Rome

As a city-state, Rome had first subjugated Central Italy, next the rest of the peninsula, and then had added more and more provinces. Its constitution, however, remained for a very long time that of a city-state, so that the growing empire consisted of roughly three areas inhabited respectively by citizens, allies, and subjects. For a while, this architecture seemed to work reasonably well, but the continuing expansion in the course of the 2nd century seriously undermined the whole structure, and in the next century the republic gave way to the rule of one man.

In the period from the end of the Struggle of the Orders until the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (287-133 BC), the organs of the city-state in Rome functioned in such a way that Rome could be said to be governed by aristocratic consensus. The assemblies of the people, the magistracies, and the senate to some extent balanced each other out, although the senate clearly retained a preponderance of power. In the traditional comitia centuriata, the voting was organized in centuriae combined with the property classes, which gave the most political clout to the citizens of the first two property classes and the equites, who together were far from a majority in the population but did have a majority of the 193 centuriae or voting blocks that made up the assembly. This assembly mainly functioned as an electoral assembly for the election of the higher magistracies—praetores, consules, and censores—and also as the people’s assembly that voted on a very few important decisions regarding subjects such as war and peace. The comitia tributa had a simpler organization and voting procedure. Here, the citizens were divided over the 35 tribus or “districts” in which they were registered. They cast their votes in a one-man-one-vote procedure, so that a majority vote decided the vote of each tribus, after which a simple majority of the tribus was enough to determine the final outcome. This assembly elected the lesser magistrates such as the quaestores and aediles and was regularly convened for all sorts of legislation. In practice, it hardly differed from the concilium plebis, the assembly of the plebs, which elected the tribunes of the people and was always presided over by tribunes. Clearly, the patricians had no access to that assembly, but they were just a handful of families in this period, and since its decisions or plebiscita had the force of law, the tribunes could convene the concilium plebis to suggest a plebiscitum or else turn to the comitia tributa (where patricians could participate) and initiate a law (lex). The comitia tributa was clearly more democratic than the traditional comitia centuriata, and in the later republic it had become the most important legislative body. Those who introduced the legislative proposals often were tribunes who had already deliberated these proposals in advance in the senate—the tribunes had in fact become lower members of the senate—so that the legislation actually was decided in the senate, after which some tribunes ensured that the assembly of the people sanctioned these decisions by giving them the formal status of law. As long as the tribunes of the people cooperated with the senate in this way, an image of harmony and concord prevailed. In the course of the 2nd century BC, however, that image began to disintegrate, until in 133 BC Tiberius Gracchus ended this cooperation, and a century of political crises began.

The magistracies of the Roman Republic in this period (287-133 BC) grew together into a balanced system in which politicians could make a career. The cursus honorum was the series of magistracies that a successful politician had to occupy in a predetermined order. The lower magistracies with which one had to begin were those of quaestor (usually in charge of finances, such as the sums to be paid for the army, and general assistants of the consuls when on campaign), tribune of the people (although strictly speaking, a tribune of the plebs was not serving the whole people or populus and therefore was not a magistrate), and aedilis (mainly in charge of supervising the markets and public order). The higher magistrates were in possession of imperium, the highest military authority. They were the praetores (two of whom acted as judges in Rome; the others went to the provinces as governors) and the two consules. The office of censor, held every five years by two men for

The duration of 18 months, counted as the most honorable. The censores were responsible for holding the census every five years, with the ensuing assignment of the citizens to their various property classes and the admission of members to the orders of equites and senators; they also commissioned public works and government activities, for instance, leasing out the tax collection in certain provinces to the publicani. Various rules determined the minimum age at which one was allowed to hold these magistracies (for the consulate, it was fixed at 42) and the period that had to elapse between two magistracies. Holding the same magistracy twice was a very rare occurrence, except for the consulate. Here, the law laid down that between two consulates there should be an interval of at least ten years. Of all the magistracies, the consulate was the most sought after, bringing the most power and the most opportunities to acquire glory and prestige. Therefore, eligibility for this office was regulated by certain rules that made it very difficult for newcomers and those who had held the lower magistracies but had no consul in their families to reach the consulate. In the classical republic of 287 to 133 BC, it was only a few dozen families, both patrician and plebeian, that time and again produced the consuls. They were the nobiles, literally the “known” or “renowned” ones, an aristocracy of office that ruled Rome. Someone not belonging to their circle who yet became consul—a rarity—was called a “newcomer” (homo novus). The Roman nobility tried to keep its own circle as far as possible an exclusive one, which explains why the number of consules was not enlarged and the number of praetores remained for a very long time limited to six. Where there was a need for more persons with the same constitutional powers, ex-consuls were retained with the title of proconsul—or, exceptionally, someone was made a proconsul who had not yet been a consul. In the late republic, the proconsuls would be a normal feature, while propraetores could also be appointed. The rules of the cursus honorum were not always strictly observed, though; especially, some very powerful nobiles managed in times of war or other tension to become consul at a much younger age, or to hold a second consulship within ten years, if not immediately after the first. In the extraordinary position of such persons—one could think of Scipio Africanus the Elder, of Scipio Aemilianus Africanus the Younger—already something can be discerned of the things to come: the accumulation of magistracies and competences in one person, accompanied by the necessary bending of the rules in that person’s favor.

The office of quaestor allowed its holder immediate entry into the senate, so that this council came to consist of all acting magistrates and all former magistrates. Within the ranks of the senate, the former consuls and former censors were the most respectable members. Thus, of the roughly 300 senators, a minority of nobiles set the tone. When it came to voting, younger and lower-ranking senators hardly dared to vote differently from the members who had acquired so much dignitas (prestige) and auctoritas (authority). As long as there was consensus among the rather small circle of nobiles, decisions could be made quickly. Lower senators often were connected with more powerful colleagues in a sort of clientela: the term more often used was amicitia, “friendship,” but it was an unequal “friendship.” Among themselves, the higher nobiles could also form ties of friendship and cooperation in a factio, a political faction on a temporary basis. Mutual jealousies usually stimulated the emergence of counter factions to prevent too much power, glory, and prestige from accruing to one faction or to just a few noble names. Politics in the Roman

Senate could as a result of this become a game of rather subtle and complex maneuvering, that in itself could sometimes hinder decision making. Ultimately, this contributed to a certain powerlessness of the senate in the face of the large problems that arose in the wake of the Roman expansion.

The apparatus of government of the Roman Republic was very small. There were some slaves in public service, for instance as scribes, but they certainly were not numerous. The spirit of the republic was that of a city-state with all the amateurism that went with it. Offices of state were honorary positions that did not pay any salary. If a magistrate needed any assistance, he was supposed to use his own slaves and freedmen for the bureaucratic work involved; if he needed advice, then he consulted his own friends. All this was possible as long as Rome considered itself to be a city-state and meddled with the internal affairs of its allies and provincials as little as possible.

The area of Rome itself, the ager Romanus, since 270 BC comprised about one-quarter of the territory of Italy south of the river Po. It consisted mainly of the city of Rome with the territories of Latium and Campania. Within these territories, several towns were located that had the status of municipia. A municipium was a town or community inhabited by Roman citizens outside the city of Rome, who paid taxes and served in the legions like other Roman citizens. Otherwise, the ager Romanus was made up of a number of coloniae Romanae (Roman colonies), generally rather small but fortified towns founded at various spots along the coasts for strategic reasons. About three-quarters of Italy outside the ager Romanus was nominally independent and connected with Rome by a system of alliances. In Roman eyes, these allies were a sort of clientes who had to be grateful to Rome, and therefore be subservient to it, because Rome had allowed them after their final defeats to maintain their autonomy. There were two such categories. The first consisted of Latins (Latini): the inhabitants of a few ancient cities in Latium that had retained their independence after 338 BC. The other category consisted of the so-called coloniae Latinae. These were new and relatively large settlements founded by the Romans all over Italy in areas that were suitable for agriculture and also had strategic importance. The colonists were partly of Italian, partly of Roman origin, the latter having lost their Roman citizenship by settling in such a colony, for officially, the Latin colonies were allies of Rome with internal autonomy and Latin rights, which meant that they had the same status as the old Latin cities in Latium. Their magistrates could on an individual basis freely move to Rome and automatically become Roman citizens. By far the most numerous of the Italian allies were the peoples who had been subdued in the decades around 300 BC, such as the Etruscans, Umbrians, Samnites, and Greeks. As the socii (“allies”), they were collectively distinguished from the Latini. They too enjoyed internal autonomy, but they had always to follow Rome’s lead in external policy matters and provide troops for the Roman armies. Their contingents were put under the command of Roman officers and organized as legions under the name of “wings” (alae), since on the battlefield they would be posted on both sides of the Roman legions. They also provided the Romans with most of their cavalry in the field. In this way, Rome held Italy in submission without the need to interfere much in the affairs of the various tribes, cities, and peoples, while having at its disposal all the manpower of the peninsula. The latter was used abundantly, leading to bitter discontent on the part of these allies, since they had to bear much of

The burden of the Roman wars but did not share equally in their profits, for all of the tributes, indemnities, extortions, and most of the war booty ultimately went to the Roman masters.

The provinces, meanwhile, were treated by Rome in a completely different way than Italy. The people here were deprived of most of their rights. They were subjects of Rome, who had to pay their tribute and be obedient to the governors that were sent from Rome to rule over them. Initially, for the governorships new praetores were elected, but after 197 BC, the number of praetors remained fixed at six. Henceforth, new provinces were governed by proconsules or propraetores. The collection of taxes due to Rome was sometimes in the hands of local dignitaries, sometimes in those of Roman publicani. Especially in the latter case, the tax collection went hand in hand with much extortion and corruption. Rome treated its provinces as mere sources of income that could be squeezed to the utmost, not as parts of an empire for which it felt responsibility. Such notions would only emerge later, when the republic had given way to the monarchy.

The transition from republic to monarchy is the overriding theme of Roman history from 133 BC to 30 BC. It was Roman expansion itself that undermined the republic. The wars outside Italy created an impoverished but still free peasantry and stimulated at the same time the rise of the large landowners, senators as well as equites. In the city of Rome, the proletarians dominated the comitia tributa, the main legislative assembly (since impoverished peasants who moved to Rome remained registered in their rural tribus, all the tribus became more or less “proletarianized”). Whatever their motives, politicians such as the Gracchi brothers paved the way for a politics of demagogy, from which in the end only various “strong men” would profit. The proletarianized army, Marius’ creation, handed ambitious nobiles the tools with which to pressure the senate or the people to do their bidding, so that the competition between power-hungry nobiles became a deadly danger for the state. At the same time, the discontent of the Italian allies at last found expression in the Social War that ended with all of Italy south of the Po as ager Romanus, inhabited by Roman citizens and where a great number of towns now became Roman municipia. Rome seemed inevitably to move in the direction of a territorial state ruled by a monarch in the manner of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Individual Roman potentates in this century already foreshadowed the coming regime: Marius, elected six times consul in the short period 107-100 BC; Sulla, dictator for three years (82-79 BC); and Pompey, consul without a colleague in 52 BC. It was Sulla who also transformed the consulate into a more or less civilian office in a demilitarized Italy, placing the legions in the provinces under the command of proconsules and propraetores, in essence the arrangement of the later empire. That empire, after a first attempt by Julius Caesar, was finally established by Octavian. Whether it was really inevitable is a theoretical question; that the traditional republican constitution no longer fited the new circumstances was obvious. Still, the new monarchy would for a long time to come preserve some republican memories both in the facade behind which much of the one-man’s rule would be hidden, and in the federalist character of that empire, based as it was on a large number of internally autonomous cities. The latter feature, a remnant of the republican organization, would for a long time prevent the development of a Roman imperial bureaucracy, such as had existed in Ptolemaic Egypt and still existed in contemporary China of the Han dynasty.