Caesar

by Adrian Goldsworthy

The annual election of new magistrates and the restrictions on office-holding helped to provide many senators with the chance to serve the Republic in a distinguished capacity, and prevented any one individ...

All aristocrats wanted to excel, but their deepest fear was always that someone else would surpass all rivals by too great a margin and win a more permanent pr...

Although the Republic had become the great power of the Mediterranean world by the end of the second century BC, Rome itself remained the focus of all aspects of political life.

There, and only there, could the Senate meet, courts convene or Popular Assemblies gather to elect magistrates or pass legislation. By 100 BC Rome was the largest city in the known world, dwarfing even its nearest rivals such as Alexandria.

More than anything else, it was in and around the Forum that the public life of the Republic was conducted.

Magistrates, such as the tribunes, aediles and praetors, had set places in the Forum where they sat to conduct business. When the Senate met it was with very rare exceptions in a building on the edge of the Forum, either the Senate House (Curia) or one of the great temples.

The Roman Republic was frequently at war, for long periods virtually on an annual basis. Frequent war-making was not unusual in the ancient world, where states rarely needed much more reason to attack their neighbours than a belief that they were vulnerable.

Yet from early on in its history Rome’s war-making was distinctive in character, not simply because it was so successful, but through its talent for consolidating success on a permanent basis, as defeated enemies were absorbed and turned into reliable allies.

By the beginning of the third century BC virtually all of the Italian Peninsula had come under Roman control. Within this territory some communities had been granted Roman citizenship and these, in addition to the colonies planted on conquered land, allowed the number of Roman citizens to grow in size far beyond the populations of other city-states.

Other peoples were granted Latin status, conveying lesser, though still significant privileges, while the remain...

both Roman and Latin status had lost any real association with particular ethnic or even linguistic groups, and had be...

Each community was tied to Rome by a specific treaty, which made clear both its rights and obligations. Even more obvious was the fundamental fact that Rome was the superior partner in any such agreement and that this was not a settlement between equals.

The most common obligation of all types of ally, including the Latins, was to supply Rome with men and resources in time of war. At least half of any Roman army invariably consisted of allied soldiers.

In this way the defeated enemies of the past helped to win the wars of the present. Apart from confirming their loyalty to Rome in this way, the allied communities were also allowed a small, but significant, share in the ...

In 264 BC the Romans sent an army outside Italy for the first time, provoking the long conflict with the Carthaginians, who were of Phoenician origin, hence the Roman name of Poeni (Punic).

The First Punic War (264–241 BC) brought Rome its first overseas province in Sicily, to which was added Sardinia in the conflict’s immediate aftermath. The Second Punic War (218–201 BC) resulted in a permanent Roman presence in Spain and involvement in Macedonia. The Republic’s huge reserves of citizen and allied manpower and the willingness to absorb staggeringly high losses were major factors in securing the victory over Carthage.

The Republic became used to waging war in several widely different theatres simultaneously. In the early decades of the second century BC, Rome defeated Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire. These, along with the Ptolemies of Egypt, were the most powerful of the Hellenistic

The destruction of both Carthage and Corinth at the hands of Roman armies in 146 BC symbolised Roman dominance over the older powers of the Mediterranean world.

Near the end of the century Transalpine Gaul (modern Provence in southern France) was conquered, establishing a Roman controlled land link with the provinces in Spain, just as Illyricum provided a connection with Macedonia.

Soon Roman roads would be constructed linking one province to another in a monumental but highly practical way.

Many Romans benefited greatly from overseas expansion. For the aristocracy it provided plentiful opportunities to win glory during their magistracies by fighting a war.

Campaigns against the tribal peoples in Spain, Gaul, Illyricum and Thrace were frequent. Wars with the famous states of the Hellenistic world occurred less often but were far more spectacular. With warfare so frequent, competition amongst senators focused on having won a bigger or more dangerous war than anyone else, and the honour of being the first to defeat a people was equally valued.

Along with glory came great riches from plunder and the sale of captives as slaves. Some of this wealth went to the Republic, and some to the men serving in the army, but since greater shares went to the more senior ranks...

Victories won in the eastern Mediterranean were especially lucrative, and during the second century BC a succession of generals returned from such wars to celebrate more lavish and more s...

Competition for fame and influence continued to dominate public life, but it was becoming an increasingly expensive business as some men brought back massive fortunes from their victories.

The gap between the richest and poorest senators steadily widened, reducing the number of men able to compete for the highest magistracies and commands.

was not only senators who profited from the creation of the empire, but in general it was the wealthy who did best in the new conditions.

The Republic did not create an extensive bureaucratic machine to administer the provinces, so that governors had only a small number of officials supplemented by members...

Companies headed by such men bid for the right to collect taxes in a region, to sell war captives and other plunder, or to undertake massive contracts supplying the army with food and equipment. They were known as the publicani – the publicans of the King James Bible – for undertaking such tasks required by the Republic, but their primary motive was profit and not public service.

Over the generations, an exceptionally high proportion of Roman men served in the army.

Until the middle of the second century BC there appears to have been little popular resistance to this, and most men willingly undertook their military duties.

For some active service was very attractive, in spite of the extremely brutal discipline imposed on the legions, for there was every prospect of plunder and winning honours. The Romans were also fiercely patriotic and valued this demonstration of their commitment to the Republic.

The army recruited from the propertied classes, for each soldier was expected to provide himself with the necessary equipment to serve as a horseman for the very wealthy, a heavy infantryman for the majority, or...

Service lasted until the legion was disbanded, which often occurred at the end of a war. In the early days of the Republic, a spell in the army may well have taken no more than a few weeks, or at most months, for the foe was usually close by and the fighting small in scale and brief in duration.

During the Punic Wars tens of thousands of Romans were away from their homes for years. A number of overseas provinces demanded permanent garrisons, so that men unfortunate enough to be posted to somewhere like Spain often had to undergo five or ten years’ continuous service.

Prolonged military service ruined many small farmers, and the loss of their land meant that such men would in future lack sufficient property to make them eligible for call up to the legions.

Concern grew from the middle of the second century BC that the number of citizens liable for the army was in terminal decline.

The profits of expansion brought fabulous wealth to many senators and equestrians. Such men invested a good deal of their fortunes in huge landed estates, often absorbing land that had formerly been divided into many smallholdings.

Such estates (latifundia) were invariably worked by a servile labour force, since frequent war ensured that slaves were both plentiful and cheap. The size of a man’s landholdings, the number of slaves who worked them and the lavishness of the villas built for when the owner chose to visit were all new ways in which men could compete in displaying their fabulous riches.

more practical terms, large estates could be devoted to commercial farming, which provided...

In many respects it was a vicious circle, as repeated wars in distant provinces took more citizen farmers away from their land and often left them and their families in penury, while the same conflicts further enriched the elite of societ...

In 133 BC Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, one of the ten annually elected tribunes of the plebs, launched an ambitious reform programme aimed at dealing with this very problem.

The tribunes differed from other magistrates in that they had no role outside Rome itself. Originally the office had been created to provide the people with some protection against the abuse of power by senior magistrates, but by this time it was essentially just another step in a normal career path.

In his tribunate he focused on the public land (ager publicus) confiscated over the centuries from defeated Italian enemies.

The tribune passed a law confirming the legal limit of public land each individual was permitted to occupy, and redistributing the rest to poor citizens, thus raising these to the property class eligible for military service.

Unable to secure approval for his law in the Senate, Tiberius violated tradition by taking it directly to the Popular Assembly. When a colleague in the tribunate tried to stop proceedings by imposing his veto, Gracchus organised a vote and had the man deposed from office. This may or may not have been legal, since in theory the people could legislate on anything, but it struck at the very heart of the Republican system by challenging the assumption that all magistrates of the same rank were equal.

That Tiberius, his father-in-law and his younger brother Caius were the three commissioners appointed to oversee the distribution of land raised more hackles by giving them so much patronage.

Some began to accuse him of seeking regnum, the permanent power of a monarch. The final straw came when Tiberius, claiming the need to ensure that his laws were not immediately repealed, stood for election as tribune for 132 BC.

group of angry senators led by Tiberius’ cousin, Scipio Nasica, stormed out of the meeting and lynched the tribune and many of his supporters.

This was the first time that political disputes had ended in widespread and fatal violence, and Rome was left in a state of shock. (A few stories of the early years of the Republic told of demagogues or other men who had threatened the State being lynched, but these had long been consigned to ancient history in the Roman mind.)