they provided to the people be considered. One’s overall assessment of the system also depends on the political significance that one attaches to the wide social and economic gaps between the elite and the common people. Finally, it depends on whether one regards the people’s acceptance of the social and political status quo (facilitated by ameliorative measures carried out from time to time by ambitious politicians in pursuit of popularity)13 as proof that the people had a real stake in the system, or as indicating the extent to which the social and ideological hegemony of the ruling class negated the people’s free will. While the debate cannot be reduced to ideological assumptions, expecting it to be wholly divorced from them is perhaps unrealistic. It does not seem likely that this debate will be over any time soon.
NOTES
1 1 Gelzer speaks of ‘personal connections’ of various types (including ties of gratitude created by aristocratic munificence directed at the public at large, or at whole sections of the population) and lays no particular stress on patronage in the narrow sense. See Gelzer 1969: 62, 110–116; see on this Yakobson 1999: 79.
2 2 Similarly, Hölkeskamp argues that the usage of the terms ‘party’ and ‘parties’, in modern accounts of the Republic, are ‘contaminated by modern connotation of parliamentary politics’ (Hölkeskamp 2010: 24) – although it might be natural to translate the Roman partes in this way.
3 3 E.g. Brunt 1988: 14–15. He cites Polybius, with his theory of mixed constitution, and Cicero’s acceptance of it in De Republica, against modern ‘purely oligarchic’ interpretations. But although, according to him, the mixed constitution was not quite a ‘sham’, its balance was nevertheless so heavily tilted in favour of the Senate that ‘the system could work only if the people’s share in power was largely specious’ (15, for Brunt’s interpretation of Cicero’s view); cf. 324–327.
4 4 Note however that for Sallust, this describes a certain period of Republican history, rather than the essence of the Republican system of government; ‘for before the destruction of Carthage, the people and the Senate of Rome governed the Republic together peacefully and with moderation’ – Sall. Iug. 41.2.
5 5 E.g. Hölkeskamp 2010: 12–13. Indeed, according to Millar 1998: 210, ‘The exclusive right of the assemblies to pass legislation is by far the strongest reason why, in purely formal terms, the Roman res publica has to be characterized as a democracy.’ He goes on to make clear that this ‘constitutional’ statement is, in his view, only a starting point of the discussion on the real significance of popular politics: ‘It is of course essential to separate the emphasis on these formal features from any assessment in sociological terms of actual patterns of participation.’ But it is true that designating the Republic as ‘a democracy’ in some sense (though with strong qualifications) is characteristic of Millar’s later writings on the subject. See e.g. Millar 2002b: 7 (‘manifold anomalies’), 159 (‘profound, indeed fatal, defects’).
6 6 Note that ‘democracy’ here is only ‘one element’ (as it was for Polybius) of the Republican system; there is no claim here that the Republic was in some (qualified) sense a democracy, as Millar would argue later on. Cf. ibid. 132: ‘No one will dispute the “aristocratic” (not, it should be noted, “oligarchic”) element, namely the centrality of the role of the Senate. To talk of it as a “government”, however, is highly misleading.’ Millar’s insistence that the Senate was not a ‘government’ is not, then, a narrowly ‘constitutionalist’ attempt to deny the Senate’s importance – indeed, centrality – in the system.
7 7 See e.g. Ward 2004: 119. The connection between the debate on the Roman Republic and contemporary concerns is stated explicitly by Millar 2002b: 8–10.
8 8 This certainly seems to be the case in Sall. Iug. 41.2 (see note 4).
9 9 See Mouritsen 2001: 18–37 (voting assemblies), 38–62 (contiones); Jehne 2006: 220–234. Mouritsen suggests that the contiones were ‘traditionally…gatherings of the boni’, though in the late Republic, ‘with the emergence of the populares wider sections of the population’ were apparently ‘drawn into the world of politics’. Jehne rejects (convincingly, in my view), the ‘elitist’ reconstruction of the composition of mid-Republican contiones, as well as Mouritsen’s suggestion that most of the common people would take no interest in the political issues debated at them. A ‘popular’ rather than elitist composition of the contiones is propounded by Morstein-Marx 2004: 42 n. 32 (cf. 122–133) and Tan 2008: 172–180. The legislative record of the tribal assembly in the late Republic (and occasionally, earlier) is, in my view, decisive proof that its composition was not controlled by the ruling class. On the centuriate assembly see Yakobson 1999: 20–64.
10 10 See Ward 2004: 119: late-Republican assemblies ‘had long lost whatever democratic character they may have had in the very early Republic’.
11 11 North 1990: 18. North is nevertheless, as the title of his paper shows, far from dismissing the popular element of Republican politics, bearing in mind that such divisions within ‘the oligarchy’ were far from exceptional.
12 12 On repulsae, see Pina Polo 2012. His findings show that electoral defeat (sometimes, repeated) was a very realistic prospect for a Roman politician, including nobles and those who would eventually reach the highest honours.
13 13 The significance of the instances of legislation passed against strong senatorial opposition, and of the fact that greater changes did not prove possible (or even conceivable) is variously assessed; see Morstein-Marx 2004: 286, qualified by Morstein-Marx 2013; Jehne 2013: 51–52. At any rate, controversial legislation was the usual province of reformers rather than defenders of the status quo; this is one of the reasons why the fact that we only very rarely hear of a bill being rejected by the people’s votes, while significant, should not be taken as proof that legislative assemblies served merely as organs of ritualised consensus; contra Flaig 2003.
FURTHER READING
The debate has continued in recent years. Mouritsen 2017 expounds an emphatically oligarchic model, under which the people’s real function in the system was to provide legitimacy for aristocratic rule. This is rejected by Clemente 2018, who argues, inter alia, that Roman politics was about substantial issues, involving rival social interests and opposing political views; popular participation was real and significant, rather than merely symbolic. On populares and optimates in the late Republic, see Robb 2010, contra Yakobson 2017. Hölkeskamp 2017 stresses the cultural and ideological hegemony of the elite, without dismissing the importance of the popular element in the system and the need, for the ruling class, to obtain popular consent. Morstein-Marx 2019 puts greater emphasis on popular autonomy and power. Much attention is paid to public communication, public opinion and the way the former shaped, and gave an expression to, the latter: e.g. Jehne 2000; Steel and van der Blom eds. 2013; Jehne 2014; van der Blom 2016; Rosillo-López 2017; Angius 2018; and Rosillo-López ed. 2019. See also Beck 2005; Benoist ed. 2012, esp. F. Hurlet’s paper (Hurlet 2012); Jehne ed. 1995; Gruen 1996; Gabba 1997; Rosenstein and Morstein-Marx eds. 2006; Tatum 2009; Yakobson 2010; Knopf 2018; and van der Blom et al. eds. 2018.
REFERENCES