Andrew Lintott

Imperium Romanum: Politics and Administration

Select Contents. Part 1: 1. the Growth of Empire 2. Elements of Empire 3. The Organisation of Empire 4. Government and Governor 5. Taxation and Carvees 6. Restrictions on Magistrates and the Punishment of Delinquents Part 11: 7. The Impact of the Monarchy on the Empire 8. Cities, Municipalities and Local Government 9. Roman and Indigenous Law 10. Roman Citizenship 11. The Working of Patronage 12. Publicity, Theatre and Cult

Electoral Bribery in The Roman Republic

In Western Europe to-day we tend to assume automatically that electoral bribery is pernicious, in that it distorts the democratic process, the selection by the people of their own representatives, by shifting whatever power lies in the generality of the electorate back into the hands of the people who seek office, so that a democratic procedure becomes in effect oligarchic. We even term bribery the presentation of attractive policies to the electorate by a person or party, which we believe will not be in the peoples long-term interest or will be rapidly discarded in favour of policies which suit those in power. Such judgements may be superficial and too dependent on the presumption that without bribery elections will be free. It is arguable that in specific societies and in specific historical contexts bribery may on the contrary make elections less predictable, dissolving the existing ties by which the electorate are already bound to those seeking office, rather than reinforcing them. Alternatively, bribery may be regarded as an accepted part of the political scene, which does not materially affect the result of elections and thus the course of political history. In Roman politics it is hard to refute the suggestion that the sort of people who actually held magistracies was not seriously influenced by electoral bribery, even though on occasions this may have determined that one man rather than another should be consul or praetor.

The imperial court

The work of the last generation of historians has represented a large step towards a better understanding of the early imperial court. Several major studies have extended the detailed knowledge of the freedmen personnel, the equestrian amici principis, and of links among the senatorial elite. Above all, study of contacts between emperors and their subjects, the decision-making process and the distribution of resources and patronage, show the network of imperial personnel in operation and reveal something of the structures within which they operate. In discussing the nascent court of the Julio-Claudian period, it is necessary to generalize more broadly about the function of the court in the structure of imperial power. The social rituals of a court may act as a facade to screen the realities of power. Between Augustus and Nero the patterns of court life were developing, and still far from fixed. The court was a system of power which tended to its own perpetuation.

The expansion of the empire under Augustus

A survey of territorial expansion under Augustus tempts conclusions about strategic designs, empire-wide policy, and imperialist intent. It has been claimed, for example, that Augustus adopted and refined a military system of hegemonic rule, resting on a combination of client states and an efficiently deployed armed force stationed in frontier sectors but mobile enough for transfer wherever needed. Many reckon the push to the north as a carefully conceived and sweeping plan that linked the Alpine, Balkan and German campaigns, and aimed to establish a secure boundary of the empire that ran along the line of the Danube and the Elbe. In Asia Minor and Judaea Augustus cultivated client princes, generally keeping in place those already established, regardless of prior allegiances. The imperial policy of Augustus varied from region to region, adjusted for circumstances and contingencies. Augustus reiterated the aspirations and professed to eclipse the accomplishments of republican heroes. The policy may have been flexible, but the image was consistent.

Aristotle and Democracy

There are two main types of question which arise from Aristotles treatment of democracy, as from all other major topics which we find in that part of the Politics which is related to empirical data about political behaviour (Books 2–6 in O.C.T.). One type is primarily philosophical: ‘Is Aristotles analysis logically coherent, is it consistent with his data, is it convincing?’ The other is more historical, though it has philosophical importance too: ‘From where does he derive his data, from where his views (or prejudices)? Has he done justice to the historical events that he adduces and to the opinions of men that he cites as evidence for political and ethical norms?’ Although in this paper I have a special interest in questions of the second type regarding the nature of the data, they cannot be tackled satisfactorily without considering the nature and validity of the analysis of democracy.

The city of Rome and the plebs urbana in the late Republic

For people are the City, not the houses or the porticoes or the fora empty of men (Dio lvi .5.3) It is said that Caligulas exasperated wish was that the people of Rome had only a single neck. That they had a single – and very strongly felt – collective identity is, by contrast, our historical problem. Urban populations at all periods suffer from being treated corporately – as the demos , the many, the mob, the multitude, the masses: under such concepts a sneer lies close below the surface, and the dehumanizing effect of the collective designation has never lost its political point. The difficulty is particularly acute in the case of ancient Rome. The population in question was very large (though for reasons that we shall see, quantification poses serious problems, not just of evidence). Secondly, the Roman elite had every reason to develop the vocabulary of disdain, and has processed almost all the information we possess. Thirdly, there were indeed ways in which the plebs Romana was in reality a corporate entity, and really did cohere as a collectivity, so even when the dismissive perceptions of ancient aristocrats have been allowed for, our analysis still has to penetrate an institutional facade before it can depict and explain the differentiations within the Roman populace. Our subject-matter in this chapter is the resident population of the city of Rome; but there are two other collectivities that need to be distinguished. The first, the plebs urbana , was a subset of the urban population; it comprised the Roman citizens resident in the city who were not members of the senatorial or equestrian census-categories: it excluded slaves and foreigners ( peregrini ). The second, the populus Romanus , was the sum of all Roman citizens of whatever status everywhere.

The administration of the empire

The expansion of the power of the city of Rome through the whole of the Mediterranean world during the last three centuries b.c. led to the establishment of Rome as the predominant military and economic force in the region. It also made it necessary to develop ways of administering so large and diverse an area. The patterns which emerged are now usually referred to as the provincial administration of the empire, and there is no doubt that some such collective title is necessary to describe the various methods used by officials of the state to control the communities and individuals with whom they were in contact. It is important at the outset, however, to recognize that ‘provincial administration’ was not a Roman concept, at least during the period of the Republic, within which the empire took shape. PROVINCES AND PROVINCIAE : THE ORIGINS OF THE SYSTEM Although the English ‘province’ is obviously derived from the Latin provincia , the meaning of the two is by no means identical. A province, whether in a constitutional context, as for example the province of Ulster or of Ontario, or in an ecclesiastical, such as the provinces of Canterbury and York, is an area defined for administrative purposes. The provincia on the other hand seems originally to have been a task assigned to a specified Roman magistrate or promagistrate, in the fulfilment of which he would exercise the imperium granted to him in virtue of his election or appointment. Although his task might well consist of using that imperium , the executive power of the Roman people, in a military command within a particular geographical area, it need not do so.

Caesar: civil war and dictatorship

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER We do not know exactly where the Rubicon was; nor are we sure that it was on 10 January that Caesar crossed it (by the sun it was nearly two months earlier). But it is possible that on doing so he did say, quoting a Greek comedy by Menander, ‘let the die be cast’. For the events of the next weeks, we have Caesars own account, which can occasionally be convicted by Ciceros correspondence (which includes some letters from Caesar and Pompey themselves, as well as from others) of apologetic bias. Dividing his single legion into two parts he marched with five cohorts to Ariminum, and sent Antony, probably immediately, to Arretium to block the route from Rome by the Via Cassia. He himself, on reaching Ancona, held the head of the Via Flaminia. When news of this reached Rome on 17 January, Pompey insisted on abandoning the panic-stricken city, and retired with the consuls and many senators to Campania. Caesars other troops began to come up, and perhaps even while abortive negotiations were in progress he occupied all Picenum. Several small garrisons went over to him; L. Domitius Ahenobarbus used others, and troops he had raised himself – the equivalent of three legions – to make a stand at the strategic crossroads of Corfinium, refusing as the new proconsul of Gallia Transalpina to obey the pleas of Pompey, the proconsul of the Spains, to join him at Luceria in Apulia. But Domitius was surrounded and forced by his men to surrender.

Rome and Italy: the Social War

The relationship between Rome and the Italian allies reached a turning-point with the agrarian proposal of Ti. Gracchus in 133 b.c. For, as the historical tradition represented by Book 1 of the Civil Wars of Appian reveals with great clarity, it is at this moment that there emerged an ‘allied problem’ with political and institutional dimensions. The resumption by the Roman state of ager publicus which had been occupied more or less legally by Italian as well as by Roman possessores probably involved a breach of the treaties which bound Rome and the allied states. Even if it is not possible to say whether the resumption of ager publicus affected particularly lands occupied by Italian possessores , it is clear that the links between the upper classes of Italy and Rome, which had become ever closer in the course of the two generations which followed the Hannibalic War, were gravely compromised. The serious economic and social consequences of the agrarian law for the upper classes of Italy were an implicit contradiction of a policy on the part of Rome which had up to that point set out to guarantee the supremacy, viability and acceptability of the ruling classes of the communities of Italy in the context of those communities, and hence their position as representatives of the communities vis-a-vis Rome. The intervention of Scipio Aemilianus (ch. 3, p. 74) only succeeded in part in healing the breach; and the diminution in the importance of the agrarian problem after C. Gracchus did not mean that trust once gone could be restored.

The rise of Pompey

THE REVOLT OF LEPIDUS, 78–77 b.c. Catulus and Lepidus quarrelled again as they left Sullas funeral, and Lepidus soon stepped up his agitation. He promised to rescind Sullas acts, to recall those who had been driven into exile and to restore their lands to those who had been dispossessed to make way for Sullas veterans. He may also have succeeded in passing a law reviving distributions of cheap corn. Another issue promptly raised and constantly debated in the years that followed was the tribunate. It seems, though the text of Licinianus is uncertain, that the tribunes of 78 asked the consuls to restore the tribunician power, but that Lepidus was the first to refuse and surprisingly convinced a majority of those present that such a measure would serve no useful purpose. If so, then he later changed his mind and championed the tribunate, allegedly in the interests of concord. These squabbles may have been enough to inspire the consul Catulus to introduce his law against public violence, though it may equally have been a response to the more serious disturbances that soon arose. The simmering discontent created by Sullas expropriations in many parts of the Italian countryside boiled over in one of the worst-hit areas, Etruria. The Sullan colonists at Faesulae were attacked by men who had lost their land and in some cases their citizen rights as well. The Senate was sufficiently alarmed to send both consuls to suppress the rising. What happened next is obscure, but Lepidus seems to have put himself at the head of the insurgents and clashed with Catulus, who was prepared to use force to resist him.