Culture Wednesday: The Early Republicans

For those of you rooting around teh Interweb for American political posts, welcome! This blog is about the ancient world, but hey, stick around and you might learn something new.

During the early Republic, Rome had certain ideals which its citizens, for the most part, tried to uphold. This young, upstart city-state was based, like most ancient economies, on agriculture first and foremost. The ideal Roman, therefore, was a farmer, regardless of social status, personal wealth, or fame. Land ownership was key to obtaining respect, political office, and financial independence, and the ironically egalitarian rhetoric of the Patricians often praised the Roman farmer-soldiers for their simplicity of lifestyle, expertise with weaponry, and willingness to fight for the city and put her needs above their own.

Not unlike Sparta before it, or even America much later, the early Roman military system was militia-style conscripting with annual training during the slow winter season. If you owned enough property to qualify for the fifth census class, you were not only eligible for service, you were required to report for duty. Those in the lower classes were expected to obtain work as farm-hands, house servants, or really any menial work.

Scipio Africanus, who I so recently covered, served as a great bad example by the conservative Senators of his day for his tendency to wear his hair long, spend huge amounts of money on lavish parties, and generally live a life of excess matched today only by rock stars, royalty and professional athletes. Despite his unique lifestyle, he still restored Rome's honor by defeating Carthage, though the Senate was largely displeased at his decision to parlay with the residents rather than simply burning their city to ash and putting its citizens to the sword.

The Senate's desire to see Carthage destroyed seems an unspeakable war crime to us today, and became a famous warning when it did happen after the Third Punic War. Their other imperial-style cruelties would certainly horrify us today, as well as their military discipline, which included killing soldiers who drew a short straw. However, what set the Romans apart from the Greeks and other peoples was their practicality. This may have come about because of their farming ethic, but regardless of its source, it was their most powerful weapon.

While other 'great' civilizations were concerned with the true meaning of love or which day is proper for worshiping Athena, the Romans concerned themselves with supply lines, siege engineering, battle tactics, and in general, how to ensure victory. They learned well the lesson of the Second Samnite War: either destroy your enemy or forgive them, but never humiliate if you intend to let them live. Their world and culture, heinous though some of its elements may seem to our modern sensibilities, was born out of necessity and practical reality.

The Republic had its triumphs along with its faults, and lauded the heroes of old who were granted temporary Dictatorship and did what was necessary to resolve whatever crisis led to their election only to relinquish power when their term was up. Cincinnatus was a one such hero, who went right back to farming after he had served Rome and defeated its enemies.

What happened to the noble Roman, the farmer-soldier who was as skillful with a sword as he was with a plowshare? He was out-sourced. In short, the Patricians and wealthy Plebs utilized slavery so extensively that it became impossible for the working class to find work. The excesses promoted by Scipio Africanus became commonplace, and politics became overly corrupt. The Senate, having grown powerful since the Punic Wars, desperately tried to restore the old ethics of a hard day's work and a simple lifestyle, but even they had grown used to living in great estates with their every need attended to by slaves from every corner of their colonies. Their conservatism was short-sighted at best; treating symptoms instead of stepping back to understand the problem. They sacrificed their hard-nosed practicality for selfish, soft living, and many of them paid the price in their own blood.

The biggest danger to representative government, historically, is itself. The poor Plebs became frustrated at their lack of power and representation and turned to liberators like Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Marius, and Julius Caesar. The cult of personality toppled the old rhetoric of freedom and shared power, replacing it with hero worship, mob rule, and might-makes-right style politics. The old Romans eventually faded into the annals of history along with Romulus and the kings of old, their lifestyles gradually viewed as quaint instead of inspiring.

Pax vobiscum

Julius Caesar Part 1: The Early Years

 The Roman Republic had several huge problems by the time young Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 100 BCE. The Patrician Senate was in the midst of a conservative freak-out, fearing the now armed mob that Caesar's own uncle, Gaius Marius, had created by recruiting soldiers from the poor. Though they had fought hard against any reform that would give the Plebeians equal power, they couldn't stop the shift that was occurring right before their very eyes. And when Caesar was about 12, a wholly unprecedented and fearful thing took place: Lucius Cornelius Sulla, incensed at the Senate for trying to grant his command against Mithridates VI to Gaius Marius, used his army to lay siege to Rome and enter the city by force. Caesar later referred to this event when he was looking across the Rubicon years later, pondering the same course of action.

Caesar's early life was probably fairly easy, coming from a wealthy Patrician family and inheriting a massive estate at the age of 16 when his father died suddenly while tying his shoes. However, the social and political unrest in Rome which so frequently erupted in violence soon engulfed even this promising young man, who married another wealthy Patrician and had been named the High Priest of Jupiter. Sulla returned from Asia Minor only to fight another war at home; a purge of the Marian supporters who still opposed him. Because young Gaius was Marius' nephew, he was stripped of his inheritance and his wife's dowry, as well as his office of priest. If not for the pleading of Caesar's relatives who were loyal to Sulla, he may have even been executed. Though he was born a wealthy Patrician, he was now a man with no titles or inheritance to rely upon. So, he did what many young men without title or prospects continue to do today: he joined the army.

He won the Civic Crown, the second highest honor available to fighting men, during a campaign in Asia Minor, and after Sulla finally stepped down as Dictator and restored Consular rule, Caesar felt it safe to return to Rome, though he was little better off financially than when he had left. He entered the legal profession, having a natural gift for public speaking, and made quite a name for himself as a skillful prosecutor. He took on several high-profile cases involving corruption by retired Governors and other officials, gaining convictions most of the time and gaining the adoration of the masses, who were growing ever-weary of the corruption of their leaders.

While sailing to Rhodes to study under a skilled rhetorician, he was kidnapped by Cilician pirates and held for ransom. He continued to act the part of the superior Roman in captivity and even swore to his jailers that he would have them all crucified for this act. They believed he was joking, but after the ransom was paid, he raised a fleet of warships and hunted them down. While they were being held prisoner in Pergamum, the local Governor thought that it made more financial sense to sell them as slaves, but Caesar caught up with the traders who purchased them and saw to it that every last one of them hung on a cross. He had their throats slit beforehand, which is a kindness compared to the slow death of crucifixion. Nonetheless, the message was sent that Gaius Julius Caesar intended to crush his enemies completely, no matter who they were or what efforts were required.

When he returned to Rome he decided to take up politics and was elected Military Tribune, and over the next ten years he continued to climb the political ladder, gaining higher and higher appointments in the Senate. He made many of them nervous with his constant outward support for the memory of his uncle, the late Gaius Marius. In 63 BCE, he convinced a Tribune to prosecute an optimate Senator for a political murder which took place 37 years before. The case ended in a verdict of guilty, the crime itself being treason, and the Senator desperately appealed. During the opening of the appeal, one of the Praetors adjourned the trial temporarily, and Caesar told the Tribune to let the matter drop. His point had been made: do not mess with me.

Unfortunately, the Optimates continued to harry his every step, bringing in accusations of bribery and involvement in coup attempts. The Optimates and the Populares were kind of like political parties, but much less unified than those of today. Basically, the Optimates favored laws and policies that benefited and empowered the Patrician class and the Populares gained power and popularity by supporting policies of reform that could benefit the Plebeians. Remember that Patrician doesn't necessarily mean rich any more than Plebeian means poor. This was a kind of Republican monarchy, with the Patricians claiming descent to the original Senate as their right to rule. It might seem strange that Julius Caesar, a Patrician of the very aristocratic family Julii, would court Plebeians for power, but he was not wealthy like most Patricians. In fact, when he was appointed the Governor of Hispania Ulterior, the southern part of modern Spain, he was up to his eyeballs in debt and wasn't allowed to leave until he had satisfied it. Along came Marcus Lucinius Crassus, a copiously wealthy Senator who wanted Caesar's support against Pompey, the young upstart army commander who refused to play by traditional rules. Caesar agreed, and Crassus paid some of his debts and guaranteed the others, allowing Caesar to enter his new commission.

He secured his province well, defeating many local Celtic tribes in battle, and even earning the right to a Triumph parade back in Rome. However, he had his eye set on Consulship as well, and could only muster enough political clout to enact one of the two. Keeping his eye on the prize, he chose Consulship, and earned it through an election that was dirty on all sides.

We'll talk more about old Gaius Julius next week, but for now let's critically analyze this guy. I have to look upon Caesar with some admiration purely for his ability to rise to the top, regardless of negative personal situations. After all, he was stripped of land and titles by Sulla, and had to re-make himself if he hoped to even survive, much less gain any power. If not for his public speaking skills, we probably wouldn't even know his name. But he took what skills he had and put them to good use, using his status as a Patrician to borrow money and pull strings when he needed to.

That being said, I don't think he is quite the 'pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps' example that some historians have made him out to be. In truth, if he were a Plebeian Tribune and all of this happened to him, he would surely have been killed, not having the family connections to keep him alive. He may have been able to borrow money, but he certainly would have fallen into indentured servitude without a wealthy guarantor. He would probably have been killed or sold as a slave by the pirates who kidnapped him, since he wouldn't be worth a ransom.

Though he was an impressive individual who made the best of his situation, we should not ignore the impact of his title as a Patrician, nor the involvement and help of his family. The fact was, though you didn't need to be a Patrician to be wealthy, you did need to be one in order to be powerful, and all the reforms that the Plebeians had been fighting for politically were still coming to naught because the aristocrats in Rome did not want to really share power. Their stubbornness was their ultimate undoing, as was their use of violence to make political gains. Caesar can hardly be blamed for some of the more thuggish tactics he took later on, since he was not the first Senator to resort to violence when Democracy failed him.

Ultimately, I see Caesar as both an impressive individual and a product of his time. Next Friday, we will look closer at some of his later career and you can decide if he is truly the hero who saved Rome from corruption or the villain who killed the Republic when it no longer suited his political ends.

Pax vobiscum

Culture Wednesday: Democracy, Roman Style

When Romulus founded Rome, so the story goes, he appointed one hundred upstanding and powerful men to be Senators of the new city. These hundred men elected kings, raised armies, and administered the day to day needs of Roman citizens. Later this number swelled to 300 with the incorporation of the Sabine and Etruscan people, but those original hundred Latins would be important for hundreds of years to come, for they would be known as the Patricians.

The Patricians were the old money of Rome, and everyone who was not a Patrician was a Plebeian. Over time, these distinctions only made a difference for the sake of elected office and plain old discrimination, since several of the Plebes did pretty well for themselves. I find it helpful to think of them in terms of Jew-Gentile, that is, if you are not a Jew, you are a Gentile. Of course, being a Gentile means you could be black, white, asian, hispanic, or really any race on earth that isn't Jewish, making the Gentiles a diverse group by that sort of division. In the same way, while the Patricians were a specific group of old-money aristocrats, a Plebeian might be poor, rich, or even middle class. At the founding of the Republic, they just couldn't be a Senator.

After Rome exiled their king, allegedly in 509 BCE (the Roman historians probably chose this date just to predate Athens' democracy by a year), the Senate took command over the anarchy that ensues when a leader is deposed. They decided that executive authority should never rest with just one man, and thus the position of Consul was created. Every year, the Senate would elect two Consuls for a one-year term, the hope being that if one of them talked to his horse, the other could veto his decision to order the execution of all Rabbits in Italy (a hypothetical scenario, since our records from the early Republic are less than trustworthy). The Romans feared what absolute power could do in the hands of any given man, so they set up a complicated system of checks and balances as seen below:

Sorry if I just gave you flashbacks of U.S. History, but the founding fathers of the United States had a similar fear, which led to a similar system. However, the system displayed in the diagram is the final product; the original was basically Senatorial rule with no recourse for the Plebeians if those ruling Patricians did something they didn't like. Also, the Tribal Assembly wasn't for family tribes, but for regions, similar to our own congressional districts today, except you were part of the tribe that your father belonged to regardless of your current home. So I, for example, would still be included in the Tulare County Tribe even though I now reside in Fresno County because that's where my family comes from.

The tricky thing about Democracy is reassuring the citizens that each of them gets a fair shake. It's a little difficult to ensure the lower class that they're being represented fairly when one requirement for being a Senator was being a Patrician. And not just a Patrician, but a rich one, owning at least 100,000 denarii worth of land which would be several thousand acres (we think). Now, on the one hand, I can see the benefit of Senators who supposedly couldn't be bribed because they're already rich. But I can also see how the Plebeians may have begun looking fondly toward their pitchforks whenever the Senate did something they didn't like.

The creation of the Plebeian Council is, to my mind, one of the most brilliant compromises in the political history of the world. While it still did not give a voice to women or slaves, it did give an unprecedented amount of power to those at the lowest station of Roman life. The Plebeians were allowed to elect a Tribune who had veto power over the wealthy Patrician Senate, thus giving the common freemen of Rome a check against their wealthy and aristocratic overlords.

As the Roman Constitution continued to evolve, Plebeians were eventually given the right to become Senators, if they were elected as a magistrate. But who elected the magistrate? You guessed it: the Senate. In 342 BCE, however, a law passed that required at least one of the Consuls to be a Plebeian.

While this all sounds very progressive and looks wonderful on paper, there was still a huge divide between rich and poor. Most of the Plebeians who were elected to the Senate were very well-off, and the old economic separation between Patrician and Plebeian were already blurring, favoring instead a simple matter of have and have-nots. The one thing the rich could still claim was the protection of Rome, as the army was still staffed by those of the 5^th Census class and above, but even that would prove insufficient in later years and the army would eventually be opened to all citizens under the Marian Reforms.

Those reforms would forever change the face of Rome, both militarily and politically. The Senate and other Legislative Councils faced an identity crisis which they failed to deal with, leaving a power vacuum that the Emperors easily filled. The Plebian Tribune who still held veto power over the Senate became little more than just another wealthy and complicit politician whom the Senate could bribe if they needed to. What began as an ancestral caste system changed into an economic class system over time, and failure to recognize the role of economics in politics ultimately brought an end to the Roman Republic.