Was the Roman Republic Doomed by the 1st Century BC?

Was the Roman Republic Doomed by the 1st Century BC?

  • Yes

    Votes: 56 58.9%
  • No

    Votes: 39 41.1%

  • Total voters
    95
Ya, I've been reading on Gracchus and he was the few to recognize the crisis the republic was heading towards. Is there a way for a none ASB to have their reforms actually last long term/prevent him from being assassinated?

I would be careful. Gracchus was probably not the good guy, he was in my schoolbooks or still is in popular scientific books.

Gracchus was an aristocrat. He was addicted to dignitas and auctoritas like every roman aristocrat, and he had surely a clear career goal. The optimates claimed, he wanted to become king. This was pure propaganda. Well, perhaps not just propaganda. Grachus was going to transform the tribunate to a kind of independent executive. Something the republic never had. So Gracchus died not, because he distributed the ager publicus. He died, because he tried to change more. Much more.

The senate saw itself as the highest executive, legislative and to a certain extent even iurisdiction of the roman republic. A more independent executive means kingship for them, regardless how you call the new institution. And this is blasphemy! Even worse, this is a frontal attack against the traditional rights of the aristocrats.
 
I agree with the fact that Gracchus was not a saint. He was a roman aristocrat of the highest birth.

But he actes in a collective framework : the college of tribunes. That did not make him a would-be autocrat but rather a Pericles.

The system of power could have reverted to some kind of former college of consular tribunes or athenian strategists.

But the most probable is that Gracchus would have used this system only for the time necessary to Reich curule magistracies.
He and Flaccus had found a very clever system of rotation between the land commission of triumvirs, the tribunate and curule magistracies.

Their only "crime" was that they had show' a way to by-pass their aristocratic opponents in the Senate Thanks to an alliance with the roman plebs, the roman equites and that they were about to add a new decisive support : the support of the italian socii.

Like in 367-366 with the licinian-sextian laws, the question was : AM I going to have a leading part in this new balance of power of so I risk being marginalized ?

The optimates played their game very cleverly to about the gracchan-fulvian scheme. But the price was terrible : creating a breach between Rome and its allies, which les to the hundred of thousands of death of the social war and of the civil wars.
 
But he actes in a collective framework : the college of tribunes. That did not make him a would-be autocrat but rather a Pericles.

Agreed, he obviously had a plan to reform the roman constitution. And he had a wide and dangerous network of supporters. Unfortunately we do not know this plan. I doubt it was autocracy, too. The roman senators of these days had probably at least a strong suspicion. That was sufficient to fight against him by all means.
 
Frankly, you can forget a lot of the big names: one of the things killing the Republic was entirely economic, and how it lead to an economic state of affairs that negated the assumptions of the Roman constitution.

The wars in Spain, simply put, unglue the Republic. Men are serving abroad for years. There farms go under. They go under at the same time men are coming back from Spain with a lot of cash and slaves. Their farm is bought, and amalgamated with their neighbors, and staffed by slaves. If your farm survives, well, tough - the new magnate wants it, can send men to take it, and can make damn sure your suit in the law courts in room doesn't work. And if you do win, he'll repeat the process.

This economic dynamic dooms many of the reformers, because they're one reform idea is to break up the public lands, distribute them to farmers... and then draft them all for another multi-year campaign in Greece or Anatolia, while the same cycle repeats in Italy, as of course the imperator is coming back with even more loot and slaves.

The Roman constitution assumes a large mass of freeborn citizen farmers, some considerably wealthier than the others, many owning some number of slaves, but ultimately, a number of farmers numbering in the tens of thousands able to purchase their weapons and support their drilling. This farm had to be solid enough finance the metal in the arms, and on good enough footing to allow some of its men to loose a growing season to the legions. Rome's conquests outside of Italy make this small farmer about as likely to survive as steak at a bear convention.

These farmers than move to Rome. Where they become clients of the men who took their farm, and reliant on the grain dole... or selling their vote to the rising magnates. Or join the legions.

When the choice is poverty or the legions, the legions will win. When the only way up for the legionary is the spoils of war, the imperator will find them. When the imperator has a loyal army at his back, he will use it. And the people the Republic required to be loyal to it, to prevent a rex? Their now soldiers in that imperator's army.

To be blunt, what Grachus wanted or what Cicero wanted in this context does not matter. Their political system was set up for an economic and social dynamic that was completely lost by 130. The rest is history.
 
They probably had no suspicion at all. They just needed to know that Gracchus and Flaccus were going to gain even more support than they already had. And this was understandably unbearable for them. But if they had been clever Statesmen rather then stubborn opponents, they would have supported the gracchan-fulvian policy in exchange for a share in the political profit the supporters of this policy enjoyed and would enjoy.
This reminds me about Cicero.

In late 60 or early 59, Caesar proposed Cicero to join his alliance with Pompey and Crassus. There would have been a quadriumvirate rather than a triumvirate. But Cicero refused and this certainly changed the course of history.

In the same way, the stupid stubborness and filibustering of Cato and his faction against Pompey in the late 60's forced Pompey into a strong alliance with Caesar and Pompey and forced them to resort to radical means in favour of a quite moderate and reasonable policy.
 
Last edited:
@ TheYoungPretender

I agree, but I thought, we have been already beyond this point. The Marian Reforms were unavoidable. Rome could not fight anylonger with conscripts outside of Africa. This simply did not work anymore.

I was just talking about opportunities to get more loyal legions after they became payed fulltime soldiers. Augustus showed how it works: A fixed service time and a guaranteed pension scheme are just 2 of the neccesary measures.

Of course you cannot promise land in Italy to the soldiers. There is not enough. You even cannot promise them land in colonies. Because land for colonies is not always available without major trouble. Therefore Augustus changed the system in the 2nd half of his reign to a major payment on dismissal. The republic could have established a similar model.

Regarding Gracchus, I hope I made clear, that his agrarian reform is widely overestimated or misinterpreted. It was just a tool, to get the support of the plebs. I am sure, Gracchus knew, that he cannot solve the militarian issue coming along with larger distances and service times, or stop the change of the roman society this way.

And regarding Cicero, he knew for sure, that an agrar reform does not solve the issues. And of course it matters, what Cicero thought, even if he was just a narcissistic and sophomoric little homo novus. He is the only major source we have, which shows, what reform plans the romans of these days perhaps discussed. If you read Cicero, you recognize pretty fast, how absurd most modern political concepts are from a roman point of view. And exactly therefore Cicero matters!
 
@ TheYoungPretender

I agree, but I thought, we have been already beyond this point. The Marian Reforms were unavoidable. Rome could not fight anylonger with conscripts outside of Africa. This simply did not work anymore.

I was just talking about opportunities to get more loyal legions after they became payed fulltime soldiers. Augustus showed how it works: A fixed service time and a guaranteed pension scheme are just 2 of the neccesary measures.

Of course you cannot promise land in Italy to the soldiers. There is not enough. You even cannot promise them land in colonies. Because land for colonies is not always available without major trouble. Therefore Augustus changed the system in the 2nd half of his reign to a major payment on dismissal. The republic could have established a similar model.

Regarding Gracchus, I hope I made clear, that his agrarian reform is widely overestimated or misinterpreted. It was just a tool, to get the support of the plebs. I am sure, Gracchus knew, that he cannot solve the militarian issue coming along with larger distances and service times, or stop the change of the roman society this way.

And regarding Cicero, he knew for sure, that an agrar reform does not solve the issues. And of course it matters, what Cicero thought, even if he was just a narcissistic and sophomoric little homo novus. He is the only major source we have, which shows, what reform plans the romans of these days perhaps discussed. If you read Cicero, you recognize pretty fast, how absurd most modern political concepts are from a roman point of view. And exactly therefore Cicero matters!

You made it clear very well about the Gracchi; it's always nice to see someone looking past the Victorian myth-making surrounding the still highly fascinating men. I agree completely that Cicero is the one person who tried to think even remotely outside of the box; and any novo homo who nails the cursus always in his year when the popular memory of a novo is Marius is very skilled in deed. Apologies if I came off as harsh.

The reason I drive it home is that the overall dynamic makes a lot of reform very hard, for the simple reason that the status quo was making patrician and equestrian alike obscenely rich. A cynical read of Cicero's reforms is that it requires to the Roman elite to all decide to be far thinking and enlightened, and agree to to use some of the power available to them. We'll agree not to be Sulla, in essence.

Now this cynical reading is largely wrong, and the norms of the Republic means a lot of people with the cash would likely have loved this plan. But you only need one would be Sulla to see how it can go wrong - the only ones with any political power are the oligarchs or aspiring oligarchs, and the economics of the day guarantees that this continues. The cash payment idea seems to just speed the money moving up the chain.

On the other hand... it does take away some of the impetus for a conquest. How's this for a crazy thought? Better pay and a movement to cash payment at the end of service, combined with fewer conquests to find lands for veterans, jump-starts the development of the proto-manorial system you start seeing under Diocletian?

Retiring soldiers sign on with equites and patricians to avoid going back into the insullae, and these equites and patricians, as a group, can mob up on any of their own numbers who try to get Sulla-y. Any aspiring tyrant has a problem with fewer overseas conquests with which to build an army. Of course, if your the equite, folding these soliders, who you're going to have to treat better than the normal client, into your estates, businesses, is cheaper than just paying them, and you can use your coin for the surprisingly sophisticated trade networks of the time.

Patrones-clientes is a great bulwark for a feudal system anyway - just look at the dominate and latter principate. Okay, the pay-off and no land idea might be a solid contender for how you preserve some form of a Republic... Interesting, Agricola.
 
Here's a thought. If you want a very early solution, how can you prevent the consolidation of power by the senate? It's well known that the senate was not a legislative body and didn't actually have any de jure power. But they gathered a lot of de facto power in the early decades of the republic, despite the gains made by the plebs.

So might part of the solution be preventing the senate from accumulating so much power in the first place? Would this not make reform at least a little easier, if, say, the de facto and de jure power rested in the hands of the comitia tributa and the 10 tribunes, rather than the senate?
 
I doubt it makes sense, if you go that far back to change the constitution.

In an aristocratic society it is very natural that a council of aristocrats governs the state. Look at other ancient aristocratic republics and you see similar models. Even the Republic of Venice in the 15th century was governed by several councils of aristocrats. The magistrates were just clerks to fulfill the will of the councils and even the "Mighty Doge" had barely more than representation duties officially.

This is the natural constitution of an aristocratic republic. The power of a state should be with the mighty people or class. If not, this state is in trouble. The question is, how did the power change in the roman republic. At the beginning, after the last king, the power was with the patricians only. So only patricians were members of the senate. But then mighty plebejan families arose. The romans adapted and integrated them into the senate and the magistrates.

Then the romans conquered Italy, but they forgot to integrate the mighty families of their socii. This led to the social war around 90 BC.

After the punic war, a lot of equestrian families become very wealthy and mighty. Not just in Italy, but also in the provinces. The republic never found a way to deal with them and integrate them into the political system. It was Augustus, who started to give them an appropriate political role and responsibility.

And the aristocracy developed a kind of upper-aristocracy, the oligarchs or potentates. The republic never found a way to integrate them into the political system.

One big problem of the roman republic was, that after the punic wars, the roman aristocracy was not able to integrate all these new and mighty classes into the political system. In the 19th century the historians called the late republic therefore the Roman Revolution.

The next problem we discussed was, that the constitution of a city state, where an aristocratic council rules the state does not work for an huge territorial state. The mother of all question is: If an aristocratic republic must(?) use a council to steer the state, is then an aristocratic republic able to rule an huge territorial state at all?

But until the roman constitution and the senate stopped working, it was perfect. So I see no need to start 500BC with any changes.
 
Last edited:
Top