders continued to push forward almost uncontrollably into the periphery of the square.41 All aspects of the city's life could be integrated there. At the same time, it is typical of the early period of Athens that the central sanctuary and the agora were separated. It is not just the specific history of Athens with its "Mycenaean" acropolis that provides an explanation of this bipolarity of the religious and forensic centers, for the same phenomenon appears in the newly founded cities of the archaic period (see below). Only much later, when politics increasingly became an autono­ mous and self
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Urban and Architectural Forms

and more interspersed with dwellings was situated at the edge of the settle­ ment in a depression toward the northwest. In early times, assemblies were held out there, in both cases close to sanctuaries: here that of Dionysos Lenaios, and there that of Vulcanus.'" In Athens as in Rome, since around 600 B.C. it was prohibited to use this area for burials and houses, and a big square was laid out instead. In both places, its usability was improved by extensive and costly sewage systems: in Rome, on account of the marshy nature of the area, this was achieved very early by means of the Cloaca maxima built by the elder Tarquinius; in Athens, the same need was met by constructing a great drain on the west side which dates from the time of the Pisistratids. The old assembly site with its sanctuary was preserved as a marked-off part of this square: in Athens the so-called Orchestra, in Rome the Comitium. Later on, the memory of the old necropolis found expression in shrines for heroes that were tied to the founding phase of the city: in Athens the Leokorion, in Rome Romulus' grave underneath the Lapis niger.47 In both cities, the genesis of the square makes it understandable that the public buildings of the preceding, early archaic period were not directly situated at the agora or at the forum: in Athens, this applies to Aegeus' palace, the buildings of the early officials and, in particular, the Prytaneion with the public hearth; in Rome to the royal palaces, the temples of the Lares and Penates and, in principle, also the Vesta temple with the sacred fire.48 Only af­ ter the construction of the new squares were new public buildings concentrated here: while in Athens the Archon Basileus probably received a new stoa in the agora at that time (and the tyrants possibly established their "palace" there, too), in Rome the part of the royal palace that was oriented toward the forum gained special significance and was kept after the fall of the monarchy to serve as the official building of the Rex sacrorum and the Pontifex maximus. In Athens it is quite controversial where the archaic council met; whether this happened on the areopagus or, less probably, at the site of the later Bouleuterion, a spatial relation to the site of the assembly must have-been evident. In Rome, this connection was firmly established by the Curia Hostilia at the Comitium. And similar to the agora in Athens��imlts of an explicitly political character, such as those of Saturn and Castor, were concentrated in the forum in Rome, especially at the beginning of Republic. Finally, in both cities the main temple and the forensic center were' separated. While in Athens this was the result of a historical constellation - that is, the tradi­ tional location of the sanctuary of Athena on the acropolis - in Rome such bipolarity was intentional because the cult and the temple of the Capitoline Triad were planned at the same time as, if not even - and more probably at a later date than the forum. In both Athens and Rome, the square and the 46. 47. 48.

On the latter, se Coarelli, ibid. 161H. Lapis niger: Coarelli, ibid. 189ft. Even in later times, the temple of Vesta had its entrance on the side away from the forum; this entrance was connected with the Domus publica that, according to its function, did not belong to the forum.

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temple on the citadel were ritually connected by a processional road, the Dromos of the Panathenaea and the Via sacra; as urban units, however, they remained independent of each other. Like the Roman forum, the Athenian agora was certainly not "passively" incorporated into the expanding city but actively and intentionally founded according to a new concept. The city was given a new center. In contrast, for example, with the Mycenaean palace, it was the concrete function of this center to bring the citizens together. In archaic times, there still were various reasons for such gatherings, including religion, politics, and trade. Among these purposes, however, politics became increasingly important. This development went hand in hand with the emergence of a new political self-confidence, which was primarily expressed, in the sixth century, by transforming the acropolis into a representative sanctuary of the newly shaped polis. As the first and most important step, the citizens erected for their city goddess, Athena, the first monumental temple, which probably succeeded a number of smaller structures.49 One must be aware that at that time such great building projects required communal decisions, financial ex­ penditures, and collective organization on a completely new scale. All this attests to a stronger spirit of communal unity and cohesion which, at the same time, was displayed in a monumental ritual, that is, the Panathenaea (or festival of all Athenians) that was newly founded in 566 B.C. In order to ex­ press theologically the new character of the goddess, her sanctuary and her festival, the old sanctuary on the entrance bastion of the acropolis was at about the same time transformed into a cult place of Athena Nike.so The ex­ tent to which these events relied on the equally focused conscioumess of many individuals can be observed in the emergence of private representation as reflected in monumental grave statues since the end of the seventh century, and in the dedications on the acropolis since the time the first great temple was constructed. Likewise, the firm unification of Attica was made visible by other new sanctuaries in the capital: the cult of Artemis of Brauron was established on

, , 49. Travlos, PD 143ft; T. L. Shear, "Tyrants and Buildings" (n. 33) 2ff.; I. Beyer, "Die Datierung der grossen Reliefgiebel des alten Athenatempels der Akropol is, ArchiJolog. Am:. (1977) 44ff. F. Preisshofen, "Zur Top ographie der Akropolis, ibid. 74H., has demonsttated that this temple was not the Hekatompedon. Beyer s date rertainly is to high. Conversely, for historical reasons it is impossible to connect this temple with Pisistratus: if its construction is connected with the reorganization of the Panathenaea in 566 B.C., it must have ben started earlier; for as was the case with the the clasical temple of Zeus in Olympia, the festival most probably was reorganized at the time of the dedication. Even if the temple was begun only in 566 (which for reasons of style ses rather unlikely) this date precedes Pisisttatus' rise to power in 561 B.C. Moreover, the renewal of the temple by Pisisttatus' sons makes little sense if they chose for this project of reconstruction none other than the most beautiful temple erected by their father. Generally it se a typical scholars' prejudice to think that great buildings could only have be erected by tyrants; against this assumption, se T.E. Kalpaxis, Hemiules (Mainz, 1986) 26ff., and below at n. 54. SO. Travlos, PD 148ff.; I. S. Mark, Nilre and the ellit of A thena Nike on the Athenian Acropolis (New York, 1979). "

"

'

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Urban and Architectural Fonos

the acropolis, that of Demeter of Eleusis on the northwest slope, and that of Dionysus of Eleutherai at the foot of the citadel in the south.S1 Several of these cults - those of Artemis Brauronia and of Dionysos Eleuthereus, as well as the sanctuary of Neleus that was probably established at the same timell - are associated with the family of the Pisistratids and, therefore, emphasize the role of the tyrants as unifying and centralizing factors. The Altar of the Twelve Gods, representing the official starting point of all roads in Attica, was only the last step in this development. The ideological counterpoint of this altar was the Olympieion, the gigantic temple for Olympian Zeus who, like Jupiter Optimus Maximus in Rome, as the highest religious authority was to protect the hierarchical political structure established by the tyrants.S3 This process of providing structure, monumentality, and theological meaning was, on the whole, an achievement of the archaic aristocracy. The decisive changes on the acropolis, the agora, and at the Olympieion were all initiated in the early sixth century.54 The tyranny, which has often been cred­ ited with giving the decisive impulses, mosdy enhanced developments that had already begun before. Thus in this respect, too, the tyranny proves to be a variant of archaic aristocracy. 5S As a result, the city was given both a functional and a theological topog­ raphy. The city was divided in a more conscious way into the public space of the agora, the central sanctuary of the acropolis, the residential districts of the citizens, and the sporting grounds of the aristocracy as well as the necropoleis outside the gates. This structure was defined by specific sanctuaries whose cults celebrated in religious rituals the distinct character of the different places. The organically grown and, therefore, traditional order of life appeared to be shaped through monuments, ritualized, and thus sanctioned. T H E D EMOCRAT I C CITY: M O N U M E N T S O F POLITICS

It is difficult to recognize to what extent the political change toward democ­ racy influenced and transformed the housing and living,conditions in Athens. Only a few main features are evident. The citizens who"" had been united in a 51. Artemis Brauronia: Travlos, PD 124f.; S. Angiolillo, "Pisistrato e Artcmide Brauronia," Parola del pas. 38 (1983) 351f£. Demeter of Eleusi�: Travlos, PD 198ff. Dionysos Eleuthereus: Kolb, "Peisistratiden" 124ff. 52. Travlos, PD 332ff.; H. A. Shapiro, "Painting, Politics, and Genealogy: Peisistratos and the Neleids," in W. G. Moon (ed.), Ancient Greek Art and Iconography (Madison, 1983) 94. 53. Travlos, PD 402f£.; Kolb, "Peisistratiden" 1 1 1 £. ; Kalpaxis (n. 49) 20ff. 54. The old temple of Athena on the acropolis was certainly built before Pisistratus' rise to power (above, n. 49). The earliest measures on the agora were initiated around 600 B.C. (se above, at n. 33ff.). Even the Olympieion had a monumental early-archaic predecesr that can hardly have be erected, as G. Gruben, Die Tempel der Griechen (Munich, 1967) 221, thinks, by Pisistratus; for, as in the ca se of the old temple of Athena (n. 49), it sems highly unlikely that the sons would have tom down a monumental building put up by their father. 55. Kolb, "Peisistratiden" 99ff. and, in sumry, 1 36ff. Se in general also Kalpaxis (n. 49) chapter I. The highly interesting book by H.A. Shapiro, Art and C"lt "ruler the Tyrtmts in Athens (Mainz, 1989) came to my attention only when this article was already in pres. -

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new way by Cleisthenes were able to experience and express their solidarity when rebuilding their city after the Persian Wars. The immediate construction of the new town wall, in particular, must have mobilized among al ranks of society a sense of forceful communal action and given the city a new symbol of its unity as well as a new demarcation between inside and outside, between the polis of the living and the necropoleis.56 The excavations have provided us with only a very fragmentary picture of the residential areas that were inhabited by more than 100,000 people in Pericles' time. Basically, we have information only about the districts of the craftsmen and lower class citizens around the agora and in the southwest.57 The houses were of moderate size, covering up to 250 square meters and containing six to eight rooms around a courtyard, sometimes with an upper floor. The living area was difrentiated into the men's reception room, the women's chambers and, in addition, rooms with special functions such as bath, kitchen, weaving room, a room with a fireplace, bedrooms and storage rooms. We do not know anything about the houses of the nobility and the rich, who doubtlessly lived in a more luxurious way.58 Yet the differences can­ not have been too great as no houses are known in all of-classical Greece that significantly surpassed this standard. Nor do the written sources say anything about marked social diferences in the residential areas. At any rate, it is certain that even the richest houses did not equal by far the Italian palaces of the later Middle Ages or the Renaissance. As a result of a comparative study we would undoubtedly learn that in classical Greece the culture of domestic life was developed rather poorly. Each culture sets its own specific priorities, be it in domestic or public life, in the importance attributed to religion, career, or leisure activites, and so on. The people of classical Athens developed their identity first of all in public life. Immediately, new political signs were put in place to mark this new order. The Olympieion, the tyrants' costly prestige project, was abandoned as an unfinished ruin.u The large official building at the agora which dated from the time of the tyrants and probably was their· palace, was occupied by the prytaneis, that is, the executive committee of the new council.60 On the acropolis a bronze pillar was erected with the names of all those who had been involved in the tyrants' rule.61 56. Travlos, PD 158ff. 57. lbompson-Wyc:herley, Agora 173ff.; H. Lauter and H. Lauter-Bufe, "Wohnhiuser und Stadtviertel des klassisc:hen Athen," Mitteil. du Deutsch. ArchiJol. Inst. Athen 86 (1971) 109£f.; H. Lauter, "Zum Stra8eribild in Alt-Athen," Ant. Welt 13.4 (1982) 44ff.; W. Hopfner and E.-L. Sc:hwandner, H/U unil Stadt im ItlaS$ishen Griechtmlanil (Munich, 1986). 58. Judeic:h, Athen 85 (refer to the fourth century but certainly valid for earlier times as well). Thuc:ydides 2. 1 7 is characteristic:. I cannot discuss here the ideas c:oncerning the c:lasical "Typenhaus" developed by Hopfner and Sc:hwandner (n. 57); the authors themselves concede that they do not apply to c:lassical Athens. 59. Vitruvius VI puef. 115 se to me 10 support this interpretation. A different explanation in Kalpaxis (n. 49) 3 8f. 60. Boersma, Building Policy 17; Camp, Agora 95. 6 1 . Judeic:h, Athen 68, 235.

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

Above all, however, the Athenians immediately began completely to restructure the political spaces of the city in order to comply with the new political needs. Hitherto the agora had been serving a variety of different functions, including cults, competitions of all sorts (agones), dramatic perfor­ mances, jurisdiction, and meetings of the assembly; all these functions had their place in, and were united by, a religiously sanctioned concept of the order of life. As a result of the great changes introduced shortly before 500 B.C., however, all these public activities tended to assume some degree of autonomy. The choral performances at cult celebrations developed into a highly sophisticated theater culture with moral and entertainment value. The athletic and poetic competitions became the symbols of an aristocratic way of life, as praised in vase paintings depicting musical and gymnastic scenes. The political and judicial activities evolved into highly specific domains with their own rules and laws. It is a reflection of such diferentiation that these functions finally were separated spatially as well: on the southern slope of the acropolis, a theater with stage building was constructed for the dramatic performances at the festivals of Dionysus, and on the Pnyx a new site was established for the meetings of the assembly.62 In both cases the exact date is controversial and difficult to determine: the oldest theater must have been in use at the latest in the early fifth century, while the earliest installation on the Pnyx was probably not built before the middle of the fifth century, that is, around the time when democracy was fully developed under Pericles. The competitions which were sanctioned by the cult continued to be held on the agora until they were moved to the stadium built by Lycurgus in the fourth century. Above all, except for the assembly, the political and judicial institutions remained on the site. A Bouleuterion was erected for the new Council of the Five Hundred. Having first used the converted archaic "palace" house, the prytaneis then were given an unusual circular building (Tholos). For the jury courts large areas were marked off by walls, most important among them the Heliaia.63 It is controversial whether and to what extenl this new building activity was started soon after 508 B.C. or whether it began only after the destruction of Athens by the Persians in 480 B.c.i both the Bouleuterion and Heliaia are sometimes dated around 500, sometimes not before the 62. 1beater: Travlos, PD 537ff.; E. PohlmaIUl, "Die Proedrie des Dionysostheaters im 5. Jahrhunden und das Biihnenspiel der Klasik," MMseum Helvelieum 38 (1981) 129ff.; id., "Biihne und Handlung im Aias des Sophokles," Antike utld Abendland 32 (1986) 20ff. For a discusion of the date of the transfer, se Kolb, Agora 55ff. - Pnyx: Travlos, PD 466ff.; Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 1 8ff.; H. A. Thompson, in Stud. E. Vanderpol (n. 4) 1 33ff.; M. H. Hansen, "The Athenian Ecclesia and the Assembly Place on the Pnyx, " Greek, Roman, and Byzant. St. 23 (1982) 241£f. id., The Athenian &clesia: A Collection of Articles. 1 976-83 (Copenhagen, 1983) 25ff. with adenda on p. 34. 63. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 29ff. (Bouleuterion), 41£f. (Tholos), 52£f. (jury courts, Heliaia); von Steuben (n. 33) 84f. and the contributions by M.H. Hansen and E. Ruschenbusch in the same volume (87f.). On the Bouleuterion, se also G. Kuhn, "Das neue Bouleuterion von Athen," ArchiJol. Anz. (1984) 1 7ff.; on the Heliaia also Camp, Agora 46f. (dating the structure before Cleisthenes, which I consider unlikely). For the possibility of dating the Stoa Basileios to this period, se above, at n. 36. =

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second quarter of the fifth century, and the Tholos of the prytaneis certainly was not built long before 460 B.C., most likely after the reforms of Ephialtes and Pericles. But without doubt the new boule and the expanding institutions of jurisdiction were at once established right at the agora, even if initially in provisional quarters. Accordingly, already in the time of Cleisthenes, the square was marked off from the rest of the city by boundary stones (horoi) in order to emphasize its special status.64 At that time, the agora must have totally changed its character: it suddenly became a center which continuously attracted from all over Attica hundreds and soon thousands of citizens for political and judicial functions. Activity and officiousness, pomposity and ambition must have been condensed here to a "presence civique" previously unknown.'s It was a new kind of political identity that was gradually developed and imediately given a new kind of symbol: the group of statues of the tyrant slayers on the agora." Having no concrete religious function, this was the first exclusively political monument in Greek history, put up in memory of the protagonists of the new political order. The location of these statues was significant: they were set at the old Orchestra, that is, in the center of the assembly's ancient site, which probably still was in use at that time. The succeeding generations continued, each in a different way, to express by such monuments the great themes of their political concepts and self­ understanding. The circle around Cimon commissioned the famous cycle of paintings in the "Painted Hall" (Stoa poikile), in which the recent battles of Marathon and Oinoe were linked with the mythical models of the battle against the Amazons and the conquest of Troy, thus producing an almost canonical catalogue of Athenian heroic deeds.67 Probably during the time of Pericles' leadership a group of statues representing the heroes of the ten Attic tribes (phylai) was put up as a monument of the entire citizen body.'· After Athens' recovery from the defeat in the Peloponnesian War, the cityscape was more and more characterized by the genre of honorary statues," a custom that started with the statue of Conon, celebrated as the city's savior in the early fourth century B.C. Shordy thereafter, having refounded the Delian League,

64. Se above, n. 42. 65. C. Meier, "Kleisthenes und die Institutionalisierung der biirgerlichen Gegenwirtigkeit in Athen," in id., Die Entst6hNng des Politischen bei den Griechen (FrankfurtlMain, 1980) 91ff., 129ff. "Oeisthenes and the Institutionalizing of the Civic Presence in Athens," in The Greek Discovery of Politics (Cambridge, Maschusetts, 1990) S3ff., 73ff. 66. St. BrunnsAker, The Tyrant·Slayers of Kritios and Nesiot6s, 2nd ed., Stockholm 1971); B. Fehr, Die TyrantOt6r (Frankfurt am Main, 1984). 67. T. Holscher, Griechische Historlenbilder des 5. lind 4. Jahrhunderts v. ehr. (Wiirzburg, 1973) SOff. On the stoa, se T. L. Shear, "The Athenian Agora. Excavations of 1980-1982," Hesperi4 53 (1984) Sff. 68. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 38ff.; U. Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen. Mitteil. des Deutsch. Archiiol. Inst. Athen, Beiheft 5 (1976) 228ff. 69. Pausanias 1.3.2. =

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the Athenians gave themselves a new conceptual symbol in the statue of Eirene, the peace goddess, in the center of the agora.70 By this genre of political monuments the city was given a political­ ideological topography. It was now possible to stress political aspects and set political accents by putting up monuments at all political centers, whether in the agora, the sanctuaries, the Prytaneion, or the theater, and, by doing so, to define the meaning of these sites. Those monuments were used to keep alive the memory of the great events of the recent past and contemporary history. As a result, the citizens were confronted with a new concept of the historical past. While in archaic times the city's mythical beginnings were kept present by cults forming a static frame of life, now a monumental succession of heroic deeds was displayed by a continuous sequence of memorials celebrating contemporary events. Thus out of a world of static traditions the city moved into a world of dynamic history.71 Although this time with a certain chronological difference, that is, in the late fourth and early third centuries, once again the forum in Rome reveals a similar development.72 This process too was the result of the transformation of the old "organically grown" aristocracy into a new nobility based on wealth, office and achievement - which in turn created a new awareness of politics as a sphere in its own right. As at Athens, this process was reflected in various kinds of political monuments. A series of honorary statues began with C. Maenius and Sp. Camillus in 338 B.C. At the same time, the prows of the fleet of Antium, attached to the speaker's platform (Rostra) on the Cornitium, formed the first secular monument set up to celebrate a military victory. And in 263 B.C. the first historical painting, the Tabula Valeria, depicting the Roman victory over Hieron and the Carthaginians, was displayed on the exterior wall of the Curia Hostilia. As in Athens, in a parallel and closely linked development, the functions of the forum were fundamentally changed and differentiated. Shortly before 3 1 0 B.C. the grocers were expelled from the tabernae and obviously assigned different quarters; in the course of time, various speCialized markets were created that provided the population with food. The tabernae of the forum, by contrast, were reserved for the money-changers, that is, for the upper levels of economy. In commenting that by this measure "the dignity of the forum was enhanced" (forensis dignitas crevit), Varro clearly understood the fundamental significance of this action. Immediately afterwards, the tabernae

70. B. Schlorb-Vierneisel, Glyptothek. Miinchen, Klasche Slt.ulpturen des 5. "nil 4. Jahrhunderts v.Cht. (1979) 255ff.; N. Eschbach, Statuen auf panathtmiischen Preisamphoren des 4. Jahrhunderts v.Cht. (Mainz, 1986) 58ff. (dating it to 361 B.C., which is not convincing). 71 . Se Holscher (n. 27). 72. For Rome's development in the fourth and third centuries B.C., se T. Holscher, "Die Anfiinge romischer Reprasentationskunst," Mjtteil. Deutsch. Archiiol. Inst. Rom 85 (1978) 31 Sff.; K.-J. Holkeskamp, Die Entstehung tier Nobilitit (stuttgart, 1987) 204ff.; se also L. Richardson's contribution to the present volume.

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were decorated with a long row of gilded shields from the booty of the Samnite Wars providing the square with a new homogeneous monumentality. Finally, the level of abstract reflection behind this process was revealed in Rome by the temple of Concordia, just as in Athens it found its expression in the altar and statue of Eirene. Thus Rome, too, was given a political topogra­ phy, more than a century later than Athens, but due to similar political developments. Many sanctuaries and temples that were founded in Athens during this period reflected this new political character as well. First, the Persian Wars were the most important focal point for sanctuaries expressing the Athenians' new political identity. True, some of these cults stayed within the traditional conceptual framework; this was the case, for example, with the cult of Pan established in a cave on the northwestern slope of the acropolis, in recognition of the god's help during the battle of Marathon.73 Other sanctuaries, however, demonstrate a new political emphasis. The forceful heroic pride prevalent after the Persian Wars received a new focus in the sanctuary of Theseus, which was established by Cimon after the transfer of the hero's bones from the island of Skyros in 475 B.C.74 From then on Theseus remained, through all phases of Athenian history, a mythical symbol of the communal identity of the Athenians. This state cult found its private counterpart in the small sanc­ tuary of Artemis Aristoboule that Themistocles established for his divine advisor near his house in the city district of Melite. Although this was a personal and individual project, it was very ambitiously adorned with a portrait of its donor, thus openly referring to the politician himself.75 There can be little doubt that both sanctuaries were built in rivalry to each other, that of Themistocles probably representing a slighdy later egoistic reaction to Cimon's successful action. In listing the sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule among the reasons for Themistocles' exile, Plutarch seems to be aware of the potentially explosive political power of such cults. Thus cultic topography became a political stage. Even old nature cults could be reinterpreted in a new political sense. Around the middle of the fifth century, a cult of the Demos was added to an old sanctuary of the Nymphs on a rocky hil northwest of the Pnyx:" thereby those nature divinities bc:came divine protectors watching over the well-being of the Athenian demos, which probably began to meet nearby at exactly that time. Later, patriotic consciousness was enhanced primarily by the Peloponnesian War; for example, it was probably in those years that a sanc­ tuary of the ancient heroic couple of Neleus and Basile was complemented by a cult of the mythical king Codrus who, in this area at the llissos river, had Travlos, PD 41 7ff.; cf. the cults of Boreas and of Oreithyia: Judeich, Atben 416. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 124ff.; S. N. Koumanoudis, Tbeseos seltos, Archaiologilte Epbemeris (1976) 1 94ff. 75. Travlos, PD 121ff. 76. U. Kron, "Demos, Pnyx und Nymphenhiigel. Zu Demos-Darstellungen und zum iiltesten Kultort des Demos in Athen," Mitteil. Deutsch. Arcbiiol. Inst. Atben 94 (1979) 49ff. 73. 74.

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repelled the Dorians in an act of heroic self-sacrifice and therefore received topical importance as a model of devotion to the community.77 Thus the cults, too, in many ways provided the city with a political-ideological topography. Above al, it was Pericles who, when rebuilding the acropolis, consciously aimed at creating political identity. The Parthenon was not only a cult temple but also a kind of representational treasury and a monumental symbol of the Athenian state.78 Accordingly, Phidias' Athena Parthenos not only represented the venerated goddess but in a way also personified Athens itself: the statue's material splendor and rich figurative decoration described the character of the city as a center of political power. In addition, the decision was made to build a new temple of Athena Nike on the old bastion at the entrance of the Mycenaean fortification.79 The construction of this temple, in the first decade of the Peloponnesian War, was influenced by recent successes against the Spartan invasions of Attica. Just as from this bastion the invading Dorians were said to have been repelled already in mythical times, so their descendants, the Spartans, were supposed to fare now, in the Peloponnesian War. Soon thereafter, behind this bastion the most important cults and symbolic monu­ ments of Athens' invincible autochthony - the ancient cult statue of Athena, the imprint of Poseidon's trident, the tomb of Cecrops and the palace of Erechtheus, together forming, in some way, the holiest sanctuary of the Athe­ nian state - were united in a precious architectural shrine, that is, the Erechtheion.a° Thus through the monuments mythical prehistory and the cults of the gods blended with current politics. At the same time as the Parthenon a temple was erected above the agora for Hephaestus and Athena; in a strictly axial arrangement, a number of seating steps were laid out below the temRle's front in a wide gap between the Bouleuterion and the Stoa of Zeus, thus consciously making this temple the focal point of the entire square.81 But whereas the Parthenon designated the acropolis as the center of power of the Delian League, the temple of the Athenians' mythical parents, who were also the patron gods of craftsmen, created a powerful link between the agora and the Athenian citizens who at that time based their political identity primarily on the ddea of autochthony. This communal ideology was supplemented by the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios that, around 430 B.C., represented the highly topical- concept of liberty in a monumental formulation in the very center of the "freest city," that is, as a 77. Travlos, PD 332ff.; u. Kron, Ph.,lenheroen (n. 68) 222; d. Shapiro (n. 52) . It is not expJicidy attested that Codrus was added when the sanctuary was reorganized; but this is a plausible assumption. 78. F. Preisshofen, "Zur Funktion des Parthenon nam den schriftIichen Quellen," in E. Berger (ed.), Panhenon-Kongress Basel (Mainz, 1984) ISH. 79. Travlos, PD 14 8ff. On the date, B. Wesenberg, " Zur Baugeschichte des Niketempels," Jahrb. Deutsch. ArchiJol. Inst. 96 (198 1 ) 28ff. On the decoration, E. Simon, "La decorazione architetonica del tempieto di Athena Nike sull' AcropoJi di Atene," Museum Patavinum 3 (1985) 271H. 80. Travlos, PD 21 3ff. 8 1 . Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 140ff.

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cause uniting all citizens.82 A bit later, shortly before 420 B.C., the old Altar of the Twelve Gods was rebuilt, but in a significantly different fashion: now it was the central point of asylum in the city, the altar of Eleos (Pity) and hence a symbol of yet another ideological motif of Athens, stressing its role as the protector of all those in Greece who needed help.'3 Moreover, statues of gods put up at crucial points were intended to accentuate and interpret the topography of the city in a new way. Many old sanctuaries now received new effigies. At the beginning of the new planning, Pericles marked the entire acropolis as a sacred district by putting up, right in front of the old Propylon, a statue of Hermes Propylaios.84 At the same time, the statue of Athena Lemnia, set up inside the entrance and celebrating Pericles' policy of founding military colonies, documented his claim to be the initiator of this central sanctuary.as Shortly thereafter, during the construction of the new propylaea, a statue of Athena Hygieia was erected as a sign of gratitude for the lucky outcome of an accident on the building site." And after the construction of the new temple of Athena Nike the defensive character of the bastion was emphasized by an apotropaic figure of Hekate Epipyrgidia.87 Similar images of deities were put up at other places. Thus at its central points the city was interpreted and defined by statues. On the whole, these changes in the city strongly induced the citizens to concentrate on politics and on the rituals of state religion. The citizens were brought together and united particularly in matters of politics. By comparison, the votive offerings in the sanctuaries seem to indicate that people in the fifth century paid less attention to private cults that focused on personal and family life. To a large extent, the intensity of political life must have absorbed the citizens' energies.

TH E LATE C LASSICAL CI TY: MON UMENTS O F CULTURE The catastrophe of the Peloponnesian War brought all ambitious building projects to a standstill. The temple of Athena �ike and the Erechtheion on the acropolis, and the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios on the agora were the last big buildings erected by the polis as monumental political-religious symbols. The subsequent centuries illustrate well what kind of contradictions could develop 82. K. Raaflaub, "Athens 'Ideologie der Macht' und die Freiheit des Tyrannen," in J. M. Balcer, H. J. Gehrke, K. A. Raaflaub, and W. Schul\er, Studien zum Attischm Seebund, Xe­ nia 8 (Konstanz, 1984) 68ff.; d. id., Die Entdeckung der Freiheit, Vestigia 37 (Munich, 1985) 233ff., especially 245f. 83. Thompson-Wycherley, Agora 133ff. 84. D. Wilers, "Zum Hermes Propylaios des Alkamenes," Jahrb. Deutsch. Archiiol. 1nst. 82 (1967) 86£. 85. On the setup, T. Holscher, "Die Aufstellung des Perikles-Bildnisses und ihre Bedeutung," WUnburgerJahrb. fur die AltertumswiSs. 1 (1975) 192f. 86 . A. E. Raubitschek, Dedications (n. 31) 1 85ff. no. 1 66 . 87. M. D. Fullerton, "The Location and Archaism of the Hekate Epipyrgidia," Archiiol. ArIZ. (1986) 669ff.; E. Simon, "Hekate in Athen," Mitteil. Deutsch. Archiiol. 1nst. Atbm 100 (1985) 271ff.

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in a society that had shaped its civic space in a period of collective energy and power, but later on focused its perspectives more and more on private and personal goals. As was the case after the end of the Mycenaean palace culture, new conditions now required a transformation of the city's structures, while from the preceding era monuments survived that could no longer be filled completely by contemporary life. As in those early days, in this situation there now emerged a new experience of the past and a new state ideology that reassumed an almost mythical character. The population of Athens and Attica must have shrunk greatly during and after the War, and even at the end of the fourth century the number of adult male citizens was only half of what it had been under Pericles.·' Even if the migration of the rural population into the city partly made up for the shrinking population of the capital and, in addition, the share of foreigners and slaves increased, the overal population must have been smaller. Some quarters, particularly in the rocky southwest, were given up." Nevertheless, the standard of living among the rich was rising.90 So far, the excavations have only exposed residential quarters of craftsmen, but the written sources tell of increasing luxury in the living style of the noble families. Thus the social diferences, as expressed in housing conditions, must have become bigger. Demosthenes' well-known complaint that public building projects were over­ shadowed by private building activities may well reflect a fairly general atti­ tude.'l Thus it is not surprising that the most important new sanctuary of that era was not dedicated to the deity of a political state cult but to Asclepius, the god of healing.lI1 The extreme concentration on politics that was characteristic of the fifth century and that, to a large extent, had also focused religious energies on the cults of state gods, was reduced considerably already during the Peloponnesian War and disappeared almost completely thereafter. Cults pertaining to personal religion were revived or newly established everywhere in the city and outside the gates.'J Apart from the central political sites 'and sanctuaries, the city's life was thus given new focal points. It was no longer the political community of al citizens that ideally met hctte, but people rather got together in smaller groupings that were characterized by personal motives such as profession, family, illness or fate. , But the great political sanctuaries remained and continued to present a monumental challenge to the present. The Athenians certainly identified with these symbols of great politics, but they did not add anything new; down to 88. M. H. Hansen, Die athenische Vollrsversam",lung ;", utalter des Demosthenes. Xenia 1 3 (1984) 27 id., The Athenian Assembly in the Age of Demosthenes (Oxford, 1987) 19. 89. H. Lauter and H. Lauter-Bule (n. 57) 1 1 6f. 90. C. Wachsmuth, Die Stadt Athen i", Alterthu", I (Leipzig, 1 874) 607; Judeich, Athen 85. 91 . Demosthenes 3.25f.; 1 3.29f.; 23.207£. 92. Travlos, PD 127£f. 93. Thus, for example, the sanctuary of Herakles Pankrates at the I1issos (Travlos, PD 278ff.) or the revival of the sanctuary of Amynos (Travlos, PD 76f.). =

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the time of Augustus, the city itself built no large temples. With an increasing historical distance and detached view of the past, the magnificent buildings of Athens' heyday became objects of veneration and glorification.94 The Athe­ nians, so to speak, made themselves comfortable in their own past, used it as a criterion and canon of historical dignity, and justified with it their claim of lasting importance for their city. Under the auspices of an enlightened intellec­ tualism, the cityscape was mythologized for the second time.'s In principle, the same also holds true for the only major project of a political building in those times, namely the extension of the assembly site on the Pnyx." In comparison with the era of Pericles, the seating capacity was doubled, although the number of voters had diminished by half. Even if we take into account the migration of rural population into the city in the fourth century, which must have facilitated participation in the assemblies, the decision to extend the Pnyx cannot have been dictated by real political needs. With its gigantic revetment wall and its huge central flight of stairs, this new Pnyx equally was a monument designed to symbolically illustrate Athens' character as the birthplace of democracy. Yet from the fourth century the reality of the present almost everywhere caused a significant shift in emphasis. As the political greatness of the past could only be claimed in a restricted way for the presen4 it is the cultural achievements, proving less ephemeral, that were increasingly emphasized. The idea of basing the city's claim to leadership also on cultural achievements was probably developed as a refined concept for the first time in the circle around Pericles. Since the fourth century, however, the city was consciously shaped into a monument of its own culture. The central state rite that continued Athens' grandeur up to the present was the procession of the Panathenaea. For the formation of the procession and for other ceremonies, above all for banquets, the Pompeion was erected in the early fourth century, a representational building with halls around a large inner court.J7 The ceremonial self-represe�tation of the community was thus institutionalized in a monumental way in the cityscape. Half a century later, a statue of Socrates, who probably had spent much time in this area, was put up in the Pompeion." Thus religious rites and cultural achievements of-the past were equally supposed to visualize the great traditions of the city. The building activity under Lycurgus after the middle of the fourth century represented the climax of this development. Now even the athletic parts of the games of the Panathenaea that hitherto had still taken place on the agora were given their own site in a new stadium." But the city's most im94. On me Propylaia: B. Wesenberg, in Kunst in Hauptwef'ken: Von tier AkropoUs his Goya UR Schriftenreihe der Universitit Regensburg 15 (1988) 10f. ,

95. Cf. H. von Hesberg, "Bernerkungen zu Architekturepigrammen des 3. Jahrhunderts v. Chr.," Jahrb. Deutsch. Archiiol. Inst. 96 (198 1) 88, referring to Demosth. 3.25. 96. Cf. the literature cited in n. 62. For the number of voters, n. 88. 97. W. H6pfner, Das Pompeion und seine Nachfolgebauten, Kerarneikos 10 (1976). 98. G. M. A. Richter, The Portraits of the Greeks (1965) 109ff. 99. Travlos, PD 498ff.

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portant cultural monument was the new Theater of Dionysus. Right at the time of its dedication, the historical dimension was programatically empha­ sized by displaying the statues of the three classical tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.loo Just as the political-religious topography of the city was thought to have reached its final shape with the temples of the late fifth century, thus too the heyday of Athenian drama was considered a complete cultural monument. The present, on the other hand, defined itself as bearer and advocate of this classical culture. In the fourth century, an old street east of the acropolis that led from the Prytaneion to the theater became the most popular site for exhibiting the tripod monuments of victorious choregoi whose splendor is illustrated by the Monopteros of Lysicrates.lol At that time, this street of the tripods was terraced on the downsloping side, while on the side of the acropolis, in the course of time, the monuments multiplied to form a dense and highly distinguished gallery honoring cultural expenditure for theater and dithyramb. Finally, for the same reason, public and private institutions devoted to educating the young received special support. The gymnasia developed into centers of philosophical teaching; Plato's and Aristode's schools were attached to the sports grounds in the sanctuaries of the hero Hekademos (better known as Akademos) and Apollo Lykeios outside the city gates. In accordance with general changes occurring in Greece, at that time the architectural design and layout of the gymnasia must have been adjusted to their new needs as educa­ tional institutions.102 While organizing the military training of the young citizens (the eph ebeia), Lycurgus remodeled the Lykeion and probably adorned it with a famous statue of Apollo.lo3 On the whole, Athens' development in the fourth century must have gone hand in hand with an incisive transformation of communal life. The sites of politics and the sanctuaries of state gods no longer determined so strongly the reality of life but rather became public monuments that functioned as detached symbols. When people met in the city, they did so less as citizens than as members of an educated community. Thus the primacy of political identity characteristic of the fifth century was replaced--by an identity of culture and sociability. This development was continued even under the chapged conditions of the Hellenistic Age. The increasing loss of political importance suffered by Athens, as by the other Greek poleis, under the rule of the new monarchies led to a further decrease in public building activity. A vacuum emerged into

100. Travlos, PD 537ff.; Rh. F. Townsend, NThe Fourth Century Skene of the lbeater of Dionysos at Athens, Hesperia 55 (1986) 421ff. For the statues of the tragedians, Richter (n. 98) 121ff., 124ff., 133ff. 101. Travlos, PD 566ff. 102. J. Delorme, Gymnasion (Paris, 1960) 51ff. 103. St. F. SchrOder, NDer Apollon Lykeios und die attische Ephebie des 4.Jh.," Minei/. Deutsch. ArmiJol. Inst. Athen 101 (1986) 1 67ff. It

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which foreign rulers could enter without facing competition.104 The few great building proj ects undertaken in the Hellenistic period, when contrasted with those of the earlier times, reveal that Athens had long since become a petrified monument of its own past.

Fig.

1

Plan of Athens, 600-479 B.C. Oohn Travlos. 1959).

104. On the agora in Hellenistic times, se for example, H.·J. Schalles. "Die hellenistische Umgestaltung der Athener Agora im 2. Jh. v. Chr.: Ausdruck von Rationalitit oder Entpolitisierung?" Hephaistos 4 (1982) 97ff. I am grateful to Kurt and Deborah Raaflaub for their assistance in translating this article from German.

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

Fig. 2 Athenian Agora, 4th century B.C. Uohn Travlos, 1974).

AGOQA

.

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Urban Development in Ancient Rome and the Impact of Empire

L. R I CHAR DSON JR

ROME 'S EARLY DE VE LOPME NT NE MAY CONVENIENTLY BEGIN with the accession of Tarquinius Priscus

O

and what its Etruscan dynasty accomplished for the fabric of Rome, physical and institutional, for al three Etruscan kings were builders and reformers, ambitious and visionary. If Augustus boasted that he had found Rome brick and left it marble, the Tarquins could boast that they had found Rome a village and left it a city. Actually they must have found it a federation of villages, each with its own character and more or less autono­ mous with respect to its internal afairs, although there had been no shared kingship after that of Romulus and Titus Tatius. But tradition held that in the addition of citizens to the Roman polity after the destruction of their own towns, each group was settled in a particular geographical locale within Rome designed to keep it separate and distinct, and the exclusion of the Aventine from the pomerium down to the time of Claudius seems to point strongly to an important difference between its inhabitants and the rest of Rome long after the Aventine had for all other purposes become an integral part of the city. Thus we have the original settlement of Romulus on the Palatine and the Sabine settlement of Titus Tatius on the Quitinal and Capitoline, with a contingent of Etruscans, the army of Caele Vibenna, on the Caelian. After the destruction of Alba Longa, Tullus Hostilius is said to have settled Alba's population on the Caelian and thus doubled Rome's population, which neces­ sitated increasing the number of senators and constructing the Curia Hostilia, as well as enlarging the army, an enlargement in which the new squadrons of Alban cavalry were kept distinct (Livy 1.30.1-3). Then under Ancus Marcius the population of Politorium was seted on the Aventine ad Murciae, on the slope above the Circus Maximus, where it was soon joined by the people of Tellenae, Ficana, and Medullia (Livy 1.33.1-5). These were all cities of the Prisci Latini that disappeared in antiquity, all but Tellenae following the transference of their population to Rome, and their geographical location is still doubtful, except possibly for Ficana. But as cities of the Prisci Latini, they were probably members of a league headed by Alba that included only the cities of the coastal plain and Alban Hills and excluded the Volscians and

382

Urban and Architectural Fonns

Hernicans.1 Thereafter we hear no more about transference of whole popula­ tions to Rome. But this federation of at least five settlements, in close proximity but geographically distinct, with an army, assembly, and senate in common but autonomous in many other ways, not only reflects in a general way the organization of the Latin League and Etruscan dodecapoleis, but can be paralleled at other sites. Throughout history Corinth was a federation of villages scattered over a wide territory, centered around sources of water, arable land, sanctuaries, and other advantages.2 It had its great agora and twin ports, but the settlement around the agora was comparatively small in the time of the Roman colony and smaller earlier. And at the site of Acquarossa near Viterbo Swedish excavations have exposed an archaic acropolis of 1,000 by 600 meters, where the houses are primitive affairs of one to three rooms grouped in small irregular villages around the edge of a vast tableland, and the administrative center was a complex of monumental buildings of regular orthogonal plan with colonnaded porticoes and at least one temple.l Evidently most of the tableland was cultivated fields, and the slopes below were woodlot and pasture. Such a settlement pattern seems also to have obtained at sites such as Veii and Vulci, where the city sites clearly outlined by geographical features are far too vast to have been occupied in more than a small portion, and the absence of fortifications has long perplexed scholars.· If we allow that Veii was in large part fields, with only the Piaza d'Armi strongly fortified and capable of withstanding siege, with the housing and sanctuaries located at the edges of the plateau and on the slopes below it, as the great Portonaccio sanctuary is, and with the fortification only the scarp of the cliffs, or a gate and guardhouse on an easy approach, we will probably not be far wrong, and Rome can take its place beside these with no difficulty, although the difference in its geographical character gave it a somewhat different shape. At Acquarossa the evidence has been preserved by the early r�moval of the inhabitants, probably to a new city at Ferentium (Ferento), Still in the archaic period. Elsewhere habitation was continuous throughout antiquity, or even down into modem times, so it is difficult to recover and read the sort of evidence needed to prove it, although that might be possible in new excavations at Veii and Vulci. This, then, was the city that Lucumo, the son of Demaratus of Corinth, saw when he and his Etruscan wife, Tanaquil, abandoned Tarquinii for Rome to seek their fortune there. As the wagon loaded with their possessions crested 1. Se, for example; Andreas Alfo\di, Early Rome and the Latins (An Arbor, Michi­ gan: University of Michigan Press, 1981) 1-46, especially 1 9-36. 2. Henry S. Robinson, "1be Urban Development of Ancient Corinth," Etudes sur I'art antique (Paris, 1963) 53-77; Princeton Encyclopedia of ClassiC41 Sites (Princeton: University Press, 1 976) S.v. Corinth (H. S. Robinson). 3. Carl Eric O stenberg, Case etrusche di Acquarossa (Rome: Monografie della Tuscia, 1975), plan p. 8, pIs. 58, 62. 4. Se, for example; George Dennis, The Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1878) 1.4-17 (Veii), 466-67 (Vulci).

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the Janiculum Hill and came in sight of the city, an eagle snatched the pileus from Lucumo's head and then replaced it, and Tanaquil, who was skilled in the interpretation of prodigies, hailed this as a sign that Lucumo would achieve transcendent greatness here (Livy 1.34.7-9). This he did under the new name of L. Tarquinius Priscus. Elected king to succeed Ancus Marcius, Tarquin embarked on an ambi­ tious program of expansion, both in conquest and in urban organization. As a victory celebration after his first war, with the Latins, he instituted lavish games that became an annual event, the Ludi Romani or Ludi Magni. For these the Circus Maximus, the traditional place for such games ever since Romulus, although heretofore without much in the way of formal arrange­ ments, was laid out with places appointed for the senators and equites, although these had to build their own seating, which they did on scaffolding reaching twelve feet in height (Livy 1.35.8-9). And following his third war, again against the Prisci Latini, Tarquin set about surrounding the city with a stone wall, reorganizing the area of the forum, and building a temple to Jupiter on the Capitoline. The wall we can dismiss; no one says it was completed, and there is some doubt it was ever begun. He might have fortified certain still undefended heights or projected a new pomerium, but whatever his work was, it must have been only preliminary (Livy 1.38.6). In the area of the forum and other low areas around the hills of Rome he dug out sewers of regular inclination, so that water draining to them from the hills would run off to the Tiber (Livy 1.38.6). This was essentially dredging and regularizing of the courses of the brooks that ran through the forum and the Circus Maximus. The former was the Cloaca, continuing up the valley of the Subura between the Viminal and the Esquiline. This has tributaries not only in its upper reaches from between the Viminal and Quirinal and between the Oppius and Cispius, but more important, tributaries in the forum itself, one down from the Velia along the line of the Sacra Via and one from the Tullianum spring at the base of the Capitoline.s The latter was the Circus brook, possibly called Murcia, with its continuation between the ·Caelian and Aventine, along the line of the Via Appia, and an important tributary that joins it at the south corner of the Palatine that drained the basin of the Colosseum and valey between the Oppius and Caelian.' Tarquin also divided the area around the forum into building lots and constructed porticus tabernaeque (Livy 1.35.10). The tabernae were owned by the state and let out, apparently at first to provisioners, especially butchers (tabernae /anienae), and the porticoes were colonnaded walks in front of these, probably with columns of wood, an arrangement like that which has now been discovered around the forum of Cosa, where the shops are large and so arranged that they could not be shut 5. Pietro Narducci, Sulle fognature della ana di Roma (Rome: Forzani E. C., 1889) 39 44; Roma sotterTanea (exhibition catalogue, 00. Roberto Luciani [Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 19 84]) 170-73. 6. Louise Adams Holland, Janus and the Bridge (Rome: American Academy, 1961) 34350; Roma sotterTanea ( n. 5) 173-76.

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up at night.' These might have housed three or four dealers at a time, who would have had to remove their wares at the end of the market day. And between each pair of shops at Cosa opens a corridor (fauces) leading back to an atrium. In Rome the rows of tabernae seem to have lined only the long sides of the forum from the Cloaca to the northwest end of the square, and it must remain doubtful whether there were galleries above the porticoes, as there would be later, to accommodate spectators at the ceremonies that might take place in the forum. That seems an innovation that would come only with wealth and empire, but it must be admitted that Tarquin was a ruler whose taste and politics ran to ostentation. Below the Cloaca, toward the Velia, there was probably as yet no development of forum adjacencies; here the temple of Vesta, the Regia, the house of the Vestals, the Domus Publica of the Pontifex Maximus, and perhaps a number of other sacraria must have been gathered in a loose cluster reminiscent of a primitive village. Tarquin's final work was to be a temple to Jupiter in fulfillment of a vow he had taken during his war against the Sabines. This was to crown the Capitoline and dominate the forum, a victory monument and a demonstration to the world of the greatness of Rome. It was to be so grand that Tarquin got only as far as laying its foundations, or according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (3.69.1) only as far as the terracing of the summit of the Capitoline in preparation for the temple. But it marks a revolution in Roman religion and architecture. Up to this point the Roman gods had been content with groves and templa, sacred places duly bounded and consecrated, but without images of the gods or ornate buildings to house these. An altar was enough, and that might be built of sods. Such buildings as there were, were essentially utilitar­ ian: the temple of Vesta to shelter the fire and the penus Vestae, where the Palladium was kept, and the temple of Iuppiter Feretrius, where the spolia opima and the sacred implements of the Fetials were kept. But Tarquin, who was half-Etruscan and half-Greek (Livy 1.34.2), �as used to images of his divinities, and evidently believed that the larger and better housed these were, the better the gods were pleased. So he set about building the finest temple in central Italy. If he got only as far as laying its foundations, that shows the grandeur of the conception. Tarquin's successor, Servius Tullius, by birth a Latin, native of Corniculum on the borders of the Sabine country, continued Tarquin's work of reform with great vigor. He reformed the organization of the army and the franchise, assigning men to military classes and duties according to their wealth and the armor and equipment they could be required to provide. And to this end he conducted the first census of the Roman people and also assigned them to geographical tribes. It was probably in connection with this last distribution that he is credited with having redrawn the pomerium of Rome and fortified it, in part with an agger and fossa, in part with a wall. His pomerium 7. Frank E. Brown, Cosa: The Making of a versity of Michigan Press, 1980) 33, 39-41.

Roman ToWl (An Arbor, Michigan: Uni­

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included the Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Palatine, and possibly Capitoline, although no one mentions it; but the Aventine was excluded. There is some disagreement about his fortification of the city, because Dionysius (4.14.1 and 15.2) relates that he enclosed the seven hills with a single wall and built citadels on eminences out among the rural tribes in which the country people could take refuge in time of danger. But undoubtedly Dionysius was thinking of the so-called Servian Walls and Rome of a later date. More likely we should ascribe to Servius the great agger that runs south from the Porta Collina on the Quirinal to the valley that separates the Oppius from the tableland to the east.8 Such walls as he built must have been limited and local, possibly no more than a continuation of the terracing of the Capitoline. Although he seems to have been devout, Servius does not seem to have continued construction on the Capitoline temple. Instead he turned to temples of a different program, not monuments of victory, but religious centers that would welcome large sectors of the popula­ tion, even the whole nomen Latinum. To this end and at his urging, a temple to Diana was built on the Aventine by representatives of the Latins as a whole people in concert with the Romans, and all the Latin cities had a share in the festival. This Diana was the Diana of the Ephesians, whose temple was supposed to have been built by the cooperation of all the Ionian cities; the cult image was a xoanon of the type of the Diana of the Ephesians, brought from Massilia, or copied after one there (Strabo 4.1.5 [180l). The temple also had the right of asylum (Dion. Hal. 4.26.3). It is easy to understand why it was built on the Aventine outside the pomerium. Another of Servius Tullius' dedications has come back into prominence recently: twin temples on the Forum Boarium, one to Fortuna and the other to Mater Matuta.' That to Fortuna contained a gilded wooden image so primitive that while most people believed it a statue of Servius Tullius himself (e.g., Ovid Fa st. 6.569-72), others held it to be an image of Fortuna (Cass. Dio 58.7.2-3). This was especially because it was wrapped in two togas, but a representation of the king is unthinkable at so early a period. The temple to Mater Matuta is the more puzzling because we know so little about her. What we do know is that she was the divinity of the great peripteral temple of'Satricum, one of the finest examples of temple architecture in central Italy.lO In its rebuilding of the late archaic period, all the figurative terracottas are of exceptionaly high quality in both conception and execution, bold and lively groups of frolicking satyrs and maenads, Juno Sospita, Sirens, and Typhons. But there is older material, also of very high quality, and a votive st;ps containing material that goes back to the beginning of the sixth century. 8. 44-75. 9.

GOsta Siflund, I.e mIlra di Roma repubblicana (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1932)

Se, for example, Antonio Maria Colini et al., "L'area sacra di S. Omobono,"

Parola del pasato 32 (1977) 9-128 and literature cited there. 10. Se Satricum, llna cina latina (exhibition catalogue, 00. Conrad

Alinari, 1982]) 47-131 and literature cited there.

M. Stibb e [Florence:

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

Here were found figurines that seem to show Mater Matuta herself, an Astarte figure, nude, with a sun disk or moon disk mounted on her head. This identifies her with a divinity worshiped at Pyrgi, LeucothealEileithyia, there regarded as equivalent to the Punic Astane and the Etruscan Uni, a goddess of the dawn, childbirth, and the sea. The festival of Mater Matuta in Rome was the Matralia on 11 June and of very ancient date; she was regarded as the mother of Portunus, equated with the Greek Palaemon. Excavation has shown that the precinct in which the Roman temple stood had a very early phase, older than any temple building, but a temple rose here by the second quarter of the sixth century. That suggests that Servius Tullius rebuilt an existing sanctuary in monumental form. That the divinity had Latin and Etruscan connections should not escape us, for here at the head of the bridge that led into Etruria and adjoining the Portus Tiberinus it would have presided over one of the noisiest and busiest pans of Rome. One can see here some of the same thinking that went into building the temple of Diana on the Aventine. Whether Fortuna, who is almost another aspect of Mater Matuta, was an addition of Servius Tullius, or whether he found her already there, she seems to have been his favorite divinity. For he was credited with building her not only this temple, but a temple of Fors Fortuna on the opposite bank of the Tiber at the first milestone (Livy 10.46.14), a shrine of Fortuna Respiciens on the Esquiline, a temple of Fortuna Virilis at an unknown site, a temple of Fortuna Virgo at the Fons Muscosus, a temple of Fortuna Obsequens in Regio I near Porta Capena, a temple of Fortuna Primigenia on the Capitoline, a temple of Fortuna Privata and another of Fortuna Viscata on the Palatine, and a shrine of Fortuna Euelpis in the Vicus Longus along the Quirinal. Plutarch lists ten Servian temples in all to her (Quaest. Rom. 74). It looks very much as though Servius Tullius were trying to make her the supreme divinity of his city. But we must remember her popularity elsewhere in Latium. At both Praeneste and Antium there were great pilgrimage shrines of Fortuna.ll At Praeneste she was Fortuna Primigenia, either the eldest daughter of Jupiter or the eldest born of the gods. At Antium her image was 90uble, both maiden and Amazon. Perhaps we can see Servius Tullius' temples'ltSan effort to unite the various component parts of his city in the worship of his special patroness. Following the murder of Servius Tullius at the hand�of his son-in-law, L. Tarquinius, we find a return to Etruscan autocracy and magnificence. Having made Rome supreme head of the Latin League, an accomplishment Livy and Dionysius agree was the result of intrigue, and having brought the Hernicans into the league, he made war on the Volscians, captured Suessa Pometia, and used its rich spoils in the construction of the Capitoline temple that his father had projected (Livy 1.53.3). There is no reason not to believe 1 1 . For Praenestc, se Filippo Coarelli, I santMari del Lazio in eta repubblicaniJ (Rome: Nuova ltalia Scientifica, 1987) 35-84 and literature cited there; for Antium, se Robert De Coster, "La Fortuna d'Antium," L'AntiquitJ cltJsique 19 (1950) 65·80; F. Coarelli, op. cit. 74-79.

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this temple was built entirely by him and to his design. The story of the refusal of the god Terminus to submit to removal to a new site and of the discovery of a human head by a man digging for the foundations of the temple are both told only for the younger Tarquin (Livy 1.55.4). He, we are told, s umoned the finest artisans from every part of Etruria to work on it, and he pressed into its construction not only the public treasury but the forced labor of the plebs (Livy 1.56.1). The final product could not have been more magnificent, although Tarquin did not keep his throne long enough to perform the dedication. Not only was it the largest temple in central Italy, it was the most elaborate Tuscanic temple ever builtY In addition to the very extensive terracing carried out to make a: suitable precinct in which to set the temple, the building itself was mounted on a substantial podium approached on axis by a frontal stair. It was divided into equal halves between porch and cella and had three cellae, proportionately long and narrow, for the three divinities who were worshiped there: a somewhat larger one in the center for Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and a lesser one to either side, that on the god's right for his consort, Juno Regina, that on the left for his warrior daughter Minerva. On the lines of the cella walls were files of columns, three in each file, while an extra file was added to either side, runing down the flank of the temple to a closed wall behind. In all there were twenty-four massive columns supporting a great wooden roof that pro­ jected deeply in front to cover the stair of approach and spread wide to both sides to be finished with a fretwork of decorative terracottas, some figured, others conventional, in a rich polychromy of red, black, and yellow. More­ over, the roof was surmounted by other terracotta sculptures at large scale, a quadriga driven by Jupiter, the work of the great coroplast Vulca, brought from Veii to execute the cult statue, and a statue of Su mmanus that was subsequently damaged by a thunderbolt. Fragments of a number of large spiral acroteria that seem to have run down the slopes of the roof have been recovered at the base of the hill, and we can pre�ume that the whole roof was covered with ornaments and statuary. The cult statue, a standing figure holding the thunderbolt in his right hand, excited special admiration; probably those of Juno and Minerva were only a little less splendid. The furnishings and treasure that came to -embellish the temple have to be largely matters of speculation: the stone chest in which the Sibylline Books were kept, the works of art and trophies dedicated there - we hear, for instance, that in 193 B.C. the aediles placed gilded shields ;n fast;g;o (Livy 35.10.12); but much of the floor space had to be kept unencumbered, for the senate met there on the first day of the new year and on other occasions. What is striking about this temple, apart from the engineering and the massive timbers that would have been required to roof it, is the design, the 12. Se Einar Gjerstad, Ea,ly Rome III, Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae 1 7.3 (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1960) 168-90; Ernest Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome, 2nd ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 1968) 530-33 with bibliography.

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successful wedding of a frontal house form with a peripteral temple. As far as we know, there was no other triple-cella temple in Italy when this one was built, and the effect of the forest of columns in the porch must have been more akin to that of the great Ionian temples than it was to anything in Etruria. None of the temples of Caere or Falerii comes close to this in scale, and its being situated on a hilltop in the Latin manner, rather than low on the slope or along the seashore, as at Pyrgi, can only have heightened the effectY Tarquin's work was a monumental triumph. Nor was the Capitoline temple Tarquin's only work, for he vigorously pursued his father's projects of a drainage system to ensure the salubrity of the lower parts of the city and the completion of seating arrangements in the Circus Maximus (Livy 1.56.2). So at his expulsion Rome could boast a unified urban pattern, the villages still with distinct characteristics that differ­ entiated them from one another - some of them probably still with their own defenses and all certainly with their own traditions and festivals, distinc­ tions that they would keep well into the imperial period - but al set around a monumental square of generous proportions above which rose the mass of the Capitoline temple, and with the valley between the Palatine settlement and the Latins on the Aventine filled with a great showplace that was held in common. One would very much like to know whether the route of the Roman triumph of later days was also an institution of the Tarquins. The verb triumphare is first used by Livy of Tarquinius Priscus after the conquest of Collatia, but so casually that it seems hazardous to attach much importance to it (Livy 1.38.3). Still it would fit very well with the rest of his program for the city. Little in the way of urban change seems to have taken place in Rome between the expulsion of the Tarquins at the end of the sixth century and the sack of Rome by the Gauls at the beginning of the fourth. We hear of the vowing and dedication of temples in connection wjth Rome's wars - Castor by the Lacus luturnae, luno Regina on the Aventine - temples that were to become important in the course of time but need not have been more than modest shrines at the time they were built. Rome was totn'by internal troubles and finding its way to political shape. Its wars were local, and we do not hear of the annexation of territory at their conclusion. It is true that under Ancus Marcius Rome built Ostia as a colony and brought under its wing the whole of the salt industry at the Tiber mouth, but that was clearly not an anexation of imperial importance. And under Tarquinius Superbus Roman colonies were sent to Signia and Circei, but these were simply guards on the Hernicans and Volscians, praesidia urhi (utura terra marique (Livy 1.56.8), and Circei seems to have fallen back into the hands of the Volscians at the end of the fifth century, while after Rome's final victory over the Latins in 338 B.C. we find Signia appearing as a Latin colony (Livy 8.3.9, 27.10.7), so we can be sure 13. Santuari d'Etruria (exhibition catalogue, ed. Giovanni Colonna [Milan: Electa, 1985]) 127-41.

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the concept of empire had not yet taken hold in Roman thinking. Rome's brief effort to secure Antium by sending a short-lived colony there in 467 B.C. is to be seen in the same light (Livy 3.1.5). Two events, however, demand attention: the surrender to the plebs of the ager publicus on the Aventine in 456 B.C. and the construction of the Villa Publica in 435. The former was effected by a lex Icilia (Dion. Hal. 10.31.2-32.5) over the vigorous opposition of the consuls and senate; one can well imagine that this strengthening of the Latin settlement there might be viewed with alarm, thanks to the trouble between senate and plebs earlier in the century and the extensive appropriations of ager publicus by senators, especially in the vicinity of Rome. Whatever the Aventine community had been earlier - and the Latin settlement, exclusion from the pomerium, and temples of Diana and Luna there suggest that it was a sort of limbo it now took on the proletarian character it was to keep throughout the republic. A little later, at the opposite end of the city, the censors C. Furius Paculus Fusus and M. Geganius Macerinus approved the Villa Publica in the Campus Martius and held the cenSUs there (Livy 4.22.7). This was the first major encroachment on the Campus Martius and for a long time the only one, although the altar of Mars on which sacrifice was offered at the closing of the lustrum and on which the October horse was sacrificed annually must go back to very ancient times, possibly even be immemorial (Festus 204L). We would give a good bit to know what the Villa Publica was like, but no one offers a description of it in its early days. Any building there must have been essentially only a simple farmstead; the principal parts seem to have been open fields and park, especially the sheepfold, or Ovile (which may have been a humorous name but must reflect its general appearance), where the Romans assembled to vote. In the late republic Varro and his friends repaired to another part, richly ornamented with pictures and statuary, to await the announcement of the outcome of the election of aediles (Varro, Rust. 3.2.1-6). The fact that Livy does not mention the letting of the contract for the construction of the Villa Publica, but only the approval of the work, may be of some ·significance. So may Varro's remark that it was devoid of such embellishment as rich furniture. It was a public garden and at a later date would probably have been called horti.14 .' The destruction wrought by the sack of the Gauls at the beginning of the fourth century seems to have been indiscriminate. Large parts of the city, especially the area around the Forum Romanum, were put to the torch. Only the Capitoline arx, we are told, escaped, while those besieged there watched their houses and possessions burn (Livy 5.42.4). Although the city was not completely destroyed, Livy believed that the irregularity of the grid of streets and the courses of the sewers was to be blamed on the confusion and haste in -

14. CE. Giuseppe Lugli, ltinet'ano eli Roma antica (Rome: Bardi, 1975) 477-80, 484-86, 512-18; Gino Cipriani, Horti sallustiani, 2nd ed. (Rome: Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni, 1982) 13-73; Eugenio La Rocca, Le tranquille elimore degli dei (Venice: Cataloghi Marsilio, 1986).

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

construction that were excited by the rewards assured builders if they could complete rebuilding within the year that followed. Rome in the fourth century must have been an interesting place. Fired by its glorious victories over Veii and Falerii, chagrined and humiliated by the sack of the Gauls, Rome embarked on the construction of a wall that would make such a debacle impossible in the foreseeable future.IS It took at least twenty-five years; Livy's first mention (6.32.1) is for the year 377 B.C., the last (7.20.9) for 353. The material used was great blocks of Grotta Oscura tufa from quarries of Veii near the Tiber and perhaps from the ruins of Veii itself. The wall embraced the whole of the urban core on the left bank of the Tiber, including the Aventine, but the Campus Martius and Tiber Island were ex­ cluded. Parts of older fortifications, such as the agger of Servius Tullius and the fortifications of the Capitoline arx seem to have been used, but these were improved, dressed with new faces, and provided with new and better designed gates. The system had at least seventeen main gates, plus posterns. It was as advanced in its design as the Romans could make it, running above scarping along the brows of the Quirinal, Aventine, and Capitoline and presenting no acute angles. It described a rough oval, the long axis running north-northeast and south-southwest, with one important indentation between the Caelian and the Aventine, where the Porta Capena spaned the road that was to divide into the Via Appia and Via Latina. The other great building activities that occupied Rome in the fourth century were roads and the Aqua Appia. There were certainly important highways along both sides of the Tiber Valley from prehistoric times, and the great trunk highway that led from southern Etruria down the Hernican Valley to Capua, and from there behind Vesuvius to the pass at Nuceria, to Paestum, and on down the Val di Diano eventually to Sybaris in the instep of the boot of Italy is probably also prehistoric; certainly it was in heavy use in the Early Iron Age.I6 But Rome now embarked on a program of road building that was exceptionally farsighted and efficient. The Via Lanna in large part replaced the old Hernican Valley highway; it was also a militaJ;y highway, its first eleven miles running in a straight line that crossed thf'Alban Hills in the interior of the crater, ran through a gap at Algidum, and from there went along the southwest side of the Hernican Valley to Casilinwp on the Volturnus, a short distance from CapuaP It was built after Rome came to control the pass at Algidus in 389 B.C. but had reached Cales by 334 (Livy 8.16.13) and was almost certainly then complete. It assured Rome access to Campania in any weather, and it was a hold on the Hemicans and Volscians, should that 1 5. G. Siiflund (supra n. 8); Roma media repubblicana (exhibition catalogue, Asses rato Antichiti, Belle Arti e Problerni della Cultura [Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1973]) 7-31

(Maria Grazia Picozzi and Paola Santoro). 16. 1bis is the line followed by the modem Autostrada del Sole; in Roman times it was the Via LatinalCasilinalPopilia. 17. On the Via Latina, see Lorenzo Quilici, La via Latina (Rome: Bulzoni, 1978), espe­ cially 5-20.

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be needed. The Via Appia, begun in 312 by the censor Appius Claudius Caecus, was a coast road running from Rome along the southwest slope of the Alban Hills and along the edge of the Pontine Marshes to Tarracina, and from there through one of the most beautiful parts of central Italy, the Ager Caecubanus and Formiae, to join the Via Latina at Casilinum.18 Perhaps be­ cause of its beauty, this, the regina viarum, early eclipsed the Via Latina. It was prolonged to Venusia in 291, to Tarentum in 281, and to Brundisium in 264 (Livy 9.29). The rapidity of these advances is an indication of the impor­ tance Rome attached to them. We tend to look on this as the route to Greece, influenced in this by Cicero's return from exile and Pompey's flight from Italy, but in fact its real purpose was to secure the south of Italy and provide it with efficient communications. Rome had now embarked upon an ambitious scheme to control all of peninsular Italy. Its experience with Veii had taught that the surest way of dealing with rivals and enemies was to annex their territory, once they had been subdued in war, and to absorb them into its own fabric. It was, in a way, a return to the strategy of the earlier kings, but now to secure its hold on more remote parts Rome devised the strategy of sending out Latin colonies, made up of volunteers anxious for a change who would form their own state, make their own laws, and run their own government, but yet be strongly colored with Latinitas. The chain of these colonies follows the great Roman roads; they were linked to the capital for defense as well as convenience. From the last third of the fourth century down to the war with Pyrrhus it is an impressive list: Cales in 334, Tarracina in 329, Luceria in 314, Sora and Alba in 303, Minturnae and Sinuessa in 296, and Venusia in 291.19 In Rome itself there is little that reflects this expansion; all effort seems to have been expended on roads and colonies. To be sure, the Rostra was created as a monument of the victory over the combined Latin navy in 338 (Livy 8.14.12). In 310-309 for the triumph of the dictator L. Papirius Cursor gilded shields were distributed to decorate the shops along the forum, and trophies of Samnite arms were set up at intervals (Livy 9.40.16). But there is nothing to arrest us here. Rome in the time of the Samnite Wars had no building program, and the generals with vows to discharge followed no pattern in the temples they built: Salus on the Collis Salutaris (Livy 9.43.25, 10.1.9), Iuppiter Victor on the Palatine (Livy 10.29.14 and 18), Venus Obsequens on the Circus Maximus (Livy 10.31.9), Victoria on the Palatine (Livy 10.33.9), Iuppiter Stator ad summam Sacram Viam (Livy 10.36.11 and 37.15), Fors Fortuna in the Transtiberim (Livy 10.46.14), Quirinus on the 18. On the Via Appia, se V. Leoni and G. Staderini, SuIl'App;a Antica (Rome, 1907); G. Ripastelli a nd O. Marucchi, La Ilia Appia en I'epoqu� romaine et de nos iou,s (Rome, 1908). 19. On these sites, se Princeton Encyclopedia of Clasical Sites (supra n. 2) s . vv. Cales (Werner Johannowsky), Taracina (Raymond Schoder), Luceria (Felice Gino Lo Porto), Sora (Edward Togo Salmon), Alba Fucens UosefR. Mertens), Mintumae (Howard Comfort), Venusia (R. Ross Holloway). Se also Edward Togo Salmon, Roman Colonization under the Republic (London: Thames & Hudson, 1969) 55-69.

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Urban and Architectural Forms

Quirinal (Livy 10.46.7). They could hardly be more varied or more widely scattered. One might have thought that the war with Pyrrhus and close contact with the rich culture of Tarentum would have given the Romans a taste for Hellenistic elegance and refinement, but evidendy this was not the case. The fact that when Rome finally took Tarentum in 272 it was not plundered but accepted into alliance with Rome as a socius navalis may have had more than a litde to do with that. All of South Italy was in a state of dishevelment with the Mamertines in Messana and the Campanian brigands in Rhegium, and Rome was already girding its loins for the inevitable conflict with Carthage that was to break out in less than a decade and continue down to the end of the century in two long struggles, with respite only to heal the wounds and hamer out fresh weapons. THE IMPACT OF EMPIRE

When empire finally came, it came with the force of a cataclysm and in mounting shocks, beginning with the spoils of Syracuse, paraded in triumph by M. Claudius Marcellus in 212 or shortly thereafter, and lasting down to the triumphal arrival of Aemilius Paullus in the royal flagship of Perseus of Macedon, for which Rome lined the banks of the Tiber in November 167 (Plutarch Aemil. 30. 1). Rome had had to fight long and hard for its victory, and the years of struggle through the long decades of warfare had been years of deprivation and sacrifice, not only of men and materiel, but often of trust in its allies and its gods. Natural disasters no less than human betrayals had repeatedly racked the city almost to the breaking point. Storms and fires wrought as much havoc as disastrous batdes. But Rome had stood fast, and most of central Italy with it, and in the years following the Second Punic War it entered a Golden Age unlike anything it had ever dreamed of. We are told that the spoils of Syracuse, especially the pictures and sculptures, first kinaled that intense admiration for Greek art that was to proye so pernicious to Rome in the centuries that followed (Livy 25.40.1-3; Plutarch Marcel. 21.1-5), but no one is more specifiC; no particular work of art is actually recorded as having formed part of that booty. But we are told that with it M. Claudius Marcellus enriched temples throughout the city, and especially the temple of Honos et Virtus at Porta Capena that was his personal victory monument. In the heart of Rome the most important development during these years was the reorganization of the Forum Romanum. In 213, in the depths of the war, a terrible fire had swept from the Salinae near the Aventine through the Forum Boarium to the Porta Carmentalis, destroying everything in between, including the temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta, and spreading beyond the Servian Wall to destroy the temple of Spes. It burned for two days and a night (Livy 24.27.15-16). The temples were quickly rebuilt, but presumably

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other things were not. Three years later, in 210, the tabernae on the northeast side of the forum burned (Livy 26.27.1-4), together with the Forum Piscarium, the Lautumiae at the foot of the Capitoline, and the Atrium Regium, the temple of Vesta being saved only by almost superhuman effort. No temple is listed among the losses, and because the Curia Hostilia escaped, we can presume the Ianus Geminus did. Although only secular buildings seem to have been destroyed, the loss amounted to half of the forum and very impor­ tant adjacencies. There seems to have been a delay in rebuilding, and the offices (tabernae) seem not to have been rebuilt until 192, and then on a new and different plan, an original seven being then reduced to five (Festus 258L). The reason for this delay may have been the war and lack of funds, but it seems also likely that it was prolonged long after the war's succesful conclusion by a wish to redesign the forum and to bring it, now that it had been so fortuitously opened to the possibility, better into line with what had been seen in Syracuse and the Greek cities of Sicily, where Hellenistic wealth combined with regal ostentation, and constant commerce with the East brought news of what other potentates and nations were doing. Our best description of the new forum, which we can for convenience call the Scipionic forum, is in an interlude in the 04rculio of Plautus, preserved evidently by chance and to be dated in the decade 202-193. Having to kill time, the Choragus takes us on a tour of the forum, pointing out where one can best find every sort of man (Plautus 04rc. 462-86). He begins with the Comitium at the north corner, where one can find perjurers, and proceeds down that side of the forum. At the shrine of Cloacina are those who are mendacious and boastful. In the shadow of the basilica are doting husbands who squander money on their wives, as well as scented harlots and their potential clients. In the Forum Piscarium are those who are assembling the makings of dinner parties, and at the end of the forum, in foro in{imo, stroll the rich and the respectable. He now turns to the opposite side: in the middle, along the canal, which must be the Cloaca, are the show-offs. Beyond the Lacus Curtius are the garrulous and the maficious gossips and slanderers. And in the shadow of the Tabernae Veteres are the investors and brokers. Behind the temple of Castor in the Vicus Tuscus are men whom one would do well not to trust, who sell themselves readily, while in the Velabrum are bakers and butchers and haruspices. There are problems with the text and its interpretation, and the Choragus allows himself to digress from the forum proper to include the Forum Piscarium and Velabrum, but the picture as a whole is clear. Filling the north corner of the forum is the Comitium with the praetor's court, below it an area for idlers, and then under the lee of the basilica a market in feminine adornments. These two areas must be separated by the course of the Cloaca, the basilica standing entirely below it along the Sacra Via, for this is not the Basilica Aemilia, but a nameless basilica, evidently the only one in Rome at this time. Although the market may very likely have extended beyond the basilica along

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the Sacra Via, there is nothing notable between it and the forum infimum, the resort of the rich and respectable. We now return to the middle of the forum, where along the Cloaca channel the show-offs loiter, and the Lacus Curtius with its contingent of gossipmongers. Beyond these, in the lee of the Tabernae Veteres, are the investors and bankers, who fill the west corner of the Forum as far as the temple of Saturn; the incorporation of the public treasury (aerarium) with its functionaries in the temple might have drawn them to that area. We then move back to the temple of Castor and Vicus Tuscus, an untrustworthy neighborhood, and along the vicus to the Velabrum, where there are provi­ sioners. The picture is easily read. The Roman forum was somewhat larger at this time than later, unencroached by the temple of Deified Julius and the great basilicas, and with smaller versions of the temples of Saturn and Castor. It stretched from the temple of Saturn to the Regia and from the Comitium to the temple of Vesta. But it had very much the same tapering shape, and recent excavations tend to show that this is as old as the first building phase of the Regia. The Comitium was well marked and, as recent research has shown, probably still kept intact the architectural form of its original design. It was a rectangle, probably deliberately oriented to the cardinal points of the compass, surrounded by a circuit wall and containing a circular amphitheater of steps to accommodate citizen assemblies. Opposite its axial entrance from the forum rose the Curia Hostilia, behind the Comitium but on axis, approached only through the Comitium. Between Comitium and Curia was a speaker's platform in front of the Curia door, and on this the praetor urbanus had his tribunal and held his court. Various statues and monuments, such as the puteal over the razor and whetstone of Attus Navius, found places on the Comitium steps; by this time these must have amounted to a ·considerable collection, and others encumbered the speaker's platform. The Comitium was clearly entirely separate from the forum.20 The Cloaca effectively divided the forum approximately in half. It was an open channel that must have been bridged where the streets on opposite sides of the forum crossed it, and possibly elsewhere, but much of its length was open, guarded perhaps with a parapet, possibly with a.walk along it like the later Euripus through the Campus Martius, along which the ostentatores could stroll. The tabernae that had burned in 210 had not yet been rebuilt in the area that was eventually to be occupied by the Basilica Aemilia, but around the sacellum of Cloacina gathered idlers and boasters. The opposite side of this part of the forum was entirely taken up with banking and busi­ ness, the Tabernae Veteres, the hive of finance. The other half of the forum, the southeastern half, was given over to a market in luxury goods and to the 20. On the Comitium se F. Coarelli, II foro romano, periodo arcaico (Rome: Qu asar , 1983) 119-226; id., II foro romano, periodo repubblicano e augusteo (Rome: Quasar, 1985) 11123. There is still much debate about the problems presented by the Comitium.

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civic and religious functions that had had their place there since the days of Numa. The organization of the market is of considerable interest, since Plautus puts it in close conjunction with the basilica, but outside it. The basilica we must probably see as a small building, although the hypostyle hall of Delos, now generally regarded as the prototype of all Roman basilicas, was of very generous dimensions, nearly 57 meters long and 3 4 meters wide, its outer aisle having nine columns on the long sides, five on the short, while the entrance front is calculated to have required no less than fifteen columns.ll Here there might be room enough for such a building, but it is hard to see its usefulness. Moreover, small basilicas seem to have been a Roman invention and continue into late antiquity. More to the point is the relationship between basilica and market. On Delos the hypostyle hall seems to have been a business house, as were most later basilicas, certainly not a market. Can we then see this earliest Roman basilica as an adjunct to the forum, an attempt to unify this sort of activity and to persuade bankers and brokers to forsake the forum square for its shelter, but as yet not completely successful? That certainly seems a very attractive possibility. Within the next half-century the Roman forum was to change enor­ mously. Three basilicas rose around its periphery. The first, the Basilica Porcia of 1 84, was not in the forum proper, but in lautumiis on the slope of the Capitoline adjacent to the Curia Hostilia and sharing a party wall with it. Plutarch (Cato Mai. 19.2) says it was built over the vigorous opposition of the senate, but because it was built by Cato as censor and at public expense, that may have been more politics than anything else. To make room for the basilica Cato purchased two atria, the Maenium and Titium, and four tabernae (Livy 39.44 .7), which can best be interpreted as two private houses, probably neither one more than a simple atrium complex, and the four shops that would have preceded these on a busy street, such as one would expect in this part of the city. The plot would have been bounded by the Clivus Argentarius on the west and the Curia on the east (less likely the south) and cannot have been very large. The tribunes of the plebs held public audiences in this basilica, probably on a tribunal it included. And it continued to be used until its destruction in the conflagration started by the pyre of Clodius in 52 B.C. (Asconius in Milon. argo 29), so it cannot have been an architectural failure. We do not know enough about it to be able to place it in the evolution of the Roman basilica, but it was probably very important, because soon after its construction the old basilica on the forum was dismantled and replaced by the Basilica Fulvia et Aemilia. This was built in 179 B.C. post argentarias novas (Livy 40.5 1 .5), these be­ ing tabernae replacing the original argentariae on the northeast side of the fo­ rum between the Argiletum and the Cloaca. The construction is assigned by Livy (40.5 1 .5) to M. Fulvius Nobilior, one of the censors for that year, the 21. For the hypostyle hall of Delos se Delos 2.1: La Salle hypostyle (Gabriel Leroux, Paris: E. de Boccard, 1909) 2.2: Complement (Rene Vallois, Gerhard Poulsen, ibid., 1914).

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other being his great rival M. Aemilius Lepidus. Excavation under the exist­ ing Basilica Aemilia has brought to light remains of a basilical building that are likely to belong to the basilica in questionP These show that the original basilica lay somewhat farther to the northeast but had the same orientation as the present building, and that the Cloaca had been roofed and buried before the construction of the basilica and probably before the construction of the argentariae novae, perhaps in preparation for their construction. The basilica, a splendid and spacious building, seems to have run from the Argiletum to the Cometa, to have been set off from the forum by the bank of argentariae novae and not to have included these in its design, and to have been accessible chiefly, possibly only, at the ends. It was basically a columnar building, but with very wide intercolumniations and wooden architraves. There may well have been no gallery over the side aisles, because the usefulness of such a gallery in this location is doubtful, and there was already a gallery over the argentariae for the benefit of spectators at events in the forum (Festus 120L). The clerestory over the central nave may have been mainly a solution to the problem of adequate lighting, as it was in the hypostyle hall on Delos. A decade later, in 169 B.C., this was balanced on the opposite side of the forum by the Basilica Sempronia, built by the censor Ti. Sempronius Gracchus behind the Tabemae Veteres, replacing the house of Scipio Africanus and adjacent shops (Livy 44.16.10-1 1). About this we know next to nothing, as it has completely disappeared under the Basilica Julia, but the symmetry with the Basilica Fulvia opposite is striking, and it is likely that it ran from the Vicus Tuscus to the Vicus Iugarius and again, like its counterpart, was accessible chiefly at the ends. Thus, already in the middle of the second century B.C., the forum was framed from end to end, as we see it on the Anaglypha Traiani, not, as handbooks on architecture would have it, by the continuous colonnades of a Hellenistic square or temenos, but by a succession of important temples and buildings, each of a discrete architectural s�pe, with exploitation of symmetries and contrasts.13 To the visitor entering the forum along the Sacra Via it must have unfolded dramatically, with the Capitoline temple still the paramount feature. The ultimate flourishes in this theatrical new forum were indeed colon­ nades, but colonnades that ran behind buildings. to bring them out into relief, rather than conceal them. The earliest was built in 1 74 B.C., midway in date between the two great basilicas, by the censors Q. Fulvius Flaccus and A. Postumius Albinus (Livy 41.27.7). It lay along the shoulder of the Capitoline from the temple of Saturn to the Curia.24 Here it ran behind a collection of small shrines and monuments - the altar of Saturn, the Volcanal, the Aedicula 22. Not. Scav. 1 948 , 1 1 1 -28 (Gianfilippo Caretni). 23. For the Anaglypha Traiani se Nash (supra n. 12) 2.17 6-77. 24. Earlier the passage in Uvy was frequendy taken to mean that the Clivus Capitolinus was colonnaded from the temple of Saturn to a senaculum on the summit of the Capitoline, but that is patendy absurd for a variety of reasons.

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Concordiae, he Senaculum - and formed a backdrop for them, pulling this end of the forum together and providing the Capitoline hill with a base line, above which soared the temples crowning the summit: Jupiter Optimus Maxi­ mus facing southwest toward the Tiber and Juno Moneta pro�ably facing east over the city itself. A little later, in 159 B.C., Scipio Nasica built a colonnade enclosing the Area Capitolina (Vell. Pat. 2.1 .2 and 2.3.1 ). This seems to have been the earliest temenos colonnade in Rome, but how it looked from the exterior is unknown; probably it turned a fairly blank wall to the world outside, in view of the use of it made by the Flavian defenders of the Area Capitolina in A.D. 70, and we should think of it as a surprise for those visiting the precinct of which they would have been unaware before they reached the top of the Clivus Capitolinus, passed the arch that Scipio Africanus, Nasica's father's first cousin, had built there in 190 (Livy 37.3.7), and entered the precinct. The arch with its seven gilded statues and two horses must have been a monument especially to the Scipios, either explicit or allegorical, and it can hardly have failed to catch the sun and attract the attention of those in the forum who glanced upward toward the temple. It was perhaps not the first triumphal arch in Rome, Scipio having been anticipated in this by L. Stertinius a few years earlier, in 196 (Livy 33.27.4). But Stertinius' three arches, embel­ lished with gilded statues, were in front of the temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta in the Forum Boarium and in the Circus Maximus, fine places, to be sure, but hardly to be compared to the top of the Clivus Capitolinus. Unfor­ tunately no one is informative about the program of any of these arches, which is perhaps an indication that they were not explicidy triumphal. After all, Stertinius did not even put in for a triumph. The passion for porticoes that led to those last embellishments of the Scipionic forum spread through Rome like wildfire in the years after the Second Punic War. As Velleius says (2.1 ), "The elder Scipio opened the way to power for Rome, the younger the way to ex�ess (luxuriae). With fear of Carthage and rivalry for dominion gone, Rome abandoned the course of old­ fashioned virtus, not gradually, but headlong in its race to new vice. " And he takes as paradigmatic of this the construction of porticoes, beginning with such public monuments · as those of Scipio Nasica and Metellus, but soon becoming private indulgence, the extravagances of citizens' houses and villas. The earliest of these of which we hear seem to have been more functional than luxurious, two built by the aediles of 193 B.C., M. Aemilius Lepidus and L. Aemilius Paullus. One of these led from the Porta Fontinalis to the altar of Mars in the Campus Martius (Livy 35.10.12), the other lay extra Portam Trigeminam. The former provided, in effect, a covered walk for the censors from their office in the Atrium Libertatis just inside the Porta Fontinalis to the place where they held the census and lustration, their most impressive cer­ emony. This portico was relatively long and canot have been of conspicuous magnificence; very likely it had a wooden superstructure and the columns

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were simply wooden posts. However, it continued in use, perhaps later rebuilt in stone, down to the time of Nero, and gave the name Aemiliana to this part of Rome. The second, an adjunct of Rome's new Emporium along the Tiber under the lee of the Aventine, was even more useful, because it gave definition to one side of the market square and provided protection from the weather when it was needed. It must have been subjected to especially heavy use and had to be rebuilt in 174 by the censors of that year (Livy 41.27.8). It was followed almost immediately in 192 by a portico inter lignarios (Livy 35.41.10), also outside the Porta Trigemina and presumably connected with the Empo­ rium, and by another in 170 (Livy 40.51.6). How these were related to one another is unknown, but because down to the time of the Porticus Metelli all porticoes seem to have been single-wing buildings, they need not have been a connected design. The Emporium probably consisted of a series of open squares fronting on the river and accessible from it over an embankment scaled by ramps and stairs. Each square would have had its class or classes of commodities available there, which would have been well known. The depth and extent of the squares would have depended on the volume of traffic, and the porticoes may have served either to separate one from another or to finish the square along the foot of the Aventine. The architecture was probably largely of wood, at least at first, and relatively plain. But compared with what Rome and central Italy had been used to earlier, it was an impressively organized and handsome complex. The inspiration for it may have come from the East, where such markets with stoas of monumental form already existed in cities such as Miletus and Priene.2S But it seems equally possible that the design was a Roman invention based on what they had seen in Sicily and the Carthaginian emporia in Spain and Africa. These essentially utilitarian porticoes - and there may have been several more connected with the new Macellum of 179 and smaller local markets in various quarters of the city - were soon eclipsed by a series of porticoes ouilt to franle temples and connect them with one another in interesting or mean­ ingful groups. The first of these, of the phenomenally rOductive year 179, are recorded only in a mutilated passage in Livy (40.51.6), but there seem to have been two of them along the river in the neighborhood of the Forum Boarium, one post navalia et ad {anum Herculis, the other post Spei et ad aedem Apollinis Medici. It is not entirely clear whether the Servian Walls were still standing in this part of Rome, as the use of the Porta Trigemina as a landmark may suggest; if they were, the first portico must have run outside the wall from the vicinity of the Emporium to a shrine of Hercules near the

p

.

.

•

25. Se Gerhard Kleiner, Die Ruinen von Mikt, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Walu:r de Gruyu:r, 1968) 50-59; Martin Schede, Die Ruirren von Priene, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Walu:r de Gruyter, 1 964) 4857; John B. Ward-Perkins, Cities of Greece and Italy: Planning in Clasical Antiquity (New York: Braziller, 1974) 14-15, figs. 9, 12a.

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round temple, perhaps Hercules Olivarius. Because Hercules and his worship dominated the area just inside the Porta Trigemina, the omission of a descrip­ tive epithet for this {anum suggests that it was the only one outside at this time and that it was not a building but a sacrarium, but one cannot be sure. The picture conjured of a portico parallel to the river that was both a conve­ nience and an ornament is very vivid, but again the architecture need not originally have been pretentious. The other portico, running behind the temple of Spes as far as the temple of Apollo Medicus, or across the area now occupied by the Theater of Marcellus, seems rather to have framed one side of an open square than anything else, since the two temples in question face at an angle of ninety degrees. Spes here is closely associated with the temple of luno Sospita; these temples stood side by side with almost no space between them. But Juno is not mentioned, nor is Bellona, whose venerable temple stood beside that of Apollo Medicus. The portico ran too far inland to have been a conspicuous embellishment of the river embankment, and between it and the river there must have been other buildings. In these circumstances it seems best to think that the Forum Holitorium, a square named for the dealers in agricultural produce and not for the produce itself and therefore not a place where such produce was sold but a place where collegia met, had now become important enough to warrant monumentalization. Over the years a great many temples had been added to the city as victory monuments. There . was no prescribed place for these, and one of the questions that still plague topographers is how one went about obtaining a place when one had the vow of a temple to fulfill. Still it is clear that there was a strong tendency to build such temples along the route of the triumph: around the Circus Flaminius, Forum Holitorium, and Forum Boarium; on the slope of the Aventine overlooking the Circus Maximus; and along the Sacra Via. The temple of Apollo was vowed in 433 during an epidemic and dedicated in 430. Bellona was vowed in 296. Janus was vowed by Duilius after the victory at Mylae in 260, and Spes by A. Atilius Ca'latinus also during the First Punic War. luno Sospita was vowed by C. Cornelius Cethegus in 197 during the Insubrian War, and Pietas was vowed by M'. Acilius Glabrio at the battle of Thermopylae in 191 :-As their number increased around the open square of the vegetable dealers, they must have made a heterogeneous lot. The portico seems to have been an attempt to give them a unifying background, and perhaps we should see this and the Porticus Post Navalia as parts of a single program designed to enhance those stretches of the triumphal route that lay through the more commercial pacts of Rome. From the Forum Holitorium the triumph passed up the Vicus lugarius to the Porta Triumphalis and thence to the Forum Romanum, to return to the Forum Boarium almost immediately by the Vicus Tuscus. At that point it might emerge in a square that had the Porticus Post Navalia as a backdrop. This, together with the works of the cens ors of 1 74 the paving of the Clivus Capitolinus, the portico along the -

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Urban and Architectural Forms

base of the Capitoline at the northwest end of the forum of the same year, and various improvements in the Circus Maximus (Livy 41 .27.6-7) suggests that the frequency of triumphs in these years, with their shows of spoils and parades of captives, demanded that much of Rome be turned into a stage for the mounting of such spectacles, and that these porticoes were built in answer to that demand. They were not Hellenistic stoas with shops behind, but rather simply covered walks that connected buildings and framed them. This sort of thinking and building must have led to the development of the Circus Flaminius, adjacent to the Forum Holitorium, probably the favorite staging area for triumphs, because it provided an opportunity to display the spoils for some days prior to the triumph itself (Plutarch LUa41. 37.2), al­ though it may have shared this function with the Villa Publica.26 The circus had been laid out in 221 B.C., an open square, probably eventually enlarged to make a long oblong, rather like the Forum Romanum, by culverting the Petronia Amnis that ran across it. But this is unlikely to have occurred before the middle of the second century, the end of the period that interests us. Originally it must have straddled the brook, with bridges at strategic points. The square soon came to be lined with temples. The oldest of these were probably those of luppiter Stator and Hercules Custos, neither of which can be dated precisely, but both of which go back to the third century. They were followed by the temple of Hercules Mus arum, vowed by M. Fulvius Nobilior during his Ambracian campaign and probably built shortly after his triumph in 1 87. Then came luno Regina (Livy 39.2. 1 1 ) and Diana (Livy 39.2.8), both vowed by M. Aemilius Lepidus in 1 87 and dedicated in 1 79, and Castor and Pollux of uncertain date, but probably relatively late, because the exigencies of space made it necessary to adopt a plan with a transverse cella, like that of the temple of Concordia (Vitruvius 4.8.4). These seem to have been built in rivalry with one another, the temple of Hercules Musarum being so located with respect to luppiter Stator as to show off its grander program of Greek statuary, while in 189 a statue of Hercules that merited recording in hiStory (Livy 38.35.4) had been installed in the temple of H.ercules Custos. The insertion of luno Regina between Iuppiter Stator and 'Hercules Musarum looks like a deliberate attempt by M. Aemilius Lepidus to outshine M. Fulvius Nobilior, and Lepidus' dedication of two temples in the same general area on the same day hints at this as well. But these were all rebuilt in the Augustan period and again after the disastrous fire of Titus in A.D. 79, so it is impossible to test this suggestion, and large parts of the area of the Circus Flaminius are still unexplored. This square with its assembly of temples naturally invited the addition of porticoes, and in due course these were built, the earliest being that of Cn. Octavius of 168 (VeIl. Pat. 2.1 .2; Pliny HN 34. 13). This seems to have been -

26. The gradual encroachment of the Villa Publica for other buildings and functions may have made it unsuitable for such displays by the time of Augustus, and it sems likely that the Circus Flaminius was always a more suitable setng.

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the first portico in Rome to emphasize opulence, its bronze Corinthian capi­ tals being possibly the first Corinthian capitals and the first bronze capitals to be seen in Rome. It was a double portico on the model of a Greek stoa, but evidently a single wing, for it is never mentioned in he plural. Its length and location are entirely conjectural; if we put it on the southwest side of the square, we have to contend with the newly discovered temple of Castor and Pollux with its adjacencies, which force a location near the southeast end. If we put it on the northeast side, where its exposure would catch the afternoon sun and might account for Velleius' description of it as amoenissima, it must be crowded into the northwest corner. It was followed by the Porticus Metelli, built in 147 by Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus to surround the temples of luppiter Stator and luno Regina (VeIl. Pat. 1 . 1 1.3-5; Vitruvius 3 .2.5 ),l1 Metellus had brought from Macedonia the twenty-five equestrian statues made by Lysippus for Alexander to commemorate those who fell in the battle of the Granicus (Arrian Anab. 1.16.4 ) and placed them facing the temples. To make the setting adequate to the statuary, he rebuilt the temple of luppiter Stator entirely in marble (which must have been imported from Greece), the first marble temple ever built in Rome. If the temple with which Octavia replaced it followed the plan of Metellus' temple, it was peripteral sine portico, frontal in the Roman manner, hexastyle on a low podium. It is questionable whether the temple of Juno was rebuilt at the same time, because no one mentions this and its original con­ struction dated only a little more than thirty years earlier, but the two are complementary in size and location and clearly Metellus was interested in shaping a complex every part of which would be aesthetically important, so we should not exclude the possibility. But what is really important is that for his complex Metellus invented the portico of four wings, a portico that completely surrounded and bounded the precinct, providing an unbroken march of columns as a background from every angle, a continuous walk in which people could stroll at leisure or find refuge from rain that might interrupt the games in honor of Apollo, whose-temple was adjacent, a place for the display of pictures and sculptures, but above everything else a frame for his own gifts. It did not detract from the Circus Flaminius; in fact it must have enhanced it enormously. But the glimpse of what lay within was teasing, an invitation to the interior, where the splendors of art and architecture reinforced one another. Probably Metellus got the inspiration for his complex from the East, for framing stoas of fairly early date are known at such sites as Pergamum, Magnesia on the Maeander, Priene, and KOS.28 If so, he and his 27. On this portico se Bjorn Olinder, PortkllS Octavia in Circa Flaminio: Topographi cal Stvdies in the Campus Martius of Rome (Stockholm: Paul Astrom, 1974); L. Richardson, jr, "The Evolution of the Porticus Octaviae," Am. J. of Archaeol. 80 (1976) 57-64; H. Lauter, "Porticus Octaviae," BoUettino d8Ua Comisone Archeologica Comnale di Roma 87 (19801981) 37-55. 28. Carl Humann et aI., Magnesia am Maeander (Berlin, 1904); Schede (supra n. 25) 58-61; Rudolf Herzog and P. Schumann, Kos I. Asldepision (Berlin, 1932).

402

Urban and Architectural Forms

architects made it brilliantly their own, for there is nothing quite like this, nothing that encloses, conceals, and at the same time invites. Later and with changes it became the archetype of the imperial forums and the great Hadrianic temples, but here it appeared in its simplest and purest form. If we are looking for the impact of empire on Roman urbanization and architecture, we need look no further.2' For Rome the impact of empire did not come with the flagship of Perseus of Macedon in 167, although the Romans lined the banks of the Tiber to welcome its arrival, nor yet with the defeat of Carthage. It came with the taking of Veii at the beginning of the fourth century. The Roman drive to imperium was deep-seated and passionate, taken in with their mothers' milk and carefully nurtured from generation to generation. But Rome had always been a melting-pot, ready to receive its freedmen into citizenship and to absorb whatever it could profitably use of the cultures that it conquered. Its taste for architecture and urban magnificence had been affirmed in the time of the Tarquins; when the kings were expelled there was no question of erasing their public works, galling and hateful though some of them had been. Instead Rome built on that heritage uninterruptedly over the centuries, loving the old and welcoming the new.

29. For a complement to this chapter, analyzing the beginnings of Roman representa· tional art in the late fourth and early third centuries, se T. Holscher, "Die Anfinge romischer Reprasentationskunst, n Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archilol. but., Rom Abt. 85 (1978) 31557; d. also Holscher's contribution to the present volume.

Civic Urbanism in Medieval Florence

FRANEK S ZN URA

LORENCE ONE

IS of the many Italian cities of the communal period whose origins go back to Roman times, when the plain to the west of the city in the direction of Prato was measured and allocated along the Cassian consular road, doubtless to allow better water drainage and to reclaim that land. The city itself, whose characteristics were similar to those usually found in Roman colonies with a rectangular castrum, followed a ritual orien­ tation based on the cardinal points of the compass. Two main roads (carda and decumanus) linked the four city gates and intersected in the Forum urbis, which is where Piazza della Republica is now situated. The umbilicus coloniae, where the decumanus maximus and the cardo maximus intersected, was near the western gate of Roman Florentia where via Tomabuoni, via Strozzi, via della Vigna Nuova, and via della Spada now intersect. The divergent orientation

F

given to the city with respect to the fields to the west brought about an unavoidable distortion of the orthogonal network of urban streets as compared with the roads that led to the castrurn. The roads leading to the city were determined by the way in which the surveying and allotting of the plain had been done, which meant that they reached the gates of Florence at an angle

(see figures 1 and 2).1

The development of Florentia in Roman ti�es reached a culminating point probably some time between the second and third centuries A.D., when the es­ timated population reached about ten thousand inhabitants. Archaeological evidence has shown that there must have been extra moenia settlements and suburbs along the roads leading to the city gates. These suburbs were in the Oltramo area, where the bridge over the Arno was situated (far from where the Ponte Vecchio is today); to the east, where the river port was situated and where the church of San Remigio is today; to the north, where the church of San Lorenzo is now; and to a lesser degree, to the west of the Roman walls, where the Mugnone torrent limited urban expansion. Some time between the 1.

For a history of Florentine

town

planning

se

the fundamental work by G. Fanelli,

Pi,enze. A,chitetQ e ana (Florence, 1973); idem, Pi,enze (Rome-Bari, 1985) (one of the vol­ umes of the series Le Ciua nelil sforil d'!ttJlUJ); E. Guidoni, Am e u,btmisticQ in ToscanQ, 1 1 1 01315 (Rome, 1967); and idem, StanQ dell'NrbtmisticQ. II Duecento (Rome-Bari, 1989).

404

Urban and Architectural Fonns

first and second centuries A.D. Florence built a theater ( more or less where Palazzo Vecchio stands today), an ampitheater (where Piazza Peruzi, via dei Benci, and via Torta are), and an aqueduct that linked it to the springs of Valdimarina. The first Christian churches of Florence were built outside the city walls along the access roads as was the case in other Italian cities. Thus, for example, the church of Santa Felicita was built in the Oltrarno area and San Lorenzo to the north of the city. The latter site also seems to have been the early see of Florentine bishops, which would confirm the hypothesis that the paiatium episcopi was usually built in the outskirts of cities.1 Although there are still signs of Roman survey and land allotting in the plain between Florence and Prato, these are rapidly disappearing as this area is becoming urbanized. On the other hand, the orthogonal gridiron in the center of Florence, inherited from Roman Fiorentia, is still very visible. Both the layout of the fields, which determined the direction in which the roads ran, and the shape . and structure of the castrum imposed themselves on Florence when, in the medieval period, it was rebuilt and developed. During the Byzantine period Florence became a much less populated site, as can be seen from the abandoned extra moenia suburbs and even the abandoning of large parts of the Roman castrum, especially the northern and southern sectors.J The so-called Carolingian area, inhabited more or less during the ninth century, seems to have been the turning point after a steady decline that had lasted dur;ing all of the early Middle Ages. During this period part of the ancient Roman walls were used again (but only those which were still useful) given the changes in the topographical and orographical conditions, especially changes regarding the lengths of the walls close to the river or to other watercourses (see fig. 3). On the whole, Carolingian Florence inherited the linear and geometric qualities of the fortifications built by the Romans, but it also seems to have foreshadowed the new walls to be built in the communal period between 1 1 72 and 1 175. The latter walls not only confirmed how Florence had outgrown the limits of the Roman castrum, but also deviated from the north-south orientation of the classical city. The new communal walls adapted to the shape of the suburbs that had groWn around the city especially during the first half of the twelfth century, when they tended to develop along the ancient access roads leading to the city. These suburbs somehow crystallized the distorted alignment, mentioned earlier, between the orthogonal network of streets in the town and the main access roads to the city. The first communal walls of Florence were, therefore, rotated by some degrees with respect to the Roman walls. This break with the Roman shape of the town allowed medieval Florentine town planners to create a more harmonious link between the city and its surroundings because the first part of the road inside the walls now became a direct prolongation of the roads outside the walls (see fig. 4). 2. 3.

Fanelli, Pir�e. Architettura, 4 and 5.

Ibid., 7-10. .,

Sznura: Urbanism in Medieval Florence

405

The history of the first Florentine communal walls is not well known. Although we know where those wals were situated and, to a certain extent, when they were built, we know nothing at all about their size. The brief three years in which they were built leads one to think that they were not necessarily equally high or equally solid in all places. In any case, even if we are ignorant of how this major project was planned, the first communal wall around Florence does allow us to focus our attention on some town planning problems and to set up a series of comparisons. As I have already pointed out, the walls built in 1 172-1175 were meant primarily to protect the suburbs recently built along the roads connecting the city to the surrounding countryside. The suburbs, built in a straight line along these roads, had no overall planng and thus tended to be densely settled areas alternating with large areas between one suburb and another in which there were no settlements.4 From this point of view the new walls seem to have been more an acknowledgement of the new urban shape of the city than the manifestation of a precise will to create a given urban model. The speed with which these walls were built also seems to point to urgent military considerations, which often had priority over city planning in the Middle Ages. The rotation of about forty-five degrees of the twelfth-century square walls with respect to the Roman castrum also meant the abandonment of the symmetrical relationship with the Roman walls, the lack of a further relation­ ship to the city of classical times, and the recognition of the new suburbs in which the immigrants from the contado had settled. The twelfth century walls protected the more recently urbanized areas of the city in which an increasing number of rural immigrants were in the process of becoming town dwellers, one of the most typical and interesting phenomena in the Italian communal period. The difference between ancient Roman Florentia and the areas built up during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which were eventually enclosed in the above-mentioned walls, can also be seen in the basically different shape of the city blocks. In the Roman city they were d�ermined by the square walls and by the orthogonal road scheme, even though the details of this scheme could vary from place to place. The medieval city blocks, on the other hand, w.ere much more irregular and often triangular since they had been determined by the way in which the access roads to the city reached the gates of the ancient castrum. Thus, some of the more fundamental traits that characterize the relation­ ship between the Roman town and the medieval city began to take shape in Florence in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This relationship took on a very specific meaning in the more central parts of town, that is, those in which the classical urban forms remained (and still remain) more readily apparent. In late medieval sources one can also find the expression civitas vetus, which was used to indicate the city center and especially (but not exclusively) 4.

Ibid., 23-29.

406

Urban and Architectural Fonns

the area of the old castrum. In this part of town there still existed pieces of the more important Roman buildings which had been incorporated and adapted into more recent constructions. For example, the underground rooms of the Roman amphitheater (burelle) were used for one of the Florentine prisons. Even place names transmitted rather clear memories of the Roman city: via di Terma, via del Campidoglio, and via di Capaccio. In the suburban area outside the walls place names like Arcora, Arcovata and Trallarcora marked the position of the Roman aqueduct. Late medieval building in the center of town continually brought to light buried remains of Roman Florentia. Agree­ ments between clients and foremen for digging in the area of the civitas vetus sometimes included clauses specifying how aurum vel argentum eventually to be found would be shared ..s Private towers were the first important change in the urban characteristics of the town's center. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries these buildings (an expression of new complex social and economic relationships ) dominated the town's central area, helping to change the layout of the city blocks. In fact, it is thought that the dividing and fragmenting of the ancient insulae was brought about by the creation of alleys whose function it was to separate the possessions of one consorteria from those of its neighboring families and other consorterie. At a later date, new towers built along these alleys brought about the opposite phenomenon, the concentration of several individual properties into smaller and more compact city blocks (see fig. 5).' It remains to be understood whether, and to what extent, town magistra­ cies might be involved in regulating construction, an initiative probably needed because of the tendency of consorterie and groups of noblemen to build on the edges of their properties. Besides the undeniably greater wealth of docu­ mentation that appears during the thirteenth century, the intervention of the town authorities also became more pressing at this time. Town authorities began with the phenomenon of private towers and the problem of organizing the urban development of the city as a whole. The need to control entire sectors of the city and take them out of the hands of the consorterie and their towers was certainly of overriding importance and lcd, toward the mid­ thirteenth century, to the removal of some of these towers and the lowering of the rest of them to a specified height? It is quite significant that according to the chronicle tradition the building materials obtained 'in demolishing the towers, which had been the means and the focus of the consorteria wars waged in the city, were used for a new set of walls to protect the Oltrarno area of the city.' Furthermore, it is just as significant that this tower-dominated city witnessed, at this time, a new phase in its history. Usually referred to as the

5. An example is in Franek Sznura, L'espaPl5ione urbana di Firenze nel Duegento (florence, 1975) 42. 6. Fanelli, Firenze. Architettura, 32-35. 7. Ibid., 49. 8. Ibid., 50; Sznura, L'espansione, 95 and 96.

Sznura:

Urbanism in Medieval Florence

407

period of the Primo Popolo (1250-1260), this phase was characterized by the new and decisive role of some groups of artisans and shopkeepers. This fundamental decade in Florentine history also witnessed a series of important steps taken in the domain of town planing, worth examining more closely. One example of such innovation was the construction of the first building meant to house exclusively the city government: the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo was begun in 1255. Another and an even more important example was a project for a kind of circular road where the walls had been built in 1172-75, as they were no longer needed. This road was meant to run between Ponte aIle Grazie to Ponte alIa Carraia so as to link two of the city's four bridges, the one farthest upstream to the one farthest downstream (see fig. 6). This project deserves special attention, not only because of its links to the measures regarding the private towers but also because it expressed the first clear reading of the city as a whole, taking into account the spatial and chronological dimensions of the city's historical phases. These separate and distinct phases were: (a) the Roman-influenced civitas vetus, (b) the construc­ tions and additions made during the early communal development phase contained by the walls built in 1172-75 and the circular road replacing them, and (c) the "new suburbs" that were rapidly growing beyond the circular road. The circular road . . . was not, in itself, a novelty since similar toads can also be found, for example, in Bologna and in Pistoia, where they enclosed, in an irregular curve, the entire old town. In this case, however, the almost pedect straightening out of the new road, the link-up with the new network of straight roads and the civilian rather than strategic use of access roads to the city gave rise to an entirely new solution. The different segments of the circular road became part of the new city even though they confmned the layout and functional aspects of choices that were linked to the preexisting city.'

The wealth and complexity of decisions regarding town planning during the Primo Popolo is further proof of the need to reexamine the history of that period. Mid-thirteenth-century urban development touches upon the whole problem of the relationship between the city's changing urban political order and the quality and the global cost of town planning. It is likely that the town planning measures undertaken at the end of the century were also discussed and formulated during the crucial decade between 1250 and 1260. Although it is possible to insist on a koine concerning the fundamental premises in Italian town planng in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, further reinforced by cultural exchanges and by mobility, it must be, nevertheless, pointed out that the wealth of ideals and aspirations in a town like Florence did not come about as a result of a purely coherent and uninterrupted line of development. On the contrary, a city like Florence shows, as I have pointed out elsewhere, that there could be sudden accelerations but also a slowing down in urban 9.

Guidoni, 5torill deU'Nf'banistica, 153.

408

Urban and Architectural Forms

planning initiatives undertaken by the town authorities.tO Proof of this may be the fact that the decade of the Primo Popolo, so dense in new developments, was followed by a period of Ghibelline domination (1260·1267), characterized by devastations perpetrated on the buildings of their adversaries, when, in the urban sector of Florence alone, no fewer than 47 palatitz, 159 houses, and 59 towers were destroyed. Florence saw drastic changes in its original characteristics both during the years of the Primo Popolo and during the Ghibelline sequel even though plans, intentions, and goals in these two successive periods were very different. It is unlikely that Dante, as a young man, could have had a precise idea of how his city had looked at the time of Cacciaguida. In fact, there had not only been qualitative changes. The city had also become substantially bigger, and large new setlements had been built up in the suburban areas. The building of new suburbs is another important topic in Florentine town plang at the end of the thirteenth century, because these suburbs illustrate the policies followed by the city authorities in the civitas nova. The phenomenon was undoubtedly complex, characterized by the presence of leaseholding allotments. The leaseholding concession of rectangular and narow lots ad casam elevandum from private person to private person and especially from religious institution to private laymen is well documented in Florence from the eleventh century on. Such leases and building lots were certainly the rule in the area within the walls of 1 172-1 175. However, as I have already pointed out, the basic road network in that part of town was made up of streets radiating out from the convergent point in which they met the ancient Roman city gates, and thus the lots tended to be angular or even triangular once the free areas between one suburb and another had become saturated. During the last decades of the thirteenth century the road system in the new suburbs was no longer made up of old roads because a new network had been put into place in order to limit the newly c
Sznura: Urbanism in Medieval Florence

409

nuove.ll In the last two decades of the thirteenth century, when the city expanded at a particularly rapid pace, Amolfo held a job similar to that of town planing superintendent and directly or indirectly controlled all projects he undertook at this time. During those years new criteria emerged in which regularity, straight lines, and urban decorum seemed important in both planning the building of new roads and the modification of preexisting ones. In he following decades these criteria were often recalled and applied in the new areas of town according to an orthogonally structured network of roads that defined regular-shaped blocks (square or rectangular). These new roads were uniformly wide and were especially laid out so as to be perfectly straight, linking the city, through the new suburbs, to the surrounding countryside. Such straight roads simplified trafic but also highlighted, from a distance, the stage effect achieved by the public buildings and the churches: "The straight road no longer held only a technical value but also a formal one." The concept of the "road with a backdrop," lined with the symbol-laden buildings of the city, emerged at this pointP The regularity of late-thirteenth-century allotment roads and the equally regular shape of the lots defined in this way was similar to the town planning solutions used in the Roman castrum. On a historical and cultural plane this similarity to the castrum and the centuriazione emerges with great clarity in the last circle of walls begun in 1284 and finished after several interruptions in 1334. Villani, who had some direct experience with communal building commissions and had firsthand knowledge of this project, pointed out both the overall idea of these walls and the implicit references present in the project. He wrote, in fact, that the new walls were designed in such a way that two main thoroughfares - from Porta Romana to Porta San Gallo and from Porta al Prato to Porta alIa Croce - be more or less equally long and that they intersect roughly where the old Roman Forum had been, in the dead center of the old city.u In the Oltrarno area the walls formed a triangle with an apex (Porta Romana) that was exactly where the cardus max;mus had in­ tersected with the second decumanus south orthe Roman decumanus max;­ mus. The northern gate of the new walls was also lined up with the cardus maximus almost at the intersection of the second northern decumanus. The last walls of communal Florence were planned during the city's greatest period of expansion, as the size of the area enclosed demonstrates. The project for these walls referred quite explicitly to the deepest historical roots of a city that felt it was "the beloved city of Rome." These walls seem to have been a concrete attempt to harmonize, in a new synthesis, the com­ plexity and historical stratification of an urban center with ancient origins and a splendid communal period, while linking the city to the equally compli11. For this aspect se, above all, Guidoni, Stona dell'urbanistica, 140-163. Now, also se David Friedman, Florentine New ToWlU: Urban Desip in the Late Mid Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1 988). 12. Ibid., 151 and 1 52. 1 3 . Fanelli, Firenze. ArchitettNra, 64-66, and Guidoni, Stona dell'uriJanistica, 138.

410

Urban and Architectural Fonns

cated history of the countryside surrounding the walls. "The summits or gates" of the new walls and "the most important angles of the layout seem to have been made using a projection from inside the old city toward the sur­ rounding countryside and taking the most important towers and belfry (Santa Reparata, the towers of the Bargello and of the Palazzo dei Priori) as observa­ tion points. Thus the old walls were projected onto the new ones" (see fig. 7).14 One is struck, above all, by the links, both functional and aesthetic, between the city and the outside world. Contemporary documents stress the importance of functional roads in order to ensure copiam b/adi and a concursum hominum in case of need, but they stress even more the pulchritudo of the measures taken to straighten and make more uniform the roads outside the walls, seen now as a prolongation of the internal segments and their backdrop, projecting the city and its formal values beyond the limits of the walls that enclosed it.

In the years between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century Florence reached the apex of its success in urban planning. In the last decades of the Duecento it set out to rearrange and reconvert the city center (or at least those parts of town that had already been built up), thus extending the criteria of decorum and beauty already applied in the civitas nova. The new Palazzo dei Priori was begun in 1298 in the area where the Uberti family had lived. The new palace gave rise to a long series of demolitions that resulted in the nearby Piazza dei Signori. Much the same happened in the case of the new Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella when a large square was cleared in front of it, thus establishing a bipolar symmetry with the Franciscan church and the square at Santa Croce. The construction of the new cathedral, begun in 1296, also brought with it a rearrangement of that part of town. Special attention was given to the rela­ tionship between the city and the urban segment of the river because Lungami, protected by walls, were built in such a way as to connect adequately the different bridges of the city. The town authorities al,so planned in the heart of the civitas vetus (and partly carried out, relying upon a series of demolitions) a road linking the Palazzo del Popolo to Orsanmichele making it possible to see one building from the other. This urban rearrangement also involved the Oltrarno. Between the years 1294 and 1 317 the town undertook to enlarge Piaza Santo Spirito, open up Piaza del Carmine, and pave, via degli Spadai. In those years the city also tried to plan open areas that would be both large and formally consonant with the new and bigger public and religious buildings. Attention was focused on the piazza, not only on its size, but also on the architectonic elements that comprised it. Some of the buildings were subjected to expensive and complex "surgical" operations to enlarge the open spaces, realign the fa�ades of buildings on the square, and unify them aestheti­ cally in order to achieve a homogeneous effect. The honos and decus of the city, ultimately the values the city aspired to embody on a regional level, were also the motivations most constantly mentioned in the contemporary documents. 14. Guidoni, Storia tkll'u",anistica, 142.

Sznura: Urbanism in Medieval Florence

41 1

Compared with the tight spaces that had characterized the eleventh- and twelfth-century city, the late Duecento once again gave great functional and formal importance to the square. As a result, the city mingled its " beautiful" and its "useful" aspects in such a way that many quarters featured an articulate succession of open areas (squares) and closed visual channels framed by roads with a backdrop. The projects that were meant to unify these urban spaces were greatly reduced after the crisis of the Trecento, when they began to focus on more fundamental sectors of the town such as its religious center (the cathedral and its square) and its political center (the Palazzo della Signoria and the square). In both cases formal unification was sought by creating a succession of regular arches on the ground floor of the buildings, interrupted by doors providing access to living spaces, and by constructing fa�des with the same materials throughout the square. By the end of the fourteenth century, however, all of the basic elements had completely changed, and a fundamental period of Florentine town planning was coming to an end. The great demographic collapse prevented the comple­ tion of the burgi novi or, at least, greatly limited their growth in the Oltrarno area and in the northern suburbs. The intervention of public authorities in town planning was limited and was now concentrated on the two major programs planed at the end of the preceding century (the cathedral and the residence of the Signori), at the very moment when another important element became important: the palazzo. A product of private building, this new archi­ tectural contribution to the city can be seen as the transition point between the communal city and the Renaissance.1S

15. Thanks to Allen Grieco for his translation of this essay from Italian.

412

Fig. 1

Urban and Architectural Forms

Plan of Roman Florentia and of the Centuriation in the West of the City (from G. Fanelli, Firenze. Architettura e citta).

Sznura: Urbanism in Medieval Florence

Fig. 2

Florence. Umbilicus Coloniae, near the western Gate of the Roman Perimeter (from G. Fanelli, Firenze Architettura e citta). .

413

414

Urban and Architectural Forms

Fig. 3 Orthogonal plan of Florentia. Enclosed in bold outline the supposed shape of the "Carolingian" walls (from G. Fanelli, Firenze. Architettura e dna ).

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Sznura: Urbanism in Medieval Florence

Fig. 4

Florence: hypothetical trace of the 12th Century walls (to the North of the river) and the Enlargements in the Oltramo (from R. Davidsohn, Storia di Firem:) .

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416

Urban and Architectural Forms

Fig. 5 Medieval Towers in Florence, XII - XIn centuries (from G. Fanelli, Fi,em;e. A,chitettu,a e cittil).

Sznura: Urbanism in Medieval Florence

Fig. 6 Florence. Thirteenth Century Urban

Changes. Via Juxta Foveas (no. 10) from Ponte alia Carraia (no. 1) to Ponte aile Grazie (no. 2). (from G. Fanelli, Firenze. Architettura e cina).

417

418

Urban and Architectural Forms

Fig. 7

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Urbanism in Medieval Venice

JUE RGEN SCHULZ

I

TALIAN CITIES grew and reshaped themselves enormously between the

end of the first millennium and the arrival of the Black Death - over the period, that is, which encompasses the first stirrings of the communal movement, its apogee, and its decline. They filled out their thinly settled centers with new construction, absorbed the setements around them, reasserted public control and regulation of the city fabric, built new public monuments, and rebuilt those they had inherited from the past.1 Almost without exception the communal cities were founded and laid out in Roman times, and their new growth was grafted on to urban structures - walls, street grids, squares, and monuments - inherited from antiquity. Venice, of course, was the exception. An impromptu agglomeration that formed in the early Middle Ages around island settlements of mariners, fisher­ men, and salt harvesters, such as were scattered throughout the northern Adriatic lagoons, Venice had no Roman past.2 Nor was it ever part of the 1. lbis chapter is based on research carried out under grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the S. H. Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Expenses for photo­ graphs were met by Brown University (Providence) . I- am deeply grateful to all for their support. Works referred to more than once are cited in an abbreviated form and described in full at the end of the chapter. General urbaoistic histories, such as L. Mumford, The City in History (New York, 1961), or P. Lavedan and J. Hugueney, L'urbanisme au Moyen Age, Bibliotheque de la societe fran�ise d'archeologie, V (Geneva, 1974), give little space to communal urbanism in Italy and are compiled from secondary literature that is entirely ourdated. Far richer and better informed than such books, albeit limited to one region alone, is Braunfels, Mittelalterliche Stadtbaukunst, issued originally in 1953. Numerous specialized studies have appeared more recendy, dealing with a single city, city type or building type but attempts to se the phenomenon as a whole have been limited to short papers such as those collected in E. Guidoni, La ana dal Medioevo al Rirlcimento (BarilRome, 1981). 2. A description of life in the lagoons, written by Cassiodorus in A.D. 537 or 538, clearly attests their unurbanized state at the time; Opera, ed. A. J. Fridh, Corpus christianorum, ser.latina, XCVI-Xcvm (Tumhout, 1958-1972) III [Variae epistolae), book XII, n° 24. By the tenth century the lagoons were dotted with island towns; they are enumerated and said to have ben founded on virgin soil by mainlanders fleeing the barbarian invasions of the past, by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenetos; De administrando imperio, ed. G. Y. Moravcsik, Cor­ pus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, I (Washington, D.C., 1967) 91-93, 116-121. Venetian ,

,

420

Urban and Architectural Forms

Italic Kingdom, so that its precommunal history and the social and political institutions it developed in the early Middle Ages were quite different from those of cities on the Teraferma. Standing on mud and piles amidst brack water rather than on solid land, it had no ancient substructures, knew nothing of the processes and instruments of public planning that governed urban growth in antiquity, and lived by a constitution all of its own. And yet, despite these differences, Venice too became a commune and, during its communal age, grew as much and in a similar manner as its mainland peers.3 Tracing the steps of this expansion, we may learn what patterns, independent of urban origins and precommunal experiences, were basic to al the communes' urban growth. The nuclei of the future city lay at the eastern tip and the middle of the Venetian archipelago, at, respectively, the island first called Olivolo (later called Castello) and the area ocupied today by Piazza S. Marco (figure 1). At the turn of the eighth to the ninth century the first became the seat of the archipelago's bishop, the second headquarters of the military governor - the dux, or doge - who administered the coastal remnants of the Byzantine province of Venetia et Histria.4 Settlements must have existed already at both

chroniclers, of whom the earliest wrote in the eleventh century, give similar accounts; d. A. Carile and G. Fedalto, Le origini di Venezia (Bologna, 1 978) 55-68. Two modern scholars have proposed instead that Venice had Roman origins: G. Marzemin, Le origini romarw di Venezia (Venice, 1937), and Dorigo, Venezia origini. The more considerable of these boks is Dorigo's, which, using a mountainous accumulation of archaeo­ logical, geological, climatological, and historical data, argues that the Vehetian lagoon was emerged land in antiquity - centuriated, settled, and tilled - and was flooded by the sea only during the Middle Ages. He makes no claim that a Roman town lies beneath modern Venice but does believe that Venice's street plan reflects the layout of preexisting Roman fields. This is not the place to give a detailed criticism of his book; suffice it to say that the fields Dorigo reconstructs have never be discerned by students of centuriation in the Veneto; d. L. Bosio et al., Misurare Ia ten'a. Centuriazione nel MOndo romano:;1 cIISO Veneto (Modena, 1 984). 3. For the history of Venice in this period the first two volumes of H. Kretschri'layt, Geschichte 11011 Venedig (Gotha, 1 905-1 920, reprinted Aalen, 1964), are still the richest in detail. More recent works are R. Cessi, Storia lklla Repu bblica di Venezia, 2nd edition (Milani Mesina, 1968), F. Lane, Venice. A M4ritime Repu blic (Baltimore, 1973), and G. Craceo, Venezia nel Mediaevo, Storia d'ltalia, ed. G. Galasso, VII, i (Turin, 1986). General accounts of the city's medieval urbanism can be found in G. Bellavitis and G. Romanelli, Venezia (BarilRome, 1985) and Miozzi, Venezia nei secoli (without critical ap­ paratus). E. R. Trincanato and U. Franzoi have published an adas of photographs and historical plans, Venue au til du temps (Boulogne-Billaneourt, 1961). 4. The first bishop of Olivolo mentioned by the eleventh-century chronicler Deacon John is Obellebiatus, whose death after twenty-three years in office is narated among the events of A.D. 797. John attributes the move to S. Marco 10 Doge Agnellus Parteciacus, whose election is usually dated to 8 1 1 . Se Johannes, "Chronieon Venetum," resp. 99 and 102. His reports are corroborated by acts. Very son after the dates given by Deacon John, a bishop is attested at Olivolo, and doges are attested at "Rialro," the original name of the Venetian archipelago. An act of Agnellus and Giustinianus Parteciacus, reigning at Rialro as co-doges, is dated 819; Giustinianus's testament of 828-829 is witnes by Bishop Ursus of Olivolo; L. Lanfranchi and B. Strina, 005., Ss.llario e Benelktto e S. Gregorio, Fonti per la sroria di Venezia, sez. n, Archivi ecclesiastici, Diocesi castelana, II (Venice, 1965), resp., nGO 1 and 2. Giustinianus's testament provides for the construction of the ducal palace chapel, St. Mark's, and thus also confirms the fact that the Rialtine site of the new ducal palace was at S. Marco.

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places to warrant their being chosen as the islands' administrative centers, which they remained for the rest of Venetian history. Olivolo is almost one mile from Piazza S. Marco. Urbanisticaly speaking the separation of the one from the other duplicates the separation of eclesias­ tical and civil seats of administration in contemporary cities on the mainland.s However, on the Te"aferma it had been the result of ancient burial customs and the late arrival of the church in the ancient city. For devotional reasons many of the first episcopal. churches, offices, and residences were founded near Christian burial grounds, and the Romans buried their dead extra moenia. Roman city centers were already built up in the fourth century and left little room for new structures. Thus, in the late Roman and early medieval city the bishop was commonly installed in the suburbs, the civil administration down­ town. In Venice it may have been the doges, arriving a quarter-century after the bishopric had been established, who settled of their own accord far from the bishop; perhaps it was the latter who insisted that the ducal government keep its distance; we do not know. In any case, the characteristic arrangement was repeated in Venice, even though the reasons for it cannot have been the same as on the mainland. Surrounded by marshes, Olivolo had limited room for expansion without extensive filling and reclamation. But the ducal precinct at S. Marco was encircled by natural islands on the east, west, and north. As settlers were drawn to the archipelago this area became its most urbanized part. Sixteen (38 percent) of the forty-two neighborhood churches recorded in Venice before 1100 are concentrated here.' Of the others, a few lay near two early monasteries, amidst the marshes extending from S. Marco to Olivolo, a zone called Gemini; a few stood between the Grand Canal and the Canale della Giudecca, on sandbars that gave this district the name Dorsoduro; and the rest were scattered across the great reaches of land and water, called Luprio, that straddled the Grand Canal, on the landward side of the archipelago ref. fig. 1}. Here, at the first bend of the Grand Canal, a market area developed and . 5. C. Violante and C. D. Fonseca, "Ubicazione e dedicazione delle cattedrali dalle origini al periodo romanico nelle citta dell'Italia centro-settentrionale," in I11'omanico pistoiese nei suo i 1'apporli con l'arle.1'omanica dell'Occidente. Ani del I convegno intemazionale di studi medioevali di storia e d'arte (Pistoia, 1964) 303-346. The separation was found, for the same reason, also in northern European cities; d. T. Hall, Mi�lalte1'liche Stadtgnmd . . . in Deutschland lind PFarJkFeich, Kungl, Vitterhets Historle och Antikvite1S Akademien, AntilUlariskt Mkifl, LXVI (Stockholm, 1978) 56, with further references. 6. I am excluding from the count monastic churches and St. Mark's, the chapel of the ducal pala tillm. The churches in question all b ecame parish churches in later centuries: S. Angelo Michele, S. Bartolomeo, S. Basso, S. Benedetto, SS. Geminiano e Menna, S. Giuliano, S. Luca, S. Maria Formosa, S. Maria Zobenigo, S. Maurizio, S. Moise, S. Paterniano, S. Procolo, S. Salvatore, S. Samuele, and S. Vitale. The earliest published notices of the city's churches are gathered in Comer, Ecclesiae Venetae, and P. Zolli, L'antica toponomastica u1' bana di Veneda (typescript thesis of the Facolta di Lenere e FiIosofia, University of Padua, for the academic year 1 962-1963), sllb fIOcem. They have be digested and augmented with information gathered by Francesca Cavaz Romanelli from the unpublished Codie diplomatico fleneziano (ASV, typescript), in Dorigo, Vene;da migini, 11, 464-466.

422

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came to be called by the name originally given to the archipelago as a whole, Rialto. Drawing settlers of their own, these outer districts were akin to the burgi that sprang up during the early Middle Ages around monasteries and market­ places on the periphery of mainland cities. Eventually, during the age of urban expansion, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, such burg; were in­ corporated within the parent city, as they were in Venice, albeit in a manner somewhat different from that used on the mainland. Generally, cities incorpo­ rated their suburbs by extending the city walls. Venice had no walls, of course; the waters of the lagoon were its defense. It is the progressive pushing outward of the lagoon that gives the measure of Venice's expansion in the high Middle Ages. The original islands of the Venetian archipelago were small and swampy, dotted with stagnant ponds and separated from each other by broad marshes and waterways. Beginning in the eleventh century one hears at an increasing rate of the reclamation of interior ponds and of the extension of island shores. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such filling was a private activity, done by individuals and ecclesiastical property owners, on their own initiative and at their own expense. Beginning in the thirteenth century, however, the state assumed a growing role in promoting and regulating fills. The financial burden still remained that of the intending occupant, but the government began to sponsor filling in certain areas against others and to· subject all filling to a licensing requirement. As time passed, the areas being filled grew constantly, until in the early fourteenth century, a truly heroic scale was reached: four and a half acres of fill were licensed in 1303 at the eastern fringe of the archipelago: eighteen acres were licensed between 1318 and 1332 at the southern fringe? By these means the city's edges grew to reach the limits that remained valid until population growth resumed in the late �ixteenth century, while its interior waterways, with the exception of the Grand Canal and Canale aella Giudecca, were reduced to narrow rii. And so, during the three centuries of economic and demographic expansion, the scattered settlements of the early Middle Ages were brought together to make one city, circumscribed by the open lagoon, as if by walls. The state regulated not only this filling activity, but also the construction that went with it. As everywhere else in Italy, the rise of communal institutions in Venice led to a steadily more insistent gathering of administrative powers

7. Published and unpublished acts known to me document five fills carried out before 1200, twelve done in the thirtenth century, and thirty-six between 13 01 and 1348. The principal published sources may be found in Comer, Eccle.siae Venetae, II, 36 5-366, 368-369, IV, 238, 278, 294; and Temanza, AntictJ pitJnttJ, 56, 62-63, 70. The chief unpublished sources are the series "Grazie" of the Maggior Consiglio, at the ASV, and a volume of rulings by the Iudices publicorum (for whom se below), in the Cicogna Collection at the Museo Coaer, Venice.

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in a steadily more powerful and complex central government.8 Maintenance of streets, bridges, and waterways had previously been left to local owners, lay and ecclesiastical, singly or in association with their neighbors. Property rights, of private owners or the state, had been governed by unwritten consuetudines. Now statutes and administrative norms were promulgated and magistracies instituted, bringing the transfer of properties, maintenance of streets, waterways, and bridges, and defense of public rights of way under ever closer state supervision.' Statutes promulgated in the mid-twelfth century affirmed the traditional method of property transfer by investiture; those promulgated in 1194-1195 and 1204 defined the conditions for different types of investiture more explic­ itly, and the latter subjected the whole procedure to the oversight of a new court, recently instituted to prove contracts, the Curia Examinatorum. The careful regulation of property transfers met social and political needs as much as urban needs, in that a family's patrimony was basic to the definition of its social status, and the possession of property conferred political rights. Other innovations had purely urbanistic aims. In 1224 two men were appointed overseers of embankments, public streets, and public waterways, with the duty to report to the Great Council offenders against established norms of usage and maintenance. By 1249 bridges and piscinas, that is, stagnant bodies of water, had come under their supervision as well. In 1282 the group was reconstituted as a judicial body, the Iudices publicorum, with power to sentence usurpers of public property to stiff fines, demolition of their buildings, and other penalties. The norms that these au­ thorities were supposed to enforce were entered not into the statutes but into the capitolare, or constitution, of the magistracy, as was the normal practice in Venice. Here we find the legislation and decrees regulating details of con­ struction and urban life (for example, projection of houses over public streets and waterways, disposal of industrial and household wastes) and specifying conditions under which public rights-of-way might and might not be ceded to private parties, which in other cities were set forth as statutory law. The capitolare is known only from a copy of the 1290s, but many of its rubrics originated earlier in the century.10 8. The first indication of institutional change is the promulgation in February 1 1 42 m.v. or 1 143 st. eirc. of a decree approved by the doge, "una cum nostris iudicibus et ipsis viris sapinetibus, qui prerant Consilio," not to be altered "nisi ducis precepto et communis consilio"; Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio, 1, 235-236, n° 1. 9. A brief and up-tD-dare aCcount of the development of the Venetian constitution and legal code is offered by PansolIi, Gerarchia delle fonti, 27-58. The basic works are R. Cessi, "11 Maggior Consiglio," in Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio, I, iii-xx; Roberti, Magistrature giudkiarie; E. Besta, "n dirino e Ie leg civili di Venezia fino aI dogado di Enrico Dandolo," Ateneo veneto XX ( 1 897) ii, 290-320, XXII (1899) i, 145-1 84, 302-331, XXII (1 899) ii, 6193, 202-248 (separately, Venice, 1900); and R. Cesi, "Gli statuti veneziani di Jacopo Tiepolo del 1242 e Ie loro glosse," R. Istituto veneto di scienze letre ed arti, Memorie XXX ( 1938) ii. 10. For the history and capitolare of the Giudici del Piovego, as these iudices were called in the vernacular, d. Roberti, Magistrature giudiziarie, I, 199-206, and 11, 257-303, and Codex publicorum (Codice del Piovego), ed. B. Lanfranchi Sttina, I, Comitato per la pubblicazione

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The growth of a body of law and supervisory authorities for the over­ sight of the city's fabric as we find it in Venice ran parallel to similar develop­ ments in other communes. In Bologna, statutes regulating street widths and ordering the paving of streets were promulgated between 1211 and 1249; a propositus stratis et acquis to oversee the maintenance of streets and freshwa­ ter canals was instituted in 1250. In Reggio Emilia a statute regulating the paving of streets was promulgated in 1241, and an authority to oversee public rights-of-way and waste disposal was instituted in 1265. Siena elected each year a six-man commission of signori delle vie to oversee streets, first heard of in 1245, and in 1298 created an office for the protection of public rights­ of-way. The tides and competences of enforcing authorities, and the exact content and date of laws, differ from city to city. But there is a broad paralelism throughout the thirteenth century in the concerns addressed and the remedies devisedY Antiquated urban structures and commonly accepted, unwritten norms of urban development were being overwhelmed, in all the Italian communes, by an expansion of trade and industry, and a growth of population - not least from immigrants, new to the city - that had been accelerating since the tum of the millennium. As inhabitants and businesses multiplied, arteries of communication were becoming choked with traffic, blocked with stalls, and fouled by wastes; public lands were being ocpied left and right by private builders; fires were spreading farther as houses pressed ever closer together. Similar problems with similar causes have bedeviled our own cities in the twentieth century, and we have responded to each new assault upon public amenity with new regulations and policing bodies. So also did the communes.U There is no trace in Venice of legislation for wholesale urban renovation, such as the Praecepta of the commune of Vicenza of 1208, by which 103 delle fonti relative alia storia di Venezia, sez. 1", Archivi pubblici, [VIII]lDeputazione di storia pattia per Ie Venezie, Monumenti stooo, N.S. XXII (Venice, 1985) xxi")[XVii. 11. Cf. F. Bocchi, uNontiva urbanistica, spazi pubblici, dispdsiZioni antinquinamento nella legislazione comunale erniliana," in Attraverso Ie cina iti.diane nel Medioetlo, ed. F. Bocchi, (Casalecchio di Reno, 1 987) 107-124 (repr. in c"ltura e socisea nell'ItAlia medievale. Stud; per Paolo Brad, Istituto storico per il Medio Evo, Sludi storici, CLXXIV/ct.XXVII [Rome, 1988) I, 9 1-115 ), J. Heers, uLes villes d'Italie centrale et I'urbanisme ," in Melanges d4 fr�e d4 Rome, Moyen Age CI (1989) 67-93, and Braunfels, Mittelalterliche Stadtbaubnst, 86-130. 12. In the case of Bologna, a recent writer has interpreted the commune's regulatory and physical interventions in the city fabric as reflecting political conflict rather than pragmatic problem solving; J. Heers, &paces publiques, espaces pril/U dans la ville. LA Liber termiPlOrum d4 Bologrul (1294), Cultures et civilisations midiales, III (Paris, 1984). But his argument rests on an outdated understanding of the city's towered residences as private fortresses, and his account of its factions is ill-informed and grossly simplified. For the last point, se G. Fasoli, "Un nuovo Iibro su Bologna," Sto,;a della citta, n" 31/32 (IX, iiiliv ) (1984) 145-1 54. For tow­ ered residences, se G. Fasoli, "Appunti sulle torri,'cappelle gentilizie e grandi casate bolognesi Era il XI e il xm secolo," 11 CarTobbio I (1975) 145-157, and A. A. Settia, "L'esportazione di un modeno urbano: torri e case forti nelle campagne del nord ltalia," Socieea e storia XI (1981) 27 3-297. .

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property owners in nine different parts of town were ordered to take down at their own expense walls, columns, porticoes, stairways, and other structures, seemingly in order to clear obstructed streets.13 In Venice, major interventions in the urban fabric were decided upon piecemeal, and the commune either assumed the costs directly or found ways to distribute them among public and quasi-public entities, acquiring in this way the power of management over important parts of the city. The major interventions of the commune were three: a new center for trade was fostered at Rialto, a new center for construction and maintenance of the Venetian fleet was created at the Arsenal, and a new civic square was laid out at S. Marco. The market of Rialto had started as a gathering of private traders on the west shore of the first bend of the Grand Canal.14 Markets for everyday neces­ sities, where tradesmen leased stalls from the local church on its campo, or square, must have existed from early times in the city's various neighborhoods.1S But a privately owned market formed at Rialto at an unknown time. Like the extra-urban markets recorded outside major mainland cities in the early Middle Ages - for example, the markets of S. Nazaro in Cremona, S. Martino in Pavia, Pittola in Piacenza, and S. Zeno in Verona - it was here that export­ import trading began to concentrate.Iii On the mainland, the rise and growth of such eccentrically situated markets had been due, at least in part, to their topograprucal location: in sparsely settled suburbs that afforded ample space, or close to major roads and rivers that afforded direct access to distant markets. Rialto had an ideal situation in these respects too. It was not among the early residential settlements and thus must have been for long relatively unencumbered with structuresP It was on the deepest waterway of the arcru1 3 . B. Brogliato, II centro storico di Vicenza nel dureto edilU:io del 1208 (Vice nza, 1979). The author convinci ngly sets aside the argumen t of other scholars, that the Praecepta should be da ted to 1197 or before. 14. The standard history is Cesi and Alberti, Rialto. For the period of the Rena issance se the recent work by D. Calabi and P. Morachiello, Rialto: Ie fabbriche e il Ponte 1514-1591 (Turin, 1987). The name "Rivus altus," signifying deep water, first mean t Ven ice as a whole, that is, the en tire archipelago occupied by the city. Thus, in the Middle Ages the principal waterway was termed "Cana le de R ivo alto" ra ther than Grand Canal, and notarial acts, no matter in which part of the city th!:J' ha d be indited, bore the datatio "R ivoalto." As narrated by a thirteth-century chronicler, the representatives from throughout the Venetian territory who elected Pietro Ziani doge in 1205 as bled "ad urbem magnam que vocatur R ivum-altum"; "Historia ducurn," 95,1.1. 15. The so-caled Chronicon Altinate, in the version compiled at the tum of the eleventh to twelfth ce ntury, mentions a market operated by the bishop on Saturdays at OlivoloiCastello; Origo civitatum, 42. Markets by S. Giovani in Bragora, S. Polo, and St. Mark's are mentioned in the thirtenth ce ntury but were probably much older; B. Cecchetti, "Le industrie in Venezia nel sec. XIII," Archivio veneto IV (1872) 211-257, resp., 222, 251 and pasm. 16. For extra-urban markets on the mainland, d. R . Greci, "Luoghi di fiera e di mercato nelle citti medievali dell'Itaiia padana," in Studi in onere di Gino Barbieri. Problemi e metodi di stof'ia el ec onomia (Pisa, 1983) II, 943-966, esp. 948-951. 17. Even in the twelfth century the area included farmed land. Cf. the dispute of 1134 between the Basilio (=Basego) a nd Gradenigo concerning an ex-Gradenigo property at R ialto comprising both masonry structures and vineyards: I. Fees, Reichtum und Macht, 273-274, n° 19.

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Urban and Architectural Forms

pelago, the artery from which the whole of the city's capillary network of rii was nourished, leading at one end directly to the nearest mainland markets via the rivers Sile and Brenta, and at the other to more distant mainland markets and overseas emporiums via the Adriatic. Rialto was different in one important respect. Whereas the extramural markets of mainland cities had been fostered, protected, and exploited by lay and ecclesiastical lords with policing and taxing powers, the market of Rialto, when first heard of in the eleventh century, was controlled by private owners who had no administrative or fiscal powers of their own. They were no more than proprietors of the market area and structures, on which they levied rents. These private owners were the Gradenigo and the Aurio, among the leading families at the time.18 In a patrimonial division of 1051 two Gradenigo brothers divided, inter alia, an unspecified number of multistory structures (solar;,) at Rialto containing shops (voltas) and stalls (stationes), bounded by the Grand Canal, the rio di S. Giovanni (which no longer exists), and other properties owned by the Aurio.19 The latter, in tum, are the originators of an act of 1097 by which they gave one entire suite (ordo) of shops and stalls in mercato de Rivoalto to the state.20 Their gift set in motion the slow transfor­ mation of this previously private market into a state enterprise. The government never owned all of the market district. The Gradenigo retained their shops and stalls for centuries, and other private families owned or acquired property in the area.21 Noncommercial and commercial activities continued alongside one another for a long time; only in the 1220s, for instance, did the Gradenigo begin to vacate their residences at Rialto and move to less valuable locations.22 Only in the thirteenth century, for that mat­ ter, did the state begin to apply an increasingly rigorous control to market activities and invest increasingly larger funds in the maintenance and expansion of the market fabric. In 1164 and 1187, by contrast, the government had been willing for a fixed period to transfer collectibles - rents on its market properties and even some levies on market transactions - to a group of private individuals in exchange for a large 10an.2J

18. Both figure prominendy in government offices and actions during the eleventh century; cf. G. Rosch, Der IIenezianische Adel, Kieler historische Studien;XXXII (Sigmaringen, 1989) 65. 19. R. Fulin, "Le carte del Mille e del Millecento . . . nel R. Archivio Notarile di Venezia trascritte da Baracchi Antonio," part i, Archiuio Veneto VI (1873) 317-319, n° ii. The name of

the location is not given, but the property boundaries place it exactly on the site of the Rialto market. Cf. the sketch plan in Fees, Reichtum unci Macht, 129. 20. S. Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia, 2nd. ed. (Venice, 1853) I, 396-397 (repr.: Venice, 1972, I, 284-285). 21. E.g., the Ziani, owners by 1228 of extensive holdings at Rialto that came in part from the Basego and Orseolo; Fees, Reichtum unci Macht, 127-134. (Fees also diagrams, on p. 129, the holdings of the Gradenigo.) Other properties belonged to the Viadro and Zorzi in 1224; Deliber�ioni del MaggioT Consiglio, I, 70, n° 90. 22. As of the 1220s one finds some of them living in the districts of S. Paternian, S. Polo, and S. Silvestro; Cessi and Alberti, Rialto, 25, no 2. 23. Luzzatto, Prestiti, docs. n" 1-3; cf. also his introduction, xii-xiii.

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The transfer of 1164 lists among the rights abdicated by the commune all rents from shops, stalls, benches, and the like, plus all fees paid by foreign traders for use of the commune's standards of weights and measurements. Thus, a bureau of standards had been installed at Rialto by this time. By 1255 a Cons ilium de superstantibus Rivoalti with its own constitution (capitolare) had existed for some time.24 By 1282-1283, when an effort was made to rationalize the state administration and eliminate, where possible, magistracies no longer needed, government offices were organized into three major groups: those of San Marco, those of Rialto, and those abroad. Here, under offices at Rialto, we find twenty-seven further magistracies besides the Superstantes, concerned with trade, commercial shipping, taxation, and public order. Their exact dates of foundation are unrecorded and their capitolari undated. But legislative strictures added to the capitolari by the Great Council are dated and show that one body, the Superstantes (later Vicedomini) Funtici Theotonicorum, was functioning already in 1242; by the same token another thirteen bodies were already active in the 1250s. Actual dates of foundation were presumably still more remote. The Fondaco dei Tedeschi, for instance, governed by the body r ecorded in 1242, is itself already mentioned in the 1220s.25 This institutional growth ran parallel with physical growth. The area drew population around it. By 1156 a marshy zone to the south had been partly filled and colonized as an extension of Rialto, the new district of San Matteo.26 Space at the market itself grew increasingly short. Between 1222 and 1228 the government had moved one large group of traders - those from German-speaking lands - out of the area and established them across the Grand Canal, in a state-run hospice and trading mart of their own, the Fondaco dei Tedeschi I have just mentioned. A wooden bridge was built to link the two sides of the Grand Canal, the first Rialto bridgeP In 1229 two 24. Additions to the capitolare dated 1255 and after are entered in Deliberazioni tkl Maggior Consiglio, II, 309 310. How much earlier the offi& and its constitution were composed we do not know; Cessi and Alberti, Rialto, 29, n. 3, 163. 25. The "Rubrica continens sub se consiIia omnibus et singulis officialibus Rivoalti pertinentia" of 1282-1283 is published in Deliberazionj del Maggior Consiglio, II, 252-314. The Renaissance historian M.S!Uludo attributed the creation of six of these offices, namely those overseeing guilds, weights and measures, and trade and taxation of certain foodstuffs to Doge Sebastiano Ziani (1172-1178); Vite tki Dogi,285. Of the Fondaco we know that its site was acquired by the commune in 1222 and that it was already functioning in 1228; K.-E. Lupprian, "Zur Entstehung des Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venedig," in Grundwisenschaften und Geschichte. Festschrift fur Peter Acht (Munchner historische Studien, Abtlg. Geschichtl. Hilfswissenschaften, XV) (Munich, 1976) 128-134. 26. In February 1155 m.lI. ( 1156 st. eire.) new residents of the district donated land to the patriarch of Grado for construction of the church of S. Matteo; Comer, &clesiae lIenetae, III, 177-178. (The act is misdated 1155 by many writers and misprinted 1153 by others.) One hundred years later the district was still growing, as we learn from a resolution of 1256 by the Great Council, requiring individuals who had received permission to fill the piscina of S. Matteo to complete the work of embanking and paving the fiU, and building landing stairs on the edge to the Grand Canal; Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio, II, 50, n° xxvi. 27. Its exact date and form are unknown. Fourtenth-century chroniclers like Dandolo =

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

other new marts for traders were ready for operation.lI These were the first major government interventions in the urban configuration of Rialto. Con­ tinuously thereafter gov ernment moneys were expended to improve the mar­ ket by paving it, adding to it, and widening or creating streets for better access to it. By the 1280s even these meliorative measures were unable to deal with the congestion that the market's success caused. Schemes to enlarge the market area began to be studied, leading first to the acquisition of houses and a small clearing on the west, where an anex to the market was installed in 1281-1288, Rialto Nuovo, and then to the wholesale renovation of the old market buildings and enlargement of the original square in 1305-1322.29 By its unsystematic but growing involvement with Rialto, institutionally and urbanistically, the commune prompted the growth of the entire area into a densely built up core of commercial structures, with a ring of residential districts around it. The growth was unplanned and the result untidy, reflecting decisions made opportunistically and piecemeal by private persons and various government agencies. The other two developments had different histories and different results. The Arsenal, in its heyday a vast spread of ship basins and workshops where the state built, maintained, and armed its galleys and round ships, and manufactured and stockpiled military supplies, seems to have been developed entirely at government initiative. As in the maritime cities of the mainland, construction and operation of seagoing ships were originally a private enterprise in Venice. Small shipyards were scattered throughout the city; orders to build ships were given by individual traders and syndicates of traders to indepen­ dent artisans;JO crews and cargo were recruited on the open market. In 1206 we hear for the first time of an arsana in the city, albeit without particulars of place or ownership. From the 1220s we begin to hear regularly of an arsana near Olivol
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The arsana of Castello was not the only one operated by the state. In 1281 we hear of another one, at Terranova (an extension to one of the islands of S. Marco, occupied by the Giardinetto Reale today).31 Nor did these state arsenals displace private enterprise. Private shipowners seem to have used communal facilities alongside the government until 1289.33 As late as 1301 the state was having galleys built at private shipyards as well as at its own.34 Specialized manufactures like oars were acquired ready-made from subcon­ tractors rather than fabricated in the government yards.3s Even so, state involvement with ship construction and maintenance seems to have gained steadily throughout the thirteenth century. An official supervising the "servici[um] arsane et galearum ," with the services of a bookkeeper­ scribe, is recorded in 1223 and was not necessarily the only one.3' By the mid-

1206, according to B. Cechetti, "La vita dei veneziani fino al sec. XII," A rch i vio veneto II (1871) 1 1 7. An arsana on the site of the Arsenal defines one side of a property situated near Castello in a transaction of 1 220; R. Predelli, ed., I libn co_emoriali della Republica di Venezia. Regesti, I, Deputazione veneta di storia patria, MOtImenti storici, I (Venice, 1 876) 169, n" 1. In 1223 the government was having private properties "ex altera parte arsane versus Castellum" appraised - one would imagine because it was intended to expropriate them; Bilanci generali della Repubblica di Vene.tia, ed. F. Besta, I, i, R. Commissione per l a pubblicazione dei documenti finanziari della Repubblica di Venezia, ser. 2', Bilanci generali, I, i (Venice, 1912) 27-29, n" 1 1 -13. Modem authors have confidendy dated the Arsenal's foundation to 11 04 on the

basis of an inscription there. & two recent writers demonstrate, this inscription was invented and erected in the early 19 th century by the engine Giovanni Casoni, who oversaw the Austrian restoration of the complex; Bellavitis, L 'Arsenak, 21; Concina, L'Arunak, 9. 1be word arsana derives ultimately from the Arabic "dar al sin'a," or "dar al sana'a," with the general meaning of an industrial enterprise or factory. Some writers such as Concina, op.cit., 16-17, have therefore sugges ted that the Venetian Arsenal was modeled on the state ports of the Islamic Levant, North Africa, Spain, and Sicily. But state ports also existed in great numbers on Byzantine coasts, several of them in Constantinople, and these were termed arsenals too, the word having been imported into Greek from the Arabic. In the form it took in Venice and other Italian states, it derives not from the Arabic root but from the Greek derivative. See M. Cortelazo, L'i"flusso Ii"putico greco a Venezia (Bologna, 1970) 28-33, citing parallel examples elsewhere in Latin tertories. Fbr the ports of Constantinople, se Janin, Constantinopk /ry.tantirJe, 225-240; Muller-Wiener, BildJexikOrl, 56-63. 32. DeliberaDoni del Maggior Consiglio, II, 244, n" x. Gallicciolli, Memorie vmete, I, 275, reports reading in an otherwise unidentified "Cronaca di Muglia" that fifte state galeys were built in the yards o.t Terranova in 1299. By 1319 the place was no longer in use as a shipyard but served to stOre lumber; in 1333 it was enclosed in a masonry embankment toward the Bacino, rendering it unfit for shipbuilding; in 1341 the state granaries were built on its site; Cechetti, "Vita dei veneziani," resp. parts ii, 7, n. 2, i, 36, n. 2, and iii, 7, n. 6 (separately: resp. 72, n. 2, 36, n. 2, 72, n. 6). 33. In this year private shipbuilders were excluded from state arsenals by resolution of the Great Council; F. Zago, Capitolare dell'Arsenak (in pres), cap. xxiii; an extract in Bell avitis, A"senak, 43, n. 27. 34. Luztto, Presti';, doc. n" 72. 35. An order for 1,00 oars in 1224 is recorded in Delibera.tioni del Maggior Omsig/io, I,

59, n"49. 36. Ibid., I, 52, n" 20. The document records the bokkeeper-scribe's oath of office and

thus refers to him alone. His supervisor is a certain Iohan Boli, the man who accepted the fust delivery of 806 oars on the order for 1,000 recorded in 1224; d. n. 35. Boli reappears several times thereafter, consigning vess and war machines to authorized borrowers from Pola and Zara, or receiving them back from the latter; ibid., I, 82, n"130 (1225), 1 47, n" 54·55

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

thirteenth century the supervisors were, in fact, a body of three, called patroni arsenatus, with a written constitution.37 As of 1265 the patroni were required to have ready for use at all times 100 "maderios segatos" (seasoned and dressed timbers) "pro laborerio galearum"; as of 1276, to have four galleys and two lesser vessels ready to take to the water at all times.38 A steady suc­ cession of improvements in the facilities of the arsenal in Castello accompanied this growth of administrative control, beginning likewise in the 1220s: the access canal was deepened, buildings for rope casting, sailmaking, storage of oars and munitions, and similar functions were built in increasing numbers along the canal and at the sides of the ship basin.39 One never reads in the sources of improvements in the arsenal of Terranova, only in that of Castello. Whereas Terranova was hemmed in by government buildings and early residential districts, the arsenal of Castello lay in a region of marshes and stagnant waters that had remained largely'undevel­ oped down to the thirteenth century. It was closer to the sea as well. By the beginning of the fourteenth century the establishment ocupied not only the area of the original basin, called the darsena vecchia today, but also a consid­ erable stretch of land to the east and along the banks of the rio dell'Arsenale. The yards in Terranova meanwhile fell into disuse.40 What with their demise and a government decree requiring the patroni henceforth to do all shipbuild­ ing in the state yards,41 the Arsenal at Castello became increasingly short of space. Work to �xpand it began in the second half Of the 1320s and finished still before the Black Death, adding a darsena nuova half again as large as the 01d.41 The constant growth at government initiative of the Arsenal in Castello is amply attested, thus, from the early thirteenth century onward. We do not know when it was founded. Perhaps it already existed in 1187, when, by terms of the chrysobull of Emperor Isaac n Angelos, the Venetians undertook,

(1227), 157, n° 89 (1228), 188, n° 66 (1227), 196, nO 92 (1228). By this time the facilities un­ der Boli's management were also serving for the storage of armaments. 37. The earliest addition to the constitution boked in the lioer officjalium palacii is dated 1258; Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio, II, 242, As F. C. Lane pointed out, the name given to these supervisors, patroni, was that used for owners and captains of ships; Nallires et eonstructeurs a Venise , Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, VIe section, Centre de recherches historiques, Oeullres etrangeres, V, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1965) 125 n. 2. 38. Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio, II, resp. 242, n° iii, 244, nO ix. 39. Appraisals of neighboring properties- presumably with a view to expansion of the arsenal- were made in 1223; d. n. 31. Deepening of the canal was authorized in 1224: tiber plegiorum, 38, n° 85. The growth of service structures is charted by Concina, Arsenal, 25-50. 40. By 1319 they had been taken over by the procuracy of Saint Mark to store building materials; in 1340 they became the site of an imposing row of new state granaries; d. Cecchetti, as cited in n. 32. 41. "Patroni non possint facere aptari galeas nec aliquod navilium Communis alibi quam in arsenatu": ASV, Maggior Consiglio, tiber Magnus, fol. 24, 25 feb. 1301 m.lI. (=1302 st. cire.). 42. Some fiftenth-century chronicles date the beginning of work as early as 1304 or 1307, but the earliest acts are of 1323-1325, and work seems to have continued into the 1330s; Concina, Arsenale, 28. '

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43 1

within six months of an imperial request, to make, equip, and man up to 100 galleys for use of the empire, appointing one overseer for every five ships to be outfitted.43 The undertaking implies not merely a place to build the ships, but an organization capable of doing so. Whatever the precise date of foundation, the arsana of Castello preceded by some time the other state shipyards of Italy known to us. The Pisan tersana is first mentioned in 1286, when it must have been quite new, for it is ordered walled.44 The arsenal of Salerno as first described in 1278 in a report of its provisor et praepositus, was suffering from rotten roofs, leaking gutters, and missing doors, "propter vestutatem."4S How many years one should sub­ tract for rot and "vestutas" is impossible to say, but weather and neglect do not take long to produce decay. The arsenal of Amalfi cannot be dated on the basis of texts, but its ship sheds are thirteenth century in style.46 Genoa in­ vested enormous effort in its port facilities although it never operated state shipyards. The greatest activity is of the mid-thirteenth century and after: extension of the Molo was begun in 1248; an office of minister et operarius for maintenance of the Molo is heard of in 1257 and is subsumed in 1281 in the magistracy of the salvatores portus et moduli.47 At best, these various state harbors were being planned when, in the 1220s, the Arsenal of Castello was already expanding its infrastructure and bureaucracy. Urbanistically speaking, although constructed upon a limited area, to serve industrial-military needs, the Arsenal affected the entire city's plan and had a profound effect on the distribution of its population. Venice was begin­ ning to grow rapidly in the twelfth century, but early development had con­ centrated on the west and east banks of the Grand Canal and the districts adjacent to S. Marco. The eastern reaches of the archipelago, toward Castello, had remained underdeveloped, some of them even under water. Establishment of the Arsenal there suddenly drew development. A growth of population is attested by the many nearby churches and hospices founded in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (fig. 2).48 Some were founded on private land, some on lands of the diocese, some on lands granted by the state. Indeed, by 43. Tafel and Thomas, Urir.uruien, I, n· lxxii, esp. 196. 44. F. Bonaini, Statuti inediti della ana di Pisa clal XII al XIV sec. (Florence, 1854-1870)

1, 147. The statute is cited Sy E. Tolaini, Parma Pisarum. Storia urbanistica di Pisa . . , 2nd ed. (Pisa, 1 979) 337, along with a chronicle of unspecified date or attendability, which claims the tersana was begun "nelli anni MCC," op. cit., 93, n. 68. 45. C. Carucci, Codice diplomatico salemitano (Subiaco, 1931-1934) 1, 488495; see also, 11, 163-166 (1284) and 619 (1299). 46. A. Schiavo, M01lmenti della costa di Amalfi (MilanIRome, 1941) 63-68. 47. The basic work is still that of F. Podesta, II porto di Genova clalle origini fino alia caduta della Ref1Nbblk4 (Genoa, 1913). Cf. also E. Poleg, "Porto e cini in eta preindustriale," in II porto di Genova: storia e attualita (Genoa, 1977) . For the salvatores se E. Polegi, Strada Nuova, una lott¢tazio de l Cinquecento a Genova, 2nd. ed. (Genoa, 1972) 4548. 48. In chronological order they are the churches of S. Maria eli GerusaI em (1229), S. Maria della Celestia (1237), S. Anna (1242), SS. Giovan e Paolo ( 1246), S. Francesco della Vigna (1257), S. Domenico (1312), and S. Antonio (1346), and the hospices of the Ca' di Dio ( 1272), S. Bartlomeo (1291 ), del Marion (1 312), and S. Giovanni Battista (1 318). For the churches, se Comer, Ecclesiae venetae, resp., IV, 6, XI, 241, IV, 253, VII, 240, VIII, 4246, .

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Urban and Architectural Forms

the early fourteenth century the state was promoting this growth. One cannot speak of a planed development, as in communal Brescia. But votes of the Great Council in 1303-1307 directing that refuse, rubble, and scavenged mud be dumped at this end of the city, and the licensing here in 1 303 of one of the largest tracts of fill in premodern Venice, four and a half acres, had the effect of directing development to this zone.49 In other growing parts of Venice, resi­ dential building types and inhabitants ran the entire social spectrum, from the palaces of nobili to the row houses or apartment blocks of citizen merchants, trades- and craftsmen. At Castello, however, trades- and craftsmen in row houses and apartments predominated. Perhaps the first settlers were drawn by employment opportunities at the Arsenal, and later ones by social custom. Whatever the reason, the settlers made of Castello a middle- and lower-class district, and it has never stopped being a working class district down to the present day.50 In their straggling layout and slow, halting growth, both Rialto and the Arsenal reflect incremental, ad hoc planing. Government involvement at Rialto grew incrementally as well. Redevelopment of the government center at S. Marco, by contrast, seems to have been entirely a government venture from the beginning, resulted in a civic square of astonishing coherence, and was realized in the short space of a century - less time than that required for the construction of many a medieval church. We know almost nothing of the operative decisions that guided the construction campaign, but, judging from the appearance of the final square, they were informed by a unifying concept, if not from the first, then from early on. 51 The site consisted originally of two islands facing the Bacino di S. Marco, separated by a canal called the rio Batario.51 They were enclosed by a con­ tinuous wall and ringed on all sides, except the east edge of the east island, by buildings belonging to various private families and religious foundations:

VI, 305-306, and N, 307; for the hospices, se F. Semi, Gli

"ospizi" di Venezia (Venice, 1983) 87-102 . 49. Th e state tok over the management o f waste disposal i n 1295 to protect waterways against obstruction. The Iudices publicorum and Supnstantes Rivoalti were directed to orga­ nize a weekly collection and dumping service (a decision reaffirmed in 1298). In 1 303 and again in 1305 they were directed to dump at the eastern tip of the archipelago; in 1 307 an area adjoining the Arsenal at the northwest was declared open for dumping too, cf. ASV, Maggior Consiglio, Libn Pilosus, fols. 1 12 v., 1 1 4 r. (1295, 1298), Ubn Magnus, fols. 46 v. (1 303), 96 r. (1305), Libn Capricomus, fol. 46 r. (1307). For the licenses of 1334 se n. 7. 50. The social character of the district in the sixtenth century is studied from tax declarations by E. Concina, Venezia nell'eta modema (Venice, 1989) 90-95 . 51 . Lavishly illustrated essays on various aspects of the square appear in Piaz S. Marco: l'architettura la storia Ie {u,,;:jon;, ed. G. Samona (Padua, 1970). Unforninately, the pre-Re­ naissance period is dealt with only perfunctorily, and the reconstruction drawings of the medieval square are disfigured by gross inaccuracies, such as inversions and misplacements of buildings. 52. The western island is shut off from the Bacino today by an islet, occupied by the Giardinetto Reale. First mentioned in 1281 (as the site of a shipyard; cf. note 32 above), it went under the name Teranova in the Middle Ages, indicating clearly that it was fill. How long before 1281 it was created we do not know.

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houses and shops, two churches (S. Basso, and SS. Gimignano and Menna), and a hospice for pilgrims to the Holy Land (the Ospedale Orseolo). On the east edge of the site stood the center of government: the Ducal Palace and the palace chapel, St. Mark's. The chapel's bell tower stood away from the church, among the other buildings. An L-shaped, open field, termed a brolium by early writers, lay in front of St. Mark's; one leg led to rio Batario, the other, traversed by a dead end waterway, extended toward the Bacino di S. Marco. Owned by the convent of S. Zaccaria, the field was used for meetings of the citizenry in condone, to elect doges and act on important matters of state. In the 1 160s or 1 1 70s a radical transformation of the two islands was begun. The enclosing wall was demolished; the brolium was enlarged on its east­ west axis by covering over the rio Batario, demolishing the church of SS. Gimignano and Menna that had stood on the rio's banks, and building it anew at the west end of the enlarged field; the north-south leg of the brolium was regularized by filling the waterway that crossed it; a suite of entirely new buildings was erected around the enlarged and regularized brolium; and the main street linking the area with Rialto was improved. The new buildings included, along the north side of the enlarged brolium, a continuous tract of row houses equipped with shops on the ground floor. Similar houses were built on each side of the new SS. Gimignano and Menna, at the west end of the brolium, and more such houses along its south side. All these houses were four stories high. A new hospital for the infirm (the Ospedale di S. Marco), only three stories high, was erected on the south side too. The shops, all the houses on the north and west, and some of those on the south were available for rent by private tenants; the remaining houses on the south served as offices and residence for the administrators (called procurators) of St. Mark's. Rooftop cresting and a ground-floor arcade on columns and piers continued across the fronts of all of the housing tracts. Similar arcading and cresting decorated the new Ospedale di S. Marco and also the old Ospedale Orseolo, which therefore must have been rebuilt. The exterior form of the new SS. Gimignano and Menna is unknown, but St. Mark's was drawn into the scheme by construction of the elaborate, columnar facade that still exists today. The doge's palatium was enlarged by the addition of a new palace for the commune's assemblies, and anodier one for its courts.S3 Their fronts, to the water and to the brolium's southern extension, were also articulated with ar­ caded porticoes. Two colosal columns, reportedly spolia from Constantinople, were erected at the edge of the Bacino, and ancient statues, also spolia, were

53. 1be palatium comunis is first mentioned under that name in 1224; Deliberazioni del MAggior Ccmsiglio, I, 26, nO 94. Its construction is attibuted to the reign of Doge Sebastiano

Ziani ( 1 1 72-1 178) by the "Historia ducum," 80, note .. , and by all the major later chronicles. The palatium ad ius recldendMm is not mentioned under that name before 1422; G. B. Lorenzi, Morwmenti per servire alia $wria del Palazo Ducale (Venice, 1 858) nO 148. • . •

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

placed on top to symbolize the city's patrons: a bronze lion for Saint Mark and a stone warrior slaying a dragon for Saint Theodore.54 Little is known about the financing and administration of this vast devel­ opment. When the piazza was paved, in 1266, expenditure of the neCessary funds was committed by the Great Council to the Procuracy of St. Mark. The latter, first recorded in 1 152 as the Opus ecclesie sancti Marci, must have be­ gun as the office of works for the basilica, the rebuilding of which was launched in the mid-eleventh century. Over time, however, the office evolved into a fiduciary authority for the management of St. Mark's endowment, state funds and private funds, trusts and estates.55 In as much as St. Mark's was the ducal chapel, procurators were appointed by the doge upon election in the Great Council, so that they were, in effect, public officials. The procuracy's pre-sixteenth-century archives are lost, but from other sources we learn that already in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it was licensing shops, collecting rents, looking after waste disposal, and keeping public order on the piazza and piazzetta. The records of the Renaissance and later times that do survive show the procurators collecting rents, meeting expenses, and regulating daily activities in the entire ring of buildings and on the square itself. 56 It would seem that the government had used the procuracy as the executing authority for the medieval development, conveying into the former's hands the properties that were acquired and the moneys that were appropri­ ated for it.57 With its paving in the mid-1260s the new square was apparently com­ plete. A chronicle written between circa 1265 and 1 275 recognizably de­ scribes the whole ensemble.s8 Throughout the communal period, and in the later centuries of oligarchic rule, it served as the principal stage for civic ritual in Venice: the regular processions and fairs that marked the Venetian liturgical and secular calendar; the extraordinary processions held in celebration of 54. Resp., B. Ward Perkins, "The Bronze Lion of St. Mark in Venice," Antiquity XXI (1947) 23-41, and L. Sartorio, "5. Teodoro, statua composita," A,te 1!eneta I (1947) 1 32-134. Cf. G.N. Urbani de Ghelthof, Le colonne della Piazzetta. Memoria sjorica (Venice, 1 879). 55. For the paving of the square, se Dandolo, Chronka, 314, 1.13, and Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio, II, 386. For the procuracr's history, se Mueller, "Procurators of San Marco." 56. Only the Ducal Palace and the churches of S. Basso and 55. Gimignano and Menna escaped the procurators' supervision. The first was managed by government councils and bureaus, the others, being separately endowed, were managed by chapters of their priests. 57. Another instance when state property was conveyed into the hands of the procuracy is the grant to the opus of St. Mark's of Venice's enclave in Tyre (acquired by the Venetians for aiding the crusaders in 1 124), stipulated in 1 1 64 and reaffirmed in 1 1 75; Tafel and Thomas, U,kunden, I, n" lix and lxiii. Use of a city's leading workshop, normally the local "Opera del Duomo," to manage on the city's behalf construction of public buildings and squares is attested in the fourteenth century in Bologna, Florence, and Orvieto; se respectively, Fanti, S. Petronio, 1 1 1-1 1 3, C. Frey, Die Loggia de; Lanzi zu Plorenz: (Berlin, 1885), and Marilena Rossi Caponeri, " II duomo e l'attiviti edilizia dei Signori Sette (1295-13 13)," in II duomo eli Orvieto, ed. Lucio Riccetti (Baril Rome, 1 988) 29-48. 58. Martino Da Canal, Les estoi,es de Venise, ed. A. Limentani (Florence, 1972) 128. .

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victories, treaties, and the like; even the paradigmatic executions of crimi­ nals.s9 Of the medieval square, only St. Mark's and the two columnar monu­ ments survive today. The Ducal Palace and its additions, the Ospedale Orseolo and Ospedale di S. Marco, and the porticoed houses were replaced in the Renaissance. SS. Gimignano and Menna was totally rebuilt, and then, in the nineteenth century, razed. The pavement was many times relaid, last in the nineteenth century, and the campanile of St. Mark's fell down in 1902. Even the shape of the main piaza is no longer as it was, for the buildings put up in place of the procurators' houses and the Ospedale di S. Marco are set back from the foundation line of the thirteenth century. We can see the original ensemble only by looking at early views (figs. 3-4}.6O Beginning in the late twelfth century, all of the communes of the Italian mainland built themselves new administrative buildings, and most laid out new civic squares.61 Previously, even during the first decades of communal government, the center of civic administration and ritual in mainland cities had been the local cathedral, episcopal palatium, and cathedral square. But in winning their long war against Emperor Frederick I, the communes successfully asserted, among other things, their independence of the bishop. Their new status brought a swift growth of communal powers, assemblies, and magis­ tracies and reinforced the hold that the commune had on imaginations as a

59. For processions, se E. Muir, Cillie Ritual in Renaisance Venice (Princeton, 1981), esp. 1 85-250. For executions, se G. Ruggiero, "Law and Punishment in Early Renaissance Venice," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology LX IX (1978) 243-256, and idem, Violence in Early Renaisance Venice (New Brunswick, 1 980) 47-49. 60. The illustrated views are Gentile Bellini's Procession in St. Mark's Square of 1496 (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice) and Jacopo de' Barbari's woodcut View of Venice of 1500. Se, respectively, S. Moschini Marconi, Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia. Opere d'arte de; secoli XI V e XV (Rome, 1955) nO 62, and J. SChulz, "J. de' Barbari's View of Venice . . . ," Art Bulle­ tin LX (1978) 425-474, 744. In Bellini's painting the medieval annexes of .the Ducal Palace have already been replaced. In Jacopo's woodcut the new Torre del Orologio has taken the place of a portion of the row houses on the north. 61. For communal palaces in Italy, se Paul, Mittelalterliche Kommunalpalitste, which provides more, and more: reliable, information than P. Racine, "Les palais publics dans les communes italiennes (XII-XIII" siecles)," in Le paysage urbain au Moyen Age. Actes du Xle Congres des historiens mediivistes de I'enseignement superieure (Lyon, 1981) 1 33 153. The word palace has a general meaning today of a large, imposing, secular building. In the Middle Ages, by contrast, it signified the seat of a ruling authority. Se Paul's chapter 3, on the origins of the building type, and C. R. BrUhl, and " ll 'palazzo' nelle cina italiane," in La coscienza cittadina nei comuni italiam del Duecento. Atti del XI Convegno del Centro di studi sulla spiritualita medievale (Todi, 1972) 265-269. The attempt of G. Soldi Rondanini to establish a hierarchy of communal building types, by which public buildings styled pa latia serve one function, and those termed domus, so­ laria, and camere another, draws on too small a sample of instances to allow any conclusions; " Evoluzione politico-sociale e forme urbanistiche nella Padania : i palazzi pubblici," in La pace di Costanza 1183. Un dif(rcik equilibria di poteri (Bologna, 1 984) 85-98. For squares d. Racine, "Naissance de la place civique en Italie," in Fortifications, portes de lIilles, places publiques dans Ie monde mediterraneen, ed. Jacques Heers, Cultures et civilisations mediivales, IV (Paris, n.d.) 301-32 1 . . . •

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

symbol of the collectivity. Driven by new practical and representational needs the communes now became builders. The earliest communal palatia that we can date with confidence were put up in the 1 180s and 1 190s, in Bergamo, Brescia, Mantua, Modena, Padua, Pavia, Piacenza, and Verona. Other com­ munes built theirs in the thirteenth century, and, as time passed, nearly all the cities added a second palace, some a third, and a few even a fourth, to house their swelling councils and bureaucracies. In many cases these palaces were built at a distance from the cathedral precinct, and a new civic square was developed around them. An example in all respects is Bologna, where the commune first made use of the church of S. Ambrogio and the small square and buildings that lay around it, safely inside the then existing walls, whereas the cathedral lay outside. Soon this site was outgrown, and in 1200 properties were purchased nearby to build a new communal palace and lay out a new square. A second palace was built adjacent to the first in the 1220s, a third in the 1240s, and a fourth was created in the 1 330s by converting an older building in the area, bought for use as a granary, into office space. Meanwhile, a first expansion of the square was begun in the 1250s; further expansions followed in the 1280s and in 1390-1400, when S. Petronio was rising on the south side of the square.62 Communal councils and magistracies proliferated in Venice too, so that between the mid-twelfth and the mid-thirteenth centuries, like their mainland peers, the Venetian authorities must have been increasingly pressed for space.63 Furthermore, as power passed from the ducal court to the councils of the commune, Venetians, like mainlanders, may have wanted to give architectural expression to the change. Yet, considerations of space and constitutional innovations cannot have weighed as much in Venice as on the mainland. No government purpose was served by the bulk of the buildings put up around the new piazza. Nor was there a need in Venice to construct ex novo symbols of independent, secular rule; such a government had always existed and had always displayed a meeting place and a palatium th'at it could call its oWIi;' : -

..

62. For Bologna's civic palaces, cf. Paul, Mittelalterliche Kommunalpalaste, 126-1 30. For its square, wrongly reported by modem authors to have be laid out in toto in 1200-1203, se G. Guidicini, Case notabili della dna di Bologna (Bologna, 1 868-1 873; repro Bologna, 1972) 11, 332-344, 359-368, 38 8-392, 397414. S. Petronio was built, not as a cathedral, but as a temple to the city patron, endowed and managed by the commune; Fanti, S. Petronio, 1245. 63. For the growth of councils, cf. R. Cesi, Vene.da nel Duecento: tra Oriente e Occidente (Venice, 1 985) 6-18 , his 5toria della RepubbUca di Venezia, 2nd. ed. (MilanlMessina, 1968) I, 170-172, 271-273, and Rosch, Venezianiscber Ade/, 84-85. For the multiplication of courts, cf. Roberti, Magistrature giud4iarie, I, 1 80-222; PansoJli, Gerarcbia delle tonti, 3 1 -52, and particularly E. Besta, "L'ordinamento giudiziario del dogado veneziano fino aI 1 300," in Seritti storici in memoria di Giovanni Monticolo (Venice, 1922) 251-273, esp. 257-267. The number and the workload of the procurators of St. Mark doubled in this period too; cE. Mueller, "Procurators of San Marco, 109-11 0. The increased crowding of S. Marco is reflected in the number of state agencies that ended up at Rialto, of which only some were directly concerned with market affairs; se above, at n. 27. II

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The motives that prompted Venetians and mainlanders to undertake these major building schemes must have been different in some important respects, just as the squares they built are different too. The Venetian square, to begin with, was entirely owned by a group of permanent public, charitable, and ecclesiastical institutions, whereas on the Terraferma considerable por­ tions of every civic square remained in private hands. At a total area of more than 12,000 square meters, the piaz and piazetta were far larger than the largest mainland squares, those of Bologna, Florence, Siena, and Vicenza, which did not exceed 9,500 square meters.64 None of the latter, furthermore, comprised as many structures as did the Venetian scheme. Columnar monu­ ments, such as those on the piazzetta, were not erected by any other Italian commune.'s Finally, the piazza and piazzetta were unified formally to a degree not matched anywhere on the mainland. A few comparisons will illustrate this last point. Perhaps the most unified mainland square is the Piazza del Campo in Siena, where all new buildings were required by law to follow a system of fenestration similar to that on the Palazzo Pubblico on the east side of the square." The windows of many buildings on the campo are indeed alike, and most structures are built of the same kind of brick; many sport crenellation like that of the Palazzo Pubblico, and several follow a common roof line. Yet, the Sienese square was never as unified as the piazza and piazzetta, because most structures were private property. Many owners of pre-thirteenth-century buildings with discrepant window forms, or of discrepant heights, neglected to make' alterations. Build­ ers of new buildings did not build to the main roof line when it did not suit them. Citywide height limitations on family towers forced several families to shorten their towers on the campo, but the latter still rear up exhibitionistically above all else except the tower of the Palazzo Pubblico. Continuous porticoes, as on the piaza and piazzetta, are found on many civic squares in northern Italy, where arcaded street fronts were a traditional 64 . Sununi ng together the several spaces hat con'lprise their civic squares, I calculate over 12,000 square meters for Venice (circa 7,200 square meters for the piazza, 4,400 for the piazzetta, and 500 for the space beside the north side of St. Mark's, called the Piazzetta dei Leoncini), circa 9,500 each for Florence, Siena, and Vicenza, and 8,500 square meters for Bologna. Padua, which has two squares of somewhat over 5,000 square meters each, one on each side of the Palazzo della Ragione, reaches 10,500 when they are added together. 65. A column with an equestrian statue of Theodoric on top (called the Regisole) stood since the sixth century in front of the cathedral of Pavia and was reproduced on the city's seal in the communal period. A column with a rider on top, believed to be the ancient city patron, Mars, stood in the Middle Ages beside the river Arno in Florence . However, both monuments were inherited, rather than erected, by the respective communes and are not comparable with the Venetian ones. Small columnar monuments without ornament, or with crosses or other Christian symbols on top, were erected during the Middle Ages in and outside many Italian churches, but their scale, meaning, and patronage make them unlike the columns of the piaz to . Cf. W. Hafrman, Das italienische Saulenmonument. Beitrage %liT Kulturgeschich� des Mittelalters und tier Renaisnce, LV (BerlinlLeipzig, 1 939; repro Hildesheim, 1972) 1 1 1 · 125. 66. The statute, of 1297, is transcribed by Braunfels, Mittelalterliche Stadtbaukunst, 1211 22, and doc. n° 1. Se also L. Franchina , ed., Piazza del Campo. Evoluzjone di una immagine: documenti, vicende, ricostruzjoni (Siena, 1983).

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feature. But older and newer buildings, and private and public property, were mixed quite as much on North Italian squares as in Siena, allowing an endless variety of forms that separated rather than drew together the different fa�ades. Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza delle Frutta in Padua, for instance, are still less unified than the Piaza del Campo despite their arcades.li7 Height, width, and shape of openings, and height, style, and color of the buildings as a whole, vary endlessly, producing an impression of picturesque disorder rather than coherence. Standing apart from the urban schemes of their day, the Venetian piazza and piazzetta resembled more closely the great imperial forums of ancient Rome. To be sure, by the time the Venetian ensemble was built, Roman forums had been rendered unrecognizable in Italy through centuries of despo­ liation and usurpation. But in the coastal cities of the eastern Mediterranean, increasingly familiar to Italian traders from the eleventh century onward, extensive remains still stood. In Constantinople, the most visited port, late­ antique for�s and forumlike squares punctuated the entire length of the city's main street, the Mese. Some were still in use as public squares during the high Middle Ages, when the city became the Venetians' main port of call, whereas the rest, although disused, retained most of their ancient buildings and statuary." At the Imperial Palace and the beginning of the Mese lay a ceremonial square, the Augusteion. Next followed the Forum of Constantine and the Forum of Theodosius. Thereafter, at a large intersection embellished like a forum, the Philadelphion, the Mese divided in two. Its southern branch continued to what may have been another square, the Amastrianon, and thence to the Forum Bovis, the Forum of Arcadius, and a carrefour called the Sigma. The Forum of Constantine was round or oval; the Sigma, judging by its name, was also curved; the other squares were rectangular. They were surrounded by public meeting halls, office buildings, baths and exchanges, and shops, churches, and imperial palaces, linkeq together by porticoes. Of the forums properly so called all but the Forum Bovis contained columnar monuments: in the Forums of Theodosius and Arcadius there were historiated columns covered with spiraling relief, like the columns of"Trajan and Marcus Aurelius in Rome; in the other forums stood plain, colossal columns bearing statues of stone, bronze, or silver. There were also great columns with statues afxed to their sides or set at their bases: in the Philadelphion, for instance, there was a column bearing a huge cross, with statues of Constantine and Helen at its base, and, afxed to the shaft, figures of four embracing men, 67. Piazza delle Frutta, on the north side of the Palazzo della Ragione, occupies the sites of a market square, created by the commune in 1 191-1192, and the former forum. Market and forum were joined and enlarged after the erection of the palazzo in 121 8-1219. Pi azza delle Erbe, on the south side of the palazzo, was created sometime before 1262. Cf. C. Gasparotto, "II foro civile di Patavium nella toponomastica medioevale," Accademia patavina di scienze, lettere ed am, Ani e �morie LX (1 964 1965) part iii, 373-392. Piazza delle Erbe is illus­ trated in P. Mareno, I partie; di Padova (Milan, 1986) 1 35, fig. 190. 68. For the forums of Constantinople, se Janin, Constantinople byzantine, 59-72, and MUlIer-Wiener, Bildlex;kon, under "Platzanlagen." .,

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thought by ByzantiUe authors to represent Constantine's sons.69 Initially al these squares had been owned and managed by the state. During Byzantium's dark ages of war, pestilence, and religious strife, some were abandoned, and all suffered some measure of usurpation and despoliation, like the forums of the West. But the Augusteion and parts of the Forums of Constantine and Theodosius were still in use when the crusaders arrived in 1204, while the columns in those two forums and in the Philadelphion and Forum of Arcadius remained standing until the days of the Ottomans. All the distinctive features of a Constantinopolitan forum return on the Piazza and Piazetta di S. Marco. This cannot be an accident, any more than the choice of a Byzantine model for St. Mark's itself had been an accident. Bringing the body of Saint Mark to Venice in the ninth century (or a body claimed to be Saint Mark ' s ) and building over it an imitati on of Constantinople's Apostoleion, the Venetians had made manifest the claim of their national church to be an apostolic foundation. They had also given their city, born after the Roman towns of the mainland, the mark of an ancient past. The symbolism was carefully preserved in the eleventh century, when St. Mark's was rebuilt to the identical plan. Nor was it lost on contemporaries: "Quodamodo sedes apostolica, " Saint Peter Damian styled Venice when he preached at St. Mark's shortly after its rebuilding?O Now, casting their new civic center in the urban forms of an imperial capital, the Venetians seem to have been expressing notions about their state rather than their church. In the last quarter of the twelfth century, when the first steps were taken to expand and rebuild the district of S. Marco, it is hard to find any connection between Venice and the ideas one would associate with a forum. However, at the partition of the Byzantine Empire, after the capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1 204, a direct and unequivocal connection was born. Venice acquired the rights to three-eights of the empire's capital and lands, and purchased, in addition, the island of Crete. There were great obstacles to realizing thes� rights: the commune lacked means and men to occupy the territories it had gained; its allies, that is, the other crusaders, were engaged in enforcing their own newly won rights and purloining lands allotted to Venice; its citizens in Constantinople were acting as if independent of their homeland. It was under Doge Pietro Ziani ( 12051228 ), successor to the doge who had led the crusade and negotiated the partition, that these difficulties were overcome. The Venetian colony in Constantinople was brought to heel; Crete was parceled out to private families, and the burden of asserting ownership shifted to them; Venetian adventurers were allowed to establish strongholds on various Aegean islands; knights of 69. Representing the four tetrarchs, the group was actually brough t to Venice in 1204 and now decorates the exterior of St. Mark's; d. R. Naumann's appendix to his " Der antike Rundbau beim Myralaion," Ist4nbuier Mitteilungen XVI (1966) 209-2 1 1 . 70. Cf. O. Demus, The Church of Sa n Marco in Venice, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, VI, 30-60, 96-97.

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other nations who had occupied lands assigned to Venice were sworn to fealty to the doge; Venetian churchmen were installed in the patriarchate of Constantinople and in major bishoprics of the newly Latinized Greek Church. And in this way, step by step, during the quarter-century of Pietro Ziani's rule, the Venetians established effective control over Crete and a chain of islands and coastal ports encircling Greece, from Corfu on the Adriatic to Euboea on the Aegean. It was a good deal less than three-eights, but still a sizable portion of the former Byzantine state, making Venice into the capital of what was truly an empire of its own. "Dominator quarte et dimidie parris totius Romanie," Pietro Ziani styled himself in official acts, and at his death he was remembered as the equal of Caesar and Vespasian.71 In their final form the piazza and piazzetta plainly expressed the new status of Venice as an imperial capital, successor to Constantinople and Rome. This canot have been the plan at first. Acording to Venetian tradition, the first steps in the long building campaign were taken under either Doge Vitale II Michiel ( 1 156-1 1 72) or Doge Sebastiano Ziani ( 1 1 72-1 178), with expansion of the brolium and construction of a palatium communis.72 The -symbolism of the final ensemble would have been meaningless in those years. We must assume that the initial plan was limited to accommodation and expression of the city's new communal institutions, and that it grew to imperial dimensions only later, under Sebastiano Ziani's son, Doge Pietro. Identical squares were not built anywhere else in medieval Italy, but the conditions that made the scheme appropriate in Venice in the age of Pietro Ziani were not repeated in any of the other communes. However, more highly integrated designs for civic squares, and a more ambitious scale of construction do appear in the mainland squares begun after the piazza and piazzetta, and they doubtless owe inspiration to the latter's model.73 Even in the 71 . For the Fourth Crusade and its aftermath, aside from the standard histories of Venice, se F. lbiriet, La Romanie veniiUl'lne au Moyen Age. Le developpemtmt et I'exploitatiol'l du domaine colonial venitiel'l (Paris, 1959); S. Borsari, II dominio veneziano a Creta 1181 XII secolo (Naples, 1 963); id., Studi sulle colonie venezjane il'l Romania. 'till XIII seco/o (Naples, 1 966); and A. Carile, Per una storia dell'impero Iatino di Costal'ltil'lopoli (Bologna, 1978). For the Venetian colony and the tide of the doge, se R. L. Wolff, "A New Document from the Period of the Latin Empire of Constantinople: The Oath of the Venetian podesta," AI'Iaire de l'Institut de phi/o/op et d'histoire orientales et slaves XII (1952 [publ. 1953]) 5 39-573. Pietro Ziani's Roman virtue was remembered in an epitaph on the family tomb, formerly in S. Giorgio Maggiore; Venetiarum historia, 153; Cicogna. Inscrizioni, IV, 609-61 0. 72. Enlargement of the bro/ium and reconstruction of S. Gimignano were attributed to Michiel by Dandolo, Chrol'lica, 73, II. 1 9-2 1 . The early chronicles agree that construction of the new palace was begun under Ziani; "Historia ducum," 80, note • (a passage from a variant version of the chronicle, BNM, MS Ital. CI. VII-212 [7469)); Dandolo, op. cit., 265, 1.25; Venetiarum historiae, 124. Fifteth-century writers expanded on this tradition, making Ziani responsible for the entire piazza; d. Sanudo, Vile dei dogi, 298-299, and Monticolo's notes thereto, identifying possible sources. (The contradiction notwithstanding, Sanudo also repeated Dandolo's claims for Michiel; op. cit., 271 .) Modern writers have setded on Ziani as the doge who saw to everything, adopting Sanudo's account in the first of the two passages cited above. 73 . Examples, other than the squares of Bologna and Siena, already mentioned earlier, are Piazza della Signoria in Florence (expanded in several increments, beginning in 1299);

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fifteenth century, when classical forms were revived more fully than during the Middle Ages, and when architects began to study ancient ruins and texts to understand how the Romans built, the only existing Italian square that exemplified Roman design was the great square in Venice . Purged of medievalisms, its forms were imitated in many Renaissance squares, not least in the new piazza and piazzetta that took their predecessors' place. Thus, Venetian urbanism in the Middle Ages followed the same course as urbanism on the mainland. It was marked in the communal period by a proliferation of new institutions and legal codes, vesting in the state an in­ creasing power to discipline and direct urban growth. The city was expanded, new building types were introduced, and new urban infrastructures were created. But the process was shaped by local conditions, and its unfolding therefore followed a rhythm and pattern only broadly, not exactly, similar to urbanistic changes in the mainland communes. There was no general urbanistic model that guided the Venetians or the other Italian towns. Cities observed one another, no doubt, which was inevitable given their proximity to one another, the commercial ties that linked them, and, after introduction of the podestariate, the constant exchange of administrative officers between them. But they had no shared agenda of urbanistic reform, nor a common heritage of ancient forms and institutions that they sought to revive. Incremental and ad hoc decisions governed urbanistic development in Venice, as everywhere on the mainland. And, when antiquity was invoked as a model, that reflected local conditions tOO,?4 Piazza Maggiore [Garibaldi] in Parma (begun in 1223, expanded in 1281); Piazza Maggiore [dei Cavalli] in Piacenza (begun in 1283); and Piazza della Signoria in Gubbio (begun in 1322) . See, resp., N. Rubinstein, "The Piazza della Signoria in Florence," in Festschrift Hnbnt Siebenhuhnn (Wiirzburg, 1978) 1 9-30; J. Schulz, "The Communal Buildings of Parma," Mitteilungen des kunsthistorischen Institutes in Flor� XXVI (1982) 279-324, esp. 2 82-286, 301; M. SpigaroIi, "Tempio irancescano, palazzo pubbIico, piazza della dna: Piacenza alIa fine del XIII secolo," Storia della dna VII (1983) nO. 26-27, 149-154; and, J. White, Art and Architecture in Italy, 1 250 to 1 400 (Baltimore1HarmondS1Vorth, 1 966) 176-1 79. 74. The following works, listed by author (when there is one) or tide, are cited through out the notes in an abbreviated lonn. G. Bellavitis, L'Arsenale di Venezia, Venice, 1 983. F. Berchet, "ReiaziOJl.e degii scavi in Piazza S. Marco," R. Deputazione veneta di storia piltria, Monumenti storid, set. 4", Miscellanea, XII, 1892, iv. B. Cecchet, "La vita dei veneziani nel 1300," Archivio veneto, XXVII, 1 8 84, 5-54 [=ij, 32 1 -337 [=ii], XXVIII, 1 884, 5-29 [=iiij, 267-296 [=iv], XXIX, 1 8 85, 1 1-48 [=v] (separately: Venice, 1 886) R. Cessi and A. Alberti, Rialto. L'isola - il ponte - il mercato, Bologna, 1934 . E. Concina, L'Arsenale della Repubblica di Venezia Milan, 1984. F. Corner [=Cornelio, Cornaro], Eclesiae Venetae antiquis monumentis, 14 vols., Venice,

1 749.

A. Dandolo, Chronica per extensum descripta, ed. E. Pastorello (Rerum Italicarum scriptores, N.S. XII, i), Bologna, 1938-1942. Delibnazioni del Maggior Consiglio di Venezia, ed. R. Cessi, 3 vols. (Ani delle assemblee costituzionali italiane . . , ser. 3', sez. I ", I-III), Bologna, 1931-1950. W. Dorigo, Venezia origini. Fondamenti, ipotesi, metodi, 3 vols., Milan, 1983. M. Fanti, La fabbrica di S. Petronio in Bologna (Italia sacra, XXXII), Rome, 1980. I. Fees, Reichtum und Macht im mittelalteTlichen Venedig. Die Fami/ie Ziani (Deutsches .

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historisches Institut in Rom, Bibliothek, LXVIII), Tiibingen, 1 988 G. B. Gallicciolli, Delle memorie antiche profane ed ecclesiastiche, 8 vols., Venice, 1795. "Historia ducum Veneticorum,» ed. H. Simonsfeld, in: Monumenta GermaniiU historica, Scriptores, XIV, Hannover, 1 8 83, 72-97. R. Janin, Constantinople byzantine. Developpement urbain et repertoire topographique, Paris, ;11964. Johannes, Diaconus, "Chronicon Venetum,» in: G. Monticolo, Chronache veneziane antichisime (Istituto storico italiano, Ponti per Ia steria d'Italia. Scrittcri secc. X-XII, IX), Rome, 1 890, I [all publ.]. II Liber Communis dettc anche plegiorum . . . , ed. R. Predelli, Venice, 1 872 (=Archivio veneto, III, supplement). , G. Luzzatto, I prestiti della Repubblica di Venezia (Documenti (inanziaritJella Repubblica di Venezia, ser. 3", I), Padua, 1929. E. Miozzi, Venezia nei secoli. La cina, 2 vols., Venice, 1957. R. C. Muller, "The Procurators of San Marco,» Scudi veneziani, XI, 1971, 105-220. W. Muller-Wiener, Bildlexikon %141' Topographie Istanbuls, Tiibingen, 1977. Origo civitatum Italie seu Venetiarum ed. R. Cessi (Istituto- storico italiano, Ponti per la ' storia d'Italia. Scrittcri secc. XI-XII, LXXXII), Rome, 1933. L. Pansolli, La gerarchia delle fonti di diriUo nella legislazione medievale veneziana (Fondazione Guglielmo Castelli, Collana, XLI), Milan, 1970. J. Paul, Die mittelalterlichen Kommunalpaliste in ltalien (doctoral dissertation of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitit, Freiburg i. Br., 1963). M. Roberti, Le magistrature giudidarie veneziane e i lora capitoli , 3 vols. (II-III=R. Deputazione veneta di storia patria, Monumenti storici, XVII-XVIIn, PaduaNenice, 1906-191 1 . M . Sanudo, Le vi te de; dogi, ed . G . Monticolo (Rerum ltalicarum scriptores, N.S. XXII, iv), I [all publ.], Cina di Castello, 1900. G. L. F. Tafel and G. M. Thomas, Urkunden ZU1' iilteren Handels- und Staatsgeschichte tier Republik Venedig (Pontes rerum Austriacarum, 2. Abtlg., Diplomata et Acta, XI-XIV), Vienna, 1856-1857 (repr. Amsterdam, 1964). T. Temanza, Antica pianta dell'inclita ciua di Venezia, Venice, 1 781. Venetiarum histcria vulgo Petro Iustiniano adiudicata, ed. R. Cessi and F. Bennato (Deputazione di storia patria per Ie Venezie, Monumenti sterid N.S. XVIII), Venice, 1964. .

.

•

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.

Schulz: Urbanism in Medieval Venice

Fig. 1 Location of Early Settlements at Venice.

Fig. 2 Thirteenth Century Churches in the Neigh borhood of the Arsenal.

443

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

Fig. 3 Gentile Bellini, Miracle of the Relic of

the Holy Cross, 1 496 (Venice, Gallerie dell' Accademia) .

Schulz: Urbanism in Medieval Venice

Fig. 4 Piazza and Piazzetta di S. Marco, detail from bied's eye view of Venice by Jacopo dei Barbari, 1 497-1500.

445

Commentary

EDMOND FR�ZOULS

about urban and architectural forms express different approaches: they emphasize principally - with a more or less important place for topographical patterns - either ur­ banism and the juridical conditions of its development or architecture, intro­ ducing, in the case of Athens, a dialectical conception of the monumental evolution. The chapters present valuable syntheses about the ancient and medieval cities we are considering. I will not comment in detail on every contribution. Rather, I wish to emphasize the main possible fields of compari­ son - of positive comparison, with points of convergence, or of negative comparison, which, as some contributors have rightly observed, should not be neglected. I begin with two observations about some limits of comparison. First, the speakers, particularly Franek Sznura and Jiirgen Schulz, did not fail to use parallels with contemporary cities. In contrast with Athens and more so with Rome, for which, due to their role and their size, we lack suitable objects of comparison in most periods of their development, Florence and Venice, al­ though highly prominent, nevertheless were more on an equal footing with the major medieval and modem cities of central.and northern Italy. Second, to the two possibilities mentioned before - positive and negative comparisons - we should add a third: the fact that circumstances often make the compari­ son of several cities difficult or impossible, if not generally, at least in a particular area. The first example of such difficulties is natural conditions. Unlike Venice, Florence is an inland city; Athens and Rome are close to the sea but are not harbors. Florence lies in a valley, Venice on lagoon islands, Athens and Rome on steep hills. Furthermore, the time period that is being considered for the various cities differs greatly. For Venice it begins with the birth of the town, whereas for Athens and Rome the origins are remote and hard to reach as much by archaeological means as by the texts. Thus Tonio Holscher and Lawrence Richardson rightly start with the very moment at which one may believe these settlements became towns. For Florence, however, Sznura had also to consider the prehistory of the medieval city; that is, the Roman

T

HE PRECEDING FOUR CHAPTERS

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

colony, which was not a city-state but to a certain extent, particularly through the close connection between the growing of the medieval city and the Roman centuriation, remained present in the development of the medieval city-state. Yet such important observations are possible only in Florence and other rare cases; in Venice, by contrast, there is no perceptible continuity from antiquity beyond the possible influence of the Roman towns of northern Italy and, certainly, the reflection of Constantinople'S town planning. Finally, to leave aside other minor differences, the main sources are not the same: for Athens and Rome they are, above all, literary and archaeological, while for Florence and Venice we have substantial administrative information. Schulz was able to use, besides chronicles, memoirs and biographies of dages, sources like the Deliberazioni del Maggior Consiglio and the Liber plegiorum, which allow us to discover in the areas of jurisdiction and administrative practice important historical facts that escape us for antiquity. These obstacles make comparison not negative, but incomplete or entirely meaningless at least in some areas. Fortunately, there are many other areas where comparison may be fruitful: for example, the social aspects of town planning, its political and religious implications, the function of what we can call "willful urbanization and monumentalization," and finally the pace of evolution. The social side of town planing can be observed in all four cities. In Athens, the first setdement stretches out from the site of the Olympieion to the future agora; the town quarters developing afterwards differ in character, in accordance with the social groups predominant in them; for example, the noble families setde in suburban gardens, craftsmen in the Kerameikos. In classical times, due to the spreading of public monuments, one can notice a reclassifying of settlements; in postclassical Athens, houses lose ground, par­ ticularly in the southwest, while the rich and the poor separate more and more, and empty spaces appear, which are seize4 by the wealthy. In Rome, differentiation arises both on ethnic grounds, as' is indicated already in the legendary tradition Latins and Sabins setde on diff�rent hills; conquered peoples are transferred to the Caelius or the Aventine' - and in a social context: plebeian quarters develop, and throughout the middle republic aris­ tocratic families setde on the Palatine and doubdess also ip. peripheral gardens and parks. In Florence, the withdrawal of population after the Roman period is followed by migrations from the country and new setdements along the main access ways, and then by the construction of ramparts and, beyond them, of the borghi nuovi in the twelfth century. In contrast with such pe­ ripheral quarters, aristocratic residences emerge in the civitas vetus, first with the to"i private, then, at the end of the fourteenth century, inside a wider city wall, with the widespread private buildings modeled on the pattern of the palazzo that was developed a century before in the realm of public architecture. At last Venice, after encroaching on the lagoon in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and then regulating the connections between property and political -

Frezouls: Commentary

44 9

rights, at the beginning of the thirteenth century experiences simultaneously a population increase and a marked differentiation in the housing conditions of various social classes. Specialized quarters appear: the wealthy tradesmen gather around the Rivoalto (Rialto) market, the lower social strata, shopkeep­ ers and workmen, at Castello, in the area of the thirteenth-century Arsenal. Since the fundamental significance of the religious dimension has been underlined before, I may pass on more quickly. In Athens the most striking facts are that the gods first take possession of the acropolis and that the sacred topography is then progressively dominated by political factors, while in Rome a close parallel appears in the establishment of Jupiter and his paredroi on the Capitoline Hill. The spreading of the worship of Fortune - a remote prelude to the rise of Venus to the rank of a city goddess - and the worship of Diana on the Aventine also bear marked political significance, to say nothing of the subsequent increase in the number of temples dedicated by magistrates following the progress of conquest. All these matters have been studied well. But perhaps it would be most attractive to parallel the situation in ancient cities with that in Florence and Venice: in other words, to look at the connection between urbanization and the increase in the number of Chris­ tian buildings, without, however, losing sight of the fact that neither Florence nor Venice had an acropolis. The political dimension is present in all four cases, and it certainly reveals the difference between a standard city and a city-state, which is a center of power. I would like to suggest two points of comparison. First, the function, everywhere of utmost importance, and the progressive development of public open spaces: the agora, the forum, the Piaza della Signoria, Piaza San Marco. Second, the very early, although progressive, creation of places for the exercise of public power: in Athens stoa basi/eios, bouleuterion, tholos of the prytaneis, theater of Dionysos, and so on; in Rome circus maximus, villa publica, comitium, curia, and later the basilicae on both sides of the fo­ rum; in Florence the Palazzo del Popolo in the middle of the thirteenth century, and at the end of the same century the Palazzo dei Priori; in Venice - but only after the market and Arsenal - the palace of the doges, hospital, procuratie, law courts, and palatium communis Venetiarum. It seems to me advisable, in spite the uneven sources and the divergent administrative patterns, to consider as well the way in which public power acts and expresses itself, which is better known, in its organs and above all in its proceedings, in Florence and Venice than it is in Athens and Rome. For Venice, Schulz strongly and happily stressed that point: as early as the first half of the twelfth century, statutes regulated the transfer of ownership, and in the thirteenth century the city-state took measures to help fill in the lagoon. Each city seems to have been involved primarily in urban expansion and construction of public buildings and monuments, but we must ask to what extent such activity reveals a planned program. Apparently, such planning was rather deficient, not only in the medieval cities but also in Rome, where generally the

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initiative was taken by magistrates whose rapid succession precluded its re­ maining in the same hands for any length of time. The question of the extent of this planning is connected, of course, with a fourth major factor: the pace of evolution. In each city-state, development taken as a whole over several centuries seems to have been rather slow. But there are important differences and changes, periods of quickening or stagnancy. Acceleration sometimes was related to some catastrophe, as was the case in Athens after its destruction in the Persian Wars. In Rome, the Gallic fire and subsequent quick recovery seem to have left few traces except for the so-called Servian wall; but the construction of roads and aqueducts, like the Aqua Appia, mentioned by Richardson, must be taken into account as well. Yet the parallel between Athens and Rome may not be drawn too far: the period of extraordinary building experienced by Athens, especially in the days of Pericles, did not continue after the Peloponnesian War, as Holscher underlines, pointing to Athens' tremendous demographic collapse. In Rome certainly the first half or more precisely, the second quarter - of the second century B.C. was a time of acceleration. But after the havoc wreaked by the Second Punic War was repaired, although the city-state quickly took advantage of the conquest of the Orient, nevertheless, the rate of urban construction remained more or less the same until the dictatorship of Sulla. The city underwent a long-range transformation, carried out by fits and starts corresponding to the yearly magistracies and quinquennial censorships, in contrast to the amazingly long political leadership of Pericles. Florence, in spite of a brilliant exception at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, also experienced an irregular and rather lengthy course of urban expansion, marked by, as Sznura says, "sudden accelerations but also a slowing down in urban planning initiatives." And for Venice, Schulz comes to the same conclusion: "[there was] no shared agenda of urbanistic reform. Incremental and ad hoc decisions governed urbanistic development at Vetrice as everywhere on-the mainland." We must admit that "Pericles' century" IQoks like a glorious exception. I wil end with two more observations. First, at least three sites clearly present a bipolar spatial organization: in Athens, the acropolis and the agora; in Rome, the Capitol and the forum (and with the Campus Martius there even appears a third element); in Venice, the opposition of two originally distinct nuclei - in the east OlivokvCastello, center of the ecclesiastical authority, and in the west (and later central) San Marco, seat of civil authority - became even more pronounced when the Arsenal and a popular quarter were established in Castello. Even in Florence there is a dual structure, with the civitas vetus on the site of the Roman town and the civitas nova, but these contrasting denominations include a chronological meaning that is lacking in the other three cities.

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Second, setting up public buildings or areas made it necessary to continu­ ally replan the urban streets, often with an eye to the effects of perspective and symmetry. In Florence this process can be observed particularly well: there such changes first retained and then disturbed the Roman network; but such a result can be seen in the other cities as well, and, at any rate, this is a subject worthy of a comparative study.

Commentary

JAMES ACKERMAN

offer a uniquely dear and informed account of the growth of the four cities discussed, and each presents new and promising insights. Reading them together one can grasp the extent to which there are constants in urban evolution, even over a span of two millennia, and, at the same time, inevitable peculiarities due to the par­ ticular physical, historical, social, and religious situation in each. Differentiation, moreover, characteristically occurs as a result of the disposition of the power­ ful institutions and citizens in each place and time to express their ideologies and ambitions in urban/architectural symbols. We learn from these accounts that although societal structures and goals are perhaps the strongest determinants of urban and architectural form, cities must conform to the physical character of the site and, at least until modern times, to considerations of defense afected by that character. Athens was profoundly affected by the extraordinary formation, the acropolis, which initially was a natural fortress and later evolved into the seat of the holiest shrines of the city-state, and by the facing gentle slope, the Pnyx, which was easily adapted to function as the place of assembly of all the people. Rome's shape was guided by its seven hills, which, with the streams that separated some of them, offered an opportunity to maini3.in the distinctiveness of each separate tribe or village group. The Roman camp at Florence, however, was of a standard form, oriented to the cardinal points, that made no adjustment to the site (the same 'form was adopted throughout the empire regardless of the nature of the site), but as soon as the city began to develop beyond the castrum boundaries, it was reoriented to adjust to the banks of the Amo River (as well as to setement patterns of the borghi outside the Roman walls). Venice's form was determined mostly by the water chanels in the lagoon; no matter how much the inhabitants undertook to extend the settled parts by landfill, the larger chanels dictated their own courses, the Grand Canal being the most obvious example. The influence of defensive measures on the form of the cities discussed was not a particular concern of these chapters; it is difficult to determine with respect to the two ancient cities because we know so little of building at their

T

HE CHAPTERS IN THIS SECTION

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Urban and Architectural Fonns

peripheries; in the case of Florence, however, the three consecutive rings of walls had a strong influence on the pattern of building within, though the last, thirteenth- to fourteenth-century ring, the historical-symbolic significance of which Franek Sznura has imaginatively reinterpreted, left so much unbuilt space within its perimeter that it exercised the least constraint on planning and building (the depopulation due to the Black Death partly explains the miscalculation). Venice was unique in this respect; it was protected by water and required fortifications only at entrances to the lagoon. This explains the extraordinary openness of Venetian architecture, the radical contrast between the exteriors of the doge's palace and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. One fascinating aspect of urban development that emerges from these chapters is rooted in the political structure: at a certain moment in the evolution of institutions a struggle emerges between private and public rights. The early period of urban development is often dominated by powerful individuals and families who create enclaves and claim the right to space that eventually is wrested from them in the interest of the common weal. In fifth-century Athens and in the communal cities of the Middle Ages this ocs with the emergence of more representative forms of governance, while in Rome powerful rulers recognize the advantage of providing amenities of benefit to all classes. In none of the four cities examined was regularity of plan a major concern of rulers and planning officials, although it was already a priority in Pharaonic Egypt and in the Hellenistic foundations of Hippodamus of Miletus. It might be posed as a law of urban form that new town foundations tend to be regular and orthogonal whereas cities that evolve from simple settlements grow organically, with streets and open places forming according to patterns of traffic and loci of markets. So it came about that the core of communal Florence, built on the remains of a Roman castrum, Florentia, that determined its initial quadratic form, gave way as the population grew to organic growth - a phenomenon characteristic of many cities of the late Middle Ages. Romans, in spite of the precise quadratic layout of their military bases, arranged the principal forum of their capital city casually - like the Athenian agora - and the level land alongside the Tiber as an aggiomeration of axially conceived buildings and spaces without an orthogonal street system. (The intriguing observations of L. Richardson, jr, about the role of porticoes as relief elements and as connectors suggest how that lack may have been com­ pensated for.) In Venice, where each of the component islands grew outward by landfill from a central core - often the locus of a parish church - an overall system could not be imposed. Medieval Florentines were eager to create straight and wide streets whenever possible, and sought to achieve them by legislation, as did the projects cited by Franek Sznura of the popular government of 1250-1260 for the avenues following the path of the abandoned twelfth-century walls and for the borghi beyond. Such initiatives were often defeated by political shifts favoring powerful individuals or by the powers of organic growth, as in the case of one projected to connect Orsanmichele with

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the Palazo del Capitano del Popolo, and a modern plan shows how, outside the gates of the Roman walls, the regular internal pattern was abandoned to follow the diverging paths taken by those passing through the gates. Tonio Holscher sees the separation of civic functions in different areas of Athens as developing more distinctly in the fifth century, and the other con­ tributors have brought to the fore the significance of this phenomenon for urban form. We have seen that in early Rome each hill was assigned to a populace of a single origin; in the public areas the forum, which had many temples but served as the main center of social and economic interaction, was kept distinct from the adjacent Capitoline Hill, the site of the Arx and of the temple of Jupiter, and the Palatine, which was to evolve into the site of the imperial palaces. In medieval Florence, the principal ecclesiastical square with the bishop's residence, cathedral, and baptistery was placed on the northern periphery of the Roman grid, while the secular functions - the Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo (Bargello) and the Palazzo dei Priori (Palazzo Vecchio) - were given distinct positions nearer the river. Jiirgen Schulz has emphasized the even greater separation of three civil functions in Venice, the island of Castello being held by the patriarchy, the market and commercial center being concentrated in the Rialto, on both sides of the Grand Canal, and the ducal seat and governmental offices being established around the Piazza and Piazzetta of San Marco. What remains to be done? Scholarship in urban history has understandably focused on the major monuments and open spaces that help us see into the spirit of past times, and this has meant paying less attention to evidence - or not seeking evidence to begin with - of the ordinary, nonrepresentational structures and spaces (Holscher notes that Athenians were less focused on the home than on their public and religious places). We know little about residen­ tial neighborhoods, about the houses and shops of people of modest means, and even less about workshops, bakeries, hospitals, and hospices. This is largely due to the difficulty of excavating beneath thriving modem cities; what we do not know about the vernacular architecture of Rome (consider how little of it is represented on the well-known plastic model of the imperial city) can fortunately be compensated for by the archaeological investigation of Ostia, which never was built over in post-antique times. But this is a rare exception. Finally, since this conference focused on city-states, we ought to ask how these four capitals of city-states may have differed from other cities that were either subject to outside rule or (infrequently) independent but without sig­ nificant territory beyond their walls. The answer canot be precise, but it appears that the capital cities had more ambitious public symbolism in the form of grand squares and monuments, holy precincts, and commemorative sculpture. The dearest example was cited by Holscher: Pisistratus' Altar of the Twelve Gods in the agora, from which roads extended to all of Attica. Schulz's suggestion that the

piazze of Venice were

intended to reflect the fora

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of Constantinople - and thus to lay claim to the inheritance of the Roman Empire - is imaginative and convincing. In sum, as we review these studies we find that no matter how exigent the demands of topography, defense, and utilitarian function may have been in the formation of great cities, it was the symbolization of authority and/or collective aspiration and ideology that most effectively directed the evolution of their urban and architectural form.

PART V

Symbols and Rituals

Symbols and Rituals in Classical Athens

ADALBERTO GIOVANNINI

INTRODUCTION

(2.14-16) reports that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War Pericles persuaded the Athenians to move from the country and to take refuge inside the walls of the capital with their families and belongings. The historian says that this change was very hard for them to accept, that "they were dejected and aggrieved at having to leave their homes and the temples which had always been theirs - relics, inherited from their fathers, of their original form of government - and at the prospect of changing their mode of life, and facing what was nothing less for each of them than forsaking his own town" (2.16.2). He attributes these feelings of the Athenians to the fact that originally Attica had been divided into a number of independent cities that had had litde in common until Theseus unified the country by creating a common capital and a common government and by dissolving the local councils and magistrates. Aristode, who certainly had the unification of Attica in mind, also considers, at the beginning of his Politics (1252b15ff.), the village (kome) as the oldest form of community and the polis as the result of the unification of several villages. This statement of Thucydides is of the utmost importance for the under­ standing of the mentality and of the political, s�ial, and religious life of the Athenian citizen. Athens was a city-state of exceptional size, about 1,600 square miles, with the consequence that for the majority of the Athenians it took several hours to get to the capital. The hardworking, frugal, and self­ sufcient peasant, who'is too busy to meddle in politics, who seldom attends the assemblies and keeps silent, and who dislikes and fears the town, is a typical figure of Athenian tragedy and comedy.Dicaeopolis, the hero of The Acharnians by Aristophanes, hates trade in the city, where he is always cheated, "loathes the town and is sick for his village-home" (v" 33), and dreams of going back there to feast the Dionysia "in the Fields" (v. 202). In the Orestes by Euripides, Orestes is defended in the assembly by a peasant, "a manful man, in town and market-circle seldom found, a yeoman, such as are the land's one stay, ...a stainless man, who lived a blameless life" (Or. 91822).1 Aristotle (Pol. 1318b10ff.l considered that a democracy built on citizens HUCYDIDE.S

1.

Se al so Aristoph. Birds lllf. and Ploutos 25f. and 222; Eur . Suppl. 420ff.; £I.

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Symbols and Rituals

living from agriculture was the best because peasants are busy and therefore have little time for politics. There is evidence that the majority of the Athenians were peasants of this kind.1 Discussions on the working of the Athenian de­ mocracy should not ignore the fact that the average Athenian citizen seldom attended the assembly.J Thus, as Thucydides says, the village, the deme, was for the majority of the Athenians the traditional and daily frame of their social, religious, and political life. This has long been ignored by historians who focused their attention on the city of Athens: on the acropolis, the pnyx, and the agora; on the ecclesia, the council and the magistrates of the state. But rural Attica fortunately has been rediscovered and reevaluated in recent years." The Attic demes of which there were about 140, were homogeneous communities with their own citizenship. They had their own organization with an assembly and a demarch, as well as their own cults, temples, and traditions. Above all, the Athenians were strongly attached to their deme, even if they were rich and lived in town; they felt solidarity to their demesmen, especially in lawsuits and in political confrontations;s the famous enmity opposing the poet Aristophanes to the politician Cleon seems to have been an afir among the demesmen of Kydathenaion.' Athens was a community not of individuals but of communi­ ties, the demes. But there was no conflict, no incompatibility, between the particularism of the demes and the unity of the Athenian state. Quite the opposite. Not only were the demes perfectly integrated in the Athenian state, they were also the base of the organization created by Cleisthenes at the end of the sixth century? Sons of Athenian citizens became full Athenian citizens themselves 25 8f. What most differentiated peasants from city folk was the skillfulnes in spe: se Ar. ucl. 241££.; Eur. Bacch. 718H.; Aristoph. Fragm. 685; Com.Gr.Fr. (ed. Kock) adesp. 627. For the Athenian peasant in general, se Victor Ehrenberg, The People of Aristophanes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1951) 73ff. , 2. It is impossible to evaluate the rural population of Attica, but it sems certain that in Athens, as almost everywhere in antiquity, the rural population was much more important than the urban one (se John S. TraiIl, The Political Organization of Attica: A Study of the Demu. Trittyes. and Phylai, and their Representation in the Atheniarl Council, Hesperia Suppl. 14 [American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Princeton, 1975] 70f.). . 3. Admirers of the Athenian democracy are inclined to overestimate the participation in the ecclesia; se for instance, Gustave Glotz, La Cite grecque (Paris: Albin Michel, 1928), and Moses I. Finley, Democracy Ancient and MotUm (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973). 4. The classical work on the Attic demes remains that of Bernard Hausullier, La vie municipale era Attique: euai sur I'organisation des demes au qua� siUle (Paris: Bibliotheque des Ecoles fro d'Ath. et de Rome, 1 884). But good and important boks on this subject have ben published in the last few years: TraiIl, The Political Organization of Attica (n. 2 above); Robin Osborne, Demos: The Dist:overy of Clasal Attiu (Cambridge: University Pres, 1985), and David Whitehead, The Demes of Attica S08f7 ca. 250 B.C. (Princeton: University Press, 1986). 5. On the solidarity of the demes, se especially Whitehead, The Demes ofAttica, 223ff. 6. Se Thomas Gelzer, RE Suppl. 12 (1970) S.V. Aristophanes 12, 001. 1400, and Herman Lind, Neues aus Kydathen," Mus. Heill. 42 (1985) 249-26 1 . 7 . Se ArislOt. Ath. Pol. 21.4-6 wi th P. J . Rhodes, A Commeratary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford: Clarendon Pres, 1981) 251ff. Se further Osborne, Demos, 72-92, and Whitehead, The Demes of Attica, 1-38, 255-290. -

"

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only after they had been registered in the deme of their father. Moreover, the members of the Council of the Five Hundred instituted by Cleisthenes were elected in such a way that each deme was represented proportionally to its population. Whereas the ecclesia was dominated by the urban crowd, the council was truly representative of the Athenian citizen body as a whole, and since the term of office in the council was one year and could be renewed only once, after a lapse of two years, the majority of the Athenian citizens belonged to the council at least once in their lives. The melting pot of the Athenian democracy was the council, not the ecclesia.8 In a certain sense, Ath­ ens was a federation of demes that shows similarities with the Swiss Confed­ eration. In the Greco-Roman world, al organized communities, whether large or small, private or public, based on kinship or on community of interest, con­ cretized their unity by common cults and rituals. Integration of new members in a group always took the form of an admission to the cults and rituals of the group. Every state was a political and religious community, and politics and religion were inextricably related.' Thus the study of the cults and rituals of a state reveals its structure and organization. It sometimes allows us to reconstruct its historical development, as is actually the case for Athens, from the unification of Attica in the Archaic period (8th to 7th century) to the democratization of the constitution by Cleisthenes at the end of the sixth century and the growth of the Athenian empire after the Persian Wars. In Attica, temples, shrines, altars, sacrifices, religious ceremonies, and festivals were particularly numerous.10 An anonymous author of the fifth cen­ tury says that there were more festivals in Athens than in any other city of Greece ([Xen.] Ath. PoL 3.2). In The Clouds (v. 300ff.), Aristophanes alludes to the great number of religious ceremonies in Athens. Pausanias, who shows a particular interest for sacral affairs, says in his description of Attica that the Athenians were more devoted to religion and more pious than most other people (1.17.1 and 24.3). In the official calendar of Athens, almost every sec­ ond day was sacred in the sense that some puolic sacrifice or ceremony took place on that day. These sacrifices and ceremonies fal into two great categories: the rituals of the demes and the rituals of the state. The rituals of the demes were, as Thucydidessays, essentialy ancestral and "popular"; the rituals of the city were civic, official, mostly solemn and serious, and, to some extent, artificial.

8. Thus Osborne, Demos, 91£., is perfectly right in asrting that the council was much more representative of the citizen body than the ecclesia. 9. Se the classic work of N.S Fustel de Coulanges, La cili antique (paris: Durand, 1 864) The Ancient City (with a new foreword by A. Momigliano and S.C. Humphreys [Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Pr., 1980]). Further, Martin P. Nilsson, CNlts, Myths, Oracles and Politics;n Ancient Greece (Lund: Gleerup, 1951; repro GOteborg: Astrom, 1986). 10. On the cults and religious festivals of Athens in general, se August Mommsen, Peste tUr Stadt Athen;", A lter1Jlm (Leipzig: Teubner, 1 898); Ludwig Deubner, Attische Peste (Berlin: Heinrich Keller, 1932); Jon D. Mikalson, The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athe.

=

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Symbols and Rituals

LOCAL AND ANCE STRAL CULTS The main function of the local cults was the insertion of new members in the community of the deme and the preservation of the community itself. Until he had been accepted in the deme of his father and registered in the lists of the demesmen at the age of eighteen, the young Athenian citizen was not officially a member of the deme. Women were never registered at all. But girls, women, and boys under eighteen had nonetheless a semiofficial existence as members of the phratries. Married women were integrated in the deme of their husband by participating in the religious festivals of the deme, in particular in the festival of the Thesmophoria, dedicated to Demeter. The demes as such had several sacrifices, shrines, and priests,t1 some of which were specific to the demeI2 and in some cases accessible only to the members of the deme.1 3 Others were common to all demes; they concerned rituals connected with human life and with the annual cycle of agriculture. The Thesmophoria were of this category, as well as the Dionysia "In the Fields" or Rural Dionysia. The Festival of the Phratries: The Apaturia The phratries were groups of several families that originally were bound together, so it seems, by ties of neighborhood.14 The first step of the public existence of the young citizen, whether male or female, was his or her presen­ tation to the phratry by the father, at a festival called the Apaturia.1S The fa­ ther made a first presentation of the child soon after birth.16 Boys were pre­ sented a second time when they reached manhood. Adopted children were presented in the same wayP Girls were not presented again because if they got married they left the phratry of their father to be introduced by their man Year (Princeton: University Press, 1975); Herbert W. Parke, Pestivals of the Athenians (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977). , 1 1 . On the cults of the demes in general, see Haussoullier, La vie municipale en Ailique (n. 4) 135f£.; Severina Solders, Die ausserstiJdtischen Kulte und die Einigung AttikAs (Lund: Lindstedt, 1931); Mikalson, "Religion in the Attic Demes," Am. J. Phjl. 98 (1977) 424-435; Osborne, Demos (n. 4) 1 78ff., and Whitehead, The Demes of Attica" (n. 4) 1 76ff. Our knowl­ edge of the local cults of the demes depends mainly on their sacred calendars: the best­ preserved example is that of the deme &chia, published by Georges Daux, "La grande d&narchie: un nouveau calendrier sacrificiel d'Attique (&chia)," Bull. Con-esp. Hell. 87 (1963) 603-634 Suppl. Epigr. Graec. 21 (1965) 541; for other calendars, se Sterling Dow, "Six Athenian Sacrificial Calendars," Bull. Co,.,.esp. Hell. 92 (1968) 170-1 86. 12. Some of these specific cults of the demes, in particular those of Marathon, look archaic and primitive (se Whitehead, The Demes ofAttica [no 4J 19Of£. ) . 13. Se IG 2l. 1214 (SylL' 912), 15ff.: The deme of Piraeus honors a citizen from another deme by inviting him to all the sacrifices of the deme. 14. On the phratties, se Otarles Hignett, A History of the Athenian ConstitMtion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952) 55ff., and Denis Roussel, Tribu et cite (paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976) 93ff. On the Aparuria, se Deubner, Attische Peste, 232f£. 15. John Gould, "Law, Custom, and Myth: Aspects of the Social Position of Women in Clasical Athens," J. Hell. St. 1 00 (1980) 38-59, denies (40f.) that girls were presented to the phratry, but Isaeus 3.73-76 explicitly says they were. 16. Se especially Isaeus 8.19, who gives a brief description of the ceremony. 17. For the ceremony se Isaeus 7.16-17. =

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husband into his phratry. This presentation of the bride also ocurred at the Apaturia, with the husband being obliged to offer a banquet to the members of the phratry.18 Thus the Apaturia comprised three ceremonies on three suc­ cessive days, the presentation of the newborn children on the first, the second presentation of the boys on the second, and the presentation of the bride by her husband on the third. These ceremonies were not only indispensable for the integration of the new members in society, but also decisive for the legal status of the citizens. Because only children of both an Athenian father and an Athenian mother enjoyed the right of citizenship and because the presentation to the phratry was, for the girls, the only proof of their filiation, the testimony of the members of the phratry might be decisive if the citizenship or the filiation of a person happened to be contested, as was often the case in lawsuits about legacies.1l1 Furthermore, occasionally the lists of the demes needed revision, as for instance after the end of the Pe1oponnesian War: a decree of the phratry of the Demotionidae reveals the dispositions taken on this ocasion by the phratries in order to define precisely who belonged to them.20

The Festival of the Women: The Thesmophoria The Thesmophoria was a festival of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and, more specifically, the goddess who gave wheat to humankind.21 This festival took place in the month of Pyanopsion, about October, and was related to the ploughing and sowing for the next year. At the same time, it was a festival of the fertility of women in which only married women participated. The third day of the festival was called Calligeneia, that is, bearer of a fair offspring. The Thesmophoria was a festival of the demes co which only the wives of demesmen were admitted. The husbands had to contribute to the festival on behalf of their wives (Isaeus 3.80). Thus the participation in the Thesmophoria and the financial contribution of the husband were the mani­ festations of the "citizenship" of the women; the festival was a substitute for the assembly of the deme, where only men participated: it gave the women an opportunity to have a. social life of their own, shared with the other women of the deme. In the eighth speech of Isaeus (19-20), the litigants try to demon­ strate that their mother really was the legitimate wife of their father; they argue that "the wives of the demesmen" had chosen her to preside at the Thesmophoria and to perform the ceremonies jointly with her, and they gave 18. Se Isaeus 3.76. 19. Isaeus 8 (On the estate of Ciron) is the best illustration of the importance of the phratry in lawsuits of this kind. Se also Isaeus 7 (On the estate of Apollodorus) and Ps. Demosth. 57 (Ag. Euboulides). 20. IG 211237 SylJ.l921. 21. On the 1hesmophoria se L. Deubner, Attische Feste (n. 10) SOfE.; Allaire C. Brumfield, The Aitic Festivals of Demeter and Their Relation to the Agricultural Year (Salem: Ayer, 1981) 70fi. =

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the sacred objects into her hands, which they would never have done if she had not been the wife of a demesman. For women, the participation in the Thesmophoria had the same function and significance as the entry in the lists of the deme for the men: it confirmed the formal integration in the community.

The Festival of the Demes: The Rural Dionysia The festival of Dionysus took place in the winter, in late December.21 It was a harvest festival, a merry feast of the peasants enjoying the new wine and making offerings to Dionysus, the god of fertility and peaceful life. It was a feast of the whole community, where men, women, children, and even slaves mingled. In The Acharnians, Aristophanes gives us an amusing description of the procession organized privately by his hero Dicaeopolis with his family when he comes back to the vilage; the essential elements of the procession are the offerings of food and wine, the phallus, and above all the singing and dancing of the participants.1J In the classical and Hellenistic period, several demes also organized dramatic contests.24 Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics (1160a 25-28) that the festivals of ancient origin take place after harvest because they are, in fact, harvest festivals. This was obviously the case with the Rural Dionysia, which is certainly one of the oldest, if not the oldest festival of Attica and of the Greek world in general.1S It also was the most popular, the festival to which the Athenians were most attached. Dicaeopolis, the hero of The Acharnians, a typical Athenian countryman, longs to go back to his village and to feast at his beloved Rural Dionysia. It symbolizes for him peace, prosperity, and happiness; the procession to Dionysus is his first undertaking after concluding the peace with the Spartans .21i The Rural Dionysia is certainly the festival Thucydides first has in mind when he writes of the ancestral rites of the countrysideP THE INTEGRATION OF THE DEMES

The integration of the demes attributed to Theseus "Was the result of an evolution of several centuries, in the course of the Dark Age and the Archaic period, that found its conclus� on with the reorganization of Attica by 22. Se L. Deubner, Attische Peste (n. 10) 134ff.; Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (n. 4) 212ff.; Sir Arthur Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) 42ff. 23. Aristoph. Acharn. 242ff. Se also Plut. Mar. 527 D and 1098 B; lsaeus 8.16. 24. On the dramatic perfo nnances in the demes se Aeschines 1 (Ag. Tim.) 157; Pickard­ Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals (n. 22) 45ff.; Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (n. 4) 215ff. Several demes had their own theater (Osborne, Demos [no 4) 233f. n. 24, and Whitehead, 219f.). 25. The primitive character of the procesion described by Aristophanes needs no justification. How old the theatrical performances were is another question. 26. 1be whole scene begins with the exclamation by Dicaeopolis: ·0 Feast of Dionysus" (0 Dionysia) at V. 195. 27. Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (n. 4) 222.

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Cleisthenes. This integration, whether peaceful or through conquest, was not only political, but also religious. The demes participated in the official cults of the Athenian state.1B They sent delegations to the Panathenaea, the great civic festival of the Athenians.1!l The demarchs had to collect and to bring to Eleusis the first fruits for Demeter.3o Moreover, the demes offered sacrifices in the temples of the gods in the city. A decree of the deme of Plotheia regulating the finances of the deme distinguishes three categories of sacrifices: sacrifices of the deme, sacrifices in Athens for the community of the deme, and contributions to the quadrenial festivals of the polis, principally the Panathenaea.31 The deme of Erchia offered sacrifices "in the city" (en astel) to Apollo Lykeios, to Demeter, to Zeus Polieus, to Athena Polias, and, on theHymettus, to Zeus. Erchia also made sacrifices to Zeus Polieus and to Athena Polias in the deme itself.31 Most interesting is the integration - or more precisely, the annexation - of some local cults by the Athenian state.33 For the state, the ancestral dei­ ties who protected agriculture and human life were no less essential than for the demes. Therefore, the state participated in the ancestral cults of the demes either by creating parallel cults in the city, as is the case with the Rural Dionysia, or by taking possession of existing local cults. The best examples of such appropriation are the Mysteries of Eleusis and the Thesmophoria of Halimus.34 Finally, for purely political reasons, the state annexed some local heroes such as Aias and Amphiaraus.

The Mysteries of Eleusis The Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis commemorated the myth of Demeter and Core narrated in the Hymn to Demeter of the late seventh century.35 The Hymn relates how Demeter, the goddess of the crops, decided to strike after her daughter had been raped by Hades, the god of the underworld. After difficult negotiations a compromise was concluded: Hades agreed to liberate his wife every spring and Demeter promised that she would again allow the seeds to sprout and the vegetation to grow.3' Demeter is the "bringer of seasons"

28. On this aspect se Mikalson, art. cit. (above n. 1 1 ) and Whitehead, The Demes of Attica (n. 4) 178-180. 29. IG 2l 334, 25-2.}. 30. IG 1] 78 RussdI Meiggs and David Lewis, A Selection of Greelt. Historical Inscrip­ tions (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1969) no. 73, 8ff. 31. IG P 258, 25-28: thyein ta hiera t4 u es Plothei[as It.Joina /t.a, ta es Athenaws hyper PI[othloJn to It.OinO It.ai ta es tas penut[eridJas . 32 . SNppl. Ep. Gr. 21 (1965) 541 , Hf. and 39ff. 33. This aspect is particularly well emphasized by Solders, Die aNSerstiJdtischen KNlte (n. 1 1) 124ff. 34. A further example of annexation is the cult of Artemis Brauronia (se the remarks of Osborne, Demos [n. 4) 1 S4ff.). 35. On the Hymn to Demeter se N. J. Richardson, The Homeric Hymn to Demem (Oxford: University Press, 1974) . On the Mysteries; se above all George Mylonas, EleNsis and the EleNsinian Mysums (Princeton: University Press, 1961), and L. Deubner, Attische Pesu (n. 10) 70ff. 36. Se Jean Rudhardt, "L'Hymne a Demeter," in DN mylhe, de Ia l'eligion grecqNe et de Ia comprehension d'aNtrNi, Cahiers Vilfred Pareto Rev. eut'. sc. soc. 19 (1981) 227-244. =

=

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(horephoros) and "the giver of perfect gifts" (aglaodoros).37 Together with her daughter she brings to humankind prosperity and happiness. The Mysteries of Eleusis, which were celebrated in the month of Boedromion (around Sep­ tember) fundamentally were a harvest festival, a festival of the seasons.3S According to the tradition, Eleusis had originally been an independent city-state and was anexed by the Athenians at the time of the kings, with the condition that the Eleusinians keep the control of the Mysteries as before. The reality and above all the time of this war are controversial, but it is undisputed that, at the time of the composition of the Hymn to Demeter, the Mysteries were exclusively in the hands of the Eleusinians and of the Eleusinian family of the Eumolpidae.39 In the classical period, the administration of the sanctuary remained in the hands of the deme of Eleusis, and the Eumolpidae preserved their priestly functions, but both the administration of the sanctuary and the organization of the Mysteries were now also the responsibility of the Athenian state and more particularly of the Archon Basileus. A temple to Demeter and Core, the Eleusinion, was built below the acropolis, and the Mysteries of Demeter became one of the most important festivals of the state. This annexation took place, it seems, during the first half of the sixth century and was completed by the time of the tyrant Pisisttatus.
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of the immense prestige the Mysteries enjoyed in antiquity. Athens was able to monopolize Demeter, who to some extent became an Athenian deity. It claimed the merit of being the city that first cultivated wheat and that gave it to other people. And because bread was a symbol of civilization, the Athenians could consider themselves as the founders of Greek civilization;43

The Thesmophoria of Halimus The Athenian state celebrated its own Thesmophoria.44 The festival took place in Athens and began with a procession ascending to the Thesmophorion situated on the Pnyx. But the procession started not from the city itself, but from the deme of Halimus, which was situated some four miles to the south of Athens. The Athenian women, among whom the ladies of noble families took a prominent place, assembled there for the first of the four days of the festival.4s It seems certain that originally the Thesmophoria of the Athenian state lasted only three days and that the day in Halimus was added after the annexation of Halimus by the Athenian state, thus marking the integration of a local cult, the Thesmophoria of Halimus, into the state cult. This expansion symbolized the fact that the ancestral Thesmophoria of the demes were now part of the Thesmophoria in the city, which were the festival of all Athenian women who were represented in particular by the "well-born" ladies.

The Local Heroes As stated earlier, the demes had their own deities and heroes to protect the community of the deme. With the political unification of Attica, the deities and heroes of the demes automatically became deities and heroes of the Athenian people as a whole but, in some cases, the annexation of the local hero took a particularly spectacular form. The same is true for the integration of territories outside of Attica proper. The best example is the annexation of Aias, the hero of Salamis who had a shrine and a cult there.46 After the con­ quest of Salamis at the time of Solon, the legemi"emerged among the Athenians that the island had been given to them by the sons of Aias to whom they had granted Athenian citizenship and who had come to live in Athens (Plutarch Solon 1 0.3). They honored Aias and his sons as their national heroes. One of the Cleisthenic tribes was called Aiantis. After the battle of Salamis against the Persian fleet, at which the Greeks had invoked the help of Aias and his kins, the Aeacidae (Herodotus 8.64), Athens created a festival, the Aianteia.

43. On this ideology, se especially Isoer. 4 (Paneg.) 28-31. 44. On the state Thesmophoria se L . Deubner, Attische Feste (n. 10) SOff., and R. Osborne, Demos (n. 4) 170f. (whose interpretation, however, sems problematical) . 45. In the Thesmophonazusae of Aristophanes, the chorus is composed of "well-born" women (eugenas gyn4ikes, 330). Se also Plut. Sol. 8.4: "the first ladies of Athens." 46. Paus. 1.35.3. Deubner, Attisehe Peste (n. 10) 228, and Solders, ANSerstiJdtische Kulfe (n. 1 1 ) 100f.

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The ephebes went to Salamis in procession, offered a sacrifice there, and organized gymnastic contests, a torch race and a regatta...7 The Athenians acted in the same way in 338 B.C. with Amphiaraus, the local hero of Oropus, after they had taken possession of that city; they instituted a festival in his honor, the Amphiareia, with sacrifices and gymnastic contests."" The symbolical significance of these annexations appears particularly obvious in the case of Aeacus and his sons, the local heroes of Aegina (Herodotus 5.80 and 8.64). At the end of the sixth century, the Athenians were involved in a long war with Aegina, at that time one of the great sea powers of Greece. As they were unable to get the better of the Aeginetans, on the advice of the Delphic oracle the Athenians marked out a precinct for Aeacus in their city, in the agora (Herodotus 5.89). They finally won the war and eventualy (at the time of Pericles) anexed Aegina, expelled the population, and settled Athenian colonists on the island. Thus the appropriation of a local hero had a double objective. In the case of Aegina, it preceded the annexation of the territory and was intended to obtain the collaboration of the protector of the enemy. In the case of Salamis, it had the function of justifying the anexation ideologically. In both cases, political and religious annexations were complementary.

TH E EDUCATION OF TH E CITIZENS The survival and independence of the state depend first on the citizens, on their capacity and willingness to defend the interests of the community in the assemblies and magistracies, and on their capacity and willingness to fight for it on the battlefield. In Athens as everywhere" else in the Greek world, the education of the young citizens was based not only on physical training but also on music (in the original and broad sense of the word), for physical training alone was considered sufficient for barb�ians but not for the-free citizens of a free city-state: in a Greek city, learning and education were no less important than gymnastics.'" The physical and mental preparation of the young citizens took place in the gymnasium of the city under the responsibil­ ity of the gymnasiarch.so The adult citizens completed their mental and intel-

47. IG 2l 1 006, 30f. and l Ol l , 53ff. 48. Deubner, Attische Peste (n. 1 0) 229, and Solders, Die ausserstitischen Kulte (n. 1 1 ) 124.

49. Se Thuc. 2 .40.1: the Athenians are lovers of beauty and wisdom; Aristoph. PTogs 729: good politicians are educated through physical training in the palaestra and music and choruses. As is well known, the Athenians despised the Boeotians because of their ignorance (se especially !soer. 15.248). The historian Ephorus said that Theban hegemony was short­ lived because the political leaders of Thebes neglected careful training and education, ignored the value of learning and of intercourse with mankind, and cared for military virtues alone (Strab. 9.2 .2, C 401 PGrHist 70 F 1 19). 50. Se M. P. Nilsson, Die hellenistische Schule (Munich: Beck, 1955); J. Delorme, Gymnasion. Etutk sur les monuments consacres a I'education en Grece (Paris: De Boccard, 1960), and the gymnasiarchal law of Beroea (Suppl. Epigr. Gr. 28 [1978] 261) with the com­ mentary of Luigi Moret, "Sulla lege ginnasiarchica di Berea," Rill. Pil. 1 1 0 (1982) 45-63. =

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lectual education at the theater, where every year the state organized drama and music festivals that were intended not only to entertain and amuse the population but also to keep alive their civic virtues. The plays themselves, at least in the classical period, orten contained a political message, in particular exhortations to democratic behavior.Sl Above all, the festivals provided an opportunity for the community to proclaim, in the presence of all the citizens, its recognition of those, citizens or foreigners, who had been generous to it and served it well.

The Gymnasium: The Prometheia and the Heracleia In the Hellenistic period, the deities of the gymnasium were usualy the Muses, Hermes, and Heracles.S2 In Athens, the cult of Hermes is attested at the Acad­ emy already by the end of the sixth century (Anth. Pal. 6.144), and we know from Aeschines (1 [Ag. Timarchus] 10) that the teaching in the gymnasium served as a preparation for the Museia and the Hermaea.S3 But in Athens the specific gods of the gymnasium were Heracles and Prometheus who were celebrated at the festivals called Heracleia and Prometheia.S4 Our best evidence for the rituals and significance of the festivals of the gymnasium is the recently published gymnasiarchal law of Beroea.ss These festivals were in fact an inspection of the boys and youths, an examination of their physical condition, their skill, and their discipline. The best among them won a crown and had their names engraved on a stele in the gymnasium. The ceremony began with a sacrifice, comprised different competitions, and was concluded with a banquet. The most spectacular and most typical of the competitions was the torch race (Lampadedromia), an estafette race in which boys, youths, and men participated in various categories.s6 The race took place at night, through the streets of the town. It started from the altar of Prometheus and Heracles before the Academy and ended at the center of the city. This contest was extremely popular and an essential part of several Athenian festivals, the Prometheia, the Heracleia, the Hermaea, and others.

51 . To take only two examples among many others, Aristophanes claims in The Achamians (630ff.) that his ambition is to enlighten his fellow citizens and to make them distrust the adulations and lies of the demagogues. In The Progs, he introduces Euripides and Aeschylus, who debate about who was the betr educator for Athenian demoaacy (833ff., esp. 937ff.). 52. Se Delorme, Gymnasian (n. 50) 337ff. 53. Se also Plat. Lys. 206 d, who informs us that at the Hermaea the youths and the boys were mingled together. 54. Se Deubner, Attische Peste (n. 1 0) 21 1£. (Prometheia) and 212f. (Hephaisteia). 55. Se above, n. 50. 56. Se Karl Jiithner, RE XII, 1 (1924) S.v. Lampadedromia, who gives the evidence for the different torch races in Athens, their itinerary, and their iconographic representations. The exact goal of the race is not known (se Jiithner, ibid. 571£.).

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Symbols and Rituals

The Theater: The City Dionysia and the Lenaea The god of the dramatic festivals was, in Athens as everywhere else in the Greek world, Dionysus. In all the Greek world, with only a few exceptions, the dramatic contests were called Dionysia. Dionysus was the patron of the guilds of artists who performed at the Dionysia.S7 Athens had two great dramatic festivals every year, the Lenaea cel­ ebrated in midwinter and the City Dionysia or Greater Dionysia in late spring.S8 These festivals of Dionysus preserved some features of the original, rural cult of the god, but in the classical period they essentially were a cultural and civic ceremony. The civic character of the festivals is manifested in the institution of the proedria, that is, the privilege of sitting in the first rows at the theater, a privilege that belonged ex officio to the magistrates and priests of the state and was also granted to citizens and foreigners who had deserved well of the city, and to ambassadors and friends who happened to be present.S9 But most important in this perspective were the proclamations that the herald of the city made before the first tragic performance at the Greater Dionysia.60 We know from Lysias (Fragm. 6.2), Isocrates (8 [On the Peace] 82-83 ), and Aeschines (3 [Ag. Ctesiphon] 1 54) that on this ocasion the herald proclaimed the names of the orphans of war and the names of their fathers, who had fought gallantly and given their lives for their city, and announced that the city was taking charge of them until they reached the age of manhood. Those who had come of age were presented to the audience, equipped with a new panoply, and dismissed from state care. In the Hellenistic period, the herald also praised the ephebes and their trainers for the seriousness of their prepara­ tion, for their zeal and discipline.61 Above all, the herald proclaimed the honors and crowns decreed by the city to its benefactors and friends. The Athenian state, like most Greek states of the classical and Hellenistic periods, was quite lavish in granting crowns and privileges to citizens' who had been particularly generous or simply had conscientiously and honestly fulfilled their citizen duty, and to foreigners and befriended cities and kings who, in difficult circumstances, had helped the city with money, grain, or in some other way. The herald anounced these honors at the Dionysia with the following formula: "The Demos crowns X or Y for his good will and merits."62 For both the citi-

57. Se Franz Poland, RE V A, 2 (1934), s.v. Technitai. 58. Se Pickard-Cambridge, The DTamatic Festillals of Athens (n. 22). 59. See Michael Maas, Die PTohedrie des Dionysostheaters in Athen, Vestigia 1 5 (Munich: Beck, 1972). According to Demosth. 21 (Ag. Mad.) 2 1 7 and Aeschin. 3 (Ag. Ctes.) 42, all Greeks who happened to be present attended the festivals. 60. Se especially Aeschin. 3 (Ag. Ctes.) 40ff. who complains that me multiplication of proclamations disturbs spectators, actors, and choregi, and Simon Goldhill, "The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology," J. Hell. St. 107 (1987) 58-76: 62ff. 61 . Se, e.g., IG 2%.1006, 42ff.; 1 008, 35ff.; 1 009, 16ff., etc. 62. For me proclamation of honors at the Dionysia se Louis Robert, Opera minora selecta I (Amsterdam: Hakkert 1969) 73.

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zens and the befriended foreigners and cities, for all those who were present, these proclamations were an exhortation to be even more devoted to the community: "For be assured, fellow citizens, it is not our wrestling halls or the schools or our system of liberal studies alone that educate the young, but far more our public proclamations. It is proclaimed in the theater hat one is crowned for virtue and nobility and patriotism" (Aeschines 3. 246).63 T H E STAT E C U LTS

The physical training and the civic virtues of the citizens were ineffective and useless without the protection of the gods. Common gods and common cults were necessary to keep alive the unity of the community; they were indispens­ able to preserve its independence against' enemies. The gods and heroes were the protectors and defenders of the city, which was in a sense their property (see, for example, Dinarchus 1 [Ag. Demosth.] 64 and Lysias 4.20). Piety to the gods of the city was no less important than physical strength and discipline; impiety to the gods was synonymous with treason.64 The Athenian state, like all states of antiquity, devoted the greatest care to the cult of the gods and heroes of the state; meetings of the council and of the ecclesia always began with a prayer to the gods.6S

The Common Hearth in the Prytaneion: Hestia The city was, first of all, a community, a kind of enlarged family: "For you, Athenians, observing what I have called the natural bond of mutual kindness, live as a corporate body in this city just as families live in their private homes" ([Demosth.] 25 [Ag. Aristog. 1] 87). The city, like every family, had a common hearth that was represented by the goddess Hestia and situated in the Prytaneion,l" The Sacred Fire of the community burning there was extinguished only once in Athenian history, during the siege of Sulla.'7 According to tradi­ tion, Athenian colonists took from it the fire before leaving their mother-city. The Prytaneion was the symbolic center of the community as a "partnership of families." It was the residence of the eponymous archon (Aristoteles, Ath. Pol. 3.5 ) and the place where the representatives of the community granted hospitality to official guests and took their meals with them. This honor was 63 . Se also Demosth. 18 (On the Crown) 120. 64. Se Eudore Derenne, Us proces d'impUIi intenUs awe philosophes a Athh1es au V- et IIU IV- decks IIfI. }.-c. (Liege, 1930); Harvey Yunis, A New Creed: Furrdlentll Reli­ gious Beliefs in the Athenilm Polis lind Euripideln Drllmll, Hypomnemata 91 (GOttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1988), esp. 19-28. 65. Se in general Fustel de Coulanges, 1A cili IIntique (above, n. 9). 66. Se R. E. Wycherley, The Athenian Agora III: Literllry lind Epigraphiclll Testimonia (Princeton: The American School of Oasical Studies at Athens, 1957) 166-174; Stephen G. Miller, The PrytaneWn: Its Function lind Architeturlll Form (Berkdey: University of California Press, 1978), especially 4-24, 132-218. 67. Se [Theocr.J 2 1 .36 and Pluto Num. 9.1 1, with the commentary of Wycherley (op. cit., p. 171 ); Schol. Thuc. 2.15.2; Poll. 1 .7. There is no reason to think, with Robert Flaceliere, Rev. Et. Gr. 61 (1948) 417-419, that the Sacred Fire was in the Parthenon.

472

Symbols and Rituals

normaly conferred on ambassadors and visiting friends, and on citizens who had deserved well of the city, such as the victors at the panhellenic games. A small number of citizens obtained this extraordinary privilege (the sitesis) in recognition of exceptional deeds: for example, it had been granted to the descendants of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the murderers of the tyrants, and it was later conferred on Demosthenes, Lycurgus, and a few others (see esp. IG P 131).

Athena Polias The Greeks had common gods who were honored in every Greek city. The Athenians had a cult of Zeus, of Apollo, and of all other gods of the Olympus. But they had, like every Greek city, a deity of their own, Athena, who was the divine owner of Attica and its specific protectress: "I think that the gods on our side are more than a match for theirs [the Argives']. Hera may be their patron but we have Athena; and what counts in the long run is having stronger gods upon your side. Pallas will never let the others win. "68 Thus the cult to Athena Polias was the state cult par excellence. The festival of the Panathenaea, celebrated in midsumer, was the major religious event of the Athenian state.6' According to tradition, this annual festival was created by Theseus, the founder of the Athenian state. By the middle of the sixth century, the tyrant Pisistratus gave to this festival a new dimension by creating the Great Panathenaea, a quadrennial festival of particular prestige with gymnastic and musical contests. The essential part of the Great Panathenaea was the procession that brought to the goddess her peplos, the embroidered robe intended to clothe her statue in the Parthenon. This procession waS, as we can see on the frieze of the temple, extremely solemn and serious, and, as is often the case in ceremonies of this kind, a monopoly of the social and political elite of the state. The girls and women who wove the peplos and carried it in the proces­ sion belonged to the most prominent families. The procession was also a parade of the Athenian cavalry, again the "fine fleur" pi. Athenian society. Thus the cult of Athena Polias indeed was the cult of the Athenian state as such, reflecting its traditional social structure.

The Eponymous Heroes of the Tribes As he reorganized the Athenian state at the end of the sixth century, Cleisthenes

distributed the 1 39 demes into ten territorial tribes that had the essential function of strengthening the unity of the Athenian citizen body by combining urban, suburban, and rural demes, thus reducing the natural opposition between the urban and rural population.1O But the .main purpose of the tribes was to 68. 69. 70. et ciU (n.

tr. by A. Gladstone. Deubner, Attische Peste (n. 1 0) 22ff. Se Hignet A History of the Athenian Constitution (n. 14) 138ff., and Roussel, Tribu 14) 2 79ff. Eur. Heraclid4e 347ff.;

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distribute equally among the citizens the rights and duties that were the foundation of Athenian democracy.71 The tribes were the basis of the organi­ zation of the army, so that citizens from the city and the countryside trained and fought together. Public works like digging trenches and building walls or ships, were assigned to the tribes (Aeschines 3 [Ag. Ctesiphon] 30-3 1). Each tribe had fifty councilors in the council and one representative on the board of the ten generals.72 The dramatic festivals were a competition among the tribes that were responsible for the preparation of the actors, musicians, and choruses. The victory of the choregos chosen by his tribe was a victory of the whole tribe.73 The system was so effective that in the classical period the solidarity of the tribesmen was almost as important in public life as the solidarity of the demes.74 Since common cults and rituals were indispensable for the cohesion of a group or community, Cleisthenes invented for the tribes fictitious ancestors, the eponymous heroes of the tribes?S Each hero had his own shrine, where the members of the tribe honored him with sacrifices, held their meetings, and published their decrees. The common altar of the ten heroes near the council house on the agora was used for the exhibition of public information and documents.76 The heroes clearly were the symbols of the democracy instituted by Cleisthenes.

The National Hero of the Athenians: Theseus Like every Greek city-state, Athens had its mythical founder, Theseus." But this hero was more than the founder of the unified state who dissolved the local councils and created a central government. In the fifth century, he became the hero of the triumphant Athenian democracy, victorious over the tyrants and over the barbarians. Theseus is the personification of the freedom of Athens. The myth of Theseus was known throughout the Greek world already at the beginning of the seventh century. But, surprisingly, he appears in Athenian

71 . Se Hdt. 6.131, who says of Cleisthenes: ho t4s phylas kai ten demokratfan Athenafoisj

katastisas. -

_

72 . See Aristot. Ath. Pol. 22.2 with the commentary of Rhodes (n. 7) 264f., and Roussel, Tribu et cite (n. 14) 280ff. 73. The best iIIustration of this competition is the speech of Demosthenes against Meidias (or. 21). 74. Se, e.g., Hyper. 3.12; Demosth. 23 (Ag. Andr.) 206. Dernosthenes offered a banquet to his tribesmen (2 1 [Ag. Meid.J 156). 75 . Se Ursula Kron, Die zehn attischen Phylenberoen: Geschichte, Mythos, Kult und Darstellungen, Ath. Mitt. 5. Beih. (Berlin, 1976). On the necessity of inventing fictitious ances­ tors, se Nilsson, Cults, Myths, Oracles, and Politics (n. 9) 65ff. 76. On this altai, se R. E. Wycberley, The Athenian Agora II (n. 66) 85-90. 77. Frank Brommer, Theseus: Die Taten des griechischen Heiden in tier antiken Kunst und Literatur (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschah, 1982). See also Emily Keams, The Heroes of Attica, Bull. 1nst. Clas. St. Suppl. 57 (London, 1989) 117-123, who however ignores the role of Theseus as leader of the Athenians against the barbarians in the conte� of the Persian Wars.

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iconography only in the second half of the sixth century. The most popular theme, here as elsewhere, is his fight against the Minotaur. But the political significance of Theseus as the national hero of Athens really begins with the Athenian victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 B.C. For the Athenians, this battle was the great victory of their history, the victory they evoked again and again in later times. They were particularly proud of it because they had fought this battle alone, without the help of the Spartans. It was a victory of fundamental consequence for Athens because it was the victory of the young democracy of Cleisthenes (it must be remembered that Hippias, the expelled tyrant, accompanied the Persians hoping to return to power) and it was the starting point of the political and cultural greatness of Athens that culminated in the so-called Periclean Age. It was said that during the battle of Marathon many Athenians saw the ghost of Theseus coming up from the underworld to fight with them against the barbarians (Plutarch, Thes. 35.8). In the famous painting of the Stoa Poikile of about 460 B.C., Theseus is actualy represented as fighting with the Athenians at Marathon (Pausanias 1.1 5.3 ). A few years after the Persian Wars, about 476 B.C., the bones of Theseus were recovered in the island of Skyros and solemnly brought back to Athens (Plutarch, Cimon 8.6-7). A temple was built in his honor (Paus. 1 . 1 7.2-6) and a festival, the Theseia, instituted, with a great procession, in which the young Athenian citizens marched in arms.78 From this time onward, Theseus, like Heracles, appears in the iconogra­ phy as the hero of many deeds. He is often represented as fighting against the centaurs and the Amazons. Both deeds were originally attributed to Heracles, in Athens as everywhere else (on Attic vases of the second half of the sixth century the fight against the Amazons appears very often, always with Heracles, never with Theseus)." This integration of Theseus and the Athenians in myths in which they originally had no part is not due to fashion; it is a deliberate usurpation by the Athenian state, pure ideology. It first appears in the paintings of the Stoa Poikile and soon afterward in the paintings of the Theseion; on the metopes of the Parthenon, and on the statue of Athena. The fight against the Amazons is also narrated by Aeschylus in The Eumenides The political purpose of this ideology is obvious when considered in its historical context. It is the consequence of the Athenian . decision, after the Persian Wars, to continue the fight against the barbarians until the total liberation of the Greeks was achieved. After the Persian Wars, the Athenians took over the leadership of the Greek world against the barbarians, a leadership that had previously been in the hands of the Spartans . In this context, the fights against the centaurs and the Amazons were reinterpreted as mythical antecedents of the war against the Persians. Of the four paintings of the Stoa Poikile, one represented the fight against the Amazons with Theseus, a second a scene of the Trojan War with the sons of Theseus, and a third the battle of 78. L. Deubner, Attische Peste (n. 10) 224ff. 79. Se F. Bronuner, Theseus (n. 77) 1 1 6.

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Marathon with Theseus.so The integration of the myth into history was per­ fect.

The Apogee ofAthens: The Parthenon In the year 448-447 construction began of the monument that was to be

forever the symbol of the political greatness and cultural supremacy of Athens, the Parthenon. This most beautiful achievement of Greek architecture and sculpture was realized in an astonishingly short time, less than fifteen years. Simultaneously, Phidias created his statue of Athena Parthenos dedicated in 438. The Propylaea, even more famous in antiquity than the Parthenon, were erected in the years 438-433.81 This extraordinary building activity belongs to the period when Athens, under the leadership of Pericles, enjoyed peace and prosperity. Ephorus, a historian of the fourth century, asserts that the Athenians financed the buildings on the acropolis with the surplus of the tribute paid by the allies for the war against Persia.82 He states that some years earlier, by 454-453, the Athenians transferred the treasury of the Delian League from Delos to Athens, that by this time the accumulated reserve amounted to 10,000 talents, and that it was from this reserve that the Athenians drew the money for their building programs.B3 Plutarch knows this tradition and says in a famous passage of his biography of Pericles (cH. 12) that the political opponents of the great statesman accused him of using the money of the allies to embellish the city like a prostitute. According to Plutarch, Pericles answered that, as long as they fought for the freedom of Greece against the barbarians, the Athenians owed their allies no account, and that it was just that those who risked their lives for others receive some compensation: beautiful buildings for the city, work and money for the poor. Modem scholars take the testimonies of Ephorus and Plutarch at their face value; no one doubts that the Athenians felt authorized to use the surplus of the tribute for their own purposes, in partioular for the embellishment of the city.B4 Thus the Parthenon is seen as a symbol of Athenian imperialistic

80. Paus. 1.15. 2-3. The fourth painting represents a battle between Athens and Sparta. 81. Ancient sources usually mention the Propylaea as the most important monument on he acropolis and hardly mention the Parthenon at all: se Thuc. 2.1 3.3; Aeschin. 2.105; Diad. 12 .40.2; and Cic. Off. 2.1 7.60. Demosth. 22 (Ag. Andr.) 13 is an exception. 82. Diod. 12.40.2. Diodorus explicitly quotes Ephorus as his source in this context (12.41.1). 83. Diod. 12.38.2. In this pasge, Diadorus gives a figure of 8,000 talents, but the figure mentioned at 12.40.2, 12.54.3, and 13.2 1 .3 is of 10,000 talents. 84. Se on all this August Boeckh, The Public Economy ofAthens (London: Parker, 1 842) 1 78ff., 201H.; Benjamin D. Merin. Henry T. Wade-Gery, Malcolm F. McGregor, The Athe­ nian Tribute Lists III (Princeton, 1950) 1 18-132, 277-281, and 326-345; ArnQld W. Gomme, A Historieal Commentary on Thucydides II (Oxford: Qarendon Press, 1956) 16-33; Meiggs and Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions (n. 30) 1 64f.; R. K. Unz, "The Surplus of Athenian Pharos," Greek., Roman, and Byzant. Stud. 26 (1985) 21-42.

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Symbols and Rituals

policy under the leadership of Pericles, intended to express the supremacy of Athens over the Aegean, its glory as the head of a great empire.8S We are fortunate to possess, engraved on marble slabs, important frag­ ments of the accounts and inventories of the Parthenon and the other build­ ings of the acropolis. A careful examination of these inscriptions shows that, for the main part, the monuments were financed by the Sacred Treasury (hiera chremata) of Athena Polias and, to a lesser degree, by a special contri­ bution of the allies, the aparche, that amounted to one-sixtieth of the tribute.86 But there is not the slightest evidence that the Athenians ever used the tribute itself for this purpose, nor that they transferred to the treasury of Athena funds accumulated by the League. Moreover, these documents reveal that for undertakings of some importance, such as the siege of Samos in 441-440 or of Potidaea in 432-430, the Athenians borrowed considerable amounts of money from the treasury of Athena Polias and from the chests of other gods deposited on the acropolis. Apparently, the tribute was sufficient to maintain a fleet of a few dozen ships that could ensure Greek supremacy over the Aegean, but it did not, or only exceptionally, allow undertakings of great size. At any rate, it is quite impossible that the League accumulated a reserve fund of several thousand talents in the first twenty-five years of its existence.87 The money contained in the Sacred Treasury of Athena must have another origin.88 Sanctuaries and shrines of the Greek states were, like the churches in the Middle Ages (the Basilica S. Marco in Venice is a remarkable parallel), the symbols of the political independence of the city and of the military virtues of its citizens. From the time of Homer (Iliad 7.81££.), spoils taken from enemies adorned their walls. Moreover the Greeks used to consecrate to the gods one­ tenth of the booty they took from their enemies, whether on the battlefield, through the plunder of cities, through razzias, or by ransoming prisoners. 85. Se especially Rusll Meiggs, The Athenian EmpireJ,Oxford: Oarendon Press, 1972) 152ff., 289f.; Wolfgang Schuller, Die Herschaft tier Athener im Ersten Attischen SeebNnd (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1974) 70f.; S. Eddy, "The Gold in the Athena Parthenos," American Journal of Archaeol. 81 (1977) 107-11 1 , p. 1 1 1 : the statU� . of Phidias is a "literal monument to Athenian imperialism." 86. On the following, se my article Le Parthenon, Ie Tresor d'Athena et Ie tribut des allies," Historia 39 (1990) 129-148, and, with other arguments, Lisa Kallet-Marx, "Did Tribute fund the Parthenon? " Clas. Antiquity 8 (1989) 252-266. 87. R.K. Unz, art. cit. (n. 84) is conscious of this difficulty and tries to save the tradition by supposing that the tribute grew progresively from 460 talents at the foundation of the league to 560 by 450. But there is no evidence at all for this assumption: in the tribute lists of the inscriptions, the total amount is never more than 400 talents and cannot have been more than 500 talents in 454-453 (se Meiggs and Lewis, op. cit. [no 30] 87f.). 88. The eror of Ephorus is probably due to a misunderstanding of a passage of Thucydides, which lists, in a speech of Pericles, the Athenian resources at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (2.13). Thucydides says that originally the treasury deposited on the acropolis contained 9.700 talents, but he gives no information on the origin of these funds. He only says at the end that al these resources (money in cash, offerings, cult objects, and statues) could be used for the salvation of the city but should be fully restored. This sentence is in perfect agreement with the epigraphical evidence, which shows that the reserve fund was the property of the goddes and not of the Athenian state or the League. Thucydides was evidendy better informed than Ephorus. "

<

Giovannini: Classical Athens

477

They consecrated this share of the booty in the form of statues or monu­ ments; they sometimes built temples or porticoes when the booty was particu­ larly important.8' The Persian Wars, in particular the battles of Salamis and of Plataea, left to the Greeks quantities of gold and silver they had never seen before, part of which they spent for colossal statues, for porticoes, or for temples.90 After the defeat and the retreat of the Persians, the Greeks pursued the war under the leadership of the Athenians with the acknowledged pur­ pose of avenging themselves for what they had suffered by ravaging the Great King's territory (Thuc. 1.96. 1 ) . Of their share of booty, the Athenians neces­ sarily offered at least one-tenth to Athena Polias and the other gods of the city. It is reasonable to assume that the reconstruction of the temple of Athena, which had been destroyed by the Persians, was financed with the booty taken from the Persians. The iconography of the Parthenon, that is, the Battle of the Gods and Giants, the Battle of the Amazons and the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs on the statue of Phidias, the same themes and the Trojan War on the metopes, fits perfectly with this assumption.'l These themes all express the same idea: the fundamental opposition between Greeks and barbarians - an ideology that throughout the fifth century appears again and again in Athenian iconog­ raphy and literature. This fundamental opposition between Greeks, born to be free, and barbarians, born to be slaves, is the central theme of the Histories of Herodotus, written precisely at the time of Pericles. It appears also in several plays by Euripides. In Iphigenia in Aulis, in particular, Agamemnon explains to his daughter that she must die for the freedom of the Greeks (1265ff.), and Iphigenia eventually accepts her fate because, as she says to her mother, she was born not for her mother alone, but for the salvation of all Greece (1370ff.) .91 For Aristophanes, those who plotted with the Great King were to be listed among the traitors.'3 This Athenian ideology is all the more significant because the Spartans and Peloponnesians in general held quite a different attitude toward the barbarians. According to Herodotus, at the nine of the Persian invasion of Greece most Peloponnesians remained neutral, which, in his opinion, amounted to being favorably disposed toward the barbarians (Hdt. 8.73), and from Thucydides we know that the Spartans did not hesitate to ask the Persians for help against Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 2.7.1). Thus, the Athenians really were the pillar of Greece against the Persians.!J4

89. After the battle of Hirnera in 480, Acragas used its share of the booty and the prisoners of war to build several temples and public buildings (Diod. 1 1 .25). 90. Hdt. 8.121; 9.70 and 81; Paus. 3.1 1 .3 and 9.4.1. 91. For the statue, se Plin. Nat. hist. 36.1 8; for the metopes, Frank Brommer, Die Metopen des Parthem (Mainz: von Zabern, 1967). 92. Se also Mea. 536ff.; Heraelidae 423; And,. 169ff. and 665f.; Hec. 1199-1200. 93. Knights 478; Peaee 107f. and 408. 94. See Pind. Fragm. 76 Snell: Hellados ereisma. The Athenians rewarded the poet gen­ erously for the compliment (Isocr. 15. 166) .

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Symbols and Rituals

The pride of the Athenians, which finds its most beautiful expression in the plays of Euripides, is not that they dominated a great number of Greek cities, but, quite the opposite, that they were the champions of the freedom of Greece because Greeks had been born to be free. Their pride was that, like Iphigenia, many of them had given their lives for Hellas. This is the significance of the Parthenon as well: it said to the Greeks that since the times of Theseus the Athenians had fought for them against the barbarians and that they were going to fulfill their mission to the end.'s

95. Incidentally, this ideology provides a further argument against the historicity of the extremely conttoversial Peace of Calias. On this question, se, recently: Klaus Meister, Die Ungeschichtlichluit des Kalli4sfriedens unci deren historische Folgen (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1982), and, contra, Ernst Badian, "The Peace of Callias," }. of Hell. St. 107 (1987) 1 -39. I am in­ debted to my colleagues and friends Philippe Borgeaud and Jose Dorig for advice and help. -

From Violence to Blessing: Symbols and Rituals in Ancient Rome KEITH HOPKINS

N

INTRO DUCTIO N : THE LUPERCALIA A . D . 495, more than a century after the triumph of Christianity, Pope Gelasius I finally forbade Christians to participate in the ancient Roman rites of the Lupercalia.1 He tried to persuade both Christian traditionalists and pagans of the wickedness of their ways, and of the Lupercalia's inefficacy in protecting the city of Rome against famine and plague. When some Christians objected that previous popes had allowed the Lupercalia to continue, and that they had been celebrated even in the presence of a Christian emperor (Anthemius, A.D . 467-472), Gelasius countered with the argument that it had not been practicable for the Church to dismande paganism all at once (Letters, 13 and 29).2 The Pope's prohibitions were not immediately successful, even among Christians. But in due course, the Lupercalia disappeared, though some of its rituals were transferred to the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary (or Candlemas) .3 It is easy enough to see why the Pope objected. The Lupercalia celebrated nakedness, sex, bawdy violence, voluntary or forced flagellation, riotous dis­ order and drunkenness, as well as antique pagan superstitions.4 Originally, so several Roman intellectuals thought, the Lupercalia had been a rite of purifi-

I

1. 1be tide of this chapter is an inversion of Mauri� Bloch, From Blesing to Violence (Cambridge, 1986), a brilliant study of the changing meaning and functions of circumcision rituals among the Merina of Madagascar. - I should like to thank Kurt Raaflaub for persisb:lt patience, Glen Bowersock for helpful criticism, and above all Mary Beard and Stephen Hugh­ Jones for many intellectual discusions and good advice. 2. 1be most interesting study of the Lupercalia, hom which I have gready benefited (though I do not always agree with his detailed interpretations) is A. W. J. Holleman , Pope Gelasius I and the LN/lercalia (Amsterdam, 1974), supplemented by G. Pomares (ed.), Gelase leT, Lettre contre 1es Luperca1es (Paris, 1959). 3. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Rome in the Mide Ages I (London, 1894) 265; Bede, Patrologia Latina 90.351 CD. Se also Walter N. Schumacher, "Antikes und Chrisdiches zur Auspeitschung der E1ia Manacia," Antilce 14nd ChristerJtum 11-12 (1968-69) 6575, for a very interesting discussion of a third-century Roman tomb probably of a Lupercus, depicting the Lupercalia, with candles. It indicates night time festivities in the Lupercalia, mentioned by Gelasius, and presages the to Candlemas. 4. It is an interesting symptom of the ritual's plasticity and of Christian adaptability that the Lupercalia was celebrated by Christians. But then the Merina circumcision ritual, involving the worship of ancestors among other things, was practised by fervent Christians (Bloch, Blesing to Violmce [no 1 ) 41 and 62).

Jahrbuch fNr

480

Symbols and Rituals

cation, derived from Rome's pastoral origins when herds of goats had to be defended from wolves (/UPi = wolves, hence perhaps, /uperci, the name given to the runers in the ritual). Apparently, in popular imagination, the symbol of the wolf was associated with the festival, since in the temple of the Luperci, discovered at Rome in the seventeenth century, but now destroyed, pictures behind the altar portrayed Rome's founders, Romulus and Remus, being suckled by a wolf, and next to them a Luperms, armed with a whip and ready to run. But in historical times, the main interest of the rites seems to have centered on the fecundity of women.s The core elements of the rites were roughly as follows. Every year, on February 15, after the sacrifice of a dog and goats (an exceptional sacrifice, since Romans usually killed for the gods the more edible animals: pigs, sheep and bulls), two young men, their foreheads smeared with blood and milk, led teams of young aristocrats and knights, feasted, drunk, garlanded and per­ fumed, rung naked around the ritual center of the city. As part of the festivities, they beat anyone they chanced to meet, but especially women, with thongs cut from the sacrificed goats allegedly in order to render them fertile, or to ease child birth. In the second and third centuries A.D., some Roman senators and knights were so proud of having run as Luperci, that they boasted about it or had the ceremony portrayed on their tombstones.' And in all strata of Roman society, boys and girls were given names which directly recalled the Lupercalia: Lupercus, Luperca, Lupercilla, Lupercianus. The Lupercalia was a ritual which helped Romans identify themselves as Romans. Pope Gelasius' open leter on the Lupercalia and his polemical prayers, which were especially composed for delivery during mass before and after his prohibition of the Lupercalia, are particularly valuable as sources. Gelasius, a hostile observer, provides us with details about the rites, which earlier and friendlier commentators had merely hinted at. Even so, many details of the Lupercalia rites are uncertain, partly because surviving accounts vary, and partly because it is difficult for us to know how much these variations in description imply differences in perception, or changes in practice. For example, acording to Gelasius, men were naked for the flagellation, while earlier sources disagree as to whether men were naked or wore loin cloths made of goat skins; Gelasius states that respectable women were �tripped naked and 5. The most detailed aneient accounts of the Luperca1ia, apart from Gelasius, are by Ovid, Pasti 2, 267-428 and Plutarch, Romulus 21. These and other accounts, for example, Festus 76 L s.u. Februarius and Varo, On the Latin Lanpage 6.34, asate the Lupercalia closely with February, from febn4 a purificatory offering. Se helpfully, the commentary by Franz BOmer, P. Ovidius Nasa, Die Pasten (Heidelberg, 1957). The painting discovered in Rome in the sevententh century and now lost, is reproduced from an old drawing by Rudolfo Laneiani, "Miscellanea topografica," B"lletino Com"",nale di Roma (1891) 305H., 341 and plate 12. 6. Se, for example, CorpNs InscriptiOtfl", Latina,.,,, vol. 6.2160: "a Roman knight who also ran as a Lupercus"; ibid., vol. 8. 9405 21063: "awarded a public horse, and who performed at the holy Lupercalia." For two memorials (one is ibid., vol. 6. 3512 plus vol. 14. 3624 lnscriptifmes ltaliae, vol. 4.1. 496), se conveniendy Paul Veyne, "Iconographie de la 'transvectio equitum' et des Luperca1es, "Revile des etudes andennes 62 (1960) 100-110. =

=

=

Hopkins: From Violence to Blesing

481

flogged, but Plutarch writes that women merely stretched out their hands to be beaten, like children in school (Julius Caesar 61 ).7 In the fifth century A.D., according to Gelasius, the runers were no longer aristocrats, but despised members of the lower classes. But in the last century B.C., aristocratic youths, even magistrates, participated actively in the rites; indeed, Antony was among the runners when he was consul in 44 B.C.: he turned aside from the ritual, addressed the crowd in the forum naked, and offered Julius Caesar a crown (Plutarch, Antony 12; Cicero, Philippics 2.85-7, 3.12: "naked, drunk, per­ fumed"). The carnival spirit had taken on serious political overtones.' The Lupercalian rites involved much more than a brief, half-hearted, symbolic chase by drunken young men through one part of the city.' Acording to Gelasius, they were associated with a charivari, the ritual singing of lewd songs, bawled in rebuke of some wrong-doers' alleged immorality; they involved seductions and even sexual assaults on maried women accused of adultery, and finished with ritual flagellations and penance. to Perhaps it would be com­ forting if we could dismiss al this as idle speculation, late accretions, or as the hostile exaggerations of a reforming pope. But centuries earlier, Cicero had hinted that the Lupercalian runners "had intercourse in a rustic style as was customary before civilization and law were established" and that they called out accusations against named people (pro Caelio 26); Cicero's description is at least compatible with that of Gelasius. The centrality of serious flagellation, in the image and so perhaps also in the reality of the Lupercalia, is corroborated by a calendrical mosaic dating from the third century A.D. It gives a picture for 7. The disagreement among ancient authors about the nakednes of the runners and of the beaten women is interesting. Did it reflect contemporary variation (some were, some were not), or a clash of ideals, or changes over time? Ovid (P.uti 2.283-84), Varo (On the Latin Language 6.34), Plutarch (Julius Caesar 61) and Gelasius (Letter 16: "respectable women floged in public with their bodies nude") stres nakedness; Dionysius of Halicarnasus (Roman Antiq­ uitiu 1 .80) and Plutarch again (Roman Questiofls 68 280BC) are explicit about the loin cloths covering the genitals worn by the luperci. Justin (1.43) has it both ways: "naked, clothed in a goat-skin." Perhaps the tension was between the nakednesl necesy for a fertility rite and the difficulty of respectable aristocrats run naked round the city and confronting respectable women who wanted to be fertile. 8. It is important to stres that some people thought the Lupercalia was fun. The luperci were propelled through the streets by collective solidarity, the jollity induced by a banquet and a lot of wine drunk (acero, pro Caelio 26; Valerius Maximus 2.2.9). 9. I used to think that the Lupercalia was· perfunctorily ritualistic, mere tokenism, a quick fun run. This common view was a product of our conventional understanding of traditional Roman religion: dull, unemotional and colorles. The latent agenda, I suspect, is to idealize the Romans (masterful and efficient) and to undervalue Roman religion, as a backdrop, son to be displaced in an evolutionary procesion by oriental mystery religions and eventually by Christianity. Se fur example, Robert Turcan, Les culres orientaux dans Ie mcmde romain (Paris, 1989) 25. 10. These are the speculative but well-argued conclusions of Holleman 1974 (n. 2) 6087, based principally on Gelasius, Letters 2, 5, and 16-20, plus Mas 18-20, delivered just af­ ter the Lupercalia of A.D. 495, in which he attacked those who had deserted Christ, were filled with camal desire, had forcibly entered homes and had taken unfortunate and sinful women captive, not just widows but wives. There sems some color to Holleman's speculation that the Lupercalia served as a carnival trial, public punishment and penance of wives accused of adultery (d. Socrates, History of the Church 5.18). =

482 . Symbols and Rituals

each month; under the title February, it depicts the Lupercalia and shows two men forcibly holding a naked woman face upwards, while a third man, half naked, whips her thighs.u Once again, the festivities have taken a more seri­ ous turn. The men's drunken hilarity is matched by the beaten woman's obvious pain. The image of Roman festivals which this mosaic projects (and a third century sarcophagus from Rome depicts a similar scene) is disturbing,u It reminds us, if we needed reminding, not to domesticate Romans into a comfortable familiarity. Romans were dangerously different. I began with the Lupercalia, because they illustrate the persistence of ritual forms, certainly for six centuries, and perhaps for a thousand years. The rites persisted, in spite of huge changes in the Roman political system, from the early small scale pastoral and agricultural republic, threatened by wolves, through the conquest of a large empire, the growth of the city in size and intellectual sophistication, and in 3 1 B.C. the political transformation of the state into a stable monarchy, to the eventual triumph of Christianity in the fourth century A.D. and the collapse of the western Roman empire in the fifth century. In order to survive so long, the Lupercalian rituals must have ocupied a social space which was disassociated both from political government and from religious ideology.13 The stability of ritual forms must have disguised both radical diversity and radical changes in meaning. For example, it seems likely that the Lupercalian rites had different significance in each period for different sections of Rome's varied population: spectators, participants, half­ naked men and beaten women, full Roman citizens, visiting saints, and immi­ grant traders.14 And it seems likely that they had different meanings for early

1 1 . For the mosaic discovered in El Djem (Roman Thysdrus) in 1961, se convenimtly, Schumacher " Antikes und ChristlicheS" (n. 3) 65-75 or Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, The Mosa­ ics of Roman North Africa (Oxford, 1978), and the literature cited there. 12. On this sarcophagus panel, the woman is being whipped on her buttocks, is naked from the waist down, and is depicted as a volunteer sufferer, pr so Schumacher deduces from the way she is held; se Schumacher 1968-69 (n. 3) 65-75 . 13. The best discusion which I have read about how rituals should be interpreted is by Maurice Bloch (n. 1) 157-195. But se also Christel Lane, The Rita ofRulers (Cambridge, 1981), and Abner Cohen, Two-dimensimll Man: An Esay on the AnthropOlOgy of Power and Sym­ bolism in Complex Societies (London, 1974). 14. I doubt the interpretation of Paul Zanker in his rightly-influential book, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (An Arbor, 1988): "To the equita, fot example, he [Augustus] assigned the ancient but now meaningles cult of the Lupercalia. In this ritual, which was originally meant to insure the protection and fertility of the flocks, a dog was slaughtered and priests, dres only in a short skirt, ran a course round the Palatine, incidentally beating women with a whip made of goatskin. It is easy to se how this archaic fertility ritual might have seed ridiculous in a cosmopolitan environment and understandably Augustus forbad adolescents from being present at this event. Only recendy have honorific statues of luperci . . be identified combining a classical semi-nudity, the short skirt and goatskin whip into a public image that conforms to classicizing aesthetic standards" (p. 129 and fig. 105 on p. 1 30) . The erors here are multiple: an overidentification with authority, the apparent attribution to all Romans of a single attitude and interpretation, and the imposition of modem art-history categories - which functions as an evasion of analyzing the varied meanings of the artefact to its ancient erectors and observers. Why did Roman knights commemorate their participation in the Lupercalia on their tombstones, if the rites were generally considered "meaningles" or "ridiculous" ? .

Hopkins: From Violence to Blesing 483 Roman peasants, Roman aristocrats in the Middle Republic with one eye on the popular electorate, imperial intellectuals thoroughly acquainted with fash­ ionable skepticism, immigrant citizens living in Rome but strangers to Roman traditions, proselytizing Christians, and late pagan reactionaries. We do nOt know the secret of the Lupercalia's appeal, but we can speculate. Its central concern was with sexuality and fecundity, with the wild and the civilized, with hierarchical order of men and the humiliation of women. During the cold of February, naked aristocratic men, masked like wolves, hunted for women, but could beat whomever they met in the crowded streets of metro­ politan Rome.ls Respectable women, instead of modestly retreating, stood up to, even offered themselves to the hunters for a beating. The professed objective was fecundity. But clearly at some stage in the development of the ritual, the focus shifted slightly: the disorderly sexuality of women was symbolically punished by the flagelation of selected wrong-doers or penitents. The Lupercalia became attached to the public punishment of those accused of or confessing to adultery. Some of the runers, as I have said, were proud enough of their participation to have it recorded on their tombstones. The survival of the Lupercalia for so long was due partly to the confron­ tation of issues which repeatedly troubled Romans, and partly to the encapsu­ lation of these troublesome emotions in a disorderly dramatization which bracketed the performance off from the normal world. The sheer unconven­ tionality of the rituals, their barbaric wildness, heightened their appeal; at the same time, they increased the variety and ambiguity of meaning for participants; which in tum helped secure their survival - just as a modem political party survives by meaning many things to different voters. The Lupercalia survived, I suspect, because they were disorderly, without promoting any general disor­ der. Participation, as actor or observer, was a symbol of belonging to the community of Rome, which identified itself partly by its religious rites and traditions. Participation also symptomized obedience to the legitimacy of tradition; whether as beater or beaten, the violatIon of normality was justifiable because the actor was merging his or her self in a collective Roman identity. The naked vulnerability of the male luperc; was compensated by being masked, drunk, and in a gang; wielding whips and asserting the hierarchical privilege of treating whomever they encountered just like slaves. The ritual was insulated by its strangeness into being a special ocion; its violent violation of normality helped contribute to the strenuous self-control of everyday, ordinary Roman life.16 15. The idea that INperci wore wolf masks is derived from Lactantius, Divine InstitJ4w 1 .21.45: "naked, drunk, garlanded, either masked or smeared with dirt," a sequence of words which closely follows Cicero's description of Antony as INpercus (Philippics 2 .85-87 and 3.12). And se Holleman, Pope Gelasius 1 (n. 2) 60-87. 16. I am close here to viewing the Lupercalian rires, functionally, as a safety-valve. This may have been their function, that is, it may have be an unintended result of participation. I acknowledge this as both possible and probable, without committing myself to seing all Roman rituals as functionally preservative of social order.

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A COMP LEX OF RITUALS We entered the world of Roman festivals, as outsiders, on a single day. But Romans lived through dozens of religious rituals and festivals every year, and for year after year throughout their lives.17 They learned about rituals cumu­ latively and by assimilation. Consciously or unconsciously, they experienced or intuited Roman rituals and religion, willy-nilly, as a total system, without of course drawing the same boundaries around that knowledge, which we have to, in order to understand it or explain it. Romans, for example, typicaly intertwined religion and politics; their rituals sufed everyday life, whereas we, in modern industrial societies, typically see religion as separate from politics and, for our own ideological protection, typically consider rituals as non-purposive, non-instrumental, peripheral activities such as sporting oc­ casions or family festivals, disassociated from the serious world of work. Our understanding of Roman festivals and rituals can best proceed, I think, by pursuing a double strategy. First, we need to use empathetic imagi­ nation to help think and feel ourselves back into how different Romans themselves experienced rituals. Secondly, we need to see the totality of Roman festivals and rituals analytically, almost objectively, as a complex system. Both approaches have their dangers and limitations. We can never think like Romans. And yet if we are to understand the power of Roman rituals, their repeated capacity to secure citizens' involvement, then we have to recapture the excitement, the heightened emotions of participants: the cheering, jeering crowds voting death with their thumbs down at the gladiatorial games, the pious prayers of worshippers seeking victory in war or helplessly hoping to escape an epidemic, and the individual anxiety of an eighteen-year old recruit who one hot day in July 1 10 B.C. stood sweating in his father's armor, bor­ rowed for the ocion, waiting and wondering if he would ever be called out and chosen to serve for the first time as a soldier in a Roman legion. This perspective, as I have said, has its dangers. It is based' sometimes on imagination rather than on sources, and so violates the canons of careful scholarship. But it can also serve as a valuable corrective to the unselfConscious elitism of Roman historians, both ancient and modern, who place themselves effortlessly in the very top ranks of Roman society and view rituals only downward, ' from above.1s My second tactic is to consider Roman rituals as a system whose busi­ ness it was to constitute and reconstitute a Roman sense of identity.19 This 17. For a convenient, annotated list of Roman religious festivals, se H. H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies in the Roman Republic (London, 1981) S1ff. 1 8 . Ronald Syme was the arch-proponent of elitist Roman history; for him explicidy, as for others implicidy, the only history which matters or is possible, is the political history of the aristocracy and emperor. This was a prejudice of many, though not of all our surviving sources. Our own prejudices can be different and there is certainly little justification in a social history for privileging elitist accounts of Roman practice, as though they were true accounts of typical Roman experience. 19. Viewing Roman rituals as a system implies the complementarity of different rituals. I think they were complementary, but I must stress that rituals can at the same time be -

Hopkins: From Violence to Blesing 485

second approach is analytical and comparatively objective, because it is a modern intellectual creation which cannot be attributed to the Romans, who may well have perceived their own institutions quite difrently. But al history does violence in some way to actors' perceptions. To be sure, Romans ' knowledge of their own ritual world was diverse and probably hierarchical. Some people participated in some festivities actively; in others, they keenly watched their father or mother playing a seemingly complicated part, and realized that one day they too would have to go through the same nerve­ racking performance. In other festivals perhaps they only watched from a f distance, or were puzzled by their complexities, or simply slept through. The I point I want to make is that Romans' knowledge of ritual was, paradoxically, at the same time systematic, partial, and hierarchical. Some people knew a little; only a few knew a lot. Our picture has to cope with this diversity, has to recognize that by no means everyone knew as much as our most knowledgeable sources, and so acknowledge that ignorance, and the anxieties which ignorance created, were al part of the Roman ritual system. In this view, rituals cumulatively, throughout each year and each lifetime, provided Romans with a system of action and knowledge by which they negotiated standardized and repetitive ways of dealing with powerful impon­ derables, such as sexual appetite, hierarchy and sickness. Rituals also confronted the problematic populations within and surrounding Roman society. Sacrifices, for example, joined humans with their gods, gladiatorial games confirmed Roman superiority over defeated enemies and highlighted the risks of cowardice in battle, the Lupercalia helped delineate the multiple differences between men and women and their mutually problematic sexuality, the Saturnalia dealt with slaves by subverting rank and temporarily giving slaves the power to command, and the Lemuria placated the ghosts of the dead. This whole array of Roman rituals, religious and political, public and private, was like an orchestra, with each ritual standing for a single instrument. None of them can be understood alone, by itself; each ritual depen
expresive, formalist, integrative and subversive. Se them as a system is a heuristic device, not a substantive commitment to a particular view. Se the pathbreaking article by Mary Beard, IIA Complex of Times: no more sheep on Romulus' birthday." Procudings of the Cam· bridge Philological Society 213 (1987) 1 ·15.

486

Symbols and Rituals

foster a sense of collective identity, in light of the obvious fact that citizens have competing interests. States can do this effectively and economically only by mass rituals. From this perspective, we can somewhat unconventionally envisage some of the central political institutions of the Roman state, such as the census, the military levy, the electoral and legislative assemblies of the people, as rituals. This is not to deny the instrumental and practical importance of these institutions in the Republican period (509-31 B.C.). Far from it. The census regularly listed tens of thousands of citizens by name, recorded their wealth or poverty, and fixed their tax liabilities, their status, their entitlement to vote, their obligations to serve in the army. The military levy worked to enlist thousands of soldiers; indeed, during the last century B.C., an average of well over 100,000 citizen soldiers served in the Roman army every year. The electoral and legislative popular assemblies rejected bills, passed laws, chose between aristocrats competing with each other each year for dozens of presti­ gious magistracies. We are dealing here with central processes of military and political power. But the processes were also rituals.20 Whatever the divergence of participants' interests, however bitter their conflicts in elections, their very participation united them under a common cultural flag. At this stage, it may be useful to try to re-combine our two approaches, the empathetic and the analytical. We have to acknowledge the formalism and complexity of constitutional arrangements, and at the same time appreci­ ate the subjective anxiety which participation evoked among actors. Each of the rituals which I have just mentioned, the census, the levy and the popular electoral and legislative assemblies, involved large-scale participation, with a cast of many thousands. They also stimulated intense but different reactions. Rituals often work like that. By crowding participants together, they generate strong emotions; and they offer fertile ground for the manipulation of symbols, such as flags, ceremonial clothes, or the sounds of music and the smells of a burning sacrificeP Each ritual was a public perfoonance, carried out in front of spectators. The plump knight had to lead his aging horse through the forum in front of the censors. Cold constitutionality had a sweating face, set in a potentially jeering crowd. Every head of household' had to make a public 20. These central Roman institutions are normally understOod constitutionally. Still best is Theodor Mommsen, R6misches St4tJtsrecht, 3rd. ed. (Leipzig, 18 87). In adition, on the census and levy, se Peter A. Brunt, Italian Manpower (Oxford, 1971); on the levy, Keith Hopkins, ConqUMotS and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978) 31ff.; on the popular asblies, Lily Ross Taylor, Roman Voting Asemblies (An Arbor, Michigan, 1966). 21 . Because we rely on surviving written sources for rewriting Roman history, we tend perhaps to undervalue the importance of color, sounds, and smells in Roman rituals. Good modem films, such as Ben Hur, Spartacus and I, Claudius offer interesting supplements. So too do Egyptian mumy cases of Roman citizens, if provincial Romans alive dres as they were portrayed dead. Se the fine pictures of the coffin of Cornelius Pollius and his family (dated A.D. 93), now in the British Museum, reproduced in Otto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker, Egyptian Astrological Tats II (Providence, Rhode Island, 1969) 89ff. and Plates 46-48. The noise of the crowd in an amphitheater, such as the Colosseum in Rome, must have be deafening, and enhanced the music of trumpet and water-organ which introduced and punctu­ ated gladiatorial fights. See conveniendy Keith Hopkins, "Murderous Games," in id., Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983) 20-27.

Hopkins: From Violence to Blessing 487

statement of his wealth for each census, which served as the basis of his taxability, fixed the level and style of his military service, and determined his own and his family 's s ocial status . Imagi ne the conflict between underdeclaration and exageration, between the meanness of the fre�rider and the boastfulness but expense of social ambitionP The Roman census pe­ riodically constituted and reconstituted, before a critical audience, hierarchy and social order. It was both a constitutional institution and a mass participa­ tion ritual. Every state has to harness the power of its underclasses. The trick, as Marx saw, was to ensure that peasant potatoes were ordered into sacks, but also to ensure that peasants remained like potatoes, without a consciousness of their collective interest!l My argument in the next section of this chapter is that Roman political rituals were organized by complex rules, which worked rather like a stately eighteenth century dance, such as a gavotte, or pavanne. The purpose of this metaphor, and it is only a metaphor, is to acknowledge the complexity of constitutional regulations, but also to invest them with the actors' subjective meaning and anxiety. There were four principles underlying the organization of Roman rituals. These principles competed and overlapped. First, the populace of citizens was repeatedly divided into mutually competitive strata and sets. Within each set, the citizens were then again sub-divided (by regulations so complex that few people could have understood what was going on) into ever-shifting, repeatedly reconstituted groups, like the changing sets of a gavotte. One function of these constitutional rules (by function, I mean here the consequence of the rules envisaged independently of their creators' intentions ) was to harness the aggregate power of the Roman masses, without allowing them the repeated possibility of establishing stable internal coalitions, through which they could realize or achieve their collective interests, and so undermine the dominance of the senate. The power of the plebs was harnessed, without allowing it to be threatening. Secondly, the constitutional rules were so c�mplex that few people knew what they or others should be doing. Ignorance about procedures, and the passivity or anxiety which ignorance encouraged, were themselves hierarchi­ cal devices, which helped subordinate the ignorant to the knowledgeable.14 And waiting - waiting for your tum, and especially waiting for your social 22. On the dilem of the fre rider, se Douglass C. North, StTuctJ4re and Change in Economic History (New York, 1981) 10ff. of Louis Bonapam (English translation, Mos­ 23. Karl Marx, The Pifteenlb cow, 1934) 1 06. 24. Knowledge is still used as a power base, for example, by governments which with­ hold or selectively release information and by university professors. Se, for example, P. Bourdieu, Homo Academiau (Cambridge, 1988). As to waiting, it was a well-known aspect of Roman elections; Yaro sets one of his dialogues in a period of more than two hours, during which his intellectual and aristocratic conversationalists waited for their election results and whiled away the time discusg birds and bees in some shade near the voting pens (On Agri­ c"ltJ4re 3. 2ff.).

488

Symbols and Rituals

superiors to have their tum first - was also a device repeatedly used by Romans to reinforce hierarchy. The third principle of Roman ritual organization was that affiliations should be diferentiated and cross-cutting. Differentiation implies that rituals were organized in such a way that subtle peculiarities of dress, style, and self­ dramatization demarcated diferent social boundaries. Senators, for example, wore tunics and togas with a broad purple stripe as well as distinctive red shoes with black lacing and an ivory buckle. High ranking senators, as officers of state, were preceded by attendants carng bundles of rods and axes to signify their powers of corporal punishment, and were entitled to sit on special chairs.lS Similar differentiations suffused al strata of Roman organiza­ tion; some divisions, as we shall see, were by birth, others by wealth, others by body armor or physique, stil others arbitrarily created by lottery. The important point is that differentiations shifted between rituals, over a year and over each actor's lifetime. Consequently, one function of rituals was to express, and to repeatedly re-express, membership of ever-changing and only partly overlapping sets: senators, knights, a legion, a tribe, a priestly college, a lineage, a combination of patron with his clients, a social grouping in a morning passegta in the forum, or an afternoon group at the baths. Rituals are stylized, repetitive social activities, which help express and define social relations. They do their work especially through symbols, just because they combine participants who do not explicitly share common interests. Finally, rituals and symbols work partly through obscurity and mystery. Symbols and rituals cannot do their symbolic work if all actors are clearly conscious of their functions. In the end, in a stable political system, rituals work because they provide the opportunity for different people to share the illusion that they each belong to a common cultural system. The ritual dramas of publicly declaring one's wealth at the census, joining the army, fighting a battle, running in the Lupercalia, mourning at a y..oung daughter's funeral, losing an election, or getting drunk at a public feast, each coalesced a different set of fellows, projected different but yet quintessentially Roman images. Each Roman created his or her own symbolic map; the maps ' overlapped, and so helped create a fluid, but stable, and identifiable cultural system which we call Roman society.16 This common culture, through its ambiguities, drew to­ gether people with different interests and helped propel them toward common actions.

25. Mommsen, Rmnisches Stltsrecht (n. 20) I. 372ft., Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton, 1984) 216-19.

ID.2.

888-92; Richard J. A.

26. I borrowed the idea of symbolic maps from Jonathan Z. Smith, Map is not Tertory (Leiden, 1978) esp. 2 89ff.

Hopkins: From Violena to Blessing

489

RO MAN P O LITI CAL RITUALS : TH E LEVY, CENSUS AND POPULAR AS S E M B LI E S

The Levy These four organizing principles of Roman ritual can best be illustrated by taking a closer look at how Roman political rituals worked. Let us begin with the military levy during the republic. Once again, we owe our best surviving description to an outsider, the Greek historian Polybius, who presumably, unlike the Romans themselves, did not take their traditions for granted. Polybius stayed at Rome for a long time in the mid-second century B.C. and set himself the task of explaining to Greeks why the Romans had succeeded in conquering their cultural superiors. He looked at Roman institutions from inside, but as an outsider. This is how Polybius analyzed the ritual dance of the military levy, executed every year, so that a cast of at least 18,000 performers (comprising four legions) were chosen from among the tens of thousands of adult male citizens who had not yet served al the years for which they were eligible. Please note the formalism of the procedural rules, the internal divisiveness of the selection process and of the sets which it produced, and finally, the emphasis on hierarchy and order. All Roman citizens were eligible for military service between the ages of seventeen and forty-six years. Up to ten years service was required from the cavalry, sixteen years from the infantry. The poorest citizens, those with property worth less than 400 denarii, were demoted to service in the navy. On the day of the military levy, previously fixed by the consuls and announced in the popular assembly, all eligible citizens converged on Rome. Needless to say, Polybius' account here is idealistic and ignores population centers outside Rome; but it is quite underst�dable that his account of a foreign ritual concentrated on the thousands present in the capital city rather than on the absentees.27 Let us begin, as Polybius did (6.6), with the' officers. Twenty-four military tribunes were elected by the tribal assembly: ten senior tribunes from among the soldiers with at least ten years service; fourteen junior tribunes from among those with at -least five years service. The twenty-four tribunes were then allocated among the four legions as follows:

Tribunes Senior Junior

I

Legions III II

2 4

3 3

2 4

Total IV 3 3

10 l! 24

27. The classic commentary on Polybius is by Frank W. Walbank, A Historical Com­ mentary on Polybius, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1957-79). Polybius' account of the Roman constitution is in book 6.

490

Symbols and Rituals

It is rules like this which remind us of ritual dances. The first soldiers to be selected were the cavalry, three hundred per legion, chosen from among the wealthiest citizens, nominated as such by the censors. The early selection of the cavalry, Polybius noted, was an innovation; it probably reflected the increasing stratification of Roman society, which itself resulted from an ex­ panding empire. Next came the selection of the infantry. First, the thirty-five tribes were ordered by lot. Then, from the winning tribe (and later from each successive tribe in turn), a tribune chose four young men of similar physique. Next, a tribune from each legion picked one of the quartet, with the order of choice rotating between the legions, so that eventually each legion had soldiers of similar physical standards, but from diferent tribes. The procedure of enlistment went on, the men being chosen, walking forward, being chosen again, until all four legions, totalling 18,000 men, had been registered and marshalled. Finally, each man singly swore a very brief oath of loyalty. It was a full day's work for those choosing, chosen, and rejected: a collective ritual of togetherness and anxiety, repeated each year, and like the periodic census, a public restate­ ment of physique, age and wealth. A few days later, when the soldiers joined their legions for active service, they were once again divided up, by age, poverty and body armor, experience and contiguity, into rows and centuries. The process of enlisting, choosing, rejecting, marshalling, ordering thou­ sands of Roman citizens every year as soldiers, sailors, infantry, cavalry, and officers was both purposive and ritualistic. It was efective but not efficient in time and energy. But its protracted ritual helped Romans realize the might of Rome and the cost at which it was won. The levy celebrated Roman military togetherness, and yet, by its repeated subdivisions, it set citizens against or above other citizens. The levy was a collective action, signifying varied meanings and arousing strong emotions, impelling men to conjoint action. The levy was both ritual and institution. I chose to begin with it Path because it had a cast of thousands and because it was central to Roman imperial expansion and political identity. But it was only a start. In order to -understand Roman rituals and symbols, we cannot deal with single institutions in isolation. We have to look at the configuration of rites, through which individual Romans in the course of a year, and a lifetime, were socialized and resocialized into their set identities. Of course, in a single essay, that is too large an agenda. But the approach can be illustrated with two further political rites, the census and the electoral and legislative assemblies.

The Census The periodic census was held on average every six years throughout the late Republic, until the disruptions of the civil wars. The overt purpose of the census was to create lists of citizens, tax-payers, potential soldiers, and electors. Citizens had to record their ages, children, slaves and property, and on that basis were allocated to one of seven social categories (knights, five classes,

Hopkins: From Violence to Blessing

49 1

and proletarians whose only contribution to the state was their children A sculpture now partly in the Louvre and partly in Munich, dating from the last century B.C., shows a census registration in progress.l8 A citizen carrying his own records in a small diptych of wax tablets stands before a seated census official, who is making an entry onto a large record sheet. Behind the census official's left knee we can clearly see a stacked pile of six volumes of census records. At the official's side, another seated census official is taking the oath from the next citizen about to make a declaration, while a saluting soldier looks on. The military and religious elements of census-taking are illustrated in the same relief: the next panel shows soldiers, infantry and cavalry, standing by while preparations are made for the sacrifice of a pig, sheep and bull, the ceremonial and religious termination of the census. The census combined religion, social order, hierarchy, and tension. The Roman census created lists, honor, and rank. The mere act of recording the names and property of 300,000, and in the last century B.C. of over a million citizens should not be underestimated. It was a ritual on a large scale. But the census was not just an emotionless head count. It was a social stock-taking, in which each citizen had his social standing confirmed, or changed. The censors reviewed moral behavior as well as wealth. They reviewed the physique of the upper classes and their horses in the ritual center of Rome. They demoted even senators for alleged immorality. In general, the social order was stable. But within this stability, consider­ able atomic flux occurred; single sons inherited whole estates, while in other families several children split the patrimony between them, with a drop in status for all unless they were lucky and/or married well. The census provided a regular stage for the public declaration of the changing worth of each citizen's property. In a rapidly expanding empire, wealth had to grow for relative status to be maintained. Imagine the added tension at academic con­ ferences, if name badges noted incomes as well as names. The word census came to mean "declared wealth"; the term equestrian census meant the wealth which qualified a man for the status of a knight. In formal birth certificates, which survive only from a later period, Roman citizens declared the birth of a child. They also stated how much the father was worth, as an open matter of public record: -

proles}.

I, C. Herennius Geminianus, (census) 375,000 HS, have registered (as a Roman citizen) my daughter, Herennia . . . (P. Mich. 166 of A.D. 128, written in Latin). Census taking in the Republic was an important ingredient in securing the continuity and reproduction of the Roman system of social identity and divisive stratification. It was a recurrent, ritualistic and public fixing of social status. Once again, its emphasis was on order, hierarchy and social divisions by tribe, class and obligations.

28. Mario Torelli, Roman Histoneal Reliefs (An Arbor, Michigan, 1982) Sff. and the literature cited here.

492

Symbols and Rituals

Popular Assemblies The people in Rome had considerable political power. Their power was expressed in the army, in citizens' legal rights, and by popular assemblies. This is not to say that Rome was a democracy; far from it. In many respects, it was an ever-changing aristocratic oligarchy. But it had surprisingly strong democratic elements. I say surprising, because conventional scholarly opinion over the last few decades (misled I think by the elitist preoccupations of leading scholars) has assumed the unquestioned dominance of an aristocratic elite.2.lI The main reasons for dissent are twofold. First, aristocrats disagreed among themselves, so that popular assemblies often held the balance of power. Secondly, in order to win popular support, competing aristocrats proposed measures which favored some sectors at least of the broader citizen population. Hence, for example, the distributions of conquered land to citizens, voting by secret ballot, and monthly distributions of subsidized (and later free) wheat to citizens resident in Rome itself. Politics is not only about process and who controls the state, but also, even in Rome, about results and who got what share of the cake. The recurrent tensions in Roman political life, both between competing aristocrats and between competing political objectives (war, peace, expenditure, triumphs) provided the emotional bloodstream for the complicated rituals of legislative and electoral assemblies. The voters had to choose and repeatedly cared about who won. Imagine the conflicting emotions when, for example, laws were debated and passed limiting the amount of state land a rich man could lease (367 B.C.), displacing the co-option of state priests by popular election (287-218 B.C. ), allowing secret instead of open voting ( 1 37 B.C. ), and establishing a court for trying judges for corruption (91 B.C.). The issues here are not constitutional niceties, but the life blood of Roman political practice. There were three main popular assemblies in operation during the last centuries of the Republic: the Assembly of the Centuries, which had origiIlly been a military organization, the Assembly of Tribes, and the Council of the Plebs, which excluded hereditary nobles and which had been an instrument in the earlier myth-creating struggles of the people against the aristocrats. Each asse�bly had important electoral, legislative, and · judicial functions. For ex­ ample, the Assembly of Centuries elected senior officerS of state (consuls, praetors, censors), the Assembly of Tribes elected lesser magistrates (aediles, quaestors), and the Council of the Plebs elected tribunes of the people, an 29. 1he best synoptic account of the curent debate about the Roman political system in the late Republic is by John North, "Democratic Politics in Republican Rome," Past and Present 126 (1990) 3-2 1 . The clasic statements of the elitist view were by Matthias GeIzer, The Ro­ man Nobility (Oxford, 1969, an Fnglish translation of the 1912 German original), and Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939). Revisionist views have be sugested by Peter Brunt, The Pall of the Roman Repllb/ic (Oxford, 1988); Fergus Millar, "The Political Charac­ ter of the Classical Roman Republic," jOlmal of Roman Stw:lUs 74 (1984) 1-19; id., " Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War," ibid. 76 (1986) 1 -11; Keith Hopkins and Gt-aham Burton, "Political Succesion in the late Republic (249-50 B.C.)," in Hopkins, Death and R enewal (n. 21) 1 07ff.

Hopkins: From Violence to Blesing

493

office designed to protect ordinary folk against official or senatorial abuse. All laws had to be passed by one of the assemblies. The Centuriate Assembly made official declarations of war and dealt with crimes punishable by death, at least until the establishment of permanent courts. The Tribal Assembly dealt with cases punishable by a fine. Yet, since the membership of al three assemblies was almost identical, the functions of the differences were partly maintenance of tradition, partly mystifying involution (like mazurkas and foxtrots), and partly, like other Roman political rituals, fragmentation of the subordinate classes into constantly changing and therefore never coalescing sets. The ritual complexities of Roman political practice are well illustrated by the voting procedures of the Centuriate Assembly or by any modern book on Roman constitutional law. First, I should stress that the voting day was the culmination of prolonged electioneering; in the case of legislation, voting occurred only after due publication of the draft law and open public meetings of citizens, at which rival orators tried to sway public opinion. The elaborate voting rituals which celebrated hierarchy and order followed the controlled disorder of mixed public meetings.30 On the day appointed for voting, a red flag was hoisted on a hill across the Tiber from the city, and a trumpet was sounded from the city walls. The presiding officer said a prayer, then lots were drawn to decide which century from among the younger men in the top social class should vote first. The first century selected by lot entered the voting pens (as in sheep pens ovile, saepta), each man wrote the initials or names of the candidates he favored (two consuls elected one day, eight praetors elected the next according to the rules, the names of all candidates were to be written up clearly on white boards in the voting pens), their votes were counted, and the result was formally announced.31 This first result was thought to be influen­ tial and predictive, like a modem opinion poll on the eve of an election. On some notorious ocasions, an imperious presiding consul who did not like the outcome, sent the first century back to vote ag.1in (Livy 24.7), or suspended proceedings because of a bad omen (Plutarch, Pompey 52). Normaly, the voting proceeded to the other centuries of the first class. Lots were drawn to d�ide the order of voting, with the result of each class successively anounced until an absolute majority 97 of the 193 centuries - had been obtained for each consul and praetor. I must stress that results were often unpredictable. Since al candidates had clients, patrons, and kinsmen, and since competing aristocrats often had overlapping circles of acquaintance, none of these variables (patronage, clientship or family) is by itself an explanation of success. Votes were therefore usually split and emotions often ran high. We know only of some close decisions, which went to the lowest centuries (Asconius 94C; Livy -

-

30. Se the excellent guide by Taylor, Voting Asblies (n. 20) lsff. and I l l , on which I lean heavily here. On the procedures of publishing bills, se Mommsen (n. 20) m.l. 369ff. 31. An excellent account of voting methods is given by Taylor 1966 (n. 20) 34ff.

494

Symbols and Rituals

43.16). Voting and counting votes for multiple candidates took a long time and sometimes could not be completed by sunset. We are dealing with a complex, long, and important political ritual. Consider the difficulties, both formal and practical. The 193 centuries were organized by classes, which were based on wealth and on age. From the third century B.C., each century also had to be drawn from different tribe or tribes. This caused some difficult manoevering, because members of the thirty­ five tribes, younger and older men separately, had to be squeezed into ten or twenty centuries. The following table illustrates the problem:

Centuries Class 1

35 centuries aged 1 7-45 years,

70

35 centuries aged 46 years and above Knights

12

Aristocratic Knights

6

Carpenters

2

Class 2

20

Class 3

20

Class 4

20

Class 5

40?

sex suffragia

}

each 10 centuries aged 1 7-45 years,

10 centuries aged 46 years and more 20 centuries aged 17-45 years, 20 centuries aged 46 years and more

Musicians

1

Supernumeraries

1

Proletarians

1 193

In the first class, the thirty-five tribes of younger men (aged 17-45 years) and 35 tribes of older men (aged 46 years plus) matched the number of centuries. But in the lower classes, younger and older men from the thirty-five tribes had to be redistributed so as to constitute ten centuries each. The re­ allocation was done by lot, and we can plausibly reconstruct the procedure from a bronze tablet, the Tabula Hebana, discovered only in 1947 near the ancient town of Heba, which details procedures devised in A.D. 19 for splitting 33 tribes of senators and knights among 15 centuries, each with its own voting basket. Presumably similar processes of random electoral mixing had regularly occurred previously at the Centuriate Assembly. The function of the rules was to repeatedly divide up the electors in different ways, so that they did not develop stable alliances or small group identity. It also seems probable that many voters were ignorant about the precise procedures or at least found them confusing.

Hopkins: From Violence to Blesing

495

Ritually, one function of the rules was to develop the voting into a stately and protracted dance, like a pavanne. First, balls for each tribe were to be put into a revolving urn. The order in which the balls fell out determined which tribes were to vote in which century: The assignment of lots shall be carried out in such a way that for the centuries . . . (1-1 0), two tribes shall be allotted for the first, second, third and fourth balot basket, three for the fifth, two each for the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth, three for the tenth. And for the centuries . . . ( 1 1 -15), the lot shall be carried out in such a way, that two tribes shall be allotted to ballot baskets eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and three tribes to basket flfteen.3Z It is easy to imagine similar inventiveness in splitting the younger and older voters from 35 tribes among ten centuries each in classes 2-4. It is easy to imagine that on a hot day in July voting and counting votes, punctuated by anouncements of results from each class, took a long time; sometimes the whole procedure was not finished by sunset and had to be continued on the next day. Unfortunately, we do not have any figures for attendance at the popular assemblie� comparable with those for democratic Athens. But we do have some clues. The stone walled electoral Pens (saepta), begun by Julius Caesar and finished in 26 B.C., were huge, some 300 meters long and 100 meters wide. They allowed simultaneous voting by all 35 tribes in elections by the Tribal Assembly. Lily Ross Taylor calculated that the Pens could hold 70,000 voters at a time.33 Of course, we do not know whether or how often the Pens were filled. It is reasonable, albeit risky, to argue that building on so huge a scale simply assumed large-scale voting. The hall where votes were counted, the Diribitorium, was the largest roofed building in Rome. It seems ironic that both large buildings were erected only after the institution of monarchy, which heralded the death of democratic elements in the Roman constitution. The Pens became a site for gladiatorial shows,· · and suitably a market for antiques (Martial 9.59).34 CON F I G URATI ONS 9F A LI F E -TI M E : OTH E R RITUALS Up to now I have discussed one religious and three large-scale political rituals: the Lupercalia, the military levy, the periodic census, and the popular assemblies. I have argued that it is not sensible to understand them singly, or in cold 32. The translation here is from Taylor (n. 20) 90. The full text is printed by James H. Oliver and Robert E. A. Palmer, "Text of the Tabula Hebana," American Journal of Philology 75 (1954) 225-49; a translation is given in Allan C. Johnson et aI., Aneient Roman Statutes (Austin, Texas, 1961) 131 -35. The voting prescribed by the Tabula Hebana was in order of precedence: senators first, then knights. In Roman political ritual, so it sems, no opportunity was lost to reconfirm status relativities by ordering and waiting. 33. Taylor (n. 20) 1 1 3 and 47ft. 34. Zanker, Power of Images (n. 14) 142-43.

496

Symbols and Rituals

constitutional terms. Instead, we have to envisage a configuration of varied rites. We have to imagine a Roman citizen, and whole, shifting, permeable sets of citizens, moving from ritual to ritual through the year, through a life­ time of learning, assimilating, being socialized and then teaching others the traditional rites of being Roman. This statement implies neither universal participation, nor equal understanding of what was happening. But the citi­ zens as a body created for themselves, and in some sense shared, a map of rituals, which existed in their minds and on the ground, as well as in learned encyclopedias. This map constituted an important element in the Roman cultural system. I have concentrated so far on political rituals, because they were central to the effective running of the Roman state, because they were large-scale, highly formalized rites, and because we ourselves are not accustomed (for our own cultural and ideological reasons) to perceiving ritual and symbolic elements in purposive political institutions. Inevitably, I have left much out, even large­ scale popular rituals. For example, the free wheat-dole involved registering 250,000 citizens who turned up (at least in the system as it developed) once a month, eight thousand per day, at particular outlets ("he received wheat at outlet 39, day 10" ran an epitaph for a three year old: Inser. Lat. Sel. 6069). The whole process of queuing, waiting, revealing one's needs, participating in a lottery for vacant places, carg, sweating for the privileges of citizenship, was an important ritual of togetherness and social identity. Once again, its organization fragmented the 250,000 recipient citizens into very much smaller sets, perhaps less than two hundred per outlet per day.3s I have said nothing about other civic rituals, such as the triumphal processions, circus races, and gladiatorial games which celebrated Roman victories over defeated, captive, and plundered enemies; nothing about state religious rituals, which aligned senatorial priests as chief human intermediar­ ies between citizens and the great gods who favQred and protected Rome. I have also not discussed the Vestal Virgins, the extraordinary ritual observances of the priest of Jupiter, the Flamen Dialis, and the strange foreign religions, some of which, like the worship of the Great Mother, Cybele, were officially imported (in 204 B.C.), while others, like Isis, Dionysus, Judaism, and later Christianity, came unofficially and were resisted; finally,. I have said nothing further about the traditional rituals, such as the Lupercalia with which I began, or the Parentalia and Saturnalia. Obviously, even in a longish paper, I could not discuss all these individually. Instead, I wondered if it would be profitable to examine this wild profusion of varied, civic and religious rituals by applying the concept of configuration, 3S. On the wheat dole at Rome, se Geoffrey Rickman, The Com Supply ofAncient Rome (Oxford, 1980) 1S6ff.; for a fascinating parallel at the small market town of Oxyrhynchus in Roman Egypt in the third century A.D., se John Rea, The Oxyrhyru;hus Papyri, vol. 40 (Lon­ don, 1972). Claimants for the dole there had to attend a public meng, go through a lottery and have the validity of their status as citizens publicly and administratively approved.

Hopkins: From Violence to Blessing

497

and by invoking the ancillary ideas of function, the penumbra of moral ambiguity, controlled violence, and inversion. My initial intentions can be simply put. I want to envisage how the whole gamut of Roman rituals worked. The central, large-scale political rituals, which we have already dis­ cussed let us call them mass participation rites - implicitly reinforced the virtues of hierarchy and order; they functioned both to harness and to fragment the lower classes. The civic rituals of triumphal processions, gladiatorial games, the Lupercalia and state sacrifices - perhaps we could call these by contrast, spectator rituals - all presented the citizens who watched, smelt and heard, brief but repeated visions of violence: the slaughter of a bull, the hunt of wild animals in the forum or amphitheater, the murder of captured enemies or convicted criminals, the whipping of women. The Vestal Virgins, the self­ mutilating, castrated priests of the Great Mother, and later the ascetic virgins of Christianity, all helped reassert the vigor of normal sexuality by inverting it. So, similarly, the inversion of the Saturnalia reconfirmed the authority of the masters by "playful" rituals in which masters served slaves and slaves played at being masters. The steeper the hierarchy, the more it both needs and can afford ritual inversions. The full panoply of rituals at Rome operated as a harmonic configuration, offering citizens antiphony between hierarchic order and encapsulated violence, and securing moral conformity by locating rituals especially in the penumbra of moral ambiguity. As I see it, the core of political mass participation rituals, celebrating hierarchy and order, was held in place by the nimbus of religious and civic spectator rituals, which celebrated violence and the upset of hierarchy and order, albeit in very restricted doses. So too, conventional sexual morality was upheld by worshipping through the mediunl of priests and priestesses who behaved abnormally. It is as though the margins of normality, what I have called the penumbra of moral ambiguity, provide the ideal staging for the celebration and codification of symbolic values. Spectator rituals concentrate in areas of social strain. One implication of my argument seems worth exploring briefly. The first emperor, Augustus (31 B.C. A.D. 14), revolutionized Roman political life by superimposing monarchy on traditional republican forms. He and his succes­ sors maintained power by demilitarizing and depoliticizing citizens living at Rome and in Italy, and by cutting the ties which bound the aristocracy to the plebeian electorate. So the annual military levy was effectively abandoned; soldiers served for sixteen or more years, and were recruited from all over the Mediterranean basin and beyond. The citizen census, after a brief and inter­ mittent revival, was also abandoned; the political assemblies continued to meet for a while to pass laws, but the area of political debate had shifted from the forum to the Palace. By the end of Augustus' reign, elections to the senate were shifted out of the popular assemblies to an electorate of senators and perhaps knights. In sum, Augustus had degutted the central political rituals of the city of Rome. There was a ritual vacuum. breaQ an
-

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Did it matter?3' For as long as the empire was effectively defended against barbarian invasions by its professional long-serving armies, and as long as its internal political task was to minimize the combinatory power of its con­ quered populations, the lack of a centrally controlled symbolic leverage was an advantage. Control over the symbolic map could not fall into the wrong hands. But when the old empire of conquest tried to increase its capacity to mobilize resources against external invaders, the lack of a co-ordinating ideol­ ogy of collective interest was critical. The empire as a whole had no effective rituals to give all the inhabitants of the empire a single collective identity. I wonder if this lack of a co-ordinated set of rituals and symbols at the very center of empire made the empire as a whole vulnerable to attack across its own symbolic and ritual frontiers. After all, the empire was conquered by the strange sect of Christians a century before the western empire was overrun by barbarians.

36. I face a problem here which I canot easily or satisfactorily resolve. The more important 1 claim political rituals to have be in the political and social life of the Republic, the more problematic their abolition or transformation under the emperors becomes. My claim in this coda that the abolition of ritual created a vacuum, only filled several centuries later by the invasion of Christianity, puts to much weight on a metaphor, and telescopes time uncom· fortably. The reader who has got this far deserves comfort; this argument as it stands does not sem entirely convincing; but it semed to interesting to discard completely; and besides, someone else may improve it out of all recognition.

Symbols and Rituals in Florence

F RANCO CARDIN I

Al of the stendardi, the compagnie of armeggiatori and the potenzie should be eliminated since all of them detract from the good reputation of the public weal and increase the reputation of private individuals. Those who investigate their origin wil find that they were established by tyrants who introduced such feasts to entertain the plebes through whom they might hold the Republic in a state of oppression. For this reason it would be good if all spectacles held in the city to please the people be ordered by the government, so that private individuals not rise in the estimation of the crowd.1 RI GOROUSLY REPUBliCAN OPINION, expressed in the beginning of the sixteenth century by Donato Giannotti, synthesizes the political outcome of a long symbolic, ritual, and ceremonial dialectic through which the city of Florence had constandy tried to express its identity and redefine its image from the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century. The slight and yet consistent veneer of terms and of oppositions through which one can see the Roman inspiration in Gianotti's statement is quite transpar­ ent. The oppositions in his mind were those of the public and the private spheres, of tyrant and republic, of the plebes and the republic (and, of course, of the plebes and tyrants). His statement can ;Jlso be seen as a perfecdy lucid theory that explains the genesis of tyrants. According to this theory tyrants brought about a "rise in reputation" of "private individuals" amongst the "crowd." In other words, he thought that the organization and management bf public festivities was the link between republican freedom and "public order. " It is highly significant that he paired the aristocratic companies of the

T

HIS

1. lbis essay owes much to the suggestions of Sergio Bertelli, Giovanni Ciappelli, Riccardo Fubini, Maria Luisa Minio Paluello, and Elvira Garbero Zorzi. Anna Benvenuti Papi and Lucia Nesi gave me indispensable help concerning the festivities in honor of John the Baptist. Nicole Carew-Reid was generous enough to let me consult her manuscript, as yet unpublished ("Lea fetes a Florence sous Laurent Ie Magnifique") . I have also profited from al of Lucia Ricciardi's suggestions. Finally, very special thanks are owed to Paola Ventrone. The quote is from "Un discorso sconosciuto di Donato Gianotti intorno alia milizia," ed. G. Sanesi, Archivio Storieo Italiano, ser. V, 8 (1891) 2S quoted by Richard Trexler, Publk Life in Renaisance Florence (New YorklLondonforontoi Sydney/San Francisco: Academic Pres, 1980) .

500

Symbols and

Rituals

armeggiatori and of the lower-class potenzie, which, not quite by accident, were to flourish in the grand-ducal period. Gianot clearly had in mind jousts, carnival celebrations, and the sacre rappresentazioni organized and staged by confraternities whose messeri (leaders) were followers of the Medici family, and he knew well the importance of all these festivities in shaping civic consensus and their use as a means of intimidating adversaries, two basic objectives that ranked high in the political struggle of the foremost Florentine families. The ritual and ceremonial life of Florence cannot be understood by instituting arbitrary - even anachronistic - distinctions and dichotomies between a sacred, ecclesiastical, and religious function on one hand and a lay function on the other. This opposition is even less acceptable when we consider the deep sacrality permeating all ceremonies, both ecclesiastical and secular, in which these two elements were usually present and interacted. It is equally unacceptable when we consider the civic religiosity that one encounters in the various patronal and co-patronal cults and that expressed itself in the ceremo­ nies linked to these cults. The ritual and ceremonial life of Florence can be understood only by examining the image the city tried to give of itself through rituals and ceremonies in which the ruling class defined both its own self and the dialectical relationship it entertained with those it governed. Furthermore, one must try to understand the real relationship between the public sphere and the private one. Giannotti knew very well indeed how to use these juridical but also political concepts even though he applied them in a somewhat facile and maybe not entirely innocent way to a reality in which the interchange between these two spheres was continuous. In fact, it may be said that the legitimation process of the public sphere came about through the invasion of the private sphere, whose strength was expressed in terms of the resources of the public one. The famous opinion of Lorenzo de' Medici that neither his family affairs nor his banking affairs could have been saved if he had not been able to maintain and strengthen his hold on the st�te is an effective antidote to the partisan venenum contained in Giannotti's apparen,cly noble defense of the public sphere. If we examine Florentine festivities and ceremonies during the late repub­ lican period, it becomes obvious that they were organized arQund three separate dates and seasonal periods of the year. By late republican period I mean the period in which the crypto-principality of Cosimo had already given way to the signoria larvata (embryonic principality) of Lorenzo (the difference between the crypto and the embryonic principality may be better understood if we think about the meaning of andar larvati - literally, to go about hidden during carnival). Three periods of the year were singled out for staging these festivities. First, there were the ceremonies dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, from June 22 (21 after the reform carried out by Archbishop Antonino in 1454) to June 24. This celebration was placed in such a way as to embrace the entire period preceding the solstice, ushering in the sumer, and culminating

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501

with the patron saint's feast day. The second period of the year was carnival, which was devoted to games, entertainment, dances, processions with floats, anneggerie, military games (great favorites in Florence as well as in other cities), and jousting (more popular than mock battles and tournaments). The third such period, less important than the first two, was devoted to the spring celebrations of Calendimaggio, a kind of conclusion of a yearly cycle that began by celebrating the Annunciation, when the Florentine New Year began, and Easter.2 Besides these festive periods, sanctioned by the calendar, there were other special celebrations and festivities not associated with any fixed da.te which could be coupled with celebrations linked to dates of the calendar or with visits by important people such as ambassadors. Occasions such as the latter could be transformed into nothing less than a citywide festival, especially when the person received was particularly important. Two such celebrations ocurred, in 1452, when Frederick II visited Florence, and in 1459, when Pius IT and Galeazo Maria Sforza came to the city. It seems to me that, up to now, Richard Trexler's work has constituted the most complete and coherent effort to understand the symbols and rituals of late medieval Florence. In his work he studies both the dialectics and the interpenetration between the public and private spheres, a fragile and difficult but nonetheless undeniably important relationship since it characterizes civic identity. According to Trexler, . . .Three tensions emerge that form the axes about which the celebratory mode revolved. First came a chronological tension between a predominantly public celebratory mode around the feast of St. John (the procession of the whole clergy, of the governmental subdivisions of the city, of the government and bureaucratic offices), and a preponderantly feudal, personalistic, and private mode (jousts, dances, and armeggerie) most pronounced around Carnival. Second, the corollary group tension between familial and public celebration persisted, even though the interdependence of the two modes was recognized. The fundamental Florentine political dynamic, in which the families of the city fed off the public charisma, and in which the .public sector had charisma only through its ingestion of family honor, was nowhere more evident than in this period. When Dati said that the families waited til St. John's to "honor the feast," he meant not only that the families profited from the commune, but vice versa. Thus the coinmune itself had to adopt feudal festive forms in its celebra­ tions if it was to prosper. By the same token, feudal forms at any time had public meanings. A final tension is implicit in the previous two: the tension in the fonns themselves. Jousts, armegggerie, and dances were associated in the Florentine perception with feudal northern Europe and with the kingdom of Naples; pro­ cessions of the clergy, government officials, and sections were associated with a civic mode. The former activities were aristocratically, familially, and individu­ ally oriented; the latter, publicly and popularly. For al that, Florentines wanted 2.

Se Trexler, Public Life, 223-263.

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Symbols and Rituals

their city, if not their government, to be noble. It is this most fundamental of all citizen concerns, that the city generate legitimacy, honor, and trust through legitimate forms, that leads us to choose this tension between the forms of celebration themselves as the decisive approach to the understanding of this period.]

It is possible that the use of the term feudal will create a misunderstanding and a few raised eyebrows. The term must be understood in the context of what has been termed the refeudalization of late medieval and especially early modern Italy. The costumes and the courtly-chivalric attitudes encountered in Florence at this time could be understood as conveying a superstructural meaning of this refeudalization process. They might also be seen, in a more focused way, as an attempt to produce a global definition (even though forced and somewhat superficial) of an aspiration widely shared among the upper strata of the Florentine ruling class. This small group of people had provided recruits for the oligarchy presiding in Florence in the course of the fourteenth century. After the problems encountered between 1340 and 1370, this same ruling class tightened its grip on the city in the course of the last two decades of the century, even though family factions, interest groups, and family groups fought tooth and nail for power." The concentration of wealth and the vast reconversion of wealth into real estate (land, prestigious estates outside the city walls, and, slowly, even the palaces built within the city walls), the social control they exercised via the privatization of public office, their shaping of public consensus, and the repression of any kind of lower­ class organization went hand in hand with (and were expressed by) an intensi­ fied and heightened refinement, exterior and intdlectua� in both dress and attitudes. In short, a way of life inspired by courdy and chivalric codes arose as can be seen in an increasing interest in romances (very different from the popular vogue for songs),s in heraldic fashions,' in the passion for devices, and in the practice of decorating horses, as well as in the taste for jousts, tow:na­ ments, and armeggerie. Even the government magistracies seem to have adopted and even tried to use to their advantage some oftilese vogues, as can be seen in the creation of the cavalieri del Comune (city knights), the cavalieri del Popolo (knights of the people), and the altered coats of arms imposed on the families of magnates who chose to become popolani. In the meantime the Guelf party, the powerful oligarchic organization that controlled the ruling class and political change in the city, had corne to play a role as guarantor of these attitudes and fashions, which, in fact, were the codification of precise 3. Idem, 224. I used the excellent Italian translation in R. Guarino, ed., Teatro e cuitura dell4 rappresenta:cione. 1.0 spettacolo in ltalia nel Quattrocento (Bologna: n Mulino) 72. 4. Se G. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaisnee Ploreru:e (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Pres, 1977). 5. Se F. Cardini, "Concet di cavalleria e mentalita cavalleresca nei romanzi e nei cantari fiorentini," in I ati dirigenti nell4 Toscana tardo comunale (Aorence , 1981) 157-192. 6. Se "Dell'arme delle famiglie fiorentine," in V. Borghini, Discorsi, 1585, with anno­ tations by D. M. Manni, P. Gori, ed. (Aorence: Savellini, 1990).

Cardini:

Florence

503

civic and social messages. Consequently, the Guel£ party was in charge of organizing the knightly games.7 The feast of Saint John has been described more than once, and Trexler has given a detailed account of the rituals enacted on this day during the so­ called mature phase of this festival, which began after the reforms of Saint Antonino. I will, therefore, give only a brief description of the elements that went into the celebration of this festivity. The culminating phase of the cel­ ebrations lasted only three or four days, although the preparations and festivi­ ties together lasted about ten days. In the course of these days the patron saint was celebrated by merchants and artisans of the city who were responsible for organizing an exhibition of their most beautiful work. After the merchants came the clergy, whose task it was to organize the great procession that was usually held on the morning of June 23. Finally, it was the tum of the citizens, who presented their gifts, sestiere by sestiere (after the reform, quarter by quarter), to John the Baptist. Various devotional confraternities participated in the patron saint's feast day as of the end of the fourteenth century and even more so in the fifteenth century. These confraternities contributed the well­ known floats and mechanical gadgets (edi(izi), which soon became the best­ known and most appreciated feature in the long and complex celebrations. In 1454 Antonino intervened decisively to make sure that there would no longer be any confusion between the solemn clerical procession and the various processions of floats and other artifices. His attitude was that of a strict moralist faced with a tendency that had surfaced in 1377, when Florence, struck by a papal interdict, had increased the lay component of the patron saint's procession to compensate for the absence of the clergy. This increased role of the lay component had been maintained since 1377 and might even have grown somewhat at a later date. At this point it is worth remembering that Saint John the Baptist, patron and therefore head and defender of the city, was not specifically a symbol of the city government even though there was a tendency to give him this role. If anything, the city government, whose sovereign prerogatives had more of a de faao recognition than a legal one, was one of many institutions that came to the Baptistery during these days of celebration to pay homage to the Precursor. As .the celestial prince .of Florence, John the Baptist also had a very precise military value. In fact, it is hardly a coincidence that there was a Florentine legend according to which John the Baptist had supplanted Mars, whose effigy (La pietra scema, che guarda il ponte) was kept and honored in its own way until the great flood of the Amo swept it away in 1333. This flood was interpreted by some to have been a punishment from- Heaven because two brigades (brigate) of artisans had held excessive dances and banquets during the feast of John the Baptist. In any case, this military aspect of the Baptist 7. A fundamental text for all these matters is still that of G. Salvernini, "La dignitA cavalleresca nel comune di Firenze," in idem, La dignitl callalleresca nel comune di Fi,enze e altn scritti, ed. E. Sestan (Milan, 1972).

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Symbols and Rituals

helps explain the reason for which the citizens of Florence came to pay homage to him quarter by quarter: the gonfalon; corresponded to the basic military repartitioning of the city. This military organization of festivities was also underscored by a horse race, the so-called Palio, which crossed the entire city and was held in honor of the patron saint on June 24 in the afternoon. When held in enemy territory or under the walls of a besieged town, the running of a Palio was a symbolic afrmation of dominion. In the same way, John the Baptist, to whom the various subject communities offered rich pali; (cloths) in homage and during whose feast the Palio was run, became the au­ thor and guarantor of all Florentine victories. Minor Palii (run on foot) were staged during the days honoring other patron saints of Florence: Saint Reparata and Saint Barnabas, whose feast day (June 1 1 ) also commemorated a victory at the battle of Campaldino. The Florentine pantheon of civic warriors was enlarged, at a later date, by the addition of Saint Anne (whose feast day on July 26 coincided in 1 343 with the expulsion of the Duke of Athens) and Saint Victor (whose feast day in 1 364 coincided with the end of the war with Pisa). Saint Victor was also honored with a chapel in the new cathedral and with a very expensive palio cloth offered by the Guelf party. Another cult that developed in the course of the fourteenth century was that of Our Lady of Impruneta, directly associated with protecting the city from floods and drought. This last cult seems to have taken the place of the pietra scema effigy of Mars guarding the city from dangers coming from the Amo. The solemn entry of the image of Our Lady of Impruneta, carried into the city of Florence whenever an emergency called for it, was also a pretext for rituals and festivities of great importance.B Let us, however, go back to Saint John and the processes that this feast put into motion. In 1343, shortly before being expelled from Florence, Walter of Brienne reinforced the civic characteristics of these festivities, giving them a strong lay and courtly connotation. He was also responsible for yet other innovations, which were destined to have little succesS due to their pronounced political meaning. For example, in civic processions, he .substituted for the gonfaloni, that is, the territorial circumscriptions within which the prominent men of the city mostly marched, representatives of the Guilds, that is of the corporations. This substitution meant that the procession, included O at least some representatives of the middle and lower classes. More than just a dema­ gogic trick, this move was part of the rather well-known politics of the Duke of Athens, who strove to create for himself a base of supporters among the lower classes of the city. This innovation was eliminated following his fall and the failure of his attempt to start a signoria. Yet, he had introduced other innovations in the ceremonies honoring John the Baptist. As Villani's chronicle points out, "The morning of the feast, besides the large candles usually sent

8. Se F. Cardini, "La Grande Madre della Repubblica," in idem, "De finibus TuscU. " II medioevo in Tosc/lna (Aorence, 1989) 290-296.

Cardini: Florence 505

by some twenty castles of the commune, he received, from twenty-five of them, golden pali, hunting dogs, hawks, and goshawks as presents." After 1343, the "hunting dogs, hawks and goshawks" disappeared from the tribute paid to the great seigneur, who represented himself as John the Baptist's delegate to the outlying communities ruled by Florence. More than the usual lay gifts, these presents must be seen as a reminder of feudal times. The pali, on the other hand, continued to be presented, perhaps because of the dense and even jurisdictional meaning attached to them, because these cloths could be understood as symbols of sovereignty and jurisdictional power being offered by the outlying towns to the protector of the city that ruled over them. After the innovation brought about with the offering of the pali, the feast of John the Baptist saw yet other phases and events that were to change it at least in part. One such phase came in 1453-1454 when, among other alter­ ations, a role of greater prestige within the procession of the civic magistracies was accorded to the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia. However, it was during the last fourteen years of Lorenzo's rule that the manipulation of the great patron's feast was to become both more apparent and more radical. Although this manipulation was brought about through a series of changes that, taken one by one, do not reveal the intent behind them since, individually, they seem to be slight, when taken as a whole the nature of these alterations becomes clear. In 1478, after the assassination of Giuliano and the wounding of Lorenzo de' Medici, and in the midst of the ensuing tension with the Holy See, the signoria forbade the use of floats during the celebrations honoring John the Baptist. This ruling can hardly be explained by invoking problems of public disorder because, during the Pazi conspiracy, it was precisely the people of Florence who had vigorously bolstered the Medici (even though the spontane­ ity of this movement can, to a certain extent, be doubted). Furthermore, these floats were great favorites with the people of Florence. It might make more sense to see this ruling as a kind of answer to the Pope, similar (because of circumstances but different in content) to measures taken at the time of the war of the Eight Saints, when the city's sincere"religiosity and a strong civic sense had resulted in an increased lay element in the feast of Saint John. After the Pazi conspiracy, and in reaction to the nepotism and rigidity of Sixtus IV, the changes followed suggestions made some decades earlier by Saint Antonino, their intent being to underline the rigorous and even austere faith of the Florentines. At the same time Lorenzo began a program of discrete appropria­ tion of the Baptist's feast day. In 1484 he got rid of the large candles, the palii, and all of the other trophies and symbols accumulated in the Baptistery ostensibly so that the marvelous architecture of this monument could be admired for its pure lines. However, it is very difficult not to see this move as a conscious and implicit message to the city, reminding it that power was no longer concentrated in the hands of those institutions and those centers which Giannot would have defined as the public sphere. In 1488 the much-beloved floats were given back to the Florentines during the festivities of Saint John,

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celebrated in connection with the entry of Francescheto Cybo, son of Inno­ cent VII and Lorenzo's son-in-law since he had married his daughter Maddalena. Finally, in 1491 Lorenzo decided that the patron's feast day should be embellished with an element, both profane and pagan in taste, a "Triumph of Paulus Emilius." This last element was supposed to represent the apotheosis of Medicean good government. As Tribaldo de' Rossi pointed out in his memoirs, "Lorenzo de' Medici had the compagnia della stella make, according to his ideas, fifteen triumphal arches depicting Paulus Emilius when he came back after taking a city so full of treasures that, as a result, Rome did not have to pay any taxes for some forty or fifty years. " From 1 343 to 1491, from the goshawks and hawks of the Duke of Athens with their Gothic and feudal meaning to the Renaissance cult of antiquity and Lorenzo's .triumphal arches, is a very long step, even though the message that both of these lords broadcast to the city was very similar. Walter of Brienne did not succeed in his attempt to turn Florence into a principality, whereas Lorenzo, although he did not manage to give his rule the name that really belonged to it, did manage to set the tone in such a way that everybody knew the nature of his rule. The festivities held on June 24 did not lack elements taken from the courtly and chivalric tradition, which not only continued to hold sway in Florence but seems even to have gained in popularity during the fifteenth century. During the days preceding the twenty-fourth or just after the solemn celebrations of this day, there were tournaments, jousts, wild animal hunts, fires, and masquerades. As a consequence the end of June was characterized by events that made it resemble carnival especially since - because Lent comes after the carnival - in high sumer there were no feasts and no great preaching, not only because of the heat but above all because it was feared that big crowds favored epidemic outbreaks. The tension between the public and the private sphere is, I think, quite visible in the festivities dedicated to John the Baptist'. However, this opposition can be found in all of Florentine history, at least in the sense that the defense of the public sphere was regularly taken up by the partisans of the government faction whereas the attacks coming from the private sphere always came from the faction that was being kept from participation in the government of the city. Lorenzo Ridolfi, in a speech of 1428, told the Florennne priors that "just as only one God is to be adored so you too, Priors of the city, must be venerated above all other citizens, and those who tum their eyes to others are adoring false idols and must be condemned. " It was clear to him that the false idols in question were all the opponents of the group that was in power at the time and that these opponents were becoming increasingly popular at least among certain sectors of the Florentine population. Furthermore, those false idols knew how to emanate a brilliant light that could seem divine, as can be seen in the famous cult of the Magi. The earliest known record of a procession winding its way from San Marco to the Baptis-

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507

tery in order to reevoke the trip of the three Magi appears in a document of 1390.!I By the beginning of the fifteenth century all of the festivities com­ memorating the day of the Epiphany had been concentrated in the area around the convent of San Marco. As of 1410, the convent also became the seat of the confraternity of the Magi. Recent studies have linked the Adoration of the Magi painted by Gentile da Fabriano for the Strozzi chapel in Santa Trinita with the entry into Florence of Martin V in 1419. They also suggest that the cult of the Magi was linked to the welcorning ceremonies held in honor of important visitors to the city.10 In 1419 the Signoria had to turn its attention to the power group hiding within the city's various confraternities which, potentially, was hostile or at least in competition with it. The Signoria thus formulated rules regulating the confraternities' operations which effectively lirnited their scope. These new rules certainly had a bearing as well on the confraternity of the Magi, which, however, resumed its activities in 1429, when it organized a great procession for Epiphany and participated massively in the festivities held in honor of John the Baptist. Things must have changed a great deal with the return of Cosimo to Florence. The confraternity of the Magi, who considered Cosimo one of their most illustrious exponents, became a choreographic element in the propaganda and image building launched by the Medici. It is hardly a coincidence that Lorenzo, born on 1 January 1449, was baptized during the festivities celebrating Epiphany. It is no less of a coincidence that ten years later Benozzo Gozzoli painted a Procession of the Magi, obviously inspired by the processions held during Epiphany, in the chapel of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in which the very young Lorenzo appeared in the magnificent clothing he had worn during the armeggeria held that same year in Florence to welcome Pius n and Galeazo Maria Sforza.11 The brigate of knights shaped and flaunted "private" power, more so than the confraternities, whose primary function was, after all, to meet for devotional reasons and in order to organize religious festivities. These brigate had a strong clan and partisan element in them which city officials tended to view in two ways: favorably, if the brigata was controlled by its men, and dangerous if the brigata included members and families that were unfavorable

9. Se also Aile bocche tklla piaza. Diario di anoni".o (rorentino (1382-1401), ed. Anthony Molho and Franek Sznura (Florence, 1986); R. Hatfield, "The Compagnia de' Magi,"

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970) 1 07-1 61; and Richard TrexIer, "The Magi Enter Florence: The Ubriachi of Florence and Venice," Studies in Medieval and Renais­ sance History, n.s., 1 (1978) 129-21 3. 10. Se H. Hofmann, Die Heiligen Drei Kanige. Zur Heiligenverehf'ung i". kjrchlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen Leben tks Mittelalters (Bonn, 1 975). 1 1 . Se G. M. Beccabianca, Gli affreschi di Benozzo Gozzoli nella cappella tkl palazzo Medici-Ricardi a Pirenze (Milan, 1957); and R. Hatfield, "Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459," Art Bulletin 52 (1970).

508

Symbols and Rituals

to the current city officials. Thus, behind the gay and gaudy spectacle of young people thronging the town's streets with clothing characterized by the same color scheme (whose symbolic message it is difficult to decipher today), could lie repressive, intimidatory, and even subversive messages to the rest of the city. This was an ancient device indeed. The compagnia of the Signore dell'amore, founded during the feast of John the Baptist in 1283 by the Guelf family of the Rossi from Oltrarno, had more than one thousand members, all dressed in white, who organized armeggerie, dances, and banquets. This compagnia seems to have had a role in bringing about the unification of the Guelfs and the popolo, who together eliminated the Ghibellines from the Florentine scene after the peace of Cardinal Latino and despite the terms agreed to at that time. After the 1283 experience, other confraternities and brigate were created, not unlike those which were thriving in Pisa at much the same time where, significantly, the compagnie di divertimento (literally, enter­ tainment companies) were soon transformed into compagnie d'armi (weapon companies), and in Siena where the famous brigata spendereccia (literally, bri­ gade of the spendthrift) had its seat. Under a happy and carefree exterior, the brigate harbored a profoundly violent element and a capacity to intimidate adversaries by showing them their wealth and the power wielded by the members of their families. All this can be seen in isolated examples that have come to us via narrative evidence. One such example is the case of Betto Brunelleschi's brigata, which "playfully" pursued Cavalcanti all the way to the stone arches of the Baptistery. This kind of pursuit must have become alarming if one is tojudge from the fact that the 1 322 statute of the Capitano del Popolo specified that these groups could not number more than twelve men each and, if this number was exceeded, . that the fine for each extra member was to be one thousand lire. The 1325 statute of the podesta forbade games like the one called II Veglio della Montagna. Unfortunately we know very little about this game besides the fact that, due to Marco Polo's account of him, the Veglio had quickly'be­ come a well-known character in chivalric literature whose notorious ordering of mysterious crimes seems to indicate that the game which bore his name must have had violent aspects. It is obvious that feasts, games, and brigate meetings cQuld be ideal places at which to exercise private vengeance and to settle old accounts. For example, the dances held during Calendimaggio were, more than once in the first half of the fourteenth century, the moment at which episodes of civil strife broke out. Anthropologists and also ethologists such as Ireneiis Eibel-Eibesfeld who have studied "wars" and "tournaments" among animals have pointed out that dancing is closely related to war and courtship (war and courtship being two sides of the same coin). There is also a strict formal link between dancing and jousting or dancing and armeggeria. Thus it is not surprising if these oc­ cupations were practiced together during the carnival season, often at night,

Cardini: Florence

509

illuminated by torches or bonfires.12 The spectacle was undoubtedly beautiful but also dangerous and disquieting, not only because of the risk created by so many fires burning in the city, but also because customary civic laws were broken: nighttime was no longer devoted to silence and sleep, fires were not put out, and gatherings were no longer forbidden. The celebrations organized by Lorenzo il Magnifico could be held at night only after obtaming permits from the Signoria, which suspended customary laws for the necessary amount of time. It must be pointed out, however, that these special permits unleashed groups of young armed men who were often masked or in any case disguised. The potentially violent character of these celebrations was only partly hidden behind a thin veneer of "happy" partying. The hierarchical order, but also the solidarity and equality reigning inside the brigate, has been defined a little too hastily as "feudal" and "knightly." These words are not basically incorrect as long as we do not fall into the temptation of using them in a purely evocative and impressionistic way. In fact, the brigate were made up of young men, roughly equal in family and social status, led by a signore or messere who paid them and who also took on all or most of the costs the brigata incurred during the festivities (armeggerie, dances, jousts, banquets, and so on). The hierarchical obedience to the leader coexisted with the egalitarian feeling of belonging to an "armed brotherhood." Although basicaly a game, the brigate seem to have been taken quite seriously, because such brotherhoods sometimes led to more concrete forms of mutual help long after the festivals. The uniforms and devices characterizing them became a sign of as well as an emotional catalyst for this solidarity.13 The dis­ tinctive traits of the Germanic warrior's comitatus were thus retrieved and re­ lived via courtly literature that described how groups of youths were given the honor of receiving the cingulum militare. These descriptions seem to have constituted a model, willed and specific, to be followed by the brigate and thanks to which one can understand the network of family and personal alliances that otherwise would remain quite impenetrable. To look for political and patrimonial motivations as explanations of these alliances (both being motivations that existed and were certainly important) is anachronistically to undervalue the meaning and characteristics of the armed brotherhood that existed within the brigate. In fact, political and economic motivations doubtless mingled with the spirit of knighthood, creating a rich terrain of exchange between the three, although the spirit of knighthood may well have established a bond of honor that was strong enough to actually influence the political and economic aspects. The brigate were a fundamental part of Florentine history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Some were begun by the Guelf party, but most were 12. M. Grisberg, "Carnaval et societe urbaine a la fin du xv· siecle," in us fites de /a Renaisance 3 (paris, 1975). 13. See S. Settis, "Citerea 'su un'impresa di bronconi'," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34 (1971) 135-177.

510

Symbols and Rituals

private, and their history belongs to the complex story of the struggle among the families constituting the Florentine oligarchy. One of the main functions of the brigate was to create a consensus among the lower classes, great lovers of rich and colorful spectacles, and of the show of power, glory, and wealth of the families involved in the games. In other words, we are in the realm in which "gifts" and "wastefulness," that is, the festive destruction of economic wealth, take on a basic importance. Gifts and wastefulness (the knight's form of largesse) were, with the prowess shown in military games, the two basic courtly virtues. Another courtly element was the erotic content of ostentatious military prowess ( as can be seen in the 1464 nighttime armeggeria by Bartolomeo Benci in honor of Marieta Strozzi). In a world of shifting personal and fanily relationships, such a message of love could easily be converted or subverted into a vendetta. The limit of twelve participants per brigata (twelve being a fatidic number since there are twelve apostles, twelve months in a year, twelve constellations, and twelve knights of the Round Table) was also easily circumvented, either by increasing the number of brigate or by keeping the members to that number but increasing the number of secondary characters and walk-ons. Lorenzo certainly wanted to show all and sundry that he, as a leader, and his brigata wielded enough power to dominate the city in which he rode around fully armed, having obtained a special permit. In fact, this permit had been easily obtained from the Medici allies in the Signoria, whose prime concern was to legitimate what was happening in the city. One such example was the joust of 1469. This was the twenty-year-old Lorenzo's formal debut as head of the Medici family and as the city's "crypto-prince." Another such occasion occurred in 1475 when he presented his brother Giuliano to the city and to the world at large, an event whose intent was to remind everyone of the chivalric tale of two knights, one of whom was older and wiser while the younger was more active and valiant, sagesse and prouesse being the two cardinal knightly virtues, rarely fpund in one person, but triumphant when conjoined in "two brothers-in-arms." These events, celebrated by knights and by the brigate, must be seen as part of a multitude of festivities organized by a number of diferent societa, for devotional reasons or even just to celebrate a specific event in the various parts of the city. It was this world of proliferating and interconnecting societa, each with its own purpose, statutes, and insignia, that seems to have pulverized and destroyed the republic's traditional institutions and its public authority. In this context, chivalric panoply held a privileged position and had a greater catalyzing function than did other elements contributing to the end of the Florentine republic. Lorenzo used this panoply as the prime instrument to build up his prestige as lord of Florence. This is how things stood, and in this light, Giannotti's denunciation becomes more readily understandable.14

14. Thanks to Allen Grieco for his translation of this essay from Italian.

The Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

PATRICIA FORTI N I BROWN

This city of Venice, common domicile of all; a free land never subjugated by anyone like all the others; built by Christians not by wish, but by fear; not by counsel, but by necesity; and not by shepherds like Rome, but by a powerful and rich people; and these [people] from that time to the present have always been a bulwark against the Barbarians, and warriors for the faith of Grist.

RITING

- Marin Sanudo, Laus uThis

Venetae, c. 1 493

AT THE END of the fifteenth century, the Venetian diarist Marin Sanudo was not ashamed to compare his home city favorably with Rome, on three counts: its freedom in perpetuum; its Christian origins; and the nobility of its founders. He was only following a long tradition, at least four centuries old, of unabashed civic self-glorification. Indeed, one of the most striking characteristics of Venetian public life in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was an abiding concern for reputation. Although every state engaged in imagemaking, perhaps none exceeded Venice in its ability to fashion a positive self-presentation through ceremonial, through visual symbols, and through the manipulation of historical accounts.1 Although the republic had its detractors, modern scholars have even been inspired to refer to the .' resulting image as the "myth of Venice. " lh e notion of a myth of Venice, initially formulated b y Gina Fasol4 has created an alluring paradigm; for the last thirty years it has tended to define the .terms of scholarly discourse about Venetian statecraft in the early period. Any consideration of the republic seems bound to account for the remarkably compelling image, whether justified or not, of an ideal state born and continuing to flourish under divine providence: free, but secure; wealthy, but pious and just; peace-loving, but also a militant defender of liberty and the faith.2

W

1. TIle point of departure for such themes is now Edward Muir, Civic Ritual i" Renais· sance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). 2. Gina FasoJi, "Nascita di un mito," in Studi storici in onore di Gioacchino Volpe

(Florence: Sansoni, 1958) I, 445-79, who also presents a countcrmyth. For an overview of recent literature, se James Grubb, "When Myths Lose Power: Four Decades of Venetian Historiography," Journal of Modem History 58 (1986) 43-94.

512

Symbols and Rituals

A key feature of the process of self-fashioning was the perfecting of a historiographical tradition that privileged certain key events in the Venetian past.J Such events often entered the historical record on modest terms, but they grew in the telling and became essential components of the "myth." With their narrative particulars expanded and burnished over time, they were eventualy transformed into consequential and politicaly emblematic ocions. Although the paucity of surviving sources gives us only a fragmentary picture of the earlier period, it stil seems evident that the critical phase for their elaboration - and for the formation of a Venetian civic identity can be placed in the thirteenth century. As we will see, the historical scripts were further refined during the following century. But by the dogeship of Andrea Dandolo (1343-1354), the basic paradigms, while open to further revision acording to the exigencies of time and circumstance, were essentialy complete. Three iconic naratives had emerged by this time as the major fixed points of Venice's mythic chronology: its foundation on the day of the An­ nunciation in 421 ; the translation of Saint Mark's relics, in 828-829; and the peace of Venice of 1 1 77. These would remain the seminal events of the Venetian myth until the end of the republic, providing sources and armatures of support for those symbols and rituals that were critical for its visual reification. In this chapter we will attempt to trace the formative process that lay in back of their creation as historical paradigms. -

B O RN F RE E AND CH RI STIAN

The relatively late foundation of Venice was a particularly delicate point, and one that Venetian chroniclers strove to put into the favorable perspective that would eventually inform Sanudo's confident Synopsis. The earliest surviving Venetian chronicle worthy of the name is the Cronaca veneziana of Giovanni Diacono, who wrote in the first decades of the eleventh century.4 In his terse (and modest) account of Venetian origins, there were two Venices. The. first spread over the mainland at the head of the Adriatic Sea: "Its capital is the city of Aquileia, in which the holy Evangelist Mark, illuminated by divine grace, preached the gospel of our lord Jesus Christ."s . In Giovanni's view, the second Venice, situated on the islands of the lagoon, grew out of the first at the time of the Longobatd invasions in 568. The inhabitants of the first Venice, not wishing "to pass in an absolute way Se Fasoli, "Nascita," 466. CE. Anwnio Oarile, La coscienza civica di Venezia in La coscienz cittaJina nei comrmi ita/iani del dNeanro, Convegni del Centro di Srudi sulla Spirirualili Medievale, XI (Todi: L'Accademia Tudertina, 1972), along with the other esys in the volume. 4. Published in Cronache rlenniane a1lhisirne, ed. Giovan Monticolo, I (Rome: Istiruto Storico Italiano, 1890) 57-171; and now in It. transl. with commentary: La Cronaca rleneziana di Giorlanni Diacono, cd. Mario De Biasi (Venice: La Stamperia di Venezia, n.d.); d. Antonio Carile, "La formazione del ducato veneziano," in Antonio Carile and Giorgio Fedalto, Le origini di Venezia (Bologna: Patron, 1978) 31. 5. Giorlarmi Diacono, cd. Monticolo, 59-60,13. 3.

nella sua prima swriografia, ..

"

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

51 3

under the power of the Longobard� . . . sought refuge in the nearby islands." Led by the patriarch of Aquileia to the island of Grado, the people brought with them the relics of the holy martyr Ermagoras and other saints and founded "Nova Aquileia" as capital of the new Venice. Migration continued over the next century to eleven other islands. The island of Rialto, even though the last to be settled, "in any event is the richest and most exalted of all, because it is distinguished not only for the beauty of its churches and its houses, but also because it is the capital of the dogeship and the seat of the bishop." These migrants, wrote Giovanni Diacono, were named Venetici: "Eneti, although in Latin it would have one more letter, is a name that derives from Greek and signifies 'worthy of praise.'''' The chronicler's second Venice was one of "very well fortified castles and cities," and he did not suggest earlier habitation in the lagoon area. Indeed, he ignored previous notices that aluded to an earlier migration of refugees fleeing Atila and the barbarian hordes and their establishment of rude island settlements in huts.7 But the question of primitive origins was too intriguing to be passed over by chroniclers of the twelfth century, when, according to Antonio Carile, Venetian historiography assumed a "literary and fantastic character."· Although the legend of Saint Mark's early mission to Aquileia, which claimed him as its first patriarch, was accepted virtually unchanged from Giovanni Diacono's account, the first edition of the Chron;con Altinate gave Venice a Trojan an­ cestry like many other European cities with imperial aspirations.' It also en­ dowed it with a famous ancestor in the person of Antenor, "who reached the shore of the lagoon with seven galleys, and in that place built the city named Aquileia, because it was connected to the water [aquis]."lo By the third edition of the Chron;con Alt;nate, it was the "impious pagan named Attila, most savage, with a great army," who destroyed antiqua Venecia and razed the capital city of Aquileia to the soil. So now it was Attila, Flagellum De� and not the Longobardi who first drove the Christian descendants of the original Trojan settlers to take refuge in wood huts on uninhabited islands of the lagoon. The tribal name of the Venetici or Et1eti also received an expanded etymology; it was now said to be derived from Aeneas.H By the last quarter of the twelfth century, a more precise chronology for the city was established, with a foundation date of 421, deriving from the Attilan emendations, making an appearance in the Annales venet;P As Edward Muir notes, the Trojan myth 6. Ibid., 62,7 - 66,4. CE. Carile, "La Eormazione," 55. 7. Carile, "La Eormazione," 56-57. 8. Ibid., 59. 9. Dated between 1081 and 1204. Se Carile, "La formazione," 44-45 and S9�5. Se also Hugo Buchthal, Historia Troitma: StwJies in the History of Medieval Secular Illustration (London: The Warburg Institute, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971) 20-52. 10. Carile, "La formazione," 60. 1 1 . Ibid., 63�4. 12. Vittorio Lazni, n preleso documento dela fondazione di Venezia e la aonaca del medico Jacopo Dondi," in Atti tkl regio IstitJIto Veneto di scienze, lete ed arti 75, no. 2 (1915-16) 1263. "

514

Symbols and Rituals

was attractive to Venetians on several counts. First, the Trojan people had never paid tribute to another power, choosing to leave their city rather than become subjects. Furthermore, from such worthy ancestors, the Venetian patriciate could claim noble blood, as well as a love of freedom from the beginning.13 The aims of this early chronicle tradition were to establish Venice's independence ab origine and to prove the jurisdictional authority of the patri­ archate of Grado, as legitimate heir of Aquileia.14 By the middle of the thir­ teenth century, Venice's place in the Mediterranean world had changed con­ siderably. After its participation in the Fourth Crusade had culminated in a victory over Byzantium and the profitable sack of Constantinople of 1204, it entered the ranks of world powers, and for a time the Venetian doge held the title "Lord of a Quarter and Half a Quarter of the Roman Empire."15 Not surprisingly, historiographical aspirations were heightened to match Venice's new role as the center of a colonial empire. The chronicles of Martino da Canal ( 1267-1275 ) and Marco (1292) retained the three main lines of the Chronicon Altinate the Trojan foundation, Saint Mark's preaching mission in Aquileia, and the raids of Attila as the immediate impetus to lagoon settlemen� - but they refined and embellished them with an elevated laudatory agenda. Wood huts were conspicuously absent from their accounts. Canal referred instead to "noble men and women" who escaped the destruction of Aquileia: "They brought with them gold and silver in great quantities, and so they had beautiful churches and beautiful campaniles and bells constructed, and they built in the major city seventy churches, complete with large campa­ niles and bells, and dispersed through the salt waters, convents in great quantity. "16 In placing the birth of the city in 42 1, he used the notarial formula "en l'an de l'incarnacion de nostre seignor Jesu Crist."17 His reference to the in­ carnation, although used elsewhere in the chroni�le, may have had further implications; for traditions that seem to have dated back as far as the twelfth century or even earlier put Venice's actual birth date precisely on March 25, or Annunciation Day.18 As we wil see, the Annunciation was also alluded to in the fa�ade decoration of S. Marco, completed during the period in which Canal was writing. Such dating, of course, afforded the city. impeccable Chris­ tian credentials from the beginning.I' This gave it a subtle edge even over -

13. Muir, Civic Ritulll, 67-68. 14. Carile, "La formazione," 65. 15. Se Donald Queller, The PONrth Crusade (Leicester: Leicester University Pres, 1978), and Antonio Carile, lA CT0n4chisticl flerretilnl (secoli XIII-XVI) tIi {nmte IlIIil spllrliziora delil ROmlnil rulI 1204 (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1969) . 16. Martino da Canal, Les Estoit'eS de Vmise: Cr0n4C1l fleruIt:iInl in lingull {rllnCese dalle origini III 1275, ed. A. Limentani (Florence: L. S. Olschki 1972) 7. 17. Ibid. 18. Antonio Niero, "I santi pattoni: in Culto dei sllnti Il Venetil (Venice: Studium Cattolico Veneziano, 1965) 78-79. 19. Muir, Civic Ritull, 70-72.

Brown: Self-Definition of the

Venetian Republic 515

Constantinople, a yet older city less tainted by a pagan heritage than Rome: once Venice's master, then its rival, and by the time of Canal, its former subject. With Canal's chronicle we enter a period whose historiographical pan­ orama was, in Carlle's view, "neither poor nor monotonous."20 In 1291 the Great Council passed an act that called for the establishment of organic collections of state documents, including the most antique. Carile points out: "The collection and conservation of documents, ancient and recent, is an infallible sign of an already mature historical sensibility in the ruling class. "21 It was within this context that the chronicler Marco began writing his own history of the city in 1292. He went funher than Canal, claiming that the first Trojan colonists had arrived in Venice immediately after the fall of Troy, while Rome was founded only 454 years later: "And on account of this, it is well known that the first construction of Rialto preceded the construction of [the city of] Rome." He also addressed the issue of Venice's priority over Padua, now a troublesome competitor. Because that city also claimed a foun­ dation by Antenor, Marco resolved the problem by claiming that the Trojan leader had arrived in Venice well after the initial building of the city by an advance guard of his countrymen. Only later, the chronicler advised, did Antenor found Padua.22 Two centuries later, in a miscellany of notes accompanying a manuscript of his De origine, situ et magistTatibus urbis Venetae, Marin Sanudo was thus able to place the city within a broad temporal framework;23

Troia Ravenna

Tere edificade avanti l'avenimento de Christo 71 5 Roma 293 1 anru

Constantinopoli

2914

Dopo l'adven;mento [sic] 270 Veqetia

421

His chronology is revealing. Although he did not go as far as the chronicler Marco in claiming priority over Rome, the second Venice was put into a direct line (and a certain parity) with the great cities of antiquity. By means of the first Venice, which he did not mention, it also enjoyed a heritage that went directly back to Troy, the most ancient of all, and without the mediation of Rome.

20. Antonio Carile, "Aspet della cronachistica veneziana nei secoli XIII e XIV," in La

storiogra{ia lIeruJZUma fino al secolo XVI, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1970) 75.

21. Ibid., 80. 22. Ibid., 91. 23. Marin Sanudo, De origine sitJI et magistratibus Nrbis Venetae ollero La Ciua di Venetia (1 493-1530), ed. Angela Caracciolo Arico (Milan: CisaIpino-La Goliardica, 1980) 214. CE. Muir, Cillie RitJIal, 70.

516

Symbols and Rituals

The public, visual evocation of this distinguished past through recogniz­ able symbols called for a certain ingenuity. The Basilica of S. Marco, a building that Otto Demus has called the "key to [an] understanding of all Venice, of its history and of its art, " offers a telling example. As the doge's personal chapel, it had been shaped, Demus proposed, "not so much by impersonal and largely unconscious trends and sentiments, but by the con­ scious will of a ruling caste, whose representatives wanted it to be the visible symbol and the programatic embodiment of their ideas. "24 By the time Canal had begun his chronicle in 1267, six sculpted icons had been affixed to the fa�ade of the church: the orant Virgin and the angel Gabriel; two military saints, Demetrius and George; and two figures of Hercules engaged in his heroic struggles, one with the Erymanthian boar and the other with the Cerynean hind and the Lemean hydra (f;gures 1-6). Three of the re­ liefs - one of each pair - were Byzantine spoils. Their partners were appar­ ently carved to order in Venice, in an opportunistic use of unexpected trea­ sures.25 While the Virgin and Gabriel were not depicted in the familiar poses of arrival and reception usually associated with the Annunciation, their pairing was significant. Demus points out that the archangel Michael, as traditional protector of rulers, would have been a more appropriate partner for the orant Virgin, traditionally "regarded as the special protectress of the ruler or of the state." The substitution of Gabriel would thus have been a deliberate double play to allude to the Annunciation: "In Venice, where iconographic rules were loosened by arbitrary eclecticism, such an ambiguity was quite possible."26 The inclusion of Saints Demetrius and George, both popular holy pro­ tectors in Byzantium, requires little explanation, but the pagan hero Hercules may appear at first glance to be an odd companion to the others. In fact, he appears in a number of ecclesiastical contexts elsewhere in Italy and north of the Alps during this period, but here he had specifically local relevance.27 His namesake city, Eraclea (or Heracliana), was the earliest political center of the lagoons and the seat of the first dogeship. As the " original tribal hero ofthe Veneti," he referred as well to Venice's mythic origins in ;1 pre-Roman past.28 Demus is surely correct in his interpretation of these ,icons as apotropaic images, "holy protectors of the doge and the state."2' But the program also al­ luded to Venice's distinguished past in immemorial antiquity. A concurrent

24. Otto Demus, The Church of San Marco in Venia: History, Architecture, Sculpture, Dumbarton Oaks Studies, no. 6 (Washington, D.C., 1960) 59. 25. lbid., 113-35. In the Beitrag to Wolfgang Wolters, ed., Die Sltulpturm von San Marco in Vmedig: die (igirlichm Sltulpturm tier Arusmfastkn his zum 1 4. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1979), Demus identifies Gabriel, Demetrius, and Hercules and the Erymanthean Boar (plates 1, 3, 5) as Byzantine imports, datable respectively to the twelfth, eleventh, and fifth (?) centuries. The other thre reliefs are thirteth-century Venetian products. 26. Demus, Church, 133. 27. Se Erwin Panofsky, Renaisance and Renascences in Westsm Art (New York: Harper &: Row, 1972) 64-65 and passim. 28. Demus, Church, 135. CE. Panofsky, Renaisance and Renascences, 65. 29. Demus, Church, 133.

Brown:

Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic 517

thirteenth-century revival of early Christian models for the style and iconogra­ phy of new campaigns of mosaic and sculptural decoration for the church suggests, as well, an intended renovatio imperi christiani that was to give Venice a legitimate Christian history that was grounded in the "age of the apostles. "30 By the middle of the fourteenth century, when Venice was already show­ ing an agressive interest in the terra (erma to the west, evidence was cited to prove Venice's foundation on the day of the Annunciation.31 It came from an unexpected source: ]acopo Dondi, a Paduan physician who was granted Venetian citizenship (in 1334 or 1339). Writing a history of his adoptive city from a Paduan perspective, he claimed that Venice had been founded on 25 March 421 by a group of Paduans who met at twelve noon at Rivum altum and who appointed three consuls to govern the new city.3l The documentary flavor of Dondi's claim was attractive, but the particulars were awkward to explain, in light of the Attila legend and Venice's long tradition of original independence. Whereas Andrea Dandolo, the great historian doge, incorporated Dondi's contribution into his own chronicle, subsequent writers offered various versions of the particulars of lagoon immigration and civic foundation. They often omitted the legend of the Paduan consuls, but they always included the propitious date.33 Indeed, a fully worked out horoscope for the city, based on that birth date, was a notable feature of Marin Sanudo's Vite dei Dogi, as well as his short guidebook, De origine, situ et magistratibus uTbis Venetae.34 Dandolo also claimed that Venice's foundation was first celebrated with a solemn mass in S. Marco by Pope Alexander II on Annunciation Day in 1 177.35 This is probably an instance, typically Venetian, of narrative emenda­ tion and interpretation after the fact; for Dandolo's source, the Historia Duan Veneticorum, composed shortly after 1229, recorded such an event but made no reference to Venice's foundation.3' In any case, Venice had been identified with the Virgin from earliest times. In the famed Marian litany of Venice, composed in the eleventh century, the Annunciation had been given a more

30. Ibid., 57. 31. Se Giorgio Crllcco, Un 'altro mondo'. Venezia nel mediaevo. Dal slIcolo XI al secolo XIV (Turin: Utet, 1986), ch. N, with further bibliography. For state patronage of art and architecture in the treoento, se Patricia Fortini Brown, "Committenza e arte di stato," in Storia di Venezia m. Pormazione tkllo stlJto patrizio, eel. G. Arnaldi, A. Tenenti and G. Cracco, Istituto deUa Enciclopedia ItaianalFondazione Giorgio Cini (Rome: Treccani, forthcoming). 32. Lazzarini, "II preteso documento," 99-116; and E. Franceschini, "La Cronachetta di maestro Jacopo Dondi," in Ani tkll'IstitNto Veneto di �e, Lettere e Ani 99, no. 2 (193940) 969-84. Written ca. 1329-39: Carile, " La fondazione," 83. 33. Muir, Gillie RitNa/, 70-71. Buchthal, in Historia Troiana, 62-66, also proposes Dandolo as patron of an iluminated manuscript of Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiall, which was intended to confirm Venice's claims to a Trojan ancestry. 34. P. 7 (as in n. 23). 35. Andrea Dandolo, Cronica per II%tensum descripta and Crcmica Brevis, ed. Ester Pastorello, in Rerum ItlJlicarNm SCriptorllS, n. s., vol. 12, no. 1 (Bologna, 1938-42) 53 and 352-53. 36. In MonumentIJ Germaniae Historica, ScriptorllS 14, 82-83.

51 8

Symbols and Rituals

prominent place than in the Roman rite.J7 Already in 1365- 1368, the Annunciation would be given explicit politi­ cal relevance, when it was incorporated into the decorative scheme of the Great Council Hal of the Ducal Palace. The Coronation of the Virgin, a huge fresco painted by the Paduan artist Guariento, covered the east wall. It was flanked at the upper comers by the angel Gabriel on the left and the Virgin Annunciate on the right (fig. 7). The message was plain. The combined imagery proclaimed all at once Venice's origin and its eventual triumph as an earthly paradise, the chosen city of the Virgin, of Christ, and of all the saints.J8 Although it was important to call attention in an advantageous way to Venice's "auspicious beginnings," as Muir refers to them, they never became as symbolically potent in the ongoing elaboration of civic identity as two further events: the translation of Saint Mark's relics to Venice and the Peace of Venice. These ocions, which were grounded in a firmer historical reality than the city's ancestry and birth date, achieved particular iconic significance in Venetian political imagery. We will examine them in tum. A D I VI N E LY SAN CT I O N E D D E ST I NY

Immediately upon the arrival of his relics in Venice in 828-829, Saint Mark the Evangelist replaced the Byzantine warrior, Saint Theodore, as the patron saint of the city. It was a symbolic liberation of the rising republic from Byzantine control, but the 'initial impulse for the translation (some would call it theft) had been an ecclesiastical dispute. The episcopate of Aquileia had long claimed Mark as its founder, styling itself as one of the patriarchal sees of Christianity. With the emergence of the second Venice on the lagoon islands in the sixth-seventh centuries, it was split into two, with Grado forming a second (and rival) patriarchate in Nova Aquileia. An ongoing debate over primacy erupted, Venice taking the part of Grado. With their acquisition of Mark's relics - perhaps a theft on commission, as one scholar suggests the Venetians helped to undermine the foundations of Aquileia's claims.J' Significantly, it was the doge, and not the patriarch of Grado, who received ' the relics and ordered the construction of the new church of S. Marco, which became an impressive symbol of apostolic protection for the city at large.40 37. Sarah Wilk, The ScNlptJ4re of TN/Iro Lombardo (New York: Garland 1978) 1 1 3 n. 67. Cf. Muir, Civic RitJ4a/, 70 and 138-40; G. Musolino, "Culto mariano," in CN/to dei santi (as in n. 18) 241-73; and Rona Goffen, Piety and Patronage in Renaisance Venice. Bellini, Titian, and the Franciscans (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986) 138-53. 38. Se, in particular, Stale Sinding-Larsen, "Christ in the Council Hall: Studies in the Religious Iconography of the Venetian Republic," in Acta ad archaeologiam n artium historiam pertinentia 5 (Rome, 1974) and David Rosand, "Venetia Figurata: the Iconography of a Myth, in Interpull Vene�ne: Studi di storia dell'am in onore di Michelangelo MNraro, ed. David Rosand (Venice: Arsenale Editrice, 1984) 180-88. 39. Giorgio Fedalto, "Chiesa nella 'Venetia maritima,''' in Carile and Fedalto, Le ongim (as in n. 4) 410-15. 40. Demus, Church, 3-23. Se also Hans Conrad Peyer, Stadt Nnd Stadtpatr01l im mittel­ alterliehm ltalUm (Zurich, 1955) 8-24; Silvio Tramontin, "San Marco," in CN/to dei santi (as in n. 1 8) 43-73; idem, "Realm e legenda nei racconti marciani veneti," StJ4di venezitmi 12 (1970)

Brown:

Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic 5 1 9

Over the next four centuries the nature o f Saint Mark's role as patron saint of the city became visually well defined. On a coin of 880-885, the inscription Christe salva Venecias encircles the schematic �ade of a church, which may or may not stand for the first S. Marco. Only in the period 1056-1 125 did a bust of Saint Mark appear, now with an enthroned Christ on the reverse.41 It was during this period that the mosaic cycle of the presbytery of S. Marco was made. It included Mark's preaching mission in Aquileia, his martyrdom in Alexandria, and the translation of his relics to Venice.42 On a lead seal from the dogeship of Doge Pietro Polani ( 1 1301 148), Mark is shown enthroned, handing over the vexillum or gonfalon of Saint Mark to the standing doge. The silver grosso of Doge Enrico Dandolo ( i 192-1205 ) reveals a similar iconography, but with both figures now standing side by side, in conformity to Byzantine models. A more symbolically explicit arrangement can be observed on the first gold ducat ( 1284). Doge Giovanni Dandolo ( 1280-1289) is now shown kneeling before Saint Mark to receive the vexillum. Here we have the fully developed type, which visualizes with an eloquent economy the hierarchical relationship between the Venetian state and its holy protector.43 The ful elaboration of Saint Mark's legend, and its incorporation into the political myth, came in the thirteenth century with the fabrication of two pithy episodes - the praedestinatio and the apparitio that gave it an even more distinctively local relevance. Both appeared in written sources first in the chronicle of Martino da Canal. The praedestinatio was the tide given to a prophetic dream now claimed to have been experienced by Mark during his earlier, supposed ministry in the area of the Venetian lagoon. In it an angel recited a salutation that began "Pax Tibi, Marce Evangelista Meus," and told him that he would find his final resting place on the very site where S. Marco would later be built.44 In the apparitio (or inventio), the saint's relics were miraculously recov­ ered in 1094 after their location had been forg�tten during a reconstruction of the chw;ch. To Venetians these events were proof that their city had had a foreordained and divinely sanctioned destiny from the time of Christ.4s They were important enough to prompt a second campaign of narrative mosaics depicting the life of Saint Mark in the church. Augmenting, but not replacing, an earlier cycle in the presbytery, the newly expanded version of the Marcan myth would be situated in the south vestibule, the south transept and the -

-

-

35-58; Patrick Geary, PNna slICTa. Thefts of RelU:s in the CentFal MUJdk Ages (Princeton, Princeton University Pres, 1978) 1 07-15; and Muir, Ovk Ritual, 78-95. 41 . Fasoli, "Nascita," 452; and Agostino Pectusi, "Quedam regalia insignia," Studi lIeneziani 7 (1965) 37. 42. Otto Demus, The Mosaics of San Marco in Venice (Chicago-London: Chicago University Pres, 1984) I, 54-83. 43. Pertusi, "Quedam regalia insignia," 19-38. 44. Demus, Mosaics, II, 187. 45. Ibid., II, 27-44.

520

Symbols and Rituals

lunettes across the western fa�de of the church (figs. 8-1 0).% In acordance with a deeply embedded Venetian practice, these images were then used ex post facto as visual testimony. As Canal advised his readers; "if some of you wish to verify that those things happened just as I told you, come to see the beautiful church of San Marco in Venice, and look at it right in front, because this story is written there just as I have told it to you. "47 During the same period, the winged lion of Saint Mark emerged as the primary emblem of the republic. As such, he was a wonderfully versatile and resonant image.48 A heraldic beast, with overtones of princely, aristocratic values, he offered a measurable advantage over patron saints like Ambrose of Milan or John the Baptist of Florence, who could not easily be represented other than in their own human personas. By 1293 a bronze lion, "fulgente d'oro," was in place atop one of a pair of columns at the entrance to the Piazetta (fig. 1 1). The beast, probably of Anatolian origin, must have been part of the booty brought back from Constantinople after 1204. In Venice, it was fitted up with wings and a bo. Thus embellished, it became the symbol of Mark the Evangelist. Erected on the column, it was further transformed, becoming "an immediate, potent symbol of the Serenissima. "4' According to later sources, in 1 329 a statue of Saint Theodore " was placed on the second column (fig. 1 2).50 The saint had been relegated to a minor role for a long period after Saint Mark's arival in the city, probably because of his uncomfortably close associations with Byzantium in the early period. He was thus passed over for the apotropaic program of �ade reliefs on S. Marco. Now, with his elevation to the top of the entry column, he was restored to the status of a true patron of the city. In partnership with the leonine Saint Mark, he served not only to mark its confines, but also to protect it as a powerful thaumaturgic image. Within the wider Venetian hegemony, however, the lion of Saint Mark was the exclusive symbol that served to represent the republic. As its ambas­ sador abroad, he stood guard on top of columns and graced the city gates and �ades of public palaces in cities under Venetian dominion throughout the 46. Ibid., n, 27-4 and 186-206. Se also Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian -Na"ative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven-London: Yale University Pres, 1988) 33-37. 47. Canal, EstoiTes, 20-21. For the Venetian custom of citing pictorial narrative repre­ sentations as documentary prof for historic events, se Brown, Venetian Na"ative Painting, 7986; and eadem, "Painting and History in Renaissance Venice," An History 7 (1984) 263-94. 48. G. Pavanello, "San Marco neUa legenda e nella storia," Rivista ",ensile tklla dna di Venezia 7 (1928) 293-324. See also Tramontin, "San Marco" (as in n. 21) 59-61; and Wolfgang Wolters, Der Bilderschmuclt des Dogeralastes (Wiesbaden, 1983) 231-35. 49. Marilyn Per, "Saint Mark's Trophies: Legend, Superstition and Archaeology in Renaissance Venice," ]ollmal of the WarbNTg and CoIITt4N1d [nstitNtes 40 (1977) 48-49. For the columns, se Werner Haftmann, Das itaUnische SiblIm""",ent (Leipzig-Berlin, 1939) 125-27; and Ingo Herklotz, "SepNkTa" e "Manu_ta" tkl Medioevo: StNdi SNU'ane sepokTale in ltalia (Rome, 1985) 211-12. SO. Haftmann, sallIenmonNment, 135. See also L. Sartorio, "San Teodoro, Statua composita," Am Veneta 1 (1947) 132-34; and G. Mariacher, "Postil al 'San Teodoro, statua composita'," ibid., 230. For the cuit of Saint 1'heodore in Venice, se Muir, Civic RitJuJ/, 93-95; and Antonio Niero, "I santi patroni," in Culto tki santi (as in n. 18) 91-95.

Brown:

Self-Definition of the Venenan Republic 521

Aegean Sea and the tera ferma (fig. 13). He was also visible at close hand (on a daily basis) on coins and ducal seals inside and outside Venice (fig. 1 4).51 It is important to remember about the repetitive display of such symbols that they refer back to larger stories. They are resonant of larger realities. San Marco, in the guise of the lion, was not just a sign of the republic and its presence. He was also a sign of its divine destiny and ongoing protection. As in other medieval Italian city-states, the Basilica of S. Marco, as the church of the patron saint, was the central depository of the state's treasures and primary symbols.52 Protected by the apotropaic images across its main fa�ade, it also featured an assemblage of war trophies that were displayed on, in, and around it as symbols of victory, power, and sovereignty. Among the most prominent were spoils obtained in the sack of Constantinople in 1204. This unsavory event, in which the Franks and the Venetians had joined forces for a Fourth Crusade to the Holy Land and instead laid siege to the Christian capital of Byzantium, would ' provide a wealth of objects and materials to carry out a major redecoration of the basilica.s3 The most dramatic addition was the gilded bronze quadriga above the main portal (fig. 1 5). Once in the hippodrome of Constantinople, the horses served not only as signs of Venetian conquest, but also as protagonists in state spectacle.54 Their symbolic vigor was not lost on Petrarch, who described a victory celebration of 1 364: "Now the Doge himself with a vast crowd of noblemen had taken his place at the very front of the temple above its entrance - the place whose bronze and gilt horses, the work of some ancient and famous artist unknown to us, stand as if alive, seeming to neigh from on high and to paw with their feet. Where he stood on this marble platform it had been arranged that al should be under his feet."ss To Petrarch and his contemporaries the horses symbolized Venice's political power. With the ad­ dition of the doge, whose placement recals the triumphal entry of a Roman emperor in a chariot, they became protagonists in a symbolic drama of heightened, if momentary, significance. Objects giving further testimony to Venetian conquest were arranged around the south fa�ade of the church, the first view of S. Marco presented to state visitors as they arrived by sea and entered between the great columns on the molo (fig. 1 6). Additional mementos from the Fourth Crusade included Byzantine reliefs embedded in the outside wall of the church treasury and a 51. Se for example, Haftman, SiJuienmcmument, 136-37; and G. Bascape. "Sigilli della repubblica di Venezia: I.e bolle dei dogi. I sigilli di uffici e di magistrature," in Studi in emore di A",intore Fanta";, I. Anticmta e alto medioetlo (Milan: Giuffre, 1962) 93-103. For Vene­ tian coins, se Nicolo Papadopoli-Aldobrandini, Le monete di Venezia, 4 vols. (Venice: Ongania,

1 893-1919). 52. Helene Wieruszowski, Art and the Commune in the Time of Dante," in her Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy (Rome: Edizioni di staria e letteratura, 1971) 480-81, observing that this was also the custom in Greek city-states. 53. Demus, Church, 26-29. 54. Perry, "Saint Mark's Trophies, 27-39. 55. Epistolae Se,.;les, IV: iii, cited in Pery, Saint Mark's Trophies," 29. "

"

"

522

Symbols and Rituals

pair of freestanding pilasters, called the pillars of Acri, just outside the door of the present baptistery (figs. 1 7-1 8].5' The latter objects are positioned between two porphyry trophies: two pairs of swordsmen, variously identified as tetrarchs, merchants, or thieves, attached to the wall of the treasury; and the freestanding pietro del bando, a pedestal brought back from the war with Genoa in 1258 and originaly used for the reading of Genoese colonial decreesP As Edward Muir points out, this aggregation of spoils, immediately adjacent to the main entrance of the Palazzo Ducale with its symbols of justice, made a strong visual link between Venetian imperialism, justness, and spiritual au­ thority (fig. 1 9).58 Within the church, itself embellished with precious loot such as marble screens and revetments, the treasury was filled with priceless objects from Byzantium: icons, chalices, reliquaries, vessels, candlesticks, and other liturgical items.59 The Madonna Nicopeia, once the palladium of Constantinople, became the republic's primary miracle-working image of a civic nature (fig. 20). Nor­ mally kept in the sacristy and exposed on the high altar only on four anual feast days of the Virgin when the doge and the signoria attended a special mass, it was also paraded and put on display on special ocions. While these extraordinary showings included times of celebration, such as the signing of a peace treaty, most were prompted by a threat to the republic, such as war, rain, drought, pestilence or famine.60 The church also held symbols of a more private character. A relief plaque of circa 1265, depicting five of the republic's most prestigious relics, was embedded in the passageway of the south transept that linked the building to the Palazzo Ducale (fig. 21). Four of the relics had been brought from Constantinople after 1204; and three of these had miraculously survived a fire in 123 1. Their display on the plaque in the reliquaries in which they were encased in the treasury allowed the closely guarded objects - themselves powerful symbols of faith and divine protection - to remain on permanent display and to serve as perpetual reminders to goveriunent officials of Veru'(:e's singular destiny. 61 The reigning doge, as "solus patronus et verus gubemator ecclesiae et capellae Sancti Marci, " was charged with its construction and decoration, its ecclesiastical stafng, and the securing of its most precious ,relics. It was there 56. Long thought to have be spoils of the Genoese war of 1258, the pillars were conclusively shown 10 be from a church in Constantinople by Friedrich Deichmann, "I pHastri acritani," Am della Pontifrcia Aceademia Romana di Archeologja, ser. III, Rendiconti 50, 19n· 78 (1980) 75-89. 57. Ibid.; and Perry, "Saint Mark's Trophies," 3945. 58. Edward Muir, "Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice," Ameri· can Historical Review 84 (1979) 20-21. 59. Se The Treasury of San Marco, Venice (Metropolitan Museum of Art, exh. cat.) (Milan, 1984). 60. Musolino, "CullO mariano" (as in n. 1 8) 245-46; and Goffen, Piety and Patronage, 142. 61. Debra Pincus, "Christian Relics and the Body Politic: A Thirtenth-century Relief Plaque in the Church," in Interpretazioni vene%iane (n. 3 8) 39-50.

Brown: Self-Definition

of the Venetian Republic 523

that he was presented to people after his election and invested with the insignia of office; it was there that he participated in the great festivals of the church, along with those particular to the Venetian state. Indeed, the doge ­ the most serene prince - became the symbolic and physical joining point between church, state, and people. As Otto Demus put it, "The doge was made the center of a cult; he became himself a sacred relic."62 As such, he be­ came increasingly an object, rather than an actor, in Venetian afs of state. As the real power of the doge declined from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, his symbolic role - and along with this, his magnificence - in­ creased. This development is reflected in significant changes in the investiture ceremony. In a fundamental study of the insignia of ducal power, Agostino Pertusi observes that before the mid-tenth century this ritual "had an almost private and purely civil character, with the transmission of three insignia: sword, sceptre [baculus], and ducal throne. " By the end of the eleventh century, only the baculus remained; but it, too, would disappear before 1 130, when investiture would be made per vexillum S. Marci by the gonfalon of Saint Mark - in a fuller integration of the sacred and the secular. This final change had profound constitutional implications. On the one hand it marked the ful autonomy of Venice from Byzantium. But on the other, when the charismatic baculus was removed, so too were a good part of the doge's sovereign powers. The ceremony that Martino da Canal described in the thirteenth century remained substantially the same, albeit with increasing pomp, for the next three hundred years.63 The public coronation ceremony decreed in 1485 perhaps marked the high point of its elaboration. Now the doge was to be crowned by his councilors on the steps of the Ducal Palace in full public view. Still the human symbol of monarchy and continuity, he was now manifestly a ruler whose powers were conferred not by inheritance, but by the nobility of Venice.64 -

WARRI ORS FOR TH E FAI TH OF CH RIST "

In his role as primus inter pares, the doge was the symbol of the republic at large and, with the narative elaboration the Peace of Venice of 1177, the living bearer of the insignia of its sovereignty. This was an occasion on which D oge Sebastiano Ziani had been host to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and 62. Demus, Church, 52 . 63 Pertusi, "Quedam regalia insignia," 64-80. See also Percy E. Schram Her­ uhaftszeichen Statsolik (Stuttgart: Hierseman, 1956) 1lI 859-68; I 'dogi, ed. Gino Benzoni (Milan: Electa, 1982); and Michelangelo Muraro, " Ideologia e iconografia dei dogi di Venezia," in Le Prince Lazar, Recueil de trauaux du SymposiMm de Kniseuac (1971) (Belgrade: ' Musee National Krusevac, 1975) 423-24. 64 Published in Giambattista Lorenzi, Morrumenti per servire alia storia del Palauo Ducale di Venezia (Venice: Visentini, 1868) I 97-98. Se also Michelangelo Muraro, "La Scala senza Giganti," in De artibus opuscula XL: Esays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky, ed. Millard Meiss (New York: New York University, 1971) 350-70; and Gina Fasoli, "Liturgia e cerimoniale ducale," in Venezia e il Leuante fino al secolo XV, ed. Agostino Pertusi (florence: Olschki, 1973) 1 261-95. .

.

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Symbols and Rituals

Pope Alexander il for the signing of a peace treaty. The Historia Ducum VeneticoTUm, written within the lifetime of witnesses to the event, painted an impressive picture of Venetian diplomatic spectacle. To the unamed writer of the chronicle, one of its most noteworthy features was the attendance of a great number of dignitaries from throughout Europe. Venice was now play­ ing a role on an international stage, but in this case it seems to have been a role that was largely ceremonial rather than substantive.'s With this historical nudeus as their point of departure, however, Venetian chroniclers of the thirteenth century began to expand on the particulars of the affair. The process of historical elaboration offers an important key for an understanding of the Venetian process of mythmaking and symbolization. While the chronicles of Martino da Canal and Marco already contained a number of narrative particulars not cited in the Historia Ducum, in 1317 the Venetian government commissioned Bonincontro dei Bovi, a notary in the ducal chancery, to compile a new comprehensive account. One of its key features was Venice's strong papal partisanship. In exchange for Venetian protection and military support in a naval battle against the imperial forces, the Pope had purportedly granted Doge Sebastiano Ziani several concessions, such as permission to use lead seals for official documents and, more important, a number of symbolic gifts called trionfi. These included a white candle as a sign of faith; a sword granted by the Pope as a sign of sovereignty and justice; one of a trio of umbrellas, establishing parity between the doge, the Pope, and the emperor; silver trumpets; and eight vexilla, as signs of regal dignity. One gift was tied to an indulgence conceded to visitors to S. Marco on the feast day of the Ascension: a gold ring that the doge was instructed to use on that day in an anual sposalizio, or Marriage to the. Sea, "just as a man marries his wife in sign of perpetual domination." The trionf; became the ducal insig­ nia and accompanied the doge whenever he went outside the Palazo Ducale in processions throughout the year." As Muir points out , each one "came to be interpreted as a symbol of a distinct ducal privilege or of a specific attrio-ute of the Venetian polity."67 In fact, according to the Historia Ducum VeneticOrum and other ac­ counts written contemporary to the event, the Venetians never participated in a battle on the Pope's behalf." Furthermore, most, if not aU, of the trionfi the Pope supposedly gave the doge had already been in use long before 1177, and their original meaning was often rather different." The use of two vexilla triumphalia, for example, can be . traced as far back as the military campaign of Doge Pietro II Orseolo to Dalmatia in 998. By the end of the thirteenth 65. pp. 72-89 (cit. in n. 36). 66. Muir, Civic RitJlal, 103-34. Se also Pertusi, "Quedam regalia insignia," 82-92; Fasoli, "Nascita," 473-77; and Brown, Venetian Narative Painting, 37-40. 67. Mui r, Civic RitJlal, 109. 68. Fasoli, "Nascita," 464-67. 69. Pertusi, "Quedam regalis insignia," 81-92. Se also Fasoli, "Liturgia e cerimoniale ducale," 268-74; and Muir, Civic RitJlal, 109-19.

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Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic 525

century they had grown to eight in number, came in four colors, and were emblazoned with the lion of Saint Mark. They retained their military character, with the color carried first determined by Venice's current political situation: white for peace, red for war, dark blue for league, and violet for truce.70 Even the sposali1.io had more ancient origins, probably also dating from 998, when the bishop blessed the sea before the departure of Doge Orseolo's expedition. The Venetian forces had set sail on Ascension Day, and their victories were celebrated thereafter with an annual benedictio, or ritual bless­ ing of the sea.71 The integration of this religious ceremony into the Alexander legend created a telling metaphor for Venice's claims to sovereignty and domination of the stato da mar. It became one of the high points of the Vene­ tian ritual calendar and remained so to the end of the republic (fig. 22). Bonincontro's account, written long after the event in question, thus gave narrative coherence to a number of symbolic objects already in use and endowed them with further political significance. The message was also rein­ forced through images. First, a cycle of paintings depicting the "history when the Pope was in Venice with the Lord Emperor" was commissioned in 1319 for the Church of S. Nicolo in the Palazzo Ducale. Now lost, these works may be reflected in a series of eleven fourteenth-century miniatures, most of which feature the donation of a ducal tTionfo as the central focus of the com­ position (figs. 23-26).72 Beginning in the 1 360s an expanded version of the story would also be painted in the newly constructed Great Council Hall of the Ducal Palace. As with the twice-told story of Saint Mark in the mosaics of S. Marco, the old cycle remained to confirm the new one. But here, narrative history was given an added symbolic charge through the inclusion of the tTionfi as visual metaphors for ducal prerogatives and (ultimately) Venetian sovereignty and equivalence to the papacy and the empire?3 Above the scenes of painted history that unfolded around three walls of the huge room were portraits of al the doges in unbroken succession, collectively symbolizing the continuity of government. But symbols, to maintain their potency, need to be privileged. Civic and religious ceremonials, which often were intertwined, gave life to the tTionf; and refreshed their symbolic force through frequent exposure in public space. As essential components of the ducal procession, they surrounded the doge whenever he went outside the palace "andar in trionfo" - that is, on most ceremonial ocasions. The basic order of the procession had, according to Fasoli, been fixed in 1327.74 Whereas participants could be added or subtracted to suit the ocasion, the sequential arangement remained remarkably stable throughout the sixteenth century. Matteo Pagan's woodcut of circa 155070. Pertusi, "Quedam regalia insignia," 83-91 . 71 . Muir, Ci� RjlJ4a� 1 19-34; and Lina Padoan Urban, "La festa dena Sensa nelle arti e nell'iconografia," SlJ4di tltmed4ni 10 (1968) 291-353. 72. Brown, Venetia,. Narratile Painting, 37-39 and 259-60. 73. Ibid., 39-42, 81-86, and 261 -65. 74. Fasoli, "Nascita," 476, without giving her source.

526

Symbols and Rituals

1560 of the Palm Sunday procession represents a typical display?5 The first segment was made up of eight standard-bearers, carrying the vexilla of Saint Mark, who were followed by six trumpeters, various cittadini officials, canons of S. Marco, and, on important religious feast days, the patriarch. Also included in this contingent was a squire bearing the white candle. It was completed by the grand chancellor as the highest nonpatrician officer of state

(figs. 27-29j.1'

In the second segment, the centerpiece of the procession, the doge marched in his symbolic regalia, flanked by ambassadors and surrounded by further insignia of office borne by squires (fig. 30). These included the sword and the umbrella supposedly conceded by Alexander II. According to official ceremo­ nial accounts, the doge was also immediately preceded by squires bearing a gold faldstool and a foot cushion, although Pagan places them in the first segment (fig. 29}.77 These objects had been in use at least since the tenth century, but were integrated into the Alexander legend (and integrated they were!) only in the sixteenth century.71 The third, and final, segment of the procession was made up of patrician magistrates, including senators on occasion, who were ranked in descending order of importance of the dignity of their office (fig. 30). Muir stresses the importance of "this precise and rigid ranking" in giving visual definition to the Venetian constitution. The strict division by class, office, and seniority was a highly significant change from the ducal procession of the thirteenth century. Martino da Canal, writing before the closing of the Great Council in 1297, had described nobles and commoners simply walking together in a mixed crowd behind the doge?' S. Marco, together with the piaza in front of it, constituted the republic's main ceremonial space. Itself a multivalent sign with al its emblems of spiritual and temporal power, the church provided a backdrop for the symbolically rich processions held there on feast days throughQut the year. On many of these occasions, such as the feasts of Saint Mark or of Corpus Christi,the most precious relics were brought into public space and paraded around the square with a full display of the social and political hierarchy of the republic (figs. 31-32}.10 And as Pagan's print reveals, although women did not partici­ pate in the marching, they were essential to the event as spectators, and, indeed, as part of the display. Bedecked in jewels and finery, they were often cited in early accounts as symbols of Venetian wealth and splendor.lt These 75. Se Muir, Civic Ritu4I, 189-211; bllt cf. n. 77 below. 76. Ibid., 190. 77. Ibid., 191, suggesting that Pagan may have deliberately altered the order for aesthetic reasons. 78 . Ibid., 205-6. 79. Ibid., 192-200. 80. Ibid., pasim. Se 'Alberto Tenenti, "L'uso scenografic:o degli spazi pubblici: 14901580," in Tiziano e Venezia, Convegno Interle di Studi, Venezia, 1976 (Venice, 1980) 21-26. 8 1 . Se Giovanni Bistort, 11 Magistrato aIle Pompe nella Refnlbblica di Venezia (Venice,

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

527

celebrations of the fabled Venetian consensus remind us that the manipula­ tion of static symbols helps to keep them present and creates privileged moments of civic time. It was in the public spaces of the city, most particularly the Piaza S. Marco, that civic ideology was reified in the most visible, tangible, and vivid maner. Few visitors of the late medieval and early Renaissance period would have failed to grasp the basic message of the Venetian myth. Sir Richard Guylforde, an English knight who passed through the city in 1506, expressed the views of citizen and stranger alike when he exclaimed: "The rychesse, the sumptuous buyldynge, the relygyous houses, and the stablysshynge of their justyces and councylles with al other thyngs yt maketh a eyrie glorious, surmounteth in Venyse above al places yt ever I sawe. " 82 But it would be wrong to think of the myth as a fixed and inflexible "holy text." Its strength lay in its mutability. Within the main lines of the myth, succeeding generations of Venetians could respond to the vicissitudes of political necessity. Thus, during this time, one can see in art, in architecture, and in encomiastic literature a changing sense of civic identity: from better than Rome - "born free and Christian," but still somewhat defensive in the thirteenth century - to the new Constantinople and the new Jerusalem in the later fifteenth century in response to Turkish advances in Byzantium and the Levant; and finaly (and concurently), in Sanudo's time to a seemingly confident Venice presenting itself as the new Rome under the protection of Saint Mark.8l As the diarist commented on Venetian building activity in 1493, "Thus Vene­ tians can be compared to Romans who made such excellent edifices for their buildings; now they are making public ones as well as private; and one can well affirm - so they say - that after the Romans, this our Republic has followed them; so in arms they are most powerful, as [they are] in virtue and learning, and yet they say further: 'Gretia docta fuit, nec non potentior armisl Nunc Veneti docri; nunc tenet ana Leo."'84

1912) 34; and Patricia Fortirii Brown, "Measured Friendship, Calculated Pomp: 1be Ceremo­ nial Welcomes of the Venetian Republic," in All the World's a Stage. Art and Pageantry in the Renaisance and Early Baroque, Papers in Art History from the Penlvania State University 6 (1990) 400-52, esp. 41 1 . 82. Sir Richard Guylforde, The Pylgrymage of . . . to the Holy Land, A.D. 1506, ed. H. Ellis, The Camden Society, no. 51 (London, 1 851) 8. 83. From a large and growing literature, se in particular Barbara Marx, "Venezia: a1tera Roma? lpotesi sull'umanesimo veneziano," Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Quademi 10 (1978); Lionello Puppi, Verso GenualemrtUl. lmmagini e temi di urbanistica e di architetlra simbolic4 (Rome: Casa del Libro, 1982) 62·119 and 146-76; idem, "Venezia come Gerusalemme nella cultura figurativa del Rinascimento," in La dna ita/iana del RmasartUlnto fra Utopia e Realta, ed. A. Buck and Bodo Guthrnueller, Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Quademi 27 (1984) 1 17-36; Manfredo Tafuri, "La 'nuova CostantinopoJi'. La rappresentazione della renovatio nella Venezia dell'Umanesimo (1450-1509)," Rasegna 9 (1 982) 25-38. 84. Sanudo, De ongine (as in n. 23) 34.

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Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 1 Virgin Orant, relief sculpture, Venetian, thirteenth century (fa�de, San Marco, Venice) .

Brown:

Fig. 2 Archangel Gabriel,

relief sculpture, Byzantine, twelfth century (fa�de, San Marco, Venice).

Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic 529

530

Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 3 Saint Demetrius, relief sculpture, Byzantine, eleventh century (fa�de, San Marco, Venice).

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig. 4 Saint George, relief sculpture, Venetian, thirteenth century (fa�de, San Marco, Venice).

531

532

Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 5 Hercules and the Erymanthian boar, relief sculpture, fifth century A.D.? (fa�ade, San Marco, Venice).

Brown:

Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic 533

Fig. 6 Hercules and the Keryneian hind and the Lernea n hydra, Venetian, thirteenth century (fa�de, San Marco, Vef.;e).

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Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 7 Anonymous , The Great Council Hall before the fire of 1577, engraving.

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig. 8 Praedestinatio, mosaic, thirteenth century (Cappella Zen, San Marco, Venice).

535

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Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 9 Apparitio, mosaic, thirteenth century (south transept, San Marco, Venice).

Fig. 10 Reception of the relics of Saint Mark, thirteenth century (Porta di Sant'Alippio, San Marco, Venice).

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig. 1 1 Lion o f St. Mark, bronze, Eastern Anatolian, seventh/sixth century B.C. (Piazzeta, Venice).

Fig. 12 Saint Theodore, marble,

fourteenth- and fifteenth­ century pastiche [head: second to flISt century B.C.; torso: Roman, Hadrianic; limbs and acC:;ssory parts: Venetian, fourteenth to fifteenth century] (Piazzeta, Venice).

537

538

Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 13 Lion of Saint Mark, relief sculpture, fourteenth century (Dalmatian coast).

Fig. 14 Silver ducat of Doge Girolamo Priuli (1561).

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig. 15 Quadriga, gilded bronze (actually copper), Hellenistic? (west fa<;ade, San Marco, Venice).

539

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Symbols and Rituals

F;g.16 Erhard Reeuwich, View of Ven;ce, detail from woodcut in Bernhard von Breydenbach,

Opusculum Sanctarum peregr;nationum ad sepulcrum Christi venerandum, Ma;nz, 1486.

F;g.17 View of south fa
Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig.

18

Wall of treasury, south fa�ade of San Marco, Venice.

Fig.

19

Porta della Carta, sur­ mounted by Venezia! Giustizia, Ducal Palace, Venice.

541

542

Symbols and Ritua ls

Fig. 20 Madonna Nikopeia, Byzantine icon (San Marco, Venice).

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig. 2 1 The Precious Reliquaries of San Marco, relief plaque, 1260s (passageway near south transept, San Marco, Venice).

Fig. 22 Jost van Aman, Feast of the Sensa, woodcut, 1565.

543

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Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 23 Consignment of the White Candle, miniature, Venetian, fourteenth century

Fig. 24 Consignment of the Sword, miniature, Venetian, fourteenth century.

.

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Fig. 25 Consignment of the Umbrella, minia­ ture, Venetian, fourteenth century.

Fig. 26 Consignment of the Vexilla, miniature, Venetian, fourteenth century.

545

546

Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 27-30 Matteo Pagan, Palm Sunday Procesion, woodcut, c. 1565.

Brown: Self-Definition of the Venetian Republic

Pig. 31 Gentile Bellini, Procession in the Piaz San Marco, 1496 (Accademia, Venice).

547

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Symbols and Rituals

Fig. 32 Procession for the Publication of the Holy League, 1571, engraving.

Commentary

GLEN W. BOWERSOCK

FOUR PRE C EDING CHAPTERS presuppose that symbols and rituals have a fundamental importance in the success and regulation of the city-state. At least one chapter, Giovannini's, ascribes to them a role in the creation of the city-state. Despite the ambivalence of such terms as symbols and rituals there is a surprising unanimity as to what they were. Military parades, public processions on religious ocsions, and ceremonial dances recur more than once. In fact, the four contributors to this section seem generally to find the greatest potency in events that are linked to the religious observances or the military strength of a city-state, or both. And the hierarchical ordering of society seems to be reflected in these events, in some cases defined or even adjusted by them. Symbols and rituals emerge in several of the chapters as a kind of social engineering that is integral to the evolution of the state. Yet in this kind of analysis the use of symbols and rituals looks more like the history of institutions than the interpretation of rites that draw their power from participation in events that are experienced rather than understood. It is historical institutions that are created, introduced, adjusted, adapted, and replaced. It is historical institutions that Donato. Gianoti is talking about in the arresting passage with which Franco Cardini begins his chapter and which he justly describes as a lucid theory of the genesis of tyranny. Giannotti is writing about public spectacles, it is true, but public spectacles do not auto­ matically or necessarily fal into the category of rituals with symbols. Keeping power-hungry private citizens from winning popular support through lavish public entertainments is a part of political history as it touches on the institu­ tional instruments of control. Obviously there is a large twilight zone in which ritual acts and concomitant symbols intersect with the institutional and political life of a city, but in exploring the twilight we will surely get lost if we fail to distinguish the sources of light from the sources of dark. Keith Hopkins, with characteristic forthrightness, stresses (rightly in my view) the inherent ambiguity of symbols and rituals as opposed to political institutions. He is the only one of the four contributors to do this, and his remarks call for a review of the positions taken by his colleagues here - just

T

HE

550

Symbols and Rituals

as we wil see presently theirs call into question some of his observations. Our dialogue in comparative history is particularly fruitful in this matter.But, in segregating political institutions from symbols and rituals, let me remind you of Hopkins' provocative words, constituting the sharpest disagreement in the whole set of four essays: "Rituals and symbols work partly through obscurity and mystery. Symbols cannot do their symbolic work if all actors are clearly conscious of their functions." To show how widely divergent this perspective is from that of the other contributors, listen to Giovan on the reforms of Cleisthenes: "The heroes clearly were the symbols of the democracy instituted by Cleisthenes." Or consider Patricia Fortini Brown's confident statement on the symbolic representation of the Venetian myth: "Few visitors ... would have failed to grasp the basic message." Obviously in a certain sense everybody is right.It is possible to institute symbols, as Giovan proposes, and indeed such symbols are normally easy to read.We al know the animal that stands for Merrill Lynch and the bird that symbolizes u.S. Express Mail (a particularly apt symbol because it is always in danger of dying out).But these are institutional, invented symbols that are inherently diferent from the messier world. to which Hopkins invites our attention.His are the symbols and rituals of the anthropologist, not of the political historian.And I think that ultimately it is that darker realm that needs to be looked at in a comparative perspective. I want briefly to consider three alliterative topics in relation to these four chapters.They are manipulation, meaning, and mystery.All are messy. First, manipulation.Al the contributors, with the conspicuous exception of Hopkins, presuppose that an important part .:. perhaps even the most important part - of symbolic and ritual activity- in city-states is the deliberate use and adjustment of them by the ruling power (of whatever kind).Cardini speaks explicitly of manipulation in regard to the festival of Saint John the Baptist in Florence: "It was during the last fourteen years of Lorenzo's rule that the manipulation of the great patron's feast was to become more apparent and more radical." But Giovannini is no less clear in diferent words when he declares that the most interesting aspect of his subject'at Athens was "the integration - or more precisely the annexation - of some local cults by the Athenian state." Of the integration of Theseus and his cult.he says that it was "a deliberate usurpation " by the Athenian state. Similarly Patricia Fortini Brown records the strict ranking of the Palm Sunday procession on Matteo Pagan's woodcut of the mid-sixteenth century as "a highly significant change from the ducal procession of the thirteenth century." Processions prove, in fact, to be a most attractive event for these three scholars who look for an imposed organization of symbols and rituals. Giovannini's account of the Panathenaic procession in Athens and Cardini's treatment of Walter of Brienne's reform of the Saint John procession are both paralel in method and interpretation to Brown's on the Palm Sunday procession in Venice.Behind all this is the deeply rooted concept of the politics of public

Bowersock: Commentary

551

processions that Donato Gianotti so memorably expressed. Now Brown tells us that all these things " remind us that the manipulation of static symbols helps to keep them present." Are they really static, and to whom are they present? The problem appears to be one of multiple meanings, depending upon the social position of the reader (or observer) and, of course, the relation of that hypothetical person to the system within which the symbols ocur. In addition, the multiple meanings of symbols are themselves bound to change over time, as Brown and Hopkins emphasize. But multiplicity is not the same as mutability. The symbols, insofar as �ey can or should be read, take on meanings from adjacent rituals. Giovannini, Cardini, and Brown show us the ways in which city rituals, especially festivals and related proces­ sions, expose the hierarchy of the city: the point is, however, that they expose that hierarchy to us, the modem historians - the interpreters. Are we justified in believing that they did the same for those who inhabited the city - for those who participated in the rituals or looked at them (and looking at them we should not forget is a form of participation)? I suggest that the experience of symbols and rituals is what really mattered, rather than reading them. When Dicaeopolis in Aristophanes' Achamians, aptly invoked by Giovannini, celebrated his private antiwar festival of Dionysus with wine, dancing, and the phallus, he was not reading symbols or asking anyone else to read them. He and his little community were participating in a symbolic action, like a sacred drama, that did not represent peace: it was peace. Even the theorizing of Donato Giannoti actually turns on ritual (and its symbols) as action, not as the oblique representation of a text to be read, since he must have known that the various readings could never coincide. The action could, however, raise up a tyrant. So when it comes to meaning, it is naturally possible to find one - usually many more than one - for a symbol or a ritua� but the mystery of participation and experience can unite the high and the low, insiders and outsiders, to whom meanings might well vary, in a single action. So we come back to Keith Hopkins and his'emphasis on the mystery of symbols. This emphasis does not repudiate meaning, but rather puts it to one side because, as he suggests, the stability of form disguised radical change in meaning. At the beginning of his chapter, Hopkins illustrates his point with the survival of the bizarre ceremony of the Lupercalia - drunken, naked men runing around the city of Rome beating people in their way. We are invited to contemplate Christian participation in these exhilarating events as late as the end of the fifth century A.D. What meaning Christians attached to such goings-on is useless to inquire, but they did it. Remarkably, after leading off with this aresting example of the persistence of a very ancient Roman ritual into late antiquity and under altered circum­ stances, Hopkins devotes the bulk of his chapter to an examination of military and constitutional rituals in the Roman Republic. These, as he recognizes, are of an entirely different order from the Lupercalia: they are concerned with

552 Symbols and Rituals

social hierarchy, citizen obligations, and constitutional mechanisms - what he calls "large-scale political rituals." As he said in his sumary, Hopkins paradoxicaly (perhaps provocatively) takes republican institutions and treats them as rituals. Our other contributors, by contrast, have in some sense taken rituals and treated them as institutions. The particular events that Hopkins describes with "empathetic imagination" obviously lose their force when the constitution and the political life of Rome change under the empire, and we are asked to believe that the evanescence of these coordinated events explains the vulnerability of the empire to being overrun by Christians and barbarians. Here, I think, Hopkins has engaged in a slight sleight-of-hand. He wins our assent to the importance of messiness, mystery, and ambivalence in symbols and rituals by his exordium on the Lupercalia, and then he leads us into a highly structured, essentially secular set of political rituals (as he calls them) that lose their ginger as the Lupercalia did not. Augustus is blamed in large part for creating a ritual vacuum in Rome, even though on all the evidence we have Augustus was actually adhering closely to the doctrine later expounded by Donato Giannotti. In terms of the other chapters presented in this section, Augustus reformed the rituals of Rome, brought back old rites, and revitalized ancient priestly colleges. Even as he brought an end to constitutional rituals, he put the state at the center of festivals and celebrations. He may even be said to have manipulated ancient symbols and rituals to ensure the success of his enterprise. Everybody had their rituals, even slaves, and certainly the knights more than ever before. Yet how does Hopkins describe the Augustan reforms? "Augustus degutted the central political rituals of the city of Rome. There was a ritual vacuum. Only bread and circuses remained." That cannot be right. Augustan Rome had more rituals than ever. One can only assume that Hopkins believes Augustan rituals were not, in some sense, rituals at all. And if that is what he believes, it is presumably because these rituals were produced by manipulation and calculation and do not respond to the criteria of mystery and obscurity that he has postulated lor real rituals. Yet this would be a petitio principii and buries in a ritual vacuum the reforms of Cleisthenes or of Walter of Brienne. Any 'account of symbols and rituals must obviously not do that. Part of Hopkins' problem is the special emphasis he gives to political rituals, as he calls them, which fade as opposed to religious ones, like the Lupercalia, which survive and prosper. This may be a false dichotomy, and it certainly violates Hopkins' own afrmation that symbols and rituals must be examined together and not in isolation. And that is � excellent point. It seems to me that Hopkins is right about the primacy of mystery but wrong in rejecting the possibility of a deliberate, artificial construction of ritual mystery. As Giovannini has clearly shown, the participatory rites of classical Athens were compounded from the individual ceremonies of con­ stituent tribes, and a hero such as Theseus could be annexed to great effect. This is not degutting the rituals of a city but strengthening them, and strength-

Bowersock: Commentary

553

ening them in their own mysterious, ambivalent terms that worked in partici­ pation and celebration rather than in terms of meanings and subtexts. The same can be said of the transformations in the festival of Saint John the Baptist, as Cardini describes them, or in the Palm Sunday procession as Brown depicts it. If all this generates a myth of Venice or of Athens, I canot see that this is anything more than an incidental result of rituals, which had their own internal civic necessity. The translation of the body of Saint Mark from Alexandria to Venice may suggest to this or that scholar the foundation of the myth of Venice, but it is no more or no less than the removal of the bones of Theseus from the island of Scyros to Athens. Neither event is the foundation of a myth, but it is the use of a holy figure in the actions of a city - actions that involve everyone and serve to enhance the city's sense of security. The translation of those old bones brought the protector into the midst of the city. That is a simple fact, a political move; but the rituals accorded that protector were redolent of mystery. Therein lay their power.

Commentary

MARINO BERENGO

T

I S B Y NOW an established historiographic tradition that three areas in Europe were densely populated with city-states during the late Middle Ages: Flanders, North-Central Italy, and Germany (especially the three large areas of Swabia-Franconia, the Rhineland, and the Hanse). But not all of these were republics. The sovereignty of a count or the king of France, of the Emperor or his subject territorial lords, or of the Pope may have been weakened but often remained a clear and perceptible presence. On the penin­ sula, we note between the Alps and the Tiber River many signorie that sprouted from the communal seed but later suffocated it. State organizations encompassing more than one city expanded rapidly on the map of Italy's political geography between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These new states did not passivdy continue the civic rituals of the past. In 1471, after a bitter battle for succession, Ercole d'Este became duke of Ferrara, and remained in power for more than thirty years. On January 5 two years later, the duke's carriage left the castle "in search of his fortune." He stopped in front of every citizen's house and collected their gifts.1 This was a surprise event with no precedent and for which the Ferrarese were not prepared at the time. An experimental phase is necessWY before a ritual might be consolidated. There are also ceremonies that suddenly can acquire a specific and par­ ticular political significance. Pisa, having restored and enjoyed its "freedom" for fifteen years, in the wake of Charles VIl's invasion of Italy, was subju­ gated to Florence again in 1 509. After the siege of 1530, Florence was no longer - not even formaly - a city-republic but rather the capital of the duchy of Tuscany. The cities that it had conquered with their surrounding countrysides were by then capitals of ducal provinces. In June 1538, the confraternity of the Holy Spirit celebrated the feast of the Corpus Dom;n; in a way that startled the Florentine commissioner: "in place of saints and martyrs in procession," a woman who represented a triumphant Pisa appeared, fol-

I

1. Diario ferareu dall'anno 1409 al1502 di autori jnarli, gna: Zanichelli, 1933) 83.

edited by G. Pardi (Bolo­

556

Symbols and Rituals

lowed by the three kings of Majorca, Minorca, and Sardinia and the emperor of Trebizond, once all subjects of the free city. After this contingent had passed, a lone, silent woman in chains appeared with the sign "unfortunate Pisa. "1 The transparency and immediacy of the symbols destroyed every con­ tinuity with the past. The Pisan citizens knew this demonstration was risky but did not think that their protest could find efficient expression within the customs of the traditional rituals, by using the images of the saints and martyrs. They had to find a new form and break with the past. The signori of the Po valey and Central Italy always had to establish their courts and (in the case of states involving more than one city) the seats of their deputies and representatives within the walls of old communes. Therefore they were unable to avoid a confrontation with the forms of public life that preceded their dynasty's assumption of power. They had to choose whether to preserve them intact, modify them, or replace them. A German margrave's experience was entirely different. Although he often dominated one or more cities, these imdiately identified themselves as IandfUrstliche, that is, part of the seignorial demesne. Of course, many times they rebelled and claimed fiscal, judicial, and other privileges. They appealed to the imperial chamber of Speyer and addressed petitions to the Emperor himself. But their territorial prince never identified the existence or the hub of his own government in one or another of his cities. The true root of his power was never urban. One of the more salient aspects of ritual involved the image of sovereignty. The need for ritual was even more acute in areas marked by Roman influence, when civic origins could not be linked to a municipium and therefore could not boast their own continuity. The case of Venice, with its Trojan myth, is exemplary. Its later birth, during the long centuries of the barbarian invasions, makes it analogous to few Italian cases: Ferrara and a few other, smaller cities, north of the Tiber. Instead, comparisons must be sought elsewhere, on the other side of the Alps and in northern Europe among the fledgling cities along on the Baltic coast and the North Sea. Here the symbol carved on the city walls, on column capitals, and sometimes used in city seals and flags was not necessarily that of the city's patron saint or perhaps of one of its first bishops, always too recent and therefore neither sufficiently illustrious nor extremely venerable. Throughout the Hanseatic area one finds great statues of Roland, the majestic knights leaning on their swords, guarantors of public peace for citizens and merchants who gathered there from .the hinterland and from across the sea. If we extend our range of comparisons and contrasts, we discover that there are two elements reminiscent of the ancient city-state for which it is difficult to find an analogy, an echo, or even a simple memory in the city-state of the late Middle Ages or the early modem age. This lack of reflected echo is

2. lbis phrase is in the dispatch of the Florentine commissioner Alessandro Malegon­ nele, quoted in my bok, NobiJi e merctmti nella LNcca del Cinquecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1965) 197-198.

Berengo: Commentary

557

connected with the essential elements that characterize these diverse urban cultures. The Athenian rites of state and, to a lesser degree, the Roman ones were expressions of a civic, religious, and celebratory cohesion. One of the most significant cases, especially after the battle of Marathon, is offered by the myth of Theseus, defender of freedom against the Minotaur (who personified the exiled tyrant Hippias and his Persian allies). A religious charge was by no means absent from institutions and from everyday political choices in Euro­ pean cities. Savonarola's Florence was not in any way an isolated instance. But the formation of cults rich in political content that could unify the citizenry was not possible in Christian Europe. The state could control the Church's functions and ministry. It could promote specific forms of devotion (for example, to the patron saints). But it could not forge a religion tailored to its political needs. This limit is evident elsewhere, in the connection between artisans' guilds and religious confraternities. In the ancient world, the former lacked an officialy recognized political status and at no time was it conceivable that the guilds could be assigned a portion of the seats on the city's councils and magistracies, let alone the exclusive control of the government. Their professional nature could tum to charitable or cult activities; nevertheless it remained the qualifying element of the association. Indeed, in the communal world the distinction between the collegia licita and the collegia ilicita, dear to legislators and glossarists, was applied with equal suspicion to both the confraternities and the guilds. When Ruffino da Bologna, in the mid-twelfth century, spoke of "coniurationum et conspirationum crimen, quod apud Graecos dicitur fratria," he showed both an imprecise awareness of Greek culture and the sharpness of his political consciousness. His aim was to condemn conspiracies against the temporal power of bishops: "Etiam si bono zelo contra dissipatorem episcopi vel prelatum ineatur, coniuratio est dicenda et penitus reprobanda." One century later, Sinibaldo Fieschi, who had not yet become Innocent N, used a completely different perspective. Bishops and princes were no longer on trial; instead, the focus of everybody's attention was the swarming presence in Italian cities of the guilds whose sphere of influence and right to exist he intended both to affirm and to limit. The members of a profession, "si volunt, licet alii aliter dicant, possunt convenire simul et facere sibi rectorem et sindicum et arcam communem, dummodo societatem coeant vel collegium faciant pro aliqua causa," as long as this was a just cause.l But what was a just cause that a commune's artisanal association could promote during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? The answer was very 3. These pases are from Y. Sydow, Fragm zur Gilde, Bruderschaft und ZMrift i", Lichte !lOtI Kirchemecht und KaflOtlistilt, in Gilden und Zim{te , edited by G. Schwinekoper (Sigrnaringen: Thorbecke, 1985) 113-126, se especially pp. 117 and 119. •.•

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Symbols and Rituals

different in Venice and in Florence. The internal discipline of Venice (from pacts to apprenticeships, to matriculation, to the election of social officers) was controlled or administered by a public magistracy: the Giustizieri Vecchio In Florence, not only were the guilds not subject to any interference by public power, but they were also a governmental stnicture, one of those organizations to which the citizens must belong in order to exercise political rights. This situation became increasingly familiar to the German imperial cities between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, where chroniclers learned to describe it with a very pithy phrase: "zunftam facere." This colorful expression did not refer to the creation simply of one guild (Zunft); rather it meant providing the commune with a constitutional form of government composed of guilds. The urban revolutions, in the late Middle Ages, often had as their goal a government of guilds. However, this formula conceals diverse social forces, often in open and dramatic opposition among themselves. For example, the Florentine dis­ tinction between major and minor guilds, the German one between Gilde and Zunft, and the English one between craft and guild reflected a long-lasting contrast between merchants and artisans. The variants to this theme could be numerous: authoritative and powerful businessmen might be members of the same association to which a worker without a shop or money might also belong. Nevertheless, the difference between them was clear in the eyes and in the minds of their contemporaries. Inevitably, it was the businessmen who promoted and conducted successful revolutions that produced lasting changes in city governments. English cities had a rather more limited autonomy, continuously preempted by the Crown, which, when confronted with episodes of fiscal disobedience or public disorder, took "in the king's hands" charters of privilege. The life of the cities was, however, entrusted to the guilds, and it is from them that derived even the right of citizenship, a distant echo, perhaps, of the model of Italian municipal republics. But the political content of their constitutional structure was thinner and more illusory. Nevertheless, when the p�ant revolution of 1381 spread inside the commune of London, the king did not simply suspend communal guarantees; he went further: he dissolved the guilds. They soon rose again under a diferent name: confraternities. The distinction the glossarists had used in Italy two centuries earlier betwe�n the collegia licita (politically neutral) and the collegia illicita (potentially revolutionary) became the basis for the British Crown's practical course of conduct, a mandatory choice. A professional association, whether composed of artisans, simple trades­ men, or major international merchants, naturally tended to interfere with the choices that involved a city's public life. On one hand, the organization was always in need of religious services and devotional practices. On the other hand, it offered assistance both internally to the members of the confraternity and externally to pilgrims and the needy. These two elements represented an essential phase in the development of the organization's associative structure.

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559

But the line of demarcation between these two aspects, or vocations, was extremely fluid. Much more so than the guilds' leaders, it was the prince or the government who sought to draw that line and maintain it. When Charles V defeated the Schmalkaldic League at Muhlberg in 1547, his punishment fell more harshly and knowingly on imperial cities than on the territorial princes who had violated the pax Imperii and committed crimes. The constitutional reform that his commissioners imposed on the rebellious cities of Swabia eliminated the government of the guilds and forced their dissolution. From within their ranks had spread the Lutheran heresy; civil disobedience and armed revolt had originated among them. The government of the guilds would have difculty rising again and in many cases would not be reestablished. However, the guilds (ZUnfte), tended to reappear imediately not as artisan organizations but as religious associations, as confraternities (Bruderschaften). In public ceremonies the citizens could visually perceive the parallelism, the convergence or encounter, between the guild and the confraternity. For example, the Kalends of Lubeck's priests were guilds of secular clergy with the usual objectives of such associations (the admission of new members, the administration of their holdings, internal assistance, charity, and so on). But in city life they were imediately identified with their role in public ceremo­ nies. In the eastern Hanseatic area from Danzig to Tal the guilds also had a function that was neither conceivable, nor was it necessary elsewhere: they operated as an ethnic filter. The preliminary requirement for enrollment, from the fourteenth century on, was not only honorable, that is, legitimate birth (ehrliche Geburt), but membership in the "teutscher Nation." Here also, on the Baltic coast, contemporaries were practiced in distinguishing and deter­ mining whether a person with whom they came in contact was German, Slavic, Lithuanian, Latvian, or Estonian. However, in order to make these distinctions, official juridical instruments were necessary. Of these, registration. in a guild (Zunft) was the most visible and safest. Thus, from the perspective of professional and religious associations, a comparison between the ancient and medieval city 'Serves, above all, to under­ score divergent lines of development rather than their similarities. We have the same impression when considering the city council of Athens, a state which covered 2,400 square kilometers, double the territory of Nuremberg, the largest German imperial city; this was equal to the territory controlled by a large Italian commune of the thirteenth century, like Padua or Pisa. Here, the state's rural demos enjoyed their own representation and exercised full political powers. The heart of public life was indissoluJ:>ly anchored in the urban space, and it was not conceivable that it be moved outside the city walls. Yet, within the circle of its walls, citizens were not the only protagonists of public life. From Flanders to the Rhineland, in Swabia, and in Italy the Buitenpoorters, the bourgeois forains, the Pfahlburger, the cives siivestTes, certainly did exist. Even though these people normally resided in the country'Side, they enjoyed

560

Symbols and Rituals

the political and fiscal rights of citizens. But in the beginning, this was a sort of citizens' safeguard against bishops and lords. Later, it became a taxable expedient intended to shift on to rural inhabitants a greater portion of the fiscal burden, excluding from among their number the wealthiest contribu­ tors. But the countryside could not rely on these means to escape from its subordination to the city. This held true in every comer of that Europe which from the eleventh century on was characterized by the great urban spring. The Swiss Confederation appears as an exception to this general ten­ dency. There the canton, more than the commune, was the protagonist of political life and the guarantor of the federal structure. Clearly we are not referring here to the part of Switzerland that extends from Lucerne, at the bottom of the Gotthard pass, to artisan Zurich, and toward the aristocratic and military Berne and merchant Basel. These cities, one after another, re­ placed knights, ministeriaies, nobles of various origin and nature, and above al abbeys. They acquired villages and castles with money rather than weapons. But in forming their new territorial units they were careful not to alter the juridical status of the peasants, whose servile condition (Leibeigenschaft) would be debated and gradually upset only during the course of the eighteenth century. In the large Swiss cities, but also in the smaller ones (for example, Solothurn), rural inhabitants never had any representation or voice, even formally, in governmental organs. Rural Switzerland, that ofWilliarn Tell and the three cantons (Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden), was something else again. It was the mythical cradle of the Confederation. There, the inhabitants of the countryside enjoyed real and full political rights, but there were no cities, and the league of the communes was the only effective institutional structure. Ou�ide the borders of the Swiss Confederation, but in close contact with it, was the republic of the Three Gray Leagues. It often held its Diets and convened its fragile central bodies at Chur. Nevertheless, it did not recognize this as its capital. The forty-eight communes in the Three Leagues united for politiCal and financial decisions, but each claimed its own absolute freedom and autonomy. Once again there were no cities that politically controlled a countryside or whose surrounding areas naturally gravitated to city walls. Although in Athens peasants were able to car political weight without ' being viewed as revolutionary, in Italian cities this could occur only in short and exceptional moments of confrontation. In March of 1 5 09, when Machiavelli was negotiating with Pisan representatives besieged by Florentine troops, he faced not only citizens but also peasants who were fully integrated into the armed struggle and the political life of the republic. Both Machiavelli and his unusual interlocutors were aware of being part of an extraordinary event.Only a war fought around the city wal could explain, albeit temporarily, such a profound break with the Italian tradition. If, while scang the Italian peninsula, we set out to encounter inhabitants of the countryside formally sumoned to City Hall to participate in the

Berengq: Commentary

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decisions made there, we must stop at Aquila, a city officially founded (the traditionally accepted date is 1254) by Frederick ll. He divided it into ninety­ nine neighborhoods that corresponded to the ninety-nine villages that had been sumoned to populate it. Perhaps there were echoes and models from the classical world at work in the thoughts of the emperor and sovereign of the kingdom, alongside the need to create, in the heart of the feudal world, a strong urban commune obedient to the king. The government of rustics would not succeed, even in this new city, in laying a lasting foundation. The towers and palaces of the noble class were not slow in rising here as they previously had been built in other cities. One family, the Camponeschi, came quite close to achieving a transformation of the government, from an urban system to a seignorial and dynastic one, so familiar to North-Central Italy. During the eighteenth century the Rousseauistic myth of the free peasant, able fully to exercise his political rights, would be seen not as an integrated part, but rather as an alternative to urban life. The distant example of Sweden, where peasants sat in state assemblies, was diffused in the 1 770s and eighties throughout enlightened Europe. But not even then, when the urban communal culture had already faded away, would the participation of peasants in the government become an established and practical reality. It was hard to re­ member the example of Attica.4

4. Thanks to Ermelinda Campani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this essay from Italian.

City-State, Territory, and Empire in Classical Antiquity

KURT A. RAAFLAUB

INTRODUCTION

accomplishments of classical antiquity were achieved by two city-states (Athens and Rome) that were successful builders and rulers of empires. 1 The very fact that the two politicaly and culturally most important and thus most influential and best-known city­ states of the classical world were imperial powers tends to obscure another fact, namely that both were atypical in most respects. I will argue that under the conditions prevailing in the archaic and classical periods of Greco-Roman antiquity - that is, the periods dominated by city-statesl- few city-states met the basic preconditions necessary for imperial expansion; of those that did, even fewer actually built an empire; and most of these empires - or power formations - only existed for a short period of time. Thus the phenomenon to be examined in much of this chapter - empires ruled by city-states - was exceptional and possible only under extraordinary circumstances. A few preliminary remarks seem necessary. The Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan, and Italian city-states of classical antiquity clearly were not city­ states in the modem sense of the word; both the "city" and the "state" components are quite inadequate. But what were they? Discussions of this question usually focus on the Greek city-state, or rather on the phenomenon hat the Greeks themselves called "polis." This word became a broadly ac-

T

HE MOST REMARKABLE

1. The purpose of this chapter is to present, as much IX> nondassicists as to dassicists, a brief survey of the main issues raised by its topic - which obviously is very broad. Limitation of space makes it imposible to analyze all issues in sufficient detail; nor is it possible IX> provide detailed documentation in footnotes. Instead, in a bibliographical appendix I offer a selection of readings on most of the problems touched upon in the following discussion. 2. Both in Gre and in Italy city-states originated in the Dark Ages. They appear first in the literary (Homer) and archaeological record in the eighth century B.C., were fully devel­ oped in the course of the seventh and sixth centuries, and quickly spread widely around the Mediterranean and Black Seas in the age of colonization (c. 750-550 B.C.). Although with the ascendancy of Macedon and the Hellenistic kingdoms and with the expansion of the Roman Empire all poleis eventually lost their independence, they retained substantial elements of their local autonomy, of the traditional social and political structures, and of the cultural function of the po lis. One might say that the concept of polis lost most of its meaning only in the crisis of the Roman Empire when centralization, autocratic rule, and government interference in local affairs increased d ramaticaly, the predominance of imperial aristocracies and the general extension of Roman created new allegiances, and the villtu of the large landlords provided new focuses of social and economic life and security.

566

Territory, External Relations and Empire

cepted technical term after Jacob Burckhardt in the first volume of his Griechische Kulturgeschichte of 1 898 acknowledged the uniqueness of the Greek - and ancient - phenomenon by consistently replacing "Stadtstaat" with "Polis." More recently, the general use of the term "polis" has met with increased criticism, particularly since there is no agreement about how to define the polis. Moreover, in his famous The Greek State, Victor Ehrenberg, although acknowledging that there were other forms of state in ancient Greece, identified the polis with the Greek state par excellence because, as he put it, it was the historically decisive form of state. Ehrenberg'S book provoked an intensive debate about the polis and the Greek state, from which we have gained an increased awareness of the problems involved but no clear solution. Thus, lacking a better alternative, I will continue to use the terms "polis" and "city-state. " What, then, constituted a polis? Not necessarily independence - although this was normally perceived as an important asset - because, as the example of the subjected ales of Athens in the fifth century B.C. indicates, dependent communities did not cease to be considered poleis. Nor the existence of a city and the combination of urban center and territory - although this, too, clearly was a crucial feature of most larger and prominent poleis - because there were poleis without cities, poleis with several cities, and even poleis without territory. Rather, the polis was a community of persons, of place or territory, of cults and laws, and a community that was able to administer itself (fully or partly). Because the community of citizens was the primary element, the loyalty and mentality of the citizens - their identification with their commu­ nity - were more important than external features. For the same reason, the polis was movable, as was demonstrated dramatically by the Phocaeans and Athenians in their confrontations with the Persians,3 and by countless others who recreated their polis wherever they settled after they had emigrated from home or escaped the ravages of war. In addition, the polis was definea by emotional elements, some of which could not be replaced or re-created as easily; they are best expressed in the battle cry of the 'Athenian soldiers at Salamis (Aeschylus, Persae 402-405, tr. P. Vellacot): Forward, you sons of Hellasl Set your country free! Set free you sons, your wives, tombs of your ancestors, and temples of your gods. Al is at stake: now fight!

Originally, these basic features - community of citizens, territory, cult, and law - characterized Rome and other Italian city-states as well.4 But when

3. Phocaeans: Herodotus 1.164-65; Athenians (the wooden walls): ibid. 7.143; 8.41; cf. 8.61-62 and 1.170-72. 4. In many respects the Etruscan and Phoenician city-stalleS (among the latter is Carthage, another empire builder) fit this pattern as well. But there are differences that require thorough evaluation.

Raaflaub: Classical Antiquity

567

the size of Rome's territory grew enormously, large numbers of citizens were permanently separated from the center of their polis (through colonization and partial or wholesale enfranchisement of formerly independent communi­ ties), and relationships were increasingly defined in legal terms. Thus the community of citizens (cives Romani ) was gradually replaced by the civitas or res publica Romana. The Roman state that emerged in the fourth an d third centuries, though still based on the structures, concepts, and ideology of a polis, transcended the framework of the polis and became a hybrid - neither polis nor territorial state. Even more, Rome's rule over the entire Mediterranean world created conditions that were not at all representative of the city-state in classical antiquity. Sti1� as one of the few ancient city-states that built an empire, and the only one to succeed in maintaining it over a long period of time, Rome offers too much valuable insight to be ignored. Thus the following discussion will focus on the Greek poleis prior to 338 B.C. and on Rome dur­ ing the republic. CITY AND COUNTRYSIDE: PA RTICIPATION AND REPRESENTATION

Throughout antiquity, the polis was characterized by "the closely interlocked town-country unit"S and the predominance of agriculture: most poleis might be described aptly as farming towns and villages rather than city-states. Indeed, the great majority of poleis were very small. Considering al available ancient and comparative evidence, scholars have estimated the average territory of the Greek polis at fifty to one hundred square kilometers, and the population at 2,500-4,500 persons, including about 450-900 adult male citizens.' Usually most citizens who cultivated the farmland of a given polis, then, were able to live in the main settlement. There was no contrast between urban and rural, and political rights were distributed not according to where a citizen lived or how he made his living but acording to wealth and social status. In such conditions, political participation was not problematical for those who were entitled to it. Things were somewhat different in large poleis, most markedly in Athens, about which we are. best informed. Most large poleis gradually developed a strong urban center with a diversified economy and a substantial body of people working in the secondary sector (commerce, manufacture, construction, and so on). Even so, the great majority of the population continued to be landowners and peasants. They lived in single farmsteads or villages, close to

S. M. I. Fi nley, "The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and Beyond," in id., Economy and Society ;n A1ICient Greece (New York, 198 1) 3-23, on pp. 6 and 19. 6. Even these average figu res are to high because they include some exceptionally large poleis (like Athens, Corinth, Argos, Sparta, Thebes, or Samoa) with tertories of several hundred or thousand square kilometers and populations of several ten or hundred thousands. Some figures are given in the first part of the following section.

568

Territory, External Relations and Empire

their fields and often far from the urban center. Gradually, the life-style and oudook of city folk and peasants diverged and, under extreme conditions, provoked attitudes of mutual contempt or serious disagreement on important issues.7 But neither in Athens nor in other large poleis was there a permanent division or tension between country and city; clas conflicts, if any, were waged between rich and poor. Throughout antiquity, peasants continued to play a decisive role in the polis; as M. I. Finley puts it, "the political role of the guilds set the medieval city apart from the ancient, as the political role of the peasantry set the ancient city apart from the medieval." The value system of Greek and Roman society, whatever its relation to reality, always placed heavy emphasis on ownership and cultivation of land and, as s. C. Humphreys points out, "there was indeed a tendency in Greek political thought towards eliminating altogether the distinction between town-dwellers and country­ dwellers."· In Attica (as probably in other large poleis) the villages and rural subdivi­ sions (demo,) enjoyed a considerable amount of self-administration (with po­ litical and religious offices and an assembly); since the late 6th century B.C. the demes kept the citizen rolls and functioned as miniature democracies. But the political life of the polis took place exclusively in the urban center; only there could the citizens exert their rights. Thus for those living far from the center, political participation could be difficult, although the political life of most poleis placed relatively low demands on the citizens. For, with few exceptions, the archaic and classical Greek and Italian polis was aristocratic or oligarchic. The leading families had their principal or secondary domicile in the center of the polis and controlled the religious and political offices and the powerful council. The assembly, comprising all citizens with full citizen rights, although theoretically sovereign, had only limited functions and made decisions on relatively few issues. Apart from the exceptional case of Athens, the political agenda normally was small, mostly limited to domestic affairs, and posed few problems. Thus political participation was easily manageable even for thoSe citizens who did not belong to the elite. Representation therefore b ecame an issue only under exceptional condi­ tions: (a) if the polis required frequent involvement by many citizens, which in tum means if the political agenda was large and the range of activities of the polis exceptionally broad, if political rights were extended to substantial parts of the nonaristocratic citizen body, and if a nonaristocratic council and/or the assembly assumed a leading role in deliberation and decision making; (b) if the polis territory was so large that most citizens could not easily take part in politics and if the problem of bringing them together frequently could not be solved otherwise. 7. For example, whether or not to sacrifice the Attic countryside in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta. 8. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1973) 138; S. C. Humphreys, Anthropology and the Greeks (London and Boston, 1978) 131.

Raaflaub: Clasical Antiquity

569

This last problem requires a closer look. Traditionally, there existed in the polis a close connection between ownership of land, military capacity and political rights. The hoplite phalanx, gradually introduced between about 750 and 650 B.C., bestowed equal fighting status on the aristocrats and all those nonaristocratic farmers who could afford the hoplite equipment. In a complex process of interdependent changes, the political rights of the hoplite farmers gradually were enhanced and economic capacity replaced birth as a criterion for political participation and, in some cases, access to council an4 office. Systems based on some form of political equality (isonomia) for the hoplites probably became fairly common in the course of the sixth century. At least in Athens and Sparta, despite major differences, the assembly was institutional­ ized, given more power, and made more independent of traditional aristo­ cratic leadership. The assembly, however, could assume the role assigned to it only if a sufficient percentage of citizens was able to participate regularly in its meetings. Thus large poleis were confronted with the problem of how to make sure that its citizens could be present in the political center whenever they were needed there. One solution consisted of extending to all citizens the aristocratic privilege of living in or near the center - which at the same time separated most of them from their fields. This was Sparta's solution, possible only because its citizens (the Spartiates) were able to exploit a large work force of enslaved natives (the helots) who farmed the fields of their Spartiate owners and freed them from the necessity of working for their living. Another solution combined fairly (but not excessively) frequent meetings of the full assembly with a representative system by creating an elected council that prepared the meetings of the assembly and was capable of acting on its behalf when necessary. Whatever the powers of this council, it could represent the assembly only if it was composed of a cross-section of the entire citizen body. This was the Athenian solution, introduced by Cleisthenes at the end of the sixth century, but possibly preceded by a Solonian council and similar. institutions in other .. poleis.' True, the concept of representation had been introduced earlier - for example, in the councils of religious leagues - but it acquired new significance when it was applied to the people's or democratic council (boule demos;e).10 The system developed for this purpose by Cleisthenes was complex and sophisticated, the quota of representation remarkably high: there was one councilor per sixty to eighty citizens, and one out of every three to five 9. The Cleisthenic council probably was never more than a preparatory and executive organ of the assembly: P. ]. Rhodes, The Athenian BOIlIe (Oxford, 1972) 191-93, refuting ]. A. O. Larsen, Representative Government in Greek and Roman History (Berkel ey and Los Ange­ les, 1955) 13-1 8. 10. Only the b01l1e demosie in Chios is demonstrably older than the Cleisthenic bOIlIe: R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1969), no. 8 on pp. 14-17 (575-550 B.C.); C. W. Fomara, Archaic Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War. Transl. Documents of Greece and Rome I (Cambridge, 2nd ed. 1983), no. 19 on pp. 23-24.

570

Territory, External Relations and Empire

citizens was elected at least once during his lifetime to this year-long, time­ consuming, and deman ding office. For the Athenian boule was indeed in­ tended to be a polis en miniature (mikra polis), representing the sovereign and governing assembly but not governing in its stead. Of course, in this as in many other respects, democratic Athens was atypical. But there is no doubt that most poleis, including very large ones, retained the "supremacy of the primary assembly" (from which in oligarchic poleis the lower classes were excluded by census or other requirements). The reason is to be found not, as J. A. O. Larsen suggests, in the belief, formulated by Greek theory in the late fifth century, "that the collective judgment of the masses was superior to that of experts," but in the fact that the polis was perceived as a community of citizens and in the intimate connection between the military and political capacity of these citizens.H In Rome, on the other hand, the aristocracy was so strong and united that even the changes necessitated by the hoplite phalanx did not afect its political predominance. Moreover, already by the late fourth century, the number of citizens and the extension of territory had increased far beyond the standards set even by the largest Greek poleis, and expansion continued rap­ idly thereafter until in the first century B.C. all free inhabitants of Italy were enfranchised. Nevertheless, no effort was made to alter the traditional principle that the citizens could exert their political rights only in Rome. As a result, the advantages of citizenship were largely perceived in terms not of participation but of privileges and protections. Moreover, the urban masses voting in the Roman assemblies were far from representative of the citizen body at large, and crucial elections or plebiscites could be decided by large blocks of voters brought into the city for that occasion by interested parties.u FO R M ATION AND A DMINISTRATION O F EMPIRES

Preconditions of Empire In antiquity large territorial states and empires were usuallY IJlled by monarchs. The extensive military and administrative tasks required for governing an empire could best be handled by the central authority vested in a monarch. His rule was based on the army, his relatives and friends who were bound to him by close ties of kinship and obligations, and a hierarchically organized bureaucracy that was strictly tied to, and dependent on, his own person and!

1 1 . Larsen, Repr. Gov. (n. 9) 14. On this theory: E. Braun, "Die Sumerungstheorie des ArislDteles," Jamb. tUs ostetTeich. archaoL Inst. 44 (1959) 157-84; J. de Romilly, Problmte.s tJ. la dbnocratie grecque (paris, 1 975) 66-71. Comunity of citizens: V.Ehrenberg, The Greek State (New York,1960; trans), from the first Gen ed. 1932) 88-102, esp. 88-92; id., Dn Staat a.,. Griechen (Zurich and Munich, 2nd ed. 1965) 107-25, esp. 107-13; E. Meyer, Einfuhnmg in die aMite Statsleund. (Darmstadt, 1976) 68-80. 12. 1hese and other consequences of expansion became problems and eventualy explosive political issues only in the second and first centuries B.C., in the crisis of the Roman republic. SUelDnius, in Augustus 46, reports a remarkable but unsuccesful attempt to introduce a system of decentralized voting (mail ballot).

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571

or position.1l Thus large-scale territorial expansion and empire building by nonmonarchic city-states was a priori exceptional. Aristocratic or democratic poleis, in which the sovereign and governing bodies were made up of a plurality of individuals with a great variety of interests, were structurally and ideologically incapable of developing centralized bureaucracies. Instead, they required the frequent and intensive involvement of large numbers of citizens in various civil and military functions. Democratic Athens and aristocratic Rome provide impressive, although very different, examples. In Athens the number of adult male citizens increased from about 30,000 at the time of the Persian Wars to well over 40,000 at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; it fell to about 22,000 at the end of that war and rose again to approximately 30,000 in the middle of the fourth century. In his Constitution of the Athenians, Aristotle lists an amazing number of citizens who were paid by the polis for their public services. "There were 6,000 jurors, 1 ,600 archers, and 1 ,200 cavalry, and 500 members of the Boule. There were 500 guards in the docks and 50 others on the Acropolis; offices in the city occupied up to 700 men, and up to 700 were employed abroad. In addition to them, when later they were at war, there were 2,500 hoplites and 20 guard ships and other ships to carry the tribute employing 2,000 men selected by lot. . . " (24.3).14 Of course, not all of these were on duty every day throughout the year. On the other hand, more often than not Athens was at war, employing thousands of its lower-class citizens in its navy; even in times of peace, sixty ships patrolled the Aegean on training assignment. Finally, the combination of democracy and empire produced a flood of business for the assembly, which ended up meeting at least forty times a year - until the end of the fifth century without pay. Although attendance often was far below the quorum of 6,000 required for some particularly important issues, the sum of involvement in public service that the Athenian polis expected of its citizens is staggering. The Roman assembly played an important role in elections, legislation, and decisions on war and peace. Yet the senate' was truly the governing body 13. Typically, early eforts to extend control over several poleis originated with the archaic tyrants who profited from a wide-ranging "international" network of relationships and obligations in order to secure power in their own polis and extend their influence far beyond its borders. Their rule was entirely personal and depended on their skill and achievement, and on the loyalty of family members and close allies. Accordingly, the power fonnations created by tyrants were precarious and rarely survived the second generation. Se K. Raaflaub, "Ex­ pansion und Machtbildung in frihen Polis-Systemen," in W. Eder (ed.), Staat 14M Statlichlleit in tier frihen rOmischen Republilt. (Stuttgart, 1990) 523-24 (with literature in n. 37), 528-29, and, in general, H.Berve, Die Tyrannis bei den Grl8chen, 2 vols. (Munich, 1967). In Rome, to, an early phase of in.fluence over parts of Latium in the 6th century was connected with the monarchy/tyranny of the Tarquins: H. H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, 753-146 B. e. (London and New York, 4th ed. 1980) 61 -62; T. J. Cornell, "Rome and Latium to 390 " B.C., Cambr. Anc. Hist. VI.2 (2nd ed. 1989) 243-57. 14. Transl. J. M. Moore, Aristotle and Xenophon on Democracy and Oligarchy (Berke­ ley and Los Angeles, 1975). Se Moore's comment on pp. 249-50, and P. J. Rhodes, A Com­ mentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Polireia (Oxford, 1981) 300-9.

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that supervised the agenda and decisions of the assembly, tightly controlled public finances and foreign policy, and advised the all-powerful magistrates (see below, n. 23). The three hundred senators, and even more so the members of the senatorial elite (nobiles), were professional politicians and leaders; in their career of public office they held military, diplomatic, political, religious, and jurisdictional responsibilities; as senators, they constantly dealt with innu­ merable issues of domestic and foreign policy, and they did so through a network of personal patronage and obligations (clientelae, necessitudines). Accordingly, their value system was entirely focused on public service and political and military achievement. Moreover, beginning in the middle of the fourth century, an almost uninterrupted series of wars of expansion required ever-increasing numbers of farmer-soldiers to spend increasing periods of time away from their farms in increasingly distant theaters of war. Thus in Rome, too, although clearly to a lesser degree than in Athens, substantial parts of the citizen body were frequently and intensively involved in public service. On the other hand, by leading Italy through a system of alliances, administering the provinces of the empire as military districts under permanent martial law, and continuing to exploit the aristocrats' traditional reliance on a staf composed of familia (including slaves and freedmen), relatives and friends, to the end of the republic the Romans were able to keep the number of state­ employed personnel remarkably low. As these examples show, a city-state's ability to sustain imperial expan­ sion and rule usualy depended on at least two major factors: (a) a large territory and citizen population, (b) the resources required either to free substantial numbers of citizens for extended service for the community or to pay for the services of noncitizens (such as mercenaries) or both. Not surpris­ ingly, most imperial poleis in the classical world met both conditions, although in significantly different ways.u To begin with, they were exceptionally large. Attica covered about 2,650 square kilometers and at times counted more than 40,000 adult male citizens. Sparta controlled about 8,400 square kilometers; its citizen population (Spartiates) was never very large (9,000-10,000) and decreased alarmingly in the classical period, but it was supplemented for military purposes by noncitizen contingents. By the end of the sixth century, Rome's territ.ory extended over about 820 square kilometers, comparable with some large Etruscan city-states to the north and much larger than its Latin neighbors to the south. With the conquests of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, Rome's territory more than doubled in size. The number of citizens, probably well under 10,000 in 500, grew accordingly. Thus in the middle of the fourth century, before it set out to conquer Italy, Rome was by far the largest polis in central Italy. 15. Exceptions exist: for example, the short-lived predominance of the Phocians in the fourth century B.C. and the impresive Carthaginian empire were both based on large resources despite smal tertories. Se F. Schober, "Phokis," Pauly-Wisowa's Realtmcyclop. tier clas. Altertumswis. 20 (1941) 487-89; W. Hoffmann, "Karthagos Kampf urn die Vorherschaft im Minelme," in AufstUg und Niedergang tier romischm Welt 1.1 (1972) 341-63.

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Size of territory and citizen body, however, was an essential but not a sufficient precondition for the formation of an empire. For there were other poleis with sizable territories that never became imperial powers; and some of those which did had been large long before. The decisive issues can best be brought out by way of a historical digression.

Sparta, Athens, and the Formation of Power in the Archaic Period. In archaic Greece and Italy wars were limited in scope and purpose. Relationships among poleis were characterized by constant rivalries and frequent neighborhood wars fought mostly about land and booty. In this setting, expansion and formation of power were achieved not by subjecting the defeated but by absorbing their lands into the territory of the victorious polis (with or without the population). Thus by the end of the archaic age, there emerged some poleis with exceptionally large territories but no empires in which one polis ruled over other poleis or subject territories. Even in the extreme case, Sparta's conquest of Messenia (late eighth century B.C.), the territory and enslaved population were totally incorporated into the Spartan state; the Messenians no longer existed as a separate polis with its own structures and self-adminis­ tration (in contrast, for example, to the subjected poleis of the fifth-century Athenian empire). Sparta's efforts to expand its territory even farther ended in the sixth century. Instead, it gradually formed a system of alliances with most poleis in the Peloponnese. The Peloponn�ian League was designed to protect the status quo and the mutual interests of the allies. As the strongest partner, Sparta held an unquestioned hegemony, was very influential, and did not hesitate to enforce its will and keep the allies in line. But attempts to abuse the power of the league for Sparta's own purposes were soon checked by the strongest allies' resistance and by institutional safeguards. Thus, despite modern opinions to the contrary, Sparta did not rule over its allies: the Peioponnesian League was no Spartan empire.16 In fact, Sparta became an imperial power only in the last phase of the Peioponnesian War, partly forced by circumstances, and partly imitating the Athenian example. Nevertheless, for almost two hundred years after the middle of the sixth century, Sparta was very influential in the Greek world. Supported by the authority of the Delphic sanctuary and oracle, it assumed the role of an unofficial leader, protector, and arbiter on behalf of its allies and other Greek poleis in need of help. This function, admirably demonstrated particularly in the Persian Wars, was based precisely on the fact that Sparta was the greatest military power in Greece but . lacked interest in expansion and was perceived as nonthreatening. Its professional hoplite army was permanently on duty and used as little as possible. This paradox is to be explained by the discrep16. Raaflaub, "Expansion" (n. 1 3) 542-45; contra, among others, M. Steinbrecher, Der Delisch-Attische Seebund lind die athenisch-spartanischen Beziehungen in dn IUmonischen Ara (Stuttgart, 1985).

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ancy between Sparta's (relatively) small citizen body and the large number of helots. These provided the Spartiates with high economic status and leisure for public service but posed a constant threat and thus forced the Spartiates to protect themselves by developing their well-known military society, and to resist the temptation of using their power potential for imperial expansion. As late as the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans' reluctance to get involved in conflicts abroad, as well as their lack of financial resources, was a major factor in Athenian calculations.17 Sparta's eventual rise to imperial power was made possible only by huge subsidies from Persia and the exploita­ tion of the "liberated" Athenian subjects. What about Athens? Although Attica was united as one polis by about the middle of the seventh century, domestic instability prevented Athens from realizing the power potential provided by its large territory and population. A century-long conflict with the tiny neighboring polis of Megara over the possession of Salamis was resolved in Athens' favor only in the middle of the sixth century. The tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons, made possible by factional strife and social conflicts, contributed much to suppressing such conflicts, to unifying the community, to emphasizing the central religious and political function of Athens, and to increasing the self-consciousness of the citizens. After a brief recurrence of factional Strife, this process of political unification was decisively advanced in 507 by the reforms of Cleisthenes, by which the territory and citizen body were reorganized, the demes were given a significant role, the assembly's power was enhanced and the function of the nonaristocratic council redefined, and the hoplite-farmers were fully inte­ grated into the political structure of the polis. These reforms, it seems, were welcomed by most citizens; consequently, they must have increased their self-confidence, unity, and vigor. The results were visible in victories over a triple alliance of two neighboring poleis and Sparta (506), in the decision to support the revolt of the Ionian Greeks against Persia (500), and, most impressively, in 490 in the Athenians' stunng conquest of a Persian expeditionary force at Marathon. Shortly thereafter they used the proceeds of newly discovered silver mines. ta build a large fleet in order to gain the upper hand over another neighbor and long-standing rival, Aegina. Instead, this fleet became the decisive instrument in securing crucial Greek victories in the second round of the Persian Wars (Salamis 480, Mykale 479) and hegemony for Athens in the Aegean in 478. Thus until the Persian Wars, except for the short and unsuccessful intervention in Ionia, Athens' foreign policy was determined by the traditional patterns of neighbor­ hood rivalries and wars, and by conflicts brought about by aristocratic factional strife.

17. Se, e.g., Thucydides 1.69·71 , 141-42.

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It was only in their struges against the autocratically governed territorial states of Asia (Lydia and Persia) that the Greeks were confronted with a political phenomenon hitherto un­ known to them: the lasting subjection of a defeated polis by a ruling power, connected with such obligations as obeying the orders of governors and kings, paying tribute, and supplying troops to the rulers' wars. Here the Greeks learned much about empire and imperial rule, and they soon developed the same ambivalent attitude toward empire as toward tyranny: those who held it enjoyed it and were proud of it; those who sufered under it hated it bitterly. In 478 Sparta and the Peloponnesians retired from the common war effort, and a new alliance of Greek poleis around the Aegean was formed against the Persians under Athenian leadership. Cleverly exploiting their own naval supe­ riority, the dependence of many small poleis on their protection, and the willingness of most allies to leave the fighting to the hegemon, the Athenians gradually transformed this alliance into a vast naval empire, which at its peak comprised about two hundred poleis. Legislation and political decisions con­ cerning these poleis and jurisdiction in capital cases were centralized in Ath­ ens; the harbor of Athens became the center of trade in the Aegean, and for decades the Athenian fleet dominated the eastern Mediterranean. Athens' power rested almost entirely on its fleet, which was rowed, apart from increasing numbers of mercenaries and occasionally slaves, by the lower­ class citizens. They were paid by the allies' (or rather, subjects') contributions (tribute), which in times of peace were also used to finance public building in Athens. Thus the proceeds from the empire provided the resources needed to employ in public service all those thousands of citizens whom Aristotle mentions

Athens and Rome: The First Imperial Poleis.

(Ath. Pol. 24.3). The first empire built by a polis therefore was made possible, in addition to its large territory and citizen body, by a high level of social and political integration, a combination of extraordinary efforts and favorable historical circumstances, and the availability of vast financial resources. Once these resources were secured, the process of transformation' from alliance to empire was started, and its mechanisms and advantages were recognized by the leading polis, this process developed its own dynamics and became irrevers­ ible.is And once Athens had given the example, others (Sparta, Thebes) did not hesitate to imitate it. Finally, yet another basic factor should not be overlooked: by the end of the sixth century, the structures and institutions of the polis had developed to a level of rationalization and sophistication that made it possible to master the complex political and organizational tasks of controlling and administering an empire.19

18. As Thucydides demonstrates in his peneti'ating analysis: esp. 1. 88 1 1 8 (the develop­ ment of Athenian power); 1 .73-78 (speech of the Athenians in Sparta); 2.60-64 (Pericles' last oration). 19. As is indicated, for example, by the complexity of Cleisthenes' reforms. This issue deserves further study.

576

Territory, External Relations and Empire

In several ways, Rome's development followed a compromise pattern between Athens and Sparta. An early phase of intensive neighborhood wars resulted in a city-state of exceptional dimension and population. In the forma­ tive years of the early republic, Rome, like Sparta, was under constant and intensive pressure (although not from a subjected slave population but from hostile neighbors on all sides) . Forced by the need to survive, the Romans adopted the features of a militaristic society. As soon as the outside pressure abated they used their power potential for further expansion. Rome's victories in the Italian wars (338-270), however, resulted not in its imperial rule over the city-states and tribes of Italy but in a complex system of alliances. Unlike Sparta, Rome succeeded in keeping to itself autocratic control of foreign and military affairs, and the allies were obliged to provide troops for Rome's wars. Unlike the Athenian allies, those of Rome remained fully autonomous and did not sufr interference by the hegemon in their domestic affairs. As the head of this strong alliance system, Rome was able to establish its imperial rule over the Mediterranean world. Thus, again, the formation of an empire by a polis was the result of a combination of extraordinary factors. Here, to, success was based on continual and intensive efforts by a large number of citizens who devoted much time to public service. Rome, however, had no helots, and the allies paid no tribute. Where did the Romans find the resources that made such service possible and attractive to their citizen-soldiers? Regular pay for the legionaries probably was introduced only during the long campaigns that became the norm during the Samnite Wars in the late fourth century.20 The necessary funds were pro­ vided partly by a war tax (tTibutum) levied on the citizens and partly, one presumes, by booty and the sale of war captives into slavery. Moreover, as in the case of Athens, there were considerable material incentives (booty and conquered land, to be distributed among the citizens). Finally, expansion provided the means to satisfy the long-standing economic and social demands of the lower classes and thus to resolve social conflicts within Roman soCiety. In short, war financed both war and domestic peace, and soon war became indispensable, both for economic and political reasons - and to sustain the ideology of the senatorial elite.

Maintaining an Empire The Roman �pire lasted for many centuries. This is a truly astounding achievement. For most of the few empires created by city-states in classical

20. The introduction of anny pay is traditionally dated (following Livy 4.59.1 1 -60.8) to the end of the fifth century (siege of Veii); lor doubts about this early dau:, se C. Nicolet, Tributwn. Recherches SMr Ia fiscaliti directe sous Ia ripNblique romaine (Bonn, 1976) 16-19, 100; P. Marchet, "A propos du triblltum romain: imp6t de quotiti ou de repartition?" in Armies et fiscaliu dims Ie mcmde antique, Coli. nat. du CNRS 936 (Paris, 1 977), esp. 1 17-1 8.

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antiquity were short-lived. Some of the reasons will be revealed by another look at the example of Athens. Athens was relatively successful: it held on to its empire for more than half a century and might have done so even longer had it not overextended itself in the Peloponnesian War and finaly collapsed from economic and physical exhaustion. In fact, the very factors on which the empire was built (the active role of the citizens and the exploitation of the allies) also contributed decisively to its short life-span, quite apart from possible flaws of democratic politics. To explain: first, as previously discussed, the maintenance of an empire by a city-state required intensive involvement in politics, administration, and military service by a great number of citizens. Due to the nature of ancient warfare, defeat on both land and sea often resulted in great losses. Wars were frequent in the world of ancient poleis anyway; in particular, imperial poleis, inclined toward agessive expansionism and likely to meet hostility on the part of the defeated and subjected, were almost constantly involved in wars. Accordingly, the possibility of heavy losses was ever present. Despite the employment of metics (resident aliens) and mercenaries, the attrition rate among Athenian citizens was severe: during the Peloponnesian War their number was reduced to half. Thus the ability to replenish or enlarge the citizen body was crucial, and this is where Athens failed. Greek poleis generally adopted a restrictive concept of citizenship. In Athens the criteria were made even tighter soon after democracy was fully developed. The citizens became an exclusive elite, set apart from all other members of the community by their political rights and identity. Enfranchise­ ment was extremely limited. Losses therefore could be made up only during extended periods of peace, and the possibility of massively increasing the citizen body in order to meet greater challenges was a priori excluded. Such increases could have been effected if the Athenians had adopted a method of enfranchising the citizens of the alied poleis - at least partly or gradually. Given the power and wealth of Athens and 'the opportunities it offered its citizens, many allies might have found this possibility attractive. Its advantages, though, were not recognized as such by the Athenians. The political identity and involvement of the Athenian citizens, their exclusiveness and elitist attitudes, democracy and empire - all were closely linked and interdependent. At any rate, since there was no possibility of integration, Athenian rule was at best tolerated for lack of a better alternative, at worst hated and, when possible, resisted. Such resistance was suppressed brutaUy, and Athenian domination became more systematic and oppressive over time: eventualy, all ' but a few allies had to pay tribute and accept Athenian interference in their domestic afairs. Thus, in order to secure the revenues from the empire, which were needed to maintain the empire, the Athenians depended on their ability to control their subjects tightly and to prevent defections. Power, success, and revenues were causally connected. Failure would decrease power, which would

578

Territory, External Relations and Empire

trigger defections and decrease revenues, which in turn would make it more difficult to restore and maintain power.21 In all these respects, Rome followed an entirely different policy. To begin with, Rome had a much more open society with a remarkable capacity for integrating territory and new citizens, both aristocratic and not. Throughout its history Rome made extensive and varied use of this possibility. Thus it was able to enlarge its manpower base continuously and to cope much better with setbacks and the increasing challenges posed by imperial expansion. Enfran­ chisement was particularly attractive to allied aristocracies, which provided crucial loyalty and support. Moreover, Rome's principle of respecting allied autonomy created reliable ties of loyalty among most Italians. The resulting, almost unbreakable alliance system, a practically unlimited supply of man­ power, and the consistent and determined leadership the senate provided were decisive factors in sustaining Rome's expansive drive and imperial rule. Dissatisfaction among the allies emerged only in the second century, soon followed in Rome by efforts to curb large-scale enfranchisement. Both were caused by factors that were brought about by the empire itself, which had been built by the open and pragmatic policies pursued in earlier centuries. The same is true for the collapse of the republic in the extended crisis of the first century B.C. Thus we turn to our final question, the impact of empire. TH E I MPACT OF WAR AN D E M P I RE ON TH E CITY- STAT E AND ITS S O CI ETY

Balancing Individual and Communal Interests As previously stated, with very few exceptions, classical imperial city-states

were not monarchic but aristocratic and even democratic.22 Both these consti­ tutions placed a high value on equality and the involvement of large numbers of citizens in public service; both offered many opportunities for conflict and failure, and they were hampered by the difficulty of balancing the interests of individuals, groups, and the community as a whole. Such difficulties could and did afect the city-state's imperial rule; both Athens and Rome tried in various ways to cope with these problems, which can be sk�tched only briefly in this final section. As a result of Athens' hegemony in the Delian League, its lower-class citizens acquired an important communal function. In most other poleis these 21 . The problems posed by this vicious cycle were recognized by the Athenians them­ selves - or at least by Thucydides; see, for example, 2.62-64 (Pericles' last oration); 3.37-48 (Mytilenian debate); 5.84-114 (Melian dialogue). 22. One exception, apart from the early tyrants (n. 13), is Syracuse under Dionysius the Great in the late fifth and early fourth centuries; se K. F. Stroheker, Dionysios I. Gestalt und Geschichte des TYTamum lion SYTaos (Wiesbaden, 195 8); L. J. Sanders, Dionysius I of SYTa­ cuse and C,eek TYTanrry (London, 1987).

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citizens, lacking the economic capacity to meet the hoplite census, counted for little, both socialy and politically. In Athens, they provided much of the manpower needed to row the fleet; thus they permanently assumed responsi­ bility for the security, power, and prosperity of their polis, thereby gaining the minimum of social prestige and acceptance that was necessary to make them politically acceptable as well. From the beginning, therefore, democracy was inextricably linked with Athens' naval policy and empire. As a result of reforms realized in 462, the assembly and its supporting branches (council and popular courts) controlled not only all final decisions but the entire process of planning and determining policies, supervising their execution, and controlling the persons actively involved in that process: the people indeed were fuly in charge. Thus a random cross-section of a few thousand citizens (usually less than 10-20 percent of the entire citizen body) made decisions that affected the whole polis of Athens, hundreds of poleis in the empire, and a substantial part of the world around it. Moreover, the nature of politics in classical antiquity was highly personal: often the same person made a proposal, persuaded the assembly to accept it, and was respon­ sible for its execution, taking credit for success and blame for failure. Thus a group of increasingly professional politicians competed with each other for public recognition and leadership, trying to beat their rivals with their proposals and thereby influencing the course of foreign policy. Under these circumstances, the main problem was to prevent rash and emotional decisions by the assembly, and to secure for the polis a consistent, rational, and responsible foreign policy - which in turn meant to provide stable and responsible leadership. Thucydides' assessment of this problem is well known: under Pericles, "in what was nominally a democracy, power was really in the hand of the first citizen. But his successors, who were more on a ' level with each other and each of whom aimed at occupying the first place, adopted methods of demagogy which resulted in their losing control over the actual conduct of affairs. Such a policy, in a great city with an empire to govern, naturally led to a number of mistakes" (2. 65, tr. R. Warner). To put it differently, democracy needed a strong leader to provide stabil­ ity; with its excessive concern for equality, however, it could not tolerate a strong leader unless he was exceptionally skillful in presenting himself as nonthreatening and not too ambitious: a true champion of the people. Various institutional safeguards were installed in order to guarantee careful deliberation, prevent illegal motions and decisions, and hold the politicians accountable for their proposals and actions. Nevertheless, abuses and emotional as well as ill­ informed decisions ocrred, and it proved increasingly difficult to reconcile the intense competition among ambitious and often selfish individuals with the community'S need of responsible leadership. Particularly during the Peloponnesian War, this built-in and virtually insoluble conflict caused sev­ eral decisions that clearly were not in the comunity's interest and contrib­ uted much to the demise of the empire.

580

Territory, External Relations and Empire

Rome's army, on the other hand, always remained primarily a land army, composed of the citizens and allies who met the census requirement; democracy therefore was never an option.13 Moreover, the constant pressure Rome endured in the early republic must have strengthened not only the quality and importance of aristocratic leadership, but also solidarity, cohesive­ ness, discipline, and willingness to subordinate oneself within both the aristoc­ racy and the entire community. All this helps to explain certain peculiar features and attitudes of Roman society. Rome's later successes in foreign policy naturally contributed to bolstering even further the leadership of senate and nobility.24 Yet in Rome, too, conflicts were inevitable between the aspira­ tions of individual senators, the power of the magistrates, the collective interests and responsibilities of the senate, and the needs of the citizens who fought in the army and voted in the assembly. Formal and informal safeguards existed in the collective discipline and code that the elite adopted, in a dense network of ties and obligations among al groups and classes, in the unwritten but powerful norms of customary law (mos maiorum), and in the checks and bal­ ances of the mixed constitution analyzed so impressively by Polybius.2s Nevertheless, these safeguards proved incapable of preventing decisions by the assembly that jeopardized a consistent and responsible foreign policy. For example, already on the eve of the First Punic War, an ambitious consul, Appius Claudius Caudex, persuaded the assembly with the promise of great profits to ignore the well-considered negative recommendation of the senate and vote for intervention in Sicily; his actions as a general in Sicily then prompted the outbreak of a long and arduous war with Carthage - which was hardly envisaged when this issue was discussed in Rome.26 No doubt, 23. Pace F. Millar's recent efforts to emphasize the role of the asbly in political practice and thus the democratic element in the Roman constitution: "1be Political Character of the Oassical Roman Rep ublic, 200-151 B.C.," Joum. of Roman Stud. 74 (1984) 1-19, esp. 14-19; "Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (1 50 90 B.C.)," ibid. 76 (1986) 1-1 1. For opposing views, se esp. M. Gelzer, Die r5mische Nobilitit ( Leipzig 1 912,"Tepr. Stuttgart, 1983) 49ff. id., Kleine &hriften (Wiesbaden, 1962) 68ff. id., The Roman Nobil­ ity (trans!. R. Seager, Oxford, 1969) 62ff.; C. Meier, Res publica amis (Wiesbaden 1966, repro with a new introd. FrankfunlMain, 1980) 34-63; J. Bleicken, Staatlfclie Ordnung Nnd Freiheit in der r5misehen Republilr. (Kallmiinz, 1972) 64-80; L. Burckhardt, "The Political Elite of the Roman Republic: Comments on Recent Discusion of the Concepts Nobilitas and Homo ftOlINS, Hismna 39 (1990) 77-99; se also K.-J. Holkeskamp, " Conquest, Competition and Consen­ sus: Roman Expansion in Italy and the Rise of the Nobilitas," forthcoming. Se further, with more literature, n. 10 of W. Eder's contribution and, particularly, E. S. Gruen's chapter in the present volume. 24. Similarly, in the case of Athens, there was a tradition that the Persian victories temporarily bolstered the authority of the old council on the Areopagus: Aristode, Constitution of the Athenians 23.1-2; cf. Rhodes, Commentary (n. 14) 283-90; R. Wallace, The Areopagos CaNnal, to 307 B.C. (Baltimore, 1989) 77-83. 25. Polybius 6.1 1 -18; cf. F. W. Walbank, PolybiNs (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1972) 1 30 56, and, for a critical assessment, T.J. Cornell's contribution to the present volume. 26. Polybius 1.1 1-12; on the outbreak of the First Punic War, se, for example, C. Nicolet, Rome et la conqNete tIM monde mlditeranien II: Genese d'Nn empire, Nouv. Clio 8.2 (Paris, 1978) 606-10 with literature on p. 483; A. M. Eckstein, Senate and General: IndillitlMal Decision M4lr.ing and Roman Foreign Relations 284-194 B.C. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1 987) 341-45. =

=

n

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similar situations had occurred earlier, and they repeated themselves later with ever-greater consequences.

The Impact of Empire The rule over an empire necessarily afected the structures of the polis and the attitudes and "ideology" of its society. Martial capacity and achievement became part of the value system of the ruling class and of the ideology supporting the prevailing constitution. As success in war provided the ruler in a monarchy with power and legitimacy, so too in an aristocracy or a democracy martial success helped to perpetuate and legitimize the system, whereas failures threatened it. Thus, as the examples of Athens and Rome illustrate, war and imperial expansion could become indispensable and create their own dynamics. Democracy originated in Athens under exceptional conditions and re­ mained exceptional in the Greek world. By claiming to give even the poor and humble citizens equal political rights, it was a "revolutionary" and upsetting system: at best, it was perceived as government by the entire citizen body, at worst, by the mob. Like all ancient political systems, it was more than a constitution; it was a way of life: in democratic Athens life, politics, and the policies pursued were different from those in an aristocratic polis. Inevitably, therefore, democracy was hated by those elsewhere in Greece who sufered from its aggressive policies and by those in Athens who felt deprived by it of their traditional claim to unquestioned power and lea.dership. Yet, on the whole, despite serious failures and setbacks, democracy was - and considered itself - remarkably successfulP Thus the emotional configuration of the average lower-class citizen muSt have been contradictory: he was proud of the achievement of his polis and he identified with democracy; he claimed political equality with, but remained socially inferior to, his noble and wealthy fellow citizens; and he resented it that he was criticized and not taken seriously by the "better ones." In this situation he developed, as C. Meier has shoWl a primary political identity.18 If his social status remained low, almost indistinguishable from the slaves and inferior to many metics, at least the political sphere set him apart from the noncitizens: there he had rights, he was an equal, he counted as somebody. Collective achievement in politics became crucial for his self-confidence and instrumental in demonstrating his competence, which was questioned and maligned by the opponents of democracy. The sphere to realize such achievement necessarily was that of foreign policy. Thus the Athenian citizen was all too willing to assert the power of his city and to embark on new conquests and wars. This tendency was enhanced, on the one hand, by the fact that all Athenians profited in many ways from

27. Se only Pericles' comments in Thucydides 2.36 and 64, or Herodotus 5.78. 28. C. Meier, "Die politische ldentic:at der Athener und das Arbeiten der perikleischen Demokratie," in id., Die Entstehung des Politischen blli den Griechen (FrankfurtlMan, 1980) 247-72 : id., The Greek Discovery of Politics (Cambridge, Maschusetts, 1990) 140-54.

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the empire and expected to profit even more from further expansion, and on the other, by the fierce competition among the leaders, for whom an interven­ tionist and expansionist foreign policy provided opportunities to prove them­ selves and to gain influence, power, and wealth. These factors largely explain the agessive foreign policy of democratic Athens and the character portrait drawn by Thucydides and others, which describes the Athenian citizens as totally devoted to their city, incessantly meddling in other peoples' af, and incapable by nature either of living a quiet life themselves or allowing anyone else to do so.llI Thus continuing success became crucial to holding the empire together, to bolstering the self-esteem of the democratic citizens, and to providing democracy with the legitimacy needed to make it acceptable for the majority of the Athenian upper class. Conversely, when democracy suffered major failures (such as in Sicily in 413 B.C. or at the end of the Peloponnesian War), it lost its legitimation by success and much of the support of the upper classes, and became vulnerable - although after half a century democracy was so firmly entrenched that efforts to overthrow it succeeded only temporarily (in 41 1/410 and 404/403). Rome's case is well known and can be summarized briefly. The Roman aristocracy early on adopted a value system that was entirely geared toward achievement in political and military leadership. Once in place, this system inevitably put pressure on Rome's foreign policy. At the same time the citizen­ soldiers were conditioned to accept constant warfare as necessary for the survival of the community, profitable, and thus, to some extent, desirable. Moreover, given the power of the aristocracy, the military sphere was the only one in which the nonaristocrats collectively, and upstarts individually, could assert themselves and prove their indispemability.JO For Roman society, therefore, wars became necessary in essential ways. This in part explains why, once the defensive wars of the early republic were over, Rome quickly got involved in an almost uninterrupted series of wars of expansion that resulted in a large empire.

29. Thucydides 1 .70. For parallels in Euripides, se Raaflaub, "Contemporary Percep­ tions of Democracy in Fihh Century Athens," Clasica et Mediaeuf 40 (1989) 33-70, at 5152. The connection between democracy and aggresive foreign policy or imperialism has not ben discus sufficiendy in modern scholarship. 30. Which is also demonstrated by the tradition about mutinies and "military strikes" of the plebeian soldiers (seces plebis ) in the social conflicts of the early republic and by the crucial political role of the armies in the crisis of the late republic. For the former, se, recendy, K. Raaflaub, "From Protection and Defense to Offense and Participation: Stages in the Conflict of the Orders," in id. (w.), Social Strugglu in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986) 221 24 (with literature); for the latter, se, for example, W. Schmitthen, "Politik und An in der spiten romischen Republik," Historische ZtJitsehr. 190 (1960) 1-17; P. A. Brunt, The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution," JONm. of Roman Strut. 52 (1962) 69-86; E. Gabba, The Roman Profesional Army from Ma­ rius to Augustus," in id., Re{nIblican Rome, the Army and the Allies (Berkeley and Los Ange­ les, 1976; tr. from id., Esercito e societa nella tarda Re{nIbblica Romana [Florence, 1973]) 20-69. "

"

Raaflaub: Clasical Antiquity

583

Finally, the opportunities offered by an empire inevitably put severe strains on the traditional structures and relationships within the imperial polis. Disproportionate individual advancement and enrichment were incom­ patible with the principle of equality that was crucial for the functioning of aristocracy and democracy. Increasing competition destroyed solidarity and hampered responsible government. Again, these effects have been studied extensively in the case of Rome, where they eventually caused the breakdown of the republican system. Although on a much smaller and less dramatic scale, less clearly visible and enhanced by the impact of an exhausting war, the destructive effects of empire on Athenian society are unmistakable as well. Fierce competition by increasingly irresponsible means, factional strife, self­ ishness, arrogance, greed and corruption, unlimited ambition, and a loss of respect for others and the common good are some of the symptoms we see on the part of the leaders.31 They were accompanied, on the part of the people, by fickleness, emotionality, greed, an unrealistic sense of power and infallibility, and lack of respect for the other Greeks and their needs and rights. In the long run, either the impact of empire resulted in the destruction of the social and political system that had provided the strength and unity to build an empire (as was the case in Rome), or else the system was eventually preserved at the cost of losing the empire (as happened to Athens and Sparta).

B I B LI O G RAP H I CAL AP P E N D I X32

a. Introduction

a1 . On the term polis: W. Gawantka, Die sogenannte Polis: Entstehung, Geschichte und Kritik der motUrtUn fJlthistorischen Grundbegrif{e "tIer griechische StfJfJt", "die griechische StfJfJtsiJee", "die Polis" (Stuttgart, 1985), gives the curent state of discussion (12-29) and the history of the term in the 19th cent. (53-78). Cf. also F. Kolb, Die StfJdt

im Altertum (Munich, 1984) 58-61 . On the polis "as the estial Greek state" ("'der' griechische Staat schlechthin") in archaic and classical Greece: Ehrenberg, StfJte (n. 1 1 ) 3-4, 28-102;'StfJfJt (n. 1 1) VIII-IX, 32 12 5 (cita­ tions: 24 and 27, respectively); d. id., "Von den Grundformen griechischer Staatsord­ nung," Sittungsber. AkfJd. Heidelberg 1 961 no . 3 id., Polis urld Imperium: Beitrage zur Alten Geschichte (Zurich and Stuttgart, 1965) -

=

3 1 . Internal tension and ever-threatening factional strife - both characteristic of the Greek polis - must generally be emphasized as contributing decisively to its weaknes in foreign relations; d. H.-J. Gehrke, Swis: Untersuchungen %u den inneren Kriegen in den grie­ chischen Staten des 5. urld 4. /fJhrhunderts v. ehr. Vestigia 35 (Munich, 1985) 359: "Wenn die griechische Polis sich unter dem Gesichtspunkt der aussenpolitischen Machtentfaltung sum sum als relativ 'erfolglos' erwies, so ist das nicht alein durch den zwischen­ stadichen Antagonismus zu begrien, sondem BUch durch die latent immer vorhandene Stasiskonstellation und -zielsetzung, welche sich zudem unloslich miteinander verquickten und so in ihrer Wirkung polelerten ... 32. References to earlier citations will be given by footnote (n. 1) or section (letter and number) of this appendix (al). . . •

584

Territory, Extemal Relations and Empire

105-38. Critical discussions of Ehrenberg's views are listed by C. Meier in his review of "Der Stat der Griechen", in Gnomon 41 (1969) 365-79, n. 1 on p. 366. Generally on

the cl assical polis, city and city-state, M. I. Finley, "The Ancient City" (n. 5); Kolb, Die Stadt 58-120; R. Griffeth and C. G. Thomas

(eds.), The City-State in Five CMIlJ4res (Santa

Barbara CA and Oxford, 1981); E. Kirsten,

Die griechische Polis. als historisch­ geographisches Problem tks Mktelmeeraumes (Bonn, 1956). al. On the origins of the polis in Gre, V. Ehrenberg, "When Did the Polis Rise?" Joum. of Hellenic Stud. 57 (1937) 147-59 id., Polis "nd ImpniMm (al) 83-97; A. N. Snodgras, Archaic Greece: The Age of Ex­ periment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1980) ch. 1; C. G. Starr, IrrdividMal and Community: The IUse of the Polis, 800-500 B.C. (New York and Oxford, 1986). For more literature and a discusn of the polis in Homer, se Raaflaub, "Homer und die Geschichte des 8.Jh.v.Oir. , " forthcoming in J. Latacz (ed.), Zweih"rrdert Jahre Homerforsch"ng, Coll. Rauricum 2 (Stuttgart, 1991). a3. On the origins of the city-state in Etruria: M. Cristofani, The Etruscans: A New Investigation (London , 1979); M. Grant, The EtrNscans (London, 1980); M. Torelli, Cambr. Anc. Hist. VII.2 (2nd ed., 1989) ch. 2. On the beginnings of Rome: J. Heurgon, Rome et la MemteranM octale ;tuq,,'aux perres PNniq"es (Paris, 1969); Scullard, History (n. 13); C. Ampo lo, "La nascita della cina." in Storia di Roma I: Roma in Italia (Turin, 1988) 153-80 (with recent lit.); A. Momigliano, Cambr. Anc. Hist. VII.2. ch. 3. On Rome as a city-state, se Raaflaub, Social Struggles (n. 30) 30ff., and T. J. Cornell's contribution to the present volume. a4. Poleis without tertory: F. Hampl, "Poleis ohoe Territorium," Klio 32 (1939) 160 F . Gschnitzer (ed.), z"r griechischen Staatsk"nde, Wege der Forschung 96 (Darmstadt, 1969) 403-73 . Poleis in the Athenian empire: Meiggs, Schuller, Raaflaub (e7). Colonization: J. Boardman, The Grults Overseas (Har mon dswor t h, 1 964); O. Muray, Early Grua (London, 1980; Ger­ man ed. Munich, 1982) ch. 7; J. Gt-aham, "The Colonial Expansion of Gt-eece," Cambr. Anc. Hist. m.3 (2nd ed., 1982) 83-162. as. Community of citizens: Ehrenberg, Meyer (as in n. 11); F. Gschnitzer, "Stam­ und Ortsgemeinden im alten Griechenland," in id., StaatskNruls (a4) 272-74. For the im­ portance of "spiritual factors" and attitude, se C. G. Starr, "The Early Greek City-State," =

=

La Parola iUI Pasato 12 (1957) 102 id., Esays on AtICiera History (Leiden, 1979) 127; id., Individual and Comm"nity (al) 35. On the tertory of the polis, G. Audring, ZNr StrNklJ4r tks Terms griechischer Poleis in archaischer Zeit. Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike 29 (Berlin, 1989); R. Osborne, Demos: The Discovery of Clasl Attika (Cambridge, 1985). =

b. City and Countryside: Participation

and Representation

bI . Size of poleis and number of citi­ zens: K. J. Beloch, Die BevolkerNng iUr

griechisch-romischen Welt (Leipzig, 1 886, repro Rome, 1968); E. Ruschenbusch, "Zahl und Grosse der griechischen Staaten," in id., UntersNChNngen � Staat Nnd PoUtik in Grie­ chenland vom 7.-4.Jh.v.Chr. (Bamberg, 1978) 3-17; id., "Die Bevolkerungszahl Griechen­ lands im 5. und 4. ]h. v. Oir.," Zeitschr. fUr Papyrol. Nr Epigraphik 56 (1984) 55-57; id., "Die Zahl der griech i schen Staaten und Arealgrosse und Biirgerzahl der 'Normal­ polis'," ibid. 59 (1985) 253-63; in addition for Athens alone: A. W. Gomme, The PoPN­ larion of Athens in the Fifth and FoNrth Cen­ IJ4ries B. C. (Oxford, 1933); M. H. Hansen, Demography and Democracy: The NNmber of Athenian Citizens in the FONrth CenlJ4ry B.C. (Heming, 1985); for Rome, se the litera­ ture cited by Raaflaub, in Social Struggles (n. 30) 41-45,-nn. 112-13. b2. Political tensions between city and countryside in Athens: E. Kluwe, "Die soziale Zusamensetzung der athenischen Ekesia und ihr Einfluss auf politische Entschei­ dungen," Klio 58 (1976) 307-10; G. Audrihg, "Zur wirtschafdichen und sozialen Lage der attischen Bauern im ausgehenden 5. und im 4.Jh.v.u.Z.," Jahrb.' fur Wirtschaftsgesch. Sonderheft (1977) 55-56. Mutual contempt: Audring, ibid. 43-44; V. Ehrenberg, The People of Aristophanes (New York, 1962) 9597; K. J. Dover, Greek Popular Morality (Oxford, 1975) 112-14; S. C. Humphreys, Anthropology (n. 8) 1 33 with n. 12. Clas conflict between rich and poor: J.-P. Vernant, "Remarques sur la lutte de clas dans la GJice anciene," Eirene 4 (1965) 5-19, esp. 12-17; Humphreys, Anthropology (n. 8) 130·35; G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Clas Struggle in the Ancient Gruk World (London, 1981) 285300; se also J. Ober, Mas and Elite in Democratic Athens: Rhetoric, Ideology, and the Power ofthe People (Princeton, 1989) ch. 1. b3. For the intimate connection betwe

Raaflaub: Classical Antiquity

ownership of land and citizenship, se M. Austin and P. Vidal-Naquet, Economic and

Social History of Ancient Greece: An Intro­ duction (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977) 9599, and D. Whitehead's contribution to the

present volume. For the disruption of this connection in late-fihh- and fourth-c:entury Athens: Vernant, "Remarques" (b2), and Humphreys, Anthropology (n. 8) 141 (se also 144-49). Values: A. Aymard, "Hierarchie du travail et autarcie individuelle dans la Grece archa·ique," in id., Etudes d'histoire ancien (Paris, 1967) 316-33; J.-P. Vemant, "Travail et nature dans la Grece ancienne," in id., Mythe et pensee chez les Grees II (Paris, 1974)

16-36. b4. The demes of Attica: B. Hausullier, La lIie municipale en Attique: essai sur l'organisation des demes au quatrieme siecle (Paris, 1 884); G. Busolt and H. Swoboda, Griechische Staatskunde II (Munich, 1926) 964-72; D. Whitehead, The Demes of Attica, 508/7-c.250 B. C.: A Political and Social Study (Princeton, 1986); Osborne, Demos (a5) ch. 4;

se also A. Giovannini's contribution to the present volume. For other poleis: 0,,(. Clas. Diet. 5.11. demoi (p. 329). Generally: G. Busolt, Griech. Statskunde I (Munich, 2nd ed., 1920) 262-72. On the agenda of the assembly and the special case of Athens: E. Ruschenbusch,

Athenische Innenpolitilt im 5.Jh.v.Chr. : Ideologie oder Pragmatismusl (Bamberg, 1979) 15-17; id., Urrtersucngen (b1) esp. 6871 ; W. Schuller, "Wirkungen des Ersten

Attischen Seebundes auf die Herausbildung der athenischen DemoIcratie," in J. Balcer et aI., Studien zum Atlischen Seebund, Xenia 8 (Constance, 1984) 87-101 , esp. 94-97. On the hoplite phalanx and its political impact: M. P. Nilsson, "Die Hoplitentaktik und das Staatswesen," Klio 22 (1929) 240-49; A. N. Snodgrass, " The Hoplite Reform and His­ tory," Joum. of Hell. Stud. 85 (1965) 1 10-22;

J. Lataa, Kamp(pariinese, Kampfdarstellung und Kampfwirklichkeit in der Was, bei Kallinos und Tyrtaios, Zetemata 66 (Munich, 1977); Murray, Early Greece (a4) ch. 8; for

more literature and a critical asment of recent scholarship, se Raaflaub, "Homer" (al) section 4. b5. For the political reforms in archaic Athens, which are mosdy connected with the name of Solon, se W. G. Forrest, Wege zur

hel1enischen Demokratie: StatsdenJum und politische WiTk1ichkeit lion 800-400 v.Chr. (Munich, 1966 The Emergence of Greek Democracy [London, 1966)) ch. 6; P. Spahn, Mittelschicht und Polisbildung (Frankfurt, 1977) 139-56; A. Andrewes, CAH 1I (2nd =

585

ed., 1982) 360-91, esp. 384-89; T. W. Gal­

lant, "Agricultural Systems, Land Tenure, and the Reform of Solon," Ann. Brit. School Ath­ ens 77 (1 982) 1 1 1 -27; P. Oliva, Solon: Legende und Wirklid1keit, Konstanzer althist. Vorn. und Forsch. 20 (Constance, 1988). b6. On the political changes in archaic Sparta (the historical tradition about which is hopelessly intertwined with the legendary Great Rhetra, the "constitution of Lycurgus") and on Sparta's development and social struc­ ture, se for example, Forrest, Wege (b5) ch. 5; P. Oliva, Sparta and her Social Problems (Prague, 1971); M. I. Finley, "Sparta and Spartan Society," in id., Econ. and Soc. (n. 5) 24-40; P. Cardedge, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History, 1300-362 B.C. (London and Boston, 1979); L. H. Jeffery, Archaic Greece: The City-States, c. 700-500 B.C. (London and Tonbridge, 1976) 1 1 1 -32; for more literature, se M. Qauss, Sparta (Munich, 1983) and K. Christ (ed.), Sparta. Wege der Forschung 622 (Darmstadt, 1986) . b7. On the reforms of Cleisthenes and the function of the new council in his system: E. Will, Le mantle grec et l'orient I (Paris, 1972) 71-76; Rhodes, Boule (n. 9) esp. ch. 1; C. Meier, "Kleisthenes und die Institu­ tionalisierung der biirgerlichen Gegenwir­ tigkeit in Athen," in id., Die Entstehung MS Politischen (n. 28) 91-143 Discollery (n. 28) 53-8 1 ; M. Ostwald, "The Reform of the Athenian State by Cleisthenes," CAH IV (2nd ed., 1988) 303-25. For the organizational de­ tails: J. S. Traill, The Political Organization of Attica, Hesperia Suppl. 14 (1975); P. Siewert, =

Die Trittyen Attikas und die Heeresreform K1eisthenes. Vestigia 33 (Munich, 1982).

des

Representation: A. W. Gomme, "The Working of the Athenian Democracy," in id., More Es­ says in Greek History and Literature (Oxford, 1982) 1 80-86, esp. 1 83ff.; K. Raaflaub, "Des heien BUrgers Recht der freien Rede," in W. Eck et al . (eds.) , Studien zur antiken

Sozialgeschichte: Pestschrift P. Vittinghoff (Cologne and Vien, 1980) 38-42. No details are known of the Solonian council-if it is authentic; for discusion, se C. Hignett, A

History of the Athenian Constitution to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1952) 92-96; Rhodes, Boule (n. 9) 208-9 and Com­ mentary (n. 14) 153-54. For similar arrange­ ments in other poleis: Busolt, Staatskunde I (b4) 476-77. On the councils of religious leagues (esp. Delphi): Larsen, Repr. GOI. (n. 9) esp. 27-31; Busolt and Swoboda, Staatskunde II (b4) 1292-1310. b8. For a comparison between the po­ litical reforms realized in Athens and Rome,

586

Territory, External Relations and Empire

se K. Raaflaub, "Freiheit in Athen und Rom: Ein Beispiel divergierender politischer Be grifsentwicklung in der Antike," HZ 238 (1984) 557-60; Social Struggles (n. 30) 21021. On Roman civil liberties: C. Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cam­ bridge, 1950; German eel. Dantadt, 1967); Bleicken, Staa tliche Ordn"ng (n. 2 3 ) ; Raaflaub, "Freiheit" 547-50, 564-66 with lit­ erature. On the increase of Roman terrilDry and population: Beloch, Bevolken'"g (bl); P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (Oxford, 1971); A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Citizenship (Oxford, 2nd eel., 1973) . On citi­ zenship and participation, se now also W. Eder's contribution to the present volume (part 1). c.

Formation and Administration of

Tertorial States and Empires

c1 . The groundwork for the analyses of this section has ben laid in Raaflaub, "Ex­ pansion" (n. 13), which contains references to recent scholarship. On monarchy and ter­ ritorial state: J. Deininger, "Explaining the Change from Republic ID Principate in Rome," Camp. Civ. Rev. 4 (1980) esp. 96-10I. c2. On the Athenian population: above bl . Navy: B. Jordan, The Athenian Navy in the Clasal Period (Berkeley and Los Ange­ les, 1975) 103-5. Assembly: M. H. Hansen, The Athenian Assembly (Oxford, 1987). Amount of busines: Schuller, "Wirkungen" (b4). Sum of involvement: Raaflaub, "Freie Reele" (b7) 38-46; R. K. Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Athens (Cambridge, 1988). c3. On the Roman nobility: Gelzer, Nobilitat (n. 23); Meier, Res publica amis (n. 23) esp. parts II and IV. Wars: E. Badian, Roman Imperialism in the Late Roman Re­ public (Oxford, 2nd eel., 1968); W. V. Har­ ris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327-70 B.C. (Oxford, 1979). On the Italian alliance system: H. Galsterer, Herschaft "nd Verwalt"ng im rep"blikanischen Ita lien (Munich, 1976); M. Humbert, M"nicipium et civitas sine s"ffragio: L'organisation de la conq"ite jusq,,'a la perre socia Ie (Paris, 1978); E. T. Salmon, The Making of Roman Italy (London and Ithaca NY, 1982). Foreign relations and provinces: E. Badian, Poreign Clienulae, 264-70 B.C. (Oxford, 1958); W. Dahlheim, Gewalt "nd Herschaft. Das pro­ vinziale Herschaftssystem tier romischen Rep"blik (Berlin and New York, 1977); G.

H. Stevenson, Roman Provincial Administra­ tion till the Age of the Antonines (Oxford, 1949) 53-93; M. Cary and H. H. Scullard, A History of Rome down to the Reign of Constantine (3rd ed. London, 1975) ch. 17. c4. Size of teritories and number of citizens: above bI. Formation of power in ar­ chaic Greece: Raaflaub, "Expansion" (n. 1 3) 516-31. On Sparta and the Peloponnesian League: Busolt and Swoboda, Staatskunde II (b4) 1 320-37; D. Kagan, The O"tbreak of the Pe/opon War (Ithaca NY and London, 1969) 9-30; K. Raaflaub, Die Entdeck"ng tier Preiheit: Z"r histo,ischen Semantik "nd Gesellschaftsgeschichte eines politischen Gr"ndbegriffes der Griechen, Vestigia 37 (Munich, 1985) 153-59 and the literature cited there; id., "Expansion" (n. 13) 542-45. On Spartan leadership in Greece: H.Schifer, Staatsform "nd PoUlik: Untersuchungen zur griechischen Geschichte des 6. "nd 5.Jh. (Leipzig, 1932), esp. 196-225. On the helot problem, d. the literature cited under b6 and by R. J. A.Talbert, "The Role of the Helots in the Clas Struggle at Sparta," Historia 38 (1989) 22-40, 22 nn. 1 -3, who , however, contests the view presented here. On Spartan imperialism in the late 5th and early 4th cen­ turies: D. Lotte, Lysander "nd tier Pelopon­ nesische Krieg, Abh. Akad. Leipzig 57 (Ber­ lin, 1964); A. Andrewes, "Spartan Imperial­ ism?" in P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker (eels.), Imperialism · in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1978) 91 -102; D. M. Lewis, Sparta and Persia (Leiden, 1 977); C. D. Hamilton, Sparta's Bitter Victories: Politics and Diplomacy in the Corinthian War (Ithaca NY and London, 1979) esp. part 1; D. Kagan, The Pall of the Athenian Empire (Ithaca NY, 1987). c5. On the history of Athens before the Persian Wars: Jefery, Archaic Greece (b6) 83108; the literature cited earlier under b5 and b7 on the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes; in addition, M. Ostwald, CAH IV (2nd ed., 1988) 325-46; L. H. Jeffery, ibid., 360-62, 364-67. On the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons: Berve, Tyrannis (n. 13) I 41-77; A. Andrewes, CAH III.3. 392-416; D. M. Lewis, ibid. IV. 287-302. Effects on the community: W. Eder, "Political Self-Confidence and Re­ sistance: The Role of Demos and Plebs after the Expulsion of the Tyrant in Athens and the King in Rome," in T. Yuge and M. Doi (eds.), Porms of Control and Subordination in Antiq"ity (Tokyo and Leiden, 1 988) 46575. c6. On the Persian Wars: A. R. Bum, Persia and the Greeks: The Defence of the

Raaflaub: Classical Antiquity

West (London, 1962); N. G. L. Hanunond, CAH IV (2nd ed., 19 8 8) 491 -591; J. P. Barron, ibid. 592-622. On Greek confronta­ tion with eastern imperialism: Raaflaub, Ent­ deckung (c4) ch. 3. c7. On the Athenian empire: R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972); W. Schuller, Die Herhaft der Athener im ErsWn Attischen Seebund (Berlin and New York, 1974); M. I. Finley, "The Fifth-Century Athe­ nian Empire: A Balance-Sheet," in Garnsey­ Whittaker, Imperialism (c4) 103-26; Raaub, Entdeckung (c4) ch. 4; Steinbrecher, Der Delisch-Attische Seebund (n. 16). Use of trib­ ute for building projects: the standard view mentioned above is contested by Giovannini (se the discussion in his contribution to this volume, at nn. 82ff.). On Greek ambivalence toward tyranny: Raaflaub, Entdeckung, ch. 5; W. R. Connor, "Tyrannos Polis," in Ancient and Modern: Esays... G. F. Else (An Arbor, 1977) 95-109. On Spartan imperialism: c4. On Theban imperialism: J. Buckler, The Theban Hegemony, 371 -362 B.C. (Cambridge Ma. and London, 1980). c8. On Rome's situation in the early republic: Heurgon, Rome (a3) 261££., esp. 288303; Scullard, History (n. 1 3) ch. 3-4; T. J. Cornell, Cambro Anc. Hist. VI.2 (2nd ed., 1989) cbs. 6-8; Raaflaub, "Expansion" (n. 13) 531-41 . On the Italian alliance system: c3. On Roman resources: for l'ributum, se Nicolet and Marchetti (n. 20); for booty and slaves: Harris, War (c3) esp. ch. 2, and Haris' con­ tribution in Eder, Staat (n. 13). For further discussion of some of the issues raised here, se K. Raaflaub, J. Richards, L. J. Samons, "Rome, Italy, and Appius Claudius Caecus," forthcoming in R. R. Holloway (ed.), The Age of Pyrrhus (Providence and Louvain-La­ Neuve, 1 991) section 3. Resolution of social conflicts: ibid., and Raaflaub, "Freiheit" (b8) 561-63. c9. On ancient warfare: J. Kromayer and G. Veith, Heerwesen und Kriegfuhrung der Griechen und Romer, Handbuch der Alter rumswiss. IV.3.2 (Munich, 1928); Y. Garlan, La guere dans l'antiquiu (Paris, 1972; Engl. ed. London, 1975); P. Ducrey, Guere et guerriers dans la Grice antique (Fribourg, 1985; Eng!. ed. New York, 1986); V. D. Hanson, The Western Way of War (Oxford, 1990). On casualties (an important issue that is rarely discussed), se, for example, Herod. 7.9; Athenian losses during the Peloponnesian War: Gomme, Population (b1) and the other literature cited under b1; B. S. Strauss, Athens

after the Peloponnesian War: Class, Faction and Policy 403-386 B.C. (Ithaca NY, 1 986)

587

179-82 .

elO. On Greek concepts of citizenship and the Athenian citizenship law of 450 B.C.: C. Patterson, Pericles' Citiunship Law of451 50 B . C. (Salem, New Hampshire, 1981); H. J. Reinau, Die Entstehung des Burgerbegriffs bei den Griechen (Diss. Basel, 1 9 8 1 ) ; M. J. Osborne, Naturalization in Athens (Brussels, 1981) esp. 5-9; P. B. Manville, The Origins of Citizenship in Ancient Athens (Princeton, 1990), and D. Whitehead's contribution to the present volume. On Athens' failure to de­ velop integrative policies: W. SchuI\er, Die

Stadt als Tyrann: Athens Hemchaft uber seine Bundesgenosn, Konstanzer Universititsreden

101 (Constance, 1978) 20-2 1 . On the debate about the "popularity" of Athenian rule, se the literature cited in Raaflaub, Entdeckung (c4) 209-12. ell. On Rome's open society and inte­ grative policies: Sherwin-White, Citizenship (b8); Humbert, Municipium (c3); C. Ampolo, "Su alcuni mutamenti sociali nel Lazio tra I'VI e il V secolo," Dial. d'Archeol. 4 ( 197071) 37-99; A. Drumnd, Cambro Anc. Hist. VII.2. (2nd ed., 1989) 209-1 1 ; Cornell, ibid. 269-71, and Cornell's contribution to the present volume. Later allied dissatisfaction: Galsterer, Herschaft (c3) esp. 152-204; C. Nicolet, Rome et la conquete du montle

meaiteraneen I: Les structures de l'ltalie ro­ maine, La Nouvelle Clio 8.1 (paris, 1977) 27099; A. Keaveney, Rome and the Unification of Italy (London and Sydney, 1 987); Brunt, Fall (d4) 93-143.

d. The Impaa of War and Empire on the City-State and its Society Many of the questions raised in this section have be discussed intensively for Rome but only to a limited extent for Athens: d1 . Generally on Athenian democracy: P. Ooche, La democratie athinienne (Paris, 1951); J. Bleicken, Die athenische Demokratie (Paderborn, 1985); se also M. I. Finley, De­ mocracy, Ancient and Modern (London, 1973); id., Politics in the A ncient World (Cambridge, 1983). On the development of democracy: Forrest, Wege (b5) chs. 6-9; J. Martin, "Von Kleisthenes zu Ephialtes: Zur Entstehung der athenischen Demokratie," Chiron 4 (1974) 5-42; Bleicken, Demokratie, ch. 1 (with literature on pp. 405-7); M. Ostwald, From Popular Sovereignty to the

Sovereignty of Law: Law, Society, and Politics in Fifth-Century Athens (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1 986) part I; Ober, Mas and Elite

588

Territory, External Relations and Empire

(b2) ch. II; se also the literature cited on Solon, Pisislratus and aeisthenes above, under b5, b7, cS. On the reforms of 462 B.C., se also R. Wallace, "Ephialtes and the Areopagos,"

Greek, Roman and Byzantine Stud. 15 (1974) 259-69; id., The Areopagos Council (n. 24) 8 1 ff., esp . 8 3 - 8 7; E. Ruschenbusch, "Ephialtes," Historia 1 5 (1966) 369-76; R. Sealey, "Ephialres," Clas. Philol. 59 (1964) 1 1 -22 ; C. Meier, " Der Umb ruch zur Demokratie in Athen (462161 v.CItr.)," in R. Herzog and R. Koselleck (eds.), Epochen­ schwelle und Epochenbewustsein, Poetik und Hermeneutik XII (Munich, 1987) 353-80; L. Piccirilli, E(udte (Genoa, 1988). On the con­

nection between Athenian democracy, aggres­ sive foreign policy, and empire, se, for ex­ ample, Schuller, "Wirkungen" (b4); Finley, "Empire" (c7); Bleicken, Demokratie 220-25, 376 and the literature cited there; V. Ehren­ berg, "Polypragmosyne: A Study in Greek Politics," loum. of Hell. Stwlies 67 (1947) 4667. Athenian politicians and problems of Athenian leadership: M. I. Finley, "Athenian Demagogues," Past 6' Present 21 (1960) 3-24; W. R. Connor, The New Politicians of Pifth­ Century Athens (Princeton, 1971 ); M. H. Hansen, "The Athenian 'Politicians', 403-322

" Greek, Roman, and Byzant. Stud. 24 (1983) 3 3-55; Sinclair, Democracy and Par­ ticipation (el), esp. chs. 6 and 7; Ober, Mas and Elite (b2 ) . Institutional safeguards: Bleicken, Demokratie 1 78-84, 225-29 with literature on pp. 414, 41 7.

B.C.,

dl. Safeguards in Rome (ethos, disci­

pline, mos maiorum, legislation): E. Meyer, Ramischer Stat und Staatsgedanlt.e (Zurich and Munich, 4th ed., 1975) 253 57; C. Meier, Res publ. amisa (n. 23) 45 63; J. Bleicken,

Die Verfassung der romischen Republik: Grundlagen und Entwicklung (Paderborn, 1975) 54-60; E. Baltrusch, Regimen morum:

Die Reglementierung des Privatlebens der Senatoren und Ritter in der romischen Republik und frihen Kaiserzeit, Vestigia 41 (Munich, 1989), se also E. S . Gruen's contri­ bution to the present volume. On Roman so­

ciety and imperialism, se the literature cited above, under c3. d3 . On the asment of Athenian de­ mocracy by ilS contemporares: A. H. M.Jones, "The Athenian Democracy and its Critics," in id., Athenian Democracy (Oxford, 1957; repro Baltimore, 1986) 41 -72; C. Farrar, The Origins of Democratic Thinking: The Inven­ tion ofPolitics in Clasl Athens (Cambridge, 1988); Raaflaub, "Perceptions" (n. 29) and the literature cited there in n. 5. On domestic tension and factional strife, se, generally, Gehrke, Stasis (n. 3 1 ) ; A. Heuss, "Das Revolutionsproblem im Spiegel der antiken Geschichte," Historische Zeitschr. 216 (1973) 17-37; R. J. Littman, The Greek Experiment:

Imperialism and Social Conflict 800-400 B.C. (London, 1974); A. Lintott, Violence, Civil Strife and Revolution in the Clasal City (Baltimore, 1982). On the Athenian oligarchies of 411 and 404: Hignet Constitution (b7) 268-98; P. Krentz, The Thirty at Athens (Ithaca NY and London, 1982); Bleicken, Demokratie (dl) 261-68 with literature on p. 419; Ostwald, Sovereignty (dl) part 3; Kagan, Pall (c4); Raaflaub, "Politisches Denken und Krise der Polis: Athen im Verfassungskonflikt des spiten 5. Jh.v.Chr.," forthcoming in

Historische Zeitscm. d4. On the crisis and fall of the Roman Republic: Meier, Res publ. amissa (n. 23); P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Re­ public (Oxford, 1971 ); id., The Pall of the Roman Republic and Related Esays (Oxford, 1988); K. Christ, Krise und Untergani'der romischen Republik (Darmstadt, 1979).

The Italian City-State and Its Territory

GI ORGIO CH ITTO LI N I

city and territory, always important for understanding the nature of an urban center, is particularly significant in the case of the medieval Italian city when one is seeking to identify its similarities with and differences from other types of cities (for example, "ancient" or "Western Medieval" ones). It is especially significant that, in the great urban flowering that characterized the eleventh and later centuries, the city-state - as an autonomous political entity, capable of dominating a relatively vast territory - did not constitute the ordinary or prevailing form of government in Europe. Urban centers were part of larger territorial bodies (principalities, kingdoms, empire) which were frequently fragile but nonetheless represented the actual political conditions on which the cities depended. The growth and expansion of cities - even the stronger and more important ones - did not usually imply their ful emancipation from a dependent relationship, nor did it lay a foundation for the constitution, around these cities, of territorial dominions that were relatively vast. This was the situation of the majority · of European cities even where their growth was strong and vigorous, as in Flanders, southern Germany, the Rhineland, and the Baltic region. It was this gtowth, founded on the intense development of mercantile and manufacturing activity, that conferred on them their character, so frequently highlighted, as profoundly innovative eco­ nomic centers. This characteristic differentiated the medieval city from the ancient one and placed an original stamp on its portrait even when viewed from a more general perspective (social, political, or cultural).1 The new pro­ file of the city, as the nucleus of commercial and industrial activity, did not mean the establishment of new territorial entities, analogous to the Greek poleis, which were intimately linked to their own territories. Rather, in the

T

HE RELATIONSHIP BETWE EN

1. Philip Jones, "La storia economica. Dalla caduta dell'impero romano al secolo XJV," in Storia d'ltalia, ed. R. Romano and C. Vivanti. vol. IT (Dalla calluta dell" mpero romMIO al secolo XVIII) (Turin: Einaudi, 1974) 1469-1810, se especially pp. 1495-1540, with their ample bibliographic references; M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1 973), se especially chapters I and V; id., "The Ancient City. From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and beyond," in Comparative Studies in Sociology and History 19 (1977) 305-327.

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West, during the Middle Ages, a complementary relationship was established between the new urban centers and the preexisting political and territorial structures. This relationship was, however, frequently conflictual and subject to constant readjustment. Only in North-Central Italy did autonomous politi­ cal entities, capable of dominating relatively vast territories, assert themselves: these bodies then constituted actual city-states. In the following discussion we shall focus on the relationship between city, city-state and territory in the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. F O RMAT I O N AN D CHARACT E R OF TH E CITY-STAT E S

A factor that was notably important i n the formation of these city-states was the ability of the communes - in all of the north-central area during their formative phase in the eleventh and twelfth centuries - to develop at their own pace without encountering the grave obstacles and restrictions imposed by those larger political structures (principalities, kingdoms, empire) within which the cities beyond the Alps remained confined. In Italy, these structures remained weak or even nonexistent. By the time the emperors ( between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, first with Frederick Barbarossa and later with Frederick IT) attempted to restore imperial authority in Italy, the autonomy of the urban communes had already become irreversible. In this situation, the city found the opportunity to give vent to its old territorial vocation. This was an inheritance of its role in the Roman adminis­ trative system. The territorial vocation had been reinforced, between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, when the functions of eclesiastical government were added to those of civil government. This occurred as the civitates became seats of the dioceses. The role of the city as an organizational nucleus of a larger territory surrounding it was kept alive, although this trend experienced ups and downs and underwent many local variations during the entire period of the early Middle Ages. It was also for this reason that the city, even at the dawn of communal life, was able to present itself as a place for the amalgamation of the classes ' and even for landed, seignorial, and "feudal" interests. Not only merchants and artisans were represented, as was the case in many European cities. This was a condition of the isolation of European cities in the '·feudal" ocean that surrounded them. Indeed, those very groups - vassals of bishops, landowners, and holders of seignorial rights in the countryside - had played a large part in the process of establishing and consolidating the commune. Even from the point of view of its social structure, then, the city maintained close ties with the countryside. This was a relationship not of opposition but of symbiosis which constituted the premise of the city's capacity to spread politically and economically. The "conquest of the countryside" that ocurred between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was, in effect, a clear demonstration of this. It was during this period that the commune came to extend its own dominions

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to a relatively vast territory which frequently coincided, to a great degree, with the boundaries of the diocese.2 Not many centers came fully to develop autonomous communal institu­ tions and vast dominions in the countryside. As a rule those that did had been civitates under ancient Roman law and thus had also been seats of the diocese. This is eloquent testimony to the weight of Roman influence on medieval urban development in Italy. Only these centers - with few exceptions were granted the title and the status of city. This title carried with it the implication of the capital of a district that was both civil and eclesiastic. The stability of the city is some indication of the strength of this urban network. While in all of Europe during the late Middle Ages we witness a proliferation of new cities, in North-Central Italy the establishment of new cities and the promotion of old centers to the rank of civitates was very rare. Indeed, the number of cities between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries remained com­ prehensively stable and relatively limited. To the scant number of cities corre­ sponded a considerable extension of their territories. The contadi often main­ tained the boundaries of the former ecclesiastical dioceses, which in turn had traced the outline of the more ancient Roman districts. Beyond the Alps the territories of the cities only rarely reached significant dimensions. The limit of one thousand square kilometers was exceeded only in special cases (Nuremberg and Zurich, for example); however, the standard extension, even for very important cities, was a few dozen square kilometers or a few hundred at the most. In North-Central Italy, the dimensions were, on the average, much larger. In the vast Tuscan-Po valley area, there were only a score of city-states, each covering an average territory of perhaps between one and two thousand square kilometers. These naturally were dimensions that the larger contadi (Milan, Bologna, Florence, Parma, and so on) greatly exceeded.3 Vast city-states then constituted the dominant structure for the organiza­ tion of the territories. Already by the end of the twelfth century Otto of Freising described Italy as "tota inter civitates fermc divisa, » that is, a country organized into a pattern of city-states that had already begun to cover its entire territory, while in Europe the urban districts, besides being smaller, were squeezed in between larger feudal and royal dominions. These were the

2. Still fundamental on this question are the works of N. Ouakar; se "Comuni" in the Enciclopedia Italiana, vol. XI (Rome, 1931) and E. Sealan, "La ana comunale italiana dei secoli XI-XIII nele sue note caratteristiche rispeno al movimento comunale europeo," in eongru international des &ienas Historiques (Stockholm, 21-28 August 1960), Rapports, II, Moyen Age (GOteborg-Stockholm-UppsaIa, 1960) 91 -120. Se also, for more recent IilErature on this subject, R. Bordone, "Nascita e sviluppo delle autonomie cittadine," in La storia, ed. 'N. Tranfaglia and M Firpo, vol. II (11 Medioevo. Popoli e stn4tb4re poIiliche) (Turin: UfET� 1986) 425-458. 3. A. Haverkamp, " Die Stidte im Herschafts- und Sozialgefi Reichsitaliens," in Stadt 14M Herschaft: r5mische Kaiserze;t 14M bobes Mittelalter, ed. F. Vittinghoff (Historiscbe Zeitschrift: Beiheh 7) (Munich, 1982) 149-245, se especially pp. 149-159.

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principalities and kingdoms within whose structures the process of territorial restructuring was developing. In various aspects of the city-territory relation, among those mentioned above, it is perhaps not difficult to discover analogies with the poleis of an­ cient Greece and even more marked analogies with Roman cities of the imperial age:" from this arises the problem, frequently perceived and dis­ cussed, of the continuity between classical and medieval urbanism. This is a continuity within which an extremely important role is acknowledged to the relationship between urban and rural centers.s Nevertheless, there are also numerous and obvious elements of change that characterized the medieval city-state and differentiated it from the ancient city (or rather from the various forms of the ancient city). These characteris­ tics and differences not only involved relations with the territory but also derived more generally from the new aspect that the city gradually assumed during the medieval centuries.' This new character was clarified and accentu­ ated by the growth of trade and manufacturing activity and by the entirely new economic context established after the " qualitative leap in the European economy that ocred around the year 1000."7 This is a context that must not be neglected in a comparative examination of the urban phenomenon lest such a comparison become too circumscribed and solely limited to individual aspects and fragments of a larger reality, which, however, may be fully captured and understood only within the framework of the general situation. Even though the influence of the Roman tradition on the development of the medieval city appeared much stronger in Italy than elsewhere, it nonethe­ less constituted only one element of the global picture. Historians have rightly spoken of the "two spirits" of the medieval city (just as Otto of Freising before them had already spoken of its "double-faceted existence" ): the first is an ancient spirit both civic and urban, and the second a medieval one, mer­ cantile and bourgeois. As a result of the Mediterranean location of the penin­ sula, both spirits cohabited halfway between the east and the west, betWeen the Old and the New World. It has also been rightly emphasized that it was

4. Strong emphasis is placed on this aspect of the question in Philip Jones, "Economia e socied nell'ltalia medievale: la legenda della borghesia," in Storia d'Italia, cit., Amrali, I, Dal feudalesimo al capitalismo (Turin: Einaudi, 1978) 187-372. This article should nevertheles be consulted in conjunction with his other one, "La storia eC()flomica,,, cit. See also M. Nobili, "L'equazione citti. antica-citti. comunale ed iI mancato sviluppo italiano nel saggio di Philip Jones," in Sociera e storia 3 (1980) 891 -907. 5. R. Chevallier, "Cite et teritoire. Solutions romaines aux problemes de I'organisation de I'espace," in Allfstieg lind Niedergang der ROmischen Welt, IV1 (Berlin-New York, 1974) 649788, se especialy pp. 708ff.; H. Galsterer, "Stadt und Tertoriwn," in Stadt lind Herscha{t, cit., pp. 10llf. 6. R. S. Lopez, "Epilogo," in La citra nell'alto Medioevo ("Setmane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull'A1to Medioevo"), VI (Spoleto: aSAM, 1959) 729-748, se especially pp. 732-735. L. Cracco Rugni and G. Cracco, " Changing Fortunes of the Italian Gty from Late Antiquity to Early Mide Ages," in Rivista italiana di filologia e di istrlone clas 105 (1977) 448-475. 7. Jones, "La storia economica," cit., pp. l505ff. The quotation can be found on p. 1529.

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precisely from the way these elements mixed and from the tension between them that the original character of Italian history derives. It therefore contains a large component of "modernity" and a full participation on the part of the Italian city in the characteristics of the medieval European city. 8 Thus, while we may say that relations with the territory remained strong, it is also true that the nature of this relationship changed over time. Even in Italy, with the emergence of the mercantile spirit and the establishment of various classes, in the heterogeneous social mix that the great urban crucible was creating, new interests were being formed that belonged specifically to the city. Notwithstanding "the bonds between commune and civitas," there came about "a structural transformation in the power relationships between the classes and in the distribution of property and authority," consequence of the extraordinary development of commercial activity, that was non-Roman and non-military. The new communal economic and political structures were extraneous to the Roman tradition.9 Even in Italy, the city became the place for a revitalized economy, distinct in its forms, in its objectives, and, partly, in its protagonists from the agrarian and rural one that was considered prevalent in ancient cities (the Greek poleis as well as the cities of the late imperial age) and was used to characterize their nature.tO In the new economic climate, in a society that was profoundly trans­ formed (above all through the elimination of slavery), the countryside was placed in a new position, which was more clearly diferentiated from the city. The need to define a new rapport with the countryside was felt, in tune with the interests and objectives of the inhabitants of the cities. Prerogatives already partly enjoyed in the Roman period were substantially enlarged in accordance with the times, so as to satisfy the needs and demands that arose from the new conditionsY It was necessary to elaborate a policy capable of guarantee­ ing the city sufficient arable territory and the work force to cultivate it, without setting up a distribution of labor that would impinge upon the development of mercantile and manufacturing activities. It was also necessary that this policy be capable of ensuring the resources of men and money necessary for the political objectives of the free communes. In Italy, the cities' efforts to control and conquer the countryside were more fully realized because of the existing strong ties between urban centers 8. Ibid., 1 553-1554; and G. Rossetti, " D comune cittadino: un tema inattuale?" in L'el/oluzione delle dna italiane neU'XI secolo, ed. R. Bordone and J. Jamut (Bologna: II Mulino,

1988) 25-44. 9. Jones, loco cit. 10. Besides Finley (cit. n. 1), se La dna antica, guida storica e critica, ed. C. Arnpolo (Bari, 1980), in particular "Introduzione," xvii and xli, and the ample bibliography provided; regarding the debate, which is still open, see Ph. Leveau, "La ville antique: ville de consommation? Parasitisme social et economie antique," in Etudes ",raw, nos 89-91 (1983) 275283 (which is followed by a "Reponse" by Ch. Goudineau, 283-287); L. Cracco Rugni, "La cina romana dell'eta imperiale," in Modelli di ciua, ed. P. Rossi (Turin: Einaudi, 1987) 1271 52, se especially pp. 146-150. 1 1 . Cracco Rugni, "La cina romana," cit., 146-150; E. Gabba, "La cina italica," in Modelli di dna, cit., 109-126: 122-125.

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and their territories and because of the cities' capability for independent initiative.U The sharp distinction that came to exist, from a legal standpoint, both in the peninsula and in Europe in general, between the inhabitants of the city and those of the countryside produced in the organic entity that was the city­ state two distinctly differentiated categories of people: the ewes and the rustici, or the eomitatini. Only those who possessed citizenship had the right to par­ ticipate in political life and in the organs of government of the municipal commune. However, they ruled al of the state, including the city and the rural areas. The granting of these rights to noncitizens was extremely rare and very unusual. We find examples of it in relatively small centers (like Cortona) or in moments where extraordinary measures were called for (in Pisa during the uprisings against Florence at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries)Y However, not even the granting of citizenship to inhabitants of the countryside (cwilitas forensis) was adequate to allow the ef­ fective representation of the interests of the eomitatini in the organs of urban government. Similarly, during the entire communal age, associations of rural bodies were unable to form organizations capable of opposing the city ( see note 20). Thus, we witness the creation of a government composed only of citiz::ns, which correspondingly exerted over the countrySide a strict control and reserved a markedly privileged condition for its cives. With regard to the first point, the extent of domination that the great communes of North-Central Italy exerted over their districts is well known. These areas were much more disciplined, compact, and well defined than the ones developed beyond the Alps. In fact, it is difficult to find there the equivalent of the eontado of an Italian commune. Rather, beyond the Alps we find a mosaic of small territories, upon which the city could exert more or less extensive fiscal and judicial control. Next to these were other smaller territories in which the city possessed minor rights, perhaps in competition with-the rights of other lords. The urban center, furthermore, may have come to exert some influence - but only indirect and partial - over land and lordships possessed by families or by ecclesiastical institutions of the city. Even more tenuous and partial was the influence that the city could e�end and instil� at times, over relatively large areas located some distance away. This was generally

12. Se the suggestions and bibliography in F. Bocchi, "Le cina e I'organizzazione del territorio in era medievaIe," in Le dna in ltalia ed in Gemr4nUt nel Medioevo, ed. G. EIze and G. Fasoli (Bologna: n Mulino, 1981) 51-80; A. I. Pini, " Dal comune cina stato aI comune ente amsttativo," in Storia d'ltalia, eel. G. Galasso, vol. IV (Turin: lITET, 1981) 451-587, passim; P. Cammarosano, Le campagne nell'eta comunale, meta secolo Xl - meta secolo XIV, 2nd edition (Turin: Loescher, 1976); id., " ana e campagna: rapporti politici ed economici," in Societa ed Istitlioni deU'ltalia conmunale: I'esempio di Perugia (sec. XII-XIV) (Perugia, 1988) 303-349. 1 3 . M. Luzzati, Una guera di popolo (Pisa, 1973) 11 3££.

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accomplished through commercial or trade agreements, control on roads, waterway tolls, market rights, and perhaps through the granting of citizen­ ship or various types of political and economic agreements. Moreover, this influence, which was limited only to certain areas, did not exclude the presence and influence in these same areas of other lords and potentates, even much stronger ones who at times were political and military antagonists. Instead in Italy, the control of the countryside was much fuller and more complete. No entity other than the communal government could exert au­ thority over it. Thus, the exercise of public rights, vassal and servile ties, castles, and other institutions, over which the commune could not claim sovereignty or exercise its control, were not allowed to exist. The district was subdivided into many small rural communes, which were the manifestation of a kind of local self-government. However, they also constituted a type of peripheral administrative network that was dependent upon the urban magis­ tracy. In addition, the rural communes were gathered into larger groups in which podesta and vicars sent by the city administered justice, kept order, and collected taxes. The authority of the urban magistracy and the normative force of the commune's laws (a legislation and government from which; as we noted, the comitatini were excluded) were exercised over the entire district. This authority governed waterways and roads, provisions and markets, manufacturing, agriculture, and taxes. The image, proposed by political texts as well as chancery documents, of the city-state as a unified body of which the city is the head and the countryside its limbs indissolubly tied to it is well known. This image highlights well, on the one hand, the organic nature of the relationship between urban center and territory, and on the other hand, the preeminent role granted to the city. In addition to the right to govern the territory, citizens were granted other privileges compared with those of inhabitants of the countryside. In part, these privileges automatically descended from the jurisdiCtional and governmental preeminence of the city and in part were granted by other, specific laws. The civis, entitled to the privilegiUm civilitatis, was accorded fa­ vorable fiscal treatment, easier access to the market for food products, and special prerogatives in the exercise of mercantile or industrial activity. Above all, the civis enjoyed a broad jurisdictional and fiscal tutelage over his own real estate holdings. The situation outlined here presents, in the relation between the city and the countryside, many elements that favor the former. During the communal age then, the city was able to establish the premises for a process that would siphon the wealth and energies of the countryside. This process became more evident and ever more parasitic in the late Middle Ages and in modern times. This depiction of the historical situation is found, although with some varia­ tion and with emphasis placed on different points, in the works of various scholars whose analyses are shaped by different perspectives and who possess heterogeneous ideological tendencies, for example: from Philip Jones to Ruggero

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Romano, to Maurice Aymard, to various Marxist historians who carry traces of Antonio Gramsci's ideas.14 However, this does not mean that I am proposing an image of the city as a place solely for exploitation and passive consumption (analogous again with the ancient city). In fact, historians have recently observed that "the bourgeois government of the medieval city treated peasants much better than did the agrarian government of the ancient city."IS Above al, the flow of wealth and energy from the countryside appears to be a component of a more complex economic mechanism in which the countryside maintained a rela­ tionship of exchange and reciprocal integration with the city. The balance remained unfavorable to the rural areas, and this situation was still very far from the "urbanization of the countryside" that Karl Marx described as the beging of a more articulated division of labor and new method of production (an urbanization that Italy, as I will discuss, experienced later than the rest of Western Europe). Nevertheless, the circulation of goods, capital, and men between urban centers and territories on the one hand offered sustenance and nourishment to the great and innovative forms of urban mercantile and manufacturing activities and on the other hand did not fail to contribute decisively to the transformation of the agrarian economy and rural society into a developing and expanding world.16 B ETW E E N TH E M I DDLE AN D TH E MO D ERN AGE: CRI S I S AND SURVIVAL OF TH E CITY- STAT E

In the centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the

modem age a common characteristic can be fo�nd in the history of Italian and European cities. Both experienced a notable reorganization of their role, which occurred concurrently with the establishment of broader and stronger state structures. In all of Western Europe the tendency to overcome a fragmented and local organization of power seemed to become stronger. Although it had represented a first type of political ordering of European society after the tenth century and had also constituted the basis for the development of autonomous urban centers, this organization now appeared inadequate. There was a tendency toward the creation of broader governmental structures and above all toward the constitution of a more solid government apparatus, able 14. See especially R. Romano, "Una tipologia economica," in Dal feuda1esimo al capitalismo, cit., 256-304; M. Aymard, "La ttansizione dal feudalesimo aI capitalismo," ibid., 1 1 33-1 192 (English version: "From Feudalism to Capitalism in Italy: the case that doesn t fit," in Review VI, 2 [Fall 1982] 131-208). Se R. Bordone, "Tema cittadino e 'ritomo alIa terrra' nella storiografia comunale recente," in Quademi storiei 19 (1983) 255-277. 15. R. S. Lopez, Intenlista sul/a cift/l medieua1e, ed. M. Berengo (Bari: Laterza, 1984) 104. 16. E. Fiumi, "Sui rapporti economici tra cina e contado," in Archivio storico italiano 114 (1956) 1 8 -68; J. Le Goff, "The Town as an Agent of Civilization," in The Fontana &0tiomie History of Europe, I: The Mid Ages, ed. C.M. Cipolla (London and Glasgow: Collins! Fontana Books, 1 972) 71-106. '

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to coordinate and regulate local powers within the sphere of the larger politi­ cal systems. In European countries where the cities had already been part of king­ doms, principalities, and other such entities, the new situation implied a certain reduction of their former autonomy. This phenomenon occurred even though they - for example, the French bonnes villes or the German Reichsstidte maintained a privileged relationship with their sovereigns and by doing so preserved their old privileges and monopolies as well as created new economic possibilities. In addition, this assured safer and more peaceful conditions for their activities within the new organization of the state. In Italy, an evident result of the urban crisis at the end of the Middle Ages was the disappearance (or almost complete disappearance) of the city­ state, an entity that was extremely unsuitable to a political universe organized on a broader base, and more rigidly coordinated. This was occurring in central and northern Italy. "No city-state," notes ]. R. Strayer, "ever solved the problem of incorporating new territories and new populations into its existing structure, of involving really large numbers of people in its political life. Either the City-state became the nucleus of an empire (as [ancient] Rome did), and so became subject to ills of empire; or it remained small, militarily weak, and, sooner or later, the victim of conquest."17 Also in Italy, because of the heavy and growing financial and military burdens demanded by the new political situation, the majority of free communes, in effect, ended up in a position of inferiority and extreme weakness compared with the major powers. Consequently, they were forced to orbit around tyrants, sect leaders, or perhaps foreign princes, and over time more stably around the major cities and the strongest principalities - at first as allies and later as subjects. There was no concrete possibility of creating federal bodies, such as the Swiss Confederation or later the United Dutch Provinces. The majority of old city-states became provinces subject to new regional states. A few others became centers and capitals of those states: either as seats of principalities, or as "dominant cities" which kept their republican institutions. .. During the crisis phase of the city-state, the enduring close ties between the urban center and the territory continued to diferentiate the Italian situation from the European one (while making it similar, to a certain extent, to the ancient city). The creation of regional states did not mean the "sunset of the city" in the face of the "rise of the state," nor even the crumbling of that robust foundation of urban prosperity represented in Italy by the domination of the city over the countryside. The latter continued, to a large degree, to remain subordinated to the control of the city (where the landholding spirit seemed well on its way to prevailing over the bourgeois and mercantile spirit). This subordination granted the municipal state a very long life, well into the -

17. J. R. Strayer, On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1970) 1 1 .

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modem age. This is an imprint, recognizable even with some variation, in the diverse forms the ancient city-states assumed.

Subject Cities The loss of political independence did not mean a total loss of power for the old communes. Between the regional state and the city a sort of division and complementary arrangement of power was established. This was a type of dualism not very diferent from the one that ruled many areas of Europe at the beginning of the modem age.II However, in Italy, this dualism became polarized into the relationship between the prince (or the dominant city) on the one hand and the subject cities (in their lasting role as capitals of their ancient contadi) on the other. The maintenance of a broad control over the old contado was, in fact, one of the principal elements of renewed urban privilege. The old city-states, without radical variations in their territory, became, as a rule, provinces of the new regional states. The cities came to be automati­ cally recognized as small capitals of the new provinces. They were not consid­ ered neutral administrative centers, but rather organisms endowed with their own powers and the authority to exercise them. Because of the considerable preeminence given to the laws, the judicial system, and the collegium of city jurists, the cities' power extended to judicial matters. In addition, their authority also encompassed fiscal matters due to the strong bargaining power that municipal councils retained in the definition of the taxes collectively settled on the province and their allotment between the city and the countryside. They also maintained power in the selection of duties to be imposed, as well as in the criteria for their subdivision among the rural communities, in the mecha­ nisms for tax collection, in customs contracts, and also in those matters involving provisions, markets, economic activities, waterways, and so on. The preeminent position of the urban commune over the countryside was accQm­ panied by a continuing position of privilege for the cives over the comitatini. With regard to fiscal treatment, for example, "civil" goods, that is, goods that citizens possessed, were taxed less than "rural" ones. The .cives landholders enjoyed a privileged position, recognized by the law, to take juridical action against the rustici laboratores terrarum. These factors caused a further increase of urban landownership within the countryside in the modem ageY' The area of urban privilege, besides extending to various degrees in the different regions of the peninsula, was certainly also moderated through the balancing role of the regional government. It was subject to erosion and

18. G. Chittolini, "Inttoduzione" to La ens; degli ordinamenti comunali e Ie origini dello stato del rinasc;mento (Bologna: n Mulino, 1979) 38H. 19. Se suggestions and bibliography in M. Berengo, "La cina d'antico regime," in QJlademi storie; 9 (1974) 662-692; G. Chittolini, La formazione dello stato regionale e Ie istitl del contado (Turin: Einaudi, 1979) xxi-xxxiii; G. M. Varanini, "Dal comune a1lo stato regionale," in 11 Medioevo. Popoli e stTJItture politiche, cit., 689-720.

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control. In the continuous and intense dialogue that took place between subject cities and regional states during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the main issues in this confrontation - namely, the problems regarding administrative and fiscal control of the countryside and privHeges pertaining to provisions, mercantile trade, and manufacturing - underwent more than one redefinition and adjustment. And from the mid-sixteenth century, when this institutional dynamic seemed to accelerate considerably, the prerogatives of the city underwent some restriction.20 However, even in the eighteenth cen­ tury, when the governments of the Enlightenment sought to initiate their reforms, the strongest resistance they encountered continued to emanate from "the bodies and the old institutions of the municipal tradition." Above all, it was "against the old communal spirit" that they had to fight. Only then, observed Antonio Anzilot, could the long arc of the municipal state be considered definitively closed.11

Capital Cities The condition of cities that were capitals - maybe precociously - of signorie and principalities was different from that of cities we have examined so far. These included Ferrara, seat of the Estensi family; Verona, of the da Romano and later the Scaligeri; Urbino, seat of the Montefeltro family; Milan, of the Visconti and the Sforza families; and others that were minor cities or capitals for shorter periods. They were able to benefit from advantages, which were sometimes substantial, over the subordinate cities. Nevertheless, the government of the state remained in the hands of the lord and not in those of the ruling urban classes. They were capital cities but not dominant in the sense that I will attempt to define better.11 In some cases (Milan, for example) the long-standing importance of the city and a certain original vocation to become a regional capital favored a precocious expansion of the signoria.13 This ambition was to function as a hegemonic center, a magnetic pole for politi�al, economic, and territorial aggregation that would also attract the surrounding cities. Nevertheless, the tendency of the new rulers to grant their principalities fresh, new foundations 20. E. Fasano Guarini, "GH stati dell'Italia centto-settrionale Era Quattro e Cinque­ cento: continuici e ttaslormazioni," Societa II storia 6 (1983) 617-639. Particularly important was the creation of organisms of c0nt4do and remtorio that represented rural communities in order to confront the cities on fiscal matters; se the monographic issue, StNdi bresciani 13 (1983) (articles by D. Parzani, A. Rossini, B. Molteni, Ch. Porqueddu); and M. Knapton, "II teritorio vicentino nello stato veneto del Cinquecento e del primo Seicento: nuovi equilibri politici e fiscali," in "Dentro Ia stato italko": Venezia /I fa Teraferma fra Quattro II CinqlUcentO, ed. G. Cracco and M. Knapton (Trent 1984), 33-1 15. 21. A. Anzilotti, II tramonto della stato cittadino (1924), now reprinted in Anzilotti, Movimenti II contrasti per I'unita italiana, ed. A. Caracciolo (Milan: Giuffre, 1964) 17-1 8. 22. M. Berengo, "La capitale nell'Europa d'aittico regime," in La ciua capitate, ed. C. De Seta (Bari: Laterza, 1985) 3-15, se especially pp. 3-4. 23. A. Haverkamp, "Das Zentralitatsgefuge Mailands im hohen Mittelalter," in Zentralitit als Problem tier mittefalterlichen Stadtgeschichtsforschung, ed. E. Meyen (Cologne­ Vien: BOhlau, 1979) 48-78.

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free from mortgages and influence of local ruling classes, at times, caused a reduction in the prerogatives of urban political bodies, even with regard to their own contadi.24 Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, upon becoming the seat of the seignorial government of the Visconti, who already lived there, Milan, although already a large metropolis and the capital of Lombardy, was forced to undergo the limitation of its old expansionist ambi­ tions and even some loss of control over its own territory. Similarly, the Milanese patriciate, gradually excluded from government, lost its own physi­ ognomy and capability as a ruling class.

The Dominant Cities: Venice and Florence Another element that characterized Italian geography (when compared with that of the rest of Europe) during the Renaissance period was the formation of a few large dominions of regional dimensions that were ruled by old urban republics that had become dominant and that maintained their old institu­ tional arrangements. This phenomenon was a significant indication of the strength of the city and its governmental and territorial vocation. It is, in fact, what occurred in Florence (until the 1 530s) and above all in Venice. The old communal bodies managed to expand and transform themselves into govern­ mental structures capable of dominating territories of considerable breadth. In turn, the old municipal leadership managed to transform itself into a ruling class of more than local range, that possessed singular energy and wide­ ranging strategies. Paradoxically, the governmental and territorial vocation of Florence, and especially of Venice, originally had seemed rather weak. Both were similar to other essentially mercantile cities (for example, 'Genoa and Pisa): they were situated, even geographically, on the margins of the system of city-states lo­ cated in the Po valley and yet were fully integrated into the Mediterranean and European commercial system. In addition, during the communal _�ge Venice and Florence developed a foreign policy that sought to establish com­ mercial agreements and a mercantile and financial hegemony and, in some cases, even colonies and maritime bases in lands as far 'aWay as the remote Levant. They did not seek to conquer territories in surrounding lands. These cities, then, were less territorial than centers in the Po ' valley. They also differed from them in that they were characterized by a strong mercantile patriciate, a robust guild organization, and a strong tradition of republican institutions that lasted even during the age of the signorie. These cities more closely resembled other great European mercantile centers. However, between 24. D. M. Bueno de Mesquita, Giangaleazo Visconti, Duke of Milan (Cambridge, 1941) SO; W. Tommasoli, La lIita di Federico da Montefeltro (Urbino, 1978) 31-71; G. M. Varanini, "Gli Scaligeri, il ceto dirigente veronese, I'elite intemazionale," in Gli Scaligeri, 1 277-1387 (Verona: Mondadori, 1988) 1 1 3-124; G. Chittolini, "Di alcuni aspetti della crisi della stato sforzesco," in Milan et les Etats bourguigncms: deNx ensembles politiques princiers entre Moyen­ Age et Renaisnce (XIV"- XVI" siecle) (Basel: Centre europ&m d'etudes bourguignonnes, 1988) 21 -34.

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the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth century, Florence and Venice were forced to convert themselves into large territorial states. This was a response to the action of healthy and agessive s;gnor;e which (like the , Visconti) had begun a policy of expansion. As a result, in addition to domin­ ions already acquired during the fourteenth century, Florence also succeeded, in a few years, in occupying various territories (Pisa, Cortona, and areas in the Apennines). This increased the dimensions of the state to approximately twelve thousand square kilometers and began a significant process of fiscal and administrative reorganization. For centuries, Venice had not felt the need for dominions on the Terraferma, but between 1404 and 1428 it became the strongest Italian territorial power. In the Po river valley its territories covered an area of about thirty thousand square kilometers. This is approximately the area that Venice continued to govern for almost four centuries until its fall, in 1 797.25 The formation of a vast territorial domain did not originally mean, either for Florence or for Venice, the rejection of their ancient vocation to be important commercial centers. Rather, this was understood to be the necessary condition for continuing their intense economic activity, in peace and without menace. Nevertheless, because they were a part of the political system of the peninsula, the Venetian and Florentine oligarchies were constrained to embark on a road that diverged greatly from that of the other large European mercan­ tile centers. While the latter were guaranteed the opportunity for intense commercial activity (and a large measure of autonomy) by their privileged position within larger states (Empire, kingdoms, and principalities), or in leagues and urban federations like the Hanseatic League, Florence and Venice themselves had to become large regional states.2' This was a unique result that had no relevant parallel within the institutional panorama of the continent. It was only later, with the weakening of their former commercial and financial potential, that new interests became prevalent both in Florence and in Venice. These interests were territorial, landholding, administrative, or regarded the control of benefits. Perhaps these' changes were in tune with a general tendency toward the European urban system that ocurred between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern ageP However, these trends were more accentuated and provoked further changes in Venice and Florence as compared with the great mercantile emporiums beyond the AlpS.28 25. The situation was different for Genoa, which limited its territorial expansion to the curve of the Ligurian coast and was favored by its geographic position and even more by the vast system of alliances and relations in which the city and its aristocracy maintained their involvement. 26. F. ROrig, Die europiie Stadt ;m Mittelalter (GOttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1964) 121ff.; Th. Brady, Turning Swis: Cit.ies and Empires, 1450-1550 (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1985). 27. Y. Barel, La ville mJdieuale: systeme social, systbne urbaine (Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1977) 299ff. 28. For further information, se Florence and Venice: comparisons and relations, ed. S.

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Territory, External Relations and Empire

It is worth noting also that in relation to the maturing of these new political-territorial interests the old city-states managed to create regional governmental structures that were relatively efficient and vigorous (more so, perhaps, than those principalities with which the "modem states" of the Renaissance, in an echo of Machiavellian thought, frequently and hastily were identified by historians). And this was due, not to the creation of a new or "modem" type of state, but to their ability to activate together the public and private energies and will, which were closely intertwined in the leadership of the dominant 0ligarchies.29 The dom;n;o became something similar to what the contado had been to the old commune (Florentine documents from the early fifteenth century define the newly acquired provinces "verum et originale territorium et comitatus de territorio et comitatu Florentiae" ), that is, an area for land expansion and the supply of foodstuffs; a reservoir for ecclesiastical benefices and rents; a territory to be administered through lucrative and prestigious offices. Therefore, it was an object for the interests, both individual and collective, of the patricians in the dominant cities. Because of this situation the Venetian and Florentine states offer an impression of vigor and substance in the course of the fifteenth century. The very different reactive capabilities of the two republics - especially in comparison with the weakness of the duchy of Milan and the inertia of the Milanese patriciate - when the Italian political system encountered the great shock of a' confrontation with the major European powers at the beginning of the sixteenth century - may have been a result of this vigor. The centuries between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modem period were the stage for the establishment of the "ancient" spirit rather than the " bourgeois" one. They also witnessed the fulfillment of an original territorial vocation both in the free and the dominant Italian cities as well as in the subject ones. As historians have frequently repeated and as I mentioned earlier, it is this territorial vocation that, over time, became a braking element and a factor in the grave backwardness of these cities (almost as if to repropose the static and parasitic image of the " ancient" city).JO Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the unique combination of city and territorial governmental institutions seemed still vital and fertile. This, in fact, was the premise for the lasting survival of the Italian city, following the definitive decline of its great mercantile stage.

Bertelli, N. Rubinstein, C. H. Smyth, vol. I, Quattrocento, vol. II, Cinquecento (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979 and 1980). Se also G. Del Torre, Venezia e Ia Teraferma dopo Ia ens; di Cambra; (Milan: Angeli, 1986). 29. On the importance, according to this point of view, of the financial mechanisms of public debt, se F. Lane, ·Public Debt and Private Wealth, Particularly in Sixtenth Century Venice,n in Melanges en l'hcmneur � Femand Braudel (Toulouse, 1973). 30. R. Romano, ·Una tipologia economica,n cit.; A. De Maddalena, Dalla dna al bOt'go (Milan: Angeli, 1982). Thanks to Ennelinda Carnpani and Christine Andrade for their translation of this esy from Italian. -

Diplomacy in the Italian City-State

JAMES S . GRU B B

PLOMACY WAR

AND dominate the record of external relations. They are not, of course, strict alternatives or even true binaries. Italian city­ states knew a variety of other strategies for dealing with each other: economic blockades, ritual agession, networks of patronage, and cultural and intellectual competition. Still, war and diplomacy are virtually the only guides to external relations that we are allowed by sources and scholarship. Chroniclers specialized in wars and alliances, as have most historians up to the present.1 Later historians added only the history of diplomacy, a teleologi­ cally based study that has tended to ignore the context for external relations and instead pursues the origins of modern mechanisms for conflict resolution. If the study of external relations has been stunted, lately it has been ignored as well. The various forms of social and cultural history care little for borders, and even political historians have moved to study the internal dynamics and institutions of the state, looking at how polities were constituted rather than at how they interacted. Diplomatic history has been virtually abandoned, and military history has been reduced to a specialists' subfield.1 But even if historiographic fashions change, the study of external relations can never be completely erased: on the evidence of medieval Italians themselves, diplomacy and war are keys to the nature of the city-state.

D

TH E CITY-STATE I N FO RMATI ON

Histories of external relations between early Italian city-states have not been much concerned with the diplomatic side of the narrative. A martial preference has prevailed, with good reason: the political history of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries is indeed a narrative of incessant, ragged conflicts, seemingly lacking in any grand order. Unstable coalitions of municipal factions fought 1. 1be pattern is represented by J. R. Hale, "International Relations in the West: Diplomacy and War," in The New Cambridge Modem History, I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1961) 259-91. 2. Diplomatic relations receive, fur example, a scant 2 of 671 pages in the most authoritative recent survey: Ovidio Capitani et aI., Comu"; e Signorie: istituzioni, societiJ e lotte peT I'egemcmia, Storia il'Italla, ed. Giuseppe Galasso, IV (furin: UfET, 1981) 556-58.

604

Territory, External Relations and Empire

under party labels of momentary convenience, and they quickly abandoned alliances to secure assistance elsewhere. Popes and emperors and later surrogates such as Norman, Angevin, French and Aragonese claimants provided higher and more long-term focuses, but consistency of allegiance was entirely lacking, and the lineups of any given campaign differed markedly from those of previous or subsequent wars. And so past attempts to discern general patterns, notably that of the mercantile, philopapal Guelf communes against feudal, philoimperial Ghibelline communes, have not stood up to close scrutiny. Certainly diplomacy was not the preferred means to contain or discipline friction in the long term, useful though it may have been to ratify or destabilize temporary military advantage. There are three preconditions to effective long-term diplomacy: that the polity have internal coherence, that polities have the ability to recognize each other as legitimate and roughly equal, and that polities have a common discourse for negotiation. At the outset, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the city-state was ill-equipped to meet those preconditions. First, no magistracy, corporation, or faction could speak for the urban commune as a whole in negotiating with foreign powers. Municipal government had emerged from the vacuum created by the destructive but inconclusive conflicts of the investi­ ture controversy and from the patent inability of bishops and residual imperial officials to protect the city and provide order. This opened the door to a variety of local claims to self-governance. The resulting municipal commune generally emerged as a coalition of overlapping and competing corporate bodies (societates), each with its own council, militia, fortifications, treasury, and even statutes and tribunals.3 Recent research has claimed that Italian history demonstrates persistent domination by a largely landed oligarchy, that popular movements were but an episode, and that corporations were dominated by nobles.4 This may have been so in the long run, but long-term continuity does not equal day-to-day stability; membership in that oligarchy changed over time, and changed more often through brusque overhauls than simple attrition, and if the net impact of corporations was slight they wreaked havoc on communal politics for some time. Contemporary acounts are consistent in their chaos: greater landed nobility and lesser feudal lords initially contended for supremacy, then greater merchants aspired to a share in the commune's afrs. So did neigh­ borhoods (vicinanze), and the clans (consorterie) which contended for author­ ity from their strongholds in the great towers that dominated the urban skyline. As the urban center extended jurisdiction over the immediate country3. This reading reflects the thesis of J. K. Hyde, Society and Politks jn Medieval Italy (London: Macmillan, 1973) 44-60, 94-118. 4. The leading arguments fur a persistent "arislDcratic hegemony" are Sergio Bertelli, II potle oligarcbico nello stato-eiua medievak (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978), esp. 8-10; Philip Jones, "&onomia e societi nell'Italia medievale: la legenda della borghesia," in Storia d'ItaNa, Annali, I (Turin: Einaudi, 1 978), esp. 230-58, 308-37; but se the criticisJm by John M. Najemy in this volume.

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side (contado), new waves of former rural lords entered the political arena. Lesser merchants and artisans coalesced into the popo/o, which fought for a municipal voice but frequently split into bodies of higher and lower status. The great Guelf and Ghibelline parties, the main protagonists of external relations, sometimes reflected their origins in the battles between the adherents of papacy and those of the Empire, sometimes mirrored class divisions, and sometimes reflected simple factional breakdowns that cut across class lines. Characteristically, the rise of any one force caused not the destruction of its rivals, but rather the superimposition of a new agency onto an already crowded political map. As banishment and proscription were the favored mechanisms of victory, out-groups remained to press for revenge. The near­ equal distribution of resources between rivals, and the almost unlimited op­ portunities for reshuffling alliances, virtually guaranteed recurrent overthrow. The external policy of the city-state, in consequence, reflected only the will of the group momentarily in power. The triumph of its rivals a short time later, a foregone event in unstable municipal regimes, effectively canceled any ar­ rangement and initiated an opposite course. Rapid turnover in regimes damaged a prime condition for stable diplomacy, confidence that the other party has the sustained will to uphold its commitments. Second, coherent diplomacy requires a workable definition of sover­ eignty for the city-state as a whole. A fully developed theory of sovereignty was not necessary, indeed was not forthcoming for some time; and it was certainly the case that blatantly illegal regimes could successfully negotiate simply on the basis of momentary ascendancy.s Nonetheless, enduring agree­ ments require trust, and trust requires that polities be able to recognize each other as legitimate bodies endowed with comparable status. Both prerequisites, authenticity and approximate symmetry, were largely lacking in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The city-states were new and without precedent. Their autonomy was self-declared and often without endorsement by a higher power. A city-state might build a workable legitimacy . from sheer longevity, but this was too fragile and easily compromised by the violent overthrow of the regime. The precondition of parity between city-states was jeopardized by enormous variation of size and resources: the two hundred-odd individual cases nearly defy typology, ranging from small agrarian villages to great mercantile centers. A Florence or Bologna or Milan tended to deal with its tiny neighbors on the basis of force rather than bilateral negotiation. Third, coherent diplomacy requires a common discourse to articulate ambitions and resolve grievances. States can coexist more or less peaceably with neighbors only when they share a language and a general consensus of the meaning of language. They need a common repertoire of arrangements treaties, alliances, arbitration - to regulate conflict over the long haul. Again, the sheer novelty and variety of Italian city-states precluded long-range coop5. Donald E. Queller, The Ofrra of Ambasador in the Mide Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1967) viii-ix:, 11.

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Territory, External Relations and Empire

eration in the early centuries. Communes had come into being to address problems of internal pacification, without much initial regard to problems of external security. Many operated under local custom or rudimentary statutes that found little correspondence among neighbors. Most experienced rapid and thorough revisions of constitutions. Al built mechanisms of governance by trial and error rather than program. Leaders rose to power as managers of faction, some little more than architects of successful thuggery; there was no assurance that they would demonstrate expertise or good faith in dealing with other governments. The major players of the peninsula hardly helped matters: in particular the escalation of rhetoric in the Investitute Controversy so polar­ ized papal and imperial positions that the speeches of an Innocent N and a Frederick II often seemed mutually incomprehensible. Without a reasonable degree of standardization city-states could not talk intelligibly to each other or build up trust through formal dialogue. War was the fallback, the best universal language available. T H E CITY - STATE I N MATURITY

Despite that inauspicious start diplomacy proved to be one of the sectors in which medieval Italian city-states made early and rapid progress. By the mid­ fourteenth century, preconditions for the effective management of tensions had largely been met. In consequence, mechanisms for regulating external relations had become sophisticated and widely deployed, and the martial predominance of the political narrative was much diminished. Common re­ course to stable and effective alliances demonstrated that the will and means for peaceful resolution had at last proven sufficient to restrain all but extraor­ dinary pressures. Inside the cities, much of the credit is due to the consolidation of communal regimes after the freewheeling earlier period. Lesser constituent corporations, such as neighborhoods and artisan guilds, usually dropped to secondary rank, reducing the number of effective contenders within the commune and allowing the commune to speak with a more coherent voice. Dissidents such as the popolo had already been integrated into communal structures, reducing the threat of open insurrection. Mass factional expulsions haq begun to tail off, in part because purges were more effective and permanently eliminated rivalries. Most cities were firmly Guelf or Ghibelline, which at least clarified the diplo­ matic map. Widespread leveling of the towers of consorter;e and proscription of magnates eliminated some of the most factious components of the earlier commune. This is not to deny real unrest in the mature city-state, but from the perspective of the twelfth century, turmoil was less frequent and severe Florence's Ciompi revolt of 1 378 may have been spectacular, but it ended quickly and did not scramble the regime permanently. Accompanying the shakedown in practical politics were a number of theoretical and structural forces for internal stabilization that, in tum, worked for the stabilization of external relations. Foremost among these were devel-

Grubb: Diplomacy in the Italian City-State

607

opments in political and legal theory, often based on classical precedents. As regards internal sovereignty, for example, the growing body of corporation theory fostered recognition of the city�state as a coherent polity while ac­ knowledging its composite structure.' Comprehensive statutes grounded in the Roman-law-based ius commune allocated precise subjurisdictions to the city's corporate bodies and promoted the legislative supremacy of municipal councils. The creation of the office of podesta, a foreign official who served as chief judge and administrator and who brought with him outside judges to direct leading tribunals, established a superior authority over the disparate compo­ nents of the municipal regime. In consequence of the growing clarification of hierarchy, the city-state was better equipped to present a united front before its foreign counterparts; renegade factions could less plausibly claim to speak for the commune as a whole. The second precondition for efficient diplomacy was met as city-states acquired the capacity to assert legitimacy and to deal with colleagues on a basis of roughly equivalent status. To some extent this too was the result of purely practical factors. Sheer experience in negotiation, for example, promoted mutual trust and comprehension and reduced the raged and ephemeral qual­ ity of the earlier period's alliances. Elimination of the smaler and least stable city-states, through absorption into the growing territorial states, assisted parity. As thorough overhauls of constitutions became less frequent, communes no longer sufered drastic discontinuities in foreign policy. Even more powerful in clarifying external relations was a series of devel­ opments in the very basis of external relations. The extralegal status of the civitas was partly regularized with the Peace of Constance in 1 1 83, when Frederick Barbarossa effectively granted the consulate and other regalia to several northern Italian city-states.? These and other cities could justify inde­ pendence by the law of prescription: the long-term and unchallenged exercise of de facto autonomy conferred rightful self-governance.' In a more general and potent movement, jurists gave the civitas definition and validation as a com­ munity of citizens living under a common law, e�dowed with the capacity to make law and to administer higher and lower justice (merum et mixtum imperium).' They endorsed the ius proprium o� the city-state as consonant with

6. · Brian Tierney, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer· sity Pres, 1955) part II; idem, Religion, Law and the Growth of ConstilJ4tional Thought, 1 1501 650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1982) ch. V; J. P. Can, " The Corporation in the Political Thought of the Italian Jurists of the Thirteth and Fourteth Centuries," History of Politieal Thought, I (1980) 9-32. 7. Marcel Pacaut, Frederick Bllrbarossa (New York: Saibner's, 1970) 179-81; Peter Mum, Frederick Bllrbarossa: A Study in MedUwal Politics (Ithaca: Cornell, 1969) 361-62. 8. For the Venetian case se Jacobus Alvarottus, SMper feudis (Lyon, 1535) f. 57v. 9. Pier Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, &p;es du mouvemDJt comnitaire dans Ie Moyen-Age LAtin (paris, 1970), esp. ch. IV, VI; J. Gaudemet, "La contribution des Romanist.es et des canonistes medievaux a la theorie moderne de I'etat," in Diritto e potere nella storia europea (Florence: Olschki, 1982) 1-36; Ugo Nicolini, "Autonornia e diritto proprio nelle cini italiane nel Medio Evo," ibid., 139-62.

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Territory, Extemal Relations and Empire

the higher natural law and the ius commune. At the end of the period of maturation, in the mid-fourteenth century, the jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato capped a long movement with his celebrated formula civitas sibi princeps, claiming that the city-state assumed the authority of the emperor in internal governance.tO By a simple corollary, a commune endowed with legitimate internal jurisdiction exercised a legitimate authority in its external relations as well. Bartolus's contemporary Marsilius of Padua, arguing from the very difent vantage of Aristotelian political thought, justified any polity operating "with the wil or consent of the citizens."l1 We need not seek absolute consis­ tency, nor a fully developed theory of sovereignty; by any or all of these tests the city-state could claim legitimacy without much fear of contradiction. And by another corollary, the legitimacy of any one city-state was roughly equal to that of its neighbors, regardless of differences in scale: here theory promoted parity of status. Above all the new legal theory, jurisprudence, and political theory greatly facilitated a common discourse of diplomacy. Certainly the practical business of lawmaking and interpretation broadened the common ground of contending cities. The widespread difion of the ius comne as the basis for local stat­ ute aided the relative standardization of municipal government. Common to e e �� wnenlocal law that the JUS comne should CIties was silent or contradictory; the principle was valid for disputes between states as well as for purely internal grievances and so established a higher set of norms for the peninsula. The emergence of a few standard glosses and com­ mentaries on the Roman law and ius commu1J6 further assisted uniformity. Recourse to legal opinions (consilia) by a few noted jurists provided a set of common interpretations, especially when collections of consilia were widely copied and circulated. Generalized notarial formularies, such as those of Rolandinus Passaggieri and Petrus da Unzola, gave a common format" for both private and public documents. A few popular rhetorical treatises and formularies from the artes diaaminis tradition, notably that of Boncompagno da Signa, introduced models for diplomatic correspondence and oration throughout the chanceries of Italian states.ll Peripatetic �niversity professors gave common training to the lawyers who came to dominate embassies and wrote treatises - Baldus's De paais, for example - which defined the rules for diplomacy. Podesta and 'ud es rotated throu the overnments of the th�judicial an legislative isolation of earlier

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10. C.N.S. Woolf, Barto,," of SiJsofnrato: His Position in the History of Medielal Politi4:a1 Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913) 107�1; Quentin Skinner, The FounJatimrs ofModem Political Thought, I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1978) 8-12. 1 1 . Marsilius of Padua, The Defender ofPeace ([he Defensor Pacis), trans. Alan Gewirth (New York: Harper 8c Row, 1956) Discourse I, ch. vm, para. 3. 12. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaisance Thought: The CIas, Scholastic and Humanist Strains (New York: Harper 8c Row, 1961) 102-5; Skinner, FounJalions, 28·33.

Grubb: Diplomacy in the Italian City-State

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As universal rules and language provided a bridge for contending cities, so too new mechanisms for negotiation built diplomatic trust and reliability. Applying the Roman civil law's rules of procuration and representation to public afrs, for example, city-states could authorize ambassadors capable of making decisions binding upon their cities.13 The Roman law itself provided techniques for conflict resolution such as norms for arbitration, rules to regulate retaliation against the property of foreigners, and guidelines for the making and enforcement of treaties. Canon law played a major role in the more general task of pacification, stressing the sanctity of treaties, the protection of noncombatants, and the need to distinguish just from unjust wars.14 Both canonists and civilians, arguing from the ius gentium, established rules for the immunity of legates.1S The fractiousness of the earlier period was much reduced by the fourteenth century. War was greater in scope, given the fewer but larger polities of Italy, but was less frequent and was a last resort to specific conflict rather than the invariable outcome of tensions. Northeast Italy provides a good example of the growing consensus of methods to subdue ordinary disruption. The great Lombard leagues that confronted Frederick Barbarossa in the twelfth century had an ad hoc character and fell apart soon after triumph. In the next century, on the other hand, the coalition that ousted the tyrant Ezzelino da Romano remained operational to reestablish the independence of the city­ states once under his sway. The alliance that broke up the Scaligeri empire in the mid-fourteenth century did the same, then informally administered a regional balance of power for the next half-century. A mature diplomacy might not eliminate violence but could act swiftly and effectively to subdue its excesses. T H E E N D OF TH E CITY-STAT E

If the city-state and diplomacy began and matured in tandem, their fortunes diverged after around 1350. The techniques of diplomacy grew more elaborate and comprehensive, building upon but not drastically departing from medieval precedents. Largely because of that expanded repertoire, negotiation played an increasingly prominent role in the external relations of Italian states. At the same time, though constitutional documents and propaganda display a virtualy unchanged city-state, the city-state was so fundamentally changed that the conventional definitions of a civitas - a self-governing community living under a common law or an urban nucleus with jurisdiction over surrounding countryside - cease to be applicable. It is fair to say that diplomacy flourished precisely at the moment when its parent the city-state disappeared. In every case the developments that assisted the rise of diplomacy equally assisted the demise of the traditional city-state.

13. Queller, OffICe of Ambassador, 26-59. 14. Garet Mattingly, Renaisance Diplomacy (Baltimore: Penguin Boks, 1964) 19-20. 15. Queller, OffICe of Ambasador, 175-85; Mattingly, Renaisance Diplomacy, 39-4.

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Territory, External Relations and Empire

Success in diplomacy was much aided by the greater internal coherence of regimes, particularly by the progressive subordination of alternate allegiances. Most obviously, all save a handful of cities had passed under the authority of individual lords (signori), who did not abolish communal regimes but imposed their wills upon traditional institutions. If signori proved respectful of consti­ tutions, they had no patience for the factions and corporations that had disrupted urban life in earlier generations. Domestic pacification was entirely positive for external relations: negotiations with other states were made rather more coherent by the signore's often brusque elimination of contenders and rivals. Both signori and diplomacy benefited, as well, from theoretical rein­ forcement. Jurists after Bartolus, notably Baldus de Ubaldis, pushed Bartolus's civitas sibi princeps to logical extremes, reinforcing the jurisdiction of an urban government against al possible challenge from within or without. In the process they extended the argument for legitimacy from the community of citizens to any territorial power, including a principality, and ratified the sovereign jurisdiction of signori on the grounds of popular election and de facto sovereignty and/or imperial ratificationY; Because jurists' arguments es­ tablished the full sovereignty of all · states, and hence tended more toward parity than hierarchy, the various Italian powers were better able than their forebears to meet in relative symetry: republic of Florence with marquis of Este, duke of Milan with Sienese oligarchs, lords of Urbino with the pope. But with the rise of signor� the basis for the city-state's government changed almost beyond recognition. It is true that insofar as most signori did not radically change municipal constitutions, but simply exerted their wills through extant institutions and scrupulously obtained ratification of authority from municipal councils, the city-state itself was very much alive. Still, the lord appointed officials and judges, proposed laws, issued mandates, and made war largely without recourse to local citizens or municipal agencies. When the lord managed to have his authority made hereditary, as usually happened, dynastic succession made the ratification of heirs a formality. The next step came when the siinori, especially of northern Italy, regularized their positions by obtaining an imperial vicariate. They thereby gained an authority independent of and superior to that granted by the city-state, which allowed in municipal them to dispense with the restrictions on personal power constitutions and which made those constitutions hollow. In the case of the republics that did not pass under signori, the case is much the same: internal constriction of the power base promoted efficiency in external relations but equally brought an end to the characteristic city-state. In Florence, the failure of the Ciompi revolt in 13 78 strengthened a narrow oligarchy, increasingly self-conscious and hostile to penetration from below, which held a de facto monopoly of municipal power. Corporate subgroups, especially the guilds and partes, which had vitiated the solidarity of earlier 16. Joseph Canning, The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1987), esp. 15, 1 7, 209-13, 221-27.

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governments, retained considerable economic and ceremonial prestige but ceased to challenge for overall superiority,17 Internal frictions might still be acute, such as those between the Albizzi and the Medici, but they took place between factions of a compact patriciate rather than between fundamentally diverse groupings. After 1434 the direCtion of external policy lay increasingly with the Medici, a fact that goes far in explaining Florence's relatively steady course for the remainder of the century. Though the Venetian republic had been firmly aristocratic since the closing of municipal councils from 1297 to 1323, there too power became concentrated in fewer hands. The Great Council of all nobles progressively lost executive and to some extent legislative power to the smaler and more exclusive Senate, which in turn was shouldered aside by the even smaller Council of Ten. In diplomatic relations management passed to executive committees within the Senate and to smaller agencies such as the Collegio. Although technicaly responsible only for overall state security, the Council of Ten so consistently broadened the interpretation of its jurisdiction that by the mid-fifteenth century it ased supervisory control over day-to-day operations, including embassies, and maintained a network of informants. Taking decisions out of the fractious and raucous Great Council already made policy judgment more secure and consistent; relocating management in elite agencies gave Venice an unrivaled reputation for diplomatic efficiency. In their relations with other states Florence and Venice made extensive use of modes of self-presentation that repeated and reinforced the topo; of the city-state. Florence's civic humanists sought allies among the smaller powers by stressing the city's inheritance of the Roman republican traditions of free­ dom, rule by law, and citizen participation in government. Venetian apologists built up the myth of their city's mixed constitution, balancing elements of democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy in a stable and just regime. Both ideologies were essentially conservative, designed to remind onlookers of the republics' continuity from venerated city-states of the past. Both were effective in the short term: Giangaleazzo Visconti once remarked that the pen of Florence's chancellor was worth a thousand horsemen. But in the long run neither Florence nor Venice could pretend substantial continuity from bygone'city-states. The Venetian myth of a mixed constitution was powerful as myth but lacked practical resonance when observers noted that, with the closing of the aristocracy and the downgrading of the doge, both the democratic and the monarchic elements had ceased to matter.1B Venetian nobles, at least, accepted the new state of afairs, and in 1423 they

17. John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensu ira Florentine Electoral Politics, 1 280(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982) 263-300; on the decline of the Pane Guelfa se Gene Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaisance Flormce (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1977) 72-75, 314-15. 18. A number of writers stres, or argued against, a finnly aristocratic republic: Angelo Ventura, "Scrittori politici e scritture di governa," in Sroria della cultura veneta, III, 3 (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1981) 537-42; Franco Gaeta, " L'idea eli Venezia," ibid., 583-95. 1400

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abolished the general assembly of citizens and changed the name of their polity from commune to dominium. In Florence the republican fa�ade became even more brittle with the ascendancy of the Medici. From the time of Cosimo onward, arriving ambassadors went straight to the Medici palace for serious discussion, then proceeded to the communal palace for formalities; the Milanese ambassador Nicodemo da Pontremoli actually lived in the Medici palace.19 Well known is the flight of Lorenzo de' Medici to Naples in 1479, to resolve personally a disastrous war. The Florentine people as a whole, whatever the city's constitution, were hardly self-governing. Civic humanism, one of the city-states' great contributions to political thought, actually enjoyed an ephemeral success in practical diplomacy. As internal constitutions changed, so too did the external physiognomy of Italian polities - with a similar impact on diplomatic relations. The char­ acteristic binary city-state of urban core and surrounding contado gave way to great regional conglomerates. The papacy had been enforcing its ancient claims to central Italy for several centuries, notably with the reconquests of Cardinal Albornoz in the fourteenth century. Florence and Milan steadily annexed their neighbors from the thirteenth century onward, with bursts of conquest in the later fourteenth century. The Venetian maritime vocation delayed serious mainland expansion until 1404; but within a quarter-century the republic controlled the hinterland as far west as Bergamo and Crema. By the mid-fifteenth century five major states - Naples, the papacy, Florence, Venice, and Milan - remained in relative balance, all dedicated to the preser­ vation of a few small buffers such as Siena, Mantua, and Ferrara. Consolidation gave impetus to a more coherent diplomacy; the establishment of territorial states simplified the map, eliminated a congerie offractious rivals, and produced a stalemate between the greater powers, which rewarded discussion rather than aggression. In a related development, the conduct of warfare contributed signifi­ cantly to the growing recourse to diplomacy as a preferred agency to regufate external relations. Territorial powers needed larger and more skilled forces than the capital city could supply, yet they could not truSt" the militias of the cities they had subjected. They also enjoyed great revenues from their new subjects. Understandably they turned to mercenary captains (condottieri) and hired troops to build up vast, semipermanent armies. But condottieri served the highest bidder; when any one power seemed likely to achieve superiority, rivals could simply hire away its captains and their troops. While the canard that Italian wars were bloodless has been put to rest, it remains the case that military advantage was generally narrow, which promoted a balance of power and a negotiated settlement.20 The outcome of a war generally rested upon

19. Gene Brucker, Renaisance Florence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) 259-60. 20. Michael Mallet Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaisance Italy (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1974) 196-98, 242.

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the subsequent bargaining for peace. Typical was Florence, whose army was usually weak but whose able diplomats often caried the day. Diplomacy was a beneficiary of the rise of territorial states; one of the victims was the city-state that had created diplomacy. The urban commune itself did not cease to exist; territorial states were technically composed of free city-states under the general sway of a regional superior. Subject cities such as Arezzo, Verona, and Pavia called themselves civitates and even republics and retained such crucial attributes of autonomy as local citizenship, legislative authority, and criminal jurisdiction. Their relations with superiors such as Florence, Venice, and Milan were regulated by formal treaties (paaa or conventiones), which followed the formulas of bilateral negotiations between independent parties. But overall loss of independence removed one of the defining qualities of the early medieval city-state, and the redistribution of power away from the periphery to the center left no real doubt that the effective self-government of the citizenry had been eradicated. Superiors in­ variably held an open-ended arbitrium that authorized the imposition of citi­ zens upon subjects, the imposition of new taxes, the conscription and gari­ soning of troops and auxiliaries, the imposition of veto of local law, the appointment of governors, the hearing of appeals, and the exercise of primary jurisdiction. In most cases (Florence is the exception) the capital did not extend its citizenship to new subjects and did not allow them to ocpy high public office.l1 Superiors alone conducted foreign policy. Subject communes, in short, retained only such autonomy as the central power chose to delegate. That autonomy might be generous in peacetime, but in times of crisis the community of citizens was reduced to insignificance. Certainly an old definition of the civitas, as urban center possessed of jurisdiction in the contado, became meaningless as subject cities retained only lower administrative powers in their hinterlands. Here too Florence and Venice claimed substantial continuity with the traditional city-state, and in vain. Civic humanists and mythmakers spoke of a republican vocation for freedom, almost in the Periclean style, and offered protectorates to those in danger of faling under tyrany. But Florence was one of the earliest of the regional powers, and Venice was the most aggressive of the Quattrocento. Invocation of republican liberties b ecame logically un­ tenable when the two powers demonstrated a clearly expansive vocation. They professed intentions to save helpless cities from tyranny but did not restore local rights. Indeed, Florence and Venice were behaving exactly like the signori they decried, a fact noted with increasing success by critics.u

21. For Florence se Julius Kirshner, "Paolo de Castro on aves ex prillikgio: A Contro­ versy over the Legal Qualificacions for Public Office in Early Fiftenth Century Florence," in Renais Stl in Honor of Hans Baron (Florence: Sansoni, 1971) 229-30, 234; for Venice se James S. Grubb, Firstborn of Vmice: VicerlZ/l in the Early Renaisna State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Pres, 1988) 173-75. 22. Nicolai Rubinstein, "Italian reactions to Terrakn expansion in the 6ftnth cen­ tury," in Renaisance Venice, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Faber and Faber, 1973) 197-217; Gaeta,

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D I PLOMACY I N TH E TE RRITORIAL STATE

By the middle of the fifteenth century, as Garrett Mattingly pointed out in a classic survey, diplomatic institutions had acquired a range and sophistication that approach those of the contemporary world.1J Certainly they were more efficient than those of two centuries earlier. Careful and formalized distinction between legates, ambassadors, and plenipotentiaries, for example, clarified the parameters of negotiations. Letters of credential and commissions spelling out the powers of emissaries reinforced the authority of diplomatic agents. Chanceries, stafed by increasingly well-trained humanists and legal specialists, contributed to greater continuity and sophistication. As embassies became permanent and ambassadors became resident, a diplomacy of constant con­ sultation replaced one of crisis intervention. Formal reports (relaziont) from ambassadors to municipal councils systematized communication between governments and their agents.14 Jn consequence alliances became more stable, constructed on the basis of long-term mutual interest rather than contingent expediency, which in turn promoted the idea of a formal balance of power. The great Peace of Lodi in 1454, ending a confused half-century of war among Milan, Venice, and Florence, was a conscious attempt by the great powers to regulate the external afairs of all the peninsula's powers. Any state thereafter attempting to upset that formalized stability faced the concerted opposition of the others. The system worked; with a few minor exceptions Venice was the persistent offender - Italy enjoyed a relatively calm four decades. On the other hand, the triumph of diplomacy was accompanied by the progressive erosion of the broad consensus that had characterized the city­ states of the past. The signori, most notably, coUld dispense with those rules and procedures which had provided Italian states with a common ground for external relations. Signori, were, in effect, above both local statute and ius commune and could rule when they chose by arbitrary decree. Their relations with other states were dictated by personal will rather than the careful etiquete of diplomacy or the strictures of a ius commune-bas ed int�rnational law. Most signor;, it is true, continued to operate by time-honored procedures. The foreign policy of the single ruler usually did not differ greatly in method from that of the broadly based city-state. Still, the signor; had die potential to pur­ sue an unconstrained foreign policy. Several of the more aggressive and un­ principled exercised that option. Giangaleazo Visconti, most famously, rose to power by murdering his uncle, titular ruler of Milan, then quickly asserted

"Idea di Venezia," ch. 2; idem, "Storiografia, coscienza nazionale e politica culturale nella Venezia del rinascimento," in Storia della CII".ra veneta, II, 1 (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1980), esp. H . 23. Mattingly, Renaistma Diplomacy, lS. 24. On resident ambasdors, se Mattingly, Renaistma Diplomacy, chs. 7, 10-1 1; Queller, Office of Ambasador, 82-84; on re/azioni se idem, "The Development of Ambas­ dorial Relazioni," in Renais Venice, cit., 174-96; Ventura, "Scrittori politici," 553-60.

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61 5

his authority over the remnants of the Milanese commune. He legalized his position with the purchase of an imperial dukedom. Aspiring (it would seem) to dominion over al of Italy, Giangaleazzo proved utterly indifferent to the sovereignty of neighbors and the constrictions of treaties. Of the few city-states that did not fall under the sway of signori, Venice too abandoned much of the common ground it had once shared with Italian states. Specificaly, the republic's managers gradually opted out of a governance based upon the ius comune. The emergent myth, which traced the city's origins and rise to glory, specified that the city had never been subject to eastern or western empires, hence had never used imperial law. Jurists on the Italian mainland actually endorsed Venice's exceptional status, noting that its ius proprium was utterly diferent in substance and procedure from that of its Italian counterparts.1S It is true that Venetian peculiarity was somewhat muted in everyday diplomacy; the city did hire jurists as consultants, and certainly Venice was a leading force in regularizing diplomatic practice. Nonetheless the Venetians' strident assertion of an idiosyncratic polity was an announcement that Venice did not intend to play by conventional rules. No less than signor� Venice claimed the right to manage foreign relations according to its internal logical rather than the codes of others. As a major player in Italy's afairs the Venetian republic could not be ignored, but as a self-styled alien it could never be fully trusted. Venice's unabashed expansionism thr,oughout the fif­ teenth century only reinforced prevailing unease until, in the great League of Cambrai of 1508-09, all Italian states (together with Spain, France, and the empire) combined to strip Venice of its mainland state. To a considerable extent the rise of the territorial state also eroded that common ground. Regional polities were certainly strong enough to break the old higher allegiances that had bound city-states from across the peninsula. The popes were nearly impptent in Italy during the Babylonian Captivity in Avignon and subsequent schism. If Henry VI could throw all of Italy into turmoil during his sojourn in 1310-13, his impetial successors were important only for providing welcome fanfare and ratifying de facto aristocrats. In addition, the territorial states blocked the widespread circulation of jurists and judges who had earlier given Italy a common culture of legislation and interpretation. Students were forbidden to attend university outside the do­ minion; while study of the legal profession is not advanced, there is the strong impression that professors no longer moved readily from university to univer­ sity. Podestas were appointed from among the courtiers of the capital, not from a peninsula-wide pool of experts. Diplomacy itself may not have sufered from the regionalization of jurisprudence, but certainly the relative harmoni-

25. Lamberto Pansolli, La gnarchia delle {anti di diritto nella legislazione medievale veneziano (Milan: Giuffre, 1970), esp. ch. VI; Giorgio Zordan, L'ordinamento gilnidko veneziano (Padua: CLEUP, 1980); Aldo Mazacane, "1.0 &tato e it dominio nei giuristi veneti in Storia della cultJ4ra veneta, II, 1 (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, durante il 'secolo della 1979) chs. 1 -9.

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zation of governments characteristic of the fourteenth century had ended by the fifteenth. However generous the definition of city-state, however much constitu­ tions preserved on paper systems of broadly based self-government, the Ital­ ian civitas was a shadow by 1450 and a memory by 1 530. Few Italians bothered to maintain the polite fictions of local urban autonomy or regional federations; Venice openly referred to its domain as an imperium. Nor was there respect for the integrity of the polities that had escaped annexation into regional combines. Diplomatic pressures for a balance of powers could not survive the aggressions of the greater states. Venice pushed to the south, with an open attempt in the 1480s to take over Ferrara. Though the primary objective was thwarted by the concerted opposition of the greater powers, Venice still captured the rich zone of the Polesine. A subsequent takeover of Rimini and several cities along the Adriatic coast announced a program entirely at odds with the prevailing balance of power. At the same time the popes, emerging from weakness, revived ancient claims to direct governance of cities such as Bologna and Perugia. Dynastically ambitious popes of the later fifteenth century, the Borgias in particular, carved out principalities for their offspring and thereby upset the generally favored vacuum of power in the Romagna. Foreign powers too had never abandoned ancient claims. The French still harbored pretensions to the throne of Naples, from which they had been pushed in the thirteenth century, and they aspired to control of Milan by virtue of a princess's marriage to a Visconti in the early fifteenth century. Imperial ambitions remained those of Frederick II in the thirteenth century, dormant during the debility of the early Hapsburgs but powerfully revived with the accession of the great Maximilian. More to the point, expansion­ minded Italian powers, knowing they could not gain the consent of their neighbors to schemes of conquest, were prepared to encourage foreigners in exchange for military support. Venice flirted with a French alliance during the war for Ferrara. Ludovico Sforza, universally repudiated in Italy for his attempt to usurp the Milanese throne, successfuly sought French assiStance; the French answered his invitation by conquering Milan for themselves and launching a temporarily successful invasion of Naples. The Aragonese, rulers of Naples countered with closer ties to their Spanish cousins. In 1509 a German army swept down to avenge ancient Venetian usurpation. The Swiss, imported as mercenary allies, staked out a claim in Lombardy. Soon the armies of much of Europe were marching across the Italian peninsula. By the time the dust settled, around 1530, the Hapsburgs were supreme in Naples and Milan, and dominant in Rome and Florence. As diplomacy had helped city-states resist foreigners in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, now diplomacy returned foreigners to domination. Principalities were the norm. Save for Siena (des­ tined to fall within a generation) and oligarchic Lucca and Venice, self­ government was extinct.

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The long travail of the Italian city-state did leave an enduring legacy. External relations in particular demanded a workable theory of the sover­ eignty of the city-state, in relation both to internal particularism and to outside competitors. That theory, drawn from the complete repertoire of the classical tradition, but especially from Roman law, both articulated and con­ ditioned prevailing definitions of the civitas. The need for legitimacy thus led to extraordinary self-consciousness in the movement between actuality and theory and produced a thorough and attractive body of apologetics. The republican theory of the city-state, above all, has exercised a fascination on subsequent generations out of proportion to the actual importance of the republican genre in medieval Italy.!' Because the basis for external relations was so thoroughly grounded in a higher (and older) principle, it could be distinguished from the city-state that had produced it. Thus could diplomatic discourse survive the demise of the city-state, and the practice of medieval diplomacy could prefigure its modern counterpart.

26. Giorgio Chittolini, "A1cune considerazioni sulla storia politico-istiruzionale del tardo Annali dell'Istituto italo germanico in Trento, II Medioevo: aile origini degli 'stati (1976) 401-3.

Commentary

HARTMUT GALSTERER

Athens and Rome with Florence and Venice one compares entities that had far surpassed the stage one can call "Stadtstaat," "city­ state, " or however one prefers to define this construct.1 They had sur­ passed it in such a way that quantitative differences had given way to a change of quality. In the cases of Florence and Venice this is quite obvious because we have the archives and the local histories of dozens of other Italian city-states and may compare social and political constitutions, spatial organi­ zation, and so on; but with regard to Athens and Rome the modern historian is in a much less fortunate position. For both there is ample documentation in the sources, but the cities one might call of second rank - like Argos and Corinth, Tusculum or Capua - are very much in the shadow, and with even smaller cities our ignorance becomes realy distressing. While there exist histories of medieval cities like Treviso and Arezzo, there are none that are worth the name of "history," for instance, for Greek Panopeus in Phocis or Roman Tarvisium - which means that our two ancient specimens may or may not be singular cases among all other Greek and Roman cities. One other, more general, reflection may be added: the Athenians were the first to invent and to try out administration on a large scale by a city-state. There were no Athenians before the Athenians, as Christian Meier once remarked, but with them the European tradition started.2 The Romans, of course, knew Greek history and used the failure of the Athenian democratic experience to justify their own aristocratic way of public administration. Later, the politicians and citizens of the Italian communes knew Roman history - Machiavelli was not the only one to have read Livy - and, via Roman 'authors, Greek history.3 So the experience of the past was always

I

N COMPARING

1. There is no ancient term equivalent to the English "city-state." The Greks called it simply "polis" (but d. W. Gawantka, Dk sogenamate Polis: Entstehung, Geschichts lind Kritilt t:Ier modemen althistorischen Gn",dbegr "t:Ier griechische 514t, " "die griechische 514tside "die Polis" [Stuttgart, 1985)). In Latin neither civitas nor one of the more specialized terms like urbs, colonia, or municipium is equivalent. 2. Cf. now the stimulating treatment of O . Muray, "Cities of Reason," Arch. ENrop. Social. 28 (1985) 325-346. 3. Cf. the contribution of Alison Brown in this volume. »

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present to some extent; it was part of the ideology of Venice that the politics of the Serenissima was inspired by the example of the Roman senate, and Florence chose, at least sometimes, to refer to the democratic strands in Roman history, as it saw them. So we compare, after al, not pure, unadulter­ ated examples, but one pure and several mixed ones, and that may make a difference in some fields. I would like to begin with the chapter by Kurt Raaub, which not only gives a very good introduction to the territorial problems and questions of city-states but also explores far more widely the internal politics of Athens and Rome. I wonder whether for medievalist scholars the definition of the city-state as Raaub gives it seems sufficient, that is, that the city-state is "a community of persons, a community of place or territory, and a community that had its own laws and was able to administer itself."4 I concur with this definition. "Community of persons" is well known: not the state of Athens or that of Rome, but hoi Athenaioi and senatus populusque Romanus. " Com­ munity of place or territory" is obvious, too, and underlined by Giorgio Chittolini's chapter, although there were Greek and Roman cities without territory; that means their territory had been given - after a defeat - to a neighboring town, and if they wanted to work their fields they had to pay rent. But populations could also decide to leave their ancestral lands and emigrate, as the Phocaeans did in the mid-sixth century and as the Romans considered doing after Rome's destruction by the Gauls; although they planned to move just a few miles, to recently captured Veii, that does not make much of a difference. The populus Volsiniensis or hoi Phokaioi remained themselves even when they emigrated. Non est in parietibus res publica, as Carmine Ampolo remarked, citing Pompey in his commentary earlier in this volume. The third part of Raaflaub's definition is the most important: that the city-state had its "own laws and the ability to administer itself," which implies having one's own magistrates.s No city could survive for long without its own administration, with the exception of some borderline cases I will come b"a.ck to immediately - cities within Rome's Italian territory. " Community of persons" is important for medieval communes too, less so perhaps for Venice but probably more so for communities organized on less strictly aristocratic lines. As for "community of territory, " the Italian city seeIl}S to have survived the Dark Ages more as a territorial than as a community-centered entity - as Chittolini pointed out - and one of the important characteristics of almost all medieval and later communes, namely that they constituted a bishopric, added one more territorial aspect. The third part of the definition given 4. In classical German political theory (made somewhat obsolete by modem develop­ ments) the constituent parts of a state were Staatsvollr. Statsgebiet, and Staatsrecht. 5. This touches on the thorny problem of the means necesry to preserve a city's identity if its altiriti was restricted more and more by a dominant power. Differences between the cities' "own laws" gradualy decreased among the Athenian allies and the Roman ,,. Very often the feelings of hatred or competition among neighbors (for example, Pompeii and Nuceria or Vienna and Lyon) was one of these means.

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621

earlier, concerning legal and administrative autonomy, strangely seems to play a lesser role. If I rightly understand what medievalists say, the proper laws of each city tended to become increasingly more uniform, due in part to the beging of some sort of supracommunal jurisprudence (the work of people like Bartolo and his successors), producing a ius commune, and in part to the achievements of foreign magistrates who were invited regularly and for short terms to serve in the position of podesta, gonfaloniere, and so on, a measure not unheard of but not used regularly in antiquity. There are a few points I would like to add to Raaflaub's definition, and I think medievalists would agree. There may have been cities without an urban center - Raaub called our attention to the case of Panopeus (probably saved from oblivion just by Pausanias' disparaging remarks) - as there were cities with two centers, but in common parlance one expected a city-state, polis or civitas, to have a center with temples, a city hall, and a theater, as in medieval times you expected a town to have walls and a cathedral; both theater and cathedral served as an expression of the city's wealth and impor­ tance and had, if possible, to be larger and more beautiful than those in any other town of the neighborhood. The religious aspect of the city seems impor­ tant too. Just as medieval towns had their patron saints, so was Athens the city of Athena, and Rome could conquer Veii only after persuading the patron deity of that city to go over to the Roman side. And just as in later times there were bishoprics in partibus infidelium, that is, cities having only one citizen, the bishop, so to there were in the surroundings of Rome cities like Lavinium and Cabum that existed only to give priestly titles - and local citizenship - to prominent Romans. Moving on to the questions concerning the town-country relationship, I wil try to diferentiate between (a) the hinterland of the city, its territory or contado; (b) the empire a city might have acquired, as was the case with Athens or Florence; and (c) the outside world with which one might have diplomatic relations or - more often - war. TH E TERRITO RY OF T H E CITY

This was land, directly supervised by the town's magistrates, whose inhabitants in antiquity mostly enjoyed equal rights with the town dwellers: they all were, for example, Athenaioi or cwes Romani. For most poleis in Greece and many towns in Italy this posed no problems because the territory was so small that it was more or less a backyard to the city, that is, town dwellers and country dwellers (maybe one thousand altogether) were living in the same village (d. the remarks on citizen numbers in Greek poleis in David Whitehead's contri­ bution to this volume). The more successful states slowly conquered the neighboring communities and absorbed them in a process the Greeks called synoikismos. It meant that the conquered community ceased to exist; its inhabitants - if they had survived the catastrophe and had not been enslaved - were taken to the victorious town and added to its population: henceforth,

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they literally lived together with the victors. This procedure ocurred even in the Middle Ages. But this type of annexation served its purpose only for a restricted area. In Athens, which according to legend was born out of such an act of synoikismos instituted by Theseus, there had always been some kind of politi­ cal life in the local communities of Attica, that is, outside the city proper, and in the Cleisthenic constitution the demes, mostly ancient villages and boroughs, played a very important part. Rome dissolved the community of Veii in 396 B.C. to absorb its territory and redistribute it to its own citizens, and for totally different reasons put an end to Capua's communal life in the Second Punic War. But already in the third century B.C. Rome began to establish ­ or to tolerate - some sort of communal life and self-government on its territory that by then had reached enormous dimensions; this movement gained strength in the second century and ended with reducing the ager Romanus proper to a small zone of horti and villae around Rome. EMP I RE BUI LD I NG

Raaflaub very righdy underlines the fact that only few city-states in antiquity were able to proceed this far. Those that could do so had, as a necessary prerequisite, succeeded in building up a large territory. In order to feed the larger populace resulting from such expansion, those cities had to conquer other cities and make them supply grain, pay taxes, and contribute their resources in stil other wars. The question of why city-states waged wars probably would have seemed naive to most Greeks, Romans, and even Italians of the Middle Ages and afterwards. War was part of the natural order of things, and those who were not on the losing side reaped benefits, such as pay for military service and receiving a share of the booty. But, most of al and for most of the city-states taking part in the game of empire building, the benefits came with the ensuing peace: the administration of an empire offered � the victorious many opportunities to gain wealth and power. Raaflaub put forth the interesting suggestion that the Athenians learned from the Persians how "to milk their cows"; I rather doubt whether they needed much learning, but already the political treatise usually cited under the name of the Old Oligarch and written around the beging of the Peloponnesian' War states that the arche of Athens was much to the benefit of the Athenian citizens, and most of all the poorer ones; the pertinent numbers are given by Aristode one century later; he says that out of approximately 30,000 citizens each year almost 15,000 Athenians served in one or another paid function, not including the rowers of the navy, 170 per trireme, who were paid too. The common Athenian citizen would have understood perfecdy the sense of a Florentine provvedimento of 26 November 1495, which says that the administration of Florence's dominions was to "dare benefitio universalmente a tutti e cittadini della nostra repubblica"; and the poorer Venetian nobles who lived off the posts of rettore, podesta, and so on, in the cities of the Terraferma would have

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623

agreed too. Rome was an exceptional case in that it did not try to exploit its Italian confederates financially in the interest of its citizens.' They paid with soldiers - but this is not at issue here. There were other benefits too. In San Gimignano, for instance, in the fourteenth century 80 percent of the land in the contado was owned by townspeople. One of the complaints of Athens' allies was that the privilege of Athenian citizens to buy land in allied territory (the ges enktesis) was used to an extreme degree. The same privilege to buy land in a state where one was not a citizen was contained in the Roman commercium. We do not know how much it was used - some Roman senators might buy villas in nearby Tivoli and Palestrina just in case they had to go there into exile - but we should not forget that the right of comercium was never a unilateral privilege but con­ cerned the citizens of both contracting parties. Even if, for economic reasons, few Italians may have been able to buy Roman land the mere knowledge that they were entitled to do so may have been of some importance. Thus there were important diferences between Rome and the other imperial cities - differences that seem to be reflected in the level of loyalty the reigning power could command among its subordinate states, especially in times of war. In the case of Athens, as contemporaries like the Old Oligarch recognized clearly, it was brute force that held down the members of the alliance. Athens was in a unique position in that its fleet could reach every point of the Athenian empire within the shortest time to keep down unrest. One wonders, though, whether it really was only brute force that kept the alliance alive for such a long time, but that need not detain us here. Rome did better with the members of its Italian confederacy. There were no administra­ tors, tax officials, and so on, sent by Rome into these states. In other words, the presence of Rome was not felt very much. This is true also in the field of symbols and representation: whereas the lion of Saint Mark was seen every­ where in the domain of the Serenissima (see the contribution to this volume by Patricia Fortini Brown), of Rome's domination there were few symbolic representations, and whereas the Athenian allies\vere obliged to participate in the Panathenaic procession, nothing comparable is found in Italy.' Whatever the precise reasons, in the Second Punic War, when Rome - after the defeats of the Trebia, the Trasimene Lake, and Cannae - seemed very much on the losing side, only an astonishingly smal number of its allies went over to the enemy, much to the disappointment of Hanbal, who, when shaping his strategy, perhaps had read too much Greek, that is to say Athenian, history, and had not learned enough about Rome. Whether it was only or mostly sympathy and fides with Rome that kept the allies on Rome's side is quite

6. This is true only for Roman rule in Italy (like most of what is said about Rome in this conunentary). In the provinces tribute was levied, of course, and cities were much more under the direct administration of the governor than those in Italy. 7. Here again it is in the provinces and under the empire only that the provincial cond/ia played a faindy similar role; Gaul provides a go example.

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another question, but they were not discontented enough to find it attractive to break away at their first opportunity or to exchange their current master for any other. The contrast with Athens is obvious; so is that with Venice, whose towns in the Teraferma seceded immediately when the treaty of Cambrai became known, and with Florence, where cities like Siena, Pisa, and others continued to feel smoldering resentment for a long time after they had become part of Florence's domain. WA R A N D FO REIGN PO LICY

James Grubb has reminded us that one prerequisite for a continuous foreign P9licy is internal cohesion, the development of a rudimentary raison d'etat over and above all party interests. The ancient historian immediately thinks of Athens, where at least from the time of Cleisthenes and probably much earlier, to speak in modem terms, party politics and foreign policy were so inseparable that a change of government always meant a change of orientation in foreign policy as well. Whereas the communes Grubb describes were still in a very early stage of development, in Athens it was already a symptom of decline that the citizens were no longer able to contain and to decide party differences within the city but had to have recourse to foreign support. "A losing party, expelled from the city, could easily find refuge in a neighbor and from there make war upon its enemies in the patria." This statement by Grubb easily fits the pattern of Greek staseis. Rome and Venice, of course, stand out by the degree with which they mostly succeeded in keeping foreign involvement out of party struges. Fifth columns of Hannibal in Rome or of the Pope in Venice are unheard of.· CITIZENS A N D FO REIGNE RS, I NSIDERS A N D OUTSIDERS

There are two more points to which I would briefly like to refer. One touches upon the problem that Raaflaub quite rightly emphasized: whether ana to what degree the ancient city-state was able and willing to integrate foreigners. Ancient historians like to contrast in this respect the open society of Rome with the much more closed one of Athens. In Rome single persons, aristocratic clans, and whole city populations were accepted into the civitas Romana, first from the immediate surroundings, then from more distant regions (such as the Sabines and Campanians), and finally from the entire peninsula; by contrast, Athens extended citizenship quite often to foreign kings who certainly never used it, more sparingly and as compensation for considerable merit to resident metics, and only once - and that in the desperate situation of 405 - to an entire polis, Samos.' In the few months that the Athenian empire had to live

8. The solidarity of Venice was remarked upon already by Machiaveli; d. the remarks by Cracco in this volume. 9. A juxtaposition of Roman broad-mindednes with Athenian narrownes is inappro­ priate: there were objective reasons for abhorring dual citizenship, among others the strong link between citizenship and laws.

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there was no opportunity to explore how this Athenian citizenship might afect those Samians who did not wish to emigrate to Athens, but in the end a status like the Roman citizenship sine suffragio might have emerged: "half­ citizens," belonging to an autonomous state within the larger body of hoi Athena;o;, taking part in the military obligations and enjoying the economic rights of citizens but living according to their own laws. Whatever the citizenship policy of Florence,tO that of Venice at least su­ perficialy conforms more with that of Rome, because the Serenissima quite liberally acepted outsiders into the city and did not even hesitate to give citizenship to a whole town on the Dalmatian coast, Curzola, for having successfully withstood Turkish assaults in 1571; yet that did not count for much because the people were of even less significance in Venice than they were in Rome, and the libro d'oro of the reigning nobility had been firmly closed since 1297 and 1 323, to be opened only for politicaly innocuous foreign potentates, and again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when Venice was in dire financial need and had to sell this privilege. One final point: in his chapter, Walter Eder uses the image of concentric rings to show where membership of the ruling class ended. I would like to use this metaphor in speaking about the border lines between insiders and outsid­ ers, citizens and noncitizens. We are acstomed to the modern concept of the state developed since the seventeenth century and characterized by the famous formula "un roi, une lo� une foi," a state containing no corporations in their own right - such as cities, universities, guilds, and so on - and sharing a well-defined border with the next state. That this concept has already been superseded by even more modern supranational institutions need not detain us here. States in the sense of the nineteenth century can be depicted on a map with specific colors - pink for British, and so on - and all look very neat. Something similar might be said of Athens. Attica, that is, Athens and its immediate territory, was unified to a remarkable extent even if the local entities (demo;) had some functions in self-administration - for instance, the keeping of citizens' registers - and some of the larger demoi, like Marathon and Eleusis, kept to a certain degree their own traditions. Even the Athenian empire (arche) with some hundred subject poleis, was increasingly unified. Athens imposed weight and coin standards upon its subjects, forced quite a lot of them to conform with Athenian democratic institutions, and made them acknowledge Athens' dominance by participating in the grand Panathenaic festival. Pisthetairos, the Athens-weary hero of Aristophanes' Birds, is hard put to drive away from "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land" all the decree sellers thriving on that process of unification. In short, symchoi of Athens were well on their way to becoming Athenians, but only second,lass taxpaying Athenians with­ out political rights. That means, to stay within the metaphor, the boundary

10. According to Giorgio Chittolini's contribution in this volume, Florence se to have conformed more to the Athenian model.

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between insiders and outsiders was moved more and more to the boundaries of the arche. By contrast, although Rome shared with Athens the duality separating Rome. and the citizen territory from the allies, the reality was much less neat and tidy. To begin with, there were many more distinctions within the citizen­ ship itself. When Tusculum became part of the Roman state in the fourth century B.C., it retained much of its municipal administration, which was probably quite independent of the decisions of the Roman people of whom the Tusculani formed a part. In the Law of the Twelve Tables there are traces of separate organizations in the heart of the Roman territory, and later we know of laws that were leges populi Romani but seem to have been valid only for part of the Romans . The boundary line between citizens and noncitizens was blurred too. On one side were citizens who served in the legions but had no political rights; instead they retained their own separate state with their own magistrates and laws, and spoke their separate language: Oscan in Capua and Etruscan in Caere. On the other side were the Latini, technically foreign­ ers who had their own states and their own troops but who spoke the same language as the Romans and who even participated in Roman assemblies, that is, had limited citizen rights. Rome did not try to force upon its allies its own laws and institutions, but even so al of Italy gradually was Romanized. Where does one put, in this case, the border between insiders and outsid­ ers, between citizens and noncitizens? Instead of clear solutions, as the Athenians liked them, we find shady zones of "a bit yes, but also a bit no," and that made integration much easier in Rome. I am under the impression that neither Florence nor Venice had any strong desire to impose its laws and ordinances upon its subjects in a systematic way even if it sent judges into the cities to decide cases.ll The line between insiders and outsiders, between citi­ zens and foreigners, seems to have been in both cities the border between the immediate territory and the city. Comparing our four cities did not produce sharp divisions in the sense that the ancient ones always stood on one side and the medieval ones on the other. Neither is there a division along ideological orientations, grouping the two oligarchic cities here and Athens plus Florence there. So there is no historia doeet, but if comparison sharpens our eyes for different solutions instead of analogous preconditions and vice versa, I think there is much to be gained from such an approach.

1 1 . In his chapter, Grubb correctly reminds us, however, that "subject conununes retained only such autonomy as the central power chose to delegau:. That autonomy might be generous in peacetime, but in times of crisis the conununity of citizens was reduced to insignifi.

cance.D

•

.

Commentary

ANTH ONY MOLHO

N O

mE FACE OF IT, the three topics of territory, foreign relations, and empire comprise one unit, a tripartite pendant to two other sections of this book, that on citizens and political classes and the other on politics and conflicts. Undeniably, these two parts deal with questions inherent to the internal, or domestic, politics of city-states. In our case, the very joining of the category "territory" to " foreign relations" and "empire" suggests that what concerns us is not the internal histories of these polities but their rela­ tionships with entities external to themselves. We have little difficulty under­ standing what we mean by the expression foreign relations: the pacific or bel­ licose dealings between autonomous and juridically equal political entities. Diplomatic negotiations, mediation of disputes, ambassadorial missions, trea­ ties, international law, and, of course, war: these are the ingredients of this topic, each offering links between the seemingly well circumscribed internal political world of a state and the complex and often unpredictable political realities that are external to it. On the face of it, empire presents a comparable analytical category. The fifth variant contained in the Oxford Shorter English Dictionary is probably the simplest and most clear-cut definition relevant to our purposes: "An extensive territory (esp. an .!lggregate of many states) ruled over by an emperor or by a sovereign state." This definition conveys the same set of images that the term foreign relations does: a government (the sovereign state referred to in the dictionary) dealing with the outside world, not in terms of juridical parity, but rather in a hierarchical relationship between a juridically and politically superior government and a series of subordinate governments that, either willingly or by comparison, have acknowledged their status as inferiors. In this internaVexternal antinomy, where does the category of territory fit? In domestic or in foreign affairs? Here, the earlier symetrical distinction between categories internal to the state itself and those outside it becomes blurred. Territory encompasses realms that are both internal and external to the state itself. Indeed, definitions la and 1 b of the term territory in the Ox­ ford Shorter Dictionary, underscore this ambivalence: la: "The land or district lying around a city or town and under its jurisdiction." Ib: "The land or

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country belonging to or under the dominion of a ruler or state." The second definition points in the direction of external relations, suggesting almost an equivalence between territory and empire. The first, by underlying the con­ tiguous nature of the city and of its territory, suggests much closer links between the two, even their interpenetration. This same ambiguity seems to be underscored in the definition of the term teritorium contained in the Di­ gest: Territorium est universitas agrorum infra con(mes cuiusque civitatis.1 It is understandable, perhaps, if a student of medieval Italian history thinks of the topics contained in the tide of this section by casting his thoughts upon the antinomy internaVexternal politics. The distinction, especially in juridical terms, between the city and the territory which surrounds it - the urbs and its contado - is fundamental to the histories of medieval city-states. Political, judicial, and institutional history; the rights of citizenship; fiscal relations between the hegemonic central authority and the subordinate, once independent powers in the periphery of the state; economic and monetary policies; and many more hinge on the distinction between the cina and the contado. Their very physical appearance - walls and fortifications that surrounded them and gates through which, at prescribed times and only by the consent of those who governed each city, outsiders could enter the urban space - at once defined these cities topographically and delimited them in space, underscoring in the process the separation of each cina from its sur­ roundings. In reality, the juridical distinctions fashioned by the time of the early fifteenth century were even more precise. In Tuscany, for example, by the 1420s, one distinguished the city not only from its surrounding territory (its contado), but also from the distreto, subject cities each of which, normally, maintained control over its own contado. Thus, Florence had its contado, comprising vast tracts of rural areas and some towns, such as Prato and San Gimignano, which it subjected to a particular fiscal and judicial regime. Larger towns, among them Pistoia, Areuo, and Pisa, were incorporated Into the Florentine distreto, with each, at least during the initial stages of their incorporation into the Florentine domain, allowed to' administer its own contado, while concurrendy conferring upon its own citizens local political and fiscal privileges. A few areas, generaly mountaintop castra and hamlets in the borderlands between Tuscany and the Romagna, mosdy in the area of the Casentino, enjoyed a particular status, which, in a sense, acknowledged the resilience of the power and the geographic isolation of the local feudal lords, brought rather late and under terms more favorable to themselves, within the realm of Florentine jurisdiction. But these were exceptions, and by the four­ teenth century, the overwhelming majority of people living outside the city of Florence but in the Florentine dominium were classified as being either contadini or distretli. Throughout the period that interests us (the thirteenth through

1. Cited in Alberto Grohman, Citra e tenitorio ITa mediowo ed eta moclerna (Pe1Ngia, stICe. XIII-XVI), 2 vols. (Perugia: Volumnia Editrice, 1981) n, 638.

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the middle of the sixteenth centuries), residents of the contado and citizens of subject cities could obtain Florentine citizenship and al the perquisites attached to that status only with great difculty and under unusual circurnstances.2 When dealing with the history of the relations between the dominant city of Florence and the vast tracts of Tuscany that had been brought under its control, the antinomy with which I began seems fitting. The Florentine institutional organization of the Tuscan territory and of the region's urban centers incorporated in its realm was not necessarily typical of that prevalent in other Italian regions. Yet, the same general pattern is evident elsewhere: a legal separation between central, or dominant, city and one or more administrative categories of its lands and possessions. In Genoa, the distinction was between the city, lands subjected to the avaria, and those which continued to be governed, even into the sixteenth century, by feudal grants. In Siena, there was a diference between the contado and the terre acquistate. In Padua, before its inclusion into the Venetian state, nearly all of the subject lands and towns were incorporated into the Paduan contado, al­ though some subject communes such as Monselice, Este, and Montagnana were alowed to exercise a greater degree of autonomy. In Venice, the Serenissima had constructed a mosaic of jurisdictions and magistracies through which to govern its territories, at the center of which was the arbitrium of Venice itself, a situation that led a recent historian to comment upon the incapacitl congenita of the Venetian ruling class to assimilate within its ranks the local, provincial patriciates of the subject cities.J The point I am trying to make is simple: nearly always a key dimension of the territorial policies pursued by late medieval Italian city-states was the distinction between internal and external. But this distinction did not refer to institutions internal or external to the polity itself, at least by the standards by which we define the internal and external realms of a state's actions. The territory, whether the contado or the distreto of an Italian city-state, was considered an integral part of its imperium. Its administration was an inter­ nal matter. And, as is shown by the example' ·of Florence in the years after 1494, when Pisa regained its independence for a brief fifteen years, the integrity of the imperium would be defended at great cost. Yet, within the confines of the city-state, there prevailed a very clear sense of a distinction between what properly was internal (that which concerned the dominant city itself) and 2. Julius Kirshner, "Paolo di Castro on 'Cives ex Privilegio': A Controversy Over the Legal Qualifications for Public Office in Early Fifteth-Century Florence," Renaisance Stud­ ies in Honor of Hans Baron (Florence: Sansoni, 1971) 22 7-264. 3. Jacques Heers, Gines au XV' sieck Activiti ,conomique et problemes sociaux (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1961) 590-600, and table, 682-3; William M. Bowsky, A Medieval ltal­ ian Commune - Siena under the Nine, 1287-1355 (Berkeley, California: 1981) 6-9; J. K. Hyde, PadMa in the Age of Dante (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966) 46-49; James S. Grubb, Firstborn of Venice - Vicenu in the Early Renaisance Stau (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988); Aldo Mazcane, "Lo stato e it dominio nei giuristi veneti durante il 'secolo della terfen'" Storia della a4ltJ4ra veneta clal primo Quattrocento al coneilio di Trento (Venice: Neri Pozza, s.d.) 582. -

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what was external (what concerned the territory but not the urbs, or the cita). The labels attached to Florentine magistracies represent a particularly con­ vincing illustration of this point. Offices requiring service inside the city itself were called intrinsici, while those taking their holders outside the city, but within the boundaries of the city-state, were called estrinsici. The city, whether a large one that became the capital of an important territorial state - Florence, Venice, Milan - or a smaller one such as Vicenza under Venetian control in the fifteenth century, or Arezzo following 1384 under the control of Florence, systematically cultivated and defended its juridical and political supremacy and distinctiveness from those lands which comprised its territory. This legal separation - bearing primarily on rights of citizenship and on fiscal responsibilities - was an integral, a defining, characteristic of the late medieval Italian city-states. I maintain that this point retains its validity however one setles the much discussed question of the alleged ex­ ploitative or symbiotic relationship between city and countryside. Even Enrico Fiumi, the most ardent proponent of a symbiotic relationship, never suggested that residents of the countryside were given rights of citizenship or extended fiscal parity with inhabitants of the dominant cities. It is no accident that in the events that followed · Charles VII's invasion of Italy in 1494 many cities, once-independent civitates but later subjected to the dominium of their more powerful neighbors, revolted, reclaiming their ancient liberties. In Padua they did so, because, according to the Paduan ambassador to the German emperor, they had been subjected to "3,000 tyranni veneti."4 And in Pisa, Burgundio Leoli, speaking before the French king in 1495, complained not simply and generically of the "crudelta e avarizia" of the Florentines, but also of Pisans not having been " amessi a qualita alcuna d'uffici 0 d'amministrazioni nel dominio fiorentino."s The situation in the ancient world strikes me as very different. I do not, of course, wish to suggest that exploitation by powerful city-states of their weaker neighbors did not take place; it may even have been common. The Spartans did not need lessons from the Florentines or the Venetians on how to deal with the Messenians. The latter, had they ever had a chance, would easily have out-complained both Padovans and Pisans in their recitation of the wrongs suffered under the tyranny of their neighbors who now had become their masters. And the members of the Delian League would have had a complaint or two about the manner in which their presumed allies (their symmachoi) had come to treat them unfairly and even to exploit them. The point, rather, is another one. The very nature of the ancient city was different from that of the medieval one. It was inherent in the character of these ancient political entities to maintain relationships with the territories 4. Angelo Ventura, "n dominio di Venezia nel Quattrocento," in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations (florence: La Nuova llalia, 1979) vol. I, 178-9. S. Michael Mallett, " Pisa and Florence in the Fihenth Century: Aspects of the Period of the First florentine Domination," in Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaisance Florence (London: Faber and Faber, 1 968) 404, n. 1 .

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631

surrounding them vastly different from those cultivated by their medieval counterparts. In his chapter, Kurt Raaflaub has echoed the point Moses Finley most recently made, namely "the closely interlocked town-country unit" typical of most city-states. Finley himself, obviously drawn to powerful insights formulated by Max Weber, was perhaps even more emphatic. "Plato and Aristotle . . . took city and hinterland, town and country, together as a unit, not as distinct variables in competition or conflict." This was one of the most important elements of the ancient city that, Finley thought, entitled him to conclude that "the ancient city is a distinct and distinguishable category." , Since the Middle Ages, we have become accustomed to separating and juxtaposing the categories urban and rural, ascribing to each a distinct sphere of political action and social organization. The territorial organization in antiquity undermines this perception. Why this was so - what historical explanations one can adduce to account for this phenomenon - is a question that need not detain us. The current scholarly consensus ascribes this defining characteristic to the very origin of the polis, more particularly to the relation­ ships between what we would call the warrior and the political classes. Whatever the origins of this phenomenon, the fact remains that even a large polis such as Athens (more than 2,500 square kilometers with as many as 40,000 citizens) comprised a citizen population the majority of whom not only were landowners, but, more significantly, were residents of the countryside. The polis of Athens was not simply the city of Athens with an appendage of the countryside of Attica. Rather, the polis was the entirety of Attica itself. And Athens was not, as we might be inclined to conceive of it today, the dominant element of its city-state, as Florence dominated its contado and distretto. Ath­ ens and Attica formed an integral part of the very same polis. The same observation, it seems, was applicable not only to the vast majority of the Greek poleis, but even to Rome, at least during its republican and early imperial stages. In the context of Roman history, the term civitas carried very much the same range of significances that the word polis carried in Greek. If we momentarily return to the medieval city-states, we cannot fail but be struck by the degree to which in antiquity rights of citizenship and all the perquisites attached to that status were not extended on the basis of residence in urban or rural districts of what we, today, would call the state. The point of this digression is not necessarily to engage in systematic comparisons of the territorial policies of ancient and medieval city-states. Rather, my object is twofold: First, to establish the obvious point that the tripartite topic defined in the title of this section leads us to consider a set of

6. Moses Finley, "The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and Beyond," Comparative Studies in Society and History 1 9 (19n) 305-327, quotations on pp. 307, 309. Finley, one should add, was not particularly kind 10 historians who did not understand this basic fact. A scholar who, as recendy as 1975, observed that the Athenian polis was "a large . . . political unit - a state" in which Athens was only one of many members earned Finley's stern rebuke, for this way of putting things "simply baffles me by its incomprehension of ancient Greek institutions" (M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World [Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1983] 84, n. 38).

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questions absolutely central and internal to the histories of these city-states, and not in the least either peripheral or external to them. An exploration of the category "territory," particularly when comparing ancient and medieval city-states, underscores the key elements that distinguish the very natures of these political organisms. The second point is perhaps less readily acceptable, although I think that it flows directly from the first. Once the fundamental differences between ancient and medieval city-states become apparent - es­ pecially differences regarding the organization of territory and the relationships of urban to rural regions - comparisons between these two types of political organisms are exceedingly difficult. Without the utmost care, such compari­ sons become misleading. The trouble here, as on many other occasions, is the persistence of words, which can often be misleading, precisely because they instill a sense of false familiarity among historians who use them. This certainly appears to be the case with that complex of words used in antiquity and in the Middle Ages to refer to politics and to the political process. In Greece, the term polis, as Raaflaub reminds us, referred not so much to a geographical locale, not certainly to a set of institutions, not even necessarily to an urban formation. Rather, the key ingredient of a polis (as per the well­ known Aristotelian definition) was the existence of a community of people, with its own laws and able to administer itself. The term also possessed a moral dimension, referring to the obligation of a citizen to share the responsi­ bilities imposed upon him by virtue of his membership in the community comprising the polis. In his funeral oration at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War, Pericles (as per Thucydides) used the terms polis and politeia more than a dozen times. To an untrained philologist such as myself, it seems that almost invariably the term evoked images of the moral and political community comprising the Greek city-state. Pericles himself was chosen by the polis to deliver the oration.' Having praised the ancestors and the fathers of the present generation for their excellence, he then congratut'ated both in times his contemporaries for having rendered the polis of peace and of war.s Or else, the term or its variants refer to what we might define as the constitution of the city-state, as when Pericles praises the politeia with which Athens was able to reach its greatness (2,36,4), or when he says that the Athenian politeia did not copy the laws of others (2,37,1 ). It is difficult to make precise comparisons between the experiences of the Greek city-states and those of Rome. Scholars acknowledge the awkwardness of applying labels taken from the Greek experience to the Roman situation.' In his contribution to this volume, Timothy Cornell has shown how profoundly Greek commentators such as Polybius and Dionysius of Halicamassus misun­ derstood (whether willfully or not is unclear to me) the Roman experience 7. 8. 9.

Thucydides, Historiae, recognovit . . . Henricus Stuart Jones (Oxford, 1900), 2, 34, 6. Ibid., 2, 36, 3. Finley, Politics, 11, n. 33.

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633

and how they applied to the Roman polity the label of the Greek polis. Yet, as he also shows, by the time of Livy and Tacitus, despite the vast dimensions of the Roman Empire, and despite the anachronistic persistence of referring to the Roman Empire as a polis, the term they used was not the Latin equivalent of polis; they referred not to the civitas Romana, but rather to the

urbs Romana. If one looks to some texts of the Italian medieval period to determine the rough equivalent of the Thucydidian terminology for referring to the political process, one is struck by how the Roman imperial influence was more pervasive than the Greek one; and how, furthermore, the terms Italian writers used, drawing on a stock of words and expressions with deep roots in antiquity, nonetheless conveyed realities that were particular to the experience of the Italian communes. A very small number of examples may illustrate the point. Already in the middle of the twelfth century, Otto of Freising made his famous remark that Italy was "tota inter civitates ferme divisa." It is clear from the sentence that immediately follows that what he had in mind was urbes and not civitates in the Roman republican sense, for he observes that so unusuaJ was this habit that Italians insisted that their bishops reside in their civitates and most of the nobles had taken residence in their cities. Precisely the same point seems to be made by Remigio de' Girolami in his De bono comuni early in the fourteenth century, when he expressed himself in ways that an Athenian of Pericles's generation would most probably have had difficulty understanding. Remigio, in fact, suggested that if ever the city of Florence were destroyed, those who considered themselves citizens of that city would no longer be entitled to that name: "Qui erat civis £lorentinus per destructionem Florentie iam non est florentinus sed potius 'flerentinus'. Et si non est civis non est homo, quia homo est naturaliter animal civile secundum Philosophum."lO Whether one looks to Bonvesin de la Riva's De Magnalibus Mediolani, to Dante's own poetical evocation of his city at his great-great­ grandfather Cacciaguida's time (FiorenZ'tl dentTO de La cerchia antica, Paradiso 15,97), to Bruni's panegyric to Florence (significantly entitled Laudatio Florentinae urbis, not Florentinae civitatis), or to any other number of four­ teenth- or fifteenth-century tracts the inevitable conclusion one reaches is that medieval Italian publicists and thinkers, however tenaciously they might have clung to Greek and Roman terms, used these terms to describe political conditions vastly different from those that had prevailed in fifth century Athens and in republican Rome. This brief comparison of ancient and medieval city-states from the per­ spective of the relationship between city and territory reveals substantial differences between the two. One type established an integrated political and cultural relationship between urban centers and rural regions. The other 10. Quoted in Nicolai Rubinstein, K Marsilius of Padua and Italian Political Thought of His Time," in J. R. Hale et aI., Europe in the LAte MUldle Ages (Evanston: Northwestern Uni­ versity Pres, 1965) 55, n. 2.

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imposed a distinction between the two, creating, for its part, a rough equiva­ lence between two elements that the ancients themselves had tended to separate: territory and empire. An examination of other aspects in the administration of empires and in the conduct of foreign policies may well reveal comparable differences, themselves by-products, as it were, of the fundamentally different natures of ancient and medieval Italian city-states. A brief examination of empire reinforces this point. What were the causes underlying the acquisition of empires and what consequences did empires have on the political structures of city-states? Our four states could all be thought of as empire builders. The case for Rome does not require elaboration. At the other extreme was Florence, whose incorporation of such far-flung Tuscan cities as Cortona, Pisa, Talamone, Areno, and Poppi into its dominium was tantamount to creating a regional empire. Athens, for its part, trans­ formed its system of alliances into an empire, whose members, although not always brought under direct domination of the Athenian polis, were reduced by the strength of the Athenian navy to the status of subordinate client states. Of the four, Venice founded two empires: a naval one in the Aegean Sea; and, once the viability of that empire was threatened, a second, this one land­ based, more akin to the Florentine empire. However diferent - it has often been thought of as unique - Rome's empire seems to have had much more in common with that of Athens than with that of Venice or Florence. In the cases of both ancient city-states, one historian recently remarked upon the "extraordinary willingness of citizen militias to be conscripted and to fight year after year" in support of their city­ states' imperial policies. And the explanation he offered for "this unceasing hunger for war and conquest" was the frequency with which confiscated land in the newly acquired subject territories was used to settle citizens of the metropolis in the colonies.ll Once again, it seems evident that land - its shortage in the city-states and the importance assigned to it not for economic reasons alone, but for political and cultural ones as well - was a key elenlent in the fashioning of imperial policies in antiquity. By contrast, in medieval Italy, commercial and economic considerations loomed much larger. Of course, empires in the Italian hinterland - in the Veneto and in Tuscany - resulted in considerable investrl1ent in real property by members of the Venetian and Florentine ruling classes. Some historians have even argued that investment to have been so substantial as to have contributed directly to the loss of the economic elan and entrepreneurial spirit that had earlier characterized the cultures of Venice and Florence. Yet, it is a mistake to ascribe the acquisition of these empires to the desire to appropriate and invest in land. That investment was an unintended consequence of a policy whose initial and overriding goal had been the strengthening of the entrepreneurial and commercial bases of the Venetian and Florentine economies.

1 1 . Finley, Politics, 1 1 3-11 S.

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The Florentine case is well illustrated by the conquest of Pisa, a step that led to the construction of a government sponsored galley fleet, thought necessary for the strengthening of the economy. And the Venetian conquest of the Terraferma was meant to ensure Venetian commercial supremacy in that corner of Italy and to maintain the viability of trade routes to transalpine markets,u If the acquisition of empires was rooted in very different political and cultural impulses, it also produced diferent consequences. To a medievalist, Raaflaub's point that the existence of its empire made possible the survival of the polis of Athens is striking. "Democracy and empire . were closely linked together and depended on each other." I take this statement to mean that the more successful the Athenians were in their imperial designs, the stronger and more successful they rendered their polis. The consequences for Italian city-states were different. The old commune and empire were hardly reconcilable to each other. Most obviously, this observation was true for cities such as Vicenza, Pisa, and many others that ceased to exist as autonomous civitates following their incorporation into the empires of Florence and Venice. But even these two became, as Chittolini defines them, "dominant cities" and were greatly transformed as a consequence. The old structures of government were adapted to accommodate the demands of much larger states; the "gruppi dirigenti municipali" became "ceti dirigenti di ambito non locale"; and, most important but also perhaps ironic, the acquisition of regional empires resulted in the emergence of new economic interests focused on landholding and the consequent relative decline of the "commercial vocation" of both Florence and Venice, that is, the slow transmutation of the very economic and political essence of these two cities. By the middle of the fifteenth century, each had become a very different type of civitas from what it had been two centuries earlier. Grubb echoes precisely this conclusion: "However generous the defi­ nition of city-state, however much constitutions preserved on paper systems of broadly based self-government, the Italian ciyitas was a shadow by 1450 and a memory by 1530." The experience of ancient Rome would seem to place it closer to that of Venice and Florence, for, undeniably, the civitas of Rome was also greatly transformed as a consequence of the acquisition of the empire. These hypotheses about empire reinforce the picture that emerged in my discussion on territory. When one looks closely, the striking element in a comparison between ancient and medieval city-states is their divergences. I do not refer here simply to differences in institutional structures, or in the cadences of change over time, or what, in general, one could define as superfi.

•

12. Michael Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fiftunth Century (Oxford: Oarendon Press, 1967). Gino Luztto, Storia economica di Venezia dall' Xl al XVI secolo (Venice: Centro internazionale delle arti e del costume, 1961) 161: uSe si puo dunque ritenere me iI movente principale, a1meno dal punto di vista economico, della politica di terraferma sia stato quello di tutelare gli interessi vitali del commercio veneziano, non si puo per questo disconoscere che quella rapida conquista ha determinato una svolta decisiva nella storia di Venezia."

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cial cultural elements. Rather, what I mean is that even where similarities jump to the eye - and such similarities, surely, are not hard to find - their cultural contexts endow them with very different meanings. With this observation, I come to the last question of my discussion, the alleged continuity between ancient and medieval city-states. To raise it is to broach a controversy debated, often intensely, since the nineteenth century. Savigny, Sismondi, Biicher, Meyer, Rostovtzef, and many others have discusd this issue. In Italy, the debate between Mondolfo and Barbagallo on the nature of work in the ancient and the medieval economies introduced local variants to this discussion.13 What is striking about these discussions is the resilience of the notion that medieval cities, particularly in Italy, could be thought of as temporal extensions or institutional continuators of ancient city-states. Why has this view been so resilient? What elements have made it possible for scholars in the 1970s and 1 980s, especially some very influential medievalists, to insist on the continuity between antiquity and the Middle Ages, even after Luzzatto's criticism of Barbagallo, Biicher's attack on Meyer, which in the words of Finley "left [Meyer's] conclusions in tatters," and Lopez's gentle warning that this problem of alleged continuity was "male impostato" ? 14 Yet, Philip Jones, surely one of the most distinguished histori­ ans of medieval Italy today, has recently returned to the thesis of continuity and, as Mario Nobili has shown, made it the conceptual pivot of his interpre­ tation of late medieval and early modern Italian history.iS In a series of magisterial publications, Jones has mounted a sustained attack on what he has defined as the "myth of the bourgeoisie" in medieval Italian communes.16 The starting point of his masterly treatment of medieval Italian history is this question: Why is it that Italy, first among European economic powers in the fourteenth century, was last in the eighteenth? Wny were Italians unable to exploit their advanced position in the late Middle Ages and why did they allow themselves to be overtaken by their North European competitors?17 Seeking his answers in internal Italian developmerits, and not in those changes that frequently attract the attention of historians 13. This discussion can be followed in Finley, "The Ancient City . . . " and in Giuseppe Cambiano, II ritomo degli dntichi (Bari, 1988) chapter 4. But d. also the skeptical and wise observations of R. S. Lopez on the importance (or lack thereof) of this question: Robert S. Lopez, Intenlista S1tlla ciua medieuale, ed. Marino Berengo (Bari: Laterza, 1984) 25. 14. Finley, "The Ancient City," 316; Lopez, Intetvista, 25. 15. Mario Nobili, "L'equazione alta antica-ciltA comunale ed il 'mancato sviluppo italiano' nel saggio di Philip Jones," Societa e storia III, no. 10 (1980) 891-908. 16. P. J. Jones, "Economia e societa nell' ltalia medioevale: la legenda della borghesia," in AA. VV., Storia d'Italia, Annali I, Dal feudalesimo al cap;talismo (Torino: Einaudi, 1978) 187 372. There is some question about the degree to which Jones may have somewhat changed (or refined) his earlier position. In his "La storia economica. Dalla caduta dell' impero romano al secolo XIV," in Storia d'Italia Einaudi, vol. II (Torino, 1974) 1467·1810 (and in several of his earlier esys now colle� in Eccmomia e societa nell'Italia medioevale [Torino: Einaudi, 1980), Jones does not appear to have emphasized as sharply as he did in his essay of 1 978 his thesis on the "legenda della borghesia. " 17. Jones, "Economia e societa," Annali, 200.

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(the Italian invasions, transatlantic voyages, the rise of North European na­ tion states), Jones paints a picture of late medieval Italian economy and culture different in fundamental respects from the widely accepted view. To the claims that the dominant forces in medieval Italian communes were the urban, entrepreneurial classes, Jones has juxtaposed his conclusion that aris­ tocratic and feudal structures remained prevalent in late medieval Italian culture. Even in a "commercial Italy [Italia mercantile] land prevailed over commerce, not only in society at large, but in the very cities themselves."!1 In northern Europe, cities remained isolated from the wider feudal world that surrounded them, discharging prevalently economic functions. But in Italy cities became as much the locus of land-based, feudal power as of commercial interests - and these latter had a chance to prevail rarely and then only for very brief periods. The key question for our inquiry is what, according to Jones, made possible the persistence and the triumph of these feudal forces; why, Italian society was not transformed structurally at the time of the great economic changes that overcame it in the late Middle Ages, and, furthermore, to what elements in its own history and culture can one impute the economic backwardness of Italy in more recent times. Jones's answer to these questions is at once clear and simple: It is the survival of the ancient civitas and the cultural traditions that went along with it. "In the country where it began, the so-called 'commercial revolution' was contained (or constrained) within an older, wider, diverse tradition: that of the civitas, the polis, the Mediterranean city."!' The comunitiz teroriale ( or else the comunione fra citra e tertorio), a condition that, in Jones's view, made the Italian comune comparable to ancient Rome, is key to the particular cir­ cumstances that prevailed in medieval Italy.20 The nobles, an element of the "feudal" order, retained their power and influence because they were attracted to the cities, where they domesticated to their own cultural standards the entrepreneurial penchants, that whole complex of phenomena of the Merkantilisierung which other historians consider the dominant element of late medieval central and northern Italian society. Even at the height of commercial development, and at the very moment when entrepreneurial inter­ ests (that is, the borghesia) seemed to dominate the politics of such city-states as Venice and Florence, it was really the landed, aristocratic, feudal classes that set the tone of those urban cultures. The traditions of antiquity - a household- (oikos) and land-based economy and the values that derived from it - in the end, according to Jones, made Italian cities diferent from the commercial emporiums of North European cities and also accounted for the inability of these city-states to exploit their initial economic advantages and to slowly slide, following the fifteenth century, into a condition of economic backwardness.21

18. 19. 20. 21.

Ibid., 232. Ibid , 195, 232. Ibid., 195, 237. For a penetrating analysis of Jones's ideas, for his indebtednes to the views of Otto .

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Territory, External Relations and Empire

This is not the ocasion to analyze this far-reaching view of Italian history. In 1974, Berengo had presented a very different vision of the Italian cities in the late medieval and early modern eras.2l For their parts, Nobili, Mozzarelli, Angiolini, and others have made important contributions to a critique of Jones's interpretation.23 Here, I do not wish to dwell on these issues. Instead, I would like to return to an earlier question: How can we account for the resilience and persistence of the thesis of the alleged continuity between ancient and medieval city-states? The answer, I think, is found in the very question that animates Jones's scholarly enterprise. The question, you recall, is to locate in the internal structures of Italian society the reasons for the economic backwardness that became most evident in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a good half a millennium following the events analyzed in jones's own essay. This is to view Italian medieval history from the perspective of an especially long longue duree, a duree made even longer when one considers that the locus of Jones's explanation for what happened in the early modern period is the Greek polis and the Roman civitas. Medieval Italian history thus becomes for Jones, just as it had for Max Weber himself, an intermezzo, a brief moment squeezed at both ends by the prevalence of a feudal, land-based, patrimonial Society.14 In this scheme, the elements of that society which merit dose analysis, the character­ istics that one must incorporate into one's interpretation, are precisely those which connect it, in a tightly organic whole, with the centuries preceding and those following it. Dissonances in this steady continuum are only apparent, drowned as they are by the chorus of historical voices that carry one from the archaic economies of ancient Greece and Rome to the backwardness of Italy at the time of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham. The examination of the past from the perspective of such longues duries has, no doubt, important advantages. It also has disadvantages. One thinks of the discussion regarding the origins of the modem state and of the suggestive yet often anachronistic interpretations generated around this subject. These interpretations are now acknowledged as inadequate, for they miss the mark of the characteristics of Italian city-states in the fourteenth and fifteenth Brunr, and for the change in emphasis in Jones's own asment of the role of the late medieval Italian entrepreneurial (bourgeois) clas, cf. Nobili, as per note 15, above, to whom I am indebted. 22. Marino Berengo, "La cina d' antico regime," QNaderni storici IX (1974) 661-692, particularly pp. 668, 670. 23. Something more could still perhaps be said about Jones's equation of the ancient polis and the medieval civitas and about the difficulty of reconciling two ideas that Jones views as complementary to each other, but that, when examined closely in the context of medieval history, may generate doubts about their compatibility. I refer here to Jones's notions, on the one hand, of the alleged "comunione fra cina e tertorio" and, on the other, of the "potere . . . pretese e pregiudizi di cina e cittadini." These two phrases are taken from his " Econornia e socied," 1 95 and 237. 24. For the notion of intermezo slow in the thought of Max Weber, cf. Pietro Rossi, "La cina come istiNlione politica: I'impostazione della ricerca," in Pietro Rossi (ed.), Modelli di cina. StndtuR! • fNrrzkmi paUlich. (Torino: Einaudi, 1987) 5-28, esp. pp. 15-16. ..•

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centuries. Few historians today would examine the political history of these states from the perspective of the rise of the nation-state or even of the supranational organisms that, in more recent times, have been encroaching on the domain of the nation states. Recent interpretations regarding the nature of the late medieval territorial state in Italy, by Berengo, Chittolini, Fasano, Grubb, and others, would have been inconceivable at a time when the prevalent historical method was that of selecting individual elements of the past, in light of their success at a future historical moment, more proximate to our own. Under the welcome influence of many ideas and theories, generated by such diverse thinkers as Malinowski, Polanyi, and others, the teleological perspec­ tive has been broken and the ties between past and present are seen as being more complex, more indirect, more subject to sudden and brusque changes. The same applies to the ties between ancient and medieval city-states. A comparative examination of territory, foreign relations, and empire, undertaken from the perspective of the very characteristics inherent to the Greek, Roman, or medieval city-states, cannot help but underscore their differences, beyond all apparent but superficial similarities. In the end, it is those particularities which make it possible to come closer to the defining characteristics of cultures as diverse among themselves as Athens was from Rome and either Athens or Rome was from Venice or Florence. It might, then, not be entirely inappropri­ ate to conclude these observations with one of Francesco Guicciardini's ricordi (no. 1 1 0), intended no doubt as a friendly criticism to one of the most inveterate and brilliant comparatists of all time, Niccolo Machiavelli. The context of Guicciardini's observations is very different from our own, and, surely, the issues that divided him from Machiavelli are far removed from the issues that might agitate a modern scholarly community. Yet, it is possible that the thrust of his observations may not be altogether irrelevant to the task at hand: " Quanto si inganono coloro che a ogni parola allegano e Romani! Bisognerebbe avere una citta condizionata come era loro, e poi governarsi secondo quello essemplo: el quale a chi ha Ie qualita disproporzionate e tanto disproporzionato, quanto sarebbe volere che uno asino facessi el corso di uno cavallo."lS I end here with Guicciardini's acerbic reflection, to which, however, it might not seem too irreverent to add one additional thought. True enough, it would be outrageous to expect a donkey to race like a horse. But perhaps we come to know what, realistically, to expect of a horse and what of a donkey only when we compare one With the other. Only then, to use Guicciardini's language, would we know the qualities that are proporzionate to each and those that are disproporzionate.

25. Francesco 1951) 121.

Sansoni,

Guicciardini, Ricordi, critical

edition, ed. Raffaele Spongano (Firenze:

Concluding Reflections

G U I DO CLEMENTE

T

HE VERY SUBJECT of our discussion brings to the fore two relevant

problems of method: the one of historical comparisons; and the very notion of the city-state, or the possibility of using this particular type of city as a model. These two questions are connected; the value of models changes depend­ ing on the goals of one's study, just as comparison takes on different meanings when applied to specific situations, or when it becomes abstract and ends up independent from the investigation of a specific historical problem. Two examples serve to illustrate this situation in recent work on the city. Moses Finley, in his Ancient History, Evidence and Models, published in 1985, re­ turned to Max Weber's theories on the Greek city, which he had already addressed in the past.l While discussing the explanatory value of models, Finley cautioned against the danger of a degree of abstraction which might impede an understanding of the dynamic tensions in society. Finley thought that a historical model (assuming that its use was necessary) should be used flexibly, and always measured against historical realities which it might be unable to explain satisfactorily. More particularly, Finley analyzed the Weberian "ideal type" of the city-state in the light of two essential questions: the nature of power and the role of justice. His conclusion was that Weber's model did not offer a satisfactory explanation for either. As is ohen the case with Finley, this was a militant and intentionally provocative essay, which, for all intents and purposes, became a kind of spiritual testament. Of course, when he wrote it, he was aware of the value of Weber's writings on the history of antiquity, as he was also clear about the importance of his own contributions to a range of topics which he investigated with the help of Weberian categories: the history of the ancient city, the economy, slavery, and politics.2 With his customary forthrightness and po­ lemical sharpness, which he could afford, having been one of the ancient historians most sensitive to problems inherent in the use of models, he was 1 . Moses I . Finley, Ancient History. Evidena a nd Models (London, 1985) 88ff. 2. Se ibid., the concluding pages (Epilogue) for a consideration by the Author on problems of method relative to the pol is and to the need for a new approach.

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taking stock of the concrete difficulties of the historian's work. In so doing he was closing off seemingly easy escape routes which might help one avoid the hard and complex work of verification, an essential component of the histori­ cal method. Similar preoccupations, although expressed from a different perspective, are found in a recent book, Modelli di citta.3 In his introduction, the book's editor, the philosopher Pietro Rossi, explains that the aim of this collective volume is to reexamine Weber's theories in light of the most recent studies on the city. His conclusion is that in order to work with models and use the comparative method it is necessary to expand Weber's perspective. Theoreti­ cally, it is possible to use an infinite number of models to create a typology both of western cities and of cities in other regions of the world. Two of the fundamental assumptions of Weber's thinking, the nature of power and the birth of capitalism, can also be useful in the study of cities other than ancient and medieval ones; but they are also insufficient for identifying and defining the phenomenon of the city. When seen in this perspective, the city-state loses its central importance as an ideal type and appears to be an exceptional case, while broad generalizations and different categories defining the urban phe­ nomenon abound. The present volume, therefore, raises once again the dilemma of a choice between history and the social sciences, a dilemma which has accompanied the study of cities in this century.4 It is essential to establish the relationship between, on the one hand, urban studies, with the models and methods which define that field, and, on the other, the goals of investigating historical realities. Yet, however vital this task might be, it does not appear to be a problem subject to easy resolution. The theme proposed by this volume came about not because of a desire to test the validity of any particular model. Rather, it was generated by the encounter of scholars who study ancient and medieval history, whose disci­ plinary focus is varied, and whose aim was to analyze a number of key elements of a historical phenomenon, that is, the city-state. The choice itself implied a number of assumptions about the nature of the city-state and about the use of comparisons. On the first point, the nature of the city-state, it is clear that any narrow definition would inevitably be reductive. A valid operational assumption in our work is that in the ancient world and in the medieval one there emerged certain political realities to which we refer by the name city-state, but which were different, on occasion even profoundly so, from each other. They could be cities with vast territories; cities with a politico-administrative center, but with population settlements and urban configurations which were scarcely "urban" ; cities which formed part of larger supraurban organisms, such as leagues. The most generic, but most efficient definition of a city-state would 3 . Pietro Rossi, ed., Modelli di cittl. Strutture e {Nnzioni politiche (Turin, 1987). 4 . Ibid. Cf. the introductory esys by P. Rossi and A. Tosi, pp. Sff. and 29ff.

Clemente: Concluding Reflections

643

seem to be �s: a political entity that was autonomous, and therefore capable of controlling a decision-making process. The degree of autonomy and the range of possible choices, on the other hand, are more difcult to define. Here, the results presented in this book do not al point in the same direction. There have been cities with ample administrative autonomy but without freedom of choice in the realm of foreign policy; others, such as Athens, Sparta, Rome, and, to a degree, other cities in Greece and Magna Graecia, had an ability to expand and were able to alter their territories for more or less long periods of time. Analogous situations appear to have prevailed in medieval Europe. The decision not to start with an a prior; definition of a model does not imply abandoning the use of models. Rather, it is the outcome of a desire to examine a smal number of case studies, itself a deliberate choice of analyzing examples drawn from two historical periods rich in extant documentation, and therefore subject to in-depth analysis. Under these circumstances, priori­ ties of research shih away from a search for definition and are more sharply focussed upon problems inherent in these studies. As a result, we identified a series of topics with which to clarify the realities and historical particularities of city-states: the degree of their self­ consciousness and the nature of self-representation; citizenship and political clases; politics and social conflicts; architectural and urban forms; symbols and rituals; the territory, foreign relations, empire. This range of themes could be expanded. While they do not obviously exhaust the list of the city-state's constitutive elements, this choice implies that the political organization of the city-states can be understood, and therefore described, by analyzing a certain number of key categories. These categories do not refer only to city-states; in diferent degrees, they can be found in difrent political contexts, urban and not. Nonetheless, the city-state would seem to offer a suitable context within which these questions can be usefully asked. Each of the cities considered in this book generated manifold and complex reflections on its own nature and on the development of its history and offered ·a self-conscious representation of them. The question of the citizen body - its composition and divisions appears as a precondition of the city-state's very existence. It also defines the relationship between political structures and social organization. A definition of the city's symbolic and practical character is fashioned both by the nature of its ritual representation and by its urban forms, which, at one and the same time, organize its territory and order its urban space as "political" space. Finaly, the relationship between territory, foreign policy and the ability to expand touches upon a defining characteristic of some city-states, which were perhaps exceptional, but which, nonetheless, illustrate the unfolding of historical change. Of course, the decision to compare four complex historical realities Athens, Rome, Florence, and Venice - inevitably sets certain limits and potentially creates analytical problems. Then, there is a question of definition.

Did there exist a ccclassical" fonn of the city-state (Athens in the fifth century Rome until the third century B.C., etc.), and if so was it superseded by subsequent phases in which its constitutive elements were modified or dissolved? Regardless of these doubts, to some of which we shall return, comparison acquires a heuristic value if it does not aim, aprioristicaly, at the identification of models and of constant elements, but rather concentrates on precise historical questions. The identification of comparable historical topics makes possible the identification of a general context and of possible particularities. Ac­ knowledging the concrete and the particular offers one way for devising general criteria based on constant elements. The historian's craft entails precisely this approach, at least in the case of those historians who recognize that the surest research method consists of source analysis. We can recognize, therefore, the city-state as a historical reality based on its own characteristics. Its development might have resulted in a drastic trans­ formation of certain fundamental institutons (as in Rome following the first century B.C. ), but this transformation did not alter the city-state's nature as such. In any case, contemporaries were very slow to perceive the nature of this change. As has been said, the problems we analyze here do not exhaust the theme of the city-state. One could analyze the city-state in terms of its economic realities, problems of the relation between the family and the social institutions, religion. In any case, many of these problems, al of which could be treated separately, enter into this volume in the underlying assumptions of the authors. Yet there is no single element which characterizes by itself the city-state: any definition of the city-state based only on economic, or religious, or political categories, has been avoided; only the interdepc:ndence of these elements their development, their greater or lesser prevalence in certain moments or cities - can bring them together in a historical dimension. The city-state is a totalizing phenomenon, but no constituent element represents the totality of it. The results presented in this volume have been discussed in each of its- six sections. Here, it may be useful to present some final reflections in reference to the ancient world. I have referred to a preliminary question: the typicality of Athens and Rome. Obviously, concentration on these cities has not precluded wider references, per differentiam or by analogy. Al told, we have used the cases of Athens and Rome as texts for analyzing the phenomenon of the city­ state, acording to the approach indicated above. The essential question is whether this enterprise has brought to the surface a sufficiently wide range of historical problems, which could guide us in our search for generalizations. The typicality of Athens and Rome presents itself first of al as a problem of sources; for them the documentation, even if not satisfactory, is richest. How­ ever, the evidence is difcult to evaluate; for Athens, we have political reflections following the fifth century, when the Hellenistic world was undergoing a deep political change; Roman thinkers have left us their reflections on the nature of the res publica at the most acute point of its crises. The discrepancy between B.C.;

Clemente: Concluding Reflections 645

the idealization of a model and reality is serious. Nevertheless, we must determine if this wealth of data can be used for the study of the thousands of city-states that covered the Mediterranean basin and extended to continental Europe and to Asia beyond the Tigris River, for most of which evidence is ohen in very short supply. A second problem regards the possibility of speaking of Athens as a city­ state in the Hellenistic age (and certainly after the Roman conquest), or of Rome as a city-state after its formation of a wide territorial state and creation of an Empire. The question is whether the political form of the city-state could legitimately be applied to forms which superseded the "classical" city­ state, not only because of physical expansion, but also because of problems arising from the organization of much larger, complex territories. Thus the question becomes one of definition, of the identification of models synchronically defined according to basic elements, whose relation­ ship to each other changes over time, resulting in a need to redefine the original model. Clearly, Athens and Rome, as Florence and Venice, are not typical in important aspects: their political and cultural importance, their evolution into complex territorial realities, the building of sometimes durable empires distin­ guish them from the majority of smaller city-states, whose history was briefer and less subject to structural changes. Yet, there is a typicality, beyond the uncertain though highly probable influence that Athens and other leading city-states can have exercised. That typicality consists in the two cities having been political organisms founded upon the notion of the polis, and of their having been transformed, for historical reasons and because of their peculiari­ ties, into empires. The tension between the classical city-state and subsequent political forms may clarify the model's internal dynamics. Such a perspective provides an approach which may help to resolve the dilemma between excep­ tionality and typicality, between model and concrete verification of its func­ tioning. Another consideration regarding the question of typicality comes from the obvious need to take into acount the historical context in which the city­ states succeeded and spread. Two relevant facts explain the diffusion of cities in the ancient world: Greek colonization and Roman conquest. In both cases, the result was the creation of cities which embodied the form of a city-state, meaning that this was the single political urban form that Greeks and Romans were familiar with and to which they could refer when founding new cities. An urban agomerate was a city only if it was endowed with its own laws, with administrative autonomy, and with its own institutional organisms that represented in substance the possibility of acting as a political community. Naturally, the practical condition of the Greek cities, whether of the mother­ land or the colonies, was quite diversified, and their histories had various developments. At times, political autonomy was limited by inclusion in supra­ city organisms, or limited in fact by inclusion in other empires. Some cities

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Clemente:

Ccmcluding Reflections

expressed their ful political autonomy by the exercise of effective external policies, while the autonomy of others was limited to internal af. This distincton, however, does not have a bearing on the definition of the city­ state. This is particularly clear in the case of Rome. Rome was established as a city-state, then it progressively conquered Italy and created a world empire. There may be a dispute about when Rome ceased to be a city-state and became a territorial state with extensive power. The crisis of the political institutions which were at their peak during the middle Republic is undisputed; yet it is interesting to consider that the conquest of Italy was acompanied by the foundation of urban entities, colonies, and municipia, having different ju­ ridical connotations. They responded always to the notion of city as a political community capable of administering itself, with its own laws and a territorial organization which resulted in the creation of a ruling class defined by census requirements. The fact that these communities were obligated to furnish con­ tributions to Rome, or that, as the Roman colonies, they were an integral part of the city-state as a political organism, does not imply that Rome had created a territorial state that destroyed the city as a self-governing entity. To the contrary, it applied the form of city-state to the conquered territories, using this institution as the instrument for the creation of urban political communities. For the Romans, cities did not exist without civic institutions. Thus Italy under Roman rule became a territory organized through the presence of cities, a few formally independent, others subjected to a variety of obligations, but al nevertheless defined by their autonomy. The formula was extended to the regions beyond Italy, whether through colonization or through the application of municipal statutes that tended to be true to a model. The essential element of the urban development that accompanied the Roman conquest was the notion of the city as the place where the political classes developed, and therefore as an institutional form endowed with juridical and administrative capacities. Therefore, the essential question is not so much that of the end of Rome as a city-state as it is 01 its capacity to extend its own model, as though by germination, to different realities.s This does not mean undervaluing the enormous diferences between Rome of the fourth century B.C. and imperial Rome, nor eliminating the im­ portance of a supranational organism such as the empire. Rather, one must note that the Empire offered a solution to the administrative problems of an enormous territory, and did so primarily by relying on civic institutions. In the process, the Romans projected their consciousness of the classical city­ state, defining its organization on the basis of the distribution of land. This procedure was aimed at providing a link between the economic status of citizens and their political importance. The form of the city-state which they

S . For these considerations the essays by E. Lepore and E. Gabba are useful: "La cina and "La cina italica," in Modelli di citt4, ct., 87ff. and 109ff., where there is an illumi­ nating synthesis of the problems of method and of the historical evolution. grecaft

Clemente: Concluding Reflections 647

had theorized was preserved, and even spread throughout the Empire, even following the profound modification of Rome's political structures. A study of Athens and Rome therefore canot be limited to the issue of their typicality. Modem historiography widely accepts the notion that there existed in ancient history a variety of political situations, and that it is imposible to reduce to one modd realities about which we have fragmentary information. The usefulness of our case studies lies primarily in the possibility of identifying basic elements inherent to city-states which may have prevailed in diferent contexts. The fact that both Athens and Rome created empires and that they had a long history makes it possible to analyze the dynamic elements of the city-state and its potential growth into a variety of political and social outcomes. Finally, our discussions lead us to some pertinent issues: the nature and composition of the civic body; the formation of political classes, and the relationship between the creation of consensus and political and social conflicts; to this last aspect is linked the larger problem of institutional organization. This is not necessarily the place in which to register judgments on different theses presented in this volume. One canot fail to underline the understanding, expressed here with much vigor, of the particularity of Athens and Rome, and of the diferent solutions each offered to analogous problems. Here, comparison can be iluminating. The notion of a "closed" Athenian citizenship is contrasted to that of an "open" Roman citizenship. To this distinction corresponds the Roman capacity to absorb new elements without altering oligarchic political control while Athens gave citizens full access to civic participation, excluding all those who were not, and could not become, citizens. In this order of problems every investigation should be completed, as has been noted, with the evaluation of economic realities and with the relation between social stuctures, those of the family, and political institutions. For Rome one empha­ sizes the contribution of institutions like the clientela to the formation of con­ sensus to the aristocratic ruling groups. According to views here expressed, Roman social structure made up for the substantially smaller citizen participa­ ·· tion in the political process, while in Athens such participation privileged the political role of the great mass of citizens and reduced the need for vertical ties among social groups. The preceding essays have also underlined a number of other key points: the mechanisms for reducing political and social conflict; the self-representa­ tion of the city as a place of unity, the exorcising of stasis and its transferral to external enemies; the ritualization of civic unity. Finally, the question of expansion and of the creatiort of empires, their management and their impact on the city-state constitute other reference points, whose comparative discussion helps to clarify their nature. The identification of general typologies relative to the city-state's charac­ teristic elements appears to be an achievement obtained through the compara­ tive analysis of specific realities and of comparable facts. Yet, there remains an open question: the degree of abstract conceptualization based on concrete

and difring realities. It is possible to suggest variations (even significant ones) to the typologies identified in our discussion, despite the variety and flexibility of our hypotheses. For example, the situation of Rome in the middle Republic suggests that the degree of citizen participation in politics was assured not so much by institutional mechanisms, but, rather, by the fact that citizens, at once, voted in the elections for consuls and praetors while also fighting as soldiers. Institutions like clientela do not alone explain the de­ gree of consensus reached by the ruling groups during the long phase of imperial expansion, nor can they fully explain the rupture of the political and social equilibrium after the middle of the second century B.C. Undoubtedly, the degree, variety, and even quality of political participation in the Athenian democracy were different from those of the Roman Republic. Yet, Roman society as a whole had fashioned instruments of tight political control applicable not only to the magistrates but to the entire civic body. The oligarchic structure of Roman power was rooted not so much in mechanisms of social control like the clientela, but in a system of institutional checks and balances, and in the aristocracy's ability to coopt new members and to fashion values and political views that were aceptable to a large mass of citizens. Only thus can one explain the support for territorial expansion and the preoccupation, increasingly expressed in political terms, with the equal distribution of profits, such as land, boy, and social status. For a long time, these profits were also shared by allies, groups which did not enjoy political rights in Rome. If the political classes in Rome were more closed than in Athens, the oligarchic system could impose itself and survive because of a citizen organization which also accounted for the interests of large elements of the population, even of external groups over which the city exercised its domination. In truth, the aristocratic model itself allowed the cooptation of diverse groups, beginning with the Italici following the Social War, and continuing with the provincial elites. The equations democracy/participation, oligarchy/exclusion need there­ fore to be evaluated in specific contexts. Obviously, we are not discusSing here the value of the Athenian or Roman political systems, or of their ideologies. We only wish to observe that a typology, when applied to-concrete historical events, may well offer an indispensable conceptual framework; yet, it must be a flexible analytical instrument, especially when applied to historical realities. The complexity and wealth of phenomena generated by the city-state can profit from the application of multiple scholarly approaches. The investiga­ tion of the fundamental elements of this form of political organization can give additional results, as it can also clarify, by comparison with other urban realities, the specificity and the historical importance of this phenomenon, which spanned ancient and medieval history, extending to the very threshold of our contemporary age.

I N DE X Some words and concepts that appear throughout the text (for example, city, city­ state, polis and ccmtUtw) have not be included in this index. A

Academy (Athens) 363, 469 Academy of Pomponio Leto 98 Acciaiuoli, Donato 214 Accursius 1 60, 1 64 Aciliua Glabrio, M'. 263, 265, 399 Acquarossa 382 acropolis 357-361, 363-375, 378, 449, 450, 453, 476 Acton, Harold 13, 14 Aeacus 468 Aedicula Concordiae 396 Aegeua 358, 361, 365, 366 A�na 290, 295, 468, 574 Aelius Aristides 67, 96 Aemilius Lepidus, M. 396, 397, 400 Aemilius Paullus, L. 392, 397 Aeschylus 122, 378 AgIauros 361 agora 358-360, 363-372, 374, 375, 377, 448-450, 454, 468, 473 agriculture, agrarian (economy, policy, structure, etc.) 20-22, 114, 313, 338, 460, 567, 593, 596 Aianteia 467 Aiantis (tribe) 467 Aias 465, 467 aisymnetes 27 Akademos 378 Alba Longa 381, 391 Alberico cia Rosciate 1 56 Alberti, Benedet 280 Alberti, Leon Battista 23, 93, 94, 211 Alberto cia Gandino 227 Albini, Maso degli 230, 232, 235, 280 A1bizzi, Piero degIi 276 A1bizzi, Rinaldo degli 210, 276, 278 A1cibiades 297, 466 A1esdri, Antonio 236 A1exander nI, Pope 517, 524 �ienation 99, 110, 124 �iens 1 39, 147, 148 �liance, alies 63, 117, 475, 566, 572, 573, 576-578, 580, 586, 5 87, 605, 606, 614, 623, 625 Altar of the Twelve Gods 365, 368, 375 Amal6 431 Amazons 474, 477 ambasdors 609, 612, 614 amicitia 253

Amphiaraus 465, 468 Amphiareia 468 ampitheater 404 ancestors 251 Ancus Marciua 381, 388 Andocides 466 anxation 622 annuity 188 Anselmi, Anselmo di P�la di Bernardo 205 Anthemius · 480 anthropology 349, 550 Antioch 26 Antiochus the Great 263 Antiphon 297 Antium 386, 3 89 Antonino, Archbishop of Florence 503, 505 Antonius, M. 1 1 8 Anzilotti, Antonio 599 Apaturia 462 Aphrodite Pandemos 360 Apollo 401 Apollo Delphinios 361 Apollo Lykeios 378, 465 Apollo Medicus, temple of 399 Apollo Patroos 364 Aqua Appia 390, 450 aqueduct 404 Aquila 561 Aquileia 512, 513 Arabia 25 arbitration 609 architecture 356, 384, 385, 394-402, 447, 448, 453, 455 Archon Basileus 359, 364, 366, 466 Archon Eponymos 359, 471 Archon Polemarchos 359 archons 184 Area Capitolina 397 areopagus 36, 1 86, 366, 580 Areopagus Council 179, 1 84 Areuo 229, 322, 628, 630 Argiletum 395 Ariberto 321 Aristides 295 aristocracy (su also elite, nobility, patriciate) 24, 27, 30, 54, 55, 57, 61 , 62, 66, 76, 169, 173, 1 75, 179-1 81, 1 84, 186, 187, 256, 260, 261, 266, 294-296, 305, 341, 356, 358, 362-364, 368, 370, 372, 448, 472, 483, 492, 493, 501, 565, 568, 569, 571, 572, 574, 578, 580-583, 619, 648 Aristogeiton 472 460, 461, 464, 477 Aristode 40, 46, 95, 106, 125, 1 35, 137143, 145-147, 151-154, 160, 161, 172, 173, 1 80, 1 84, 193, 378, 459, 631 army 57, 59, 171, 382, 473, 486, 488, 569,

650

Index

580, 582, 612 Arsenal (Venice) 425, 42 8, 430-432, 449, 450 �mis Aristoboule 373 Artemis Brauronia 367, 368, 465 artifICes 328 artisans 1 14, 334, 503, 558, 590 Arx 455 AscIepius 376 Asiatic mode of production 24 assembly 30, 40-43, 47, 54, 115, 143, 144, 146, 173, 1 78, 1 79, 1 83,185, 188-190, 195, 257, 258, 262-267, 342, 360, 363, 366, 370, 3 82, 460, 461 , 463, 468, 486, 492, 495, 497, 568-571, 574, 579, 580, 585, 586 Astarte 386 Asti 316 asylum 63, 385 Athena 36, 37, 41 , 1 1 6, 1 18, 354, 360, 361 , 366, 367, 374, 474, 621 Athena Hygieia 375 Athena Lerna 375 Athena Nike 367, 374, 375 Athena Parthenos 374, 475 Athena Polias 465, 472, 476, 477 Athens 29, 36, 40, 42, 43, 47, 49, 1 14, 1 17, 1 1 8, 136, 1 39, 140, 143, 144, 147, 149, 150, 153, 1 69, 171-173, 177-179, 183, 1 85, 187-191, 195, 196, 241, 242, 292298, 301, 302, 331-333, 345, 349, 3555-380, 447-450, 453-455, 459-478, 553, 559, 560, 565-579, 581-588, 619626, 63 1, 632, 634, 635, 643-645, 647, 648 Athens, duke of (se also Walter of Brienne) 504, 506 Atilius Calatinus, A. 399 Atrium Libertatis 397 Atrium Regium 393 Attica 358, 360, 367, 368, 459, 460, 461, 464, 467, 568, 622, 625 Attila 513 Augustinus, Aurelius (Saint Augustine) 67 Augustus 64, 192, 381, 497, 552 Aurio family 426 autonomy 605, 607, 613, 643, 645 Aventine 381, 385, 386, 388-390, 399, 448, 449 Aymard, Maurice 596 B Bacchanalia 59 Bacchiads of Corinth 294 Baldus de Ubaldis 1 64, 166, 608, 610 balot 257-259, 267 bankers 277, 284 Baptistery 503

barbarians 477, 552 Bardi family 204 Bari 320 Baron, Hans 125, 225 barons 321 Bartolo, Taddeo 621 Bartolus di Sasferrato 162-166, 242, 328, 608 basilica 393, 395, 449 Basilica Aemilia 393-395 Basilica Fulvia 395, 396 Basilica Julia 396 Basilica Porcia 395 Basilica S. Marro 476, 516 Basilica Sempronia 396 Bastari, Filippo 280 Becker, Marvin B. 214, 225, 284, 331 Bellona, temple of 399 Beloch, Julius 22 Below, Georg von 23 Beroea 469 BeI1leIli, Sergio 271 Bickerman, Elias J. 101, 102, 1 1 0, 309, 328 Biliotti, Ser Matteo 205 bishop, bishopric 315, 316, 3 19-321, 323, 327, 404, 420, 421, 557, 620, 621, 633 Bloch, Marc 12 Boccaccio 14 Bodin, Jean 160, 166 Bologna 149, 327, 424, 436 Boncompagno da Signa 608 Bonsi, Andrea di Benedet 211 booty 476, 477, 573, 576, 587 Bordone, Renato 316, 317 borghi 448 Bosl, Karl 163 Boukoleion 359, 364 boule (se also council, Council of the Five Hundred) 364, 371 boule demosie 569 Bouleuterion 364, 366, 370, 374, 449 bourgeoisie 337 , Bovi, Bonincontro dei 524, 525 Bracciolini, Pogo 96, 104, 127 Braudel, Fernand 338. Brescia 432 Bridbury, A.R. 333 Brienne, Walter of (se also Athens, duke of) 504, 506 brigtJu 507, 509 Brucker, Gene A. 197, 225, 226, 228, 237, 279, 348, 349 Bruni, Leonardo 14, 96, 125-127, 22 8, 633 Brunt, P.A. 59, 65 Burckhardt, Jacob 29, 1 15, 566 bureaucracy 24, 26, 570 Biicher, Karl 22, 23 Byzantium 141, 152, 5 16, 5 1 8, 520-523, 527

Index

c Cacciafronte, Giovanni, bishop of Vicenza 322 Caele Viben 381 Caelian Hill 381, 385, 448 Caere 626 Caesar, C. Julius 118, 192, 495 Caggese, Romolo 311, 317 CaiUe, Alain 333 calendars 462 Calendimaggio 508 Cales 391 Cambi, Giovanni 233 Camillus, M. Furius 67 Camillus, Sp. 372 Camrnarosano, Paolo 314 Campaldino, battle of 504 Campania 321 campanilismo 145, 151 Camponeschi family 561 Campus Martius 66, 389, 390, 397, 450 Canale della Giudec 421 Canon law 609 capitalism, capitalist 20, 22, 23, 29, 332, 334, 347 capitanei 334, 336 Capitano del popolo 27, 114 Capitano di parte 1 14 Capitoline Hil 360, 381, 383, 385, 389, 390, 395, 396, 450, 455 Capitoline Triad 366 Capponi, Gino 99, 104 Capua 622, 626 Carducci, Agnolo di Bartolomeo 207 Carile, Antonio 513 Carnival 501 , 506, 508 �ge 372, 402 Casentino 628 Cassius Longinus RaviIIa, L. 258, 259 Castellani, Matteo 235 Castello (s. also Olivolo) 43 1, 432, 449, 450, 455. Castor and Pollux, temple of 366, 388, 393, 394, 400, 401 cas� 403-405, 409, 453, 454 Catasto 197, 208 cathedral 94, 1 19, 435, 621 Cato, M. P�us 2 3, 58, 60, 256, 262-266, 395 cattaneO, Carlo 316 Cavalcanti, Giovanni 126, 232, 276 Cecrops 374 censor, censorship 66, 1 72, 1 75, 176, 185, 192, 258, 266, 397, 486 census 53, 66, 172, 1 75, 384, 486-488, 490, 497, 500, 580 . charity 30, 76 Charles V 559

651

Charles VIII 555, 630 China 25, 26 Christianity 26, 480, 496-498, 551, 552 chronicles (su also Martino da Canal) 84, 512-514 Cicero, M. Tullius 63, 96, 1 1 7, 157, 1 71, 173, 193, 251, 259, 391 Cimon 371, 373 Cinadon 299 Cincinnatus, L. Quinctius 55 Cino da Pistoia 165 Ciompi, Ciompi revolt 28, 201 , 207-209, 226, 246, 275, 313, 329, 606, 610 Circei 388 circus 496 Circus F1aminius 399-401 Circus Maximus 381, 383, 388, 391 , 397, 399, 400, 449 citizen 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 35-39, 46, 49, 53, 55, 56, 58, 64, 66, 67, 1 14, 115, 136-138, 142, 143, 145-149, 151, 152, 154, 156, 165, 166, 1 69, 1 73-179, 182, 1 8 3, 189, 194, 246, 247, 322, 326, 336, 356, 361, 367, 375, 460, 462, 468, 470, 472, 483, 487, 490, 496, 497, 552, 566, 570, 571, 573, 577, 580, 582, 595, 624, 634, 643 citizen rights 53, 54, 1 38, 171, 560, 567, 569, 577, 626 citizenship 30, 53, 62-66, 101, 135-154, 155-168, 170-173, 187, 241-244, 294, 305, 402, 460, 463, 467, 565, 577, 585587, 594, 624-626, 629-632, 647 citizenship law of Pericles 147, 151 cives sine sufagio 625 civic consciousness 131 civic humanism 125, 214, 278, 279, 611, 612 civic identity 527 civic squares 435, 440 civil war 35, 39, 48, 49, 57, 58, 116 clas struggle 2 8, 3 1 0, 568 Oastres, Piere 38 Oaudius caecus, Ap. 338, 391 Claudius Caudex, Ap. 580 Claudius Marcellus, M. 392 Cleisthenes 142, 1 50, 175, 1 86, 189, 294, 298, 302, 365, 369, 371, 460, 465, 467, 472-474, 550, 552, 569, 574, 575, 585, 622 Cleon 196, 460 clergy 503 clients, c1ientela 55, 57, 61, 174, 176-178, 181, 186, 1 89, 192, 340, 493, 572, 647, 648 OivUs Argentarius 395 Clivus Capitolinus 397, 399 Cloaca 383, 393, 394, 396 Cloaca maxima 366

652

Index

Cloacina 393, 394 Clodius Pulcher, P. 395 codification of law 27 Codrus 373 Coelius Caldus, C. 259 Cohn, Samuel 348 coinage 290 Collatia 388 colonies, colonization 67, 290, 362, 375, 391 , 471, 565, 567, 600, 645 colonnades 396 comitia CImIJ4r1ata 55, 173, 253, 492-494 comitia tributa 54, 173, 492, 495 coantium 366, 372, 393, 394, 449 comm� 24, 28, 29, 114, 338, 393, 567, 601, 634 commercial revolution 637 com_cu.". 623 communism 20 Compagni, Dino 84, 126, 276 co�arison, co�arative 23, 24, 30, 113, 1 1 5, 170, 196, 241, 331, 332, 350, 447, 550, 619, 620, 639, 641-643 concUium plebis 173, 492 Concordia, te�le of 373, 400 conflicts 30, 34, 38, 39, 4042, 115, 121, 289-309, 310-330, 334, 335, 340, 345, 349, 350, 578, 580, 582, 603 confraternity 26, 30, 351, 500, 503, 507, 555, 557-559 ccmiurationes 26 Connor, w. Robert 306 Conon 371 conquest (s_ expansion) consensus 225, 234, 278, 500, 502, 510, 527, 614, 647, 648 cons� 406, 604, 606 Constant, Benjamin 29 Constantinople 433, 438, 439, 448, 456, 514, 515, 520-522, 527 constitution 61, 100, 144, 151, 1 82, 1 85, 191, 581, 606, 607, 610, 612, 632 consuls 195, 259, 262 conrado, contadini 28, 30, 146 Contarini 96 Conti, Plio 313 continuity 592, 613, 636 Coper, Roslyn Pesman 270 Corcyra 115 Core 465 Corinth 382 Cornelius Cethegus, C. 399 corporations 351, 604, 610 Corsini, Filippo 236 Cortese, Fnio 164 Council of Florence (1439) 96 Council of the Five Hundred (Athens) 171, 175, 178, 179, 1 83, 185, 186, 195, 369, 370, 461, 466, 473, 569, 574, 579

Council of the Two Hundred (Florence) 233, 235-237, 340 council, councils 169, 170, 1 83, 1 89, 223, 246, 366, 461, 568, 585, 598 countryside 560, 567, 584, 593, 595, 596, 62 8 courts, law 192, 262, 263, 579 crafts, craftsmen 357, 365, 369, 374 Cremona 316, 327, 425 Crete 439 crisis 36, 193, 195, 291, 298, 303, 362, 578 culu 357, 361, 364, 366, 372, 373, 460462, 465, 471, 473, 504, 506, 557 curia 396, 449 Curia Hostilia 366, 372, 381, 393-395 Curius Denratus 60 Curzola 625 Cybo, Franceschetto 506 D 0' Arms, John 332 Dandolo, Andrea, Doge 512, 517 Dandolo, Enrico, Doge 519 Dandolo, Giovanni, Doge 519 Dati, Gregorio 100, 280 Davidsohn, Robert 23 Davies, J.K. 137, 143, 145, 150, 152 Decembrio, Pier Candido 96, 125 Dei, Benedet 208 Delian League 371, 374, 475, 476, 575, 578, 630 Delos 395, 396 Delphi (oracle) 468, 573 Delumeau, Jean-Pierre 322 demes (demoi) of Attica 142, 151, 460464, 467, 472, 568, 574, 585, 622, 625 Demeter of EIeusis 368, 462, 463, 465, 467 Demeter and Core, temple of, 466 democracy, democratic 28, 29, 35, 39, 40, 42, 4446, 115, 1 39, 141, 142, 146, 147, 151, 169, .113, 178, 182-184, 1 89, 190, 193, 194, 257, 258, 271 , 331 , 335, 368, 370, 377, 459, 461 , 469, 473, 492, 495, 568, 571, 57.7-583, 587, 588, 619, 625 demos 27, 28, 45, 172, 295, 298, 304, 373 Demos, cult of 373 Demosthenes 376, 472 Demus, Om 516, 523 DeucaIion 361 Diacono, Giovani 512 Diana 385, 389, 449 Diana, te�le of 400 diaphora 39, 40, 49 Dio Cassius 1 1 8 Dionysia "In the Fields" 462, 464 Dionysia 370, 470 Dionysius of Halicamassus 62, 64, 117, 632

Index

Dionysius the Great 496, 578 Dionysos Eleuthereus 368 Dionysos Lenaios 366 diplomacy 603-61 8 Divus Julius, temple of 394 doctores, medieval 158, 159 dose 319, 327, 420, 523 Domat, Jean 1 56 Dominicans 84 Domitius Ahenobarbus, L. 251 Domus Publica 366, 3 84 Donati, Corso 277, 278, 283 Dondi, Jacopo 517 Donnini, Vanni 205 Dopsch, Alfons 23 Doren, Alfred 28 Dorsoduro 421 Draco 181, 194 Dromos of the Panathenaea 367 Duby, Georges 315 Ducal Palace 433 Duilius, C. 399 E

eclesia (se asbly) economy, economic 21-23, 28, 290, 300, 304, 305, 331, 332, 337, 357, 360, 372, 569, 593, 634, 635, 637 education 468 Egypt 22 Eluenberg, Victor 566 Eibel-Eibesfeld, Ireneus 508 Eight Saints, war of 226, 229, 505 Eirene 372, 373 elections, electoral practices 237, 348 Eleos, altar of 375 Eleusinion 466 Eleusis 359, 465, 466, 625 Elias, Norbert 324 elite (see also aristocracy) 28, 30, 57, 144, 151, 251, 252, 261, 266, 267, 274-287, 295, 298, 334, 336, 341 , 346-349, 472, 492, 576, 648 elitism, in florence 97 embassies 614 empire 57, 58, 151, 300, 331, 333, 338, 339, 381, 3 84, 389, 392, 402, 439, 456, 461, 476, 490, 514, 565-588, 597, 627, . 634, 635, 639; 645-647 Emporium 398 endogamy 140-142, 152 enfranchisement 63, 567, 570, 577, 578, 624 England 558 Ennius 67 Epeiros 1 37, 141 ephebes 37, 172, 378, 470 Ephialtes 44, 179, 184, 371 .

653

ephors 27 Ephorus 476 equality 46, 53, 169, 173, 1 82, 1 84, 1 86, 187, 194, 301, 569, 578, 579, 581, 583 equires 54, 175, 176, 192, 491 Erchia, deme of 462, 465 Erechtheion 374, 375 Erechtheus 358, 360, 361, 374 Erichthonios 361 Eridanos river 358 Esquiline 365, 385, 386 Estates-General, France 236 Este, Ercole d' 555 Etruria, Etruscans 381, 572, 584 Eumolpidae 466 Euripides 378, 477 expansion 28, 1 44, 571 -573, 577, 578, 582, 645 external relations 603, 617, 628 Ezlino da Romano · 609

F faction(s), factionalism 106, 125, 126, 128, 216, 253, 254, 260, 263, 272, 289, 297, 309, 323, 326, 340, 341 , 346, 347, 349, 502, 574, 583, 588, 603, 607, 61 0, 61 1 Falerii 390 families 194, 260, 261, 314, 319, 321, 324, 327, 471 family networks 509 Fasoli, Gina 31 0, 511, 525 Ferrara 555, 556, 599 feudalism, feudal 312, 321, 322, 329, 346, 347, 349, 502, 628, 637 Fieschi , Sinibaldo 557 filiation 463 Finley, Moses I. 20, 22, 33, 39, 138, 332, 333, 339, 568, 631, 641 Fiumi, £nrico 630 f1arnen Dialis 496 Florence 30, 97, 1 05, 1 19, 128, 169, 1 76, 177, 184, 1 93, 194, 196, 197-222, 223240, 269-288, 334-336, 3 38-343, 348, 403-41 8, 447, 448, 450-453, 455, 499510, 550, 600, 601, 610-612, 619, 620, 622, 624-626, 628, 630, 633-635, 637 foedus Cassianum 116 Fondaco dei Tedeschi 427 foreign policy, relations 607, 624, 627, 639, 643 foreigners 29, 1 72, 376, 624 Fors Fortuna 386, 391 Fortuna 385, 392, 397, 449 Fortuna Obsequens 3 86 Fortuna Primigenia 386 Fortuna Privata 386 Fortuna Respiciens 386

654

Index

Fortuna Virgo 386 Fortuna Virilis 386 Fortuna Viscata 386 fonun 364-367, 372, 383, 384, 389, 393396, 438, 450, 454, 455 Forum Boarium 3 85, 392, 397-399 Forum Holitorium 399, 400 Forum Piscarium 393 Forum Romanum 392, 399, 400 Foscari, Marco 215 Fourth Crusade 514, 521 Fraccaro, Plinio 60 Franciscans 76 Frankfurt am Main 22 Franklin, Benjamin 23 Frederick I (Barbarossa) 435, 523, 590, 607, 609 Frederick n 85, 328, 561, 590, 606 Frederick III 501 freedmen 29, 64, 66, 173, 1 76, 338, 572 freedom (se also liberty) 29, 63-65, 473, 475, 477, 478 freedom of speech 178, 265 Fulvius F1accus, Q. 396 Fulvius Nobilior, M. 395, 400 funeral ceremonies 251 funeral oration 36 Furius Paculus Fusus, C. 389 G Gabba, Emilio 56, 58, 61 Gabinius, A. 259 Galasso, Giuseppe 310, 317 games 59, 496, 497 Gaudemet, Jean 157, 160 Gauls 389 Gauthier, Philippe 145 Gazoros, Macedonia 43 Geganius Macerinus, M. 3 89 Gehrke, Hans-Joachim 1 1 5 Gelasius I , Pope 480, 481 Gelius, Aulus 264 generals 262, 266, 473 Genoa 320, 325, 431, 522, 629 get, genw 180 Gentile da Fabriano 507 George of Trebizond 96 Gerini, Lorenzo di Niccolo 86 Germany 558 Gernet, Louis 41 Ghibellines 274, 275, 2 85, 508, 604-606 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 105 Gianfigliazzi, Rinaldo 233, 235 Giannotti, Donato 101, 549, 499, 500, 505, 551, 552 Gierke, Otto von 27 Giovani da Montegranaro 232 Giovani da San Gimignano 74

Girolami, Remigio de' 94, 633 Goldthwaite, Richard A. 339 gonfaloniere 621 Good and Bad Government, Siena (see also Ambrogio Lorenzetti) 122 Goria, Fausto 157, 158 Gozzoli, Benozzo 507 Gracchus, C. Sempronius 191, 258, 259 Gracchus, "Ii. Sempronius 58, 191, 259, 264, 265, 396 Gradenigo family 426 Gramsci, Antonio 596 Grand Canal 421 , 425, 431, 453, 455 graphe paranomon 190, 191, 195 Great Council 1 07 Great Mother, Cybele 496, 497 Great Rhetra 585 Guelf party 226, 274, 275, 284, 285, 287, 502-504, 508, 509, 604, 605 Guglielmo, marquis of Monferrato 321 Guicciardini, Francesco 101, 103, 104, 106, 108, 1 1 0, 1 19, 126, 232, 239, 639 guilds 27-29, 102, 1 10, 146, 177, 198, 199, 211, 212, 226, 245, 275, 276, 278, 279, 281, 283-285, 287, 315, 326, 342, 348, 504, 557-559, 600, 606, 610 gymnasium 378, 468, 469

H Hades 465 hagiography 73 Halimus, deme of 467 Hanibal 623 Hanick, Jean-Marie 141 Hanseatic league 556, 559, 601 Hansen, Mogens H. 1 1 5 Harmodios 472 hegemony 144 Hekate Epipyrgidia 375 Hekatompedon 367 hektemoroi 293, 294heliaia 370 helots 292, 298-302, 305, 569, 574, 576, 586 Hephaestus 374 Hephaestus and Athena, temple of 374 Heracleia 469 Heracles, Hercules 469, 474, 516 Hercules Custos, temple of 400 Hercules Musarum, temple of 400 Hercules Olivarius 399 Hermaea 469 Hermes 469 Hermes Propylaios 375 herms 365 Hernicans 382, 386, 388, 390 Herodotus 40, 45, 49, 294, 296 heroes 118, 467, 472, 473

Index

Hestia 1 1 6, 359, 471 hetaireia 1 85, 1 86 Heuss, Alfred 113 Hexter, j. H. 338 hierarchy 488, 489, 491 , 497, 549, 552 Hieron of Syracuse 372 Hipparchus 365 Hippias 474 historiography 100, 269, 345, 512, 51 3, 603, 636, 639 Hobbes, Thomas 110 Holmes, George 270 Homer 302, 360, 565 homines now 334-337 Honos et Virtus, temple of 392 hoplites 181, 305, 569, 570, 573, 579, 585 horoi 365, 371 hospital 74, 433, 449 Howell, Martha 243 Hwnphreys, S. C. 568 Hymet 465 Hyperbolus 297 I lanus Geminus 393 iconography 86, 124 ideal type 21, 23, 358 identification 566 identity 486, 490, 498, 577, 581 ideology, ideological 53, 55·57, 60, 64, 66, 68, 1 1 8 , 1 19, 300, 302, 305, 306, 341, 356, 374, 376, 466, 468, 474, 477, 478, 498, 567, 571, 576, 581 Ilissos river 358, 361, 373 immigrants, immigration 136, 139, 147, 149, 151, 1 52, 294 imperialism 105, 296 independence 598, 613 India 25, 26 industry, industrial 20, 23, 1 1 4, 296, 301, 338 in(uJelis 243 Innocent IV, Pope 557, 606 Innocent VIII, Pope 506 institutions 281-284, 292, 303, 304, 3 12, 324, 348-350, 355, 364, 441, 453, 454, 505, 549, 550, 602, 644 investiture controversy 604, 606 Ionia 574 Isac II Angelos, Emperor 430 lsagoras 294, 298 Isidore 160 Isis 496 isonomia 569 Israel 22 Italic Kingdom 420 luno 387, 388, 400, 401 luno Moneta, temple of 397

655

luno Sospita, temple of 399 luppiter 383, 3 87, 496 luppiter Feretrius 384 luppiter Optimus Maximus, temple of 368, 384-387, 397, 449, 455 Iuppiter Stator, temple of 391 , 400, 401 luppiter Victor 391 ius com_rut 608 ius provocationis 144

J javolenus 1 59 jerusalem 72 jones, Arthur H. M. 331 jones, Nicholas 151 jones, Philip · 3 15, 595, 636 jordan, w.e. 340 juno (su luno) jupiter (su Iuppiter) justinian, code of 156, 157, 241

K Keller, Hagen 314, 315 Kent, Dale 270, 272, 273 Kent, Francis William 99, 273 Kerameikos 363, 448 kingdoms 24, 597 kingship 358, 365 kinship 142, 151, 253 Kirshner, julius 164 Klearchos of Heralcleia 1 38 Koenig, john 317 Kos 141, 401 Kotel'nikova, Liubov A. 313 1r.ratos 39, 40, 41 Krisreller, Paul Oskar 15 Kuehn, Thomas 200 Kyda�ion, deme of 460 L labor 23, 29, 289, 291 , 300, 301, 303 Lacus Curtius 393, 394 Ladislaus, King 234-236 Lampadedromia 469 landowners, landed nobility 146, 147, 152, 293, 310, 331, 334, 336, 337, 422, 454, 569, 585, 590, 604, 623, 634 language 632, 633 Lapis niger 366 Lares and Penates, temple of 366 Larisa 154 Larsen, J. A. O. 570 latifundia 57, 60 Latins, Latin League 1 16, 382, 385, 386, 448, 572, 626 Latini, Brunet 160

656

Index

Lautumiae 393 law, laws 170, 178, 179, 190-196, 267, 609 leadership 579, 580, 582 League of Cambrai 615 legal theory 607 /ega'; 1 89 legitimacy, legitimation 322, 324, 349, 485, 502, 582, 610, 617 Lemuria 485 Lenaea 470 Leokorion 366 LeucothealEileithyia 386 Uveque, Piere 114 liberty, liberties (se also freedom) 1 0, 65, 257, 258, 260, 261, 374, 474, 586 Litchfield, R. Burr 339, 340 linu,pes 29, 149, 173, 1 85, 295 Livy 65, 67, 97, 255, 619, 633 Lombard leagues 609 Longobards 512, 513 longue duree 638 Lopez, Robert S. 124, 125, 317 Lorenzet, Ambrogio 47, 48, 71, 105, 122 Lucca 310 Luceria 391 Lucumo 382 Ludi Magni 383 Ludi Romani 383 Luna 3 89 lustrum 66 Lupercalia 480-485, 488, 496, 497 Luztto, Gino 312 Lycu�us 298, 370, 377, 378, 472, 585 Lydia 575 Lykeion 363 Lysippus 401 M rnacellum 398 Machiavelli, Boninsegna di Agnolino 205 Machiavelli, Niccolo 1 4, 93, 96, 97, 99, 103-106, 108-11 0, 119, 126, 127, 130, 223, 225, 239, 287, 318, 321 , 560, 619, 639 Maenius, C. 256, 372 magistracy, magistrate 169, 170, 172, 178, 179, 1 83, 1 85, 1 87, 188, 195, 196, 252, 256, 260, 340, 359, 468, 580, 620, 630 �ates 102, 309, 322, 327, 328, 606 Magnesia 401 mail balot 570 Maine, H. S. 20 majority 39-43, 1 1 5, 1 89, 493 Malispini, Ricordano 126 manumissions 158, 241 Marathon 557, 625 Marathon, battle of 474, 475, 574 Marches (urban commune) 3 12

Marco, chronicler 514, 515, 524 Marius, C. 260, 261 marage 253 marage laws 64 Mars 389, 397 Marsilius of Padua 608 Martino da Canal 514-51 6, 519, 523, 526 Marx, Karl 20, 24, 486 Marxism, Marxist 20, 23, 313, 596 Mater Matuta 385, 386, 392, 397 Mattingly, Garet 614 Maurer, Georg von 20 Medici family, faction, regime 193, 200, 206, 215, 238, 270, 272, 281 , 347, 500, 510, 611, 612, Medici, Cosimo de' 104, 207, 215, 230, 233, 278, 507 Medici, Giovan di Bicci 215 Medici, Lorenzo de' 238, 500, 505, 506, 509, 612 Medici, Piero de' 273 Medici palace 99 Medici-Riccardi, Palazzo 507 medicine 72, 79 Megara 298, 574 Meier, Christian 36, 38, 1 14, 619 Meitzen, August 20 mendicant orders 84 Mercanzia 284, 285 mercenaries 1 88, 572, 575, 577 merchant class 76, 81, 87, 102, 324, 637 merchan� 277, 278, 284, 285, 309, 310, 314-317, 319, 320, 324-326, 328, 503, 558, 589, 590, 604 Mesopotainia 22 Mesa 573 Metapontum 365 Metellus Macedonicus, Q. Caecilius 397, 401 metics 29, 1 39, 149, 150, 171-173, 581, 624 Meyer, Eduard 22 Michiel, Vitale II, dQge 440 Milan 98, 31 1, 315, 324, 327, 599, 602, 612, 630 Miletus 398 Millar, F� 1 1 7 Miltiades 40, 295 Minerva 387 Minturnae 391 Minucius Augurinus, C. 264 Minucius 1bermus, Q. 262, 265 miracles 72, 73, 81, 82, 85, 87 mixed constitution 61 , 62, 96 model, historical 125, 126, 131, 561, 641643, 647, 648 Momigliano, Ama1do 20, 1 1 3 Mommsen, Theodore 66 monarchs, monarchy 24, 65, 169, 180, 319, 320, 357, 361, 366, 497, 570, 586 _,

Index

money 303, 304 Monopreros of LysiaaleS 378 Montano, Cola 98 Montepulciano 87 Montesquieu 24 monu�U 355, 361, 362, 368, 372, 455 Mor, Carlo G. 312 Morelli, Giovanni 214, 280 mos �onun 53, 57, 192, 580 Mas, Claude 139 Muir, Edward 513, 518, 522, 526 Muses 469 Mycenaean period 356, 357, 360, 361, 365, 367 Mykale, battle of 574 Mysteries 465, 466 myth 512, 524, 527, 611 myth of Veni� 511 N

Nakone 35, 45 negotiation 609 neighborhood 272, 273, 455, 604 Neleus 368, 373 Nepos, Cornelius 264 networks, social 75, 347 Newman, W. L. 140 Niccolo da Uzzano 233 Nicodemo da Pontremoli 612 Nicolet, Claude 145, 1 55, 156 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg 113 nobiks. nobi/itas, nobility 54, 102, 109, 174-178, 1 85, 1 86, 190, 192, 251, 252, 260, 267, 314, 315, 317, 318, 320-324, 326, 335, 346, 369, 561, 572, 580, 586, 625, 633, 637 nowwthesia 191, 195 notaries 324

o Octavia 401 Octavius, Cn. 400 office, publiC; officeholding 139, 144, 145, 171, 173-176, 183, 1 84, 1 88, 197, 211, 251-253, 255, 256, 259, 266, 359 "Old Oligarch" (se Pseudo-Xenophon) oligarchs, oligarchy 44, 45, 140, 142, 144, 169, 175, 1 87, 195, 204, 246, 251, 269, 271, 273, 279, 280, 283, 287, 294, 298, 304, 309, 319, 334, 335, 340-342, 346, 347, 492, 502, 5 10, 568, 570, 588, 601, 602, 604, 610, 648 Olivolo (sa Castello) Oltrarno 403, 409, 410 Olympieion 357-359, 361, 365, 368, 369, 448 optimatu 253

657

orchedra 366, 371 Orchomenos 141 Ordinances of Justice (1293) 102, 204, 282, 283 Oreos 141 Orestano, Riccardo 159 Orestes 1 1 8 Oriental despotism 24 Oropus 468 Orsanrnichele 410, 454 Orseolo, Pietro n, doge 524 Osborne, M. J. 153 Osborne, R. 150 Ostia 388 ostracism 1 78, 188, 294 Otto of Freising 314, 321, 336, 591, 592, 633 Ottokar, Nicola 269, 309, 347 Our Lady of Imprunera 504 outsiders 485

p Padua 145, 438, 515, 629, 630 Pagan, Marreo 525, 526, 550 palace(s) 99, 357-361, 364-367, 449, 497 Palatine 365, 381 , 385, 391, 448, 455 palat;, com"umis Vlmetiarum 449 Palaz dei Priori (Palazzo Vecchio) 404, 410, 449, 454, 455 Palazo del Capitano del Popolo (Bargello) 407, 455 Palazo del Popolo (Florence) 410, 449 Palaz Pubblico (Siena) 119 Palmieri, Matteo 104, 280 patio 504 Pan 373 PanarlBenaea 367, 377, 465, 472, 550, 623, 625 Panopeus 621 papacy··104, 612 Papirius Carbo, C. 259 Papirius Cursor, L. 391 Parentalia 496 Parma 85, 317, 327 Parthenon 374, 474477 participation, political 29, 30, 56, 140, 144, 151, 169-171, 177, 178, 196, 333, 551, 552, 567-571, 578, 586, 588, 61 1 , 647 Passaggieri, Rolandinus 608 patin' fami!i4s 192 patricians, patriciale 54, 174, 1 75, 181, 1 86, 309, 311, 336, 600 patron, patronage 30, 173, 176, 177, 1 81, 192, 212, 272-274, 277, 282, 295, 296, 340, 347-349, 493, 572 Pausanias (author) 461 Pausanias (Spartan general) 298 Pavia 425

65 8

Index

Paui conspiracy 505 Peace of Callias 478 Peace of Constance (1183) 607 Peace of Lodi (1454) 229, 614 peasant 313, 315, 326, 336, 560 Peloponnesian League 573, 586 Peloponnesian War 49, 152, 296-299, 373376, 459, 573, 577, 579, 582, 587, 632 Pergamum 401 Pericles 36, 140, 141, 1 88, 193, 196, 295, 296, 370, 371, 374-377, 450, 459, 474477, 632 perioeci 299 Perseus of Macedon 392, 402 Persia, Persians 295, 296, 302, 477, 574, 575 Persian Wars 573, 574, 586 Pertusi, Agostino 523 Peter Damian 439 Petrarch 521 Petronia amnis 400 Petrus da Unzola 608 Phidias 374, 475, 477 Philip V of Macedon 62, 154 Phocaeans 620 phratries 151, 172, 294, 462 Phrynichus 296 phylai 371 phylobasileis 359 Piacenza 316, 323-325 , 425 Piazza dei Signori 410 Piazza del Campo 437 Piazza del Carmine 410 Piazza della Signoria 449 Piazza San Marco 420, 421, 449, 455 Piazza Santo Spirito 410 Piedmont 312, 315 Pietas, temple of 399 pilgrimage, pilgrims 72, 433, 558 Pini, Antonio I. 316 Pirenne, Henri 23, 334, 338 Pisa 72, 310, 317, 320, 325, 431, 504, 508, 555, 560, 624, 628, 630, 635 Pisistratids 297, 364, 366, 368 Pisistratus 1 73, 1 81, 186, 192, 297, 362, 367, 368, 455, 466, 472, 574 Pisistratus the Younger 365 Piso, L. Calpumius 251 Pistoia 628 Pitti, Buonaccorso 280 Pitti, Luca 99 Pius n, Pope 501, 507 planning, urban 449 Plataea 173 Plataea, battle of 477 Plato 41, 49, 50, 96, 97, 103, 1 16, 125, 172, 173, 193, 378, 631 Plautus 393, 395 plebeian(s), plebs 28, 174, 176, 177, 181,

255, 309, 315, 328, 334, 342, 389, 448, 487, 497, 582 Plesner, Johan 311 Plotheia, deme of 465 Plutarch 373 Pnyx 370, 373, 377, 453, 467 Po valley 324, 556, 600, 601 Pocock, J. G. A. 95 podesta 27, 227, 324, 327, 607, 621, 622 Polani, Pietro, Doge (1 1 30-1 148) 519 politeia 144 politics, political 22, 24, 101, 103, 124, 239, 245, 246, 269, 272-274, 278, 281-287, 323, 340, 345, 348, 350, 411 , 421, 432, 560, 627, 631, 643, 646, 648 Politorium 381 Polybius 61 , 62, 265, 489, 632 pO�N1n 381, 383, 384, 389 Pompeion 377 Pompeius Magnus, Cn. 1 17, 391 Pompeius Strabo, Cn. 63 Ponte alIa Carraia 407 Ponte alle Grazie 407 Pontifex Maximus 366, 384 papalo 27, 102, 271, 274-278, 288, 309, 313, 318, 319, 334-336, 341, 346, 501 , 508, 605, 606 paPNlares 253 population 53, 56, 1 36, 172, 357, 358, 360, 376, 381, 567, 572, 574, 576, 586 pOPNUu Ronranus 63 Porcari, Stefano 98 Porta aI Prato 409 Porta alIa Croce 409 Porta Fonunalis 397 Porta Romana 409 Porta San Gallo 409 Porta Trigemina 398 Porta Triumphalis 399 portico 397-400, 437, 454, 477 Porticus Metelli 398, 401 Porticus post navalia 399 Poseidon 374 Post, Gaines 163 Postumius Albinus, A 396 Pothier, Robert-Joseph 156 Potidaea 476 poverty 76 po� 169, 170, 1 74, 177, 1 83, 191, 196, 251, 287, 341, 357 Praeneilte - 386 PralD 628 Priene 398, 401 Primerano da Mosciano, Spinello di 205 principalities 597, 599, 616 principate 239 priorate 228, 275, 281, 340 Prisci Latini 381, 383 Procuracy of St. Mark 434 .

Index

!"ocuratie 449 proedria 470 proletarians 54, 55 promagistrates 1 89 Prometheia 469 Prometheus 469 propenY 143, 144, 153, 289, 291, 303, 304 property laws 423 Propylaea 375, 475 prosopography 341, 347 provocatio 30 Prytaneion 116, 359, 366, 372, 378, 471 pryraneis 369, 370, 449 Pseudo-Xenophon 179, 622, 623 Punic Wars 392, 397, 399, 580, 623 Pyrgi 386 Pyrrhus 392

Q Quirinal 381, 385, 392 Quirinus 391

R Racine, Pierre 316 Rapp, Richard 331 Rego Emilia 424 Regia 384, 394 regional states 597 relics 522, 526 religion, religious 59, 71, 103, 104, 1 15, 1 1 6, 1 1 8, 1 19, 1 30, 188, 194, 243, 356, 357, 365, 367, 368, 370, 375, 384, 411, 421, 449, 455, 461, 465, 549, 621 representation 175, 567-569, 585, 609, 623 republic, republicanism 96, 98, 101, 1 03, 1 1 0, 1 83, 281, 600, 610, 611, 61 7 revolutions 29 Rex sacrorum 366 Rhodes 141 Rialto 422, 425, 427, 432, 449, 455, 513 Rialto bridge 427 Ridolfi, Lorenzo di Antonio 215, 506 Riesenberg, Peter 146, 162, 245 rights (se citizen rights) riots 30 ritual 30, 121 , 145, 356, 434, 459, 461, 462, 466, 469, 473, 478-498, 500, 501 , 512, 549-553, 555, 643 Riva, Bonvesin de la 633 Robinson, Richard 139, 140 Ro�o, Ru� 596 Rome 53-70, 72, 97, 123, 125, 144-146, 169, 171-173, 175, 177-179, 1 84, 1 87192, 195, 196, 241, 242, 251-268, 311, 312, 315, 318, 336-338, 340, 342, 343, 349, 360, 364-366, 368, 372, 381-402, 409, 449, 450, 453-455, 479-498, 511,

659

515, 527, 552, 557, 565, 566, 570-572, 575, 576, 578, 580-588, 592, 607, 608, 617, 619-626, 631-635, 643-648 Romulus 55, 63, 365, 366, 381 Roover, Raymond de 340 Rossi, Pietro 642 Rossi, Tribaldo de' 506 Rostovt:zeff, Michael 332 Rostra 372, 391 Rubinstein, Nicola 200, 225, 228, 349 Rucellai, Giovanni 94, 99, 104, 200, 212-, 214 Ruffino da Bologna 557 ruling clas 245, 269, 31 0-31 3, 327, 328, 516, 600, 611, 629, 634, 646, 648 Rupilius, P. 259 Ruschenbusch, Eberhard 135, 1 36 Russia 25 Rutenburg, Victor 313

s Sabins 448 Saccheai, Franco 81, 88, 130 Saint Barnabas 504 Saint Bona 1 1 8 Saint Catherine o f Alexandria 88 Saint Clare of Assisi 87 Saint Fina of San Gimignano 74, 77, 1 1 8 Saint Francis of Assisi 76 Saint James of Compostella 72 Saint John the Baptist 500, 501, 503, 550, 553 Saint Margaret of Citti di Castello 84 Saint Mark (se also San Marco) 118, 434, 439, 512, 5 1 8, 519, 525, 526, 553, 623, 828, 829 Saint Paul 26 Saint Peter of Verona 84 Saint R9'8rata 504 Saint 11ieodore 434, 520 Ste. Croix, G. E. M. de 291 saints, civic 71, 72, 74, 75, 81, 88, 1 19, 124, 130, 434, 519, 520, 556 Salamis 467, 468, 574 Salamis, battle of 477, 566, 574 Salerno 431 Sallust 95 Salus 391 Salutati, Coluccio 126, 276 Salvemini, Gaetano 269, 309 Samnite Wars 373, 391 Sarnos 173, 476, 624 San Basso, church 433 San Gimignano 72, 85, 1 1 8, 623, 628 Sari Giovanni d'Acri 73 San Lorenzo, church 403 San Marco 421 , 425, 431, 450, 507 San Marco, basilica 433, 519, 526

660

Index

San Matteo, diania 427 San Nicolo, church 525 San Remigio, church 403 sanctuary 360, 361, 364-368, 372-376, 476 Santa Croce, church 410 Santa Felicita, church 404 Santa Maria Novella, church 410 Santa Triniti 507 Santi Gimignano and Menna , church 433 Sanudo, Marin 511, 515, 517, 527 Sarpedon 302 Satricum 385 Sanun 366, 394, 396 Sattunalia 485, 496, 497 Savigny, Friedrich Karl von 26 Savonarola 100 Schleich, Thomas 332 SchmaIkaldic League 559 Schmitt, Carl 38 Scipio Aemilianus, P. Cornelius 258, 259, 261 Scipio Africanus, P. Cornelius 264, 397 Scipio Nasica, P. Cornelius 397 Scipio, L. Cornelius 263-266 Scipios, nial of 263 self-sufciency 143, 145 Senaculum 397 sena� 171, 176, 1 83, 1 85, 1 89, 192, 195, 239, 252, 257, 258, 262, 264, 338, 340, 342, 382, 487, 488, 491, 497, 571, 578, 580 serfs 149 servitude 138 Servius Tullius 53, 1 82, 360, 384-386, 390 Sforza, Galeaz Maria 501, 507 Sherwin-Whi� A. N. 56 shipyards 428, 431 Sicily 398, 580, 582 Siena 47, 50, 71, 85, 105, 1 19, 122, 424, 437, 508, 624, 629 Sieveking, Heinrich 23 Siewert, P=r 294 Signia 388 Simeoni, Luigi 326 Sinues 391 Siphnos 147 silGs 472 Sixtus IV, Pope 505 Skyros 373, 474, 553 slavery, slaves 29, 55, 57, 62, 64, 138, 148151, 154, 172, 243, 294, 300-303, 338, 345, 376, 464, 485, 497, 569, 572, 575, 576, 581, 587 Smith, Adam 291 Snodgras, Anthony 1 19 social conflict 298-308, 309-330, 346, 574, 576, 587 soci�, social 317, 320, 323, 345, 350, 351, 638, 647, 648

sociology 24, 26, 29 Socrates 377 Soderini, Piero 1 06 Solon 48, 118, 138, 150, 175, 1 80, 1 8 1 , 1 86, 194, 293, 294, 297, 302, 303, 362, 364, 466, 569, 585 Sombart, Werner 22, 23, 25 Sophocles 378 Sora 391 sources 71, 141, 448, 644 sovereignty 504, 605, 608, 610, 617 Sparta, Spartans 27, 42, 138, 144, 292, 296, 298, 301, 305, 374, 474, 477, 568, 569, 572, 573, 575, 583, 585-587, 630, 643 Spartiates 292, 299, 300, 305, 569, 572, 574 Spes, �rnple of 392, 399 spostllU:io 525 stadium 370, 377 Stahl, Berthold 315 Starr, C. G. 142, 337 s� 35, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 1 15, 181, 297, 298, 305 S�nius, L. 397 Sthenelaidas 42 Stoa Basileios 364, 449 Stoa of Zeus FJeutherios 364, 374, 375 Stoa Poikile 371, 474 stoas 398, 401 strategoi 1 84, 186, 188 Strayer, J. R. 597 Strozzi, Palla di Nom 213, 280 suburbs 403, 405, 408 Sulla, L. Cornelius 172, 192 sumptuary legislation 257 Swiss Confederation 560 symbols 121, 453, 455, 459, 473, 476, 501, 512, 516, 522, 525, 549- 552, 623 Syme, Ronald 341 , 347 syrwilWmos 26, 621 Syracuse 392, 393

T

Tabacco, Giovan 312, 316 tabernae 372, 383, 393-395 Tabula Hebana 494 Tabula Valeria 372 Tacitus 67, 633 Taddeo di Bartolo 85, 87, 1 1 8 Tanaquil 382 Tarentum 298, 392 Tarquinius Priscus, L. 366, 381, 383, 384, 388 Tarquinius Superbus, L. 386, 388 Taraana 391 taxation, taxes 148, 149, 297, 304, 346, 427, 486, 487, 576, 595, 598, 622 temple, temples C- also listings under

Index

separate gods and godes) 119, 355, 360, 361, 366-368, 373, 377, 385, 386, 388, 391, 392, 398, 399, 455, 477, 621 Terrarenna 310, 325, 420, 421, 437, 517, 521, 601, 612, 634, 635 territorial state 53, 56, 67, 105, 229, 323, 358, 459, 467, 567, 586, 589, 591 , 594, 601, 602, 607, 612, 613, 615, 627, 629, 635, 639, 643, 646 thea� 59, 370, 372, 404, 469, 470, 621 Thea� of Dionysus 378, 449 Theater of Marcellus 399 The� 468, 575, 597 ThenU�ocles 43, 1 17, 294, 295, 373 Theramenes 297 Theseia 474 Theseion 474 Theseus 118, 361 , 373, 459, 464, 472-474, 478, 550, 552, 553, 557, 622 Thesrnophoria 462, 463, 467 Thesrnophoria of Halimus 465, 467 Thesrnophorion 467 Thesrnothetai 359 Thesrnotheteion 364 Tholos 370, 449 Thrasybulus 297 Thucydides 45, 49, 1 15, 179, 296, 302, 459, 476, 579, 582, 632 Thucydides Melesiou 295 Tiber island 390 tirnoaacy 53, 57, 175, 1 82 Tisamenus of Sparta 1 1 8 Titus Tatius 381 Tommaso da Modena 88, 1 1 8 towers 448, 406, 606 town planning 407 Toynbe, Arnold 60, 1 17 trade, traders 20, 23, 27, 29, 72, 293, 334, 357, 362, 365-367, 425, 427, 592 Treasury 476 treaties 609, 613 Treuga Dei movement 30 Treviso 88, 326 Trexler, Richard 104, 501 trial 257, 259, 262-267 tribe, tribes 21, 54, 1 1 6, 146, 177, 384, 488, 552 tribunes 30, 174, 177, 1 87, 192, 195, 395, 489 tribute 296, 300-302, 475, 476, 575-577 tnl,."". 54, 57, 587 Trimalchio 338 triumphs 266, 400, 492, 496, 497 Trojan War 474 TuUianum spring 383 TuUus Hostilius 381 Tuscany 628 Tusculum 626 Twelve Tables 55, 626

661

�anny 169, 1 80, 1 81, 1 86, 194, 296, 305, 368, 549, 574, 575, 586, 587 �ant 27, 178, 194, 182, 194, 302, 362364, 366-369, 371, 472-474, 551, 571

u Ullman, Walter 163 Ulpianus 157 Umbria (urban commune) 312 Uni 386 unity 122, 235, 347 urban, urbanism 309, 314, 316, 319, 323, 329, 347, 405, 407, 409, 419, 424, 431, 441, 453, 454, 598, 591 , 643, 646 Urbino 599

v Valerius Antias 264 values 103, 510, 582, 585 valvassores 334, 336 Varo, M. Terentius 372, 389 Veti 67, 382, 390, 391, 402, 620-622 Velabrum 393, 394 Velia 365 Venice 1 02, 107, 1 1 8, 128, 129, 169, 177, 184, 185, 194, 310-312, 318-320, 331 , 334, 338, 339, 419-446, 448-450, 453455, 511-548, 550, 553, 600, 601 , 611, 612, 615, 619, 620, 624-626, . 629, 630, 634, 635, 637 Ventura, Angelo 310 Venus 449 Venus Obsequens 391 Venusia 391 Vemant, Jean-Pierre 36, 37, 1 14 Verona 321 , 324, 326, 327, 425, 599 Vespasiano da Bisticci 232 Vesta 366, 384, 393, 394 Vestal Virgins 384, 496, 497 Vettori, Franceso 93 Via Appia 391 Via Cassia 403 Via Latina 390, 391 Via Sacra 367, 393, 399, 466 Vi� 322, 324, 327, 424, 630, 635 Victoria 391 Vicus Tuscus 393, 394, 396, 399 Vidal-Naquet, Piere 1 14 Villa Publica 389, 400, 449 Villani, Giovani 84, 206, 276, 278, 409, 504 Viminal 385 Violante, Cinzio 311 violma: 496, 497, 507 Visconti wars 231 Visconti, Giangaleazzo 614 Volcanal 396

662

Index

Volscians 381, 386, 388, 390 VOR$, voting 39, 42, 43, 54, 64, 1 15, 143, 144, 173, 1 74, 177, 486, 492, 493, 495, 570 Vulca 3 87 Vulcanus 366 Vulci 382

w Waley, Daniel 145, 334 walls 409, 422, 621 Walls, Servian 390, 398 Walter of Brienne 206, 226, 550, 5S2 war, warfare 23, 38, 72, 75, 152, 1 81 , 1 88, 492, 572, 573, 577, 582, 586, 587, 603, 606, 609, 612, 622, 624, 631 Weber, Marianne 24

Weber, Max 19-30, 114, 145, 331, 337, 338, 356, 357, 631, 638, 641, 642 wheat, distribution of 492, 496 women 72, 1 37, 172, 462-464, 467, 472, 480, 481, 483, 526 working class 349, 432

x Xenophon 35, 147, 148

z Zeus 41, 357, 367, 368, 465 Zeus Polieus 465 Ziani, Pietro, Doge 439 Ziani, Sebastiano, Doge 309, 440, 523, 524

P H OT O CRE D I TS Author, p. 379-380, 412-41 8, 443 Berlin, Staatliche Museen, p. 445 New York, Art Resource, p. 8 9-90, 445, 547 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 543 Treviso, Photo Fini, p. 91 Venice, BOhm, p. 528-533, 5 35-537, 539-543 Venice, Museo Correr, p. 534, 544-548