011 - The Morning After

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. At the opening of the sixth book of his monumental History of Rome since its foundation, Livy wrote, The history of the Romans from the foundation of the city to its capture, first under kings, then under consuls and dictators, decemviri and consular tribune, wars abroad and dissensions at home, I have set out in five books, covering matters which were obscure, both through their great antiquity, like objects dimly perceived in the far distance, and because in those days there were few written records, the only reliable means of preserving a memory of past events. A further reason was the loss of most of such accounts as were preserved in the commentaries of the pontiffs and other public and private records, when the city was destroyed by fire. From now on, a clearer and more reliable account can be given of the city's civil and military history, after it made a second start, reborn as it were from its old roots with increased vigor and productivity.

That seems like a good place to start this week. Rome was devastated. The city was in ruins and the population, what remained of it anyway, despaired. Officially the subject of abandoning Rome had been closed, but unofficially the idea was still a potent force. Why rebuild when perfectly good homes sat vacant in a well-positioned, defensible city? The Romans had been merciless in their annihilation of the Veites, and the Entruscan city was practically a ghost town. But the Senate's mind was made up, and the Romans were ordered to rebuild, each according to their means. Camillus, whom the people now looked upon as twice their savior, if we believe the legends, stood firm behind staying in Rome, and the population, some reluctantly, followed their hero's lead.

The new Rome that would grow out of the ashes of the Gallic sack would be recognizable today, with its haphazard streets and deep, tangled neighborhoods clearly devoid of any central planning. There was, in fact, no planning whatsoever. The Romans simply picked up what material they could salvage and began rebuilding wherever the whims of each individual directed. Rome, and I say this with love, is, and has been since the 380s BC, a convoluted mess that defies logic. The irony being that in almost every other town, city, or camp built by the Romans, rational right angles was the norm. A model was developed for the fortified military camp that centered around bisecting perpendicular roads that was copied in almost every other settlement the Romans established. A centurion encamped in Britain would have been able to easily navigate his way around a camp in Syria. Everywhere the Romans went, they took their standard grid city layout with them, but the eternal city itself was the dark city of this Roman type A OCD, and the roots of that chaos lay in the years after the Gallic sack, when the Romans rebuilt quickly, but without any kind of master plan.

Not that this is necessarily the Romans' fault. As they were attempting to rebuild their shattered city, nearly every one of their formerly subdued enemies took their shot at setting themselves free of the Roman hegemony. As I mentioned at the end of last week, the usual suspects, particularly the Volscians reappeared, but longtime allies now rose up as well. Piling it on Rome became the fad du jour among long disgruntled Latin communities who never got over Rome's breaking up of the Latin League 100 years earlier at the Battle of Lake Regillus. Even colonies set up by Rome with strong ties to the city joined in the rebellion and kicked their mother's city while she was down. While trying to put their lives back together, the Romans kept being recalled to arms, now to fight on this front, now to fight that enemy, now to fight this former friend. It is no wonder the city grew so haphazardly. There was barely enough time to nail down the roof before it was time to go and fight again.

Throughout these years, Camillus was the rock behind which the insecure Romans hid. In times of danger, they turned to him again and again to lead them to victory. Whether he was appointed official dictator, as he was in 389, 368, and for the fifth and final time, 367 BC, or whether he was elected as one of the military tribunes for that year, Camillus was unquestionably the leader of Rome. Everyone relied upon his strategic and tactical brilliance to see them through these dark times. His enemies, and he did have a few, accused him of arrogance, of treating his fellow tribunes as if they were his vassals, not his equals, but the people were indifferent to these accusations. Camillus was their man. Plus, the other commanders did little to inspire the people's confidence. At one point, a tribune leading a legion against an allied army of Latins and Volscians saw his army flee in terror and hide behind their camp walls. Camillus was ordered to take command and, by his very presence, instilled the soldiers with enough confidence to march back out and defeat the enemy they thought so powerful.

Camillus dominated his time and it would be another 150 years until anyone emerged to equal him in the pantheon of Roman heroes. That man, Scipio Africanus, who delivered the Romans from the scourge of Hannibal, is often mentioned in the same breath as Camillus and, indeed, the consensus opinion is that later historians, Plutarch and Livy especially, colored their descriptions of Camillus to make him seem a prelude to the great Scipio of Africa.

But as Camillus remained in the people's high esteem, another hero fell from grace. Marcus Manlius Capitolanus, the last name attached in honor of his bravery during the Gallic siege, would soon find himself etched into Roman history not as a great hero but as a villain. After the withdrawal of the Gauls, Manlius' ego was severely bruised by the honors heaped upon Camillus and he took them as a personal insult. Had he and the others not held out against the Gauls, Camillus never would have had the opportunity to save them. Surely that deserved some glory, but Camillus hogged it all. Manlius was one of the few amongst the citizen body who could not stand the sight of Camillus, who he considered to be a pompous fraud. This aggravation led Manlius to break ranks with his fellow patricians and take up the cause of the plebes. By making himself their champion, Manlius hoped to do an end run around Camillus and earn the acclaim he felt he deserved.

The most pressing issue of the day was debt relief. Immediately as the Romans rebuilt, there was a hefty amount of borrowing going on and the interest payments began to bankrupt the population. Every day saw men hauled off to prison for defaulting on loans. Men who had fought at Vea and stood firm against the Gauls were daily being made slaves by money lenders who showed no mercy or compassion. Manlius spoke out publicly in favor of relief and often paid the debts of former soldiers out of his own pocket and offered interest-free loans to any who asked. The patricians were disturbed by Manlius' new image as the savior of the people, not only because they saw him as letting irresponsible debtors off the hook, but also because he constantly slipped in references to the great untapped strength of the populace and how their numerical superiority ought to account for something in the formation of policy. The patricians saw these as veiled and not-so-veiled threats against the established order and began to see Manlius as a revolutionary figure.

Manlius was arrested once on charges of bringing false claims of theft against the money lenders, but public outcry was so great that they were forced to release him. With peace abroad to allow for real public unrest, riots began to break out between patrician and plebe factions, Manlius offering daily harangues against the tyranny of the nobles and offering himself as the only patrician who cared about his fellow citizens. The implication was clear, throw out the Senate and elect a new democratic government with me as your leader. Finally, unable to take it anymore, the patricians again arrested Manlius, this time on charges of sedition and treason.

The trial of Manlius would become famous for the way it would play out. The trial was originally held on the campus marshes, which lay in the shadow of the Capitoline Hill. During his defense, Manlius was able to stretch his hand up to the hill and remind the people of his great service to the city, asking how anyone could possibly believe he was now engaged in treason. The argument was having its effect, so the savvy patricians adjourned the trial to a different location. Now, without the Capitoline as a backdrop, the charges and evidence against Manlius stood on their own merits. Public opinion turned against Manlius, who, it became obvious, was engaged in an active conspiracy to overthrow the Senate. The verdict was swift and harsh. He was to be thrown from the Tarpian Rock, a steep cliff on the Capitoline Hill used for executions, ironically dying in disgrace a few feet from where he had achieved his greatest glory.

The death of Manlius did nothing to end plebeian unrest, however. Manlius saw an opportunity and exploited it. He did not create the conditions for that opportunity. The plebes' overriding concern at this point were, as we have seen, debt relief, but the old standbys of land redistribution and access to political power rose again. The former problem was wrapped up in the latter two, and the plebes began to focus their energy on the land and power questions. Both the land taken from Vea in the north and the land taken from the Volscians in the south conspicuously wound up in the hands of a few patrician landowners, rather than being divided up amongst the masses. How were the people supposed to pay off their debts when they were denied the income land provided? Further, how was it that state policy had granted so much to so few? Obviously, whatever concessions had been made to the plebes in the past had lost their potency. The plebes finally saw the office of military tribune with consular power for what it was, an attempt to water down plebe authority and deny them access to the consulship, the ultimate office of state.

One man in particular, a patrician with two daughters, took it upon himself to end once and for all this unbalance. Marcus Fabius Ambustus, a patrician who enjoyed plebe support, had married his eldest daughter to an influential patrician, and his youngest to a wealthy plebe named Gaius Licinius Polo. The younger daughter complained that she would never receive the honors her elder sister received on account of her husband's plebe status. Fabius, the story goes, promised his daughter she would have everything her sister had and began working with his son-in-law Licinius to break the patrician's stranglehold on the consulship. They began by pointing out to people that despite plebe access to the office of military tribune, no plebe had been elected to said office for the last decade, which was true. They then demanded a permanent return to the dual consulship, with the stipulation that one of the consuls had to be a plebe.

Licinius got himself elected tribune of the plebes, an office that had fallen into some disrepute, and used his veto power to bring government business to a standstill. He promised to veto everything in sight, including the yearly elections, until his demands were met. In addition to access to the consulship, Licinius also demanded that a cap be put on the total amount of land a man could own, as well as regulations on interest rates. It was this shutdown, engineered by Fabius and Licinius, that Livy uses to explain his chronological gap, stating that between 375 and 370 BC no magisterial elections were held. Though the duration and excess of the standoff is no doubt exaggerated, the outcome is not. The plebes finally gained access to the consulship.

The moment would not come without a final appearance of the great Camillus, however. The civil unrest and power vacuum led to calls for a dictator, and the senate named Camillus, who enjoyed the support of everyone, patrician and plebe alike. They were hoping Camillus would see things their way, but much to their discomfort, he did not. Due to a flaw in the appointment ceremony, a religious event stuffed full with every kind of Roman superstition, Camillus was forced to resign for that year, granting a reprieve of sorts to the clearly defensive patricians. The next year, 367 BC, Camillus was again named dictator, for the fifth and final time. He used his power to broker the deal Licinius and his colleagues demanded, and for the first time a plebe would be elected consul. The crisis settled, Camillus resigned. The old Roman leader died soon after, the victim of a plague that decimated the Romans in the 360s BC.

With his death, a new era dawned. The Romans had survived their brush with death, and emerged a strong, more democratic place. The honor of first plebe consul historically goes to Lucius Sextius, one of Licinius' colleagues who had helped engineer the shutdown. The land ownership ceiling and regulation of debt were granted at the same time, and ironically, Licinius himself would be prosecuted years later for violating his own laws, after he sought to accumulate large tracts of land for himself and his family. At this point, the law stated merely that one of the consuls could be a plebe. Later, around 342 BC, a law would be passed stating that one of the consuls had to be a plebe. For now, though, the plebes accepted the obvious victory, and passed to the next generation the task of not simply allowing equal access to power, but guaranteeing it.

The veracity of this patrician-plebe showdown, and the election of a first plebeian consul in 367 BC, has been called into question by modern historians. In the first place, they point out that Roman historians of the late Republic and early Imperial period were obviously drawing their narrative from more recent events, specifically the conflicts that centered around the Gracchi brothers, who used their veto power to try and force through land redistribution in the 130s and 120s BC. Second, modern analysis has determined that as many as a third of the consuls prior to 367 were in fact of plebeian origin. As is so often the case, a clear dramatic delineation in history is less plausible than a gradual shift in policy over the years. There is no doubt that the vast majority of early consuls were patricians. But it is suspected that this was not the result of overt discrimination, but rather because of the greater wealth and fame of patrician candidates.

The 367 BC date is important, though, because from that point on there is a marked increase in plebe consuls, demonstrating some sort of conscious decision to grant plebeians more power. And of course, the existence of a 342 BC law stipulating that one of the consuls had to be a plebe is not disputed, and it seems likely that this was the culmination of a decades-long shift rather than a bolt out of the blue. In general, what can be stated is that after the sack of Rome, the plebes demanded and received far greater power than they had enjoyed prior to the arrival of the Gauls.

The Romans struggled in the years after the Gauls left them for dead, but managed to hold on in the face of massive external pressure and internal dissension. The new enfranchisement of the plebes made the Romans a more cohesive and less divisive society. This cohesion would be tested by a confrontation that loomed on the horizon. Though the Romans did not know it yet, they were about to begin a series of war that would leave them the dominant force not just in Latium or central Italy, but in the entire peninsula.

Next week, we will introduce the Samnites, the fiercest of all the hill tribes, who would not only prove more than a match for Rome, but also force the Romans to rethink everything they knew about warfare. The Romans would fight a single great war, with three distinct phases against the Samnites between 343 and 295 BC. The Samnite wars would pull all the major powers of Italy onto one side or the other and culminate with the largest battle ever fought on Italian soil. When it was over, the Roman victory was so complete that it would be 200 years before an Italian people again mounted a serious threat to Roman rule, and, by that time, Rome had grown into a global empire the Italians were not trying to topple, but rather gain full legal citizenship within.