Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

CHAPTER IX
THE REVOLUTION AND THE TRANSITION TO THE PRINCIPATE

The party of reform which, during the last century of the Republic, gave a new development to the elastic Roman constitution, by gradually creating a stronger executive organ than had been known since the time of the monarchy, had two distinguishing features. One was an opposition, sometimes rational, sometimes blind, to the senatorial government; the other the exposition of a positive programme for remedying evils which all but the most callous or careless could see. The nature of their attack varied with the assailable features presented by its object. At first it was directed against the assumed indifference of the Senate to internal reform and its failure to suggest hasty remedies for economic grievances. This was the essential feature of the Gracchan movement; but, although its example was perilous, the immediate effects of this first revolution were transitory in the extreme. The Senate emerged from the attack shaken but victorious. Italy was but of little account when the world lay at the feet of the noble families who composed the great council of state, and the Senate could be made to appear the only true government for an empire. Unfortunately this theory was rudely shaken. A miserable war in a protected state, into which the government was most unwillingly dragged, was thought sufficient to show that the merits of the senatorial administration of the empire were an illusion. The epoch of the Jugurthine war is the turning-point of the history of this period. A reforming party with an imperial policy must associate itself with the military power. The change was rapidly effected. Tribunes, commons, assemblies still represent the nominal sovereigns, but their weapons—too powerful for the users—are the imperator, the army, and the camp. Henceforth we find a perpetual association of militarism with democracy which could have but one issue, a monarchy resting on the sword.

But to the reformers of the times the ultimate solution of the constitutional problem was something far less present than the programme of reform, which was being handed on from leader to leader with scarcely an item altered since the time when the genius of C. Gracchus had given it birth. It contained agrarian laws, measures for corn distribution and for colonies beyond the sea, means for relieving social distress and the plethora of the great capital, and at times it admitted—the most pressing need of all—proposals for remedying the iniquitous relations that the law permitted to exist between debtor and creditor. A new and unexpected development was given to the activities of the party by the introduction into their programme of proposals for enfranchising the Italians. This was a measure that, like so many others in popular programmes, was a creation of the demagogue and was profoundly distasteful to his followers. Its acceptance by the Liberals (populares) was a pure accident—one due to the desire of breaking a formidable weapon employed by the Whig opposition, who, like Scipio Aemilianus, had adopted the somewhat dangerous policy of playing off Italian rights against those of the city proletariate. But, as belief usually follows acceptance, there is some reason for regarding the franchise question as, at least finally, a plank in the democratic programme. In the multiform efforts of the discontented we can also discern the spasmodic attempt to create a competent central military authority for Rome, as the only means of securing corn, commerce, and the empire.

It was by no means a homogeneous party which developed this programme and attempted to replace a government which they deemed incompetent. Even its more thorough-going members cannot be described by a single name. Amongst the populares were many Liberals who had nothing to gain by revolution; but amongst them were also to be found many who were democrats by necessity as well as by conviction, the revolutionary element which was often a thorn in the side of the reforming constitutionalists, the class of improbi which supplied Catiline’s so-called “conspiracy” and made it a genuine democratic movement, and whose aspirations were subsequently represented by Caelius Rufus and Dolabella. Nor must it be supposed that there was any clear line of demarcation between populares and senators. Nowhere was the Senate more bitterly attacked than from within its own body. The leaders of the extreme party had attained the magistracies that entitled them to a seat in the Curia, and elections, so far as they were not gained by family influence or bribery, were fought on party lines. Nor even amongst the constitutionalists was there a lack of would-be reformers of a more moderate type. The elder Cato and the Scipionic circle, while eager to maintain senatorial ascendency, had been conscious of some of its defects; and, as the cry for innovation gathered in strength, a party was formed which, by borrowing wholesale from the radical programme, attempted to reconcile the privileges of their order with concessions to Italy, purity in imperial administration, and care for the poor of Rome. This attempt was shattered by the fate of the younger Drusus, and henceforth there is no senatorial party of reform. Even Cicero, with his wide sympathies and his acute sense of the evils of the time, can suggest only a concordia ordinum, merely a means of bolstering up the existing constitution by means of a union of the propertied and therefore “loyal” classes (boni). The municipal statesman did, indeed, wish to see an “Italian” rather than a “Roman” government, but he had no scheme by which Italy could have secured representation at Rome, and before the close of his life he had accepted the inevitable solution of personal rule. There was to be a moderator rei publicae, a princeps civitatis;[1557] but this monarchy is not to destroy the constitution; his prince is to be a loyal coadjutor of the Senate, not the exponent of a military despotism.

It is probable that with parties so evenly balanced as the populares and optimates no very decisive result would have been attained, had it not been for the existence in the state of a perfectly homogeneous body of men with few ideals but very decided wants. This was that upper middle class of large and moderate capitalists which, through an accident in nomenclature, had come to be known as equites.[1558] It was a class that possessed the tradesman’s narrow honesty and complete indifference to all politics not connected with business. Like all classes, they were quite willing to plunder the provinces while state officials did the same; but they desired strong government more than plunder. They longed for an administration which should secure them adequate protection in the conquered world over which they had spread the network of their trade, and which should also ensure a freedom from revolution at home. Hence their wavering and yet always decisive attitude. To secure their first end they join the attacking party, to secure their second they attach themselves to the government, and their adherence or disaffection always turns the fortune of the day. It was the equites who helped the democrats to raise Marius to power, who forced their own creature to abandon his revolutionary colleague Saturninus, who ruined the schemes of the younger Drusus and set the Varian commission on the track of his adherents; it was their hostility that proved equally fatal to the schemes of Sulla and of Catiline, their commercial instincts which lifted Pompeius into power and led them at the crisis of 60 B.C. to abandon the Senate and give their whole support to Caesar. There is something tragic in the ruthless massacre of equites which ushers in the Augustan monarchy; for no class had done more for its existence and to none did it prove a greater boon.

To appreciate the issue of this struggle in which all parties were engaged, we must recognise its twofold aspect as a struggle for social and political renewal, and consider separately the fate of the detailed programme of reform and the change in the constitution to which the attacks on the Senate led. From the first point of view the efforts of the democratic party ended in an unqualified success; for every item of its programme was carried out, with the requisite modifications, by Caesar and the Principate. The agrarian question reached as near an approach to settlement as such eternal questions can attain, especially when it became absorbed into the movement of transmarine colonisation which was employed in the Principate for poorer citizens and for veterans. The extension of the franchise was completed, so far as the territory south of the Alps was concerned, by Caesar’s renewal of the gift of citizenship to the Transpadanes and Augustus’ incorporation of their territory as a part of Italy,[1559] while the Principate was liberal with the conferment of Latin rights on provinces, such as Sicily, the Maritime Alps, and Spain, and the full citizenship gradually won its way in the provincial world by individual grants and recruiting for the legions. The laws of debt were emended by the just bankruptcy laws of Caesar and Augustus, and even the leges frumentariae required but a slight modification to make them a genuine scheme of poor-relief.[1560] The equites, too, the class to whom C. Gracchus had given an official recognition, became a still more recognised order under the Principate and a most useful wheel in the administrative machinery.

It is more difficult to decide whether the radical change of government to which the agitation led can be considered a genuine triumph for the reformers. Military monarchy may be regretted by those who see in it a confession of incapacity to combine imperial government with Republican institutions; but, from the point of view of the reforming party, it was only a disappointment if we conceive that their leaders thought that government by comitia might replace the rule of the Senate. But there is hardly a trace of this idea. No effort was made throughout the whole of this period to make the comitia a workable or really democratic institution; and personal rule, as the only expression of democracy, had asserted itself at the beginning of the movement. The only open question was whether it should be a Periclean tyrannis of the type enjoyed by C. Gracchus or a Napoleonic rule such as that of Caesar. As a matter of fact the Principate learnt a lesson from both solutions—that of the Gracchan and that of the Marian epoch—and established itself on a joint basis of the tribunicia potestas and the proconsulare imperium.

If we look round for other possible solutions, we find two faintly foreshadowed, but both doomed to failure. The first was a reformed Senate, not merely the existing body artificially bolstered up, as it had been by Sulla, but a body really made representative of Italy through the free inclusion of novi homines. The idea was held by Cicero, but no scheme was ever considered which would have made it a reality. For such an object to be attained, election to those magistracies from which the Senate was recruited must cease to be in the hands of the Roman comitia; but no one to our knowledge, with the exception of the Emperor Augustus, thought of the possibility of election by the municipal towns.[1561] Help might also have been looked for from a reformed assembly, one that had been made representative of the whole Italian people. The allies nearly worked out this means of salvation for themselves,[1562] but the magnitude of Rome was itself a stumbling-block to the solution of the problem on federal lines. We can hardly blame the thinkers of the day for not seeing the possibility of a representative assembly of a national kind; for the Italian, like the Greek mind, though familiar enough with the idea of the representation of cities, had not advanced to the conception of the representation of individuals through electoral districts.

The reason why the creation of an Italian senate or an Italian assembly might have warded off the monarchy is that such a body might have commanded respect even from the army of the provinces. This correspondence in sentiment might, it is true, have required that the army should remain mainly Italian; and Augustus’ attempt to give Italy something of a representative character may have been abandoned through fear of a conflict between an army which was becoming provincial in personnel and an Italian proletariate, when the choice of a Princeps had to be decided. Yet, although circumstances were hostile to a fusion of Italy and the provinces, and the Principate was not to be Italian, one should not forget that it had something of a popular character. The Roman citizens of the legions who made the Princeps[1563] were of a better type than the plebs urbana of Rome; for not only was the freedman element eliminated, but discipline had with them replaced demoralisation, their life was lived under healthier influences, and although they were often moved to their selection by a mere esprit de corps, they generally succeeded in placing a very capable man on the throne.

Caesar was the first sole ruler of Rome; and we might be inclined to imagine that the powers which he enjoyed were consciously assumed merely as those of a provisional government, were there not signs that towards the close of his life he was satisfied with the solution which he had adopted. The early dictatorships of 49 and 48 B.C., the second and longer of which was only for the term of a year,[1564] were merely efforts for tiding over a crisis; and the same may perhaps be said of a later tenure of this office, which was conferred on him for ten years in 46 B.C.[1565] But in the last year of his life (44 B.C.) he entered on a perpetual dictatorship,[1566] a revival of the Roman monarchy both in reality and in name. It is true that the title rex was not assumed, out of deference to the feelings of the masses who saw in it merely a synonym of oriental despotism; and for the same reason the diadem was declined.[1567] But every educated Roman knew that the Roman monarchy had been nothing else than the unlimited imperium, and many may have believed that dictator or “master of the people” was the most significant of the titles of the king. It was, therefore, a regnum under which Rome was living,[1568] and there was no concealment of its military character, for the title imperator was now borne by the regent within the walls.[1569] This designation was a mere symbol of military command and the fullest jurisdiction; it was no description of a basis actual or future on which Caesar’s power could rest, for the unqualified imperium had no existence to the Roman mind, and, if it was to be unlimited, it must be either regal or dictatorial.