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The Constitution
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Politics of the Late Republic
In this course, Dr Ed Bispham (University of Oxford) explores several aspects of the politics of the Late Republic. In the first module, we think about the extent to which structural deficits within the Republican constitution were responsible for its collapse. In the second module, we think about the tension between the optimates and populares – who they were and what they stood for – before turning in the third module to the influence of Sulla on the political culture of the Late Republic. In the fourth module, we consider the role of the (so-called) First Triumvirate in dominating and deforming Republican politics before turning in the fifth module to consider why agrarian reform is such a controversial and emotive topic in this period. Finally, in the sixth module, we think about the importance of Cicero as a historical source and the ways we can look beyond his evidence to gain a wider, more nuanced picture of what’s going on in the Late Republic.
The Constitution
In this module, we think about the extent to which the structure of the constitution of the Roman Republic may have contributed to its collapse in the first century BC. In particular, we consider: (i) the idea of the Republican constitution as a “mixed constitution”, in which there was a balance of monarchical, aristocratic and democratic elements; (ii) the problems associated with an annual rotation of magistracies; (iii) the tendency for the Roman political class to see election to the consulship as an end in itself; (iv) the ultra-conservatism of the Roman senate; and (v) the inadequacy of a four-hundred year old constitution for a territory as large as the Roman Empire in the first century BC.
ED BISPHAM: Hello.
00:00:06My name is Dr. Ed Bispham, and I teach ancient history
00:00:07at Brasenose College, Oxford.
00:00:13And I'm going to be talking to you today
00:00:15about some aspects of the history of the late Roman
00:00:19Republic and areas relating to its collapse.
00:00:23So the first topic that I'm going to talk about
00:00:27is the question of how the Constitution of the republic
00:00:31may have contributed to its collapse.
00:00:38Some things that it'll be helpful to bear in mind
00:00:42are, essentially, what was the Constitution of the republic?
00:00:45Famously described by the Greek historian, Polybius,
00:00:52in the second century as a mixed or balanced constitution.
00:00:55Which is an idea that Cicero takes up in his own De re
00:00:59publica, On the Commonwealth on the republic in the 50s BC.
00:01:04And the idea of balance essentially
00:01:11set out that the republic was a political organization, which
00:01:14was in tension between democracy,
00:01:18the rule of the many; aristocracy, or oligarchy,
00:01:21the rule of the few; and monarchy,
00:01:24ruled by a single individual.
00:01:27And in that viewpoint, the Roman people, the populus Romanus,
00:01:29was seen as the democratic element.
00:01:38The Senate was seen as the aristocratic or oligarchic
00:01:40element.
00:01:45And the consuls, the two supreme magistrates,
00:01:46each year was seen as the monarchic element.
00:01:51It was thought by the Romans that the existence
00:01:56of these three different centers of power within the state
00:02:01had contributed to Rome's stability.
00:02:06And that Rome's stability had in turn contributed to her rise
00:02:09to power as a world empire.
00:02:12The possibility that any one of these elements
00:02:16could get out of hand, could become dominant,
00:02:19or go rogue and impose itself on any of the others,
00:02:22was limited by the very existence of the other two
00:02:27elements.
00:02:32So it was the authority and power of the Senate,
00:02:33and the executive power of the magistrates, the monarchic
00:02:37and the aristocratic elements, which, in Roman thought,
00:02:41prevented the people from exercising too much power--
00:02:44in other words, from the public sinking into mob rule.
00:02:50How fair this assessment of a balanced constitution is,
00:02:56how accurate that assessment is, is certainly open to question.
00:03:01But one important thing, I guess,
00:03:06is that the Romans believed it.
00:03:10And in the period of turmoil in the late Republic,
00:03:13they looked back to the Constitution
00:03:16of the second century--
00:03:20when Polybius had been writing in that period
00:03:21of the second century, which is the dramatic date of Cicero's
00:03:25De re publica, his On The Republic-- and
00:03:29saw that as the ideal stable constitution
00:03:32when Rome was at its peak.
00:03:35After 133 BC and the tribunates of the Gracchi,
00:03:39everything changes.
00:03:43And we'll explore some of these developments
00:03:44in later lectures in this series.
00:03:47But for now, I think it's worth looking
00:03:50at some of the structural deficits, which
00:03:55the late republic entailed.
00:03:59When I say structural deficits, I
00:04:01mean problems that were hard-wired into the state.
00:04:03We can come back and start with the idea
00:04:10of the mixed constitution itself.
00:04:12There is indeed an extent to which the balance of powers,
00:04:17if you like-- the existence of three separate areas of power,
00:04:23the people, the Senate, and the magistrates, the consuls--
00:04:26did prevent any one element of the state imposing itself
00:04:29on any of the others.
00:04:34But what this prevented was the formulation of policy.
00:04:37And one structural deficit that's
00:04:43lacking in the late Republic is a real sense of policy--
00:04:44economic policy, foreign policy, political policy.
00:04:49And this is exacerbated by the fact
00:04:55that the annual magistrates, the consuls,
00:04:57are annual, that they change every year.
00:05:00Consuls are interested in achieving power,
00:05:05but that is partly about their dignitas.
00:05:09That's about their standing within
00:05:11the aristocratic community.
00:05:14You become a significant person, you become a player,
00:05:18by achieving the consulship.
00:05:21But you don't do that.
00:05:23In most cases, in order to promote a policy
00:05:25or pursue a policy, or to have a particular set of ideas
00:05:30that you want to transform into political action.
00:05:34Obviously, there are exceptions to this.
00:05:39Sulla and Julius Caesar are both individuals
00:05:40who, when they were consul, undertook substantial reforms.
00:05:44Pompey, to a degree, the same.
00:05:49But for many people, becoming consul was an end in itself.
00:05:53And the influence, the prestige, the ability to twist people's
00:05:58arms, to impose yourself on lesser individuals,
00:06:05or on client kings, and foreign powers, and subject states,
00:06:09was all part of the reward system that came with that.
00:06:13But it meant that a lot of Roman politics
00:06:19was lived in the moment.
00:06:21It was short term.
00:06:23There was no vision thing.
00:06:25Added to this was the fact that the area where
00:06:29we might expect policy to be formulated, namely the Senate,
00:06:35was essentially extremely conservative.
00:06:41The Senate was most concerned with retaining its own position
00:06:46in the state, a position that increasingly
00:06:52came under challenge as the late republic wore on.
00:06:54The Senate was as concerned with keeping things as they were,
00:06:59not with fixing things, but more often with ignoring problems.
00:07:03Or if they came to a head, as in the Catilinarian conspiracy,
00:07:09suppressing them, often violently rather
00:07:15than confronting them and dealing with them.
00:07:19The Senate, increasingly in this period,
00:07:24has something of a bunker mentality.
00:07:27It's increasingly concerned about the rise of popular power
00:07:29and the tribunes who claim to speak
00:07:32on behalf of the Roman people.
00:07:34It's concerned about the increasing
00:07:36power of magistrates, Marius, Sulla, Crassus, Caesar, Pompey,
00:07:37generals of enormous ability and charismatic power, who
00:07:43are able to become almost independent warlords, who
00:07:47were able to attach the armies of the state to themselves.
00:07:53And the Senate was desperate to try and restrain and retain
00:07:58these individuals within the traditional power-sharing
00:08:02ethos.
00:08:05So again, the Senate, in its bunker mentality,
00:08:06is more concerned with keeping these people under control
00:08:08than actually formulating any sense of how
00:08:12to run the republic itself.
00:08:15Really just wanted to keep things trundling on
00:08:19as they had been.
00:08:22The people not too unhappy, if possible; and particular
00:08:23individuals, not too powerful, if at all possible.
00:08:27The final element, I suppose, in the Constitution that
00:08:32made the running of the republic difficult,
00:08:35was that the Constitution had been designed for a city-state.
00:08:38The Constitution had been set up in the fifth century
00:08:41BC, when Rome's empire was non-existent,
00:08:44when the Roman state itself didn't extend
00:08:50more than 50 kilometers from the current site
00:08:52of the city of Rome.
00:08:57It was a very old-fashioned setup.
00:09:01It perpetuated the myth that the sovereign people
00:09:05could turn up and vote that their exercise
00:09:08of popular sovereignty was possible.
00:09:13But it simply didn't have the administrative structures
00:09:16to control an empire that stretched from the Atlantic
00:09:18to the Turkish coast.
00:09:23And this inevitably meant that the running of empire
00:09:26became hugely problematic.
00:09:30There was no civil service.
00:09:33There was no bureaucracy.
00:09:35There was very limited budgeting.
00:09:37And the state, the Roman state in the republic
00:09:41never developed the institutions to manage
00:09:44this enormous geographical and financial asset in any way that
00:09:48was rational, fair.
00:09:55There was little sense of good governance.
00:09:57There was really no bureaucracy.
00:10:01Suddenly, the Constitution changes.
00:10:06There's a limited degree of mutation.
00:10:09And so we find more magistracy is
00:10:11created and the idea of pro-magistracy, where
00:10:13someone who's been a magistrate can go abroad for a year or two
00:10:16or three years after their magistracy
00:10:22and govern a province, or look after an area of the empire.
00:10:25But these were only very limited mutations.
00:10:29And they simply repeated the basic framework
00:10:32of city-state government and tried to apply it
00:10:34over a colossal area.
00:10:39And that wasn't really viable when the Roman Empire
00:10:41began to take off.
00:10:47It certainly was not fit for purpose by the time we
00:10:48to the 60s or 50s BC.
00:10:51
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Bispham, E. (2020, March 11). Politics of the Late Republic - The Constitution [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/politics-of-the-late-republic/the-first-triumvirate
MLA style
Bispham, E. "Politics of the Late Republic – The Constitution." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 11 Mar 2020, https://massolit.io/courses/politics-of-the-late-republic/the-first-triumvirate