Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part II
The Roman Republic was a mess.
Wealth and power did what wealth and power usually does: it corrupted the political system. Rome’s money troubles, prevalent in the time of Cato the Elder (234-149 BCE) were over. The final defeat of Carthage in 146 BCE paved the way for further conquest in the Mediterranean, and the cash came rolling in.
Upper class Romans got land and slaves and money and seats in the Senate, which they used to consolidate their power and make sure that they stayed high while the lower classes stayed low. The excesses of the rich—sex scandals, wild parties, and the occasional recreational slave execution—earned them plenty of enemies among the lower classes.
There was a very clear sense that Rome was on the wrong track.
(If you'd rather listen than read all this, click the link below for the podcast episode):
https://shows.acast.com/historys-trainwrecks/episodes/015-stubborn-nags-of-ancient-rome-part-ii
The corruption of the ruling classes provided openings for ambitious young men to skip the usual paths to power, and Rome saw a series of brutal dictators running things in the first century BCE. The common people of Rome and the allied people of Italy, who did the fighting and paid the taxes without benefit of citizenship, didn’t much like that either.
If Rome needed dictators to ensure political stability, it also needed uptight conservatives to fearlessly remind these all-powerful tyrants of the ancient values they claimed to support, and make huge nuisances of themselves.
Reign of Terror Safety Tip Number Two Hundred Fifty-Seven: Despots do not like persistent nagging.
Enter Cato the Younger. Plutarch says that, “even from his infancy, in his speech, his countenance, and all his childish pastimes, he discovered an inflexible temper, unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything.”
Cato the Toddler was not off to a great start.
Roman early education was no picnic; beatings and verbal abuse were common. Cato was fortunate to have a patient tutor named Sarpedon, who was more interested in educating his students than smacking them around. Sarpedon reported that Cato was obedient and would do whatever he was asked, “but he would also ask the reason, and inquire the cause of everything.”
I’m guessing Sarpedon might have wanted to knock young Cato around a bit now and then. Or maybe he really was as patient as Plutarch says.
Cato was about four years old during the run up to the Social War, when Italian allies of Rome, who had fought alongside the legions for centuries, revolted in order to press the Senate to grant them Roman citizenship and all the privileges that came with it. Pompaedius Silo, one of the Italian commanders, was a friend of Cato’s uncle and came to their house (where Cato and his siblings had lived since their parents died) to convince Cato’s uncle, Livius Drusus, to support the rebel cause.
He stayed for several days. At one point Silo playfully tried to get the children of the house on his side. He asked, “will you entreat your uncle to befriend us in our business?” All the other children readily agreed, apparently not yet fully up-to-speed on complicated peninsular political and military entanglements.
Cato remained silent, glaring at Silo. The general asked him, “And you, young sir, what say you to us? Will not you, as well as your brother, intercede with your uncle on our behalf?” Cato said not a word. The general, exasperated by the four year-old’s obstinate silence, hung the boy out the window by his feet and told him to consent or he would drop him.
Cato, upside down, folded his arms and refused to say a word.
Silo brought the boy back in and said to one of his compatriots, “What a blessing for Italy that he is but a child. If he were a man, I believe we should not gain one voice among the people.”
***
The two Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, used loopholes in the Roman governing system to advance the causes of the Roman poor and the Latin allies of Italy, whose men fought in the legions and paid tribute to Rome while the spoils of victory went exclusively to upper class Roman citizens. Tiberius proposed capping the fortunes of the rich and distributing public lands to the poor. Gaius offered Roman citizenship to Rome’s Italian allies.
Both brothers died violently—Tiberius was murdered by a mob, and Gaius was chased through the streets of Rome after the Senate declared him an enemy of the people. As he ran, “all the spectators, as at a race, urged Gaius on to greater speed, not a man came to his aid, or even consented to furnish a horse when he asked for one” and he fled across the Tiber river and killed himself before he could be captured.
The Senate followed up by a mass purge of his followers, declared the problem solved, and built a Temple of Concord to symbolize Rome’s turning of the nasty populist corner to a time where everything could go back to the way it was.
Nice try, Roman Senate.
***
If the Roman elites were going back to business as usual, leaving all the underlying tensions unresolved, it was going to be up to someone else to take charge.
Enter the generals.
Rome was a militant state. Its fame, fortune and fear depended upon its ruthless and relentless legions. By this time in the Republic’s history, finding soldiers for the legions was difficult. Only men who owned property could serve, and land was being consolidated in the hands of patrician Romans who were no more likely to strap on an eighty-pound pack and march off to fight barbarian tribes than they were to grant voting rights to peasants.
It would take a war to make something happen.
Meet Jugurtha, king of Numidia. He took advantage of Rome’s political inertia and corruption to wreak havoc in Africa, using the spoils of his victories to bribe Senators to leave him alone and even paying off a Roman army sent against him to head back home.
It was Roman exasperation with Jugurtha making them look like idiots that stiffened enough senatorial resolve to send an army against him. This one was led by an ambitious fellow named Gaius Marius, a novos homo or new-money man who wanted to be consul. Using the precedent established during Rome’s wars with Carthage, Marius ended the property requirement for service in the legions, raised a massive army, and defeated the Numidian king, who died in an underground prison after being paraded through the streets of Rome in chains.
Marius and his right hand man, Cornelius Sulla, were the heroes of the hour. Marius was elected to the first of his unprecedented seven consulships and reformed the Roman army, changing from a draft system to open recruitment. Legionnaires could now share in the spoils of victory. Though soldiering was a hard way to make a living, so was staying home in poverty growing things in the ground. The ranks of the legions swelled.
Their loyalties were to their commander, who cared for them and fed them and gave them a share of the treasure captured in battle, not the flabby, stuck-up old Roman Senate.
Rome was at peace for a while until the Senate got uppity again and passed a decree in 95 BCE expelling all non-Romans from Rome. In reaction to the outcry, Marcus Livius Drusus was elected Tribune of the People. He proposed “a division of state lands, the enlargement of the Senate, and a conferral of Roman citizenship to all freemen of Italy.”
The last guy who had tried that had been chased through the streets of the city, then fell on his own sword to prevent capture and execution. But maybe things would work out better for Drusus.
Well, they didn’t. Drusus was assassinated in 91 BCE, sparking what was called the Social War (the Latin word socii means ‘ally’). The Italian states revolted against Rome, led in part by Pompaedius Silo, the fellow who tried to bring toddlers over to his point of view by hanging them out of windows. And that tribune who got himself assassinated? He was Cato’s uncle.
Needless to say, Cato had a serious interest in what was going on.
***
Marius, Rome’s new jack of all trades and crisis manager, was recalled to engage the Italians. He and reliable old Sulla defeated the Italians in several battles before ending up dug in behind fortifications to wait the enemy out.
Pompaedius Silo, that funny funny guy, taunted Marius. “So if you are such a great general, Marius, why not come down and fight it out?”
Marius replied, “Well, if you think you are any good a general, why don’t you make me?”
This stalemate went nowhere, Marius was relieved of command, and in 90 BCE, a law was passed granting citizenship to all Italians not under arms against Rome.
Problem--kind of--solved.
领英推荐
For now.
***
As was the case whenever Rome was weak, kings in the border territories raised armies to see what they could get away with. King Mithridates of Pontus invaded Roman territory during the Social War. Once the war was over, taking down Mithridates meant riches for whichever Roman was fortunate enough to be consul that year.
As it turned out, Marius’ old right hand man, Cornelius Sulla, was consul. Typical with most high Roman officials, Sulla needed money (what with all the bribing and vote-buying necessary), and a war was a great way to get some. Sulla suited up, summoned the legions, and prepared to march. Marius, having petered out in the Social War, was looking for a way to restore himself to glory (and another consulship). He had his allies in Rome appoint him to the command of the forces heading out to confront Mithridates also. His old pal Sulla refused to step down, and Rome’s first civil war was underway.
Sulla ordered his men to march on Rome, which was one of the great taboos of the Republic—Roman armies were forbidden to enter the city. The Senate flapped its hands in panic and recalled Marius, who tried to mount a defense of the capital with a band of gladiators.
This did not work.
Marius was defeated, his gladiators all got the thumbs down, and Sulla took over the city, sentencing Marius’ supporters to death. When Sulla was called away to fight another upstart king in Greece, Marius came back and took over Rome with his army, purged Sulla’s supporters, and put their heads on pikes in the Roman Forum.
Things were going from bad to worse, if you were a fan of Roman respectability and traditions.
***
In 82 BCE, Sulla came back from victory in the east, defeated the Marian forces at the Battle of the Colline Gate, and invaded Rome for a second time, with the attendant purges of his enemies. The cowardly Senate appointed him dictator.
Rome had had dictators before—they were appointed in times of dire threat to the Republic, and served for six months. Among the most famous was Cincinnatus, who, after holding ultimate power, returned it to the Senate and people of Rome and went back to his farm. This precedent was cited by George Washington after defeating the British, when he returned his sword to the Continental Congress, disbanded his army, and went home to Mount Vernon to become a humble private citizen again. The American Society of the Cincinnati was founded to honor these principles.
Sulla was no Washington. The Senate abandoned the standard six-month term of dictatorship, setting no end to Sulla’s one-man rule. He instituted a series of proscriptions, where enemies were identified, their property confiscated, and their heads put on pikes. The lucky ones, including a young Julius Caesar, were warned early and chose exile.
These proscriptions were used as a pretext for greedy folk to get their hands on their neighbor’s property. In one case that was all too typical, a man who had killed his own brother had his name added to the proscription list after he was dead to get out of punishment for the crime, as well as his brother’s estate.
Rome’s established norms were out the window. “The sacred laws against bloodshed on hearths or in temples were pronounced null and void. Slaves had license to murder their masters, and sons their fathers.” There was a significant commerce in human heads, as they were brought to Sulla as proof that the proscriptions had been carried out. “I am adding to the list all the names I can remember,” Sulla said of the proscriptions. “Those who have escaped my memory will be added soon.”
Sulla was on top of the world, and definitely not to be trifled with. Certainly not by a group of surly teenagers.
***
The children of Rome participated in an annual public game for “youths on horseback” called the Troy Game. It was designed for young men destined for a career in the military—as all young Roman men of a certain status were--to demonstrate their horsemanship. The ancient Trojans were considered to be the ancestors of the Romans, and this game was a way to tie past and present together.
During Sulla’s reign, the two boys chosen to lead the Troy Game were picked because of their family connections to Sulla. The adults, acutely aware of all the severed heads on sticks nearby, didn’t complain. But the other boys participating in the games refused to go along. They went on strike, dismounting their horses, putting down their wooden swords and demanding that someone more worthy be nominated to lead them.
They caught Sulla in a good mood. Instead of a mass adolescent execution, he asked, “Who do you want to lead you?”
Their answer: Cato the Younger.
***
In an upcoming episode, Cato the Younger impresses the dictator of Rome and gets a front row seat to the bloodbath of Sulla’s reign. This free-for-all turned his predisposition for order into “an almost neurotic attachment to rules, to precedent, to propriety—to everything that was not Sulla.”
It also set him on high alert for the approach of anyone with dictatorial ambitions.
Say, for example, Julius Caesar.
We’ll pick that up soon in Stubborn Nags of Ancient Rome, Part III.
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