Although the nobles were indeed extremely selfish, when faced with the choice of life and death, they still had to choose a temporary compromise. Therefore, in 450 BC, Rome formulated and promulgated the famous "Twelve Tables of Bronze"

", it is like a compilation of Roman traditional customs. Although it still safeguards the interests of the nobility, its written publication effectively limits the nobility's arbitrary distortion of the law and the confusion of right and wrong. This can also be said to be our

A very great progress in human history.

The "Law of the Twelve Tables" was a code resolution that the Roman Presbyterian Council was forced to accept at the request of the People's Assembly and elected a codification committee composed of ten people to be responsible for formulating the code. In 451 BC, the committee formulated

The Ten Tables of the Law, with two more tables added in the second year, were published in the Roman Forum. Because each table was made of bronze, it was customarily called the "Twelve Tables of Bronze Law".

Its main contents include summons, trial, debt, paternal rights, inheritance and guardianship, ownership and possession, rent and land, private offenders, public law, religious law, supplementary to the first five tables and supplementary to the last five tables. The code clearly stipulates the slave-owning aristocracy.

interests and safeguarded private ownership, protecting the private property of Roman citizens. In addition, the code also prohibited intermarriage between nobles and commoners.

From here, it is not difficult to see that in fact, the "Twelve Tables Law" at this time was still not perfect, and it was still far from the so-called democracy. However, this kind of code has protected the interests of civilians to a great extent.

At least the nobles cannot exploit the common people at will, or fabricate certain crimes against the common people at will.

Therefore, in this sense, this kind of code has a greater impact on the overall cohesion of Rome. After all, after the civilians gained some rights, they began to be willing to protect the city of Rome. They no longer felt that they were protecting only the city as before.

The nobility, and then the nobility exploited their wealth in various ways. In the end, they got nothing for their efforts, and eventually became slaves.

However, the final provision of the "Law of the Twelve Bronze Tables" prohibits intermarriage between nobles and commoners, which has resulted in the phenomenon that nobles will always be nobles and common people will always be common people. Moreover, the nobles have always tried every means to continue to exploit the poor.

Then there is the development of commerce, which sells items or accessories with low original value to civilians at sky-high prices, thus extracting the wealth of civilians in this legal form. However, civilians cannot find this kind of commercialization.

Evidence, because it's like the concept of one person willing to fight and one person willing to suffer.

Moreover, Roman business at this time was different from our modern business, and it was not as terrible as our modern business. Our current business is simply a group of legal bandits, or it is okay to say that they are robbers, but we have to

Understand, this is legal robbery! They are carrying out legal robbery in a model of monopolizing a certain industry, such as monopolizing the information industry. If we want to access the Internet or something, we must buy from their stores. As for their decision

Whatever the price, we don’t have any right to counter-offer.

But Rome is definitely not that serious at the moment. Therefore, after the long-term struggle between the common people and the nobles, after the formation of the "Twelve Bronze Tables Law", we can fully understand that it protected the interests of the common people in all aspects to a greater extent.

, so the civilians are currently protecting Rome again. This is because they feel that they are protecting Rome that belongs to them all, rather than just working as slaves for the nobles. Another one is attacking other tribes, and robbing resources. Civilians

They can also be divided, so it is not just for the Roman nobles to rob, but they will get nothing, and will be exploited by the nobles until they go bankrupt.

So in the final analysis: because the city of Rome had the Law of the Twelve Tables, although it was not perfect, and although it was not very democratic, at least to a certain extent, it still had the rudiment of democracy. Therefore, the cohesion of the entire Rome was not what we had before.

After chatting and conducting a more detailed analysis, Rome finally began to become stronger!

This kind of power is different from the power of the city of Rome in the past. In the past, the power of the city of Rome was irregular and all for the benefit of one of them. But now we can say that Rome already has the power of an empire.

Meaning, it is no longer a gathering place for a group of homeless people, thieves, murderers, swindlers, nobles, businessmen, etc. They already have their own beliefs and even a city-state and glory that they need to protect.

The birth of this concept of faith and glory is undoubtedly the basic element of a strong empire. So far, the Roman Empire has always been a city-state that mainly attacked foreign countries. It even flattened many countless tribes and the like, and gathered a lot of wealth.

, but later on, the conflicts between Roman civilians and nobles were mainly transferred to the economic field, which we will analyze together later.

So now we continue to analyze the situation after the promulgation of Rome's "Law of the Twelve Tables". At this time, the Roman army was mainly composed of clan tribes, with 3,000 infantry and 300 cavalry. In the sixth century BC,

The Romans learned the hoplite phalanx, and then the Roman consul Servius of this era carried out reforms based on region and property and established a citizen military system, which is the system we mentioned in Athens before.

The specific stipulation is that all Roman citizens between the ages of seventeen and sixty have the obligation to prepare their own weapons for military service, which also expands and reorganizes the army. However, there is no salary for being a soldier, and the equipment needs to be purchased by oneself.

Let's push the time forward a little further, and the Roman army during this period was mainly divided into two legions, commanded by two consuls respectively. The main force of each legion was three thousand hoplites, and was also equipped with a small number of

Light infantry and cavalry.

Then after the "Law of the Twelve Tables of Bronze" was promulgated, this led to an increase in Rome's cohesion and the need for constant foreign wars, which meant that it needed to meet long-term war needs. At this time, Rome's famous military commander Calumes carried out

During the military reform, the military pay system was implemented. What is the military pay system? In fact, you no longer need to buy equipment yourself, and you can even get wages.

Under the military pay system, the Roman legions were divided into thirty companies, each with two centuries. At the same time, Commander Calumes also abolished the original tradition of being included in the ranks according to property levels.

It was the kind used by the Greek city-state of Athens in the past to divide citizens into four classes. In the end, only the fourth class could receive wages as soldiers. But even with this tradition in Rome, even the poorest people were obliged to serve as soldiers.

, there is no salary to get, so it goes bankrupt.

But now it is different. The military pay system was implemented. Then Commander Calumes also completely reformed the tradition of the property class, and then divided the army into spearmen, main troops and reserve troops according to age and experience. There were three lines in total.

Platoon. The first platoon is the young spearmen, the second platoon is the very experienced main force, and the third platoon is the most experienced veterans.

During combat, the first row of spear throwers first throws spears at the enemy. This kind of spear is two meters long and equipped with a very sharp metal spearhead. Coupled with the strong impact generated when throwing, it is enough to pierce the enemy's shield and armor.

After the spearmen throw their spears, they must retreat quickly. Then the second row of main soldiers will step forward with shields and swords to engage in a bloody fight with the enemy. If they can win, they have won. If they cannot win, then the third row will

The most experienced and combat-effective veterans in the platoon are about to go into battle!

And because of their special social structure, we can also say that the Romans themselves were a group of very vigilant people. So according to our current concept of people, they might be a little cautious? But this may be normal, so the Romans

There is a special rule in the human army: if the army must camp in the wild on the way to war, even if it is only for one night, it must dig trenches and build high walls.

This is to prevent enemy sneak attacks. In this regard, we can also say that the Romans did a very good job. Anyway, no tribe or warriors from the empire can easily sneak attack on the Romans at night, because this defensive measure is also

There are people standing guard at night.

In addition to such careful defensive measures, there is also very strict discipline. If anyone dares to disobey orders, he will be executed immediately. During a war, if the entire team deserted, the Roman generals would queue them up.

In a row, every nine people will be executed. Of course, if the battle is won, it will not be like our modern army today, because we have mentioned several times that Rome has entered the era of preliminary democracy, and it is also a special group of people, so the battle

After victory, as long as they have military exploits, whether they are generals or the most ordinary soldiers, they will all receive very generous rewards.

In fact, this reward system is somewhat similar to the military merit system of the Qin Dynasty in China. The military merit system of the Qin Dynasty in China is that both generals and soldiers are treated equally. For example, if the most ordinary soldier kills the enemy on the battlefield,

It is to give certain rewards according to the number of enemies killed. Of course, we can also understand this military merit system as another concept, that is: in addition to their own fixed salary, the number of enemies killed on the battlefield is:

Legal extra money! The more people you kill, the more rewards you will get. This is calculated based on the number of heads. Of course, for killing general-level heads, the rewards will become more generous.

So when soldiers kill enemies, it seems to be a process of making money, so the soldiers are quite crazy!

The system currently implemented in Rome is such a military merit system. At this point, Roman soldiers know that killing enemies is not only to defend Rome, but also to expand Rome. It is also a matter of making money. Then we have also talked several times that the Romans
Chapter completed!