In Egypt the Ptolemies spent much of their time and efforts in vicious power struggles waged within the family. The brothers Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII plotted against and fought each other for decades, both seeking Roman support and travelling to Rome in the hope of securing it. After his brother and sister had sent envoys who dressed and acted as the humblest of suppliants, Ptolemy VI adopted a very different if equally extreme approach in his desire not to seem over-proud or to demand anything from the Senate. Expelled from his kingdom, he travelled to Italy as a private citizen and then took up residence in one of the least fashionable areas of Rome, sharing lodgings with a Greek artist or writer – our sources are unclear on this last point. He did not approach the Senate in any way, but waited for his condition to gain their attention. Once this was done, he was brought to the Senate, Rome’s governing body apologising for their failure to act sooner, giving him money and insisting that he resume dressing and living in a more fitting style. The ploy was successful up to a point, but even so real backing was limited to instructions that envoys already going to the east were to add Alexandria to their itinerary. A century later, Cleopatra’s father Ptolemy XII was driven from Egypt. It took bribery on an immense scale to win him the backing of powerful senators, even more to secure a senatorial decree in his favour, and then more bribes and a delay of several years before the proconsul of Syria marched his legions into Egypt and restored the king to power.18
Roman attitudes began to change as Rome acquired more provinces and the power struggles of neighbouring kingdoms and states came to pose more direct threats to her interests – hence Cicero’s instructions to intervene on behalf of Ariobarzanes in Cappadocia. Yet in the main, the initiative remained with the allies to seek Roman aid, so that they still needed to win backing from the governor and send or go to Rome itself to influence the Senate. The same was true of communities in the provinces, where the presence of a governor inevitably meant that a Roman was involved in more decisions and that there were more opportunities to seek his arbitration or support. As we have seen, there were severe limits to how much any governor could actually do, and much was still left in the hands of the local communities.
Roman provinces were not disarmed, and cities and other groups were expected to undertake military action to deal with banditry and piracy and take some care to their own defence. Cities in Sicily, Greece, Asia and Cilicia constructed, maintained and manned warships as part of their treaty obligations with Rome. The young Julius Caesar was captured and ransomed by pirates while in the east studying. Once released, he cajoled allied cities into providing him with a squadron of their ships and led these to capture the band. Only then did he approach the governor of Asia, who presumably was busy with many other concerns. Our sources do not suggest that he persuaded a Roman officer in charge of these warships to act. Here, as often elsewhere, the command was entrusted to local men. In 74 BC, during a second spell of study, Caesar on his own initiative led local forces to drive off a raiding party sent into Asia by Mithridates of Pontus.19
Allies were expected to raise land forces as well. Sicily had suffered two serious slave rebellions in the last decades of the second century BC and local troops were deployed in both as well as regularly being mustered in case of future outbreaks. This was not an exclusively Roman problem – Athens put down at least one servile revolt around the same time. Rome had always relied on allied soldiers to supplement the legions, and sometimes these formed the bulk or all of the troops available. The opening stages of the first conflict with Mithridates were fought almost entirely by local allies led by a governor and his legate. Many provincial communities retained some military capacity, often backed by traditional institutions for raising and equipping soldiers, and electing or appointing officers to lead them. Local aristocrats were able to win glory fighting on behalf of their home city even when fighting as allies of Rome. Excavations at a house in Segesta in Sicily dating to the late second century BC revealed a room decorated with carvings of eight warship rams, a traditional symbol of victory at sea. The only difference with the past was that within the province they were no longer free to wage war against their neighbours and instead had to employ legal means to settle differences. Allied kingdoms bordering provinces felt no such restraint, as the frequent palace coups and civil wars testified.20
Although a governor was supreme in his province, it was possible to appeal over his head to the Senate, but this was difficult and often impractical if he was only in the province for a year. One of Verres’ victims in Sicily did manage to secure a hearing at Rome, but the senators agreed to let the governor’s father deal with the matter by quietly persuading his son to change his decision. Verres ignored this, trying the man in his absence, then tampering with the official record. The Senate did nothing more about the matter. In most cases complaints were not raised until after a governor had returned to Rome. In 140 BC a delegation of provincials accused Decimus Junius Silanus, a former praetor and governor of Macedonia, of wrongfully taking money. When the Senate heard the complaint, it granted a request by Silanus’ father to investigate the matter privately. The stern conclusion of the father was that his son had failed to live up to the standards of their proud ancestry. Silanus hanged himself.21
The only significant restraint on a governor was his fear of attack on his return. Until then, when he laid down his imperium, even direct instructions from the Senate could be ignored while he remained in his province. This meant that justice was at best retrospective. In 171 BC representatives from towns in Spain came to Rome to complain of the conduct of several men sent out to govern the province, begging that the senators would ‘not permit them, its allies, to be more wretchedly despoiled and harassed than its enemies’. Discovering that large sums of money had been extorted from the provincials, a special tribunal was set up, the delegates naming four prominent senators to act as their advocates – non-citizens could not play any part in legal judgements or other formal procedures at Rome other than as witnesses. One former governor was acquitted and two went into voluntary exile before a verdict was reached. There was a rumour that the advocates were unwilling to make charges against some others who were ‘noble and influential’, and the presiding praetor brought proceedings to a close by leaving Rome to govern one of the Spanish provinces. However, a request from the delegates was granted and a law passed which banned governors in Spain from setting the value of grain levied as a 5 per cent tax to Rome, from forcing communities to sell this to them at this price, or from stationing officers in their towns to collect money.22
It was not until 149 BC that that a permanent court was established to deal with crimes of extortion in the provinces – the quaestio de rebus repetundis. This still required a charge to be brought by a Roman against the former governor on his return home – there was no Roman equivalent to ‘the crown against . . .’ or ‘the state against . . .’. A praetor presided, and the jurors were senators, while the advocates also came from the senatorial class, even if some prosecutors were young aristocrats not yet enrolled in the Senate. This was trial by a man’s peers, who were often sympathetic or simply more concerned with trading political favours than establishing the truth. In 122 BC the jury was changed so that it was drawn from the equestrian order, and this issue became a political battleground until 70 BC, when composition was settled at one third senators, one third equestrians and one third tribuni aerarii (a poorly documented group with a slightly lower census qualification than the equites). In spite of the notorious conviction of Rutilius Rufus mentioned earlier, it is hard to tell whether the bias of the court changed markedly with each reform. Some equestrians were publicani or had ties to them, but that does not mean that the latter effectively controlled the court. Details are not available for many cases, but our sources mention forty-six prosecutions which occurred in this court in the years between 149 and 50 BC. These break down into twenty-two acquittals, twenty convictions and four where the outcome is unclear. The picture is likely to b
e distorted because the sources are poor for some decades and were always more inclined to mention convictions.23
On the whole the system favoured the former governor. Prosecution was less honourable than defence, since the aristocracy frowned on ending another man’s career, so this was usually the preserve of the young. More experienced and prestigious senators tended to defend, and loyalty to a friend or political ally was seen as admirable even when he was patently guilty. Plenty of governors who had abused their power avoided even being charged in the first place, their own record, family name and connections ensuring that no one wanted to risk earning their enmity. In some cases this fear extended to communities in the province and it was common to ensure that they sent embassies praising the governor soon after he left – hence Appius Claudius Pulcher’s annoyance when Cicero prevented it. At the very least, this could be cited as evidence that any subsequent charges were invented.
Verres’ tenure in Sicily from 73–71 BC was marked by profiteering, extortion and abuse of power on a spectacular scale. Cicero claimed that the governor joked that his first year was devoted to making himself rich, the second to gathering money to hire the best advocates and the third to raising the cash to bribe judge and jury at his inevitable trial. New-found wealth, as well as artworks and other valuable presents, helped a man to buy friends to add to his existing connections. Rome’s political system, where the judge of the court changed every year, and many days were not available for trials because of festivals or other public business, was also subject to manipulation. Verres and his supporters first tried to put up an unknown as a tame prosecutor, but at a public hearing Cicero beat this challenger to the right to undertake the case. They then tried to limit the time he had to gather witnesses and evidence, and to delay the trial until the following year, when an associate would preside over the repetundis court. Cicero outmanoeuvred them each time, and then broke with convention by delivering a short, blistering speech to start the prosecution instead of the normal lengthy oration. Some defence was made by the leading orator of the day, but the long succession of witnesses and testimony soon convinced Verres to admit defeat. He went into exile at Massilia, taking much of his plunder with him. Almost thirty years later Mark Antony found it worth his while to execute the former governor so that he could confiscate his wealth and art collection.24
Cicero handled the prosecution with great skill – and made sure that everyone was aware of it, publishing an extremely long five-part follow-up speech which he would have delivered if Verres had not fled. This should not diminish his achievement, or make us forget that had someone less industrious and skilful been involved then Verres may well have escaped punishment and continued his career. If the case had involved a province much further afield, making it more difficult to gain reliable information and call witnesses – many of Verres’ victims had fled to Rome of their own accord – then things might also have been different. The entire system favoured the governor, but even so some men were prosecuted and some convicted. At best this possibility was a deterrent on future governors from committing similar crimes – a warning which clearly had not deterred Verres and plenty of others. Obviously the victims of brutality could not be brought back to life, and the only punishment for the governor was exile and the end of his career. It was hard to recover the money and other things stolen by a man like Verres, and it is doubtful that his Roman and Sicilian victims got back very much of what they had lost. Cicero claimed that the governor had extorted more than 40,000,000 sesterces, but it looks as if no more than 3,000,000 were recovered.25
PEACE AND ITS PRICE
Cicero claimed that the moral qualities of Rome’s leaders went into sharp decline after the outbreak of the first civil war in 88 BC and the subsequent dictatorship of Sulla, so that many more exploited provincial commands. Before that era
. . . our imperium could be called more accurately a protectorate of the world than domination. This policy and practice we had begun gradually to modify even before Sulla’s time: but since his victory we have departed from it altogether. For the time had gone by when any oppression of the allies could appear wrong, seeing that atrocities so outrageous were committed against Roman citizens.26
Modern scholars are reluctant to follow the Romans’ emphasis on morality and character in explaining events, but most would admit that there was some truth in this. Some of the men who thrived at a time when citizen was killing citizen were scarcely likely to conform to better standards of behaviour when placed in charge of a province. The ever-spiralling cost of winning office added to this unhealthy mix, creating more and more senior magistrates desperate for quick profit to deal with their debts. Yet we should not exaggerate or paint too grim a picture. There had been good and bad governors in the past, and there were still plenty of senators who shared Cicero’s views on the proper conduct of a governor. Throughout his career Julius Caesar championed the cause of provincials, leading at least two prosecutions of former governors, admittedly without success, and reframing the law regulating their behaviour in 59 BC. The modern instinct is to focus on his aggressive warfare during his tenure in Gaul, but by Roman standards his administration appears to have been efficient and honest.27
The men who led the Republic in its final decades had a different understanding of Rome’s imperium to earlier generations, since they grew up when it had come to mean not simply power, but the physical territory ruled as provinces. They boasted of wielding power over ‘the whole globe’ and were quite open about the profits and comforts this brought to the people of Rome. In various speeches Cicero singled out Sicily as the great supplier of grain to Italy, and Asia as the richest of all provinces. In 66 BC he spoke in support of a law granting Pompey the Great a special command against Mithridates of Pontus, and stressed the importance of this conflict, for
. . . it involves the glory of Rome, which has come down to you from your forefathers great in everything but greatest of all in war: it involves the safety of your allies and friends, in whose defence your forefathers undertook many great and serious wars: it involves the most assured and the most considerable sources of the public revenue, the loss of which would cause you to look in vain for ornaments of peace or the munitions of war: it involves the property of many citizens whose interests you are bound to consult both for their own sake and for that of the commonwealth.28
These four motives were intertwined. The provinces provided a bounty for the state and for individual businessmen operating there. Glory was important, not least because a belief in Rome’s strength and power was the best way to deter attackers. On top of that was an obligation to protect allies, since if they were assaulted then glory would be damaged and so would profits. Cicero and Julius Caesar alike assumed that it was the duty of the Republic to keep peace in the provinces, protecting them from invasion, suppressing open rebellion and lower levels of banditry and violence. This had grown from the traditional obligation to defend allies, so often used to justify wars, into a clearer need to maintain the territorial integrity of the provinces and promote peace and prosperity within them. In 56 BC Cicero told the Senate that he felt the ‘assignment of the provinces should aim at a maintenance of a lasting peace’. This was the proper and the profitable thing to do. The process was gradual, and allies and provincials alike were still expected to play a significant part in their own security. Only when the threat proved beyond their capacity to defeat did Rome step in, for instance when it set up a garrison in Macedonia.29
The presence of warlike tribes prone to raiding was an obvious threat, to be curbed by ‘victories and triumphs’. In the same speech the orator attacked the current proconsul in Macedonia, whose corruption and neglect of his army meant that
. . . this province is now so harassed by barbarians, whose greed has made them break the peace that the people of Thessalonica, dwelling in the very heart of our imperium, are forced to abandon their city and fortify their citadel, that our great military road [the Via Egnatia] through Macedo
nia as far as the Hellespont is not only endangered by raiding barbarians, but even studded and dotted with Thracian encampments.30
The peace the Thracians had shattered in this way was the Roman Peace that came through the Republic’s victory and strength. Cicero claimed that he could otherwise ‘now speak of every region of the world, of every kind of enemies. There is no race which has not either been so utterly destroyed that it hardly exists, or so thoroughly subdued that it remains submissive, or so pacified that it rejoices in our victory and rule.’31
Aggression needed to be met with greater force, but although Rome’s resources were considerable they were not infinite. It took time, effort, expense and often defeats and large loss of Roman and allied lives to deal with enemies. Victory was not necessarily permanent, as the recent failures in Macedonia demonstrated.
Some problems took a long time to be taken seriously and even longer to resolve. As we have seen, the Romans weakened the Hellenistic kingdoms which in the past had curbed piracy, allowing it to flourish in the second century BC. Allied communities all along the coastlines were prey to raiders, robbing and taking captives to sell as slaves, many of them passing through the markets at Delos and being sold to Romans and Italians. Over time the problem spread further and further west, and it may have been this that eventually persuaded the Senate to do something about it. In the last years of the second century BC a proconsul was tasked with assembling a fleet and attacking the pirates, and in 102 BC Cilicia was allocated as a province. Little changed in the long run, and another effort made in 74 BC ended in the defeat of the Roman commander. Italy itself was raided, Ostia attacked and two praetors and all their attendants abducted. Cicero lamented that Roman power had fallen so low:
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