Caesar’s Constitution

Suppose the following: Caesar does not die in 44 BC, and lives to, lets say, at least 40 BC. Lets us also suppose this additional detail: Caesar does not want anyone after him to emulate him, and wants to prevent anyone from having such autocratic power within the Republic.

He is in the position of knowing exactly how to obtain such power and wield it effectively, so one could argue he is the best person to make an attempt to prevent it from happening again. Sort of like sending Joe Kennedy after corruption on Wall Street.

So, what could Caesar do to prevent the rise of another Caesar, and how successful might he be? And if he’s not successful, what might that look like? Even if the broad arc of history is the same, we might regard him very differently.

My gut instinct is the same with almost every ‘save the Republic’ proposition: we need to have a military-political reform. The army needs to have some way of expressing themselves within the Constitutional framework. That could be as simple as reforming the Centuriate Assembly.

Another needed reform would be to find a way to end the exploitative nature of the provincial governor system. Not so much for the sake of the provinces (though that helps) but to prevent anyone from amassing a lot of wealth and power. It’d be too much to consider turning the provinces into socii en masse, but at least there is a framework for allowing the locals more autonomy.

On a more personal note, if Caesar dispenses of his fortune before his death, it would help limit the ability of his heir to polevault into power.
 

Toraach

Banned
There was a guy who tried to save the Republic and named himself a dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa, and guess what? He failed, his system was unstable, and still new warlords emerged who wanted power for themselves.

Questions you state, were later answered by Augustus, but of course he made himself an autocratic leader. The Army became a private forces of the Imperator, most governors his private envoys, and the rest of them despite rhetoric about renovating of the republic were also watched by him.

I have written many times why something like "local autonomy" wasn't a thing in the Roman Emire, because it had already existed. The Empire was an aggregate of myriads of cities, which ruled over local matters, with the Emperor somewhere far far away and governors closer as his local agents. Example in Hellas existed well into the Principate traditional federal "states", like the Etolian League, Beotian League, or Lycia League across the sea. And in not yet urbanized areas (in roman sense, not functional existence of urban centres) there were still "tribes" ruled by local kings, example Boudica and friends. There was also an issue of local client kings in the East, but after incorporation of their kingdoms into the Empire, some of their descandants became members of roman elites.
 
The army needs to have some way of expressing themselves within the Constitutional framework. That could be as simple as reforming the Centuriate Assembly.
For that you need to prevent/reverse the evolution of the roman army. Have the army composed by farmers who have to provide for their equipment and are selected among the centuries. This is my opinion but I also think it's too late at this point. In addiction not even during the III/II century B.C. the totality of the citizens took part in the comitia, so it would just remain an assembly of local romans unless you realize something similar to what Augustus briefly proposed: allow voting outside the city of Rome. However I don't know if this is feasible.
 
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.
 
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.

I like your other ideas, but I have to disagree on this point. Given the way voting was conducted in the Centuriate Assembly, the soldiers that composed the bulk of the Legions had almost no vote. They were grouped in voting centuries according wealth, with the poorest (the majority after Marius) being grouped into overly large voting centuries, and the votes proceeded in order of wealth, with the wealthiest centuries voting first, and stopping once a majority was reached. Quite simply, while the soldiers have a vote, in theory, many were utterly disenfranchised in that Assembly.
 
I like your other ideas, but I have to disagree on this point. Given the way voting was conducted in the Centuriate Assembly, the soldiers that composed the bulk of the Legions had almost no vote. They were grouped in voting centuries according wealth, with the poorest (the majority after Marius) being grouped into overly large voting centuries, and the votes proceeded in order of wealth, with the wealthiest centuries voting first, and stopping once a majority was reached. Quite simply, while the soldiers have a vote, in theory, many were utterly disenfranchised in that Assembly.

I am aware of the wealth imbalance in the centuriate assembly, but that assembly only elected three magistracies (the consuls, censors, and praetors), and the poor could easily dominate the plebeian assembly, which was required to vote on all senate bills. Not saying the Republic was fair by any means, but the legions didn't help overthrow the Republic because they were mad that their votes mattered less, they helped overthrow the Republic because they were paid and rewarded by their commanders, rather than by the state treasury. Reforming the comitae centuriata and tributium would be an egalitarian, democratic reform, but it wouldn't change the underlying structural problems that caused the fall of the Republic.
 
Suppose the following: Caesar does not die in 44 BC, and lives to, lets say, at least 40 BC. Lets us also suppose this additional detail: Caesar does not want anyone after him to emulate him, and wants to prevent anyone from having such autocratic power within the Republic.

He is in the position of knowing exactly how to obtain such power and wield it effectively, so one could argue he is the best person to make an attempt to prevent it from happening again. Sort of like sending Joe Kennedy after corruption on Wall Street.

So, what could Caesar do to prevent the rise of another Caesar, and how successful might he be? And if he’s not successful, what might that look like? Even if the broad arc of history is the same, we might regard him very differently.

My gut instinct is the same with almost every ‘save the Republic’ proposition: we need to have a military-political reform. The army needs to have some way of expressing themselves within the Constitutional framework. That could be as simple as reforming the Centuriate Assembly.

Another needed reform would be to find a way to end the exploitative nature of the provincial governor system. Not so much for the sake of the provinces (though that helps) but to prevent anyone from amassing a lot of wealth and power. It’d be too much to consider turning the provinces into socii en masse, but at least there is a framework for allowing the locals more autonomy.

On a more personal note, if Caesar dispenses of his fortune before his death, it would help limit the ability of his heir to polevault into power.

As others already said, the problem is that the prerequisites you are asking for would be un-Roman.

Rome never had a constitution and the Roman aristocracy would never have wanted to alter, by formal law, the very nature of imperium. Imperium, in itself, was unlimited. It was collegiality, one year-terms, tribunitian veto and the division of clientelae that happened to drive those holding imperium making a restrained use of imperium.

None of the imperatores wanted to end the benefits of provincial tributes to Rome. Those who had real Statesmanship, like Lucullus, Pompey, Caesar and Augustus, just wanted to bring these tributes back to sustainable levels and to make sure themselves and their friends would be the main beneficiaries of the empire’s resources.

And Caesar’s personal wealth was not the main issue : his clientelae military as civilian and his clientelae’s immense wealth were the real golden goose.
 
Just becaue the Romans didn’t have a written Constitution doesn’t mean they didn’t have one.

They had a constitution, but the fact that it wasn't written meant that it was much more flexible than our modern conceptions of constitutions. For example, consecutive terms were against the Roman constitution, but that didn't stop Marius from being elected to 5 consecutive consulships. Pompey was appointed sole consul by the senate in 52 BCE (breaking who knows how many laws), and both Sulla and Caesar were declared dictator for life, despite there being no constitutional basis for such an office. If things as basic as term limits and elections were able to be manipulated like that, then there's little hope for a firm constitution to be introduced to the Roman system in the timeframe of Julius Caesar's life.
 
They had a constitution, but the fact that it wasn't written meant that it was much more flexible than our modern conceptions of constitutions. For example, consecutive terms were against the Roman constitution, but that didn't stop Marius from being elected to 5 consecutive consulships. Pompey was appointed sole consul by the senate in 52 BCE (breaking who knows how many laws), and both Sulla and Caesar were declared dictator for life, despite there being no constitutional basis for such an office. If things as basic as term limits and elections were able to be manipulated like that, then there's little hope for a firm constitution to be introduced to the Roman system in the timeframe of Julius Caesar's life.

Well, I disagree. They had no constitution. When it’s not written and when they have but a few laws to which they can decide not to abide and custom that is twisted or that they decide not to abide to, they have no constitution.

The Roman aristocracy never wanted and would never have accepted a constitution because a constitution, either written or customary or both written and customary, would have implied that the aristocracy would have lost its checks and balances that flowed from Auctoritas, that is social domination, and not from law or legal custom.

Formally, Rome was a republic. The reality was that Rome was not a real republic because the political reality was that the aristocracy held the citizens, the republic, under their guardianship.

And all we know about Caesar drive to state that he did not want a constitution and did not even conceive giving Rome a constitution. Caesar was a Roman aristocrat, probably the best of them all, as Ronald Syme wrote. And as so, it would have seemed to him completely inappropriate and extravagant to establish a constitution.

Caesar said that how word should be considered as law. This is not a « constitutional » state of mind.
 
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Well, I disagree. They had no constitution. When it’s not written and when they have but a few laws to which they can decide not to abide and custom that is twisted or that they decide not to abide to, they have no constitution.

The Roman aristocracy never wanted and would never have accepted a constitution because a constitution, either written or customary or both written and customary, would have implied that the aristocracy would have lost its checks and balances that flowed from Auctoritas, that is social domination, and not from law or legal custom.

Formally, Rome was a republic. The reality was that Rome was not a real republic because the political reality was that the aristocracy held the citizens, the republic, under their guardianship.

And all we know about Caesar drive to state that he did not want a constitution and did not even conceive giving Rome a constitution. Caesar was a Roman aristocrat, probably the best of them all, as Ronald Syme wrote. And as so, it would have seemed to him completely inappropriate and extravagant to establish a constitution.

Caesar said that how word should be considered as law. This is not a « constitutional » state of mind.

Gotta disagree. Yes, they eventually started disregarding much of their customary constitution, but that was a sign of the degradation of their political system. These are the people that came up with the notion of Mos Maiorum.

I fundamentally disagree with your characterization of the Roman political system.
 
Gotta disagree. Yes, they eventually started disregarding much of their customary constitution, but that was a sign of the degradation of their political system. These are the people that came up with the notion of Mos Maiorum.

I fundamentally disagree with your characterization of the Roman political system.

They did not only eventually started disregarding their political system : they always did so.

The truest description of the Roman republic was : Senatus Populusque Romanus.

The Senate is mentioned before the People because the Senate, as I previously mentioned, held the people under its guardianship.

There are many examples of the aristocracy and Senate disregarding the laws and customs before the last century of the republic.

Consider the way they regularly cheated in the consular election to nullify a result that displeased them. Nullifying the functioning of the legal political system was enshrined in the aristocratic privileges. The outgoing consul could refuse to register a candidacy, refuse to validate the victory of a consul-elect for next year, cancel the vote of a law or election of a candidate because someone « saw » a bad omen, prevent the conclusion of electoral process so that an interrex finally designate screw the result of the election.

To a large extent, vote was not free : most citizens obeyed to a patron who ordered them what to vote for or against and who to vote for. They had no such thing as Athenian isegoria (liberty and equality of speech).
Only the parcelling of clientelae gave a misleading appearance of free election. It was an unfree but open hence competitive system between aristocrats with the People instrumentalized.

Having stated this, I do not deny that there were times when the Roman People’s will, backed by some powerful aristocrats, prevailed.
 
I do like the idea, and think it is vital, but I fear that there really is only one way to achieve any serious long-lasting reforms, and that would be large scale federalisation of the Senates, more as the binds of an autocrat like Caesar and Augustus, rather than trying to have them discuss and agree.

If we agree that trying to get all of the Empire (let alone all of Italy) to vote in a way that could be feasibly acted upon is nigh-on impossible, then we need to have a system where the Senates can have regional authority and power to bind the Dictator, effectively being the limit on their power within that area.

The Dictator would need to be selected, and I would suggest that at any time each Senate can put forward three candidates, whom are all publicly known, and have had to serve the state in some capacity. After which the Senates can all decide on a Dictator-Elect if/when the current Dictator dies or is voted out of office. This should allow quite a wide number of candidates, which can lead to success to whoever has a plurality of Senates support (i.e. if one candidate has 2, and all the others 1, then the first candidate becomes Dictator-Elect).

The three roles of the individual Senates then become organisation of government within their region, selection of a new Dictator-Elect, and reigning in and working with the current Dictator. After which the Dictator would work a lot like Augustus. With a 2-year rolling term requiring a majority to depose them, with a 10-year term requiring that they achieve a greater plurality than the Dictator-Elect (so yes, the Senates would need to decide that as well).

Crucially however, is that the Senate can revoke Imperium. That concept is so dangerous, I'd even suggest abolishing it.

Furthermore, in order to prevent an overly powerful Dictator, I'd suggest that the Legions are paid by Senates, with the Dictator able to order more Legions to be raised, and be summoned for use for a campaign. So if you went to war with Persia, the Hispanian Legions could be summoned, and kept for the entire campaign.

At least that is my immediate thought-dump. :D
 
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