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Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 B.C.)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Fergus Millar
Fergus Millar
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to present a particular model of how Roman politics worked, and of what Roman politics before the Social War was ‘about’. In essence I want to place in the centre of our conception the picture of an orator addressing a crowd in the Forum; a picture of someone using the arts of rhetoric to persuade an anonymous crowd about something. The most important subject of oratory, and the most important fundamental right exercised by whoever came to vote, was legislation. Yet the greatest of all the extraordinary distortions which have been imposed on our conception of Republican politics in the twentieth century is that the process of legislation, and the content of the legislation passed by the people, have both ceased to be central to it. With that we have ceased to listen sufficiently to the actual content of oratory addressed to the people, to the arguments from rights, from the necessities of the preservation of the res publica, from historical precedents, both Roman and non-Roman, and from social attitudes and prejudices. In the second century above all, we can see how the prestige which the office-holding class derived from family descent and personal standing on the one hand was matched on the other by popular demands for appropriate conduct, and by popular suspicions of private luxury, of profiteering from the conduct of public affairs, and of improper collaboration with wrong-doers both at home and abroad.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 76 , November 1986 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Fergus Millar 1986. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 I use the word ‘particular’ to emphasize that this article, like its predecessor (above), can be seen as one reflection of a general reconsideration of the nature of Roman politics, as a reaction to interpretations which emphasize prosopography or the influence of clientela. In retrospect many of the most important considerations can be seen to be expressed already in Brunt, P. A., Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (1971)Google Scholar, closely followed in many respects by Finley, M. I., Politics in the Ancient World (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who went some distance, though in my view not far enough, in recognizing the reality of political issues in second-century Rome. The fluidity and competitiveness which marked political life and the holding of office are well emphasized by Hopkins, and Burton, in Death and Renewal (1983), ch. 2, esp. 107 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The same competitiveness and individualism is also rightly stressed by Wiseman, T. P., Roman Political Life go B.C.-A.D. 69 (1985), ch. 1.Google Scholar Similarly, note Beard, W. M. and Crawford, M., Rome in the Late Republic (1985).Google Scholar My approach has derived much from all these studies, as also from Perelli, L., movimento popolare nell'ultimo secolo della Repubblica (1982)Google Scholar. None, however, has shared the particular stress which I would like to put on the element of oratorical persuasion addressed to the crowd. Note, however, Nicolet, C., ‘La polémique politique au deuxième siècle avant Jésus-Christ’, in Nicolet, C. (ed.), Demokratia et Aristokratia (1983), 37Google Scholar.

2 Badian, E., JRS lvii (1967), 217Google Scholar, quoted by Seager, R., in the introduction to his translation, The Roman Nobility (1969), xiGoogle Scholar.

3 Brunt, P. A., ‘Nobilitas and Novitas’, JRS lxxii (1982), 1.Google Scholar

4 Gelzer, trans. Seager (op. cit., n. 2), 139 (my italics).

5 Gelzer, op. cit., 85

6 For the ideological content and revolutionary implications of Saturninus' legislation see above all the very important articles of J.-L. Ferrary, ‘Recherches sur la législation de Saturninus et de Glaucia’, MEFR(A) lxxxix (1977), 619; ‘Les orgines de la loi de majesté à Rome’, CRAI 1983, 556Google Scholar.

7 Note now especially Momigliano, A. D., ‘The Origins of Rome’, Settimo Contributo (1984, 379Google Scholar.

8 Hassall, M., Crawford, M., Reynolds, J., ‘Rome and the Eastern Provinces at the End of the Second Century b.c.’, JRS lxiv (1974), 195;Google Scholar note Sherk, R. K., Rome and the Greek East to the Death of Augustus (1984), no. 55 (translation and commentary)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Cf. the works referred to in n. 1 above.

10 No such explanation is offered in this paper, and it is not clear to me whether any is possible. It is, however, worth nothing the discussion, relating to a later period, in Taylor's, Lily RossParty Politics in the Age of Caesar (1949), ch. 3Google Scholar. It is interesting to note the presuppositions embodied in the title of this section, ‘Delivering the Vote’. I hope to return to this question elsewhere, in the context of the popular politics of the last decades of Republic

11 There is much to be learned from the analyses of the relation of the individual and the people in Yavetz, Z., Plebs and Princeps (1969)Google Scholar.

12 Polybius vi, 9, 6–9. I am very grateful to John North for pointing out to me in conversation that this passage can be read as an implicit prediction of the course of events in the last century of the Republic.

13 See now Garnsey, P. and Rathbone, D., ‘The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus’, JRS lxxv (1985), 20.Google Scholar

14 ORF3 pp. 144–5 See Ferrary, J.-L., ‘A propos de deux fragments attribués à c. Fannius, cos. 122’ in Nicolet, C. (ed.), demokratia et Aristokratia (1983), 51Google Scholar, arguing that the quotations are note contemporary, but come from later declamations on the subject of Gaius Gracchus.

15 See most recently Badian, E., ‘The Death of Saturninus’ Chiron xiv (1984), 101Google Scholar.

16 On this see esp. Mitchell, T. N., Cicero: the Ascending Years (1979), ch. 1Google Scholar.

17 Sherwin-White, A. N., ‘The Lex Repetundarum and the Political Ideas of Gaius Gracchus’, JRS lxxii (1982), 18.Google Scholar

18 Ricobono, FIRA 2 1, no. 6; Girard-Senn-Giuffré, Lois des romains 2, no. 6.

19 For text and discussion of this document, long since destroyed, see Sherk, R. K., Roman Documents from the Greek East (1969), no 16Google Scholar; id., op cit (n. 8), no, 53 (text and discussion). For a comparable publicity clause not the Fragmentum Tarentinum, Girard-Senn-Giuffré, , Lois, no. 9, 11, 13 ff.Google Scholar

20 Badian, E., Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic 2 (1968), 25Google Scholar.

21 Crawford, M., Roman Republican Coinage 1 (1975) 266 ffGoogle Scholar; for 110/9, p. 313.

22 Wiseman, T. P., Clio's Cosmetics (1979), ch.2Google Scholar.

23 The use of historical exempla in various public contexts is one mode which, pace M. I. Finley (op. cit. n. 1), 126 ff., the Romans of this period did possess for representing political conflict.

24 For an interesting and valuable, but not ulimately persuasive, attempt to argue that under Tiberius' agrarian law italian Socci could receive both allotments of ager publicus and a simultaneous grant of the citizenship, see Richardson, J. S, ‘The Ownership of Italian Land: Tiberius Gracchus and the Italians’ JRS lxx (1980), 1.Google Scholar

24 Festus 286M/362L. Cicero, de off. 111, 47, suggests, whithout quite proving, that the law was actually passed.Was it directed specifially against Italian Socii, or against all (or overseas?) peregrini? In the latter case it may not be quite certain that Gaius Gracchus was opposing the law. Might he not have been arguing that eae nationes (e.g. the Greek cities) had suffered disaster by their own fault?

26 Val. Max. IX, 5, 5; Apian, BC 1, 21/86–7; 34/152.

27 Appian, BC 1, 23/99–101. I would not put any weight on the various proposals and counter-proposals vaguely recorded by Plutarch, , Gaius Gracchus 5 and 8–9Google Scholar.

28 Iulius Victor 6, 4 (Halm, , Rhetores Latini Minores, p. 402Google Scholar).

29 Apian, BC 1, 29–30/129–40. For a detailed discussion of this passage, the only item in our evidence to mention popular hostility to benefits for Italian exsoldiers, see now Schneider, H., ‘Die politische Rolle der plebs urbana während der Tribunate des L. Appuleius Saturninus’, Ancient Society xii/xiii (1982/1983), 193Google Scholar.

30 See esp. Cicero, de off. 111, 47; Asconius 67–8C.