Rome Read online

  The Gallic invasion set Roman power back a generation. The city’s imperial prestige was shattered, and old enemies sought to reverse past defeats. There were wars against the Etruscan cities of Falerii and Tarquinii, challenging Rome’s seizure of Veientine territory. The Aequi and Volsci raided Latium again. There was conflict, too, with former allies: the Etruscan city of Caere, which had supported Rome against Veii; the Hernici hill-tribesmen, who had belonged to the Latin League; and some of the Latin cities themselves – Tusculum, Praeneste, Velitrae and Tibur. Gallic war-bands and Greek pirates were also active. Yet, though on the defensive on several fronts, Rome survived. Moreover, despite the demands of militia service, she mobilized her citizens to build a new wall around the city (known as the ‘Servian Wall’). Ten metres high and four wide, built of masonry hauled from a Veientine quarry, the wall enclosed the whole of the then-existing city, a total length of more than 10 km. The work of quarrying, transporting and laying the stone represented at least five million man-hours of labour. In the aftermath of the Gallic invasion, the Roman state revealed extraordinary resilience. The burden, however, was heavy and unevenly distributed, and the effect of this was to reignite the Struggle of the Orders.

  The plebeians were the soldiers, navvies and casualties of the beleaguered city’s ordeal. Heavy losses at the Allia had carried off the young workers on many peasant farms. Land had been laid waste and property plundered by the invaders. The ransom to buy them off had been high. Since then, unceasing war had meant frequent call-ups and high taxes, while the building of the wall had consumed the labour of thousands. These burdens, bad enough in themselves, had accelerated the grinding tendency for small proprietors to get into debt and lose their land and freedom. To this ancient feud between rich and poor was now added, especially since the fall of Veii, a new grievance over recently conquered ‘public land’ (ager publicus). Should this remain under state control – under the control, that is, of patrician magistrates inclined to offer it in large blocks to their friends? Or should it be divided into small plots and distributed to poorer citizens? Was conquered land, that is, to be farmed by patricians or plebeians?

  The issues were bitterly contested. When the maverick patrician and war-hero Marcus Manlius Capitolinus championed the popular cause, paying off the private debts of many plebeians from his own resources and promising a general redress of grievances, he was met by a conservative counter-attack led by another war-hero, Marcus Furius Camillus, the man now acclaimed as ‘the second founder of Rome’ for his role in the city’s recovery after the Gallic invasion. Capitolinus was prosecuted for sedition and executed in c. 384 BC. This provided a breathing-space but solved nothing. Plebeian agitation was renewed the following decade. Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus were repeatedly reelected tribunes of the plebs on a radical platform of debt, land and constitutional reform. For ten years, the patricians blocked their initiatives, and the tribunes in turn used their veto power to paralyse government. In c. 367 BC, the opposition finally crumbled and three major reforms were enacted: debt payments were reduced by deducting past payments from the capital owed and setting a three-year maximum period for the repayment of the remainder; ager publicus was henceforward to be sold off in private plots, with holdings limited to 500 iugera (300 acres); and the right of plebeians to stand for the consulship was legally recognized.

  The Licinio-Sextian laws amounted to a comprehensive defeat for the patrician aristocracy – symbolized by the election of one of the two plebeian leaders, Lucius Sextius Lateranus, to the consulship the following year. The gains, moreover, were permanent, and additional laws strengthened the position of the plebeians further in succeeding decades. Interest on loans was first restricted; then debt-bondage was abolished outright. Plebeians were first guaranteed one of the annual consulships; then they gained access to most of the high priesthoods. Other laws increased the power of the popular assemblies, and one, the most important, gave edicts (plebiscita) of the Assembly of the Plebs equal status with laws (leges) proposed by the Senate and passed by the Assembly of the Centuries. This last measure, in 287 BC, was effectively the closing act of the Struggle of the Orders, which had begun over two centuries before.

  Within two generations of the Licinio-Sextian laws, in fact, the plebeian movement had disappeared, its aristocratic leaders absorbed into an expanded governing class, its institutions, above all the plebeian tribunes and the Assembly of the Plebs, incorporated into the workings of the Roman state. The old patrician aristocracy was transformed into a new nobility (nobilitas) by the admission to its ranks of rich plebeian families. The reactionaries who had dominated the consulship in the first half of the 4th century BC lost control to a new party of moderates – pro-reform patricians and plebeian newcomers. No longer was high office monopolized by an exclusive hereditary caste; an aristocracy based on wealth and public service, open to recruitment from below, was now in power.

  Was the Struggle of the Orders ended, then, by the simple device of incorporating the popular leaders? Some plebeian radicals fearing this had certainly opposed their leaders’ aspiration to the consulship during the Licinio-Sextian agitation. But had the grievances of poor plebeians remained acute, they would eventually have found new leaders – as they were to do in the Late Republic. Yet no great popular movements disturbed the internal order of the Middle Republic. From the late 4th to the mid 2nd century BC, the Roman state was remarkably stable. The Greek historian Polybius, writing towards the end of that period, was fascinated by the Roman constitution, seeing in it a large part of the explanation for Rome’s victories over Greece. ‘The elements by which the Roman constitution was controlled were three in number … and all the aspects of the administration were, taken separately, so fairly and so suitably ordered and regulated through the agency of these three elements that it was impossible even for the Romans themselves to declare with certainty whether the whole system was an aristocracy, a democracy or a monarchy. In fact, it was quite natural that this should be so, for if we were to fix our eyes only upon the power of the consuls, the constitution might give the impression of being completely monarchical and royal; if we confined our attention to the Senate, it would seem to be aristocratic; and if we looked at the power of the people, it would appear to be a clear example of democracy … the result is a union which is strong enough to withstand all emergencies, so that it is impossible to find a better form of constitution than this … Whenever one of the three elements swells in importance, becomes over-ambitious and tends to encroach upon the others, it becomes apparent … that none of the three is completely independent, but that the designs of any one can be blocked or impeded by the rest, with the result that none will unduly dominate the others or treat them with contempt. Thus the whole situation remains in equilibrium, since any aggressive impulse is checked, and each estate is apprehensive from the outset of censure from the others.’(6)

  Polybius was an intelligent observer. To a degree he was right. Sovereignty rested with the People, not the Senate, so that popular consent was the precondition for all major acts of state – the ‘democratic element’. The Assembly of the Centuries elected senior magistrates and voted on constitutional laws and declarations of war. The edicts of the Assembly of the Plebs had been given the force of law. And a new Assembly of the Tribes – originally set up as a conservative alternative to the Assembly of the Plebs – became virtually indistinguishable from the latter. (The ancient Assembly of the Cantons had by this time become little more than a decorative relic.) But the popular assemblies were controlled from above: the People could meet only on the summons of a higher magistrate, vote only on proposals submitted to them, and elect candidates for office only from an approved list. Laws could not be amended, merely accepted or rejected, and debate was limited to speakers chosen by the presiding magistrate. The block-voting system weighted things in favour of the better-off. Meetings were often packed by the clients of great men.

  Meantime, as the state expand
ed, the number of elected magistrates gradually increased: two censors every five years and two consuls every year had become standard, but more praetors (judges and administrators), military tribunes (junior generals), plebeian tribunes (popular representatives), aediles (responsible for public works and municipal regulations) and quaestors (finance officers) were created as needed. The senior magistrates – censors, consuls and praetors – had imperium, a regal power of command during their term of office; they were accompanied on public occasions by lictors (lictores), each bearing a bundle of rods and an axe, symbolizing the senior magistrate’s judicial authority. This was the ‘monarchical element’ in Polybius’ scheme. The Senate, of course, represented the ‘aristocratic’. It was now an assembly of rich office-holders, men of property and distinguished family who had held a senior magistracy, some of patrician descent, many now plebeian. An obsession with rank and etiquette dominated proceedings. The leader of the house (princeps senatus) always spoke first, followed by others in order of their former office, and, when all were done, the ‘sense of the house’ (sententia) would be clear. The senators would then vote a ‘decree of the Senate’ (senatus consultum), technically only advice, but advice which, in view of the supreme auctoritas of the assembly, was all but binding on magistrates.

  The mixed constitution that Polybius describes was indeed crucial to Rome’s internal stability and her capacity to wage imperialist war. But he conflates form and content, attributing prime significance to legal niceties, and misses the most essential characteristic of the Roman constitution: its stability rested on the fact that, because it accurately reflected the balance of class forces in Roman society, it enjoyed a wide measure of popular support. Rome remained, at root, an oligarchy. It was governed by an aristocracy of top landowners and office-holders, a nobilitas formed of a few hundred top patrician and plebeian families. This ruling class was now relatively open to recruitment from below, and competition for state office, and the honour (dignitas) and reputation (gloria) associated with it, was intense. Only a minority of consuls in the 500 years between 300 BC and AD 200 had consular fathers: birth no longer guaranteed success; one had to fight for one’s place among Rome’s grandees. Achievement was proudly displayed, and men honoured by Rome reciprocated with rich benefactions. ‘Appius Claudius Caecus,’ announces the epitaph of one of the most famous figures of the late 4th century BC, ‘son of Gaius, censor, consul twice, dictator, interrex three times, praetor twice, curule aedile twice, quaestor, tribune of the soldiers three times. He captured several towns from the Samnites, and routed an army of Sabines and Etruscans. He prevented peace being made with King Pyrrhus. In his censorship, he paved the Appian Way and built an aqueduct for Rome. He built the Temple of Bellona.’(7) Offices held, victories won, monuments built: these are paraded as tokens of the great man’s prestige. Appius Claudius Caecus exudes the self-confidence of the Middle Republican ruling class.

  The power of men like Caecus was not so much constrained by ‘democracy’ – as the Polybian model would have it – as shaped by a need to harness popular energies in the service of both rival aristocratic houses and the state as a whole. The People could not be taken for granted: they had to be wooed and placated. Stability was the result of class compromise in the Struggle of the Orders and the consequent emergence of a united citizen-body with a common interest in conquest. Most vital of all was the economic security of the Roman peasantry who formed the legions. Only in part was this due to new laws on interest, debt-bondage and land distribution. Equally important was Rome’s explosive imperialism after the middle of the 4th century BC. The social contradictions that had produced the Struggle of the Orders in the Early Republic were resolved in the foreign conquests of the Middle Republic. For the nobles, there was wealth, power and glory in military achievement. For the commons, there was pay for military service, a share in the spoils, and new land for those who wanted it. For the state, there were inflows of booty, indemnities and tribute with which to buy off social discontent, monumentalize the city, and build yet bigger armies. To this – resulting in the transformation of a Latin city-state into a Mediterranean empire – we now turn.

  Chapter 2

  The rise of a superpower, 343–146 BC

  The conquest of Central Italy: the Latin and Samnite Wars, 343–290 BC

  The Celts of Central Europe were not the only people on the move in the 4th century BC. It was an age of migrations. The causes are not fully understood, but we can propose a general hypothesis. New states were being built as military competition forged larger political units. War leaders and their retinues took control of society, surpluses were invested in arms and armour, and men were trained and organized for war. The world became less safe, and only powerful polities were able to retain their independence and freedom of action, subsuming smaller cities and tribes under their hegemony. Probably, also, population was growing and pressure on resources – farmland, pasture, water, woods – was increasing. Perhaps, too, there was ecological crisis. A localized failure of the human ecosystem, especially in a marginal zone – such as a drought that drained the springs and parched the grasslands on which highland people depended – could, in a world densely peopled and heavily armed, set off a chain reaction of folk movements and wars. Some such event may have started the Oscan-speaking Samnite peoples of the southern Apennines in motion.

  Once thought of as impoverished highland pastoralists with a taste for plunder, the Samnites are now known to have had a mixed farming economy supporting numerous rural settlements spread across the upland plateaus and valleys of their homeland. They cultivated cereals, vines and olives, as well as raising stock, and while some lived in isolated farmsteads, others lived in villages. Excavations at the Samnite village of Saepinum have revealed a cluster of buildings around a crossroads, where the main road was a droveway linking summer and winter pastures. Remote hilltops were crowned with circuits of rough polygonal walling to provide refuges in time of danger; and sometimes the more accessible of these, like that at Monte Saraceno, were also, like the more low-lying villages, permanently settled. In other places, there were rural sanctuaries, where, one imagines, the people of a district would periodically come together to settle community affairs, make sacrifice together, and thus refresh a common identity and solidarity; the excavated site at Pietrabbondante is an example, though the rather grand buildings revealed here are of later, 2nd century BC date.

  The Samnites stuck together. One or more villages (vici) formed a canton (pagus), governed by an elected magistrate (meddix), and a group of such cantons constituted a tribe (populus), also with its ruling magistrate (meddix tuticus). There were four of these tribes, each with a distinct territory and, possibly, a special tribal sanctuary (Pietrabbondante may have been that for the Pentri Samnites). These four tribes formed the Samnite Confederation, which, in war, had a reputation for unity, resilience and martial prowess. These Samnites, moreover, were close cousins of other Oscan-speaking peoples in southern Italy, with whom they shared beliefs, customs and institutions. The Oscans had spread throughout the region during the 5th century, so that a single Oscan koine (cultural identity) now united the peoples of Samnium, Campania, Lucania, northern Apulia, and Bruttium.

  Among other things they shared the myth of the ver sacrum or ‘sacred springtime’. An origin myth which explained the existence of territorially based tribes, the sacred springtime was a response to a crisis – such as famine – that threatened the community’s survival and compelled part of it to migrate. The year’s harvest and all the beasts were sacrificed to Mars (widely venerated as a god of fertility in the Apennines). The children of the tribe were designated ‘sacrificial’, but instead of being killed, upon reaching maturity, they were sent into the wilderness, following the lead of a wild animal, until they found a place to settle and form a new tribe at the place where the animal came to rest.

  The 5th century BC had been a time of sacred springtimes. The Oscan peoples of the hills had descended on th
e Greek and Etruscan cities of the coast, and one after another these cities had succumbed to ‘barbarian’ rule, until, by about 400 BC, only two on the entire west coast remained under Greek authority. The invaders, however, were not destroyers. Though they formed a new elite, they quickly adopted the refinements of urban life. Monumental architecture, great art, advanced technology, the luxury trades, the literature and learning of the East, all these continued to flourish under the Samnites at Capua or the Lucanians at Paestum. More than that: threatened by a new outpouring from the mountains in the mid 4rd century BC, the by-then very mixed populations of Greeks, Etruscans and Oscans in the coastal cities of the south looked around for external support. In 343 BC, the Romans received an embassy from the city of Capua in Campania offering an alliance in return for support against Samnite intruders. The Romans had previously been on friendly terms with the Samnites. But, as smaller states nearer home were absorbed, the dynamic of military competition in peninsular Italy was propelling these two power blocks, Rome and the Latin League on one side, the Samnite Confederation on the other, into collision. So Rome seized the chance for an alliance with one of the richest cities in the south – and launched herself into the First Samnite War (343–341 BC).

  The result was anticlimax. Though a combined Roman-Capuan force drove the Samnites out of Campania, the Roman soldiers, unused to long service far from home, mutinied and demanded repatriation. Theirs was, in fact, part of a wider discontent, for the First Samnite War had brought the entire Latin League to the brink of revolt. The driving grievance was simple: while the Latins, as subordinate allies within the League, were obliged to fight Rome’s wars – an increasing burden – it was the citizens of the dominant city who got most of the spoils. The Latins therefore issued an ultimatum demanding the restoration of equal shares (as required by the Treaty of Cassius, which had ended the First Latin War in c. 493 BC).