earlier periods of the Republic. As we will see further in Chapter 4, this system relied on two principles apparently designed to avoid a return to a monarchy: collegiality and annuality. Each magistrate had a colleague who was his equal in office, and each magistrate only served in office for a single year. The only exception to this practice came during military emergencies, when they appointed a dictator for a period of no more than six months. In the second century, however, magistrates on military campaigns served further and further away from Rome. This distance reduced the ability of those in Rome to oversee their choices and so gave them tremendous flexibility as commander in chief in choosing a course of action. The distance from Rome also made it inefficient and even counterproductive to replace troops and commanders every twelve months. Many generals thus remained in military command beyond a single year, and many citizen-soldiers remained on overseas campaign for multiple years at a time.
Exploring Culture: Cincinnatus, the Model Roman
The Roman government was built on the principle that no man should have more power than any other man, in order to avoid the possibility of one man becoming king. Under most circumstances this system worked fine, but what happened if the two leading magistrates could not agree on what to do in an emergency? Their powers would cancel each other out, and leave the state vulnerable to an attack.
In these situations, the Romans resorted to the appointment of a dictator. The dictator possessed sole authority in the state, but the trick was that his appointment could last for a maximum of six months. This amount of time was felt to be enough to handle a crisis while still minimizing the chances of someone turning the dictatorship into a tyranny.
For the ideal model of a dictator, the Romans always thought of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. Livy (3.26–29) tells us that he was working on his farm one day when a delegation from the Roman Senate showed up. He put down his plow and put on his toga so that he could talk with them, and they saluted him as Dictator and explained the desperate situation of the Roman army, currently fighting the Aequi. Cincinnatus followed them to Rome and immediately put Rome on a war footing: he suspended all public business, closed shops throughout the city, and ordered all men of military age to appear fully armed in the Campus Martius before sunset. By midnight of the next day the newly raised army had reached the war front. Upon arrival the dictator surveyed battle lines and immediately began a battle against the enemy. By dawn the enemy had been completely surrounded and agreed to surrender their arms and depart. Cincinnatus returned to Rome in triumph, carrying the spoils of war before him. Having completed his mission, he resigned his office on the sixteenth day and returned to his farm.
This story has had a profound impact not just on the image of an ideal Roman leader, but ideal American leaders as well: George Washington has often been compared to Cincinnatus, even in his own lifetime. Like Cincinnatus, he was called out of retirement to lead the Continental army, then resigned his commission in 1783 and returned to his farm at Mount Vernon. Washington then came out of retirement again to serve as President in 1789, before retiring to Mount Vernon for good after serving two terms as President. Jean-Antoine Houdon’s statue (see Figure 2.5) of Washington, erected in 1796, made the comparison clear: Washington stands in front of a plow and rests his left hand on a bundle of rods known as the fasces, the Roman symbol of power. Americans no less than Romans mythologize their leaders so that they have the values that we want them to have.
Figure 2.5 Statue of George Washington as Cincinnatus. Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1792. Note the fasces that represent Roman military authority under his left arm and the plow behind his feet.
These features allowed individual generals to gain popularity and stature beyond what earlier generals had seen. Scipio Africanus, the conqueror of Carthage, provides a good example. The Roman difficulties in the war against Hannibal led the Romans to appoint him to a military command at an earlier age that was normal, and despite the fact that he had at the time held no office above that of aedile, a minor city management position. Scipio spent four years campaigning successfully in Spain before being elected to the office of consul, the highest Roman magistracy, and then spent the next four years campaigning in Africa where he finally defeated Hannibal. On his return he celebrated a lavish triumph and became the single most prominent politician in Rome. Legends grew up around him that he talked with Jupiter in the god’s temple late at night, and even that he was the son of Jupiter, who had appeared in his mother’s bed in the form of a snake; a similar story had circulated about Alexander the Great. In turn, these stories created concerns that Scipio could assume sole authority in Rome, always a fear of the Romans as we mentioned with the Lucretia story. Other leading Romans launched lawsuits against his family to weaken his influence and, although Scipio was able to avoid conviction, his influence faded and he died on his farm in 183 BCE. Already in the early second century, Scipio’s experience showed the limits of Roman unity: less than twenty years after every ounce of energy was required to defeat Hannibal, the general responsible for that great victory died in solitude and disgrace.
The next fifty years saw a tremendous influx of money into the Roman state. Some arrived as a direct result of military conquest, as generals returned from campaigns against wealthy eastern kings loaded with captured treasure. A portion of this money would be distributed to the soldiery or set aside for public building projects, but most of it went directly to the general and his friends. Money also came directly to the Roman state as a result of peace treaties that obligated the defeated party to make cash payments to Rome, and even more came from Roman exploitation of the natural resources of the lands they captured. This money began to reshape the entire Roman state, not just the Roman economy (on which, see further in Chapter 11). It upset the balance between the rich and the poor, and also the balance between different members of the Roman aristocracy, as the controversies around Scipio Africanus suggest. The problems that arose beginning in the late second century BCE came as a direct result of the successes of the Roman military system, and the inability of the Roman political system to cope with them.
The tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus (c. 170–133 BCE) in 133 BCE is often viewed as a turning point in the disintegration of the Republican system. Plutarch and Appian make clear that Tiberius was a well-connected member of the Roman aristocracy; his grandfather was Scipio Africanus and his father-in-law was the most respected legal scholar of his day. During his term in office, Tiberius decided to sponsor land reform legislation to address some of the economic, social, and military issues that had arisen. His legislation was opposed by the bulk of the upper classes, which led Tiberius to employ unorthodox strategies in order to pass his legislation. Tiberius’ decision to run for re-election, contrary to Roman custom that depended on the annual transition of office, was seen by some as a step on the way to one-man rule, so they moved to confront Tiberius just as Scipio had been confronted. In this case, however, Tiberius and 300 of his supporters were killed in a violent confrontation. Eleven years later Tiberius’ brother Gaius Gracchus (154–121 BCE) was also killed in a premeditated riot after proposing a revolutionary set of reforms. The use of violence as a tool for settling political disputes became normalized over the next one hundred years. While initially the use of violence allowed the aristocracy to maintain control of Roman society, the recourse to violence would eventually play a major role in their complete loss of power.
Even while the Romans battled these internal problems, they were faced with a significant challenge from the inhabitants of Italy. Ever since the settlement of 338 BCE, most inhabitants of Italy had lacked full Roman citizenship, even though they provided much of the manpower that had enabled Rome to conquer the Mediterranean. Over the years these Italians had become increasingly unhappy with their second-class status, and finally in 90 BCE, these resentments boiled over into outright revolt. This war, known as the Social War (after the Latin word socius, “ally”), was perhaps the most fierce the Romans ever fought, in part because their opponents had the same training, techniques, and equipment as