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The Ideal Constitution
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Politics of the Late Republic
In this course, Dr Ed Bispham (University of Oxford) explores the politics of the late Republic, from the death of Tiberius Gracchus (133 BC) to the death of Cicero (43 BC). We begin by thinking about how the Roman constitution was supposed to work, focusing in particular on the importance of the sovereignty of the people and the diffusion of magisterial power. After that, in the second module, we think about the range of factors that led to widespread social and economic discontent in the 2nd century BC, and the consequent rise of the first populist politicians. In the third module, we continue the story by tracing events from the assassination of Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BC to the outbreak of the Civil Wars in the middle of the 1st century BC, focusing in particular on the oscillation between populist movements and counter-populist reactions. And in the final three modules, we look in turn at three of the most important individuals in the late Republic – Caesar, Cicero and Cato – focusing on their lives, their careers, and their political philosophy.
The Ideal Constitution
In this module, we think about how the Roman constitution was supposed to work, focusing in particular on the power of the people, the diffusion of power among pairs (or more) of magistrates, the role of the Senate, and the means which the state dealt with overly-successful individuals – people like Scipio Africanus and his brother.
My name is Dr Ed Bispham,
00:00:03I'm a teacher in Ancient History at Brasenose College, Oxford,
00:00:05and this is going to be a series of six
00:00:10short lectures on the question of politics in the late Roman
00:00:15Republic.
00:00:22So what I’m going to do, first of all,
00:00:24is to try and give some sense of the ideal working of politics,
00:00:27how politics should have worked.
00:00:35And that's important because, when
00:00:36one looks at the politics of the late Republic,
00:00:38one is looking at the politics of dysfunction.
00:00:41You're looking at a period of breakdown, crisis, failure,
00:00:43but it's impossible to really appreciate
00:00:48how significant that failure is and how it appears –
00:00:51what its consequences are –
00:00:55unless we can look first at what comes before.
00:00:57So the Roman Republic, what was it, and how did it work?
00:01:01The republic is a political organization.
00:01:10perhaps ‘commonwealth’ is a better translation of the Latin res
00:01:17publica, the ‘public thing’ –
00:01:20what belongs to everybody.
00:01:23And the Roman Republic is a political entity
00:01:25in which the people are sovereign,
00:01:30and that sovereignty is expressed
00:01:33through the people voting to pass laws and the people voting
00:01:35to elect magistrates.
00:01:41The magistrates, in their various ranks and powers –
00:01:44the consuls, praetors, tribunes –
00:01:47are there to run the state, to take an executive decisions,
00:01:50and undertake executive actions.
00:01:55They provide leadership in war,
00:01:57they oversee the judicial system,
00:02:00they oversee the treasury,
00:02:03they oversee infrastructure,
00:02:05And they operate in what are called colleges, or groups.
00:02:07So there are always pairs or multiple
00:02:10pairs of magistrates:
00:02:13two consuls, two praetors originally, then four,
00:02:17then six, then eight,
00:02:20ten tribunes, four aediles.
00:02:23And that encodes something very important
00:02:27about the Republican system, which is the diffusion of power
00:02:30and the idea of checks and balances.
00:02:35One consul on his own, as the supreme magistrate,
00:02:37could do an awful lot of damage,
00:02:44could act in an irresponsible way,
00:02:46but because he has a second consul who's his colleague,
00:02:48there is a check on his power, and this shared diffuse nature
00:02:51of magisterial power is extremely important.
00:02:56But those are the magistrates.
00:02:59They constitute the elective.
00:03:00They're advised by a body called the Senate,
00:03:03and the Senate is made up of initially three-hundred,
00:03:05and then, later, six hundred in the late Republic
00:03:08– six hundred men – most of whom are former magistrates.
00:03:11Now, they have what is technically an advisory role.
00:03:17They're there to advise the magistrates on what to do.
00:03:22They cannot issue orders.
00:03:27They can issue decrees, the so-called senatus consulta,
00:03:29the ‘decrees of the Senate’,
00:03:33but those technically are just pieces of advice.
00:03:35How, then, does the Senate become so powerful?
00:03:41Because from the Hannibalic War, from the end
00:03:44of the third century BC onwards, the Senate
00:03:47holds a disproportionately powerful place
00:03:50in the Republican system.
00:03:53We said at the outset that the Roman people are sovereign.
00:03:56The people elect magistrates.
00:04:00the people pass laws,
00:04:02the people declare war,
00:04:03the people make peace.
00:04:06Power essentially lies with the people.
00:04:09But in the late Republic, you'd be
00:04:13forgiven for thinking that it's actually the Senate which
00:04:15has the whip hand, which is dominant and powerful
00:04:18within the state.
00:04:21And that is the situation that begins with the Hannibalic
00:04:23Wars, and it derives from the fact that, in a time of crisis,
00:04:27the popular assembly is grossly inefficient when it
00:04:32comes to taking snap decisions.
00:04:35It can't debate things.
00:04:38It can't respond nimbly or effectively,
00:04:39whereas the Senate
00:04:43– three-hundred people – is much better at convening suddenly, digesting
00:04:44information, debating, moving nimbly, formulating policy.
00:04:50Policy that the Senate formulated
00:04:56in the war with Hannibal was, of course, extremely important
00:04:59because it was the key to Rome winning the conflict.
00:05:03And the prestige, the political capital
00:05:07which the Senate, as a body, gained from that
00:05:09was extremely important.
00:05:12It made the Senate, as an entity, extremely powerful.
00:05:15The other reason why the Senate is
00:05:19much more than the advisory body that it looks on paper
00:05:21is that senators sit for life.
00:05:25Once you are in the Senate, you'll remain in the Senate
00:05:27until you die, except in very rare cases
00:05:30if you're expelled for being a naughty boy.
00:05:33But most senators will be there throughout.
00:05:36They'll gain enormous prestige, accumulated experience.
00:05:39And if I'm the consul and I want to pursue a particular policy,
00:05:45I can if I want, in my year of office, use my power--
00:05:51I actually have power.
00:05:56Senators don't have power, they have influence. But I
00:05:57can use my power-- my political power--
00:05:59to drive forward my agenda for change.
00:06:01But I've got to do that knowing that when my year of office
00:06:05is over, I go back into the Senate,
00:06:08back onto the backbenches, and I have 599 or 299 other people
00:06:11who are really angry with me because I've disregarded them
00:06:16and I've forced three policy agendas which are mine
00:06:20and haven't come out of collective debate.
00:06:23So it's very difficult for magistrates
00:06:26to carve out an independent path in defiance of the Senate.
00:06:29We do see it happening, but magistrates
00:06:33can't do it beyond the end of their year of office anyway.
00:06:39Magistrates are only there for a single year,
00:06:43and then they become private citizens--
00:06:45ordinary senators.
00:06:48So the Senate, because of the longevity of its members,
00:06:49and because of its numbers and its size,
00:06:55and because of its collective experience
00:07:00is extremely important.
00:07:01And it's that collective aspect that I
00:07:03want to end by thinking about.
00:07:06One of the crucial things about the late republic is consensus,
00:07:08and the other thing is competition.
00:07:14Those are the two C words that dominate
00:07:16the study of late Republican politics, consensus
00:07:18and competition.
00:07:23The individual urge of the aristocrats,
00:07:24of the would-be politician, the would-be general is to compete,
00:07:27is, to be better than his peers, to come out
00:07:32at the top of the heap to forged glorious reputation for himself,
00:07:35and to pass that on to his family.
00:07:41And that is in tension with the collective will of the Senate
00:07:44to rule in a stable, steady manner which
00:07:48acknowledges tradition and limits the power
00:07:52of extraordinary individuals.
00:07:57So you've got two things pulling in opposite directions.
00:07:58One is the individual aspiration of the magistrate
00:08:01or the aspirant politician, and the other
00:08:05is the steady political gravity of the Senate, which operates
00:08:09by consensus and by constraint.
00:08:12What makes Rome great is that, for hundreds of years,
00:08:16the power of the Senate--
00:08:20and to some extent the power of the people--
00:08:22act to prevent individual senators from becoming
00:08:25excessively powerful.
00:08:30It restrains that competitive urge.
00:08:31It allows competition, but healthy competition,
00:08:34up to a certain point, beyond which,
00:08:38if you try to keep on competing, if you compete too far,
00:08:40the Senate will use its collective authority
00:08:43to rein you in.
00:08:45A good example of this is Scipio Africanus.
00:08:46Scipio becomes extremely powerful as the man who
00:08:50threw Hannibal out of Italy, saved the situation in Spain,
00:08:53and then crossed to Africa and defeated
00:08:57Hannibal, Rome's greatest-ever enemy, at the Battle of Zama.
00:08:59He and his brother gained enormous political capital
00:09:03from this, but it is clear that 10 years after the end
00:09:05of the war, many senators found Scipio's position overbearing.
00:09:10They found him arrogant.
00:09:15They didn't like his wife either.
00:09:16And they felt that he was too big.
00:09:18He didn't fit in this world of shared political values,
00:09:21respect for tradition, and consensus.
00:09:28Scipio and his brother were put on trial.
00:09:33They were found guilty.
00:09:36What the trial was actually for and what he'd done wrong is
00:09:38a notorious historical problem, but probably
00:09:41something to do with misappropriation of funds.
00:09:43Put on trial, found guilty, sent into exile.
00:09:47At this point, the classic republic is working.
00:09:53The classic balance that the Greek historian Polybius
00:09:56saw between the power of the magistrates,
00:09:58the power of the Senate, and the power of the people
00:10:01keeps the Republic in a steady equilibrium, which allows
00:10:04it to prosper and expand.
00:10:08And the system of checks and balances,
00:10:10the power of consensus, the belief in tradition,
00:10:13the belief that no one individual should dominate any
00:10:16of his peers is still strong enough
00:10:19that when Scipio steps over the line, he's cut down,
00:10:21and his brother is taken out for good measure too.
00:10:25He spends the rest of his life living in his villa in exile.
00:10:28That shows the Republic functioning as it ought
00:10:31to, with shared, collective values,
00:10:35sense of tradition, and responsibility restraining
00:10:40and keeping control of the potentially
00:10:45unfettered aspirations of successful individuals.
00:10:49
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Bispham, E. (2018, August 15). Politics of the Late Republic - The Ideal Constitution [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/politics-of-the-late-republic-133-43-bc/the-ideal-constitution?autoplay=true
MLA style
Bispham, E. "Politics of the Late Republic – The Ideal Constitution." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 15 Aug 2018, https://massolit.io/courses/politics-of-the-late-republic-133-43-bc/the-ideal-constitution?autoplay=true