The Fall of the Roman Republic

David Shotter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134364381
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Revised and updated to include the latest research in the field, this second edition of a popular history text examines how the Roman republic was destabilized by the unplanned growth of the Roman Empire.Central discussion points include:

• the government of the republic
• how certain individuals took advantage of the expansion of the empire
• Julius Caesar's accession to power
• the rise of the Augustan principate following Julius Caesar's murder.

Drawing on a wealth of recent scholarship and including an expanded and updated guide to further reading, a chronology, and a guide to the provinces of the Roman Empire, students of history and classical studies will find this a helpful and accessible introduction to this complex period in history.

1
THE GOVERNMENT OF
THE REPUBLIC

Roman society was classified into two groups (or ‘orders’) – patricians and plebeians; the origins of this classification are obscure and, over the years, various explanations have been suggested. These include an original racial difference between the two groups, or a distinction based upon the concepts of economic success or failure. As we have seen, doubts persist over the chronology of the ending of the antique monarchy and the inception of the republic. But if we accept the traditional dating of c. 509 BC, then, despite the usual assertion that the early republic saw a patrician monopoly of power and influence, it must be noted that plebeians, too, held prominent positions until the middle years of the fifth century BC. It may be that so long as Rome remained within the Etruscan cultural and economic sphere there was opportunity still for those whose wealth was based upon sources other than agricultural.

However, by c. 460–450 BC, the changing tenor of social and economic life in Rome appears to have shifted the political bias in favour of landowning patricians who, from that time, seem to have exercised the dominant role. According to Roman tradition, the period between the mid-fifth century BC and the early-third saw changes take place within a process known to history as the ‘Struggle of the Orders’. Again, it is not easy to assess the character of this, except to note that, as a result, plebeians won social concessions such as the right of intermarriage with patricians, and political advance through the winning of access to senatorial membership and to office-bearing, as well as gaining sovereignty for ‘their body’, the Assembly of the Plebeians (concilium plebis). How much of a change such ‘concessions’ represented, however, remains uncertain because the ability to participate fully in government must have continued to depend upon wealth. Large numbers of plebeians must simply have been too poor for such changes to have had much meaning for them, whilst those who became sufficiently wealthy to participate in a meaningful way must have come to identify their interests more closely with those of the patricians. In that sense, the ‘Struggle of the Orders’ must in essence have led to a revised polarisation in Roman society.

It is reasonable to suppose that the physical growth of the Roman state between the fifth and third centuries broadened the wealth-base. Thus, the governing aristocracy of Rome evolved into a combined group of patricians and plebeians wealthy enough to sustain the burdens of power and office, and of course to grasp the opportunities offered by them. Thus, from the third century BC, this governing aristocracy is perhaps better termed ‘the nobility’ – that is, consisting of men, patrician and plebeian, whose families were ‘known’ (nobiles). This, however, did not work to cut the majority of the population out of the political process, since ultimately all those wealthy nobles who sought office were subject to the popular will.

As we have seen, Polybius admired the republic’s government because of the fact that it brought together elements of what Greeks recognised as three different types of constitution – monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. However, whereas the Greek city-states had regularly seen the demise of these because of their exclusiveness, the Roman republic prospered not only because it enjoyed elements of all three but also, importantly, because the three were genuinely interlocked with each other through powers and checks, which precluded the dominance of any one of them.

The Roman republic had no written constitution; rather, its practices for government evolved over the centuries. The importance of evolution over revolution was seen as the root of the republic’s stability. In the republic’s ‘mixed constitution’ the monarchic element was represented by the magistracy (principally the consulship), the aristocratic by the senate, and the democratic by the assemblies of the whole people (comitia) and of the plebeians (concilium plebis).

The ‘balance’ between these elements has received different interpretations over the years; some have accepted that there was a genuine reality to the checks and balances that Polybius noted, whilst others have downgraded, even written off altogether, the notion of a popular role in the process of government. It is true that the institution of patronage must have had some effect on voting-habits, especially before the gradual introduction during the second century of secret balloting in assembly-voting. Patronage was a traditional ‘institution’ in Rome, by which the rich and influential provided help and advice of varying kinds to those less fortunate; patrons expected loyalty (fides), at least, in return. Although it may be possible to overplay the role of patronage in political life, the obligations it placed upon those involved were real enough.

Further, as we shall see, the organisation of voting in the assemblies did not follow the principle of ‘one man, one vote’; in the most weighty of the popular assemblies, the comitia centuriata, the wealthy had a clear edge in ‘voting-power’ over those less fortunate. Similarly, the fact that, as we have seen, the tenure of the magistracies and the membership of the senate were unsalaried clearly meant that in practice they were open only to those of means. Again, whilst the popular assemblies had to be summoned to meet (by a magistrate), the senate could meet at will. Respect for tradition (mos maiorum) will also have ensured that the members of the nobility were generally respected as men of experience and breeding, tried and tested over the years and thus the source of accumulated wisdom on matters political, military, religious and legal. As we shall see in Chapter 3, it was also of relevance to any discussion of popular power that Rome was frequently at war during the period of the republic, and that as Roman territory and, with it, citizenship expanded, many voters will have lived further away from Rome itself, the place where, of course, votes were cast.

However, despite these considerations, it remains clear that the people were important and had weight: tradition, for example, shows how, during the ‘Struggle of the Orders’, popular pressure was exerted by threats with a more modern ‘ring’ to them; namely, withdrawal of co-operation, especially in the military context. Even if such episodes did not occur precisely in the way that Roman historians recorded, the point itself remains valid. Again, political oratory was a major feature of Roman life: would this have been the case if the intended audience, the Roman people, were mere spectators of and ciphers in the political process itself? Further, it has to be kept in mind that formal voting in the popular assemblies was preceded over a period by a series of four informal meetings (contiones) at which the matters which were at issue and which would eventually come to a vote were rehearsed before the people or plebeians. This does not suggest that, in the Roman republic, the people should be dismissed as of little or no account in the political process.

We shall now turn individually to the three principal elements in the ‘Polybian balance’ – the magistrates, the senate and the people’s assemblies:

THE MAGISTRATES

(The duties of the magistrates in the Roman republic are laid out more fully in Appendix II.)

It is thought by some that the magistracy had its origins in the regal period in the form of men who led the kings’ armies into battle: these magistrates may at that stage have been called praetors: prae-itor is one who ‘goes in front’. Traditionally, the office of consul emerged in 509 BC with the birth of the republic; however, it has been suggested that, whilst 509 may have been significant as the year in which the great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill was dedicated, the republic itself did not come into being for another half-century or so. It seems likely that, politically and militarily, the early-fifth century was a turbulent period in central Italy, when control of the site of Rome may have been a matter of envious dispute amongst local ‘warlords’; some hint of this is provided in the ‘heroic’ stories narrated in the second book of the Augustan historian, Livy.

The founding of the republic and the dedication of the temple may have been brought together in the tradition in order to associate this temple closely with the republic rather than with the kings. If, however, the republic is to be ‘re-dated’ to c. 460, then the consuls would appear to have antedated it. The inception of consuls in Rome may indeed mark a change in political emphasis, as the name means ‘one who consults’.

If the consulship represents the ‘residue’ of regal power, then great care was taken to ensure that the consuls were kept under control and could not easily move to establish a kingship (regnum). First, two were elected to hold office for a year; after that time they handed their power over and were required formally to account for their tenures of office.

In the dual magistracy, the man who said ‘no’ prevailed over his colleague in the event of disagreement between them: the dual office may also have had practical reasons behind it; it has been suggested that one consul may have led armies whilst his colleague headed up the administration in Rome, and that they may have alternated, possibly on a monthly basis. Consuls were expected to consult their peers in the senate and the people to secure the decision-making process.

As the Roman republic grew in size and complexity, so the burden on the consuls must have become increasingly intolerable. To deal with this, new offices were created to handle specific areas of administration: quaestors, for example, aided the consuls in the financial side of their responsibilities, whilst the censorship was created in order to relieve the consuls of such duties as their care for the republic’s ‘moral fabric’ and supervision of the senate’s membership. Censors also came to ‘assess’ the Roman people for ‘taxation’, which meant placing them into a property group (classis), which determined the level of their contribution in time of war and, related to that, their place in the organisation of the comitia centuriata, the assembly which has been dubbed ‘the nation at arms’.

Praetors were ‘brought back’ in the mid-fourth century: ostensibly this provided men whose duties lay principally in the legal field, such as the praetor peregrinus who dealt with the interaction between citizens and non-citizens. Praetors could also deputise for or ‘supplement’ the consuls, particularly in the area of military command. Some, however, have argued that the decision to ‘recreate’ what was at first an exclusively patrician office came at a time (367 BC) when it was enacted that one of the annual consulships should be reserved for plebeians. Both consuls and praetors were invested with ‘military authority’ (imperium), which was conferred upon them by the longest-surviving of the popular assemblies, the comitia curiata, after their election to office in another body.

Gradually, over the years, the ‘rules of tenure’ of these offices became more closely organised and regulated, so that an order of tenure came into being, together with recognised minimum ages of tenure, intervals between offices and between successive tenures of the same office. This organisation of offices was called the cursus honorum; rising through it to the consulship was a man’s dignitas and, by doing this, he demonstrated himself as worthy of his ancestors and as enhancing his family’s standing. For members of the nobility, the ability to progress along the cursus represented freedom from the domination of others – that is, libertas. Whilst there were many laws touching upon the cursus honorum, the most important were the lex Villia annalis of 180 BC and a lex annalis of Cornelius Sulla, passed in the late 80s. It is significant that, in his reconstruction of the republic after the battle of Actium in 31 BC, the emperor Augustus retained the cursus honorum, but ensured that it came to serve the needs of the republic and empire rather than those of individuals.

In times of emergency there was provision for the election of a dictator, if both of the consuls agreed to this course of action. Such was the ingrained fear of monarchy, however, that dictatorships were held in not more than two six-month spells. Such ‘regular’ dictatorships were, of course, of a different order from the extended tenures later held by Julius Caesar in the 40s. Dictators overrode all of the state’s officers and enjoyed immunity from the exercise of the tribunes’ veto – the only office so ‘privileged’.

The office of tribune of the plebeians was, according to tradition, first established in 494 BC. The ‘tribal leader’ was the plebeians’ own officer; as he was elected by the plebeian citizens alone, his office was not de iure regarded as a magistracy of the republic, although over the years it came increasingly to be treated as if effectively it was. The office, of which there were originally two annual holders (eventually rising to ten), represented leadership of the plebeians in the practical sense of presiding over meetings of the plebeian assembly (concilium plebis), although its real ‘teeth’ rested in its power of veto.

Originally, the tribunes ‘interceded’ physically between a plebeian and a magistrate in order to protect the former; eventually, this process of intercession was enhanced into the ability to stop a piece of legislation or to halt public business by declaring a veto (intercessio). This ability placed considerable power into the hands of holders of the office and made them great assets to the political groups/factions (partes) in the senate and assemblies. In the early republic, however, tribunes, as non-magistrates, were not even members of the senate, but sat on a bench in the senate’s doorway so that they could monitor proceedings. The tribunes had one further major ‘asset’ – the sacrosanctity of their persons: if a tribune’s veto were set aside or if he was otherwise illegally handled, the plebeian section of the community was under religious obligation to avenge its wronged tribune.

These, then, were the offices (apart from the tribunate) which constituted the executive arm of the republic’s government, but which exercised their roles in consultation with the senate and the assemblies. It was said that the magistrates were motivated by patriotism and family glory (patria et gloria): many of the problems of the later years of the republic were caused by their paying an ever-greater heed to the latter and correspondingly less to the former. This state of affairs and the necessity of its correction by the emperor, Augustus, was a principal theme of the Roman Odes (Odes III.1–6) of the Augustan poet, Horace.

THE SENATE

The senate went back to the regal period of Rome’s history, when the heads of aristocratic households (patres) were used by the kings as their advisers. Officially, in those days, the senate had ‘teeth’ only in the period of interregnum between kings: it was evidently the senators who arranged the passage of power from a dead king to his successor.

Once the republic had been established, the senate assumed a stronger and wider role, perhaps principally because of the accumulated wisdom in the major areas of government, foreign affairs, finance, law and religion that was thought to be represented by senators and past generations of their families. It is little wonder that Pyrrhus, the king of the Greek state of Epirus, in the early-third century BC, referred to the senate as an ‘assembly of kings’; or that Marcus Cicero, in the first century BC, described the magistrates as the senate’s ‘servants’. Many, indeed, have seen the senate as the body which gave the Roman republic the stability and continuity of government that characterised it until the second century BC.

The senate was elected by no one: its membership was overseen initially by the consuls, but later by the censors. These men, who were former consuls, were t...