6 New Politics
Destruction
The destruction of Carthage in 146 BC was brutal on both sides even by ancient standards. The sack of Corinth a few months later was nearly as bad. The violence of 146 BC marked the summit of Rome’s military success. They had now thoroughly defeated the Mediterranean’s most powerful nations and become the only real power left. But in another way, it seemed to signal the demise of the republic, and a herald of a century of civil wars, mass murder and assassinations that returned Rome to autocratic rule.
Fear of the enemy had been good for Rome. Without any external threat, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption.
The legacy of Romulus and Remus
The period between 146 BC and the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, particularly the last 30 years, marked the high point of Roman literature, art, and culture. The city was transforming into the place we now recognize. Yet Roman commentators focused on the moral decline.
Rome’s weapons were increasingly turned on Romans themselves rather than foreign enemies. This was the legacy of the fratricidal twins. Peaceful politics was disappearing and violence was becoming accepted as a political tool. Traditional restraints and conventions broke down until rioting, swords, and clubs replaced the ballot box. A few men of enormous power, wealth and military backing came to dominate the state. There were key moments that led to the dissolution of the free state.
In 133 BC, Tiberius Semprionus Gracchus, a tribune of the people with radical plans to distribute land to the Roman poor sought a second term in office. A posse of Senators and their minions interrupted the elections, beat Gracchus and his supporters, and threw his body into the Tiber.
A decade later in 121 BC, his brother Gaius met the same fate after he introduced a plan for subsidizing grain for Roman citizens.
Again in 100 BC, other reformers were beaten to death.
Three more civil wars and uprisings followed in succession. In 91 BC, a coalition of Italian Socii, allies, declared war on Rome. They were defeated, but the death toll was estimated around 300k.
Before that war finished, a consul, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, led his army against Rome in 88 BC. He was forcing the Senate hand to give him command of a war in the East. Before he resigned in 79 BC he introduced a conservative reform program and presided over a reign of terror and an organized purge of political enemies. The fallout from these conflicts fueled the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 73 BC.
By the 60s BC, political order in Rome had broken down and street violence was the norm. The Catiline conspiracy was only one such incident.
Against this background, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Marcus Licinius Crassus made an informal deal to fix the political interests in their own favor. They effectively took public decisions into private hands. This lasted for about a decade when Julius Caesar decided to follow Sulla’s precedent and take Rome by force. He left Gaul in 49 BC and crossed the Rubicon river, the border of Italy, and marched on Rome. Caesar defeated Pompey.
Some of Rome’s underlying problems were obvious. The small scale political institutions of Rome were not up to the scale of governance. As such, they relied more and more on the efforts and talents of individuals whose power, profits and rivalries threatened the very principles on which the Republic was based. There was no backstop- no police force that could take control of the streets against the political violence that overtook the streets.
Romans grappled with these issues. They came up with the radical principle that the state had some responsibility for ensuring its citizens had enough to eat. They confronted how an empire should be managed, not just acquired.
Tiberius Gracchus
In 137 BC Tiberius, returning home through Etruria, noted that small farms had been replaced by large industrial scale farms worked exclusively by slaves. The small farmers who had made up the backbone of Italian agriculture had disappeared. Gracchus was committed to reform at this moment.
As more and more farmers were called to serve as soldiers, their farms were left without manpower, which made small farmers particularly vulnerable to bankruptcy and buyouts by the rich, who were building vast landholdings. The soldiers, meanwhile, even with the booty they returned home with, found that they had been fighting for their own displacement. Many ended up migrating to Rome or other cities in search of a living. This was the problem Tiberius wanted to address when he was elected tribune of the people in 133 BC. He instituted a plan to reinstate small landholders on Roman public land. Roman public was land that had been seized in the takeover of Italy. In theory it was public, but in practice, the rich had grabbed it as their own private property. He proposed limiting holdings based on an old limit. When one of his fellow tribunes vetoed it, he had his followers vote him out. But the Senate refused to grant any real amount to the effort. So Tiberius persuaded the voters to overrule the Senate and divert some cash to the cause.
But Tiberius found himself the target of nasty rumors and a posse of political opponents took matters into their own hands and killed him. His death didn’t stop the redistribution though, that went on with a replacement. The aftermath of this saw a LOT of suspicious deaths hitting those who murdered Tiberius as well as his supporters.
While there were undoubtedly self-interests at stake in either the support or opposition of the reforms, the clash also revealed different views about what the ‘power of the people’ meant.
Tiberius proposed voting out the people who opposed him. His argument was that when the people’s tribune no longer does the will of the people, he should be deposed. This echos a modern argument. Are representatives mere delegates, bound to follow the voice of the constituents? Or are they representatives, elected to exercise judgment on behalf of the constituents?
The fact that Tiberius sought a second term back to back was not unprecedented, but it was seen by some as a dangerous buildup of individual power. The way things went down is not instructive, but these are questions we still argue over today.
Indeed, the disagreement hinged on the difference between those who championed the rights, liberty, and benefits of the people, and those who thought it best for the state to be guided by the experience and wisdom of the ‘best men’ (optimi), or let’s face it, ‘the rich’. These were divergent views about the aims and methods of government.
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus
The younger brother of Tiberius proposed a law that the state should sell a certain quantity of grain each month at a subsidized, fixed price to individual citizens in the city. It was partly out of concern for the poor, but the underlying political agenda was about sharing the state’s resources. The debate was about who had a claim on the property of the state and where the boundary lay between private and public wealth. He proposed legislation such as the right to appeal the death penalty, outlawing of bribery, and even more ambitious land redistribution than Tiberius had proposed. He also flouted convention by turning his back on the senate to address the more numerous popular crowd.
In an impromptu clash with the supporters of Lucius Opimius, some insults were hurled on both sides and Gaius was stabbed. Opimius then gathered a militia and hunted down some 3000 of Gaius’ supporters in an makeshift court. It set a deadly precedent. Opimius was put on trial, and though he was acquitted, he never fully recovered.
Citizens and allies at war
There was an Italian alliance that sought to break away from Rome. They were defeated, but the result of the uprising was that the Italians were granted Roman citizenship. The problem was that Rome never adjusted their system to account for this. Registration and voting still occurred only in Rome, which made it impractical for any but rich citizens of other cities to travel and make their voices heard
Sulla and Spartacus
Lucius Cornelius Sulla was born into a patrician family fallen on hard times. He was elected consul in 88 BC. He invaded Rome that year in an attempt to restore himself to the lucrative military command against king Mithradates in modern Turkey. He returned victorious in 83 BC and again invaded Rome to take the city back from those that replaced him when he left. Vicious fighting marked both Sulla’s invasions. His sadism is part of the story, but the other part is the eagerness of so many to join in the massacre. This conflict was in some part a continuation of the social war. But the fundamental distinction between Roman and foreign enemies was eroded. Fellow Romans were declared the enemies. Sulla marketed the campaign as a restoration of the republic, but it was anything but. He declared himself dictator. Dictators had existed in Rome’s past, but they were temporary positions when the Consuls weren’t available. Sulla’s dictatorship had no time limit, and it entailed vast, unchecked power to make or repeal any laws, and immunity from prosecution guaranteed.
Sulla increased the number of Senators, but in doing so, created another problem: there were now many more candidates for the highest office of Consul, which created much more political competition and disgruntled failures. He also hamstrung the tribune’s powers, probably because that’s where most of the reform measures were coming from.
In 73 BC Spartacus led a slave rebellion that held out against the army for 2 years, an embarrassingly long time.