Download An excerpt from THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC: LESSONS

An excerpt from THE FALL OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC: LESSONS FOR DAVID PETRAEUS
AND AMERICA
The problems facing the Roman Republic in the 1st Century BC were obvious for several generations
before they resulted in the final crisis that lead to imperial rule. There were a large number of
proposed solutions, some more fanciful than others, but it was precisely the apparent inability of the
state to address problems that everyone recognized existed that destroyed the existing institutions.
At the core, the Roman Republic faced two problems.
First, the growth of Roman power and the acquisition of an empire stressed the existing structure for
managing provinces. The lack of a well developed colonial bureaucracy combined with the practice
of annually appointing new provincial governors from the ranks of recent senior magistrates created
massive instability. Significant elements of provincial administration – notably tax collection – were
outsourced to private companies, and provincial governors saw their postings as an opportunity for
self-enrichment, which was both a cause and consequence of the increasing cost of running for
political office. The result was endemic corruption in Rome, and frequent instability in provinces as a
consequence of the rapacious practices of tax farmers and governors. Particularly in the more
recently acquired provinces in and around Anatolia and the Levant, this instability led to revolts and
opportunities for external actors to weaken Roman control.
Second, for a variety of reasons that economic historians continue to debate, there was increasing
income inequality in Rome, and worse, the gradual impoverishment and ultimately virtual elimination
of small-hold farmers that had traditionally formed the backbone of both the Roman citizenry and
military. The result was the rise of an urban poor, increasingly dependent on the largess of the
state, more prone to violence, and ultimately more loyal to patrons than to the state as a
whole. Part of this was also a consequence of empire. Military victories brought slaves to Rome,
which were increasingly used to farm the large estates of aristocrats, raising land prices and lowering
food costs in a way that made small farming unsustainable.
These problems were recognized early. In 133 BC, Tiberius Gracchus sought to implement land
reform from his position as Tribune in order to address the twin issues of the disappearing free rural
peasantry and the resultant lack of citizens eligible for military service. His efforts threatened the
position of the aristocratic elites, and in the end he was murdered. Ten year later his younger
brother suffered the same fate under similar circumstances. At the time of the Cimbrian War (113101 BC), the threat of foreign invasion by Germanic tribes forced Gaius Marius to replace the
traditional Roman Army soldiered by land-owning citizens with one built around landless volunteers
for whom military service was a career and who owed loyalty primarily to the general paying the bills
rather than the state. Marius’ legions defeated the Germans, but a new instability had been
introduced into the Roman state due to the tendency of these new volunteer forces to be loyal to
personal patrons rather than state institutions. This instability manifested itself in the increasing role
of popular generals in Roman politics, including several willing to implicitly or explicitly threaten civil
war to get what they wanted. Marius himself marched on Rome, as did Lucius Cornelius Sulla twice,
and Lucius Cornelius Cinna. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) took over this father’s
client army on his death and became a key power broker in his twenties and without having held
elected office. By the time the of the First Triumvirate in 59BC, the Roman state had been grappling
with these basic, interlocking economic, political, military challenges for 70 years without any
systematic solution.
The endemic corruption in the Roman state was another source of instability. Corruption was illegal,
but Rome lacked a former criminal justice system with state prosecutors. Instead, any Roman citizen
could bring a case against any other in a relevant court. Corruption prosecutions became a tool for
settling political feuds or for winning over supporters. The famed Roman orator and politician, Cicero,
first established himself as a major player due to his successful prosecution of Gaius Verres for his
corruption as governor of Sicily. The threat of private prosecution for official corruption became a
tool for political competition, and yet it was almost impossible not to be corrupt because the cost of
running for office increased so dramatically during the 1st Century BC so that even wealthy men and
families needed some way to recoup the costs.
As mentioned already, these problems were widely understood. And yet the Roman state was
unable to act. Three dynamics combined with poorly designed state institutions to lead to
paralysis. The first dynamic was that within the Roman body politic, there was a small, but solid
group of aristocrats who were ideologically opposed to reform. Their argument, in short, was that it
was a mistake to mess with success. Roman institutions and values had lead to greatness, and so
the answer to any and all problems simply required a “return” to traditional roman values. This lead
to occasional anti-sumptuary laws and various efforts to outlaw corruption, but also to a determined
resistance to any sort of structural reform such as land reform or multi-year terms for provincial
governors. The second dynamic was that even among reformers there was a great deal of concern
about letting anyone get the “credit” for solving problem. Whomever managed to pass land reform,
for instance, would instantly gain a wide following among those new small farmer given land to
work. Third, there was a relatively small number of wealthy aristocrats, some of whom has managed
to effectively privatize public lands and were unwilling to allow distribution of those lands, even if as
a matter of law they didn’t actually have title to them anyway.
Perhaps you recognize these opponents to reform. In Rome, they were called the Optimates (“Best
Men”), today we call them Republicans. Same coalition of ideologues, political hacks, and the
wealthy. Same recognition of the existence of problems, and same empty solution: a call for a
return to traditional values that made the nation great. They were opposed by a loose coalition of
Populares (“favoring the people”) made up of a combination of radicals and pragmatists, and often
prone to turning on each other or making deals with the Optimates. Many, though not all, of them
favored “comprehensive” reforms aimed at addressing structural problems. And indeed, some were
probably little more than political opportunists. Anyway, we call them Democrats today. And like the
Democrats of today, the Populares were largely ineffective. Aristocrats (“Patricians”) were mostly
counted among the Optimates, but not exclusively, while commoners (“Plebians or Plebs”) were
often among the Populares, but also not exclusively. Gaius Julius Caesar, a member of one of the
oldest Patrician families was a Populari, whereas Cicero, a Plebian and a “new man” became an
Optimata.
The Roman state was also poorly designed institutionally. There is no need to get into all the details,
but a key problem was that the Roman state had a vast number of veto points. Indeed, the word
“veto” is Roman for “I forbid” and it was a formal power granted to the Tribunes of the Plebs as a
safeguard against Patrician overreach. There were 10 Plebian Tribunes, each with unlimited veto
power over all public business. By the middle of the 1st Century BC, it was common for several of
these tribunes to be bankrolled by leading Opimates and Populares, giving each faction essentially
unlimited vetos over public policy. Added to the, the Roman state religion was highly
superstitious. Priests were constantly required to check for omens, and could declare the day “Dies
Nefasti” – a day on which no public business could occur – due to bad omens, such as a spot on the
liver of sacrificial lamb, or a flock of black birds flying overhead, or lightning, or basically any number
of things. And essentially any member of the College of Augurs could suddenly bring public action to
a halt by noting an inauspicious omen. Needless to say, this privilege was sometimes abused, since
the Augurs were not an independent body, but rather drawn from political elites. So some Roman
leaders were, effectively, individual veto points with a lifetime appointment.
http://www.bernardfinel.com/?p=1433,
16:37pm, 14/05/2014
Associate Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College