According to the ancient accounts, the plebs – who made up at least some part of the Roman army and the bulk of the labour force more generally – organised several secessions, in which they simply withdrew from the city, in order to force concessions from the patricians. The result of the first of these secessions (in the mid-490s bc) was the creation of a new magistracy, the plebeian tribunate, whose role seems to have been to protect the plebeians and represent their interests.61 This magistracy was one to which people were elected, and so its creation required the organising of a suitable electoral assembly, one for plebeians only. The plebs supposedly also began to keep official records, although that claim may be anachronistic, for the fifth century at least, but probably for much of the fourth too. It was the plebeian movement as well that was said to have been responsible ←41 | 42→for getting Rome’s first ever law-code drafted and set up in public. That was in the mid-fifth century bc.62
As far as later writers were concerned, the activities of the plebs looked like they amounted to a state and, since these writers took the existence of the Roman state for granted (they believed, after all, that it had been created centuries earlier by Romulus), they conceived of the plebeian movement as leading to the formation of a state within the state. This idea has been carried over into modern scholarship, most notably by Th. Mommsen in the nineteenth century, although it has more recently been defended by T. J. Cornell.63
Cornell’s defence of the idea focuses on the question of whether or not the plebeian movement can be viewed as something that can reasonably be called a state. He takes the existence of the wider Roman state for granted.64 On the one hand, he is absolutely right to do so – it would be extremely difficult, if not even perverse, to argue that the Roman state simply did not exist at all by the early fifth century bc – but, on the other, ←42 | 43→it may be premature to think that it existed in an uncontested or straightforward manner, or that it was an idea to which everyone fully subscribed.
The private war of the gens Fabia was supposedly fought in the early 470s bc, some thirty years after the expulsion of the kings (that was in 510/509 on traditional chronology, with the first elected magistrates supposedly holding office in 509). Cornell has argued that the campaign of the Fabii ‘represents one of the last vestiges of an archaic form of social organisation which was probably already in an advanced state of obsolescence.’65 That may very well be so, although the phrase ‘advanced state of obsolescence’ is perhaps something of an overstatement.66 When it comes to the question of private wars of this kind, the argument is based on very little evidence indeed; but the lack of evidence pertains to earlier times just as much as it does to later, thanks no doubt in part to Roman assumptions about the establishment by Romulus of the Roman army. All this inevitably makes the demise of such practices extremely difficult to date; the absence of evidence is clearly not necessarily evidence of absence. There is, however, some evidence for behaviour that is not entirely unrelated.
When it comes to those powerful individuals and their followers, they did not just disappear along with the Roman monarchy. Attus Clausus was said to have migrated to Rome in the early years of the republican period.67 There are also various stories of individuals who allegedly sought to establish themselves as kings of Rome, even in republican times. The evidence is, as always, extremely difficult, and it is clear that many of these stories have been heavily modified (if not, in some instances, perhaps even invented outright) at a later date and in light of later events. As with the expedition of the 300 Fabii, it is impossible to know what, if anything, lies behind the evidence as it currently stands, or whether or not it is possible to try to put aside that subsequent manipulation and shaping. Nonetheless, the evidence does have a certain cumulative force and, more significantly, not ←43 | 44→all of what it suggests fits quite so neatly with the expectations that the literary evidence may otherwise engender.68
The most famous of the would-be kings were Sp. Cassius, Sp. Maelius and M. Manlius Capitolinus, each of whom was in the end killed for his activities and alleged aspirations, but there were others.69 Also relevant in this context is the story of Ap. Herdonius. Herdonius was a Sabine, like Attus Clausus; like Clausus, he too was said to have gone to Rome although, in his case, he was said to have seized the Capitoline hill in a bid to take over the city (this was in 460 bc).70 He supposedly had with him 2,500 followers (or perhaps more), according to Livy, and it may be tempting to think of Caeles Vibenna, his faithful sodalis Mastarna, and his army, or of Poplios Valesios and his sodales. By 460, however, Rome had been a Republic for half a century and the rule of kings was a thing of the past. Herdonius, the aspiring monarch, was out of date; he was automatically bad, and his followers are all cast by Livy as exiles and slaves.71
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It is also possible to think of someone like Cn. Marcius Coriolanus. Cornell has argued that Coriolanus’ career should perhaps be understood in the same general context of powerful, independent individuals who do their own thing, look out only for their own interests and do not think of themselves as under the authority of any government, or indeed of anyone. Consequently, when Coriolanus’ activities in Rome did not work out, he simply left and went to join the Volsci.72 This too was supposedly in the early fifth century.
The literary evidence for all these individuals and events is extremely problematic. The point does need to be stressed. Nonetheless this evidence does fit very well with the circumstances implied by the inscription from Satricum, and also with the evidence (likewise problematic) for powerful individuals from the regal period and for gentes that appear to have once been more powerful than the state. The evidence certainly suggests some element of continuity with those times.
While the difficulties involved in basing an argument on textual evidence written centuries after the events in question need always to be kept in mind, it is worth giving careful consideration to the plebeian movement in the context of state formation. To what extent did the activities of that movement – restricting the actions of the powerful, creating magistracies and an assembly, keeping records, campaigning to get a law-code drafted and published,73 and so on – play a role in the formation of the Roman state? Developments of this kind are just the sort of thing that ought to be expected when a state comes into existence. And, although it is the view of later writers who were drawing on an anachronistic literary tradition, the idea that the plebeian movement itself amounted to a state (albeit within a state) is nevertheless suggestive.
The nature of the evidence, unfortunately, may not allow for the argument to go much further than this, that is, beyond simply suggesting that ‘the conflict of the orders’ was not just about securing and advancing plebeian rights, but that it may well have also played a role in the formation of the Roman state, in its early stages at least. This possibility is certainly ←45 | 46→significant, not only in itself and for what it may reveal about the origins of at least one state, and, on its own terms at least, one extremely successful state. It is also significant for contemporary discussion, about states in the twenty-first century, about the roles that