Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic

by Tom Holland

roots in the land make the bravest and toughest soldiers.”4 The horny-handed peasant, tending to his small plot, was the object of much sentimental attachment and patriotic pride. Unsurprisingly, for the Republic had become great on his back. For centuries the all-conquering Roman infantry had consisted of yeoman farmers, their swords cleaned of chaff, their plows left behind, following their magistrates obediently to war. For as long as Rome’s power had been confined to Italy, campaigns had been of manageably short duration. But with the expansion of the Republic’s interests overseas, they had lengthened, often into years. During a soldier’s absence, his property might become easy prey. Small farms had been increasingly swallowed up by the rich. In place of a tapestry of fields and vineyards worked by free men, great stretches of Italy had been given over to vast estates, the “wilderness” through which Spartacus had marched. Of course, it was not truly a wilderness, being filled with chain gangs—but it lacked free-born citizens. The sight of “a countryside almost depopulated, with a virtual absence of free peasants or shepherds, and no one except for barbarian, imported slaves,”5 was what had shocked Tiberius Gracchus into launching his reform project. He had warned his fellow citizens that the foundations of their military greatness were being eroded. Every peasant who lost his farm had meant a soldier lost to Rome. To generations of reformers, the miseries of the dispos...