Elizabeth Rawson

Religion and Politics in the Late Second Century B. C. at Rome

POLYBIUS AND CICERO, in well-known passages, assert the importance of religion in Roman public life;1 and the ways in which the nobility controlled and used religion for political ends have been amply demonstrated for the period where our evidence is fullest, the first century B.C.2 It is very hard to suppose that their predecessors were not attempting to do the same thing in the late second century, an age of vital political struggles. But though the social and political aspects of the Senates objection to the influx of oriental religions, and also to the growth of scepticism, have been noted, and the importance of the leges Aelia et Fufia, by which obnuntiatio was extended for use against tribunes, has not been overlooked, the part which religion played in the political debate from about 135, and its place in the programme of optimate or popularis propagandists, have not been studied in detail.3 I want to collect the evidence bearing on these matters, to show the optimates, whether sincerely or less sincerely we naturally cannot say, making use of the official religion, and some of the populares (of course often aristocrats themselves) attempting to counter this, or to make use of less official religious cults; and in particular to suggest that in the last fifteen years of the century

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.

Caesar, Pompey and Rome, 59–50 b.c.

CAESAR AND CLODIUS It was clear from the moment of their election that the two consuls of 59 b.c. would be at loggerheads. The immediate issue, already foreseen in December, was a land law; Caesar was aiming to do as consul what the tribunes had failed to do in 63 and 60. Bibulus, on the other hand, was determined to resist it on behalf of Cato and the senatorial establishment. The familiar ideology of plebs and patres – explicit in Ciceros statement of his position on this occasion – was now to be played out not as a conflict of tribunes and consuls but as a trial of strength between the consuls themselves. Caesars attitude to the populace was made clear as soon as he entered office. From now on the Senates debates (and the proceedings of the people) were to be officially recorded and published, its business made accessible to the general citizen body. Helped, no doubt, by this publicity, Caesar went out of his way to be conciliatory to his opponents in the Senate. He chose Crassus, not Pompey, as the first consularis to be asked his opinion (not that the optimates would like that much better); he announced that in the alternate months when his colleague held the fasces his own official escort would be merely an orderly (his lictors to follow behind); and he assured the patres that he would bring in no legislation that was against their interests.

The Roman empire and its problems in the late second century

Traditionally, foreign affairs come first in histories of the middle Republic, domestic politics in those of the late Republic. Yet, although developments in Rome and Italy came to overshadow all else in the fifty years after the destruction of Carthage, it is wrong to write as if the Romans, as it were, changed trains in 146 b.c. In fact Romes expansion abroad, because of the power and wealth it created for both the res publica and individuals and because of the accompanying problems, continued to be the main stimulus for political changes. Polybius claimed in passages probably written between 167 and 146 that the Romans had become masters of the world with which his history dealt. This did not mean that they administered the whole area or even that they were interested in what was happening in every part, but that ultimately they expected their will to be obeyed in matters affecting their interests here. It was a hegemony that even after 146 was looser than those of the great Hellenistic powers had been in their smaller spheres of influence, but as stern or sterner when Roman power was concentrated on a particular trouble spot. The methods by which this hegemony was exercised have been discussed in the previous volume. There was fighting almost every year in one part of the Mediterranean or another, but more often than not the Romans exerted power without direct recourse to arms. In the territories administered by Rome in the West the focus was the Roman magistrate or pro-magistrate in whose province the territory was.

The Jews under Hasmonean rule

THE PERIOD The Roman seizure of Jerusalem in the autumn of 63 b.c. brought to a close a formative period in Jewish history. The previous century had seen Judaeas emergence as a power to be reckoned with in the region of Palestine, one comparable in extent, even if not quite in distinction, with the kingdom of David. The impact of this national experience continued for the Jews through the classical period, and, indeed, far beyond. From the military leadership of Judas Maccabaeus and his Hasmonean brothers came, in due course, permanent authority, a dynastic succession and a monarchy which eventually gained independence. Defensive wars merged into aggressive ones; there was expansion westwards to occupy most of the cities of the coast, east to the Jordan, south into Idumaea and north to Samaria and the Galilee. However, long-term stability was not secured. Geographical factors alone would always make Palestine vulnerable. Religion made it volatile; and this period was one of intense religious activity. Thus, elements within Jewish society found the hardening authority, the profane habits, the wealth and perhaps the Hellenizing style of the Hasmoneans wholly unacceptable. The ruling family itself also fell prey to a war of succession, so, at the time of Pompeys annexation of Syria, the door was wide open to a Roman intervention which had been long in the making. One of the rival Hasmoneans then remained in control of a reduced Jewish entity, and he was made subject to Roman taxation and to the Roman order. This was the political outcome, together with a divided population and substantial discontent.

The Cambridge Ancient History, Second Edition Volume 9: The Last Age of the Roman Republic 146-43 B. C.

List of maps List of text figures Preface 1. The crisis of the Republic: sources and source-problems 2. The Roman empire and its problems in the late second century 3. Political history, 146-95 BC 4. Rome and Italy: the Social War 5. Mithridates 6. Sulla 7. The rise of Pompey 8a. Lucullus, Pompey and the East 8b. The Jews under Hasmonean rule 8c. Egypt, 146-31 BC 9. The Senate and the populares, 69-60 BC 10. Caesar, Pompey and Rome, 59-50 BC 11. Caesar: civil war and dictatorship 12. The aftermath of the Ides 13. The constitution and public criminal law 14. The development of Roman private law 15. The administration of the empire 16. Economy and society, 133-43 BC 17. The city of Rome and the plebs urbana in the late Republic 18. The intellectual developments of the Ciceronian age 19. Religion Epilogue Stemmata Chronological table.