Augustus

Largely as a result of conquest, the state owned a good deal of land. However, rich landowners, among whom were many senators, had quietly appropriated much of it without payment. These noble squatters were, to put it mildly, disinclined to disgorge their ill-gotten gains. So the legionaries depended on their generals to bully, finesse, or persuade the Senate to free up land for their retirement farms. They developed a loyalty to their generals rather than to Rome.

The third consequence of empire was the strain that its administration placed on the ruling class, and indeed on the Republic’s constitution. So large was the throughput of elected officials that it is hardly surprising that their caliber was variable. A good number were corrupt and incompetent.

Many Romans believed that their traditional virtues of austere duty and healthy poverty were being eroded, and that this decadence explained the growing violence and selfishness of political life. The picture was not quite so bleak as it was depicted, for some nobiles worked hard to maintain standards. However, others did live in extravagant, irresponsible, and self-indulgent ways, and it was they who set the tone.

A tribune of the people, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus (from one of Rome’s oldest families), wanted to reform Italian agriculture by providing small plots of land for would-be peasant farmers. The Senate turned down the idea, but it was approved by the people and became law. In 133 B.C., Gracchus was murdered in the street by a group of angry senators, who claimed that he wanted to set up a tyranny. Ten years later, Gracchus’ younger brother, Gaius, was elected tribune and proposed further reforms. He was either killed or took his life after being cornered in a street riot.

These acts of violence were a turning point in the fortunes of the Republic. A historian writing in the following century said: “From now onward, political disputes that had been resolved by agreement were decided by the sword.”

The ruling class’s long habit of cooperation was breaking down. Many leading Romans forgot that public office was meant to be held for the public good. Also, and more seriously, everyone could see that the Roman system of government was too unwieldy to manage an empire and needed drastic streamlining.

Crises came crashing in one after another, like waves against a storm-battered ship. For the first time in three centuries, hordes of invading Celts poured into Italy; they were destroyed only with great difficulty.

Italy was governed through a network of alliances, but its communities and tribes did not have full civic rights and had long pressed for Roman citizenship. In 91 B.C. they lost patience and revolted in what became known as the War of the Allies. Rome wisely gave them what they wanted, but too late to avoid much bitterness and bloodshed.

The eastern provinces, led by the wily Mithridates, king of Pontus, twice rebelled, and it was many years before Rome regained full control.

However, the real threat to the Republic lay in domestic dissension at home. While Rome had no political parties in the modern sense and, apart from the occasional new man like Octavius, almost all elected officials were drawn from a small number of noble families, two distinct trends of opinion marked the political scene.

The optimates, the “best people,” represented conservative opinion, traditional values, and a collegiate approach to politics. They resented any challenge to the ruling oligarchy and, because they controlled the Senate, were able to block reform. The optimates’ opponents, the populares, claimed to stand, as their nickname suggests, for the interests of the Roman people, of the citizenry at large. Although some of the populares were genuine reformers, others were simply ambitious individualists.

In the eighties B.C., two outsize political personalities collided. One was a respected popularis, Gaius Marius, victor over the Celts. The second was an optimate, Lucius Cornelius Sulla. In 88 B.C., despite the fact that it was illegal for armed soldiers to enter Rome, Sulla marched his army, loyal to him personally and to no one else, into the city to fight against Marius and his friends. Such an attack had never happened before in the history of the Republic. Sulla’s action set a black precedent for ambitious Romans to follow in later years, as violence among politicians became more common.

One after another, Marius and Sulla staged massacres of their political opponents. In Sulla’s case, the bloodletting was legalized. He was elected dictator and, using the supreme emergency powers this gave him, he posted in the Forum a list of his political enemies who were to be killed without trial. Sulla even offered rewards for their execution. Modern scholars estimate that about five hundred died, senators and a larger number of equites. This summary procedure was called a proscription.