The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

by Mike Duncan

Further investigation into this period reveals an era full of historical echoes that will sound eerily familiar to the modern reader. The final victory over Carthage in the Punic Wars led to rising economic inequality, dislocation of traditional ways of life, increasing political polarization, the breakdown of unspoken rules of political conduct, the privatization of the military, rampant corruption, endemic social and ethnic prejudice, battles over access to citizenship and voting rights, ongoing military quagmires, the introduction of violence as a political tool, and a set of elites so obsessed with their own privileges that they refused to reform the system in time to save it.

Plutarch certainly believed it possible that “if, on the other hand, there is a limited number of elements from which events are interwoven, the same things must happen many times, being brought to pass by the same agencies.” If history is to have any active meaning there must be a place for identifying those interwoven elements, studying the recurring agencies, and learning from those who came before us.

The running battle between patrician and pleb became known as the Conflict of the Orders.

Patrons could expect political and military support from their clients, and clients could expect financial and legal assistance from their patrons. So though the conflict between patricians and plebs occasionally led to explosive clashes, the client-patron bonds meant Roman politics was more a clash of rival clans than a class war.

What truly bound all Romans together, though, were unspoken rules of social and political conduct. The Romans never had a written constitution or extensive body of written law—they needed neither. Instead the Romans surrounded themselves with unwritten rules, traditions, and mutual expectations collectively known as mos maiorum, which meant “the way of the elders.”

When the Republic began to break down in the late second century it was not the letter of Roman law that eroded, but respect for the mutually accepted bonds of mos maiorum.

Polybius argued that beyond their obvious military prowess, the Romans lived under a political constitution that had achieved the perfect balance between the three classical forms of government: monarchy—rule by the one; aristocracy—rule by the few; and democracy—rule by the many.

According to Aristotelian political theory, each form of government had its merits but inevitably devolved into its most oppressive incarnation until it was overthrown.

The democratic element of the Roman constitution is often underrated, but the Assemblies were incredibly powerful. Only an Assembly could enact a law or pass capital sentence on a citizen.

the geographer Pausanias said, “Audacity combined with weakness should be called madness.”

Diodorus observed: “Thus a few men became extremely rich while the rest of the population of Italy grew weak under the oppressive weight of poverty, taxes and military service.”

It would take time for the effects of these reforms to be felt, but the introduction of the secret ballot would prove a hammer blow to the foundations of the senatorial oligarchy.

With all the taboos of mos maiorum now breaking down left and right, “this was the beginning in Rome of civil bloodshed, and of the license of the sword.” The definitive triumph of naked force was a lesson no one could unlearn.

For when those in power act cruelly and wickedly, the character of their subjects is inflamed to reckless action… if they are denied the kindness which they deserve, they revolt against the men who act like cruel despots.

As the crisis over the Lex Agraria had shown, physically controlling the Assembly space was now a critical part of winning political battles. The permanent presence of the plebs urbana meant that however muted their electoral voices might be, their actual voices could be heard loud and clear,

the publicani was still the one group that could actually handle the logistical load of empire. The Republic had no standing bureaucracy, so someone had to do it.

At the top of the citizenship hierarchy were, of course, full Roman citizens. There was no wealth requirement to be a citizen—the wealthiest senator and the poorest beggar both shared equally in the rights of citizenship, rights that collectively established their libertas, or civil liberty. The most important of these liberties was the right to vote in the Assembly and protection from abuse by senior magistrates.

Holding Latin Rights soon became a civil distinction rather than an ethnic one.40 Finally, at the bottom of the hierarchy were the foederati or socii—known collectively as the “Allies.”

“Those who make themselves up for political competition or the race for glory, as actors do for the stage, must necessarily regret their action, since they must either serve those whom they think they should rule or offend those whom they wish to please.”

As the crisis over the Lex Agraria revealed, it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals.

We are silent when we see that all the money of all the nations has come into the hands of a few men; which we seem to tolerate and to permit with the more equanimity, because none of these robbers conceals what he is doing. CICERO

Emergency suspension of the property requirements was not without precedent. An ancestor of the Gracchi had even led a legion composed of slaves and gladiators during the darkest days of the Second Punic War. But what makes this moment so important is that it marked a permanent transition from temporary armies conscripted from among the free citizens to professional armies composed of soldiers who made their careers in the army—whose loyalties would be to their generals rather than to the Senate and People of Rome.

The organization of the legions then remained largely unchanged all the way down to the final conquests of 146. The years after 146 saw the legions transform once again, and the ancient sources credit Marius with many of the innovations that turned the legions as they had existed in the third century BC into the armies Pompey and Caesar would lead

Like many popular revolutions in history, the men who unlock the door are not always the same men who come bursting through.

Saturninus then passed a law establishing a new permanent court that would deal with cases of maiestas, crimes that damaged the prestige of the state. This law took the ad hoc corruption tribunals and made them a permanent fixture of public life.

The Gracchi are often pointed to as the arch-masterminds of mob tactics and unscrupulous populist politics. But their activities had mostly been driven by a genuine desire to reform the Republic. The violence that surrounded their lives came unexpectedly, without prior forethought, and was an unwelcome intrusion. Saturninus, on the other hand, was the first to show the demagogues of the future generations just how far cynically manipulated mob violence could push a man’s career forward.

men with financial means and business connections in Rome who nonetheless had not yet found their own path to citizenship. It would be this class of disgruntled Equestrians who would be the iron backbone of Italian rebellion.

The shortsighted obsession with the petty dynamic of electoral politics led to the most unnecessary war in Roman history.

THE CITIZENS OF Rome did not know what they were getting into when they rejected the Italian citizenship bill. Given the surprise they all showed when the Social War erupted under their feet, they were clearly oblivious to the ramifications of dropping the bill. For the Romans, it was just another rejection in a long series of rejections of Italian citizenship. No big deal. But for the Italians it was the last straw.32

The choice was civitas or libertas.

“Thus it is clear that, as in the case of cities and empires, so the fortunes of families flourish, wane, and pass away.”

the Lex Julia. The Lex Julia offered full Roman citizenship to any Italian who had not yet taken up arms.

There had been heavy Italian migration to the region after the Cimbrian Wars, but most of the population lacked any formal rights at all. Not only would the Lex Pompeia

Carbo passed the Lex Plautia Papiria, a law extending citizenship even to Italian communities still under arms.

So Sulpicius’s great contribution to Roman politics was the invention of the professional street gang.