Secessio plebis
The secessio plebis (Latin marching out of the common people ) was a means of struggle of the plebeians in the Roman estates fighting.
The plebeians are several times left the city, and thus the economic life of Rome have paralyzed to express their political and social demands.
The first secessio plebis allegedly found in 494 BC instead: The plebeians should be drawn to the Mons Sacer, and thus put the establishment of the Office of the tribunes of the people by. Also, the Office of the aediles to have been established at that time. One handed down by Titus Livius Legend has it moved the former consul Agrippa Menenius Lanatus to return, by telling them the fable of the stomach and the limbs: Once there was a dispute between the members of the human body and the stomach because the members all work work performed, while the stomach is idle, and refused to continue to feed him. But because they were themselves exhausted and realized that he still fulfills an important role by caring for the members. Likewise, dominated by the patricians and the plebeians Senate would need each other.
The second secessio plebis, this time on the Aventine Hill, is in the year 450 or 449 have occurred BC and had success as the adoption of the Twelve Tables, the abolition of Decemvirats and the restoration of the tribunate.
The third secessio plebis led 287 BC on the Janiculum. To end it, put the dictator Quintus Hortensius by the Lex Hortensia, which brought the recognition of decisions of the National Assembly as laws and the full equality of plebeians.
Another possible secessio plebis who 445 BC led to the Janiculum and the adoption of Lex Canuleia that permitted marriages between patricians and plebeians, may be preceded, it is indicated only by Florus.
Since the sack of Rome by the Gauls under Brennus in 387, all records were lost, Livy was in his account of the first two secessiones only on oral traditions to fall back and she has decorated accordingly fabulously. Some historical researchers assume that the background of each strike of the lower classes was that on this occasion only actually constituted as a social unit ( from Latin plebs plere - stuffing, so much as the amount ). This strike may have been associated with any economic activity for the purposes of a general strike - Livy reported that the first episode secessio to have been a famine - or for military service. On the other hand, a mass conscientious objection is likely. In the Roman military tactics in fact the latest in the army reform of the penultimate king, Servius Tullius ( † about 535 BC) had completed the transition from aristocratic single combat to Classis tactic in a closed phalanx of heavily armed infantrymen sought bulldoze the enemy literally. With this enhancement the group consisting of ordinary people infantry who had to provide for their own equipment, rose to the Romans as with all other peoples, who introduced this method of fighting, their self-confidence: You could be the political disenfranchisement by the patricians and the economic exploitation no longer offer: Livy paints exemplified in the history of the first secessio a gruesome case of bonded labor from. For an interpretation of the first secessio 494 as resistance to the recruitment also is the fact that it took place against the background of external military threat posed by the Latins.
Others assume that the concrete strikes with a symbolic train to a sanctuary, such as the Temple of Ceres were started on Aventine, from which then developed the Myth, the entire populace would have closed leaving the city.
Important sources
- Livy, Ab urbe condita
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Rhomaike Archaiologia
- Florus, Epitoma de Tito Livio bellorum omnium annorum DCC libri duo