AHC: reform the late republic

with any PoD after the second punic war, have the republic reform into something capable of surviving and prospering like the empire did IOTL - and perhaps even surpassing it in accomplishment and duration. who could have reversed the gradual proccess of republican values in rome, and what reforms could both improve the republic and be plausibly passed (so no abolishment of slavery in the 2nd century BC)
 
I'm just gonna refer back to some earlier postings of mine

The Republic surviving seems like a stretch to me. Sulla tried the whole "reform the constitution" angle, but Pompey and Crassus had reduced all of Sulla's institutional work to shambles with the brute force of the army. You mention "military reform", but the military "expressing itself" was not the problem. Every legionary was (officially) a Roman citizen, so they could already all vote, and unrest for the political rights of the legions was not what destroyed the Republic. The institutional problem at the root of everything (at least according to one view on the fall of the Republic) was that the governing framework of the Republic was only equipped to deal with the government of a city state. It was able to adapt to governing Italy effectively (after the Social War at least), but when it came to the rest of the provinces, the senate basically sent out one of their own and said, "Just do whatever for a few years then come back." The Romans were so concerned about having checks and balances in Italy (with two consuls, ten tribunes, senatorial bylaws, and three different electoral assemblies), but they basically gave unlimited absolute power to provincial governors with absolutely no checks on their authority. This can be seen most plainly in the year 49 BCE when the senate tried to recall Caesar, but the only thing the senate could do when Caesar marched south as a warlord was turn to another warlord for protection. That display on its own was proof that the provincial governing system was broken because they weren't even really under the control of the senate. Each province was basically an independent private fiefdom led by whatever governor was in charge. Sure, they were usually loyal to the senate, but it only took a few exceptions to bring the entire Republic to its knees.

The only way to save the Republic, imho, would be the total reform of the provincial government system. Caesar himself tried to tackle this during his consulship in 59 BCE with the lex Julia, which tried to impose penalties for corruption, bribery, etc in the provinces, but it failed as a reform measure for the Republic because there was no means by which the government in Rome could hold governors accountable. And this was by design, the Roman concept of military command was centered on the idea of imperium: that a commander has unlimited power of life and death over his soldiers and answers to no one. The Romans countered the possibility of corruption by limiting consular and proconsular terms to one year, but by the late Republic generals started raising private armies to blackmail the senate into backing their agendas. The senate couldn't do anything but watch and acquiesce to the generals' will because the senate itself didn't have an army to stop them. Anytime the Republic underwent civil wars, there was never an "army of the Republic", there were only armies of Sulla or Cinna or Pompey or Caesar or Octavian. To stop this from happening, the senate would have to do one of two things:

1. Create a unified military command: This is essentially what Augustus did to stop the chaos of the civil wars. He took all the provincial legions (each run by their own independent warlords) and put them all under a single commanding officer (himself). Later emperors would reform this system by adding additional general-level officers to make command of the legions more efficient (duces, magistri milita, magistri equita, etc). Of course, this just moves the underlying problem one step up. How could the senate hold this unified command accountable or check their power? Would they place the consuls at the top of this command? The office of consulship itself was frequently awarded to men by means of bribery or political violence, so I doubt that would be a reasonable measure, so the Republic may have to create a whole new office to command this new military model, but Caesar got assassinated for doing exactly that, so its doubtful that the institutional inertia of Rome would allow for such circumstances to arise.

2. Redefine the legal basis of imperium: Giving singular provincial governors total imperium in the provinces was, as I have said, part of the underlying problem. It would be like the US constitution giving US states the power to raise their own armies and didn't make state governors abide by the constitution or any federal laws, and then abolishing the US military. It would be chaos. The senate would have to start either sending two or three governors to each province (which was done during the empire), perhaps giving them different responsibilities. For example, the proconsul might command the legions and raise taxes, but the procurator might be the one who collects those taxes and pays the legionaries, so neither one would be able to turn the legions on the other and take over absolute control of the province (at least in theory). Or perhaps you could have two equal proconsuls who each command the province for a month (as they had in Rome).

I doubt either of these solutions would stick, since they both imply rapid and sweeping institutional changes to the Roman government, which were never very popular, since the Romans valued tradition so heavily. That's why from the founding of the Republic to its fall, the only significant institutional changes were the concessions given to the plebeians (the tribunary veto, plebeian consuls, the right to serve as legionaries) and the ad hoc creation of the province system.

Wow. Where to begin?

There's no universal answer to "Why did the Republic fall?", but I'll give you the two primary causes from my point of view.

1. The Roman patron-client system: This aspect of Roman society is often glossed over by armchair historians, but the patron-client system was the primary social institution which governed political behavior. For those that don't know, Roman patricians would essentially give money and food to plebeians in exchange for minor services and political support. The Romans were extremely socially conscious and patron-client relationships were often viewed as taking precedence over familial relations. While this was always important in Rome, the influx of poor farmers into Rome over the period of 146-133 BCE made it possible for populist patricians to suddenly gain huge swaths of clients for support in elections, etc, and the sheer speed of this amalgamation gave any moderately wealthy or ambitious senator the ability to assume a prominent role in Rome. This is what led to the meteoric rise of politicians from families which weren't traditionally powerful in the Early and Middle Republic. In fact, almost every populist that took part in the fall of the Republic came from an plebeian or obscure patrician family. In a society where the years were literally named after the consuls for that year, the impulse to gain rapid status was powerful, and the central role of the patron-client system made it possible for any decently wealthy, ambitious, or well-connected men to mold the political system to their designs. However, this wasn't the decisive problem on its own, rather the critical weakness was:

2. The imbalance of the Republican government: When the kings were overthrown and the Republic was established, the only real change was the length of terms in office. Consuls functionally had the same powers as kings, with the only real check on power being the presence of a second consul. However, there were no such limitations placed on proconsuls. Proconsuls did not have any strict term limits or formal institutional checks. Once they were in their province, the ex-consul functionally became a king, with no real limitations on their domestic powers and no real mechanism to prevent them from marching on Rome if they so choose. After 146 BCE, the Republic basically had no standing army, and every legion that was levied was (because of patron-client politics) personally loyal to the respective proconsul. At the end of the Republic, the senate only controlled Italy while each province was functionally an independent fiefdom. This flaw in the system was shone bare in 49 BCE when Caesar marched on Rome and the only thing the senate could do to stop him was flee into the arms of another powerful ex-proconsul.

The patron-client system on its own was not sufficient to bring down the Republic, nor was the executive supremacy of the consuls. But without a means to control the entire army from a central chain of command, there is no way to reign in the leverage held by proconsuls with their privately owned legions. It took the Republic 100 years to fall, but when it finally did, it stabilized under the rule of one man, and remained stable for another century to come. This was principally because Octavian was able centralize the legionary command structure. So, in my view, the only way for the Republic to survive would be to establish a large standing army in Italy, pledged to obey either the year's consuls or the senate as a whole such that proconsuls did not have the same amount of leverage. Now of course, a large military in Italy poses its own series of threats to the survival of the Republic, but so long as no one man is able to gain patronage over too many legionaries, the system might remain stable for a few more decades.

[...]

The problem with the judicial system was that it was run by senators. Not the senate at-large of course, but every judge (or praetor) was a senator, who could go on to serve as consul, or any number of roles in the senate. Julius Caesar for example, was praetor in 63 BCE, and every consul had to serve as praetor first. For this reason, the role of praetor was heavily politicized, and this made judicial corruption inevitable. In modern democracies, a strong and independent apolitical judiciary is one of the cornerstones of stability and the rule of law, and without that, the praetorship helped doom the republic (especially after praetorships became a prerequisite for a command in the provinces). Bribery is only really possible to reign-in if there's an independent judiciary without major interests tied to the senate (which were usually the ones doing the bribing). Julius Caesar, for example, payed huge bribes to get elected to the praetorship, and if he enforced the bribery laws on the books after his election, the praetors for the next years would bring down the fully legal might of the senate upon him for his hypocrisy. For this and other reasons, judicial independence was really impossible, and contributed heavily to the fall of the Republic. The sacrosanctness of tribunes was so fragile for the exact same reason (i.e. it was impossible to enforce due to conflicts of interest from the judges themselves).

However, if you want a less wordy list of reasons the Republic fell, then here:
1. Lack of checks on proconsular power
2. Lack of an independent judiciary
3. Inability to address bribery
4. Lack of real respect for the sacrosanctity of tribunes
5. Prevalence of ex post facto laws and bills of attainder
6. Lack of any means to address any of the above problems in the long-term (largely as a result of no written constitution)
7. Total permetivity of the patron-client system into politics

So, you would potentially have to solve at least a few of these.
 
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