THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XI - The Government and the Governed

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Page 79

Interference of the Community in War and Administration

Of greater importance was the growing interference of the burgesses in questions as to persons and things belonging to the sphere of military administration and external policy. To this head belong the transference of the nomination of the ordinary staff-officers from the general to the burgesses, which has been already mentioned;(63) the elections of the leaders of the opposition as commanders-in-chief against Hannibal;(64) the unconstitutional and irrational decree of the people in 537, which divided the supreme command between the unpopular generalissimo and his popular lieutenant who opposed him in the camp as well as at home;(65) the tribunician complaint laid before the burgesses, charging an officer like Marcellus with injudicious and dishonest management of the war (545), which even compelled him to come from the camp to the capital and there demonstrate his military capacity before the public; the still more scandalous attempts to refuse by decree of the burgesses to the victor of Pydna his triumph;(66) the investiture--suggested, it is true, by the senate--of a private man with extraordinary consular authority (544;(67)); the dangerous threat of Scipio that, if the senate should refuse him the chief command in Africa, he would seek the sanction of the burgesses (549;(68)); the attempt of a man half crazy with ambition to extort from the burgesses, against the will of the government, a declaration of war in every respect unwarranted against the Rhodians (587;(69)); and the new constitutional axiom, that every state-treaty acquired validity only through the ratification of the people.

63. Cf. III. XI. Election of Officers in the Comitia

64. Cf. III. V. Flaminius, New Warlike Preparations in Rome

65. Cf. III. V. Fabius and Minucius

66. Cf. III. XI. Squandering of the Spoil

67. Cf. III. VI. Publius Scipio

68. Cf. III. VI. The African Expedition of Scipio

69. Cf. III. X. Humiliation of Rhodes

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