How did the Romans themselves see it? The voices that our sources enable us to hear are mainly - almost exclusively - those belonging to the elite: the class of office holders and office seekers, coming chiefly from senatorial, but sometimes from other upper-class families. Did, then, Roman senators regard their class as (nearly) allpowerful, and the popular aspects of politics as merely a sham? When a senator faced, as he had to do quite often, a popular vote that affected him, his family and friends, or the interests of his class - could he usually await its outcome with equanimity? Did Roman aristocrats behave as if public opinion didn’t matter, or mattered little?
The answer provided by the sources to these questions is, it seems, generally negative. Indeed, as regards elections, even the most aristocratic reading of republican politics can hardly postulate equanimity on the part of the average aristocratic candidate, since one aristocratic candidate’s victory would typically mean another aristocratic candidate’s defeat. This gave the voting populace an important leverage in its relations with the elite. As for legislation, the history of the ‘‘Struggle of the Orders,’’ as told by our sources, abounds with instances of the assemblies legislating against the wishes of the patrician nobility. The Middle Republic appears to have been a period of relative ‘‘harmony’’ in this respect (not a complete one, as we shall see); in the Late Republic, notoriously, the more democratic tribal assembly was quite capable of legislating against the wishes of the majority of the Senate. Moreover, powerful nobles were certainly not immune to the danger of conviction, and sometimes severe punishment, by a popular assembly (tribal or centuriate) - from the early days of the Republic, according to traditional accounts. Plenty of such cases are attested for the ‘‘harmonious’’ Middle Republic.2 It is thus hardly surprising that senators did not, in general, speak - or behave - as if the assemblies did not matter.
This conclusion is of obvious significance. The senatorial elite consisted, by definition, of people who depended on repeated popular election to the magistracies; they knew well how the structures of power - formal and informal - operated in their society. Their assessment of the balance of power in it cannot be lightly dismissed. Of course, it might be colored by their own ideological perceptions. A Roman senator was perhaps even less able than a modern historian to assess the extent ofthe People’s power in the state without being influenced by his views on how much - or how little - power should, ideally, be entrusted to the People. So when we hear (as we shortly will) complaints that the power of the multitude is enormous, scandalous, that the good and the great - the boni - are left without any influence - all this should not of course be taken at face value.
More telling are the assessments manifested, indirectly but powerfully, in the actual political and social behavior of these people. The sources testify to the persistent efforts of Roman senators to gain and maintain popularity, to ingratiate themselves with the plebs, to outstrip their fellow-‘‘oligarchs’’ in this respect. Much of Roman public life, and of senators’ social life, can be said to have consisted of those efforts. A member of the Roman elite was constantly engaged in a fiercely competitive race with other members of his class (see also Chapters 14 and 17). The results of this race were determined to a large degree (though not exclusively) by popular support - principally through elections, but also in various other ways. Sometimes this quest for popularity, for the power based on popular support, and for the prizes that went with this power, led those people to espouse controversial popular causes. This might bring them into bitter conflict with the majority of the Senate.
In the turbulent last century of the Republic this was an important feature of Roman politics. The fundamental logic of the system - that of aristocratic competition - might tempt ambitious aristocrats, sometimes precisely the most self-confident and daringly ambitious, to act against the collective interests of the elite. This must account, to a large extent, for the phenomenon of‘‘Popular’’ (popularis) politicians - although, of course, there is no need to dismiss the possibility that some of them were genuine reformers and ‘‘friends of the People.’’ At any rate, the late-republican populares - starting with Tiberius Gracchus and his agrarian law - were not typically enemies of the Senate deliberately seeking to destroy its authority (nor is there any reason to assume that such an objective would have enjoyed wide popular support). They were politicians pursuing a senatorial career and making use (sometimes only at a certain stage of it) of the popular element in the republican political system - above all, of the People’s powers of legislation. What set them apart was that - in the opinion of the majority of the Senate - they played this card excessively and irresponsibly. Popularis laws might confer material benefits on the plebs - as did the various agrarian laws, or the laws providing the city populace with grain at a lowered price (passed by Gaius Gracchus in 123) and eventually free of charge (passed by Clodius in 58). They might also effect changes (significant, but never truly revolutionary) in the Roman system of government itself - for example, when the senators’ control over standing courts was removed (Gaius Gracchus, in 123) or weakened, or when the election of priests was handed over to the People (Domitius Ahenobarbus, in 104), or when the use by the elite of procedural devices to obstruct undesirable popular legislation was curtailed (Clodius, in 58).3
Alongside this structural incentive for aristocratic radicalism there existed, naturally, strong disincentives. The resentment of one’s peers and seniors was not a thing to be lightly incurred. Most senators used more conventional - less controversial and dangerous - means of competing for the People’s favor. They won wars, celebrated triumphs, distributed booty, displayed the masks of their famous ancestors at funeral processions, constructed public buildings. They cultivated the reputation of generous patrons and benefactors; they provided the plebs with ‘‘bread and circuses,’’ staged games, spectacles, and gladiatorial contests, they pumped enormous sums of money into the electorate in order to improve, directly or indirectly, legally or illegally, their chances of climbing the ladder of magistracies (see also Chapter 16). Thus they manipulated and bribed the populace into accepting and maintaining the power of the elite; or, seen from another angle, they rendered unto the People that which, under the ground rules of republican politics, was due to the People. The elitist and popular aspects of republican politics are, to a large degree, precisely that - two aspects, two different ways to look at the same interaction between the populace and the elite. Of course, there is no true symmetry here: nobody will argue that the power of the elite was merely an illusion, while many scholars do argue that the power of the common people was, if not wholly illusory, then certainly far too limited to be defined as a genuine and significant democratic element in the system. Which brings us back to the question of how these things looked from the viewpoint of the Roman elite.
World History
