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Ancient Rome

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Introduction; Early History; Life in Early Rome; The Roman Republic ; The Legacy of the Roman Republic

Political Values in the Late Republic

Patronage remained an important element in the Roman political system. Social changes diminished the traditional patronage of the rich toward the poor and masters toward their freedmen, but it survived in new forms. Popular politicians turned the entire urban population into their followers by distributing food and providing entertainment. The most important new form of patronage developed between generals and their troops. This mutual interdependence became possibly the central element leading to the fall of the republic.

Roman politicians and their families were also linked by a network of personal, financial, and marriage ties that were described by the general term of amicitia (friendship). Such agreements could be public or private, tactical or strategic, honorable or disgraceful.

The struggle to equal or surpass the achievements of ancestors lay at the heart of Roman ambition in public life. The transformation of Roman society brought competition in other arenas, as families vied to amass wealth and display it with increasingly lavish houses, retinues, and banquets. There seemed to be no limits to personal rivalry among powerful men who expected to have books written about them, and who received homage as gods from Rome’s Greek subjects. Yet a savage competition for state office remained the fundamental element in the search for prestige. Electoral office led to military commands which, in turn, brought wealth and power. Every ambitious Roman spent time on the election campaign trail, and handbooks that provided lessons on election strategies still survive. Rising young men like Julius Caesar often borrowed vast sums to promote their political careers. Their debtors could only expect repayment when the politician reached high office. Frequent attempts at electoral reform show that corruption ran rampant. The prizes were too great and the stakes too high. Roman political life of the 1st century bc was not about losing gracefully; it was about winning, or else.

Cicero

Intense rivalries for power followed Sulla’s resignation, and Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero fought valiantly for 20 years to stabilize the government and preserve the republic. Cicero hoped to bring senators and equites together in an alliance that represented responsible citizens against dangerous fanatics. He had no senatorial ancestors, but his oratorical abilities were quickly recognized. After rhetorical and philosophical studies in Greece, Cicero served as a lawyer and catapulted into prominence with his brilliant prosecution of a corrupt governor of Sicily.

The First Triumvirate

Among the ambitious political hopefuls were two of Sulla’s junior officers, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known as Pompey, and Marcus Licinius Crassus. These two men remained closely linked for the next three decades. Conservative senators despised both of them. Sulla called Pompey “the Great,” and the 25-year-old Pompey proudly added the title to his name. Pompey’s early cruelty had earned him renown as “teen-age slaughterer,” but even before he held high office, he was a skillful military recruiter and commanded armies with a self-confidence that annoyed and frightened the Senate. Crassus had profited enormously from Sulla’s proscriptions by buying the property of those condemned at bargain prices. Many such shady dealings made him the richest man in Rome. If Crassus was unpopular with senators, he found his natural constituency among the equites, for whom he became a spokesman. He and Pompey were jointly elected consul in 70 bc.

In the succeeding years, Pompey embarked on a military expedition to suppress piracy and to launch another war against King Mithridates VI in Asia. Pompey also reorganized Roman provinces and independent kingdoms in the east, and even conquered Jerusalem. When Pompey returned to Rome in triumph, he voluntarily disbanded his troops, much to the relief of all who feared a repeat of Sulla’s massacres. The Senate then made the mistake of refusing to provide Pompey land for his soldiers and drove him into an alliance with Crassus. The Senate had refused Crassus an adjustment of the equites’ contracts for taxes in Asia, since a famine had reduced the tax collections. Pompey and Crassus found another ambitious politician with a grievance against the Senate, Julius Caesar.

Gaius Julius Caesar was one of the most extraordinary of all ancient Romans. Despite his modern image as a general, Caesar was a sophisticated man who was a poet and scholar as well as the only orator of the time who could rival Cicero. His immense charm brought him the loyalty of men and women, and he could successfully project his personality to a political assembly or an army. His sharp intellect was matched by a strong will that never wavered.

In an age characterized by indecisive politicians, Caesar acted, for better or worse, with resoluteness and consistency. Many of Caesar’s contemporaries shared his ambition, but they lacked his extraordinary grasp of the existing political situation. This latter trait stemmed from a deep understanding of himself, his friends, and his opponents, and made him both a great general and a remarkable man. Despite his aristocratic birth, Caesar always supported the populares. He had a great rapport with the people and gained enormous popularity.

In 61 bc Marcus Porcius Cato (called Cato the Younger to distinguish him from his great-grandfather, the Roman statesman and writer Cato the Elder) led the Senate in rebuffing the three most powerful Romans of the day: Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar. Cato was deeply conservative, and his attempts to curtail the influence of these men drove them to make a three-way political compact called the First Triumvirate. Pompey’s needs were clear enough. His future demanded that he reward his troops with land, and his honor required that the Senate ratify the treaties he had made in the east. Cato, who had the knack of doing the principled thing at the wrong time, infuriated the equites by rebuffing Crassus and thus destroying Cicero’s hope for a compact between equites and the Senate. When Julius Caesar returned from his year as praetor in Spain and hoped to run for the consulship, a senatorial vote on his triumph was intentionally delayed to make him choose between holding a great victory procession or proceeding with the election.

Together, Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar took what the Senate refused them. Once Caesar was elected consul by the Assembly, he proposed the legislation necessary to satisfy Crassus and Pompey. When the Senate denied his efforts, he used Pompey’s veterans to intimidate voters and force these measures through the Assembly. Once the three men had satisfied their immediate goals, however, rivalries led to disputes among them. Caesar, who was deep in debt from his political campaigns, became governor of Gaul in 58 bc after his consulship ended. He hoped to recoup his fortunes through conquest and booty. After Crassus was killed by the Parthians in a military disaster in Syria in 53 bc, the Senate increasingly wooed Pompey as preferable to Caesar.

The Rising Power of Julius Caesar

Caesar first displayed his military brilliance during his long term as governor of Gaul. He did not have the strategic genius of Alexander the Great or Hannibal; instead, his success lay in his ability to appraise a situation realistically, to train his troops, and then to make the necessary logistical preparations. Caesar acted quickly to exploit every opportunity, a characteristic of both his political and military life. He made few errors and could swiftly capitalize on the mistakes of others. In Gaul he developed a battle-hardened army and was well prepared for civil war.

Over the course of a decade, Caesar subdued great portions of Gaul, built roads, captured a million prisoners, and took vast amounts of the region’s wealth. Caesar’s enormous success did little to appease his enemies, who waited for him to leave his command in Gaul before launching the customary prosecutions for corruption. Caesar would not relinquish his armies until he was given immunity, but in the Senate Cato opposed any compromise. Pompey was the other possible military leader who could oppose Caesar, so Cato and the Senate relied on him for support and naively expected Italy to rise up against Caesar. Caesar felt that the optimates in the Senate intended to humiliate him and that he had to fight to preserve his honor. In January of 49 bc, Caesar marched his army across the Rubicon River, the boundary between his Gallic province and Italy. With the words “The die is cast,” he began a civil war.

Pompey withdrew his troops to Greece; Caesar pursued and soon defeated them. Pompey fled to Egypt where he was murdered, and Cato went to Africa, where he lost another battle before committing suicide. In death as in life, Cato haunted Caesar. Cato was honored by sentimental supporters of the republic as “the last of the Romans.” With hindsight, he seems more clearly a man who helped to bring about the destruction of the republic he professed to hold so dear.

Caesar followed Pompey to Egypt where he restored Queen Cleopatra—earlier deposed by her brother Ptolemy XIII—to the Egyptian throne. He soon brought her to Rome as his mistress. Caesar routed the rebellious king of Pontus in Asia Minor, a battle in which the historian Suetonius quoted Caesar as having made the famous statement: “I came; I saw; I conquered.” He then defeated Pompey’s remaining forces in Spain and Africa. He returned to Rome, and in 44 bc he assumed the position of dictator for life that a frightened Senate had offered.

Caesar initiated a legislative whirlwind. Through numerous social and economic measures he attempted to control debt, regulate traffic in Rome, and impose import tariffs to help Italian industry. He started an ambitious building program that included the Forum of Julius to accommodate public business. He also took measures to prevent the flooding of the Tiber River. Caesar’s Julian calendar, with a minor modification by Pope Gregory XIII in the 16th century AD, remains the calendar in use today. He established many colonies and was generous in his extension of citizenship to cities in Gaul and Spain. Caesar became one of the first leaders to conceive of Rome as an empire rather than merely as a city-state with overseas possessions, although it was left to his great-nephew and political heir to make Caesar’s broad vision a reality.

The End of the Roman Republic

On March 15, 44 bc, Caesar attended a meeting of the Senate. A group of senators, including his one-time protégé Marcus Junius Brutus, fatally stabbed Caesar 23 times. Brutus and his friends were honorable and patriotic, but they were also foolish, and Rome paid dearly for their folly. The assassins expected that Caesar’s murder would take Roman government out of the hands of the generals and restore senatorial domination. It did not happen. For decades the army had been the true source of Roman political power. Caesar’s troops were not appeased by the Senate’s proclamation that Caesar’s death had restored their freedom. They sought to guarantee the privileges Caesar had given them and to exact revenge for their fallen leader.

More than a decade of murder and civil war followed the assassination. Caesar’s deputy Mark Antony quickly seized command of the troops and control of the war chest to pay them. He forced Brutus, Cassius, and the other assassins to flee to Greece. But another, unexpected heir to Caesar’s wealth and name emerged. In his will Caesar had posthumously adopted his 18-year-old grandnephew, Gaius Octavius, who was then a student in Greece.

The youth, although inexperienced, immediately showed the courage and intelligence that would later bring him mastery of the Roman world as the emperor Augustus. He crossed to southern Italy, took the name of Gaius Julius Caesar (known by historians as Octavian) and began to recruit Caesar’s troops to defend his legacy. After he drove Antony’s forces from Italy, he realized that the senators would discard him as soon as they were free of Antony. In 43 bc, Octavian joined forces with Antony and another of Caesar’s former aides, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, to form the Second Triumvirate and march on Rome. They issued death-lists for their opponents and even the great orator Cicero was struck down while fleeing to a waiting ship.

The Second Triumvirate defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi in northern Greece and then embarked on a program to attend to neglected provinces and resettle veterans. Antony took on the administrative reorganization of the wealthy eastern provinces. There, like earlier Roman governors, he gained personal wealth and the loyalty of both his troops and Rome’s dependent kings. Octavian’s task was far less desirable. He had to confiscate land in Italy to give to his armies for resettlement, a process that caused resentment and even rebellion among the local residents. By shrewd maneuvering, however, Octavian won the loyalty of the troops and built a political base among the leading citizens of the Italian towns.

Jealousy and ambition led to mutual suspicion among the the three men. Antony married Octavian’s sister as one attempt at reconciliation; yet Antony also conducted a love affair with Cleopatra and publicly acknowledged his children by her. Octavian played on Roman prejudice against eastern peoples to attack Antony and provoke civil war. In 31 bc he defeated Antony and Cleopatra in a sea battle near Actium, in Greece (see Battle of Actium). The lovers fled to Alexandria where, powerless to stop the advance of Octavian’s armies into Egypt, they committed suicide the next year.

Octavian became the unchallenged master of Rome and the entire Mediterranean. Yet his victory over Antony could no more resolve the conflicts consuming the Roman Republic than had Caesar’s victory over Pompey. Octavian was only 33 years old at the time, and he was fortunate to have another 44 years of rule to address Rome’s problems. He faced the monumental tasks of demobilizing huge armies and safeguarding their future loyalty, ensuring the safety of Rome’s long-neglected European frontiers, and reducing class hostility and civil unrest in the capital. He also had to make the Italians an integral part of Roman social, cultural, and political life, establish an administrative apparatus to govern the empire, and devise a form of monarchy that would avoid any resemblance to ancient Etruscan tyranny or to eastern kingship.

His first step was to repair the bitter wounds of civil war. On January 13 of 27 bc, Octavian, in his own words, “transferred the Republic from my own power to the authority of the Senate and the Roman people.” This statement was a carefully scripted piece of political theater. The Senate awarded Octavian the name of Augustus and mobs demanded that he retain power. In the legal fiction of restoring the republic, Augustus claimed that he held “no more power than the others who were my colleagues in each magistracy.” In fact, he was establishing the imperial monarchy that has become known as the Roman Empire. This empire endured for five centuries. See also Roman Empire.

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