Greece, Rome, and the Bill of Rights (27 page)

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Authors: Susan Ford Wiltshire

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fighting were also the source of individual identityfor men, certainly, but also for women as they acted or reacted in response to male heroism.

14
It is significant that Achilles revealed his true identity by reaching for armor while he was hidden in disguise.

The taming of the Homeric warrior into a citizen of the Greek polis has been compared with the taming of the individualist cowboy ethic in the American mythic tradition. Jean Bethke Elshtain assesses the movie
Shane
in that context. Shane, who has put away the gun that was his identity, reluctantly arms himself one last time when the settlers face a "hired gun" brought in by a leader of the ranchers. Once Shane has done what he must do, he realizes that his continued presence would represent a threat to the peace of the community. Elshtain concludes: "Shane
must
ride away at the film's conclusion. He is as out of place in the placid, settled kingdom of a tamed town as was Achilles' gory glory in Aristotle's list of civic virtues."
15
Plato and Aristotle are the leading Greek theorists on armsbearing and civic life. But they
are
theoriststhe one more than the other but both essentially armchair politicians. The material out of which they construct their theories, however, is the historical experience of the Athenian polity.
For the conservative Plato, an armed citizenry is a threat to the oligarchy he prefers and might even lead to that dangerous offspring of the rabble, democracy. When former members of the elite who have lost their power begin to long for a revolution, "these drones are armed and can sting."
16
Eventually, whether by force of arms or terrorism, the poor majority would establish a democracy that grants the people "an equal share in civil rights and government," and then "liberty and free speech will be rife everywhere."
17
In the later and even more conservative
Laws
, Plato would require compulsory military training for all citizens, both male and female.
18
It is not clear whether the citizens would own their own arms or would be issued them for the monthly training exercises.
19
In both the

 

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Republic
and the
Laws
, the assumption is that citizens would never use arms to free themselves from a tyranny in their own state but only against external enemies of the tyranny: "All citizens shall regard a friend or enemy of the state as their own personal friend or enemy."

20

Aristotle, although critical of the authoritarian and elitist state proposed by Plato, also raises the question of armsbearing. Aristotle would prefer a middle ground between oligarchy and democracy composed of a populace of armsbearers: "Finally, when the masses govern the state with a view to the common interest, the name used for this species is the generic name common to all constitutions (or polities)the name of 'Polity ...' What we can expect particularly [in a Polity] is the military kind of excellence, which is the kind that shows itself in a mass. This is the reason why the defence forces are the most sovereign body under this constitution, and those who possess arms are the persons who enjoy constitutional rights."
21
Aristotle cites the issue of armsbearing also in his criticism of the ideal state proposed by Hippodamas of Miletus, who was, he says, "the first man without practical experience of politics who attempted to handle the theme of the best form of constitution."
22
Hippodamas had proposed a state of 10,000, divided into thirds: one of farmers, one of skilled artisans, and the third of armsbearers.
23
The problem is the restriction of armsbearing to one class alone. The farmers and the artisans, not possessing arms, become the virtual slaves of the groups possessed of arms, in which case the offices of the state cannot be truly shared, and discontent will erupt.
24
Since armed cavalry and hoplites would tend to come from the wealthier classes, it was ideal to have as much of the population as possible possessed of light arms so they would be able to overcome oligarchy and enjoy citizens' rights: "When, however, states began to increase in size, and infantry forces acquired a greater degree of strength, more persons were admitted to the enjoyment of political rights."
25
Aristotle would include arms among the basic requirements, along with food and tools, of the democratic or

 

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mixed polity because arms are required against both civil and external enemies. For Aristotle possession of arms is thus required for free citizens in such a state, since they are the persons who decide whether or not a constitution may continue.
One myth-making episode in early Athenian history, the slaying of the tyrant Hipparchus by Harmodius and Aristogiton, involves the question of whether, how, and when citizens were armed within the city in the late sixth century
B.C.
In the middle of his account of the disastrous Sicilian expedition during the Peloponnesian War in 415, Thucydides pauses to offer a lengthy account of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogiton. What motivates this digression is not clear. The best judgment is that it results from "the temptation before which all historians and commentators are by their very nature weak," that is, the temptation to take any available opportunity to correct misinformation about a famous event.

26

Thucydides describes the events leading up to the slaying of Hipparchus, brother of the tyrant Hippias, by the two lovers Harmodius and Aristogiton, taking care to explain that they planned their attack for the day of the Panathenaic procession because this was "the only day on which the citizens, who were taking part in the procession, could gather in arms without exciting suspicion."
27
When the surviving brother, the tyrant Hippias, learned what had happened, he approached the armed men in the procession, ordered his bodyguards to take their arms away, picked out the men he suspected of being guilty, and found that all were carrying concealed daggers even though shields and spears were the only arms customarily carried during the annual procession.
28
The
Athenian Constitution
contradicts the story Thucydides tells, holding that a procession with arms was an innovation of the later democracy.
29
The Parthenon frieze shows men with shields and helmets, and it is probably impossible to discern what armament was permissible when. The matter is of some moment, because if the Athenians in the procession were all bearing arms, a great foe of tyranny might properly ask why all the armed peo-

 

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ple did not rush to the aid of the tyrannicideswho both were killed, but were given credit by the popular tradition (but not by Thucydides, who laid it to the pressure of the Spartans

30
) for the eventual downfall of the tyranny three years later and the subsequent reforms of Cleisthenes.
31

We can conclude from this episode two things: that in the late sixth century the Athenian people were generally not armed within the city except on special yearly occasions, and that the legitimate carrying of arms (whether Pisistratean or an innovation of the democracy at a later period) was productive of ridding the city of tyrants. Whether that is a good thing or not depends on whether one is a Platonist or an Aristotelian.
Or a Roman. As we turn to armsbearing at Rome, it is revealing that the first word in Vergil's
Aeneid
, the defining epic of the Roman experience, is ''arms''
Arma virumque cano
. The basis of Roman civic organization from the times of Servius Tullius was fundamentally military, as we saw in the preceding chapter, with the classes determined according to the degree citizens could afford to arm themselves.
The militaristic character of Roman society was never at issue, but the problem of professionalized standing armies was. During the Civil Wars in Rome in the first century
B.C.
, Gaius Marius began admitting people into the army who had no property qualifications. This practice of arming the
capite censi
, or persons outside the economic classes determined by the census, was a radical break with Roman tradition in which the citizens with the most to lose formed the core of the army. From the time of Marius's reforms, the Roman armies became increasingly professionalized, permanent, and independent of civilian influence. They still took their oath to the
populus Romanus
, the Roman people, but it was to their generals that they looked for benefits.
Gone was the ideal of Cincinnatus returning to his plow after serving or saving the republic.
32
Now soldiers who had come from nothing had nothing to go back to after their service and no source of support nor center of loyalty except their general. It may reasonably be argued that this

 

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was the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic, for it was troops personally loyal to him who made possible Caesar's successful challenge to the power of the Senate, and eventually it was the armies who determined who the emperor would be. The citizen-soldier of the republic had been replaced by the soldier-for-pay, the mercenary and emperor-maker.
But even before Caesar, the rupture had occurred. The Senate did not permit soldiers within the city unless the city was under outside attack. From the time of Servius, the procedure was that in such an emergency the consul would proclaim an emergency levy. Although this had been misused in 133, 100, and 67
B.C.
, the first time in which an act of the Senate invited serving soldiers into the city occurred in 52
B.C.
. As A. W. Lintott observes: "In 52 at last the logic of the Roman tendency to political violence in a state which had no proper police force led to the inevitable solution, professional troops in Rome, summoned on the senate's recommendation in support of law and order."

33

Once Pompey had been invited in with his proconsular army to quell domestic violence, it was a small step for Caesar to cross the Rubicon.
One important feature of Roman law demonstrates the limits on armsbearing that the ideal of the armed citizen-soldier might suggest. This was the legislation against armed domestic violence in the late republic, legislation that, like the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, was predicated by the prevailing political conditions of the times.
The transition from armies fighting in the field to gangs fighting in the streets is one of scale only. This transition was disastrous for the Roman Republic, but it is not difficult to understand how it occurred.
34
Until about 133
B.C.
, the era of the Gracchi brothers, Rome's mixed constitution of monarchic, aristocratic, and popular elements, together with military domination of the Italian peninsula and the foreign wars with Carthage, Greece, and beyond, had largely succeeded in maintaining at least the facsimile of domestic tranquility in the city. Then Rome's age-old

 

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tradition of tolerating, even encouraging violence, in the settlement of public and private disputes began increasingly to define the way of life at home, with urban violence reaching its highest pitch in the decade 5949
B.C.
Cicero's speeches reflect the extreme civil unrest of the first century
B.C.
and the ambivalence about armed violence in the civic sphere. In his attack on Catiline, Cicero praises the brave men of earlier days, who did not lack the courage to strike at conspirators who were even more dangerous than foreign foes.

35
But it was criminal to carry arms specifically for the purpose of assassination:

For you must realize that, out of all these men seated here, not one single person is unaware how during the consulship of Lepidus and Tullus, when you took your place in the Assembly on the last day of December, you were illegally carrying arms. You had got together a group determined to strike down the leading men of the state, including the two consuls themselves; and what prevented this mad crime from being carried out was no sanity or nervousness of yours, but the good fortune that favors the people of Rome.
36
In his defense of Milo, Cicero reiterated the Roman law that carrying arms with intent to kill is criminal, while carrying or using arms in self-defense is justifiable.
37
Two further developments in this period require mention. In 56
B.C.
the Senate extended the legislation against violence to apply to membership in a private association,
sodalitas
or
decuria
, which might serve as the foundation for a gang. This may have been a precedent for the clause in the
Lex Julia
outlawing membership in
collegia
, discussed under freedom of assembly in the preceding chapter. Second, we know from Pliny the Elder that an edict of Pompey's third consulship "prohibited any weapon in the city."
38
This order was more far-reaching than the clause of the
Lex Plautia
forbidding appearance in public with a weapon. It may have led to the additional clause in the
Lex Julia
, which prohibited the possession of any weapons except for hunting, voyages, and journeys.
39
Given the extent of the unrest, laws against political

 

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