The Classical World

by Robin Lane Fox

  Throughout the 70s the senators did not make distinguished use of the liberty which Sulla had handed to them. Sulla's senators, after all, were mostly his own appointments, whereas previous senators, the most traditionalist ones, had been killed off by him as his opponents.

  If he hoped that the many members of his enlarged Senate would be honest judges of the few senatorial commanders, because they themselves would never win such high office, he was mistaken. Allega­tions of corruption and collusion proliferated. He had given back too much to men unworthy of administering it: there was also his own bad example of force, violence and a march on Rome. But already by the 70s the Republic had survived so much that to those in the Forum at the time, whose views we must represent, its death was not at all inevitable.

  Not that the turmoil was confined to Rome and the Forum. In Italy, Sulla's land-grants to his veteran soldiers were promptly contested by existing landowners and neighbours. Those ex-soldiers who settled on their small plots did not always find farming to their taste or ability, even if they had been recruited originally from rural life: they, too, began to take on debts (Cicero blamed their 'luxury'). In 77, with Sulla only dead for a year, the ex-consul Aemilius Lepidus marched south with troops against Rome when the senators tried to summon him back from his large provincial command. Lepidus had combined commands in bits of Gaul on either side of the Alps, a precedent on which Julius Caesar's career would later thrive so dangerously. But Lepidus' troops were not so effective.

  Out in Spain, meanwhile, a former supporter of Marius, the talented knight Sertorius, maintained an open rebellion against the Sullan supremacy. He had his own alternative senate and a readiness to recruit able Spanish talent and encourage them to learn Latin and Roman ways. Opponents of the Sullan supremacy in Rome could now escape to the West. When Sertorius' hold was eventually broken in 73, his Roman conqueror Pompey tactfully burned Sertorius' letters from important people in Rome without (so he said) even reading them.

  Born in September 106, Pompey was only in his thirties but self-evidently a military man to be reckoned with. His background was not altogether encouraging. His father, Pompeius Strabo, had held the consulship in 89 bc and had fought fiercely against Italian rebels in the north during the Social War. But his career was then marred by duplicity and a strong suspicion that he had tried to collude with the rebel leader, Cinna, whom he was supposed to be fighting. He died of disease, but his body was thrown into the mud during his funeral: he was also accused of a ferocious greed for money. His son, Pompey, was to learn his lessons early: the need for financial backing and for popularity, but also the scope for dissimulation and the unprincipled use of troops who would become their leader's own personal army.

  As yet, Pompey's pre-eminence lay in the future. It was much more worrying that in 73, back in Italy, seventy-four slave-gladiators escaped from their barracks at Capua and started by making a stand on the nearby slopes of Mount Vesuvius near Naples. Their leader was Spartacus, a Thracian who had previously fought in the Roman army. Before long he had attracted more than 70,000 slaves and herdsmen from southern Italy. Spartacus was a real hero, big, brave and great-hearted. His followers' aim was not to attack slavery (before long, they took on slaves themselves) but to free themselves, preferably after heavy plundering. In 72 Spartacus' men defeated both Roman consuls, but in the next year their terrifying revolt (perhaps now 150,000 strong) was put down by no fewer than ten legions. It re­flected on the poor rural conditions and the extensive slave-labour which was current in much of south Italy, intensified by 'Hannibal's legacy'. And in the same year as Spartacus, King Mithridates was at war again in Asia. He had been provoked by the Romans' acquisition of the nearby kingdom of Bithynia in Asia Minor. It would be ten years before he too was finally beaten.

  Rural discontent, an ex-consul marching on Rome with an army, a huge slave war and these big wars in Spain and Asia (Sertorius and Mithridates even linked up briefly): nonetheless, the senatorial supremacy survived. Not until 75 was any of the political neutering of the tribunate reversed and not until 70 were its final elements removed by law. Ten years is a long time, and yet the total male citizenry was increasing hugely meanwhile, swollen by the recently enfranchised Italians. Some 910,000 adult citizen-males were regis­tered in the census of 69, about three times as many as in the 130s. The composition of the citizenry had also changed markedly. Even in Rome, very few of the citizens had any ancestral link with Roman voters of the fourth or third centuries bc; outside Rome, they now had none. The new citizens were distributed between the river Po in the north and the toe of Italy in the south, and, in principle, every single one of these adult males had a vote in the assemblies at Rome, whether or not they owned any property.1 If the lower-class majority of this huge Italy-wide 'electorate' had asserted itself at Rome, or if even the urban part of it had rioted in unison in the city, surely those populist symbols, the tribunes, would have been restored much sooner?

  The answer is that very few, if any, of the lower classes throughout Italy ever voted or visited at all. Distance deterred many of them, hundreds of miles away from Rome, and the wondrous voting-system neutered the rest of them. Those at hand in the city were clustered into only four of what were now the thirty-five 'tribes' in the assembly which passed the laws. A majority among the tribes decided a motion, and it was still the block-vote within each tribe which decided its overall vote. Seldom, if ever, would all 'tribes' vote, and a majority of the total votes cast still decided nothing (the 'block-vote' system stopped a pure majority of votes from being decisive). In the thirty-one other 'rustic' tribes, the voters present in Rome would tend to be the good men and true of the local propertied classes, although we are unsure quite how many poor rustic Italians might also have migrated into Rome and tried to subsist there. Above all, there was the context of such assemblies: they had no prearranged calendar throughout the year; only a magistrate could put a proposal; as always nobody in the audiences could speak, or propose an alternative.

  We do hear of harangues at public meetings other than assemblies, great speeches to crowds in the Forum, public notices, pictures, even, to influence opinion: but who were this 'people' or 'crowd'? In the city, so many freedmen were still heavily obliged to their patrons. Small shopkeepers and the entire service-industry depended on the magnificence of their superiors; clients and hangers-on would go by arrangement to a great man's household in the early mornings to pay their respects (and probably be told to turn up if he or a friend was going to harangue 'the people' from a vantage point in the Forum that day). Any lower-class immigrants from Italy would be part of this layer of social dependence. Proposed legislation was posted weeks in advance, giving time for opponents and supporters to contact like-minded men of influence in and outside the city and mobilize enough of them in enough of the thirty-one 'rustic' voting tribes. There was ample time, too, for 'canvassing' and for its counterpart, organized

  bribery, to suit the rich.2 Humble voters went along with it and expected their betters to give them presents in return for 'correct' voting. In 70 we first find the relevant officers, the 'distributors' (divisores), in action before an electoral assembly meeting even took place. They were now coming to the houses of individual candidates in order to receive the loot in advance. It was to be distributed before the electoral meeting and before just enough voting, but no more, took place.

  This context does not mean that political life was all fixed in one direction, harmoniously agreed by the upper class. Within that class there were the clear alternative political approaches, 'populist' or 'traditionalist', to which important men remained true and constant over time. They became known for them, even though they did not acquire or maintain them in organized political 'parties'. Nor were most of the elections and legislation prearranged by a few powerful families on simple family or factional lines. Oratory and its impact really mattered before potential voters, as did a speaker's popular 'esteem': there was an important interplay between the political leade
rs and the local crowds in the Forum before whom they per­formed. But money and 'generosity' mattered more. Sulla's rules on office-holding had intensified competition by those lower down on the ladder for what were still the very few top jobs, and as a result there was an even greater pressure on the keen careerists: twenty candidates competed yearly for only eight praetorships, the next step on the way up. In the race for office, they had to borrow huge sums (usually from fellow politicians) so as to make a grand show at an early stage. It helped them if they bought a fine house, preferably on the Palatine hill or the Sacred Way within a few hundred yards of the Forum's centre, and standards expected of such houses had soared since the 140s. The next hope was to be appointed to a juicy province, squeeze it and repay the debts. Abroad, a man could win military honour and return to a magnificent public triumph, with a celebratory banquet and games to follow, financed by the provincials' losses. The shows and feasting would increase his following and he would hope for the highest honour of a consulship and then another even greater command. The expenses were becoming far higher, the risks ever greater, but the roars of applause and the intoxication of being seen to be so great were the very lifeblood of aspiring great men. The ideal great man would combine military skill with oratory and money: if not, orators would have to be bribed to speak for him, and the money borrowed.

  In Sulla's aftermath, therefore, liberty, justice and luxury were never more vigorously invoked and contested. Speakers, whether populist or not, could appeal to the liberties of the distant past to support their arguments, and in 73 one of the tribunes was Macer, himself a historian. A later version of a speech by him probably reflects his line of argument.3 Wanting to restore the tribunes' powers, he gave a stirring call to 'liberty'. Sulla's settlement, he insisted, was really 'wicked slavery'; the people should not be fobbed off by the token distributions of grain, recently reintroduced (at a low price, admit­tedly, but probably for only about 40,000 free citizens, a fraction of Rome's current total). The wars of noble senators, Macer insisted, depended on the people as soldiers: let the senators fight alone, in Spain or Asia, with only the masks of their former ancestors to help them. But Macer's speech also complained of the people's apathy. Outside public meetings, they seemed to forget about 'liberty'. That fact, too, is relevant; democratic Athenians, by contrast, did not forget. And despite Macer, the plebs continued to fight as soldiers. For many, it was a better life than struggling on as a small farmer in Italy, risking slavery for debt to a canny rich neighbour.

  As for justice, the senators made a fine abuse of the monopoly of the jury-courts. Without the check of non-senatorial jurors, corruption became even more prevalent: Sulla had promoted new men to be senators and they were even more prone to bribery, as they needed funds for the vast expense of being in the senatorial order. Both in Rome and in the provinces, magistrates exempted themselves or their friends from the very rules which they enunciated in their 'edicts'. Senatorial governors were blatantly extortionate and in general they could be 'shamefully' luxurious. As 'chief priest' in 70 bc, the noble Metellus gave an amazing dinner of three courses, with ten dishes each, including seven rare types of seafood and 'sow's udders' (banned by law). The famous orator Hortensius was attacked for dining on roast peacocks and watering his plane trees with wine.4 The able general Lucullus had such an extravagant villa that a picture of it was displayed to the people when his enemies were trying to get him replaced in his command. In due course, Lucullus even introduced the cherry tree from Asia and his 'gardens' (more of a park) became the envy of fellow Romans.5 Both men were accused of the ultimate extravagance, maintaining exotic fishponds.

  This private luxury was particularly controversial at a time when the few subsidized corn-distributions were not adequate to meet the poor's needs and the price and availability of grain was being squeezed by pirates in the Mediterranean. Nor was the charge of 'luxury' simply a slogan. After the restoration of the tribunes' power in 70 no less than sixty-four senators were expelled as 'unworthy' from the Senate by the newly approved censors. Sulla's purges had left too much room for these second-raters, but would even better men have held out against the temptations of a decade of senatorial 'liberty'? In late 69 bc extravagance was limited by law once again. The slogans of the moment were clean provincial government, no favouritism by magis­trates and a restrained private life. They were reactions exploited by the rival 'populist' politicians.

  In the year 70 bc the last of the tribunes' former powers were restored by a notable pair of consuls. One of them, Crassus, was of noble family but had already made himself extremely rich, no doubt by profiteering during Sulla's confiscations. He was also distinguished by military commands, not least against Spartacus: it was he who had 'decimated' his own reluctant troops (executing one man in ten) and had then crucified 6,000 of the slave-rebels along the main road back to Rome. For the purposes of a consulship, he had managed to suspend his dislike of his colleague, the emergent Pompey. It was very intense. At the end of the Spartacus War, Pompey had returned to Italy and helped to defeat some of the slave-fugitives. Nonetheless, it was he, not Crassus, who was voted the full glory of a triumph, partly because of his victories elsewhere on Rome's behalf. Crassus had had to make do with a mere ovation. In the 50s the two of them would be thrown together again by their respective needs, but their personal relations were never easy. For the moment, Crassus marked his successes by giving a tremendous series of feasts for the people.

  Nonetheless, the star was Pompey, who added two weeks of games to the celebrations. He had already been voted one triumph (in his mid-twenties) and yet, amazingly, he was still not even a senator: he was the son of a respected consul, but personally he had remained a knight. When about to take up his consulship, he had had to have a little book on senatorial procedure written for him by the scholarly Varro. It was not that he was wholly uneducated. He knew Greek; he had an interest in Latin vocabulary and grammar; he would later respect a great Greek scholar by having his symbols of office lowered in the learned man's presence; he once freed a slave without any payment because of the man's intelligence. But he was not very bright. Pompey was married five times in his life; one of them was for a political marriage, made with a woman who was already pregnant by another man. But he only divorced twice: his last young wife was dear to him, the remarkable Cornelia, who studied mathematics and philosophy and ranks as one of the late Republic's educated upper-class young ladies. Pompey was also remembered fondly by his former mistress, a courtesan called Flora: she said that he had never made love with her without sinking his teeth into her and leaving toothmarks.6

  Outside the bedroom, Pompey's supreme skill was military com­mand. He had brought privately raised troops to help Sulla, but his brutality against his fellow Romans was to be vividly recalled more than twenty years later as the acts of a 'teenage hangman'.' He had then been made into a commander against Sulla's enemies in Sicily and north Africa. It was in Africa that his troops had acclaimed him (in his mid-twenties) as 'Great'. With his open, boyish looks and brushed-back hair, young Pompey did have a look of the real 'great' Alexander, though it is only visible to his fans. When Sulla died in early 78, Pompey at first supported Lepidus' renewed populism, but he won even more fame by helping to defeat Lepidus when he marched on Rome. Then Pompey left for Spain in order to defeat Sertorius too. It took him six years of hard fighting and he commemorated it with a trophy in the Pyrenees, topped by his own statue and inscribed to say that he had conquered no less than 876 cities. The result was a second triumph, on 29 December 71, the consulship for 70 and popu­larity in that year for restoring the tribunes' powers. Aged thirty-six, Pompey had already veered artfully from one political line to another, while proving to be Rome's supreme general of the moment.

  His consulship was not followed by a provincial command. He remained in Rome, but in due course lie was voted two controversial commands by legislation taken to the people. The first, in 67 bc, was against the Mediterranean pirates, for which he
received a massive fleet and powers equal to the provincial governors: he polished off the job in only three months, greatly to the people's gratitude. Mean­while, the traditional senators' choice, Lucullus, was failing to finish off the war in Asia against Mithridates. Lucullus had shown diplo­matic skill and had even penetrated Armenia, but enemies of his 'traditional' style emphasized his scandalous luxury and his slow progress and had Pompey sent out to replace him: he was 'sent down from heaven', Cicero even said.8 The war took Pompey, too, four years, and even then King Mithridates had to kill himself (his famous book on cures for poisons was translated into Latin on Pompey's orders). As the war had spread through connected kings in Asia, Pompey went on south to win victories in Syria, the Lebanon and, in 63 bc, in Judaea. There, the leaders of the Jews were split between two rival candidates for the High Priesthood; first one, then the other invited Pompey to help them, and eventually he settled down to besiege the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. He then entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple itself, a shocking profanation in Jewish eyes. The Jews' territories were reduced, taxed and brought, decisively, under Roman control.

  In Asia, Pompey showed a shrewd eye for durable diplomacy and for workable local kingdoms.9 His conquests of the mid-6os mark the beginning of the 'Roman Near East' and once again transformed the Romans' public finances. Tribute received from abroad was nearly doubled and the booty and chances for investment were enormous. But Egypt remained for the taking, complex, alien but uniquely rich in grain and gold. It would haunt the next thirty-five years.