Tiberius the Tyrant

by John Charles Tarver

These characteristics of the Roman Senate, that it was broadly speaking an assembly of lawyers, priests and heads of families, of which any individual might and often did combine all three functions in his own person, were most strongly marked in the period during which it commanded the respect of Polybius and Judas Maccabæus; the policy of Augustus was to restore these characteristics; they were partly in abeyance during the period of the greatest prosperity of the Republic, when the attention of the individual Senator of Rome was irresistibly drawn to the administration of her conquered territories, and to the regulation of her relations with potentates on the confines of her Empire.

At the beginning of the first century before the Christian era, the Senate was divided into parties evolved by the new responsibilities, and the changes in opinion caused by the influx of Greek ideals. The most important problem was the administration of the provinces, but along with it there had to be considered the organization of the internal constitution of the city itself. Thus there were two groups of reformers, those who were chiefly concerned in the adjustment of the relations between the city and the Empire, and those who were more actively interested in the reorganization of her local constitution. The questions which presented themselves to the individual Senator were three in number: first, were the provinces to be governed rigorously as conquered territories, or were they to be admitted to a share in their own government and the government of the Empire? secondly, if they were to be governed by Rome and for Rome, was the administration to continue to be exclusively in the hands of the Senate? thirdly, whatever might be Rome’s relations with her provinces, was it not necessary to give reality to those germs of popular government which existed in the Roman constitution, and to make the Senate directly or indirectly an elected assembly of notable men?

Thus a Senator might be Conservative with reference to the provinces, but liberal with reference to the city, or he might hold that the Senate must be the centre of government, and yet be capable of such internal reforms as to make it the best protector of provincial interests; or he might say that the rule of the Senate was good for the city, but unworkable in the provinces.

Outside the Senate there was the Equestrian Order representing both the Civil Administration of the Empire, and non-Roman as well as Roman financiers, supporting any man or group in the Senate which seemed favourable to its interests; there was also the body of Roman citizens partly composed of men who were still bound by various ties to individual members of the Senate, and partly of men who had served in the Roman armies, and supported the policy of distinguished generals by whom they were organized and in various ways paid for their help.

A peculiar quality of the Roman Senate was the romantic affection with which it was regarded by its members and adherents; it was no mere house of representatives; it was a dynasty. Men not only in Rome, but in the provinces, tolerated its scandalous misgovernment after the third Punic War, as men have tolerated the government of a bad King without losing their faith in monarchy and their affection for the institution. Hard-headed politicians may see in the suicide of Cato at Utica nothing but contemptible weakness; to them the Roman Senate is only one of many political organizations; but Cato’s act was otherwise regarded in antiquity. To find a parallel we have to search among those adherents of the Stuart Dynasty in England and Scotland, to whom the cause for which they fought was not merely a political cause, but a religion. We do not condemn men who committed political suicide after 1715, and abstained from public affairs, or even left their country; we feel that, for men believing as they did, no other course was open; it was precisely in this light that the death of Cato appeared to his contemporaries.

The resistance of the Senate to the various reforms pressed upon it from 131 B.C. onwards has been represented as simply a resistance of vested interests; that it was so in some measure even at first, and increasingly so as time went on, is indisputably true, but Cato did not kill himself as a martyr to the cause of vested interests. The Senatorial position was that of a monarch by divine right; the Senate could not accept reforms in deference to external pressure without in a measure abdicating; it was in itself both Church and Crown; it could no more make terms with a Gracchus or a Livius Drusus than could Charles I. with a Pym or a Cromwell.

This point has been largely concealed from us by the Greek influences under which the history of Rome has been written; we are tempted to think of the Roman Senate as of the Athenian Boulé, as of an Upper House, whose powers and privileges could be curtailed or prescribed at the will of a popular assembly; but to concede that point was to concede everything. The bad faith of the Roman Senate, its desperate expedients to maintain its position alike against the rising power of the Army, the organization of the Equestrians, the body of Roman citizens, or the reformers within its ranks, become in a measure respectable when we reflect that the Senate believed itself to rule by divine right.

Similarly faith in the detestation of monarchy ascribed to the Senate is the result, in some measure, of giving undue weight to Greek prejudices, and to the words of men who were unconsciously enthralled by them.

The Senate so arranged matters that no member of the oligarchy should acquire a preponderant position, and disturb the equality which in theory prevailed between individual Senators; hence various enactments as to the intervals between holding the Consulate twice over, the limited period of a provincial appointment and the disbanding of a Consul’s army outside Rome. In the decadence of the Senate piracy was not quelled in the Mediterranean, and inadequate provision was made to repel the Teutonic invasion from the North, because the immense power wielded by the man to whom either of these enterprises was entrusted threatened to overbalance the constitution. The Senate felt, and rightly felt, that its greatness had been achieved by the relatively unselfish co-operation of its members; when the sentiment, which had rendered that unselfish co-operation possible, had given way before the immense opportunities offered by provincial governorships and the successful command of Roman armies, the Senate endeavoured to restore the effects of that sentiment by insisting more and more strongly upon regulations which tended to equality; but this was something different from the Greek antipathy to the tyrant. Equality between its members was a fundamental theory of the Senate, but it had so little antipathy to monarchy as to provide for the rule of one man in the event of great dangers. The Dictatorship, so long as it lasted, was an absolute monarchy; to the Greek a Dictator was the negation of civil order; hence in a Greek town the assumption of the supreme power by one man, however great the emergency, was a revolutionary proceeding; at Rome the appointment of a Dictator was a recognized constitutional expedient.

Thus the divine right of the Senate did not exclude the possibility of making one of their own number supreme executive magistrate; and monarchy was abhorrent to the Senator, not because it was a thing contrary to nature, as some Greek philosophers held, but because it disturbed the balance of the Senatorial constitution.