Politics in the Roman Republic [2], by Henrik Mouritsen
[Part 2 of 2] Realities defy theory of checks & balances; and social order effects of blending rituals with militarisation
Leaders and Masses: the ‘Political Culture’ of the Republic
Attempts to explain the political stability of the middle republic in social rather than political terms have a long and distinguished history, beginning with Gelzer’s identification of clientelistic networks as a central feature of Roman society. Through a dense web of personal ties and obligations the ruling class was supposedly able to keep the masses in check, in effect turning the ‘democratic’ institutions into instruments of aristocratic control. The theory, long dominant in Roman historiography, has in recent decades been challenged by historians who have pointed out the scarcity of concrete evidence to support it. On a basic logistical level the idea of an all-encompassing system of clientela, linking top and bottom of society, is difficult to reconcile with the scale of republican Rome, especially during the later periods. Moreover, the fact that most members of the plebs never could be politically active removes the political imperative for the elite to maintain comprehensive social networks in order to stay in power. Given the fluidity of the urban population, that would also have been extremely difficult to achieve.
Clientela was undoubtedly important as a distinct type of reciprocal, while at the same time asymmetrical, social relationship that revolved around an ongoing exchange of favours and obligations. It is unlikely, however, to have translated into a solid structure of social and political control underpinning the elite’s ascendancy. Clients were appreciated and cultivated but not indiscriminately so, and it remains doubtful how often the poor were admitted to the clientelae of the rich and powerful; after all, we have no evidence that Cicero personally knew a single poor person.
With the realisation that clientela may not have been the arcana imperii previously envisaged, the focus of recent scholarship has shifted onto what has become known as the ‘political culture’ of the republic. The concept, originally inspired by political science, represents an attempt to capture the manifold aspects of the political process usually not covered in traditional accounts of constitutional and institutional history despite their importance in shaping political mentality and behaviour. They include issues of identity, ideology, rhetoric, and what might be called ‘style of government’. It also comprises the various forms of interaction that took place between politicians and citizens, ranging from direct personal contact to symbolic, ‘performative’, and ‘monumental’ communication. These innovative approaches, particularly fertile in German academia, have added an important dimension to our understanding of republican politics and have also laid the basis for a new understanding of the middle republic and its social and political stability. …
… In the end the citizens of Rome became literally surrounded by the elite’s monumental and performative celebration of themselves and their ancestors. The influence on the wider population is, of course, difficult to gauge; the sheer volume and monotony of the message conveyed may well have weakened the impact. Nevertheless, the fact that the ruling class presented itself in this particular mode remains significant, and even more so when we consider that the process of memorialisation took off at the very moment when Rome started to expand beyond the confines of the city-state in the late fourth and early third centuries. Not by chance were the services rendered to the res publica – and so extensively celebrated – overwhelmingly of a martial nature.
When searching for the structural causes of the relative stability of the middle republic one should not lose sight of the fact that this was also a period of extraordinary military success. The continuous engagements abroad played a vital role in shaping the relations and attitudes between elite and masses, while also transforming the character of the Roman state itself along with its citizenship.
Politics and Military Expansion
It is impossible to grasp the nature of the middle republic without factoring in the expansion of Roman power and territory during this period. This is not the place to discuss the origins and character of the process by which Rome grew from medium-sized city-state to world power, but the profound militarisation of Roman society which accompanied this transformation must have played an important part.
The relentless drive towards further conquest became integral to her civic structures, many of which were shaped around continuous warfare, and apart from the ritual distinction between domi and militiae there was no clear separation of military and civilian spheres. The soldier-citizen identity affected all aspects of Roman society, the ethos of the elite, the attitudes of the serving population, and not least the interaction between leaders and masses.
With the exception of the very poorest, male citizens became habituated to prolonged military service, and at elite level the militarisation was equally profound. Extended service became part of the public career structure, the pinnacle of which was the intensely coveted triumph. … [The] rise of plebeian leaders was closely linked to personal ability in the field against Rome’s Italian opponents …
… Military success became the object of extensive memorialisation, to the extent that part of Rome’s cityscape was reshaped as more and more votive temples and other victory monuments were being built. They served as permanent reminders to the public that the remarkable expansion of Roman power took place under their auspices and leadership. The elite’s extensive self-celebration defined the bond between populus and nobility in military terms as one of soldiers and commanders, with all the attendant values of loyalty and obedience. Thus the expansion did not just strengthen the elite through the prestige and ‘proven record of success’ it conferred upon them; the extensive conscription and prolonged military service may also have imbued Roman society with a military ethos that shaped relations between leaders and masses in the field as well as in the civilian sphere.
Rome’s militarisation led Moses Finley to suggest that ‘obedience to the authorities became so deeply embedded in the psyche of the ordinary Roman citizen that it carried over into his explicitly political behaviour’. While there can be little doubt that warfare had a pervasive impact on Roman mentality and social dynamics, the shared military experiences may have encouraged not just respect for superiors but also recognition among the elite that men under arms must be treated equitably and rewarded for their service. The military offered by far the most intense social contact between citizens from all backgrounds. During extended campaigns, soldiers, officers and generals faced the same hardship and dangers, which may have helped forge bonds across class boundaries. Such bonds might be carried over into the civilian sphere, instilling military values of discipline, leadership and common purpose into Rome’s political culture. Among the ruling class this mentality seems to have expressed itself in a particular approachable style, and the ‘joviality’ mentioned [by Martin Jehne] had a distinctly military aspect to it. Thus, while a friendly demeanour might not disguise manifest inequalities of power and resources, it should nevertheless be recognised as a contributing factor towards generating political consent.
Military expansion changed Roman society beyond recognition. Rome grew into a territorial state, albeit one which paradoxically retained the political structure of a city-state. A unique policy of incorporating defeated peoples and granting them formal political rights was adopted, which was possible because in practice they had little chance of exercising them. The remarkable growth of her citizen body, to which the enfranchisement of freed slaves also contributed, reinforced the non-political definition of the Roman citizenship. The ‘non-participatory’ nature of the People’s constitutional role became further entrenched by the fact that only a vanishingly small proportion of the citizen body could now take part in the proceedings. Collective political activity was never a unifying factor in the new territorial state. That function was instead performed by military service, which, as Jehne demonstrated, remained the single most cohesive element in the Roman republic. It did so by generating a shared soldier-citizen identity but also more practically by bringing together citizens from different parts of the country. Military units were deliberately composed of soldiers drawn from a cross-section of the tribes, thereby creating a regional mix which encouraged integration and militated against the formation of strong local identities and the separatism to which that might give rise.
The militarisation of the Roman republic not only created a social environment conducive to promoting internal stability on a number of levels; as importantly, expansion also provided the opportunities which allowed the elite to claim that its leadership brought concrete benefits for the soldier class. The most obvious reward came in the form of spoils distributed among the soldiers …
…. The formation of the nobilitas as a martially defined elite may, directly and indirectly, have strengthened civic cohesion through the pursuit of continuous expansion combined with broadly inclusive social policies which it encouraged and facilitated. Its emphasis on personal merit rather than birth helped justifying the elite’s overall position in relation to the people…
Chapter 3: Consensus and Competition
The history of the Roman Republic is in many respects that of an immensely successful ruling class which managed to share power for hundreds of years, before eventually descending into decades of internecine warfare that led to the rise of monarchy. Historians used to wonder at the republic’s spectacular collapse, but – perhaps more pertinently – we might ask how the system lasted so long, given its many contradictions and the tensions intrinsic to all oligarchic systems. The fact that aristocracies are based on competitive power sharing creates an essential conflict between the interests of the collective and the individual. As a result, oligarchic republics tend to be fundamentally unstable. They rely for their survival on the elite’s ability to maintain internal cohesion while balancing competing claims to power and influence. Some of the most successful oligarchies in history devised sophisticated and highly complex safeguards against undue concentrations of influence. In Venice, for example, public office was restricted to a closed elite, terms of office were kept short and individual families were prevented from holding several offices simultaneously or sitting on multiple state committees. The allocation of posts was … highly randomised to avoid campaigning and political interference. The greatest restrictions were naturally placed on the Doge, who despite being the formal head of state, had limited ability to dictate policy or extend influence and patronage.
In Rome, such mechanisms of aristocratic ‘self-preservation’ were for a number of reasons not politically feasible. Chief among them was the historical division of powers within the republic, which acknowledged the populus as the basis for public legitimacy, and invested the magistrates with extensive executive powers, while at the same time reducing the formal authority of the senate, the collective voice of the elite. Furthermore, the elite was far more fluid in its composition than was the case in Venice, defined as it was through office-holding rather than birth, which put even greater strain on the system by increasing competition for the honores that held the key to rank and status. The structural challenges to the long-term survival of the Roman aristocratic system were, in other words, even more daunting than in later oligarchies, which were able to formalise the ascendancy of the elite – and enforce internal discipline and cohesion – to a much greater extent than was possible in Rome.
The End of the Republic
[final section of the book]
Since the renaissance historians and political theorists have argued about the nature and causes of the process by which the aristocratic government of Rome came to a dramatic end during the first century BCE. One of the intriguing aspects of the ‘fall of the republic’ is its relatively limited impact and scope. It did not mark the collapse of Roman society or civilisation and the Roman state did not disintegrate but continued to thrive for centuries afterwards. Neither did the ‘fall’ affect Rome’s overseas empire, which survived intact and was even expanded despite the upheaval. No province cast off Roman rule, nor did the empire split into multiple kingdoms or polities, as had happened to the Macedonian empire after the death of Alexander. The social order also remained largely untouched by the turmoil, with the basic hierarchies carrying on into the imperial era – although the remnants of the old aristocracy assumed a new role as court nobility. The changes were thus largely confined to the political sphere; for however traumatic the experience of civil war, it was essentially the transition from one type of government to another.
The ‘fall of the republic’ also happened remarkably fast. Just a few decades after Cicero in the 50s had provided vivid eyewitness accounts of a creaking but still functioning republic, there was little left of the old power structure; civil war had brought an end to centuries of aristocratic power sharing and left a single ruler in its place. While the eclipse of the republican elite was abrupt and irreversible, the roots of its decline have traditionally been traced back almost a hundred years, to 133, when the tumultuous events of Ti. Gracchus’ tribunate supposedly marked the beginning of the ‘late Republic’. As already noted, sharp periodisations of this kind invariably raise methodological issues, and in this case it seems clear that the changes ushered in by the Gracchi were less radical than often assumed; there is, for example, little evidence that they introduced a new kind of ideologically based politics that split the elite down the middle. The year 133 does, however, still represent an important milestone in the history of the republic.
Ti. Gracchus’ tribunate saw the gathering of a perfect political storm in which a number of sensitive issues came together to highly combustible effect. Political conflict, sometimes divisive and acrimonious, was, of course, nothing new – despite Livy’s attempt to present the ‘middle republic’ as a consensual age largely devoid of domestic strife. Still, solutions had usually been found through a combination of informal negotiation and peer pressure (and a certain willingness to defer to superiors). In 133 a number of factors prevented that from happening. Traditional factional politics played a part, as powerful senators lined up behind the tribune in a challenge to rival sections of the elite. On a more personal level Ti. Gracchus himself, already resentful towards parts of the senate after the Numantine affair, seems to have been unusually strongly committed to the reform, as indicated by the demotion of Octavius and the attempt at re-election. Most crucially, however, the economic importance of the agrarian issue itself entrenched elite opposition to an unprecedented degree. Gracchus’ proposed redistribution of public land, ager publicus, threatened vital interests of the Roman ruling class, including senators, equites and boni in general, whose power and status depended directly on the security of their landed estates. By targeting their holdings of ager publicus, which may have allowed long-term possessio but not Quiritary ownership, Gracchus’ reform exposed the precarious nature of parts of the elite’s economic basis. At the same time, Gracchus’ plan responded to an actual demand for land among the Roman poor, which at least during the initial stages ensured Gracchus unparalleled popular support and boosted his position to a level where it gave rise to accusations of seeking dominatio. As a result of these personal, political, and economic factors, compromise on either side became impossible, causing senators to intervene directly and physically remove the threat posed by the tribune. In doing so, they inadvertently exposed a fundamental weakness of the aristocratic republic, which relied on consensus but, as their actions showed, had few legal means of enforcing compliance.
A basic paradox of Roman politics was that real power came to reside in the one body that formally held very little. The system therefore worked on the premise that the bodies which held the power did not exercise it. That applied to the populus in particular but also to magistrates and tribunes, who were restrained by their brief tenure, collegiality, and peer pressure, and in the case of the lower magistracies also by their hopes for future preferment.
A central thesis of this study is therefore the direct reversal of Polybius’ thesis that the secret of Rome’s success lay in her political system. Rome seems to have triumphed despite her constitution, because she had found a modus vivendi which neutralised the weaknesses inherent in her political make-up, above all its lack of a clear and workable division of powers.
The secret of the republic’s success should therefore be sought outside her constitution, in social, ideological, and geo-political features. Of course, the checks and balances described by Polybius were not just a figment of his imagination. But his theoretical framework led him to identify these interdependencies as part of the political system, whereas in fact they were external to these institutions. The system worked because of strong social cohesion underpinned by a powerful ideological framework often summed up in the concept of mos maiorum, the traditions and norms passed down from the ancestors.
When observance of this unwritten code of conduct began to weaken, the flaws in the constitution became all too apparent. As explored in previous chapters, a major consequence was that the assemblies acquired a new role, becoming instruments of government, controlled by annual office holders rather than by the elite collectively. This development in turn paved the way for unlimited influence accruing in the hands of individuals. Examples range from Sulla’s dictatorship [MGH: this is discussed earlier in this chapter], via the commands of Pompey, to the provincial tenure of Caesar, his later powers as consul and dictator, and finally culminating in the lex Titia which formalised the ‘Second Triumvirate’. These measures were incompatible with the aristocratic principles of power sharing but in formal terms perfectly legal. Thus there was nothing to prevent the res publica from voting itself out of existence through an entirely legitimate process. Indeed, there were no limits to the assembly’s powers or the scope of its decisions – as long as correct procedure was followed; the highly formalised concept of legitimacy investigated in the opening pages [MGH: see Part 1] turn out to have far-reaching consequences.
Characteristic of the late republic is less the widening of ideological divides often envisaged, as much as the exponential rise in ‘rule-breaking’ among members of the elite. Although the Roman republic functioned only as long as the ruling class adhered to a basic code of conduct, we find from the time of the Gracchi a growing disregard for traditional norms and conventions. The principle of collective government was increasingly honoured in the breach, as illustrated by the new role of the tribunes as independent legislators with direct access to the assemblies. The introduction of violence as a political tool marked a natural corollary to this trend. Despite deep-rooted social and religious taboos against political violence, its use soon became institutionalised by the ruling class itself; in 121 the senate issued the first so-called senatus consultum ultimum in order to lend the killing of C. Gracchus and his followers a veneer of legality. It took the form of a ‘decree of last resort’, exhorting citizens to take up arms in defence of the res publica. The decree lacked formal legitimacy but would nevertheless be employed repeatedly over the following decades whenever the senate faced a serious challenge to its position. Although originally an attempt to demonstrate the authority of the senate, the ‘normalisation’ of force highlighted the basic weakness at the heart of government, which was no longer able to assert itself in the traditional manner. The senate’s powerlessness was most vividly demonstrated in 52 when it saw no alternative but to invite Pompey to assume full control of the state in order to restore order in Rome after the death of Clodius, a far-reaching step that would lead directly to civil war.
The weakening of elite cohesion went beyond politics and also affected the military sphere, once the bedrock of aristocratic rule. … [In] the late republic extended military service was no longer the norm among the elite, leaving many nobles with little experience in the field. Provincial administration, closely connected to military commands, saw a similar development, since it was increasingly avoided by members of the elite reluctant to leave the capital for longer periods. Not only did this development affect the traditional identity of the ruling class, it also led to disparities in outlook, values, and, above all, competences. Thus, the result was a shortage of qualified commanders, which in turn led to extended tenures for those capable, paving the way for the ‘great men’ of exceptional military clout, who with their excessive prestige and resources were able to take on the republic itself. Together these factors suggest something quite remarkable happening during this period, namely a ruling elite that appears to lose its collective sense of purpose and instinct of survival, becoming seemingly oblivious to the fundamentals on which its ascendancy depended. It remains a striking fact that the ‘fall of the republic’ was not caused by any threat external to the elite; what we are observing is a class that had reached a point where it was no longer capable of upholding its own rule. …
The Source:
Henrik Mouritsen, Politics in the Roman Republic, Cambridge 2017 [pp. 94-95, 99-105, 164-168]
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.