Chapter 3 - Consensus and Competition

The history of the Roman Republic is in many respects that of an immensely successful ruling class which managed to share power for hundreds of years, before eventually descending into decades of internecine warfare that led to the rise of monarchy. Historians used to wonder at the republic’s spectacular collapse, but – perhaps more pertinently – we might ask how the system lasted so long, given its many contradictions and the tensions intrinsic to all oligarchic systems. The fact that aristocracies are based on competitive power sharing creates an essential conflict between the interests of the collective and the individual. As a result, oligarchic republics tend to be fundamentally unstable. They rely for their survival on the elite’s ability to maintain internal cohesion while balancing competing claims to power and influence. Some of the most successful oligarchies in history devised sophisticated and highly complex safeguards against undue concentrations of influence. In Venice, for example, public office was restricted to a closed elite, terms of office were kept short and individual families were prevented from holding several offices simultaneously or sitting on multiple state committees.¹ The allocation of posts was, as we saw in the previous chapter, highly randomised to avoid campaigning and political interference. The greatest restrictions were naturally placed on the Doge, who despite being the formal head of state, had limited ability to dictate policy or extend influence and patronage.

In Rome, such mechanisms of aristocratic ‘self-preservation’ were for a number of reasons not politically feasible. Chief among them was the historical division of powers within the republic, which acknowledged the populus as the basis for public legitimacy, and invested the magistrates with extensive executive powers, while at the same time reducing the formal authority of the senate, the collective voice of the elite. Furthermore, the elite was far more fluid in its composition than was the case in Venice, defined as it was through office-holding rather than birth, which put even greater strain on the system by increasing competition for the honores that held the key to rank and status. The structural challenges to the long-term survival of the Roman aristocratic system were, in other words, even more daunting than in later oligarchies, which were able to formalise the ascendancy of the elite – and enforce internal discipline and cohesion – to a much greater extent than was possible in Rome.

The final section of this study will look in some detail at the factors that helped keep the system together in the face of these challenges as well as those that eventually tore it apart. But before entering into this discussion we may briefly consider the question of periodisation and chronology, which have a direct impact on the way these issues are conceptualised.

Narrative and Periodisation: the Making of the ‘Classic’ Republic

The end of aristocratic government has typically been framed in a tripartite narrative that divides the republic into an early formative period, followed by a ‘classic’ age that marked its zenith. Then, as if mirroring a biological cycle, gradual decline set in, leading almost inexorably to its final collapse. This ‘rise and fall’ narrative has chronologically been pegged to a set of canonical dates and events. The resolution of the ‘Struggle of the Orders’ in 367 and the formation of the new nobilitas it signified have marked the transition from the early to the ‘classic’ middle republic, which lasted until 133 when the tribunate of Ti. Gracchus brought it to an abrupt end and ushered in a new age of political instability. The ‘late’ republic in turn lasted around three generations, although the precise cut-off date is debatable – 49, 43, 31?²

No understanding of the past is possible without identifying distinctive eras and tracing and explaining the transition from one to the other. But while periodisation is an essential part of writing history, it is also intrinsically problematic. Not only is there a risk of over-simplification, since all aspects of society obviously do not change simultaneously, but the labels applied may themselves carry unhelpful connotations. Here the ‘organicist’ model poses particular problems in terms of ideological ‘baggage’; for while ‘early’ may imply a somewhat unformed and embryonic stage, it is nevertheless associated with promise and youthful energy. By contrast, ‘late’ signals ageing, a certain over-ripeness, and in some cases even decadence. Between these two stands the ‘classic’ age that represents the pinnacle of maturity and experience and in a sense embodies the ‘ideal type’ of a given civilisation.³ These categories have important implications. In Rome it follows that the middle Republic over an extended period presented an almost perfect example of a well-functioning aristocracy sustained by internal discipline and effective power-sharing. Furthermore, the existence of this ‘classic’ age in turn throws into sharper relief the subsequent breakdown, since it implies that an otherwise stable system suddenly stopped working. However, we may wonder how helpful the distinction between ‘middle’ and ‘late’ republic is in terms of understanding the driving forces behind the political changes we can observe in this period.

The ‘late’ republic arguably gains its meaning from the notion of a preceding ‘classic’ period, which in turn implies that the political system in principle was sound and viable. It follows from this premise that the causes of the eventual ‘decline and fall’ will have to be sought in factors external to the political system, be they moral, socio-economic, military or geo-political. The question is, however, whether the ‘classic’ republic ever existed in the form imagined by later writers. Scholars have begun to question the ancient vision of a smooth-running aristocratic republic, suspecting it may be an idealised gloss on what was probably a far more messy reality; for what is striking about the ‘classic’ Roman republic is the extent to which it – like many other periods invested with similar nostalgic qualities – is the product of hindsight. Indeed, one of the main differences between the ‘middle’ and ‘late’ periods is the almost complete absence of contemporary records for the political life of the former.

Therefore, when studying the ‘middle’ and ‘late’ republics we are in some respects not comparing like with like. While the former is based almost entirely on later sources, for parts of the latter we have – through the works of Cicero – extensive first-hand, contemporary evidence that gives us direct insight into everyday politics and current affairs. As a result, the ‘middle’ republic – as well as its dramatic conclusion in 133 – comes to us through a process of retrospective ‘post-rationalisation’ carried out by observers who knew all too well what was to follow. By contrast, the eye-witness perspective of Cicero presents a vivid, open-ended and hence far more chaotic vision of politics during his lifetime. The vagaries of textual transmission are therefore a key factor in the creation of the ‘classic’ republic. Another important factor is the particular Roman construction of past and present and their sense of never-ending decline.

Before the ‘Fall’

The longing for an idealised past was deeply ingrained in the mentality of the Romans, for whom the present invariably appeared inferior to the age of the ancestors. The example of the maiores offered an undisputed guide to conduct in the public and private sphere, as illustrated by canonical stories of their deeds and sayings.⁴ The reverence for the maiores created an enduring sense of decline and loss which can be traced even at the height of expansion and military success, well before the conventional turning point of 133, which suggests it existed independently of actual social and political changes.⁵ Thus the Elder Cato, Polybius, and later Poseidonius and Calpurnius Piso all operated with this meta-narrative, each setting the starting-point for the decline at different moments according to their particular literary and ideological aims.⁶ By far the most important contribution, of course, remains that of Livy, who is to a great extent responsible for the tripartite narrative framework we operate within today. However, what is perhaps most striking about Livy’s surviving books on this period is how little attention is paid to domestic politics. The main emphasis consistently lies on military affairs and foreign engagements, while events at home, generally, are treated cursorily.

At regular intervals, however, certain domestic episodes are given prominence, but they appear to be carefully selected to fit a particular narrative pattern. Among the longest and most detailed we find the dispute over the repeal of the lex Oppia in 195 (34.1–8), the trials of the Scipiones in 187 (38.54–60), the suppression of the Bacchanalia in 186 (39.8–19), Cato’s censorship in 184 (39.40–4), the story of Ligustinus set in 171 (42.32.6–35.2) and finally the dispute over Paullus’ triumph in 167 (45.35–9). Some of these events seem to have been singled out less for their historical importance than for the particular exemplary qualities they carried. As such they may be interpreted as part of a ‘counter-narrative’ of incipient moral decline running underneath the main story of external success and expansion. They anticipated what was to come in the second part of Livy’s work, which was entirely dedicated to the last century of the republic, and should at least in part be understood as an attempt to trace the roots of the contemporary problems the republic faced when Livy embarked on his monumental undertaking. These episodes are singled out as the early symptoms of a slow, almost imperceptible, process of moral decline caused by expansion, wealth, and foreign influence. In this way, Livy ingeniously managed to weave an alternative ‘plot line’ into the story of the ‘middle’ republic, one of old fashioned virtue gradually being eroded while Rome triumphed abroad.

Livy does not ignore domestic politics completely. But in order to present a picture of a political system that was essentially stable and undermined only by external influences which threatened ancestral mores, events that did not fit the concept were consistently downplayed. Sometimes he leaves out episodes mentioned in other sources, such as Culleo’s interference in the registration of citizens by the censors, the sumptuary law of 182 and the dispute over the lex annalis proposed by the tribune M. Pinarius Rusca (pr. 181).⁷ On other occasions Livy’s account is surprisingly brief despite the dramatic potential of the events. For example, we are told that in 194 Q. Pleminius, who had been imprisoned for his crimes in Locri, planned to set fire to the city to enable his escape, but was denounced by accomplices and executed (34.44.7–8). It requires little imagination to picture how this event in a different narrative framework might have been expanded into a dramatic, almost Catilinarian tale of political upheaval and moral decline. However, in its second-century context the incident was reduced to a brief anecdote.

Livy’s agenda and ‘plot’ structure is inseparable from our image of politics in the ‘classic republic’. They determined his selection and presentation of political events, and since issues of considerable import and gravity were often reduced to short notices, we sometimes have to read between the lines to get a more accurate picture of the period. Doing so suggests that the seemingly stable era of aristocratic government may in fact have been as fraught with tension and rivalry as any other period. And, as one would expect in oligarchic systems, the primary source of friction appears to have been elite competition over status, honours, and distinctions. We find repeated references to the senate and those acting on its behalf trying to contain the problem of increased electioneering and private spending through stricter regulation.⁸ In 180 the cursus honorum was formalised by the lex Villia annalis, while electoral campaigning was discouraged during the early second century through a variety of initiatives aimed at curbing ambitus and munificence. In addition to these structurally conditioned sources of conflict the elite frequently quarrelled over specific issues, often associated with individual members of the senate and their demands for triumphs, commands and military levies. Clashes over triumphs feature prominently in Livy’s books on this period, probably because they represented a domestic corollary to the foreign engagements that remained Livy’s primary focus in this part of his narrative.⁹ Elections and candidatures also caused frequent disputes as members of the elite tried to bend the rules.¹⁰

Magistrates often conducted bitter feuds while in office, sometimes with their own colleagues.¹¹ For example, in 169 a tribunician proposal on public contracts was opposed by the censors, triggering an unruly meeting that was called to order by the censors themselves, in turn provoking the aggrieved tribunes to confiscate the property of one censor and charge the other with treason (43.16). On some occasions tribunes caused tension by ignoring senatorial opposition, as happened in 188 when suffragium was extended to the Volsci, while on others disputes got out of hand and tribunes resorted to prehensio, arrests of office holders, as in 151 and 138.¹² The impression is that of a fairly regular stream of political conflicts, which despite the lapidary accounts clearly seem to have caused considerable controversy. Most likely this was not a new development emerging only in the wake of the Second Punic War: in the third century a number of similar instances had already been recorded, as Bleckmann showed in his deconstruction of the ‘classic republic’.¹³

The Livian image of a united elite presiding over a smoothly running system of aristocratic power-sharing is likely to be too idealised. Even the partial and rudimentary record we have hints at continuous, often serious, conflict. We should therefore accept the possibility that our picture of the ‘middle’ republic as a period of broad elite consensus and stable senatorial control – over the res publica as well as its own members – may be a myth born out of hindsight. There are real implications for the question of periodisation, suggesting as it does a greater degree of continuity between the ‘middle’ and the ‘late’ periods; it becomes more difficult to maintain the notion of an abrupt change of direction in 133, when the aristocracy supposedly faced a sudden collapse of political cohesion.

The idea of a prolonged, almost permanent, state of crisis lasting a hundred years is, of course, meaningless, as Flower has reminded us.¹⁴ Nevertheless, later ancient writers are unanimous in identifying the dramatic events of 133 as a turning point in the history of the republic; the question is what precisely they inaugurated. Modern scholars usually focus on two long-term consequences of Ti. Gracchus’ tribunate. On the one hand, the unprecedented outbreak of political violence supposedly set an example so powerful that it would eventually lead to the armed overthrow of the old political order. On the other hand, the year is also identified with the birth of a new kind of radical politics which reflected deep and irreconcilable ideological differences within the elite. Thus, out of Gracchus’ tribunate are supposed to have emerged two different types of politicians, the so-called ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’, defined by personal commitment to distinct causes and/or class interests, the pursuit of which contributed greatly to the disunity and dysfunction of the late republic.¹⁵ The centrality of the two concepts to current interpretations of late republican politics justifies a more detailed discussion of their origins and evidential basis.

Inventing the ‘Populares’ and ‘Optimates’

The binary model of ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’ has for generations shaped interpretations of the late republic, widely seen as a battleground between competing ideologies and contrasting visions of Roman society. The categories are supposed to have come into existence in 133, although attempts to identify ‘forerunners’ of the Gracchi in the previous decades have also been made, presumably to make the transformation of Roman politics associated with that year seem less abrupt.¹⁶ Despite the ubiquity of the ‘populares’/‘optimates’-model there is surprisingly little agreement among scholars as to the actual meaning of these concepts, their practical significance and political implications.¹⁷

The great nineteenth-century historian Theodor Mommsen presented them as straightforward political blocks and invested them with ideological identities that made them directly comparable to those of his own time. The ‘left-right’ framework he adopted can be traced back to the late eighteenth century, but Mommsen updated it by accommodating the newly introduced parliamentary parties of contemporary Europe into his model of republican politics.¹⁸ While the anachronistic features of his ‘parties’ have been widely recognised, Mommsen’s modernising approach to republican politics remains a powerful presence in current scholarship. Some modifications have taken place, with historians now envisaging looser and more transient groupings, or in the case of the ‘populares’ an ideological ‘tradition’ or, most recently, a ‘family of ideas’.¹⁹ The fact that the discussion about their nature and definition continues unabated may in itself hint at their fundamental elusiveness.

The so-called optimates have been fairly unanimously identified as the ‘establishment party’, representatives of the aristocracy who defended its interests (material as well as political) and generally behaved as the Roman equivalent of modern fiscal conservatives by opposing wealth redistribution and promoting a ‘small state’. In order to enforce those policies, the ‘optimates’ emphasised the supremacy of the senatus auctoritas over the ‘power of the people’, and among their most prominent members we find politicians such as Scipio Nasica, Sulla and his followers, Catulus, Lucullus, Hortensius, and Cato. In many instances ‘optimates’ are defined, somewhat mechanically, as those who opposed the ‘populares’, although that merely shifts the focus onto the ‘populares’, who turn out to be even more difficult to pin down.

As the opponents of the ‘optimates’, ‘populares’ are typically described as ‘progressive’ and ‘democratic’ politicians whose ‘left-wing’ leanings led them to champion the cause of the people, standing up for the interests of the common man against the senate and its ‘optimate’ leaders. On closer inspection these definitions raise more questions than they answer; for how does one in practice identify individual politicians, laws and actions as ‘popularis’? The canonical list of ‘populares’, including the Gracchi, Saturninus, Sulpicius, and Clodius, is well known and much-repeated but also strikingly short. Many other politicians have been placed in the same category but as soon as we move beyond the ‘classic’ examples we run into seemingly insurmountable difficulties of definition.

The definition of ‘populares’ as those who strove to improve the lives of the masses may seem a fairly straightforward way of measuring their political profile. However, even some of the classic ‘populares’, such as Sulpicius, hardly fit that description, since none of his recorded policies had much to do with the betterment of the populus and in fact appear to have been distinctly unpopular.²⁰ Attempts to define specific policies as either ‘popularis’ or ‘optimate’ face similar difficulties. A standard example of ‘popular’ legislation would, for example, be measures offering material support for the populace, above all in the form of free or subsidised food, as well as land for the poor. It could be argued, however, that such measures were not per se incompatible with traditional senatorial policy, given the extensive colonisation the senate had overseen in the past, and the grain provision which members of the elite occasionally organised on a private basis. Moreover, policies focused on the commoda populi were not the sole preserve of so-called populares. In 91 the younger Drusus passed both agrarian and grain laws with the support of most of the senate and its leaders, while in 78 Lepidus’ lex frumentaria was apparently passed ‘nullo resistente’, ‘without opposition’, and in 62 Cato, the ultimate ‘optimate’, promoted a grain law with the senate’s full approval.²¹ And, viewed purely in terms of scale, Sulla, another ‘arch-optimate’, becomes the greatest ‘popularis’ of all, since he probably confiscated and redistributed more land in Italy than any other Roman politician. On the other hand, Caesar, supposedly at the opposite end of the spectrum, substantially reduced the number of grain recipients in Rome during his dictatorship (Suet. Iul. 41.3).

Measures defending the people’s political rights and independence have also been perceived as typically ‘popularis’, the primary example being the leges tabellariae of the later second century, which introduced written ballots in assemblies and courts. While they might seem clear-cut cases of legislation empowering the populus – and indeed were opposed by many senators – their political significance is in fact difficult to pin down. As Lundgreen noted, secret ballots are not inherently more ‘democratic’ than public voting. Furthermore, the reforms appear to have had no discernible impact on voting patterns, suggesting they did not ‘liberate’ citizens from elite control.²² After the reforms proposals were no more likely to be rejected or adopted than before, nor did the profile of those elected to public office show any change. Unsurprisingly, therefore, no attempt was ever made to reverse the ballot laws, whose most puzzling feature remains the hostile senatorial reaction they provoked.

Often ‘populares’ and their laws are identified purely by association or – in accordance with the binary model – through their opponents. That is, for example, the case with enfranchisement laws which have been classified as ‘popularis’ despite the fact that they were distinctly unpopular. Extending citizenship to foreigners held little appeal for the Roman populace and neither did the regular attempts to exploit the many freedmen in Rome by granting them greater voting power. Nevertheless, these measures have been labelled as ‘popular’ because of the controversy they caused and the objections they faced from senators concerned about political stability.²³ Likewise, some initiatives targeting senators are classified as ‘popularis’, e.g. C. Cornelius’ attempt to curb senators’ exploitative loans to foreign envoys, while other laws regulating elite behaviour such as ambitus and luxuria are never given that label. Sumptuary laws, which one would expect to fall into this category, are surprisingly not associated with ‘popularis’ politics, and were indeed implemented by both Sulla and Caesar, supposedly polar opposites. On the other hand, the long-running dispute over jury composition is often placed in that context, although it does not fit a simple ‘people versus elite’ dichotomy. C. Gracchus’ reform of the repetundae court did not ‘democratise’ it, but merely handed control to non-senatorial members of the elite. And when L. Cotta finally, after several changes back and forth, restored majority control to non-senators in 70, it appears to have been implemented in broad agreement with the senate.

In each case there were, of course, specific factors influencing the decisions, but examples like these nevertheless illustrate the difficulties involved in attaching political labels to certain types of legislation. The more closely one looks at the categories the more they seem to dissolve. It was precisely this problem that led Christian Meier, the author of the most comprehensive study of ‘populares’, to suggest a radical reinterpretation which stripped the concept of its ideological content.²⁴ Abandoning Mommsen’s left-right scheme, he applied a purely functional approach which concentrated on observable patterns of behaviour. From that perspective the so-called populares appeared as ‘dissident’ politicians (usually tribunes) who used the assemblies against the will of the senatorial majority. Behaving like a ‘popularis’ simply meant employing a specific strategy, the ratio popularis, in order to pursue specific policies and generally get ahead in Roman politics; as such it did not per se reflect a particular ideology or commitment. The ‘optimates’, on the other hand, were simply those who rejected this method and obeyed the collective authority of the senate. In this interpretation they become the ‘mainstream’ senators, who caused no trouble and attracted little attention. This part of Meier’s analysis followed in the footsteps of Hermann Strasburger, who in 1939 had argued that the term ‘optimates’ simply denoted the senate and particularly its inner circle of dominant nobles, making them a social category rather than an ideologically defined ‘party’.

After the ground-breaking work of Meier and Strasburger, historians began to downplay the ideological aspect, while some even questioned the relevance of these categories altogether. Erich Gruen could, for example, criticise the work of Burckhardt for its adoption of ‘a simplistic and rather old-fashioned dichotomy between optimates and populares as if they were identifiable groups that divided the political landscape between them’.²⁵ And following this approach the terms were typically used as convenient shorthand for the senatorial majority and those who broke the consensus, without any implication of sharp ideological divides (as I have in the past also done myself).

In recent decades, however, the pendulum has swung back towards ideological readings of Roman politics. In accordance with this paradigm ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’ are once again described in modernising idioms as ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives’, often with implied value judgements. Proponents of the revisionist school have pointed to situations which seem to go beyond a mere ‘strategy’ and indicate a higher level of commitment.²⁶ In response to the problems involved in identifying a consistent ‘popularis’ programme (which originally inspired Meier’s model), they have shifted the focus away from the policies themselves and onto the underlying motivation. Since policy itself offers no viable guide to identifying ‘populares’, a new criterion has been introduced, which is the strength and sincerity of the motives behind them. This has now become the real test of a true ‘popularis’, and final proof of selfless altruism is provided by the personal sacrifices they made, some even laying down their lives for the ‘popular cause’. The revival of Mommsen’s ideological model, albeit without the formal ‘party’ structures, coincides with the rise in ‘democratic’ interpretations of Roman politics, which it logically complements.²⁷ Thus it could be argued that if the people really held power in Rome it would be a natural expectation to find their interests promoted by their democratically elected champions. The link between democracy and ‘populares’ remains tenuous, however, not least because candidates apparently never ran on specific policies or associated themselves with particular ideologies during their campaign.²⁸

Attempting to distinguish the two types by their degree of ideological purity is likely to lead us into a methodological cul-de-sac. Personal motivation is, at any time, a dubious criterion for classifying politicians, but in Rome the inner-most thoughts of the protagonists are, with the possible exception of Cicero, little more than speculation. And even if our evidence had been fuller, their ‘true’ feelings would probably still escape us, personal motivation by its very nature being changeable as well as mixed. Certainly, we cannot deduce initial intentions from final outcomes; the Gracchi evidently did not anticipate a violent end at the hands of their opponents when they embarked on their tribunates. This is not to deny the existence of altruism or commitment to particular causes among the Roman elite (who were complex human beings like any others), but neither should we expect unrealistic levels of moral and political clarity – or overestimate our ability to separate layers of conscious and unconscious motivation.

The ideological approach offers only a very partial explanation of the categories under discussion. It does not, for example, account for the many supposed ‘populares’ who espoused policies only tenuously linked to the populus, Sulpicius again being a case in point. In those instances the model seems to fall back on Meier’s ‘functional’ definition of a ‘popularis’ as somebody who – for whatever reason – challenged the senatorial majority. The problem is that numerous politicians at some point defied the senate – and hence would have to be classified as ‘populares’ – but did so for reasons that seem unrelated to the lives of the masses.

It follows that faced with a choice between the two current models, Meier’s interpretation, being the more consistent, would have to be preferred. Nevertheless, Meier’s approach raises questions of its own; for the binary division implied in the concepts of ‘populares’/‘optimates’ sits uneasily with Meier’s general understanding of Roman politics, which he presents as an ever-shifting pattern of fluid associations and changing allegiances, all focused on the issues of the day – rather than fixed ideological positions. It was precisely to overcome this tension that Meier reduced the ‘populares’ to their lowest common denominator, which was the lack of senatorial backing. But that begs the question why the Romans created a category for such a diverse group of politicians, many of whom had little in common apart from their strategy, and indeed gave them a name that associated them with the universally acknowledged source of political legitimacy, the populus.²⁹ If ‘populares’ simply were those who employed a particular method to further their policies and careers, why did that make them members of a specific category defined in sharp contrast to those who did not? Conversely, if the ‘optimates’ were identified as those who adhered to senatorial authority, the category becomes devoid of any political content, since the majority would always be ‘optimates’ whatever policy they happened to agree on. In other words, if we follow Meier’s approach to its logical conclusion, the two concepts become virtually meaningless, as illustrated by the famous vote in December 50 when the senate rejected the hard-line ‘optimate’ opponents of Caesar and endorsed Curio’s compromise option by 370 to 22. On that occasion the leading ‘optimates’ did not have the rest of the senate behind them, effectively turning men like Cato into ‘populares’.³⁰

We are confronted with a seemingly insoluble conundrum: a political terminology that appears to defy both ideological and practical explanations. The inability to reach even the vaguest consensus about the meaning of these categories suggests we revisit the primary evidence and ask whether Roman politicians really were divided into two categories known as ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’. As noted earlier, ‘optimates’ has long been recognised as a straightforward descriptor for the leaders of the senate.³¹ As a standard term for the ruling class it was widely used, often in parallel with ‘boni’, which denoted the propertied classes in general and therefore overlapped with ‘optimates’. Its generic nature is illustrated by the fact that it could be employed about foreign aristocracies, as Cicero did when he referred to the ‘optimates’ of Asian towns in the Pro Flacco.³² If we accept this definition of ‘optimates’ as a term denoting the senatorial elite, the so-called populares – qua senators – themselves become ‘optimates’, precluding any meaningful distinction. This problem is strikingly highlighted in Cicero’s speech on the response of the haruspices, which had contained a warning ‘not to let death and danger be wrought for the fathers and leaders through discord and dissent among the optimates … ’.³³ Cicero accused Clodius of fomenting this ‘optimatium discordiam’, and since it would make no sense to blame a politician for causing a split among his adversaries, the implication is that Clodius himself formed part of that group. If ‘optimates’ was a category to which all politicians naturally belonged, then ‘popularis’ cannot for obvious reasons have been defined as its opposite.³⁴ Our sources, above all Cicero, often refer to the political views of the ‘optimates’, e.g. in the context of the disputes between the senate and Clodius, Caesar and Pompey. But that does not make them comparable to a ‘party’ or carriers of a particular oligarchic ideology or programme, although there was a natural expectation that members of the senate and the ruling class would adhere to a basic code of conduct and uphold the existing social order. Cicero could therefore play on the double meaning of ‘optimates’, noting that the principes may carry the name but not the substance, and on another occasion wonder whether there are any of them left, since the ‘optimates’ no longer behave like ‘optimates’.³⁵

‘Popularis’ is a far more complex term than ‘optimas’, as Robb recently demonstrated in her important study of Roman political terminology.³⁶ Her comprehensive analysis of all the ancient attestations revealed some interesting features. She observed, for example, that ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’, contrary to common perception, are contrasted or juxtaposed only very rarely, and that some contemporary authors did not use them at all, most strikingly Sallust (see further below). Crucially, Robb showed that ‘popularis’ covered a much wider range of meanings and usages than is often appreciated. Etymologically derived from populus, it covered any kind of association with the people and could as such be positive, negative or entirely neutral. ‘Popularis’ could be used pejoratively in the sense of ‘populist’, or ‘pandering to the lowest instincts of the people’. It also covered the modern ‘popular’ as in ‘well liked’ (or seeking popularity). Even more positive was the usage of ‘popularis’ as ‘friend of the people’, and ‘acting in the people’s interest’ (or at least pretending to do so). Entirely neutral was the sense of ‘countryman’ or ‘member of a group or association’. Finally, it could denote any type of activity linked to the people, including meetings or speeches delivered before crowds.

It follows that describing someone simply as ‘popularis’ would not have been immediately intelligible, which explains why it often appears with additional phrases indicating the particular sense in which it is used. Although its multivalency would have made it rather unsuitable as a political label, that did not apparently limit its popularity in political discourse. Indeed, all sides of political arguments might claim to be true ‘populares’ (in the positive sense), while dismissing their opponents as the wrong kind of ‘populares’, i.e. ‘populists’ and false friends of the populus. For example, in the agrarian speeches to the senate and at a contio Cicero asks rhetorically who is the real ‘popularis’: Cicero himself, who works for peace and harmony, or Rullus, who endangers these values.³⁷ Likewise in the Philippics, Cicero attacks Fufius Calenus, declaring that ‘Previously we could not deter you from being popularis, yet now we cannot persuade you to be popularis’, deftly using the term in two different ways, first as ‘populist’ and then as ‘supporter of the people’s interest’.³⁸

Examples such as these are often dismissed as instances of ‘slippery’ political language.³⁹ The twisting of words and concepts is, of course, integral to any political discourse; one could, for example, envisage a contemporary situation where an opponent claimed that a Liberal Party is in fact not liberal, playing on the ambiguity of the name. However, such a strategy is feasible only if there is a party called the ‘Liberals’ and an established set of values associated with ‘liberal’. But in the case of ‘popularis’ the existence of a particular type of politician named ‘Populares’ is itself open to dispute. The suggestion that Cicero in these passages is subverting a ‘standard’ meaning of ‘popularis’ is therefore circular, since it assumes the presence of a well-defined category of ‘Popular’ politicians with recognised characteristics. The inherent ambiguity of the term is, in other words, explained away by reference to the ‘two-party-model’ itself.

We are in fact dealing with a multiplicity of meanings, none of which was more ‘real’ than the others. Thus the various different meanings of ‘popularis’ in the political discourse can all be explained within the semantic range identified by Robb, without taking recourse to ‘parties’, ‘traditions’, ‘ideologies’ or any other unifying traits commonly associated with this putative category. In the entire ancient record only one text lends itself directly to a binary understanding of Roman politics: Cicero’s famous excursus in the Pro Sestio. It is to this particular discussion that the entire theory ultimately can be traced. In 56 Cicero defended his protégé Sestius against a charge of vis, political violence, committed during the campaign for Cicero’s recall from exile. As part of his defence Cicero launches into a highly unusual digression about Roman politics, ostensibly triggered by the prosecutor’s query about the identity of the ‘natio optimatium’, the ‘tribe of optimates’, to which Cicero apparently had referred in an earlier intervention. Taking his cue from this question, Cicero famously declares that there had always been two types of politician, ‘optimates’ and ‘populares’, the former defined as everybody who is neither ‘criminal nor vicious in disposition, nor frantic, nor hampered by troubles in their households’, while the latter are those who wished everything they did and said to be agreeable to the masses’.⁴⁰ As definitions of political groupings, strategies or traditions these descriptions make little sense, and as importantly they are not matched by Cicero’s own usage elsewhere. In the rest of his extensive corpus ‘optimates’ carry the standard meaning of senatorial elite, with no apparent attempt ever to widen its social application.

The categories presented in the Pro Sestio are therefore unique to this speech. They should be understood in the context of the wider political purpose of the excursus, which was to identify Cicero himself with the res publica, the senate and all good Romans, and correspondingly to isolate his opponent Clodius, not just from his natural political hinterland in the nobilitas but also from other politicians who had previously pursued their policies directly through the assemblies; their example – however regrettable in Cicero’s view – might still seem to provide a precedent – and hence legitimisation – for Clodius’ actions. In Cicero’s ‘model’ Clodius is therefore not included among the ‘populares’, because he, unlike his predecessors, was not actually popular; the popular backing he claimed was little more than hired crowds and strong-arm men, while the ‘real’ people despised him.

The Pro Sestio was a daring attempt to turn the tables on Clodius, reversing his opponent’s natural superiority as a scion of one of Rome’s noblest families and presenting Cicero, the new man from Arpinum who had only recently returned from ignominious exile, as the true representative of the Roman establishment. To that end he redefined one of the conventional terms used for the senatorial elite, ‘optimates’, and turned it into an almost all-embracing name for upstanding and respectable citizens. This expanded category of ‘optimates’ was then contrasted with those who pandered to the masses through populist measures. This new bisection of the political class did not include Clodius, whose failure even to gain the approval of the mob made him an outcast. Ironically, therefore, the foundational text for the modern ‘party’ model explicitly excludes one of the most famous ‘populares’ from its own definition.⁴¹

The picture Cicero presents should be appreciated for what it is, namely a brilliant rhetorical ‘conjuring trick’ that responded to a very particular challenge facing the orator in 56. As far as we know, he never repeated it, although the distinction between the real and the false populus was useful for dismissing opponents who claimed popular support. Elsewhere he simply used ‘optimates’ for the (leading) senators, while ‘popularis’ appears regularly in all its senses, both positive and negative. Modern attempts to identify examples of ‘Sestian’ usage in other parts of Cicero’s work are generally problematic since they presuppose – rather than demonstrate – the existence of the ‘parties’; without this ‘template’ for Roman politics, other interpretations become possible, indeed compelling.⁴²

Cicero’s bold rhetorical self-reinvention in the Pro Sestio has presented historians with a deceptively simple model which at first sight seems to provide a key to unlocking the secrets of Roman politics. But the terminology Cicero uses turns out to be unique and unlike anything else found in the ancient sources. It could, of course, be argued that removing the term ‘popularis’ from our vocabulary does not affect the actual practice of politics; or in other words, there might still be a ‘popular’ side to Roman politics even if it was not called that. However, all attempts to describe such a ‘democratic/progressive’ strand of politics ultimately rely on the term ‘popularis’ to give it structure and definition. We are therefore not dealing with an observable phenomenon for which the Pro Sestio happens to offer a convenient label. Rather, it is the other way round; Cicero’s use of ‘popularis’ in that particular speech has reified what would otherwise have remained discrete, difficult to classify events and individuals and turned them into manifestations of a single political movement.

Meier’s classic study of ‘populares’ was – somewhat ironically – hamstrung by its basic premise. As an encyclopaedia article on the lemma ‘popularis’ its very point of departure was the reality of the concept as well as its relevance for the study of the Roman republic. This created a tension since Meier discovered that it had virtually no identifiable features. His meticulous analysis of the individuals described as ‘popularis’, their background and apparent intentions, left him with a category of politicians who, apart from their willingness to defy the senate, had no clear or unifying characteristics. On that basis he concluded that we were dealing with a ratio popularis, that is, a method by which politicians relied entirely on the assemblies. However, after Robb’s work it is now clear that while there indeed existed a ‘popularis ratio’, there were no ‘populares’, since those who employed the strategy did so for such a wide range of purposes that the Romans did not perceive them as members of a specific category to which a single label could be attached. This is also the impression conveyed Sallust, the other contemporary source on late republican politics.

Sallust: Politics without ‘Optimates’ and ‘Populares’

According to Ronald Syme, ‘Sallust is also in part to blame for the prevalence of another doctrine, namely the belief that Rome had a regular two-party system, Optimates and Populares’.⁴³ The suggestion that Sallust somehow was responsible for this model (from which Syme distanced himself) is surprising, since he uses an entirely different terminology and presents a picture of Roman politics that is not easily reconciled to a binary, ‘Sestian’ model. Indeed, through the writings of Sallust one enters a political world distinctly different from that encountered in many modern textbooks.

Sallust never uses the term ‘optimates’, while ‘popularis’ occurs in two different meanings in the Bellum Catilinae and the Bellum Iugurthinum, neither of them coinciding with Cicero’s ‘Sestian’ definition. In the former, ‘popularis’ is employed in the sense of ‘participant’ in the conspiracy and in the latter as ‘countryman’/‘subject (of a ruler)’.⁴⁴ The labels, otherwise considered standard political coinages, are in other words absent from the works of a contemporary observer who had personal experience of Roman politics and its public discourse. His rejection of the term ‘optimates’, a common label for the most influential senators, is probably deliberate and may be explained by the implicit claim to superiority and entitlement it conveyed. His aversion to such language is evident from his stated objection to ‘bonus’ as a standard epithet for any person of wealth.⁴⁵ Rather than buying into the elite’s self-definition as ‘optimates’ he consistently prefers the social descriptor ‘nobilis’. The absence of ‘popularis’, on the other hand, cannot be similarly explained, i.e. as a reflection of Sallust’s political standpoint; for while ‘optimates’ are replaced by the roughly equivalent ‘nobiles’, the opponents of the nobles do not appear as a distinct category in Sallust’s political universe, neither in the guise of ‘populares’ nor under any other name.⁴⁶

The political divisions outlined by Sallust are entirely different from those presented in Cicero’s Pro Sestio. According to Sallust, society was split into two ‘partes’, one being the populus, the other the nobilitas.⁴⁷ We are, in other words, dealing with a subsection of the senate pitted against the rest of society.⁴⁸ Since the nobiles were defined not by a specific ideology but by ancestry and honores (and by implication power, prestige and resources), we are far removed from the ‘conservative’ senatorial party of modern textbooks. This particular part of the elite, whose most prominent members Sallust denounced as ‘pauci’ (the few, i.e. the oligarchs) was itself riven by internal divisions, described as factiones (terminologically distinguished from partes, Jug. 41.1). According to Sallust, the factiones were largely driven by selfishness and greed, albeit to varying degrees. Thus, some nobles preferred true glory (vera gloria) to unjust power (iniusta potentia), which naturally caused internal friction that occasionally escalated into open conflict. As prime examples of these rare upstanding nobiles Sallust mentions the Gracchi, whose attempt to vindicate the libertas of the plebs and expose the crimes of the pauci he extolled (Jug. 41.10; 42.1).

Sallust’s attack on the greed and arrogance of the nobles has, in accordance with the binary model, led to his own classification as a ‘popularis’ and follower of Caesar, supposedly also a champion of the ‘people’s cause’. But as Syme demonstrated long ago, Sallust’s position is far more complex; for while his hatred of the nobles is evident, his sympathies are more elusive. Despite honourable exceptions such as the Gracchi, opponents of the nobles, whatever their professed aims, are portrayed as driven by the same base and selfish motives. All politicians, according to Sallust, used specious pretexts to justify their actions. The tribunes who took office after 70 are, for example, condemned as young men, ferocious because of their age and temper, who attacked the senate and excited the plebs with largitio and promises.⁴⁹ The tribunes supporting Marius’ consular candidature are even described as ‘seditiosi’, while Lepidus’ high-minded rhetoric is undercut by references to his own profiteering during the Sullan proscriptions.⁵⁰ Sallust’s picture of the common people is hardly more flattering; although oppressed, they are presented as lethargic and impassive, even denounced as a criminal mob prone to seditio and discordia.⁵¹

Sallust’s portraits of the protagonists of the recent past hardly fit the ‘populares’/‘optimates’ model either. The depiction of Sulla is surprisingly nuanced and almost positive in the Bellum Iugurthinum (95–6), while that of Marius is more equivocal than one might have expected. Similarly, both Cato and Caesar are presented as great men and their famous debate in 63 as a clash of personalities rather than ideologies.⁵² In fact, the political arguments Sallust ascribes to his characters as well as his own comments on their actions rarely match a simple split between ‘populares and ‘optimates’. In Sallust’s works libertas populi Romani and senatus auctoritas are never presented as alternative sources of power and legitimacy nor do they mark distinct ideological creeds. Instead they appear as part of a shared understanding of the res publica embraced by political leaders and populus alike. For example, the tribune Memmius, supposedly a ‘popularis’, complains that ‘the senate’s authority has been prostituted to a ruthless enemy’.⁵³ And Macer’s speech implies that his ‘optimate’ opponents also claimed to defend libertas, while in the Histories Sallust mentions influential men who are ‘attempting to win absolute rule masquerading as champions of the senate or of the people’.⁵⁴ The point is made even clearer when he comments on the use of pretexts ‘honestis nominibus’; some maintained they were defending ‘populi iura’ others ‘senatus auctoritas’, but under this pretence of caring for public welfare – ‘bonum publicum simulantes’ – they all worked for self-advancement (Cat. 38.3). The implication is that Sallust regarded senatus auctoritas as a positive concept behind which politicians could hide less honourable motives. Defending the senate’s standing and influence was to Sallust as creditable as protecting the people’s interests. While there were clearly differences of emphasis, the two ideals are presented as in principle complementary and universally accepted by all politicians (see further below pp. 159–64).

Sallust, in sum, presents a society split between a powerful elite and an oppressed populus, whose interests some nobles claimed to champion – for a variety of motives but usually to their own advancement. All invoked similar lofty ideals and values, but most were in reality guided by self-interest. The dissenting nobles and their factions carried no particular labels, for the simple reason that they lacked the common characteristics which would have enabled such a categorisation. However, while ideological demarcations seem absent, socio-economic distinctions were important. Thus, ‘new men’ occupy a prominent position in Sallust’s vision of Roman politics and are frequently presented as the real ‘opposition’ to the nobles.

Despite his broad-brush approach and obvious moralising, Sallust’s image of Roman politics remains entirely consistent and firmly rooted in the social realities of the late republic. It dissolves the conventional dichotomies into a fluid picture of factional strife, conducted in a blurry ideological grey-zone of common values – and equally tainted motives. While not denying the existence of conflicts in which participants employed different tactics and rhetorical strategies, Sallust takes us beyond simple notions of ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ wings of the Roman elite.

Politics without ‘Parties’

If we follow Sallust’s example and abandon the notion of ‘popularis’ as a particular political category, the politicians in question lose their identity as part of a distinct ideological tradition, let alone ‘party’, and become, quite simply, office holders who at certain moments in their career used their powers without the backing of their peers.⁵⁵ Liberated from the ideological divisions implied by the ‘populares’/‘optimates’ distinction, Meier’s model offers a clear and persuasive interpretation of political conflict in the late republic. It also allows us to look afresh at some of the key figures and periods of the late republic, without the constraints of the binary model.

Amy Russell recently showed that it is impossible to make sense of tribunician activities during the period 100–91 by using the categories of ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’.⁵⁶ But nowhere do the shortcomings of the conventional labelling become more apparent than in the case of the so-called ‘triumvirs’, typically classified as ‘populares’ – although Cicero explicitly noted that while the senate had lost power it had gone to three ‘homines immoderatos’ rather than the populus (Att. 2.9.2 (SB 29)). Pompey is, for example, often described as a Sullan ‘optimas’, who turned ‘popularis’. Paradoxically, he would become the leader, at least militarily, of the ‘optimates’ towards the end of his life. Still, this supposed movement between opposite camps helps little to explain his place in Roman politics; essentially, he was a nobilis who exploited military opportunities with such ruthless determination (and success) that it alienated him from large sections of the aristocracy.⁵⁷ A particular ‘popularis’ programme is, on the other hand, difficult to trace.⁵⁸ His command against the pirates, administration of the annona, provision of lavish games and public buildings may have secured him widespread popularity, but did, of course, also entrench his dominant position in Rome.⁵⁹ The modern notion of Pompey as a ‘popularis’ therefore seems rooted in the senate’s hostility rather than in any discernible political principle or programme.

While Pompey may have courted popularity on a grand scale, no conventional ‘popularis’ traits can be associated with his ally in 60, Licinius Crassus, who most certainly was no ‘friend of the people’; indeed, his profiteering from Sulla’s proscriptions and later exploitation of the urban plebs became notorious.⁶⁰ Apart from their early rise under Sulla’s tutelage, only rivalry and mutual dislike seem to have bound him to Pompey. He may occasionally have clashed with prominent sections of the senate, but only in support of other parts of the elite, not least the wealthy publicani.

Finally, their associate and – initially – junior partner Caesar has almost universally been identified as one of the standard bearers of the ‘popularis’ cause.⁶¹ But while he undoubtedly antagonised fellow aristocrats on numerous occasions, it is difficult to point to any concrete measures he passed in support of the masses. Although controversial, his actions by and large remained within the range of normal factional politics, including the public display of his Marian connections through laudationes and public statues as well as his call for restoration of the sons of exiles. Such anti-Sullan gestures may, just like his exceptionally lavish games, have brought him fame and popularity. Caesar’s pursuit of popular favour was noted by all ancient commentators, suggesting he may have been unusual in continuing this strategy well after the early career stages when most politicians abandoned it.⁶² But it was essentially a style, involving gestures, spectacle and generosity, as well as a public show of defiance towards the nobility.⁶³ Whether it had much impact on the lives of the poor is a different matter.⁶⁴

Caesar’s status as a ‘popularis’ is closely linked to his Marian/Cinnan connections and much-advertised opposition to the Sullan regime (although that was far from consistent since he married Pompeia, Sulla’s grand-daughter, after the death in 67 of his first wife Cornelia, the daughter of Cinna).⁶⁵ The labelling of politicians ‘by association’ puts the focus on the turbulent period in the 80s when ‘conservatives’ and ‘democrats’ supposedly clashed for the first time in open military conflict, causing a deep and lasting rift through the ruling class. Historians tend to explain the civil war of the 80s in terms of the familiar two-party model, while also retaining elements of conventional ‘factionalism’, turning ‘populares’ into ‘Marians’ and ‘optimates’ into ‘Sullans’.⁶⁶ Nowhere in the ancient sources is the conflict actually described as one between ‘populares’ and ‘optimates’, and when looked at more closely it quickly begins to dissolve into a complex mix of conventional power struggles, personal vendettas and factional strife, with an added element of elite class conflict, all heightened by the exceptional militarisation of Italy in the wake of the Social War.

The transfer of the Mithridatic command from the consul Sulla to his old rival Marius provided the trigger. This step was in itself entirely un-ideological (there was a long history of disputes over provincial commands) – even if the ‘usurping’ general in question was highly ‘popular’ in a conventional sense.⁶⁷ The tribune Sulpicius who facilitated the move cannot be easily classified. While he certainly was a thorn in the flesh of many senators, none of his policies appears to have been particularly aimed at the ‘People’.⁶⁸ The sources associate him with attempts to redistribute the recently incorporated Italians among all the voting tribes. But there is no reason why granting political influence to barely defeated enemies, against whom Rome had recently fought a bloody war, would have endeared him to the ‘populus Romanus’.⁶⁹ The ‘popularis’ status of Sulpicius has therefore been restored by redefining citizenship bills as ‘progressive’ rather than ‘popular’ – which obviously reflects a very modern left–right perspective – and by stressing the senatorial opposition most of them faced.

His ally Marius, another ‘popularis’ according to the conventional taxonomy, obviously enjoyed broad popularity for his military exploits and was hailed as the saviour of Rome. His multiple consulships also testify to his appeal among the well-off voters who controlled the comitia centuriata. Politically, however, it is difficult to pinpoint any overtly ‘ideological’ measures, apart from the controversial narrowing of the voting ‘bridges’, carried early in his career as tribune in 119.⁷⁰ Later he took radical steps to provide for his landless veterans in collaboration with Saturninus, but similar settlements were, of course, organised by Sulla without the attribution of ‘popularis’ motives. Again, therefore, his political label ultimately comes down to senatorial hostility towards the new man and his personal enmity with Sulla.

Cinna, his supposed successor as champion of the ‘popularis’ cause, is never described as ‘popularis’ and the label largely derives from the description of his opponents as ‘optimates’.⁷¹ Apart from the unresolved question of tribal registration of the Italians, which probably held little popular appeal, the most pressing political issue during his so-called dominatio was the need for debt reform after the Social War. The financial situation in Rome was dire and further damaged by Mithridates’ attack on Asia, which caused great loss of public revenue. While debt reform was usually a toxic political issue, fiercely resisted by the propertied classes, the monetary law passed by Valerius Flaccus in 86 seems to have enjoyed broad elite support.⁷² In addition to the equites, substantial sections of the senate also appear to have backed Cinna, which according to most definitions would rule him out as a ‘popularis’.⁷³

It is difficult to identify any clear ideological demarcations in the conflict, which Cicero later presented as a wholly personal dispute between Marius and Sulla.⁷⁴ In this struggle the stance taken by most senators was probably dictated by purely tactical and opportunistic considerations. From the first outbreak of violence in 88 down to Sulla’s final victory in 81 it is impossible to point to any consistent political fault lines between the combatants. Paradoxically, therefore, it only becomes a clash between ‘optimates’ and ‘populares’ when the war is over; for it is Sulla’s actions as dictator that have defined the preceding conflict – and indeed the concept of ‘optimates’ as a whole.

Sulla’s reforms have come to embody ‘conservative’ values and hard-line ‘class’ politics in the late republic, although several of his measures are difficult to fit into that model. They include the sumptuary laws and the new rules regulating provincial commands, which would seem to reflect traditional oligarchic concerns about maintaining elite discipline and control. Sulla’s new system of courts, the quaestiones, on the other hand, was probably a response to practical demands, in the same way as his doubling of the number of quaestors from ten to twenty and the creation of two additional praetors. It was long assumed that Sulla abolished the grain dole, which was undoubtedly regarded with suspicion by the elite. However, Santangelo has convincingly shown that the evidence is less than compelling.⁷⁵ While several measures were passed, their precise impact is a matter of conjecture. Moreover, senatorial misgivings about the dole should not be confused with modern ‘fiscal conservatism’, since economic redistribution through taxation played no part.⁷⁶ In addition to confirming the citizenship and tribal allocation of the Italians, Sulla also introduced lavish games (a common means of gaining popularity) and, most importantly, distributed land to his veterans on an unprecedented scale. Although not ‘altruistic’ in nature, these measures nevertheless demonstrate the complexity of political labelling, since under different circumstances they could easily have been described as ‘progressive’.

Among Sulla’s most controversial acts was his transfer of the courts from equestrian to senatorial control, which in turn necessitated a major expansion of the senate and the addition of 300 new members.⁷⁷ The judicial reform had already been proposed in 91, indirectly triggering the Social War (cf. Cic. Off. 2.75; Brut. 115), and stripping the equites of their judicial role undoubtedly entrenched the position of the senate. However, it did not represent ‘class politics’ in any conventional sense, since it merely shifted power between different sections of the elite. Sulla’s resentment towards the equites, amply demonstrated by the proscriptions which mostly targeted this order, also defies conventional ideological explanations.⁷⁸

Although Sulla’s victory is often described as the triumph of the senate over the populus, the most obvious victims of his reign were other members of the elite. In fact, the conflict can be seen as one between an inner circle of old aristocratic families and those outside it, particularly the equites. Thus contemporary sources consistently present the Sullan regime as domination by the nobiles rather than by the senate.⁷⁹ For example, in his speech for Roscius of Ameria Cicero repeatedly tells the jurors (and his readers) that the elder Roscius, whose name posthumously had been put on the proscription lists, always had been a strong supporter of the nobilitas and celebrated its victory.⁸⁰ Cicero further declares that he himself also supported ‘causam nobilitatis’ and denied that his defence of the younger Roscius implied any criticism of this group.⁸¹ Indeed, Cicero supported the victors because, as he put it, humilitas was contending with dignitas over prestige and distinction (136). And by humilitas he does not refer to ‘ordinary’ people, for as he later explains, the nobles could not endure ‘equestrem splendorem’ and therefore recaptured the res publica by arms (140–1).

The Pro Roscio Amerino was delivered at a sensitive moment when the former dictator was still alive, but ten years later Cicero presented precisely the same analysis of the civil war. In his prosecution of Verres he accused him of having joined Sulla, not because he wished to defend the cause of the nobilitas or restore its honour and dignitas, but for purely opportunistic reasons and personal enrichment.⁸² For Sallust too, the nobiles were the winners of the civil war, thus presenting a picture of the conflict very similar to that of Cicero, our earliest surviving source.⁸³ Crucially, the Sullan faction was defined not according to ideological, political or institutional criteria but in purely social terms as the most prominent part of the aristocracy. It was therefore not the victory of the senate (and certainly not over ‘the people’), but of a section within it that had by armed force established a position of unprecedented strength.

The distinct position occupied by the nobiles in Roman politics deserves closer attention and may help explain some episodes of the late republic that have been interpreted as ideological clashes, but could be seen as reactions against a class which generated widespread resentment among other sections of the elite. A prime example of that discourse comes from 65, when Cicero defended C. Cornelius, the tribune of 67, against a charge of maiestas; his speeches are preserved in fragments along with Asconius’ commentary. Cornelius is usually classified as a ‘popularis’, while Cicero allegedly delivered ‘the most popularis speech of his career’ in his defence.⁸⁴ Once again, the picture may be considerably more complex. There is little doubt that Cornelius had incurred the displeasure of leading senators partly through his policies and partly because of the methods he used. Among his proposals were measures to curb ambitus and stop exploitative loans being imposed on provincial envoys. He also tried to force the praetor to obey his own decree and limit the senate’s ability to grant legal dispensations, privilegia. None of these measures posed any serious threat to senatorial interests, nor did they undermine the senate’s auctoritas, as Cicero is keen to emphasise (1 fr. 33). It even appears that many senators supported them.⁸⁵ Despite the controversy surrounding Cornelius, we are therefore not dealing with a simple ‘people versus senate’ conflict. The target of his proposals was the nobiles, who dominated the senate, but, as the outcome of the case demonstrates, enjoyed little support among the rest of the elite.⁸⁶ We have to remember that Cicero’s rhetorical attack on the ‘pauci’, which might easily be mistaken for conventional populism, was aimed squarely at a jury composed entirely of members of the elite. It was to their views and prejudices that Cicero tailored his two speeches and the strategy clearly worked, since Cornelius, as Asconius (81C) informs us, was resoundingly acquitted by a large majority.

Cicero’s own personal circumstances should also be taken into account, since he had recently held the praetorship and now was aiming for the consulate. From an electoral perspective his defence represents a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, it appealed to the powerful equites, lower-ranking senators and the propertied men of the first class, naturally resentful of the overbearing nobiles, whose influence, though important, may not have been decisive in consular elections. On the other hand, the case also offered an opportunity to woo Pompey, then the dominant figure in Roman politics, whom Cornelius had recently served as quaestor. In his defence of Cornelius, Cicero positioned himself as a supporter of the people’s ‘sovereignty’ and as a vocal critic of the principes. Since Cornelius received the support of the propertied classes and most of the senators, Cicero’s line must have been entirely acceptable to this class – which makes it ironic that his defence could later be described as a ‘popularis’ act. The social differentiation within the elite itself must be borne in mind when looking at cases like these and indeed at Roman politics in general. The senate was not identical with the elite, and its dominant families were often defied by other affluent sections of society, most obviously when bills were passed and higher magistrates elected against their express wishes, e.g. Marius or before him Scipio Aemilianus, Flaminius, and Varro.⁸⁷ Instances such as these suggest that the notion of an all-powerful nobility controlling public life is most likely a myth. Within the elite itself complex divisions and tensions existed, which means that political struggles cannot be reduced to a simple template of ‘senate versus people’.

Cicero is often assumed to have gone through an early ‘popularis’ phase, before becoming a respectable stalwart of the ‘optimates’. The theory is partly inferred from some of his forensic oratory, since his defence of Roscius may have provoked Sulla – despite Cicero’s own insistence on his support for the regime – and he clashed again with members of the Sullan establishment in his prosecution of Verres. But these actions were by all accounts challenges to parts of the nobility rather than ‘the senate’. The main evidence for Cicero’s ‘popularis’ phase has therefore been derived from a celebrated passage of the Commentariolum petitionis (4–5), which incidentally also contains one of the very few combinations of ‘popularis’ and ‘optimas’ in Latin literature.

The author of the booklet, Cicero’s brother Quintus, writes that Cicero had always agreed with the ‘optimates’ and had never been in the least ‘popularis’; in fact he had only spoken ‘populariter’ in order to attract the support of Pompey. The context makes clear that the ‘optimates’ are in fact the nobiles, whom Quintus mentions in the previous sentence.⁸⁸ Again, therefore, we are faced with a social group not a politically defined category. ‘Popularis’, on the other hand, must here refer to a certain populist style and manner aimed at winning popularity – and frowned upon by the nobility. Quintus later expands on this point by noting that Cicero gained support from ‘urbanam illam multitudinem’ by ‘praising Pompey, accepting the case of Manilius, defending Cornelius’.⁸⁹ The key element here seems to be Pompey’s well-documented popularity, which would have provided a strong incentive for Cicero to take Manilius’ case and possibly also for his defence of Cornelius. Presumably, it was also the Pompeian connection that generated the wide interest which Quintus implies the case attracted.⁹⁰ Cicero had already tried to gain the great man’s support the previous year, when he intervened on Pompey’s behalf in the debate over the lex Manilia; which also offered an excellent opportunity to court the favour of influential equites concerned about their Asian investments. It pitted him against parts of the nobility, intent on thwarting Pompey’s ambitions, but since the senate was deeply split on the issue, Cicero’s step was neither very radical nor particularly risky. As Cornelius’ case suggests, the nobiles could be defied almost with impunity.⁹¹

Cicero’s actions in this period therefore fit easily into a conventional picture of a new man manoeuvring strategically between powerful men, factions, and groupings. There are, however, aspects of his speech for Cornelius, its style and arguments, that might be interpreted as ‘populist’ attempts to appeal to a wider audience. Thus, key passages appear to have dealt with the tribunate and its place in the Roman constitution, one of the most controversial and heated topics of the late republic. Cicero delivered a vigorous defence of the powers of the tribunate, which according to the traditional ‘party’ model would place him firmly in the ‘popularis’ camp.⁹² It also takes us directly back to Sulla, the archetypal ‘optimas’; for while most of his actions are difficult to place on a conventional ‘left–right’ scale, he did implement one major constitutional change that would seem to fit the modern ‘popularis–optimas’ model, which was his neutralisation of the tribunate as an active political force. Sulla deprived the tribunes of independent initiative and even made their office a career dead-end, retaining only their ius auxilii (Cic. Leg. 3.22) and perhaps also their right of intercessio.⁹³ This particular reform has more than anything come to define his regime as ‘optimate’ in the modern tradition and there can be little doubt about its controversial nature. To understand its background and significance as well as its eventual repeal we may briefly reconsider the place of the tribunate in Roman politics.

Sulla and the Tribunate

While the origins of this office are largely lost in time and later mythologising, its exceptional status seems indisputable. Created during the so-called Struggle of the Orders in order to defend the plebeian population against patrician ‘state’ coercion, it also provided an institutional platform from which prominent plebeians could challenge the political ascendancy of the patrician elite. As leaders of the plebs and excluded from official power the tribunes had no clearly defined remit apart from the general promotion of plebeian interests. After the plebeio-patrician compromise in the fourth century, which gradually extended full equality and access to state offices to the plebeians, the tribunate effectively became redundant, rooted as it was in an institutionalised segregation that no longer existed.⁹⁴ With plebeians holding supreme executive power it made little sense to maintain a specifically plebeian office whose task it was to protect other plebeians from these very same magistrates. Surprisingly, however, the tribunate was retained and gradually integrated into the ‘normal’ state apparatus, albeit playing a very different role in the political process.

The tribunes’ new function was based on their customary right to convene the plebs and propose resolutions binding for this group. With the lex Hortensia of 287, plebiscites gained the status of law, paradoxically allowing a section of the population to legislate for the whole community. It also turned the erstwhile ‘defenders of the plebs’ into the main legislators of the republic. In the following centuries the tribunes became chiefly responsible for the drafting and passing of new statutes and bills.⁹⁵ In doing so they met a practical need caused by the regular absence of the consuls from the city along with the growing complexity of Roman society, which required increased regulation.⁹⁶ The transformation of the tribunes into legislators, while retaining their traditional negative powers of auxilium and intercessio, suggests a high degree of conformity and integration into the new plebeio-patrician elite, to whom they can no longer have been perceived as a threat. Presumably, they were expected to wield their extensive powers (made even greater by the largely affirmative role of the assemblies) in accordance with the broad interests of their peers (who now included the patricians). And this is indeed the impression conveyed by the historical record of the middle republic, which shows tribunes deferring to the opinion of the senate or even acting on its behalf.⁹⁷

An example of the latter comes from 172 when the consuls (Liv. 42.10.9–15) tested the senate’s patience by refusing to leave for their provinces, prompting the tribunes to intervene on its behalf (42.21). Similarly, when the praetor M’. Iuventius Thalna was about to propose war on Rhodes in 167 without consulting the senate, two tribunes intervened and blocked the initiative (Liv. 45.21). In 191 colonists in the coloniae maritimae complained about the draft and approached the tribunes, who simply referred their case to the senate (36.3.4–5). In 171 two of the tribunes played a similarly compliant role when the primipilarii, famously led by Ligustinus, appealed to them (Liv. 42.32.6–35.2) by referring the matter back to the consuls, while the other tribunes agreed to investigate. Likewise in 199 two tribunes blocked Flamininus’ premature run for the consulship on grounds of legality, only relenting when the senate allowed his election to go ahead.⁹⁸

On many occasions tribunes also performed a vital ‘policing’ role within the ruling class, enforcing internal discipline and holding former magistrates to account, particularly those who used their powers without consulting the senate. That was, for example, the case in 173–172 with the dispute between the senate and M. Popillius Laenas over his treatment of the Ligurian Statielli (Liv. 42.7.3–10.15). The consul simply refused to obey the senate, and only through the intervention of two tribunes could an inquiry be set up. A similar illustration of the co-operation that generally existed between senate and tribunes comes from 170, when C. Lucretius Gallus was prosecuted by tribunes after he had been rebuked by the senate. Likewise in 189 tribunes charged the censorial candidate M’. Acilius Glabrio for having misappropriated booty.⁹⁹

Instances such as these suggest that the tribunes had become fully integrated into the governmental structures of the republic. However, the legislative – and regulatory – functions of the tribunes also placed them at the heart of any political dispute, which often hinged directly on the position they took.¹⁰⁰ A case in point is the row in 189, when the praetor was deprived of his province by the pontifex maximus because of religious duties, which triggered an appeal to the tribunes and the populus (Liv. 37.51.1–6). Likewise in 184 a fierce argument broke out over levies for the Spanish wars; both sides had supportive tribunes, causing political deadlock (Liv. 39.38.8–10). In 196 a dispute between two urban quaestors and all the priests over unpaid taxes naturally led to appeals to the tribunes. On this occasion, however, the tribunes, unusually, refused to intervene on behalf of the priests, who therefore had to pay the sums demanded of them (Liv. 33.42.2–4).

Examples of ‘radical’ tribunes confronting the senate over important matters of policy are rarely attested. Among the classic instances from the third century are Flaminius’ distribution of land in the ager Gallicus in 232 against senatorial opposition and the lex Claudia from 218, which restricted the commercial involvement of senators (and their sons).¹⁰¹ They do not, however, fit a simple ‘elite versus (popular) tribune’ scenario, since Flaminius went on to become praetor and twice consul, evidently with the support of the better-off who dominated the comitia centuriata. Moreover, we are told that Flaminius’ support for the lex Claudia made him so popular that it secured him a second consulship, implying a far more complex political situation and internal divisions within the elite. In the second century such clashes between tribunes and senate remained equally rare. Exceptions include Q. Terentius Culleo’s controversial law from 189 on the census registration of citizens, which was opposed by the senate.¹⁰² The following year C. Valerius Tappo proposed that the Volsci be granted suffragium but four tribunes opposed the measure because it lacked auctoritas senatus. Normally, that would have settled the matter but Livy tells us that when it had been established that the decision lay with the populus, the tribunes relented and the bill went ahead to ratification in the assembly (Liv. 38.36.7–9). The passage is remarkable, as it appears to introduce a radically new constitutional principle – the suspension of tribunician collegiality and their right to block each other’s proposals. The implications would have been far-reaching, effectively removing one of the main regulatory mechanisms from the political system. More likely, therefore, Livy’s passing comment simply describes the negotiated solution that was reached when the opposing tribunes backed down under the rhetorical pretence of deferring to the People’s ‘sovereignty’.¹⁰³

It is, of course, impossible to generalise about an institution as complex as the Roman tribunate. Still, there seems to be little grounds for perceiving the office as inherently radical or ‘oppositional’, in the sense that it was expected to act as an institutional counter-weight to the senate or the consuls. Its historical and ideological bond to the plebs, of course, remained, but as the political meaning of ‘plebs’ changed fundamentally, so did the implications of this connection. When plebeians assumed supreme magisterial power, it no longer made any sense to define the tribunes as ‘defenders of the plebs’ – whom were they supposed to protect plebeians against? Tribunes evidently derived their powers from the plebs – and formally relied on its particular protection – but that did not set them apart since all office holders claimed popular mandates. It is therefore not surprising that we look in vain for any consistent political profile. Tribunes frequently disagreed amongst themselves over policy issues, reflecting the absence of any definite ideological character associated with their office.¹⁰⁴ At the same time, tribunes repeatedly found themselves at the centre of political controversy. Still, that was due to their pivotal role in the political process, which meant that virtually every issue, personal as well as policy-related, ended up on their – metaphorical – desk.¹⁰⁵ Looking at the forms their involvement took reveals no clear or consistent pattern or direction. The overriding impression is of ad hoc interventions responding to the particular circumstances of each case.

Nevertheless, their extensive powers – to propose new statutes, block proposals, halt public business, intercede on behalf of citizens and regulate the behaviour of members of the elite – made it imperative that effective controls were in place to ensure that tribunes exercised them responsibly, i.e. in accordance with the broad interests of the elite. The most fundamental tool was the simple principle of collegiality, which required consensus on contentious issues – and as Cicero noted, one could almost always find a dissenting tribune to block unwanted bills (Leg. 3.24). This method was not fool proof, however, and some controversial measures did manage to get onto the statute book. Unacceptable laws could subsequently be annulled by the senate on procedural or religious grounds, while troublesome tribunes might be punished afterwards by the censors.¹⁰⁶ These measures were applied only when the usual regulatory methods had failed; the primary means of reconciling the powers of the tribunes to the system of aristocratic government was through negotiation, persuasion and the application of informal pressure by senior senators, partly in private but also at contiones and at the final debates before votes were cast. Ultimately, one could argue that tribunician compliance with the principles of the res publica was rooted in social conditioning, education and the particular ethos inculcated in young nobles from an early age.¹⁰⁷

The aristocratic culture of co-operation went hand in hand with an equally strong competitive spirit. The fact that many tribunes also hoped for further advancement must have encouraged conformity. Thus, after the formalisation of the cursus honorum it became customary for tribunes to hold the office early in their career, normally between the quaestorship and the aedileship (although it seems to have been possible to go straight to the tribunate without the quaestorship, probably to expand the entry points to the senate.)¹⁰⁸ When the tribunes’ entitlement to a place in the senate was regulated later in the second century it marked the final step in their integration.¹⁰⁹

While the tribunes had become functional parts of the everyday working of the republic, their potentially disruptive powers remained intact. Reading between the lines of Livy’s ‘middle republic’ one senses a political system performing a precarious balancing act, which invariably involved the tribunes. The system functioned most effectively when the ruling class was able to maintain a degree of unity which could then be brought to bear on ‘dissident’ tribunes who threatened to rock the boat. In those situations the senatus auctoritas carried tremendous weight and often sufficed to bring them back into line, explaining why the system did not collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions. However, real problems arose when the senate was split or at loggerheads with powerful groups outside of it, above all the equites; then the tribunes were far more difficult to rein in.

The tribunate in many respects retained its institutional separation long after it had become an integral part of the Roman political system. The incorporation of the historically ‘oppositional’ tribunate into the plebeio-patrician state was an extended process which in some sense never reached full completion. The tribunate always stood apart from the rest of the institutional framework and maintained much of its original autonomy.¹¹⁰ It was formally still the office reserved for a subsection of the citizen body, albeit one that now made up the large majority. The tribunes continued to feature separately in official despatches, alongside the consuls and the senate, and it seems that as late as 201 a law existed (probably passed 232–209), banning anyone with a living father who had held curule office from standing for plebeian offices. The rule counteracted concentration of power by limiting the career options of young nobles and opening them up for novi homines, but it might also reflect an enduring perception of the tribunate as somehow distinct from the magistracies.¹¹¹ It was the tribunate’s anomalous status that allowed Polybius to identify the office as a uniquely ‘democratic’ element within his ‘mixed constitution’. His was, of course, a highly formalistic analysis of the Roman republic and it is precisely the tribunate’s formal distinctiveness that allowed this classification. It could therefore be argued that it was the tribunes, i.e. the persons holding the office, who became ‘normalised’, not the office itself; while tribunes on an individual level were fully part of the ruling class, they occupied an office that still carried traces of its original separateness. It was this feature that enabled the tribunate to be reinvented in the later republic.

These observations become relevant when we turn to the later second century and the dramatic events that prompted Sulla’s reform of the tribunate. In the second half of the second century there are signs of increased tension within the elite, tension which inevitably put greater pressure on the tribunes. It expressed itself in various cases of rule breaking, such as prehensio by tribunes in 151 and 138, when consuls were dragged off to prison.¹¹² Although attempts to define these instances as presaging the later upheavals of the Gracchi are somewhat teleological, the tendency towards greater friction and willingness to enter into open confrontation is difficult to dispute. The events of 133 illustrate both the problematic aspects of the tribunate and the factors which had neutralised them in the past. It saw a complete breakdown of the political process, the demotion of a tribunician colleague, an unprecedented attempt at re-election, a refusal to budge on crucial issues of landholding, foreign policy and public finances, with a catastrophic violent outcome. As such, the year 133 exposed structural weaknesses in the system, which had always been present but up until that point largely contained.

The fundamental problem facing the republic was, put simply, that legislation was far too easy to implement, since the assemblies provided only routine validation and there were few constitutional means by which a determined tribune could be stopped.¹¹³ Usually, it was done by the application of collective pressure or through tribunician intervention, neither method being certain of success. Therefore, confronted with a critical situation like the one in 133, the elite had no formal authority to make errant members comply. For that reason contested issues might at any time ‘spill over’ into the assemblies, placing these in a new role as the final arbiters on measures on which the ruling class had been unable to reach a negotiated agreement.¹¹⁴ The issue became most urgent when the elite’s views were not clear-cut and rival groupings leaned on the tribunes. The fact that the aristocratic republic was predicated on cooperation and general willingness to compromise naturally shifts the focus from the tribunes onto the senate, whose role it was to provide leadership and mediation when the ruling class was split. We may therefore briefly consider how the collective body of the elite fulfilled this vital function as well as the implications this had for the development of the ‘disruptive’ tribunate.

From a modern perspective, the senate appears as a constitutional paradox, since it formally held very limited powers but de facto acted as a ‘governing body’. This paradox is more apparent than real, however, especially when we think beyond conventional constitutional logic. Roman institutions were defined as much by custom and mos as through normative rules and allocated powers and jurisdictions. Thus, in the same way as the extensive powers of the populus were heavily circumscribed by practice and conventions, so the senate’s effective authority extended far beyond its formal powers. This was in fact the secret of its strength. As Hölkeskamp noted: ‘ … the power of the Senate was really based on the fact that it did not have any formally defined or precisely circumscribed responsibilities and was therefore not restricted to a specific set of concrete political topics or areas of “competence”. It was the very lack of positively defined “rights” that was the real reason for its immense authority.’¹¹⁵

In this context, it is important to reiterate that the senate was not a parliament, for despite acting as a deliberative body its primary purpose was to focus opinion and formulate a strategy behind which the ruling elite could unite. Debates were therefore only partly about weighing up and testing arguments; they were as much about reaching agreement and ‘streamlining’ opinion by identifying majority views and marginalising dissent. This is evident from the highly structured format of senatorial debates, where a strict speaking order was applied in accordance with rank and seniority.¹¹⁶ The taking of votes was therefore the exception rather than the norm, usually happening when the outcome was already clear and unequivocal. Discessio, in other words, served as a means of demonstrating unity, and was designed to paper over rather than expose divisions among the senators.¹¹⁷

The formation of senatorial policy thus relied on a high degree of consensus, and as long as that existed the senate’s lack of clear definition and formal authority was indeed a strength. However, when the elite were split, the senate became paralysed and powerless. It has been argued that the crisis of 133 reflected precisely the absence of senatorial leadership, since the senate provided no mediation between the warring tribunes.¹¹⁸ This was the moment the system failed dramatically and the open, indeed violent, clash between a tribune and his peers set in motion an ideological reinvention of the tribunate, which was possible because only the tribunes, not the tribunate, had been ‘normalised’. ‘Defence of the people’ could now be used to justify defiance of one’s peers in the senate, giving the traditional bond between tribunes and plebs a new political meaning. As David has argued, the transgressions of some tribunes in the late republic, including the breaking of rules for intercessio, the arrest of senior magistrates (prehensio) or the issuing of threats against them, and the demotion of other tribunes, were probably validated by the retrospective invention of early republican precedents.¹¹⁹ In this process, the ‘radical tribunate’ of the early republic may have been conceived, mirroring the ‘radical’ tribunate of the late republic, which it served to legitimise. This was possible because the archaic features, mentioned above, still set it apart from other public offices, and what made this reinvention so much more dangerous for the aristocratic republic was the way in which the stories pitted the tribunate against the senate rather than the patriciate, thereby creating the basis for an entirely new polarity between senate and tribunate. As such the historical redefinition of the tribunate may have provided further impetus to a succession of tribunes in the last century of the republic, who openly challenged the senate.

The failure of traditional means of managing the tribunate left the senate and its leaders with a seemingly insoluble problem: a central element of the ancestral constitution was no longer subject to collective control and threatened at any point to upset the established socio-political order.¹²⁰ It is against this background that Sulla’s reform of the tribunate may be viewed; for while the dramatic events of 88 provided the immediate trigger, the problem went much deeper. From a constitutional perspective it could be argued that by removing the tribunes’ ability single-handedly to propose (and effectively make) laws and enforcing the principle of collective government, Sulla merely rectified a structural flaw in the system; or put differently, he aligned theory and practice in the Roman constitution by giving the senate formal powers that matched its de facto governing position.

But the move was also utterly revolutionary and unprecedented, reflecting the extreme situation after the first civil war when normality had been suspended and the dictator settled personal and political scores with impunity. Under regular circumstances, neutralising the tribunate would have been unthinkable, however troublesome some tribunes may have appeared. And without the personal slight Sulla had experienced at the hands of Sulpicius, even he might not have taken the radical step of overturning centuries of constitutional practice. It may therefore not have been long after Sulla’s death that the first calls for a return to political normality were raised. Already in 78 the consul Lepidus seems to have embraced the issue of tribunician restoration, although the evidence is conflicting.¹²¹ Later in the 70s several tribunes campaigned for their reinstatement, including Sicinius and Macer. The first step in the dismantling of the Sullan reform came in 75, removing the ban on tribunes holding higher offices. It was passed by a staunch member of the nobility, Aurelius Cotta, and five years later two other pillars of the Sullan nobility, Pompey and Crassus, fully reinstated the tribunes’ legislative powers.¹²²

The debate over the tribunate is presented in our sources as a straightforward conflict between populus and senate, the latter having neutralised the powers of the people by eliminating the champions of their cause. This picture is bound to be oversimplified; as always when our sources refer to ‘the people’ we have no real idea whom they are talking about. In some respects the position of the senate was indeed strengthened, above all in relation to the courts and the equites. Still, contemporaries such as Cicero and Sallust describe it unambiguously as the triumph of the nobiles rather than the senate, and the reform must have entrenched the power of this inner circle even further. While the tribunate itself possessed no definite particular character, it did give Roman politics a dynamic aspect, which made it very difficult for any single faction or group of families to control it. The senate, far from being a single unified body – let alone a forum for open debate – was highly structured and hierarchically organised, with the formation of senatorial policy in the hands of powerful, consular families of long-standing prominence. The tribunate provided a potential counterweight to the entrenched power of the leading families which filled the ranks of consuls and consulares and generally held sway in the senate.¹²³ After the Sullan reform that was no longer the case, and with the curbs on the tribunate the political system lost its most active and unpredictable element. The Sullan reforms seriously limited the opportunities for ambitious politicians to make their mark, advance their careers or promote particular issues without noble consent. Indeed, Cicero could accuse the senators of subjecting the civitas to ‘regiam istam vestram dominationem’, ‘that monarchical tyranny of yours’, in the courts and in the whole res publica, a tyranny that was broken only when the tribunes were given back to the populus (Ver. 2.5.175).

The restoration of the tribunate may therefore not have been the ‘democratic’ backlash against ‘reactionary’ conservatives often assumed. It was supported, indeed implemented, by leading nobles, probably under pressure from other parts of the elite, who must have felt the domination of the Sullan faction stifling and oppressive. The extent of popular engagement may have been overestimated, although there is no reason to doubt it was welcomed by wide sections of the population.¹²⁴ Few probably benefitted personally from the tribunes’ right to intervene on behalf of citizens – a right so symbolically powerful that even Sulla did not challenge it.¹²⁵ Still, their historical role as ‘guardians of the plebs’ carried a strong ideological charge, which may have played a part in the eventual repeal of the Sullan reform. In a sense it simply marked a return to the ancestral constitution of which the tribunate was an integral element. As such it also responded to an innate traditionalism that could be found across Roman society. Even Cicero accepted that the tribunate had an important, not least symbolic, role to play as the embodiment of the ideal res publica as a polity founded on – and inseparable from – the populus. This was a fairly consistent stance that can be traced across his career, from the Verrines, where he emphasises the tribunes’ role as protector of libertas, alongside the magistrates, the courts, the senate and the populus itself, to his defence of the tribunate in the speeches for Cornelius.¹²⁶ In the Philippics, Cicero complains that good tribunes are no longer able to defend the state against violence and accuses Antony of having abolished intercessio (Phil. 1.25; 2.6). Even in the De legibus the tribunate is accorded a central role in his ideal constitution, which they regulate by blocking bad laws (3.11, cf. 3.23–5).

The ban on higher offices after the tribunate would not have endeared Sulla to the aspiring young aristocrats, for whom it represented an entry point to the senate or, more likely, a stepping stone on the career ladder that would take them above the ‘humble’ quaestorian class. There is no evidence for senatorial opposition to its repeal, and it is telling that Cotta, according to Cicero, incurred the displeasure of the nobiles – rather than the senators – for passing this measure.¹²⁷ Eventually, the complete restoration of the tribunate’s powers became almost inevitable and towards the end of the 70s there was little resistance left, with even Catulus supporting the repeal.¹²⁸ At that point the Sullan reform was most likely considered a step too far, and one which carried painful associations of tyranny and civil war.

The dismantling of Sulla’s tribunician laws returned Roman politics to the situation before his intervention, with the structural problems that had prompted it in the first place still unresolved. The tribunate presented an insuperable conundrum, being both disruptive and indispensable. Cicero could, on the one hand, accept the office as an essential part of the constitution and, on the other hand, rail against ‘vis tribunicia’ that in practice was beyond control. But that, we might note, was a quality of the office, not the office holders who included politicians ranging from Cato to Clodius. If Sulla’s reform was not a ‘conservative’ measure against a particular type of ‘popular’ politics as much as a radical restructuring of the constitution, the archetypal ‘optimate’ vanishes along with the category the dictator has come to personify. We are again reminded that while political conflict obviously was rife, it cannot be reduced to a simple binary scheme. That raises the question about how disputes were conceptualised and played out, or in other words: ‘What was Roman politics about?’

Content and ‘Style’ in Late Republican Politics

In the vast array of studies on late republican politics appearing in the last generation one particular argument seems to have gained almost universal traction, which is the notion that Roman politics was more than a zero-sum ‘power game’ but dealt with ‘real’ issues that mattered to the politicians who espoused them as well as to the population at large. This consensus has emerged as a reaction to what is often decried as the ‘cynical’ approach that – rightly or wrongly – has become associated with the works of Ronald Syme and others of his generation. The new paradigm may reflect the changing sensibilities of western scholars, not dissimilar to the reintroduction of ‘popular power’ into Roman politics. Among the first historians taking issue with the notion of politics as little more than a cover for personal ambition and elite rivalry was Moses Finley, who declared that: ‘What I cannot believe is that the electoral contests and military operations were a game for honour and booty, for titles and triumphs, and nothing else.’¹²⁹ Finley’s attempt to counter the somewhat reductionist ‘game’ model of Roman politics was welcome and overdue, but in recent years the balance has tipped entirely in the other direction, to the extent that many historians now identify ideological fault lines as the defining features of Roman politics.

Political opinion in Rome was frequently split and across a wide range of issues, but when we look at the stance taken on individual measures it is difficult to trace any consistent or clear-cut ‘party lines’. Christian Meier therefore suggested that senators tended to position themselves flexibly according to the nature of the issue, a characteristic for which he coined the term ‘Gegenstandsabhängigkeit’, ‘dependency on the matter at hand’.¹³⁰ The fluidity intrinsic to the formation of elite opinion is unsurprising since the basic distribution of power and resources hardly ever entered the discussion; the content of Roman politics remained remarkably limited by modern standards, a result partly of the narrow scope of the ‘state’ and partly of the general consensus that prevailed on most fundamental issues.¹³¹ The debate about the tribunate in the wake of Sulla’s reform was unparalleled in its constitutional implications and reflected the exceptional circumstances of the period. By contrast, new measures were by and large fairly modest in terms of their consequences, responding to current issues rather than shifting the balance of power and resources between major political constituencies. Even the most daring step in that direction, C. Gracchus’ reform of the repetundae court, merely reallocated influence from one section of the elite to another. And Clodius, the enfant terrible of the late republic, never attempted to undermine senatorial government as such.¹³² Interestingly, some measures with potentially far-reaching consequences were proposed to tackle short-term problems. For example, the entirely ‘respectable’ Ser. Sulpicius suggested changing the voting order in the assemblies, merely to curb electoral bribery.¹³³ The distribution of economic resources, above all land, was – for obvious reasons – a source of ongoing debate, but even here the divisions may have been far less clear-cut than often assumed. Cicero, for example, supported parts of the lex Flavia agraria in 60, provided private interests were protected. The senate, however, rejected it, suspecting more powers for Pompey, while in 59 the senate was about to support Caesar’s bill when Cato forcefully intervened, suggesting no senatorial objections in principle.¹³⁴ Similarly, Cicero’s campaign against Rullus in 63 implies that the bill initially had been well received, perhaps even by his own peers in the senate.¹³⁵

The large majority of senatorial sessions dealt with the issues of the day, many relating to foreign policy, which, of course, frequently gained a personal aspect. Confronted with these questions most senators adopted a stance influenced by a wide range of – not easily separable – motives, including political connections and expediency as well as the nature of the issue itself and the circumstances surrounding it – and indeed personal inclinations and principles. None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive, and trying to identify one as the decisive factor is likely to distort our understanding of the process. There was also a fundamental difference between modern politicians and Roman senators, who participated in government as members of their class and holders of public honores. ‘Doing politics’ was a function of their social status, not an expression of commitment to specific causes; the absence of programmes during electoral campaigns illustrates their ‘apolitical’ character. Therefore, it would probably be a mistake to expect the average senator to have entertained strong personal views, distinct from those of his peers. A certain ‘herd instinct’ is perhaps likely among the majority, allowing those with deeper convictions and powers of persuasion rich opportunities for influencing the outcome of debates. An obvious example is the Younger Cato, who, despite his relatively modest rank in the senatorial hierarchy, on several occasions shaped the majority view through the strength of his personality.¹³⁶ As noted earlier, in 59 the senators had been inclined to support Caesar’s agrarian law until Cato spoke up against it, in the same way as they apparently had favoured a more lenient approach to the Catilinarians beforehand. There was, it would seem, a considerable degree of open-endedness, perhaps even unpredictability, to the process of senatorial policy formation. Certainly, there is little trace of any unified ‘conservative’ block of ‘optimates’. For example, when the senate debated the crucial allocation of provinces in 56, the leading critics of the triumvirs presented no united front, each pushing for a different solution. Similarly, during the debate on the restoration of King Ptolemy of Egypt in January 56, Bibulus and Hortensius, supposedly close political allies, presented alternative proposals and showed no sign of co-ordination.¹³⁷

The role of the senate was partly practical, partly symbolic, and its deliberations served to express the position of the senatus as a single body. Its approval carried the status of auctoritas, a complex and multi-layered concept that went well beyond any simple constitutional classification of powers. Its primary function was to embody the collective will of the ‘elders’. The ideal outcome of the proceedings was a unanimous response which demonstrated the unity of the elite. The procedures were therefore carefully designed to elicit such a response, with highly formalised debates and strict hierarchies and speaking order. The overriding aim was to paper over disagreements rather than to expose them. Votes were therefore usually taken when the outcome was clear and unambiguous; the notion of senatus auctoritas carried by a narrow majority was almost a contradiction in terms.¹³⁸ One might go as far as saying that reaching agreement was more important than the content of this consensus, because oligarchic governments rely on internal unity for their survival.

It is against this backdrop that we may revisit the question of the ‘dissident’ tribunes, who played such a pivotal role in late republican politics. Traditionally, their powers were contained by a more or less formalised requirement that they be used only with the consent of the senate, although there were notable instances where that was ignored. During the late republic this situation occurred with increasing frequency, probably reflecting growing competition within the elite – rather than the rise of any ‘popular party’. The tribunes in question were roundly condemned, but interestingly the censure was expressed in moral rather than political terms; basically they were denounced as ‘bad people’. The standard term of political abuse was ‘improbus’, bad, which might be supplemented with a host of adjectives of a similar nature, e.g. ‘audax’, reckless, ‘sceleratus’, wicked, ‘malus’, bad, ‘perditus’, bankrupt, ‘temerarius’, impetuous, ‘levis’, fickle, ‘impius’, sacrilegious, ‘furiosus’, mad, ‘desperatus’, desperate.¹³⁹ The clear message conveyed by these terms of abuse is one of personal depravity, unpredictability and transgression. The terminology thus reflects the basic principles underlying the aristocratic republic, which required the individual to submit to the collective. Viewed from that perspective, the lack of conformity displayed by ‘troublemakers’ became signs of selfish ambition that endangered the very foundations of the existing political order.

There is no indication that they were ever conceived of as a particular type of politician, let alone labelled according to the policies they pursued. The political vocabulary is remarkable in its almost complete omission of any reference to the content of the actions that were condemned. For that reason it could be applied also to politicians conventionally categorised as ‘optimates’, such as Verres and Drusus the younger.¹⁴⁰ If their methods turned violent or caused civil disturbances, they would be described as seditiosi, irrespective of their aims and policies.¹⁴¹ It illustrates a peculiarly Roman form of discourse which operated with types of actions rather than policies and categorised politicians according to their character and degree of conformity.

The term ‘popularis’, which has come to dominate modern studies, was occasionally included among the labels used to censure opponents. Still, far from being the most common, it was in fact employed relatively sparingly in that sense.¹⁴² For a number of reasons, already discussed, it was not particularly well suited as a political signifier. It covered a surprisingly wide semantic spectrum, ranging from the highly laudatory, over neutral, to deeply pejorative. So unless the meaning was obvious from the context, a speaker would on every occasion have to specify how the word was used. This ambiguity set it apart from the usual political terms, which were all entirely unmistakable in their intent. Moreover, it associated the target with the populus, an indisputably positive concept in Roman politics, making it a somewhat double-edged sword in political invective; opponents might try to turn it into a form of praise by embracing its positive aspect. The interesting question is therefore why Cicero decided to use this particular term as basis for his digression in the Pro Sestio.

The ‘foundational’ text for the ‘optimates’/‘populares’-model is quite unusual in its choice of terminology and in its description of political categories. Cicero’s principal objective in this speech was to undermine Clodius’ claims to legitimacy and isolate him in every possible sense: from his peers and predecessors as well as from the populus. Clodius becomes not just a social outcast but also a political failure. Cicero therefore redefines the common term for the senate and its leaders, the ‘optimates’, to include a much wider section of the propertied classes, while contrasting them with ‘populists’, who for selfish reasons opposed this broad church of right-minded citizens. Normally, the latter would have been described in conventional derogatory terms such as improbi or audaces, but in this instance Cicero settled for ‘populares’. He probably did so because he wished to focus on two related meanings of the word, that of ‘popular’ and of ‘populist’; for whereas Clodius’ predecessors, including the Gracchi, had achieved genuine popularity through their populism, Clodius had not even managed that, since the people despised him and only hirelings applauded. In Cicero’s unique construction, Clodius was therefore not actually ‘popularis’ in the same sense as the Gracchi, whom he had tried but failed to emulate. He became separated not just from ‘respectable’ people, but also from the populus, the fundamental source of legitimacy in the Roman republic.

Cicero’s choice of words is carefully tailored to the specific point he is trying to make. If he had stuck to usual terms such as improbus and audax, his entire argument would have collapsed since the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Clodius would all have merged into a single unambiguous category of ‘bad people’, from which the latter could not be differentiated as being any worse. The key objective of Cicero’s strategy was precisely the isolation of Clodius, and by presenting Clodius as a ‘failed populist’ Cicero deprived him of the historical precedents that were vital to any politician venturing down a controversial path. As Cicero notes on several occasions, dissident tribunes tended to invoke notable predecessors to absolve themselves of the charge of novelty. Sometimes the models fall well outside the modern stereotype of the ‘popularis’, including Cicero’s hero Scipio Aemilianus, while elsewhere, such as the Pro Sestio, they are the classic examples of the Gracchi and Saturninus.¹⁴³ What they all held in common was personal popularity, and it was Clodius’ popular following that forced Cicero to extend his attack into a general disquisition about the nature of popularity, an excursus which despite its tendentious and self-serving nature casts a revealing light on a highly sensitive issue in Roman politics.

Popularity in the Late Republic

Cicero found himself up against one of the most effective popular leaders of the Roman republic: Clodius enjoyed wide support among the urban plebs and was able to call on their support at short notice, allowing him to dominate the political stage even when he held no public office. Faced with his opponent’s popular following, Cicero had to deconstruct the entire concept of popularity. He did so first by separating the ‘real people’ from the crowds rallying to Clodius’ cause. Cicero here draws on the common rhetorical distinction between the universally revered populus and the base manifestations of this concept, the multitudo or vulgus, which allows him to deny Clodius’ supporters, however numerous, the status of ‘the people’. In order to undermine Clodius’ position further Cicero notes the elusiveness of ‘popular opinion’ and hence popularity. He famously identifies three fora where the views of the people were expressed: contiones, electoral comitia, and the theatre and other public entertainment venues (Sest. 106–27). However, when he notes that populists confuse the reaction of a contional crowd with the sentiments of the entire populus, he is in effect observing that the populus as such has no meaningful way of expressing consent, which takes him dangerously close to questioning the very basis for the res publica; for while the comment may relate to the contio it is applicable to all claims of popular support, which invariably involved only a tiny minority of the population.

The fundamental problem was that while popularity in the broadest sense of general approval remained a source of immense prestige in Rome – precisely because of the ideological construction of the res publica – it was also inherently contestable. Claims to popularity were met with counter claims denouncing the apparent popularity of opponents as false, skewed or obtained by dishonourable means, by pandering to the people’s lowest instincts, irresponsibly catering to their material needs or simply buying their support. These arguments were feasible because of the difficulty involved in measuring popularity in Rome, a society without effective general elections, polls or mass media.¹⁴⁴ ‘Public opinion’ was therefore destined to remain a source of dispute in a society which attached such importance to popular legitimacy but had no effective means of gauging it and, in a constitutional context, had to rely on a purely formalised notion of consent.

It was as part of this attack on Clodius that Cicero created a new political category, which he labelled ‘populares’ and defined in opposition to the much-expanded ‘optimates’. They were identified as politicians who, driven by desire for popularity, commit irresponsible acts during their time in office. In some cases their activities did indeed make them popular, but more often they did not. The latter therefore belong to the paradoxical category of unpopular populist, of which Clodius is singled out as the prime example. The counter-intuitive description of Clodius as unpopular required that the very concept of popularity be redefined, which in itself tells us something about the sensitive nature of popularity in Roman politics.

Popularity was in principle a positive concept, gratia earned through honourable services and favours, and its attractions were considered self-evident and timeless. As Cicero’s own example shows, the benefits were often intangible; after his consulship he would never have to face another public ‘popularity test’, but that did little to reduce his famous appetite for personal acclaim.¹⁴⁵ Rather than a practical means to an end the pursuit of popularity was an essential and accepted part of the Roman elite’s one-upmanship. On the other hand, unseemly popularity-seeking of the kind Clodius and others were accused of raised suspicions of ‘populism’, routinely condemned as a character flaw and a potential source of civic disruption.¹⁴⁶ However, despite the moralising discourse against ‘populists’ it appears to have been a fairly common pattern of behaviour, which is probably best understood in structural terms as a function of the Roman career ladder. As importantly, it was not necessarily linked to – or indicative of – any particular type of politics, apart from the appeal to sections of the population outside the narrow circles of the nobility. Indeed, it might not even go beyond the adoption of a certain political style and personal demeanour. Intriguingly, one could apparently be a ‘populist’ without doing very much apart from acting like one.

Cicero illustrates this point in an interesting passage of the Pro Sestio, where he elaborates on the concept of ‘false popularity’. Cicero looks at five tribunes from 59 and considers their later careers. Three of them were respectable pillars of the establishment, of whom two, despite achieving nothing in their tribunate, had already reached the praetorship by 56, while the other one clearly was destined to do so. The two ‘populists’, on the other hand, had more mixed careers; one (Alfius Flavus) was unsuccessful in his attempt at the praetorship (Schol. Bob. 135, 151St.), while the other, even more disreputable (Vatinius), failed miserably when he sought the aedileship. Cicero recognises that the ‘moderate populist’, whom Cicero describes as ‘vir et bonus et innocens’, had not actually disgraced himself politically or passed any harmful bills. He had simply misjudged what the ‘real’ people wished and in his pursuit of popularity taken the wrong course (and supported Caesar). The passage underscores the point that in Cicero’s view ‘populism’ did not necessarily have any political content, but could express itself simply in a particular posture or style aimed at attracting popular attention and approval, in this case alignment with a prominent popular figure.

In making this point Cicero inadvertently collapses the political model he has just constructed, since it suggests that the sharp distinction between ‘populists’ and ‘respectable’ citizens which formed the core of his attack on Clodius in reality was far more blurred. Indeed, the artificial nature of these categories becomes even more apparent when we consider the careers of those who went down what Cicero would have called the ‘populist’ route. Cicero implies they were naturally shunned by upstanding ‘optimates’ and suffered for their political choices, a picture which has contributed greatly to the modern ‘party-model’ with its emphasis on ideological commitment and personal sacrifice. However, a quick look at the roll-call of tribunes usually classified as ‘populares’ shows that the large majority succeeded to the praetorship, in many cases without any apparent difficulties. For example, both the rejected tribunes from 59 actually went on to hold the praetorship, including Cicero’s bête noire Vatinius in 55 (and later the consulship in 47).

In a similar vein we find controversial tribunes in the third century such as C. Flaminius and Terentius Varro, who both challenged the senate but went on to become consuls, the former twice.¹⁴⁷ In the early second century Q. Terentius Culleo, tr. 189, passed a disputed bill but became praetor in 187, while L. Valerius Tappo, tr. 195, who clashed with Cato over the repeal of lex Oppia held the praetorship in 192.¹⁴⁸ Of the tribunes who supposedly ‘democratised’ voting in the later second century, the majority enjoyed distinguished later careers, including Cassius Longinus Ravilla (tr. 137, cos. 127, cens. 125), C. Papirius Carbo (tr. 131, cos. 120), C. Coelius Caldus (tr. 107, pr. 100/99, cos. 94), and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (tr. 104, cos. 96, cens. 92).¹⁴⁹ Only A. Gabinius, tr. 139, apparently reached no higher office. Even the tribune of 131 Labeo Macerio, who had tried to hurl the censor Metellus from the Tarpeian Rock, advanced to the praetorship in 122/121.¹⁵⁰ The tribune P. Decius, who prosecuted Opimius in 120 for his violent suppression of C. Gracchus, reached the praetorship in 115.¹⁵¹ As tribune in 103 Norbanus had prosecuted Servilius Caepio, causing disturbances and antagonising most of the senate, but nevertheless went on to become quaestor in 101, praetor 91/89, and consul in 83.¹⁵² C. Marius caused considerable controversy as tribune in 119 and stumbled in his attempt at the aedileship. Still, he managed to scrape through to the praetorship in 116 – and, of course, went on to hold seven consulships thereafter.¹⁵³ C. Memmius, tr. 111, tormented the nobility over its management of the Juguthine War and was described by Sallust as ‘vir acer et infestus potentiae nobilitatis’ (Jug. 27.1), but held the praetorship in 104, and was consular candidate in 100 when he was killed by Glaucia.¹⁵⁴ Several high-profile tribunes in the 70s were also elected to the praetorship, despite the controversy they caused in office, among them L. Quinctius (tr. 74, pr. 67), C. Licinius Macer (tr. 73, pr. 68), and M. Lollius Palicanus (tr. 71, pr. 69).¹⁵⁵ Pompey’s man Gabinius (tr. 67) progressed to the praetorship in 61 and the consulship in 58. In 61 the tribune Q. Fufius Calenus had assisted Clodius in the Bona Dea trial, incurring the wrath of many nobles, but still became praetor in 59 (and consul in 47).¹⁵⁶

There were, of course, some who fared less well, such as the tribune of 66, Manilius, who was prosecuted for maiestas, and Cn. Sicinius, tr. 76, about whom the sources hint at a violent end. Others again simply disappear from the record after their tribunate, including Claudius, tr. 218, C. Valerius Tappo, tr. 188, and C. Licinius Crassus, tr. 145. In their case absence of evidence is not proof of failure. Finally, the tribune of 67, C. Cornelius, also vanishes despite his elite support and connections to Pompey, which makes one suspect an early death.

What becomes clear is that going down what used to be called the ‘popularis’ route, supposedly a momentous step by which members of the elite seceded from their peer group in order to serve the interests of the people, in reality involved little risk. Only a few suffered grave consequences, which had obviously not been anticipated when they embarked on their activities. The notion of irreparable damage seems rooted in the ‘party’ model of Roman politics, which somewhat anachronistically implies it meant ‘crossing the floor’ and joining the opposite side. Populism – for that is how opponents regarded their actions – seems to have been considered a fairly ‘innocent’ transgression in most cases. Despite Cicero’s insistence to the contrary, it appears that for the most part it did their careers little harm. The entire category of ‘populists’ might therefore be seen as yet another result of Cicero’s strategy to isolate Clodius, which required clear demarcations to be drawn where none existed.

‘Populism’ typically described specific actions or forms of behaviour at certain moments, not a distinct category of politicians. It was probably an accusation many faced at some point during their career. Cicero himself was certainly accused of populism over his defence of Cornelius (cf. Vat. 5), and most likely also when he took on the case against Verres. As we saw, neither hurt his career, and the public (including the propertied classes without whose support one could not reach the highest offices) therefore seems to have given aspiring politicians considerable leeway to make a name for themselves. Thus ‘populism’ was particularly linked to early careers when younger men needed to raise their profile in order to stand out from the competition. Tribunes had just one year to make their mark and leave a lasting impression on the public that would decide their fate when the time came for the next round of elections. Name recognition was essential in Roman politics and the tribunate, with its extensive powers and prerogatives, served as a perfect vehicle for achieving that. It was also highly competitive, with ten equally ambitious younger men striving for public attention.¹⁵⁷ The tribunate was not the only option, however (and patricians were, of course, excluded), and one could decide to hold the aedileship instead as a means of attracting positive attention. An alternative – or parallel – route to fame was offered by the courts, where controversial prosecutions provided an effective way to public renown.¹⁵⁸

The ‘political public’ appears to have appreciated the needs of aspiring politicians at the early stages of their career; indeed it showed remarkable indulgence, even when they went beyond what was normally tolerated. Despite Cicero’s vilification, Clodius clearly enjoyed widespread support, also among the elite, many of whom even acquiesced to the exiling of Cicero.¹⁵⁹ And he not only reached the aedileship in 56 without any problems but was also well on course for the praetorship when he was killed in 52.¹⁶⁰ Again we look in vain for any sharp division between so-called populists and ‘optimates’; in reality, the strategy was probably relatively common and broadly accepted as a phase which many politicians went through during their career.

This does not mean that popularity was no cause for concern, and Cicero’s Pro Sestio is a rare attempt to grapple with the problem of the popular – but disruptive – politician who was able to claim superior legitimacy, authority, and prestige because of his gratia and widespread support. To counter these claims Cicero effectively resorted to sophistry. On the one hand, he distinguished between the right and the wrong kind of popularity, the former achieved by honourable means and for the right ends, the latter irresponsibly and for purely selfish reasons. On the other hand, he divided the populus into the real and the false people, thereby drawing attention to the basic problem in Rome, namely that popular legitimacy essentially was notional since the ‘will of the populus’ remained fundamentally elusive. Both sets of distinctions are, of course, rhetorical and transparently self-serving. But while they hardly qualify as an analysis of Roman politics, they do draw our attention to the language of politics and the oblique and complex ways in which it relates to ‘practice’.

Discourse and Ideology

In recent years the language, rhetorical strategies and arguments presented by political agents during the late republic have become the object of renewed scrutiny, resulting in some highly sophisticated and important studies. This has also added further weight to the notion of ‘troublesome’ tribunes constituting a distinct ‘popular’ movement in the late republic. In surviving speeches delivered at contiones, in the senate and even in the courts, scholars have identified the outline of two sharply contrasting political ideals, one championing the interests of the people and the other emphasising the primacy of the senate. The former, mostly espoused by tribunes, powerfully asserted the rights of the populus and fought for its libertas against senatorial oppression, while the latter insisted on the senate’s prerogatives and right to guide public policy.

The two discourses might at first seem to suggest a political world divided by almost irreconcilable differences in values and ideology. But before looking more closely at the debate itself we may note that it adds yet another paradox to Roman politics; for the discourse generally appears to be far more radical in tone and argumentation than the actual issues under discussion. Thus, no matter how emphatically the people’s interests and ‘sovereignty’ may have been asserted, the republic never saw any concrete attempts to change the nature of Roman society or shift the balance of power. There is, in short, a peculiar incongruence between the ‘popular’ rhetoric and the far more modest initiatives it was used to promote.¹⁶¹

The question we have to ask is therefore whether all is really as it seems. Was the political stage dominated by two fixed ideological positions or are we in fact dealing with a set of rhetorical strategies defined by the constitutional structure of the Roman state? The res publica rested on the twin pillars of senatus populusque Romanus, which ideally acted in unison, the populus remaining ‘sovereign’ while accepting the leadership of its elected magistrates who followed the advice of their peers in the senate. However, since tribunes and magistrates were not bound by the advice of the senate but could act on their own, disputes were almost inevitable and in that case the populus always prevailed. The implication was that either side of a conflict had to articulate their case in very specific terms dictated by the formal distribution of powers in the res publica. Or put differently, the constitutional framework in which politicians operated automatically turned policy disagreements into rhetorical contests between populus and aristocracy.

Tribunes who failed to get the backing of their peers, or decided to ignore them altogether, were bound to invoke the powers invested in them by the plebs. In tactical terms that meant they could justify their course of action only by insisting that popular libertas trumped all objections from the senate. Their opponents, for their part, had no other option than to stress the senate’s traditional leading role and condemn the breach of the mos maiorum which the tribunes’ actions represented. It follows that all political arguments were conducted according to a particular formula which pitted the people’s libertas against the senate’s authority. Political agents on either side of a dispute had little choice but to frame the discourse in those particular terms. The impression of two oppositional ideologies may therefore be the product of a specific rhetorical ‘game’, whose rules and conventions became so standardised that they could even become the object of parody.¹⁶²

A closer look at the argumentation also suggests that the underlying ideological tenets were considerably more unified than often realised; for while libertas populi Romani and senatus auctoritas may have been invoked by opposing sides of political disputes, neither of these concepts were questioned in principle by their adversaries. It is, for example, extremely rare for a tribune or any other politician at loggerheads with the senate to attack the institution itself or question its authority. Not only were they themselves members of that body, but its auctoritas also appears to have been recognised as a fundamental part of the Roman constitution, unchallenged even by its fiercest critics. In Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum the tribune Memmius, who waged a relentless campaign against leading nobles, presented himself as a defender of the senatus auctoritas. Conversely, Clodius could, as we saw, be blamed in public for splitting the ‘optimates’ (i.e. senators), with the clear implication that not only was he part of that class but also that the charge would damage him. When Labienus prosecuted Rabirius in a trial that is often seen as a direct attack on the senatus consultum ultimum, he was accused of slandering the senate, which again suggests that even ‘dissidents’ would never admit to targeting the senate as such.¹⁶³ To avoid that charge they typically denounced parts of the senate, usually the leading nobiles, accusing them of unduly dominating their peers.¹⁶⁴ Their opponents, they insisted, were therefore not the senate but a small clique which prevented it from exercising its free judgement. To further tarnish their motives these ‘pauci’ were often described as driven by personal animus and self-interest rather than political principle. Cicero’s Pro Cornelio, as we saw, offers a revealing glimpse into the argumentative strategy employed in these situations, showing how a speaker would defend the senate while criticising the ‘oligarchs’. Cicero had already used it to good effect in the Divinatio in Caecilium and the Verrines, and later it would form a central plank of Caesar’s self-justification in the Bellum civile, which argued that rather than fighting the senate he was in fact restoring its autonomy. Sallust even has Catiline, in his famous last address, encourage his men to fight for libertas, while claiming his opponents merely sought to uphold ‘potentia paucorum’ (Cat. 58.11).

Also on the other side of the argument the position was considerably more nuanced than the traditional ‘party-model’ allows. While casting doubt on the motives, wisdom, and popularity of their opponents, the proponent of the senatorial majority view never seems to have tried to undermine tribunes by questioning the supremacy of the populus or the powers invested in their officials.¹⁶⁵ Instead they justified their position by arguing that it was precisely the people’s best interest that informed the senatorial view. What might appear to be a confrontation between two opposite political principles thus turns out be a rhetorical contest in which both sides claimed to be the true defenders and exponents of a shared set of ideals.

Morstein-Marx aptly described the striking political uniformity of the Roman republic as an ‘ideological monotony’. He coined this phrase to define the oratory presented at public meetings and therefore suggested we might be dealing with a specific ‘contional ideology’, shaped by the need of speakers to appeal to popular audiences.¹⁶⁶ However, when we look more broadly at political rhetoric there seems to be little difference in tone or content between speeches delivered in courts, at contiones, or to the senate.¹⁶⁷ Cicero could, for example, warn a popular assembly that the trial of Rabirius was an attack on auctoritas senatus and consensio bonorum (Rab. perd. 2–4). Conversely, when Cicero insists that he is the true popularis, i.e. ‘defender of the people’, he does so both at contiones and in the senate.¹⁶⁸ Also, speeches addressed to senators are focused overwhelmingly on the freedom and interests of the populus Romanus. Thus in Cicero’s speech to the pontifices on his house he invokes the populus Romanus no fewer than eighty-six times. One passage is particularly instructive since he first recalls earlier peaceful times resting on the people’s libertas and the senate’s guidance, before comparing them to the age of Clodius, which was marked by the crushing of the people’s libertas and the extinction of the senate’s auctoritas.¹⁶⁹ Such instances are far from isolated, similar points being made in e.g. Cicero’s thirteenth Philippic, which repeatedly pairs senatus auctoritas and libertas populi Romani.¹⁷⁰ Even in private correspondence, the two central ideals of Roman public life are presented as equal and inseparable, as happened in Cicero’s letter to Plancus in 43 (Fam. 10.6.2 (SB 370)). Examples such as these have often been dismissed as aristocrats stealing the clothes of their ‘popularis’ opponents for political gain, but not only does the argument presuppose the existence of fixed ideological identities, it also overlooks the widespread use of this type of language across the political spectrum, even among the senatorial leaders themselves.¹⁷¹

All participants in public life appear to have subscribed to a unified vision of the res publica, in which the senate’s auctoritas and the people’s libertas were not defined in opposition to each other.¹⁷² They were complementary and inseparable precisely because the elite saw itself as the protectors of the public interest. While it is easy to doubt the sincerity of such claims, we cannot exclude the possibility that Roman senators may have believed their own rhetoric and seen themselves as true defenders of the common good – which just happened to coincide with those of their own class.¹⁷³ Even Nasica’s notorious outburst at a contio: ‘Be silent, citizens, if you please. I understand better than you what is for the public good’, is for all its aristocratic haughtiness ultimately phrased as an expression of concern for the people’s interest.¹⁷⁴

There were important political implications of this shared ideological platform, for as long as the elite consistently spoke the language of inclusion and popular freedom, it remained almost impossible to formulate a genuinely democratic alternative to the oligarchic regime. It followed that the political system as such never became subject to debate, at least not in the public sphere, which was dominated entirely by the issues of the day. The closest we come to a discussion about the fundamentals is Cicero’s De legibus, where his brother Quintus expresses what may be the most sustained case for oligarchic reform that has reached us. He is, however, countered by the character of Cicero himself who wishes to retain the constitution largely intact, despite its apparent weaknesses.¹⁷⁵ Whether similar theoretical exercises were produced from a ‘democratic’ perspective is unclear, but there is no trace of them in the surviving record. To our knowledge no Roman politician ever proposed legislation that would significantly shift the balance of power enshrined in the ancestral constitution; the political system was therefore destined to remain unchanged despite its many paradoxes and contradictions. But within this framework rhetorical strategies evolved which could be used to justify open conflict rather than compromise, a development that would have serious consequences for the Roman republic and take us to the much-debated ‘fall’ which marked the end of collective government.

The End of the Republic

Since the renaissance historians and political theorists have argued about the nature and causes of the process by which the aristocratic government of Rome came to a dramatic end during the first century BCE.¹⁷⁶ One of the intriguing aspects of the ‘fall of the republic’ is its relatively limited impact and scope. It did not mark the collapse of Roman society or civilisation and the Roman state did not disintegrate but continued to thrive for centuries afterwards. Neither did the ‘fall’ affect Rome’s overseas empire, which survived intact and was even expanded despite the upheaval. No province cast off Roman rule, nor did the empire split into multiple kingdoms or polities, as had happened to the Macedonian empire after the death of Alexander. The social order also remained largely untouched by the turmoil, with the basic hierarchies carrying on into the imperial era – although the remnants of the old aristocracy assumed a new role as court nobility. The changes were thus largely confined to the political sphere; for however traumatic the experience of civil war, it was essentially the transition from one type of government to another.

The ‘fall of the republic’ also happened remarkably fast. Just a few decades after Cicero in the 50s had provided vivid eyewitness accounts of a creaking but still functioning republic, there was little left of the old power structure; civil war had brought an end to centuries of aristocratic power sharing and left a single ruler in its place. While the eclipse of the republican elite was abrupt and irreversible, the roots of its decline have traditionally been traced back almost a hundred years, to 133, when the tumultuous events of Ti. Gracchus’ tribunate supposedly marked the beginning of the ‘late Republic’. As already noted, sharp periodisations of this kind invariably raise methodological issues, and in this case it seems clear that the changes ushered in by the Gracchi were less radical than often assumed; there is, for example, little evidence that they introduced a new kind of ideologically based politics that split the elite down the middle. The year 133 does, however, still represent an important milestone in the history of the republic.

Ti. Gracchus’ tribunate saw the gathering of a perfect political storm in which a number of sensitive issues came together to highly combustible effect. Political conflict, sometimes divisive and acrimonious, was, of course, nothing new – despite Livy’s attempt to present the ‘middle republic’ as a consensual age largely devoid of domestic strife. Still, solutions had usually been found through a combination of informal negotiation and peer pressure (and a certain willingness to defer to superiors). In 133 a number of factors prevented that from happening. Traditional factional politics played a part, as powerful senators lined up behind the tribune in a challenge to rival sections of the elite. On a more personal level Ti. Gracchus himself, already resentful towards parts of the senate after the Numantine affair, seems to have been unusually strongly committed to the reform, as indicated by the demotion of Octavius and the attempt at re-election.¹⁷⁷ Most crucially, however, the economic importance of the agrarian issue itself entrenched elite opposition to an unprecedented degree. Gracchus’ proposed redistribution of public land, ager publicus, threatened vital interests of the Roman ruling class, including senators, equites and boni in general, whose power and status depended directly on the security of their landed estates.¹⁷⁸ By targeting their holdings of ager publicus, which may have allowed long-term possessio but not Quiritary ownership, Gracchus’ reform exposed the precarious nature of parts of the elite’s economic basis.¹⁷⁹ At the same time, Gracchus’ plan responded to an actual demand for land among the Roman poor, which at least during the initial stages ensured Gracchus unparalleled popular support and boosted his position to a level where it gave rise to accusations of seeking dominatio. As a result of these personal, political, and economic factors, compromise on either side became impossible, causing senators to intervene directly and physically remove the threat posed by the tribune. In doing so, they inadvertently exposed a fundamental weakness of the aristocratic republic, which relied on consensus but, as their actions showed, had few legal means of enforcing compliance.

A basic paradox of Roman politics was that real power came to reside in the one body that formally held very little. The system therefore worked on the premise that the bodies which held the power did not exercise it. That applied to the populus in particular but also to magistrates and tribunes, who were restrained by their brief tenure, collegiality, and peer pressure, and in the case of the lower magistracies also by their hopes for future preferment. A central thesis of this study is therefore the direct reversal of Polybius’ thesis that the secret of Rome’s success lay in her political system. Rome seems to have triumphed despite her constitution, because she had found a modus vivendi which neutralised the weaknesses inherent in her political make-up, above all its lack of a clear and workable division of powers.¹⁸⁰ The secret of the republic’s success should therefore be sought outside her constitution, in social, ideological, and geo-political features. Of course, the checks and balances described by Polybius were not just a figment of his imagination. But his theoretical framework led him to identify these interdependencies as part of the political system, whereas in fact they were external to these institutions. The system worked because of strong social cohesion underpinned by a powerful ideological framework often summed up in the concept of mos maiorum, the traditions and norms passed down from the ancestors.¹⁸¹ When observance of this unwritten code of conduct began to weaken, the flaws in the constitution became all too apparent.

As explored in previous chapters, a major consequence was that the assemblies acquired a new role, becoming instruments of government, controlled by annual office holders rather than by the elite collectively. This development in turn paved the way for unlimited influence accruing in the hands of individuals. Examples range from Sulla’s dictatorship, via the commands of Pompey, to the provincial tenure of Caesar, his later powers as consul and dictator, and finally culminating in the lex Titia which formalised the ‘Second Triumvirate’. These measures were incompatible with the aristocratic principles of power sharing but in formal terms perfectly legal. Thus there was nothing to prevent the res publica from voting itself out of existence through an entirely legitimate process. Indeed, there were no limits to the assembly’s powers or the scope of its decisions – as long as correct procedure was followed; the highly formalised concept of legitimacy investigated in the opening pages turn out to have far-reaching consequences.¹⁸²

Characteristic of the late republic is less the widening of ideological divides often envisaged, as much as the exponential rise in ‘rule-breaking’ among members of the elite. Although the Roman republic functioned only as long as the ruling class adhered to a basic code of conduct, we find from the time of the Gracchi a growing disregard for traditional norms and conventions. The principle of collective government was increasingly honoured in the breach, as illustrated by the new role of the tribunes as independent legislators with direct access to the assemblies. The introduction of violence as a political tool marked a natural corollary to this trend. Despite deep-rooted social and religious taboos against political violence, its use soon became institutionalised by the ruling class itself; in 121 the senate issued the first so-called senatus consultum ultimum in order to lend the killing of C. Gracchus and his followers a veneer of legality. It took the form of a ‘decree of last resort’, exhorting citizens to take up arms in defence of the res publica.¹⁸³ The decree lacked formal legitimacy but would nevertheless be employed repeatedly over the following decades whenever the senate faced a serious challenge to its position. Although originally an attempt to demonstrate the authority of the senate, the ‘normalisation’ of force highlighted the basic weakness at the heart of government, which was no longer able to assert itself in the traditional manner. The senate’s powerlessness was most vividly demonstrated in 52 when it saw no alternative but to invite Pompey to assume full control of the state in order to restore order in Rome after the death of Clodius, a far-reaching step that would lead directly to civil war.

The weakening of elite cohesion went beyond politics and also affected the military sphere, once the bedrock of aristocratic rule. As Wolfgang Blösel has recently shown, in the late republic extended military service was no longer the norm among the elite, leaving many nobles with little experience in the field. Provincial administration, closely connected to military commands, saw a similar development, since it was increasingly avoided by members of the elite reluctant to leave the capital for longer periods. Not only did this development affect the traditional identity of the ruling class, it also led to disparities in outlook, values, and, above all, competences. Thus, the result was a shortage of qualified commanders, which in turn led to extended tenures for those capable, paving the way for the ‘great men’ of exceptional military clout, who with their excessive prestige and resources were able to take on the republic itself.

Together these factors suggest something quite remarkable happening during this period, namely a ruling elite that appears to lose its collective sense of purpose and instinct of survival, becoming seemingly oblivious to the fundamentals on which its ascendancy depended. It remains a striking fact that the ‘fall of the republic’ was not caused by any threat external to the elite; what we are observing is a class that had reached a point where it was no longer capable of upholding its own rule. The question is how we explain such a phenomenon. A common approach has focused on increased competitive pressures on the elite, partly driven by the growth of empire, which raised the stakes and weakened traditional restraints. While undoubtedly true, the question is whether such a general explanation tells the whole story; after all, the Roman elite had always been competitive, often balancing precariously between consensus and disruptive individualism. So what were the specific factors that eventually pushed it over the edge?

Sallust famously insisted that the growth of empire had destroyed old-fashioned virtue by introducing greed, self-indulgence, luxuria and materialism. While obviously couched in conventional terms of personal moral failings, his analysis was also rooted in contemporary experience. The huge influx of wealth and resources from the provinces had inevitable consequences for the cohesion of the Roman elite. Not only were the proceeds of empire not evenly distributed among its members; it also led to a vast increase in the expenditures associated with the pursuit of honores. The direct cost of politics (e.g. bribery) grew enormously, as did the pressures to conform to the increasingly opulent lifestyle expected of those in the public eye. The result was a further polarisation of the elite, which saw greater disparities in wealth as well as a corresponding rise in personal indebtedness. The rapid fluctuations in the economic fortunes of individual politicians are well documented and the – seemingly ever-present – spectre of bankruptcy must have further contributed to the destabilisation of the elite.¹⁸⁴ It gave political competition a much sharper edge than had previously been the case; failure was no longer a simple matter of wounded pride but had potentially ruinous consequences for a politician’s social status and economic standing. Viewed from this perspective the patterns of rule-breaking and disregard for established norms we can observe in the later republic become logical responses to a new economic reality. Catiline may be the classic example of an indebted aristocrat driven to desperate actions, but most likely he was simply an extreme manifestation of a wider structural problem, which affected large sections of the Roman elite. Indeed, their willingness to join military adventures may at least in part be explained by the financial incentives they offered; after all, civil war invariably involved redistribution of private property on a vast scale.¹⁸⁵

Political violence – and its most extreme form of civil war – was a symptom of political instability as well as one of its causes, at the same time expressing and escalating underlying conflicts.¹⁸⁶ As it became more common, contradictions inherent in the political system were exposed, with cracks in the constitutional setup widening under the strain of elite competition. The distribution of powers meant the republic could function only if all involved played by a certain set of – mostly unwritten – rules, which were increasingly flouted in the late republic, a process undoubtedly accelerated by the frequent experience that one could break the consensus without suffering long-term career damage.¹⁸⁷ Erich Gruen famously argued that the ‘fall of the republic’ was not the inevitable result of an ‘autonomous’ process of terminal decline but was caused by a single disastrous event, the outbreak of civil war in 49.¹⁸⁸ But while Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon may have been the immediate trigger for the ‘fall’, civil war becomes a reality only when a number of structural preconditions are in place, most obviously the complete breakdown of elite consensus. And since wars are not conducted by generals and their lieutenants alone, without a populace willing to join the warring factions and fill the ranks of their armies no civil conflict can ever reach the scale of the late republican wars.

The society that witnessed the aristocracy’s dramatic collapse was a very different one from that which had seen its rise to power. In material terms, most ordinary Romans of the late republic, unlike their mid-republican ancestors, probably benefitted little from the expanding empire. The population appears to have been growing along with economic polarisation and general impoverishment.¹⁸⁹ At the same time, slave labour was imported on a vast scale to serve the needs of an increasingly distant elite. Indebtedness must have been common also among the poor, who would often have suffered displacement as a result. These developments had direct political repercussions, as demonstrated by Ti. Gracchus’ attempt to address the problem. In addition there were crucial military implications. The traditional system of recruitment, which had drawn exclusively on the class of small landowners, was reformed and proletarians admitted to the legions. As Peter Brunt demonstrated, the process provided a fertile breeding ground for the rise of ‘private armies’ controlled by individual commanders rather than the senate; ultimately, it was the failure to keep military forces under effective public control that sealed the fate of the republic.¹⁹⁰

Needless to say, the particular course taken by these events was contingent on a variety of factors, several of which have already been mentioned. However, one element has received relatively little attention in this context and that is the contribution of the Italian revolt in 91, which may have played a more pivotal role than often appreciated.¹⁹¹ The destabilising effect of the conflict lay not just in the vast expansion of the Roman citizen body which followed the allied defeat, but also in the fact that for the first time in over a hundred years it brought large-scale military campaigning back to Italian soil. The impact on Roman politics was profound as well as instantaneous. Already in 88, Sulla exploited the presence of standing armies in Italy to seize power and for a period suspend the republican government altogether.¹⁹² The crucial transition from political violence to civil war was, in other words, due to a coincidence of exceptional, essentially unrelated factors; the fact that a major war against foreign enemies was being fought directly on Rome’s doorstep offered unprecedented opportunities for generals to grab power. More specifically, it allowed the rivalry between Marius and Sulla to be taken to an entirely new level.¹⁹³ The former’s extraordinary career and run of consulships had created deep divisions within the elite and vividly demonstrated the limits to the nobility’s power. Sulla’s aristocratic ‘revolution’ represented a direct response to this challenge, but it could never have happened without the allied uprising turning the geo-political landscape of Italy up-side-down.¹⁹⁴

The Social War was not just instrumental in turning political conflict into civil war; there were also long-term demographic consequences, which further unsettled the republic. The allied revolt led to the wholesale incorporation of the Italians into the Roman state. The outcome was an exceptionally large, disparate and culturally heterogeneous population, which comprised foreign peoples who had recently attempted to overthrow Roman hegemony. Many of them suffered material losses and displacement as a result, and it seems a fair assumption that substantial sections of this vastly increased citizen body probably felt little or no loyalty towards the res publica Romana, of which they had become part. The presence of recent opponents in the Roman armies during the first century must therefore be taken into account when trying to understand the events of the late republic, since they undoubtedly added another degree of volatility to an already unstable situation. Prior to the war Rome had in a sense been sitting on a ticking time bomb, being dependent on allied manpower but refusing their demands for an equal share of the empire. The aristocracy’s failure to find a peaceful solution to what was at that time the most pressing and potentially dangerous issue facing Rome was to have far-reaching consequences for its own long-term survival. As Ronald Syme noted long ago, the ascent of the first emperor also marked the moment when the Italians finally came close to the levers of power and in effect replaced the old nobility.¹⁹⁵