028 - Taking Stock

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 28 of Taking Stock. For 350 years, the Roman Republic had grown, contracted, grown again, survived, and thrived. Through it all, the Romans never turned away from their most basic founding principle, that no king shall reign in Rome. Every year men stood for election, and every year free ballots were cast by free citizens. The winners won and the losers lost, and power was transferred peacefully between them. At no point did the great and ambitious leaders of Rome step outside the bounds of the system to seize control of the state. It is a remarkable run, and the Republic's track record was and is the cause of much justifiable envy. But alas, the Romans, for all their strength on the battlefield and all their moral rectitude, could not stem the tide of greed and ambition that lurks in the hearts of men in all times and all places. Roman success would be the undoing of the Roman Republic, and after the symbolic dual sacking of Carthage and Corinth in 146 B.C., the dam holding back the dark side began to crack visibly. Less than a century later the dam would break, and in defiance of all that had once been held as good and true by the Romans, a single man would ascend to the throne of power. And though he was wise enough not to call himself king, we all know that a rose, by any other name, would still smell as sweet.

For all these years, the Republic had survived for two major overarching reasons. The lower class Pobleans had not been so impoverished that they were driven to a violent revolution to improve their material lot in life, and the upper class was unified enough that their internal rivalries did not spill out into the public sphere. Both of these critical linchpins were about to be removed, leaving civil war and violent class conflict as the order of the day. And both linchpins were pulled by the very same hand, victory overseas. The Romans, in addition to the entire peninsula of Italy, now controlled Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa, Greece, Macedon, and Spain. All those subject lands provided the Romans with wealth never before imagined, slaves in the hundreds of thousands, and endless opportunities for personal enrichment. One might imagine that with such an abundance flooding into Rome that there would be far less internal conflict, not more. There would be more than enough to go around, what would be the point of squabbling? The problem, though, was that all the new wealth was winding up in the hands of the already wealthy elites, and some became so rich that, in effect, they considered the cohesion of the state less important than they had in the past. When you are completely self-financed, there is a tendency to follow your own whims and everyone else be damned. And this, to put it mildly, is no way to keep a free Republic running smoothly. The ruling class, which had for all these centuries understood that patrician solidarity kept them firmly in charge, started to see men break off to make their own way in the world, forcing the others to compete or lose what status they had. Things quickly spiraled out of control.

In a way, it can all be traced back to Scipio Africanus. The long-haired, flamboyant, irreverently religious hero of the Second Punic War set an example for ambitious young Romans to follow. Indeed, it was Scipio who originally coined the term imperator when his troops hailed him as a king after his victories in Spain. Scipio, like Augustus, was savvy enough to distance himself from all talk of monarchy, but the cult of personality he encouraged set the tone for future threats to the Republic. And after being dispatched to the East to deal with Antiochus, Scipio also showed later Roman leaders how to form independent power bases and self-finance a good old-fashioned power grab.

A long, long time ago, I briefly touched on the idea that class struggles in Rome never manifested on strict economic lines because of the entrenchment of the client-patron model of civic relations. All Scipio did was transfer this model to Roman dealings with other nations. To recap briefly, wealthy Roman patricians offered all manner of services to their poorer fellow citizens, most notably bank loans and legal representation. In exchange for this aid, the citizen reciprocated by backing their patrons in elections and showering them with public support any time the patron required it. It may seem a minor thing, but in Rome much rested on a man's ability to turn out favorable crowds if he ever came under political or judicial attack. The client-patron relationships endured through generations and wound up providing many of the social services we now ask of the state, the equivalent of health care, welfare, and old-age pensions. These bonds were strong enough to bind families to voting against their own immediate interests in favor of their patron's chosen policy. Not to jump ahead, but when a conflict between rival patrons heated up, each had an army ready to fight blindly for their man. All Scipio did was extend this principle to his overseas dealings, leaving behind him a wake of noble families in Spain, North Africa, and Greece personally loyal to him rather than the Roman Senate per se. Indeed, it was the source of all his troubles with Cato after the Scipiones returned from the East having defeated Antiochus. Scipio had granted favors to the Syrian king in exchange for certain monetary tribute, which on the one hand was obviously bribery, but on another it was simply an extension of the client-patron model. Could a patron deny his client a favor? Why it would be rude to do such a thing.

Flaminius, after pacifying Greece, took the same attitude and soon Roman aristocrats stationed overseas began to cultivate complex networks of foreign clients, which brought enormous prestige to the Roman aristocrat in question. Slowly but surely, patricians stationed in the provinces began to outpace their fellow elites in terms of wealth, power, and fame. Almost overnight the game had changed. Other patricians were forced to keep up with the Joneses or risk being left behind, and competition was fierce for the critical overseas appointments that afforded these newfound sources of status. Cato and his faction were hyper-aware of the danger this posed to the state. If some amongst the patricians became more equal than others, then the cohesion of the ruling class would fall away and they would all end up poorer men at the end of the day. It may even lead, horror of horrors, to the plebeians taking advantage of the situation and imposing reforms on a divided ruling class. Sumptuary laws were even passed, making ostentatious displays of wealth a crime. It was an attempt to erect a superficial facade strong enough to cut the dangerous competition for riches to a minimum, but it was nearly impossible to enforce and plus, everyone knew how much everyone was making anyway. No law about what material your shirt could be made of was going to change that.

So on the one hand, Rome's emergence as the dominant political force in the Mediterranean would have disastrous consequences for the ruling class. Too much money went to the heads of too many young men, and immediate personal ambition took the place of long-term political stability. On the other hand, it also had disastrous consequences for the average Roman in the street, or at least the average Roman in the field. The backbone of the republic had always been the free citizen, farmer, soldier. The man who owned enough land to meet the property requirements for service in the legion, who would fight or farm depending on what his country asked him to do. But after conquering half the known world, these citizen-soldiers came home to find that Italy had been transformed and they were left out in the economic cold.

In the years after the conquest of Greece, the large landowners began to buy up neighboring farms. Sometimes the smallholders sold willingly, sometimes they had to be persuaded, but the upshot was that more and more land was owned by fewer and fewer families. Of course, large estates were nothing new to Rome, but even if the title was held by some patrician, he needed free men to till the earth, and if it wasn't quite as satisfying a life, at least a poor farmer could get along. But that was all about to change. After sweeping through Spain, Africa, and Greece, the legions brought home with them slaves, slaves by the thousands, then the tens of thousands, then the hundreds of thousands. Unfortunately, the largest estate owners did not need free Roman citizens for the planting or for the harvest or really for anything. Now slaves ran the farms and tilled the soil and carried the bushels. The profit margins were outrageous. How could a savvy patrician pass up the opportunity to reduce his labor costs to zero? Besides, his rival in the Senate was doing the same thing, so Senator Smith just had to keep up with Senator Jones. It was not outsourcing so much as insourcing. The jobs stayed right where they were, it was the people who were forced to leave. Suddenly, once fine upstanding members of the community were landless, homeless, and growing desperate. Most migrated to the cities where they hoped to learn a trade, or to the provinces where they attempted to become traders, or, if they were lucky, secure a small holding abroad. The pressure this put on Roman society was intense. Only a few sold their farms for a hefty profit and found a new line of work, but most simply fell on hard times. The Roman economy, which had once been merely supplanted by slave labor, was now a full-blown slave economy, and the free citizens struggled to stay afloat.

One of the most important consequences this had for the Republic was the makeup of its army. I will talk more about this when we get to the episodes about Marius and his mules, but the property requirements that men had to meet in order to be enrolled in the legions were fast becoming unattainable. If the requirements were what they had been in Camillus' time, the Romans would be marching out an army consisting of a dozen or so young nobles. Out of necessity, the requirements were lowered and lowered again to keep the legions at full strength. But with more and more families pushed off the land, it was difficult to keep up. Finally, around 100 BC, the property requirements were eliminated and the recruiting offices were thrown open to any man who wished to join. Of course, the soldier, lacking any other means of enrichment, would have to be paid. And pay was dependent on his commander's ability to secure booty. And if a commander got really good at seizing booty, there were thousands of morally flexible armed Romans who would flock to his banner. This wasn't about leaving behind the plow to fight for the family plot anymore. This was mercenary work in the guise of state policy. And it did not take long for the façade to fall away.

The properties that had bound the Roman Republic together were coming unglued. The Senate, which had risen to a state of political preeminence during the long years of the Second Punic War, was deaf to the ill winds that were blowing. Each senator was caught up in their own quest for personal glory. What cash crop should I plant this year? Sure famine is beginning to rear its ugly head, but I hear olives are fetching a fine price in Athens. Besides, I need to make enough to ensure that my son gets that questorship, and the wheels need to be greased a little, if you know what I mean. The ruling class was consumed with this kind of thinking, little realizing that it was about to all come crashing down on their heads. The problem was that the Republic had stopped functioning as a republic, and had passed into true oligarchy. But the people had not forgotten what they once had, and were fast becoming desperate enough to use any means necessary to get a piece of the pie back. And the slow slide from oligarchy into tyranny truly began when some of the nobles began to realize that all they had to do was promise the masses a piece of that pie, and they themselves could have the whole world.