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

by Mike Duncan

By simultaneously destroying Carthage and Corinth in 146, the Roman Republic took a final decisive step toward its imperial destiny. No longer one power among many, Rome now asserted itself as the power in the Mediterranean world. But as Rome’s imperial power reached maturity, the Republic itself started to rot from within. The triumph of the Roman Republic was also the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic.

The first king, Romulus, organized the legions, the Senate, and the popular Assembly. The second king, Numa, introduced priesthoods and religious rituals. The sixth king, Servius Tullius, reformed the Assemblies, conducted the first census, and organized the citizens into regional tribes for voting. But though the later Romans credited the kings with laying the political and social foundations of the city, they also believed that kings were anathema to the Roman character.

The Roman Kingdom ended abruptly in 509 when a group of senators chased the last king out of the city and replaced the monarchy with a kingless republic.7

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—wheth...

The Senate yielded and created the Plebeian Assembly, a popular assembly closed to patricians. This Assembly would elect tribunes who acted as guardians against patrician abuse. Any citizen could seek sanctuary with a tribune, at any time, for any reason. By sacred oath the tribunes were declared sacrosanct—within the city limits of Rome not even a consul could lay a hand on them. They became sentinels against the tyranny of the senatorial aristocracy.

Roman politics was not a class affair. 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.

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.10

Rome was nearly defeated in 218 when the great Carthaginian general Hannibal invaded Italy, but the stubborn Romans refused to surrender.

In the midst of his conquest, Aemilius Paullus also took a thousand prominent Greeks hostage to secure the good behavior of their kin. Among them was a brilliant politician and scholar named Polybius.

Paullus arranged for Polybius to spend his exile in Rome and tutor his son in rhetoric, history, and philosophy.20 Under Polybius’s tutelage Aemilianus embraced a new Greco-Roman spirit that was sweeping the age. The flood of educated Greek slaves into Italy led an entire generation of young nobles to become fully steeped in Greek literature, philosophy, and art. Some more conservative Romans railed against the importation of Greek ideas and believed they eroded the austere virtues of the early Romans.

Eventually Polybius would write a history of Rome to explain how and why the Romans had risen so far so fast. 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.22

According to Aristotelian political theory, each form of government had its merits but inevitably devolved into its most oppressive incarnation until it was overthrown. Thus a monarchy would become a tyranny, only to be overthrown by an enlightened aristocracy, which slid to repressive oligarchy until popular democracy overwhelmed the oligarchs, opening the door for anarchy, and so back to the stabilizing hand of monarchy again. Polybius believed the Romans had beaten this cycle

The monarchical element of the Roman constitution was the executive consuls. Thanks to the Roman aversion to kings, the Republic did not have a single executive and instead elected a pair of consuls who would share supreme military, political, and religious authority. To limit the risk of a tyrannical power grab, each executive partner had the ability to veto the decisions of his colleague.

The practical Romans, however, did create an emergency office called the Dictatorship. In times of crisis, the consuls could pass power to a single man who would hold absolute power in order to deliver Rome from danger. And this did not just mean foreign threats: the first dictator was appointed due to plebeian unrest in Rome rather than threat from a hostile neighbor. But, critically, the Dictatorship expired after six months. As the Romans held an implacable hatred of kings, the Senate authorized any citizen, at any time, to kill another citizen caught seeking regal power. For nearly five hundred years Roman dictators never failed to lay down their power.

Finally, the democratic element was found in the Assemblies, which were open to all Roman citizens. By the time of Polybius there were three principal Assemblies: the Centuriate Assembly, which elected senior magistrates; the Tribal Assembly, which elected junior magistrates, passed laws, and rendered legal judgment; and the Plebeian Assembly, which had many of the same powers as the Tribal Assembly but which elected the tribunes and were open only to men of plebeian birth. 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. And while a citizen could always appeal a verdict to the Assemblies, there was no appeal from the Assemblies.

By the end of the Punic Wars the consuls, the tribunes, and Assemblies no longer acted as a check on the Senate, but as an extension of it. Even as Polybius wrote his paean to Roman constitutional balance, the senatorial aristocracy was sliding into repressive oligarchy.

ONE OF THE ways the Senate wielded power was by keeping tight control on who would be elected to the highest magistracies. By the mid-200s the Conflict of the Orders had destroyed most distinctions between patrician and pleb. But as one elite aristocracy falls, another is always right there to take its place, and a new distinction emerged: any family—patrician or pleb—that could claim a consular ancestor was now referred to as nobile. Men born without consular ancestors were derisively called novus homo, or New Man. This new patrician/pleb nobility worked hard to ensure that their families continued to monopolize the consulship, and New Men were almost never allowed to attain a consulship. Lucius Mummius was among those who felt the effects of this slide toward oligarchy.

The first step in the cursus honorum was quaestor. Each year the Assembly elected ten quaestors who were tasked with the Republic’s finances, accounting, and record keeping. Usually acting as an assistant to a senior magistrate, the quaestors spent their year in office learning the ropes of Roman administration. Election to quaestorship also qualified a man to be enrolled in the Senate—though as junior officers in their early thirties they were typically seen and not heard during great senatorial debates.

Above the quaestors were aediles. Each year the Assembly elected four aediles who were tasked with overseeing public works and games. A year as aedile was a great way for a rising politician to cultivate name recognition and popularity by throwing lavish games or overseeing a high-profile project like a new road or aqueduct.

When former quaestors and aediles approached their fortieth birthdays they were allowed to run for praetor and cross the threshold from junior to senior magistracies. Since the two annual consuls could not be everywhere, each year the Assembly elected four praetors who held sovereign power when the consuls were not present. Praetors helped shoulder the responsibilities of provincial administration, military operations, and judicial proceedings.

The Senate assigned Mummius the task of restoring order in Further Spain, which was reeling from a revolt by the native Lusitanians. Marching into the interior, Mummius located the main body of Lusitanians and drove them back, but his army lost cohesion while chasing the rebels, allowing the Lusitanians to turn the tables. Mummius was forced to retreat all the way back to the coast. Undaunted, Mummius regrouped and then proceeded to best the Lusitanians repeatedly. By the end of the year, he was sitting on top of a pile of slaves and plunder. For his victories, the Senate and the People of Rome awarded Mummius a triumph—a rare enough honor to begin with, almost never granted to a novus homo.33

IF THE NOVUS homo Mummius needed methodical and steady steps to climb the cursus honorum, the patrician nobile Scipio Aemilianus simply breezed along without a care in the world. Aemilianus was elected quaestor around 155, but prior to his consulship that was the only official magistracy he held.

When word came back of Corinth’s destruction, the Senate dispatched a commission to Greece to settle affairs in the east for all time. After fifty years of trying to maintain the pretense of Greek liberty, the Romans finally gave up. Greece was merged with Macedon into the single Roman province of Macedonia. Greek liberty was dead. The Romans now ruled.42

TIBERIUS SEMPRONIUS GRACCHUS WAS WATCHING AS CARTHAGE burned. In 146 BC the teenager was on his first campaign and serving under the famous commander Scipio Aemilianus

First ennobled by Tiberius’s great-grandfather, the family had risen in stature with each generation, culminating with Tiberius’s father, whom Livy called “by far the ablest and most energetic young man of his time.” Over the course of his storied career, Gracchus the Elder served two consulships and was awarded two triumphs. Though his father died when Tiberius was just ten years old, the boy knew his father’s exploits well. He knew he had much to live up to.

Tiberius’s mother, Cornelia, was herself one of the most respected matrons in Roman history. She was the daughter of Scipio Africanus and wielded enormous influence inside the extended Scipione family.

To keep the family fortunes under one house, Cornelia arranged for her daughter Sempronia to marry her adopted nephew Aemilianus—even though she did not like Aemilianus personally. Cornelia found him pretentious and did not think him worthy of the honor of being head of the family. In fact, much of Cornelia’s focus on her children was an effort to keep Aemilianus from outshining her jewels. She pushed her sons’ ambitions by reminding them that the Romans still called her the mother-in-law of Aemilianus, but not yet mother of the Gracchi.

As the largest and most powerful city in the Mediterranean, Rome became a center of migratory gravity. Noncitizen Italians frequently moved to the growing metropolis, and were followed by Greek philosophers, and Spanish artisans, and North African merchants, and Syrian ambassadors, and Gallic mercenaries. By the 130s, Rome had transformed into a polyglot mix of every language and ethnicity in the known world.12

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.

On the political front, Aemilianus figured out how to use the Assembly to bypass inconvenient hurdles. He had held two consulships in his career, both secured after special dispensation from an Assembly. As consul, he fought two great wars, both assigned by a special vote of the Assembly rather than by traditional drawing of lots. It was a powerful example that would be used by all future dynasts of the Late Republic. The Assembly was incredibly powerful—the people’s unified voice could override everything. A man who controlled the Assembly could do anything he wanted.

Over the past century the Republic had undergone a massive transformation without any comprehensive attempt to refit the ship of state to survive the new waters within which it sailed. Where Tiberius had proposed a single piece of radical agrarian legislation to blunt the effects of rising economic inequality, Gaius dreamed of an entire slate of reforms to ameliorate the most destabilizing aspects of Rome’s imperial expansion. Gaius Gracchus had a dream, and this dream would lead him to share one life with his brother and die a champion of the people.

When Gaius was done with all this legislation he not only introduced reforms that anticipated by a hundred years the stable imperial structure of Augustus, but it also put Gaius at the center of a powerful antisenatorial coalition. The plebs urbana, the rural poor, the Equestrians generally, and the publicani particularly were all now arrayed behind Gaius—his success would be their success; his ruin, their ruin. The coalition forged by Gaius would become familiar in years to come as men like Marius, Saturninus, Drusus, Sulpicius, and Cinna would all use the same basic mix to pursue their own antisenatorial agendas.

Insulted by the crowd, the Senate gave Opimius the authority he needed to restore order. They instructed Opimius to do “whatever he thought necessary to preserve the State.” The intent of this vague decree was clearly to authorize Opimius to act as a dictator would—without resurrecting the cumbersome and archaic authority of the Dictatorship itself. Though they did not know it at the time, the Senate’s improvised decree set a precedent for the future. In times of civil unrest the Senate would invoke the same formula, which became known as the senatus consultum ultimum—the Senate’s Final Decree.

As the years passed the Gracchi name came to mean more than just the brothers: it stood for an array of programs and tactics that collectively represented a new populare movement in Roman politics. The standard populare programs included a grain dole for the urban poor, land for the rural poor, control of the courts with the Equestrians, secret ballots in the Assembly, subsidies for military service, and punishment of corrupt nobles. Tactically, the populare harnessed the democratic power of the Assembly rather than the aristocratic weight of the Senate. While populare leaders came and went, the citizens of Rome remained the same and would support those who offered them what they wanted.

Opposing the populares were the optimates. Meaning literally “the best” or “the good,” the term invoked a variety of characteristics. But since Cicero is our main source, those characteristics tended to align with his own worldview. For Cicero, an optimate was a well-educated senator with an active interest in oratory, politics, and war, and skewing away from the severe Roman virtues in the mold of old Cato the Elder. An optimate senator was comfortable with exotic food and Greek ideas. These grandly sophisticated statesmen were the natural guardians of the Republic, standing as sentinels against enemies both foreign and domestic.

For the great historian Sallust—himself an active partisan in the politics of the Late Republic—the divide between populare and optimate meant that “the institution of parties and factions” had come to Rome. He felt both sides were to blame for the treacherous polarization because “the nobles began to abuse their position and the people their liberty… th...

to fill his legions, Marius took a fateful step in the long history of the decline and fall of the Roman Republic—he requested exemption from the property qualification. Of this request to recruit from among the poorest plebs, Sallust says: “Some say that he did this through lack of good men, others because of a desire to curry favor… As a matter of fact, to one who aspires to power the poorest man is the most helpful, since he has no regard for his property, having none, and considers anything honorable for which he receives pay.” Any man, no matter how poor and destitute, could now serve in the army. With the promise of plunder and glory dangled before their eyes, poor men from across Italy rushed to sign up for Marius’s open legions.48

The tribune Ahenobarbus then settled a personal grudge against Scaurus, who he believed blocked his chance at a priesthood. After tying up Scaurus in court with frivolous lawsuits, Ahenobarbus carried a law opening the college of pontiffs to popular election. Until now, the vacancies in a priesthood had been filled by the senior pontiffs, allowing the optimate nobility to keep the priesthoods as their own special preserve. Now priests would be elected by popular vote. The case of Ahenobarbus also demonstrates how difficult it is to separate the personal from the political in the Late Republic. Likely driven by a personal grudge, Ahenobarbus rammed through a bill that further strengthened the power of the Assembly and weakened the nobility.

The anti-populare Cicero goes on to note that Philippus’s speech “deserves unqualified condemnation, for it favored an equal distribution of property; and what more ruinous policy than that could be conceived?” The legislation did not pass, but the fact that it was even introduced is proof that gains made during the Gracchan era had been reversed by the turn of the century.17 But while some of these populare attacks were carried out by ambitious men of noble rank simply looking to inflict as much damage as possible on their political rivals, many more were real populare radicals looking to burn down the world.

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 as they completed the conquest of the Mediterranean in the first century.18

Like many popular revolutions in history, the men who unlock the door are not always the same men who come bursting through. The men who had run populare programs the year before, like Ahenobarbus, Longinus, and Philippus, were all from ancient noble families who, like Marius, saw populare rhetoric as a path to power. Saturninus, on the other hand, really did seem to want to just burn the whole thing down.

But this was an age when a lie was not a lie if a man had the audacity to keep asserting the lie was true.

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.

Saturninus’s coalition was also now joined by Marius’s veterans, who would provide much needed muscle. Where Gaius Gracchus had been pulled into violence against his will, Saturninus pursued it without compunction. Where Gaius sought to restore the balance of the Polybian constitution, Saturninus wanted to truly crush the Senate and use Marius’s veterans to rule the city with an iron fist.

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

Optimates in the Senate like Scaurus, Crassus, and Scaevola were scandalized by all this. Their attempt to rein in the publicani had backfired and now one of the best men in Rome had been banished. The optimates concluded that taking back control of the Extortion Court was the only sure guard against future persecutions. This looming showdown over the courts would spiral out of control and make 91 another year marked by political violence

The Senate was, by now, convulsed with mixed emotions. Sulla was clearly acting as their savior and benefactor, but they bristled at Sulla’s pretensions to now be the patron of the Senate—as if they were now his clients. And crossing the Pomerium with an entire army was unforgivable sacrilege.44 But Sulla studiously maintained that he was following a chain of precedent that linked Opimius in 121, to Marius in 100, to Sulla here in 88. What he had done was no different than what they had done: he took extraordinary consular action to quell a violent political faction. But of course, both Opimius and Marius had operated under the senatus consultum ultimum.

But even with Cinna making noise about political prosecution, Sulla refused to take the bait. Disqualifying Cinna would prove that Sulla was exactly what his enemies said he was. There were multiple candidates in the race, but Sulla refused to help or hinder any of them. The other strongest candidate was Gnaeus Octavius. An old optimate conservative, Octavius was no friend of Marius and supported Sulla’s reforms in theory—but the way Sulla had gone about it burned him to the edges of his toga. Octavius could not be counted on to stand in the way if Cinna decided to prosecute Sulla.6

But though he accepted the election of Cinna, Sulla was not without tricks. As the man who would administer the oath of office to the new consuls, Sulla forced them to swear an oath that they would not disturb his political reforms. In front of a large crowd, the incoming consuls swore the oath, and cast a stone on the ground to accept the punishment of exile if they broke their word.7 As he vacated the consulship, Sulla could rest easy knowing that as long as he held his military command he would be shielded from political prosecution.