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

by Mike Duncan

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.

The legendary founding date is April 21, 753 BC.

Families that could trace their lineage back to the original senators appointed by Romulus

were known as the patricians and by both custom and law these families monopolized all political and religious offices. Anyone outside this small aristocratic clique was called plebeian. All plebeians—whether poor farmer, prosperous merchant, or rich landowner—were shut out of power. It did not take long for the plebs to agitate for equal rights. As the historian Appian says: “The plebeians and Senate of Rome were often at strife with each other concerning the enactment of laws, the cancelling of debts, the division of lands, or the election of magistrates.” The running battle between patrician and pleb became known as the Conflict of the Orders.8

Roman families organized themselves into complex client-patron networks that worked down from the elite patrician patrons through an array of interconnected plebeian clients. 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.

Tiberius was admired for his intelligence and dignity. He was possessed of “brilliant intellect, of upright intentions, and… the highest virtues of which a man is capable when favored by nature and by training.” A generous

only affected the small group of noble families who controlled the spoils of war.

life.13 Some of these dislocated citizens migrated to the cities in search of wage labor, only to find that slaves monopolized the work in the cities, too. So most remained in their rural homelands, forming a new class of landless peasants who would continue to work their land as mere tenants and sharecroppers rather than owners. Their new landlords loved the arrangement—tenant farmers could be used to produce low-margin cereals, which would allow landlords to save their slaves for more lucrative crops like olives and grapes. Politically minded landlords had an added incentive to promote tenancy: these peasants remained political clients whose votes could

piece of legislation this controversial and far-reaching was not drafted on a whim. Claudius, Scaevola, and Mucianus would have spent years carefully picking through Roman law, laying out how the survey process would work, and who would arbitrate contested claims. But once the law was written they simply had to wait for the right time and the right person to introduce the bill. And for that, Claudius had his eye on his talented young son-in-law Tiberius, who was now trying to recover from the shame of the Numantine Affair.

He stood perfectly still and allowed the inherent force of his argument to hold the audience’s rapt attention. According to Plutarch, Tiberius composed himself

AFTER FAILING TO avoid senatorial opposition with a generous bill, Tiberius and his Claudian backers decided the best play was to rally his popular base by making villains of the

Though the coming attack was not premeditated, it was clear they were willing to use force to beat back the mob trying to make Tiberius Gracchus king of Rome.

you did not have money to live you either departed for the countryside or died in a back alley. Poverty was fatal.14

The aristocracy of a given city were courted and co-opted, their sons sent back to Rome as hostages, where they would be well treated and given a full Roman education.

Men would buy shares in joint-stock companies and then bid on the right to fulfill a contract.

As the breadth and depth of the Republican Empire grew—the profits to be made from state contracts were enormous—some publicani fortunes came to surpass those of minor senators.

The work was fatal, but the profits astronomical.

The second-most lucrative contracts were for tax collection. The Roman provincial administrators did not directly collect provincial taxes. Instead publicani investors would form companies to buy five-year contracts, offering a lump sum of cash in exchange for the right to go collect what was owed Rome—the amount of money a company made over the amount paid was their profit. It was a system begging to be abused because the publicani had every incentive to extort as

much as they could—even if it was more than what was legally owed. With limited oversight out in the provinces, the publicani tax farmers soon gained a notorious reputation that wherever they went there was neither law nor freedom. But despite this reputation for vigorous avarice, the publicani was still the one group that could actually handle the lo...

This was a process made nearly impossible if owners could not produce deeds, and if sellers could not produce receipts.

Marius, Sulla, and Caesar all followed Aemilianus’s basic principles of operations: raise a personal army and then use the Assembly to legislate your opponents into oblivion.

is dangerous,” Aemilianus said, “to buy from a few what belonged to the many.”

In the course of the debates over Numidia, some senators were more supportive of Jugurtha than others, and it was well known Jugurtha’s agents had come to Rome with “a great amount of gold and silver, directing them first to load his old friends with presents, and then to win new ones—in short, to make haste to accomplish by largess whatever

That said, some men are always prepared to let their wallets rule their politics; Jugurtha exploited as many of these men as he could.

As he departed, Jugurtha looked back at Rome and issued his famous judgment: “A city for sale and doomed to speedy destruction if it finds a purchaser.”51

general who is either able to choose the terrain of battle or maintain the element of surprise.