Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

The Republic, in the eyes of its citizens, was something much more than a mere constitution, a political order to be toppled or repealed. Instead, hallowed by that most sacred of Roman concepts, tradition, it provided a complete pattern of existence for all those who shared in it. To be a citizen was to know that one was free – ‘and that the Roman people should ever not be free is contrary to all the laws of heaven’.* Such certainty suffused every citizen’s sense of himself. Far from expiring with Sulla’s march on Rome, respect for the Republic’s laws and institutions endured because they were expressions of the Romans’ profoundest sense of their own identity. Yes, a general had turned on his own city, but even he had claimed to be doing so in defence of the traditional order. There had certainly been no revolution. For all the trauma of Sulla’s march on Rome, no one could imagine that the Republic itself might be overthrown, because no one could conceive what might possibly replace it.