When, toward the end of his speech, Quintus urges Marcus Cicero to remove the ballot laws from his code, it turns out that in practice, this staunch optimate was just as aware as his ‘‘soft’’ brother that the elite was far from all-powerful in its dealings with the People: ‘‘Therefore, since we are now not simply reviewing the laws of the Roman people, but reviving old laws that have vanished, or else establishing new ones, I think you should propose, not what can be obtained from the Roman People in its present state, butwhatis best’’ (3.37). Quintus realizes that full-fledged senatorial domination is unattainable in practice, but refuses to give it up, as a matter ofprinciple, in a treatise on the best laws. But Marcus Cicero the unabashed pragmatist had little time for purely theoretical considerations divorced from political reality. 1 The People’s power was, to him, a ‘‘fact of life’’; any head-on attack on it was futile. It had to be accepted, integrated into the system, and manipulated, as far as possible, in the interests of the system’s overall stability. The popular element of the constitution was there - it was a wise statesman’s part to make it function as a safety valve. But there was no question of removing it, no use to speculate about such things even theoretically. A form of government aristocratic enough to allow the state to be governed rationally, but popular enough to enjoy the necessary broad legitimacy, would preserve, as it did in the good old days (at least as a rule - he was well aware of the exceptions), the Senate’s leading role in shaping public policy. This, for Cicero, was the best of all possible political worlds. When he insists, repeatedly, 2 that the authority of the boni is best preserved by conceding a moderate degree of political liberty (and hence, power) to the plebs he is, to a large extent, making a virtue of necessity.
On the ballot, Cicero suggests a compromise: preserving the written ballot, but allowing voters to show it to any of the ‘‘best citizens’’ upon request, repealing all the laws that forbade one to accost a voter and question him as to his vote. This would ‘‘give the appearance of liberty ( libertatis species), preserve the authority of the good citizens, and remove a cause of dissension’’ (Leg. 3.39). Libertatis species has been taken to mean that for Cicero, ‘‘the liberty conceded to the people.. .was tolerable only in so far as it was specious’’; he ‘‘wish[ed it] to be a mere sham.’’23 In and of itself, this phrase does lend itself to such an interpretation - but it is dangerous to rely wholly on a single phrase from Cicero’s complicated and dialectical argument. In defending the tribunate, Cicero chooses to present the glass of popular liberty (and power) as half-full rather than half-empty: ‘‘Thus either the kings should never have been expelled, or else real liberty, not a nominal one, had to be given to the plebs’’ (Leg. 3.25).24
But the difference between the two passages is not just in rhetorical emphasis. As regards the ballot, Cicero proposes a change that would limit popular freedom by exposing voters to greater pressures from above - contrary to his usual policy of maintaining the broad lines of the constitutional status quo in his ‘‘code of laws.’’ This, while exposing him as a rather lukewarm defender of popular rights, also shows that in his estimation, the ballot, as it actually functioned in his time, gave the humbler sort of voters much more than just an ‘‘appearance of liberty.’’ The tribunate, on the other hand, was evidently too rooted in the system to be tampered with. Therefore it had to be adopted ‘‘as it is in our state’’ (Leg. 3.19) and eloquently defended:
You say that the tribunes of the plebs have excessive power. Who denies that? But the unrestrained force of the people is much more savage, much more violent; however, it is sometimes milder because it has a leader than ifit did not... ‘‘But,’’ you say, ‘‘sometimes the tribunes inflame the people.’’ ‘‘Yes, but they often soothe them too.
This is followed by a piece of special pleading already mentioned - a misleading rhetorical question which implies that not a single college of tribunes is so ‘‘desperate’’ as to lack a ‘‘sane’’ tribune willing to defend the state against his colleagues.
In his concluding remarks Cicero defends the restoration of the tribunes’ powers by Pompey in 70:
You say you cannot praise Pompey in this one matter; but you do not seem to have sufficiently considered this point - that he had not only to look to what was best but also what was inevitable. He understood that this power could not be withheld from our state; for how could our people go without it once they had experienced it when they had demanded it so vehemently before they knew what it was? It was incumbent on a wise citizen not to leave to some dangerous demagogue a cause that was not vicious in itself and so popular that it could not be opposed. (Leg. 3.26)
At the outset of this chapter we asked how real was the people’s power in the Republic; this passage seems to indicate that it was real enough. The context does not suggest a rhetorical overstatement of the people’s power (such as might be advisable when addressing the People in a contio). The people’s role in Roman politics is often portrayed as essentially passive, on the grounds that any legislative initiative had to come from an office holder - a member of the elite, rather than from the ‘‘floor of the assembly’’ (as in Athens).25 This was, indeed, a significant limitation. But it was in the nature of things, as Cicero’s passage shows, that a sufficiently strong and persistent popular demand would eventually be taken up by an ambitious politician26 (not necessarily by a tribune - which is why Sulla’s emasculation of the tribunate could not stand). Of course, Cicero’s apologetic account ignores the part played in the events by Pompey’s own ambitions. Pompey did not just ‘‘rescue’’ the cause of restoring the tribune’s powers from being taken up by some reckless popularis. He greatly benefited from being identified with this cause - possibly already as candidate for the consulship of 70, and certainly in the 60s, when ‘‘Popular’’ tribunes carried the laws conferring on Pompey his extraordinary commands, with the enthusiastic support of the People (against strong senatorial opposition). Here again we see the interconnection and interplay between popular and aristocratic politics - or, to take a less sanguine view of things (since we are approaching the end of the Republic), between popular support and the rise of the ‘‘dynasts’’ who would pave the way to autocracy.
Even the most charitable modern reader will react to the idyllic picture drawn by Cicero - popular liberty in harmony with senatorial authority - with a fair dose of skepticism. The stability of the ‘‘balanced’’ constitution (as envisaged by Cicero and in actual practice, assuming that his vision is not wholly divorced from Roman, particularly mid-republican, realities) depended heavily on various forms of elite control and manipulation. In the final analysis, it depended on the People’s acquiescence. It appears to have been a widely shared feeling that the Roman state was, generally, in good hands when it was governed by scions of the noble families that had made it great, and guided by the collective wisdom and experience of the Senate. This basic acceptance of the aristocratic ethos did not rule out an occasional outburst of popular resentment and dissatisfaction with the elite - even in the most ‘‘harmonious’’ of times. On the other hand, it was far from wholly shattered even in the last century of the Republic. However achieved, popular legitimacy and acceptance of the system were its main bulwarks; though, of course, this ‘‘however’’ reintroduces, by the back door, some of the traditional explanations for the system’s stability and longevity having to do with the elite’s economic resources, social influence, prestige, and authority. Whether ‘‘consent of the governed’’ obtained under such conditions should count as genuinely ‘‘democratic’’ - on this question no general agreement should be expected. But, at any rate, this consent could not be taken for granted; the ‘‘oligarchs’’ had to work hard in order to obtain it.
‘‘The ideology of the ruling class’’ was accepted by the People of Rome ‘‘to an extraordinary degree.’’27 To be sure, the ruling class possessed powerful tools for shaping public opinion and fostering what some will define as ‘‘false consciousness’’ among the People. But it must always be borne in mind that this class lacked an effective mechanism of state coercion, and its individual members had to compete with each other for popular support. The People’s acquiescence and support could not be commanded - it had to be earned. A Roman senator was constantly concerned to gain and retain it; senatorial politics cannot be properly understood without taking this fact into consideration (see also Chapters 17,19, and 20). In presenting a realistic picture of republican politics and society, it is necessary to go beyond the traditional dichotomy between ‘‘democracy’’ and ‘‘oligarchy,’’ between the power of the People and the power of the elite. The actual content of Roman public life was shaped by a complicated interplay between these powerful forces.
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