Bread and Circuses
On the 13th of January, 27 B.C, the senate house of Rome began to fill. Most of the senators did not yet know it, but the observant might have realized that this would be a historic meeting from the frantic whispers and chatter emanating from the seats of the most prominent among them. The whispering came to an abrupt end as Octavian lifted himself to his feet. Just 35 years of age, he was a youth by Roman standards but the prestige of the slight, bright-eyed man already outshone that of the rest of the senate put together. The burning ambition of the adopted son of Julius Caesar had already carried him to not just a nearly unprecedented six consulships (the consul was the highest public office in Republican Rome), but also to victory in two civil wars and a self-promoted reputation as the “Savior of Rome”.
He was a calm, authoritative speaker and now he began, announcing that since the Roman Republic had now been saved from its darkest hour, he would be laying down all the extraordinary powers he had accumulated over the course of the civil wars. Of course he didn’t really mean a word of it. He had already tipped of the Senate’s most important members on how they were expected to respond, and they showed little will to oppose the wishes of the greatest man in Rome, rising quickly to their feet in protest. How could Rome’s savior abandon it to yet more chaos and infighting? Perhaps, they suggested, he would consider accepting a proconsulship (governorship)? Which proconsulship? Octavian would have inquired with mock curiosity, and his puppets must have tripped over themselves to reply that it would have to be quite a large one, perhaps including all of Spain, Gaul, Egypt, and Syria. By now the rest of the senate had caught on to the game, and despite any personal opposition, saw little option but to join the throng demanding that Octavian accept this honor. Faced “against” the entire Senate, Octavian had no choice but to humbly accept this position and a whole slew of new titles.
Modern historians call this day “the death of the republic,” certainly a more accurate name for the event than “the restoration of the republic,” the title favored for it by Octavian and his contemporaries. Although Octavian himself (now called Augustus, meaning “revered one”) would always be careful to mask his ever growing power and authority behind the veil of ancient republican tradition, even he admitted that, “After this time, I exceeded everybody in authority.” [Everitt, Augustus 210] This was an idea fiercely in opposition to the oath sworn by the men who had expelled Rome’s last king and founded its republic hundreds of years earlier, “that they would never again allow a single man to reign in Rome.” [Holland, Dynasty 6] Augustus’s successors would prove to be far more transparent when it came to wielding their authority. Alternatively they ignored, fought, and sometimes even persecuted the rich, politically entrenched senatorial elites who had dominated the republic since its foundation.
Nowadays the end of the republic and the rise of the empire is considered a tragedy. The people who founded our country and those who brought democratic government to much of the rest of the world looked to the ancient world for inspiration. In Rome they found a mythologized history of a country that rose to become the greatest nation in the world through a virtuous constitution that allowed talented men opportunities for power while insuring liberty and safety for all. Tragically, the story goes, the republic was hijacked by a series of authoritarian generals calling themselves “imperator” who brought misery on their subjects for self-enrichment, until their corrupt and debauched ways eventually led to the collapse of their country.
This story still remains the popular interpretation of the history of Rome and manifests itself in everything from history classes to the plot of the Star Wars universe. However, this tale is almost entirely fiction, based on our own positive experiences with republican rule as well as literary sources about the Roman Empire which are almost exclusively written by members of the very same senatorial class who lost the most when Republic ended and Empire began. In reality the Republic was a mechanism that allowed a few rich and famous families to compete with each other for power and glory while the rest of the population watched and suffered. The Empire, for all of its own flaws, succeeded in bringing stable, profitable governance to millions of people, establishing a wider and wider citizenship and quashing the senatorial corruption that had so long plagued those living in the provinces.
The primary problem with the Republic was that it was designed to rule over a city, not a continent. At the heart of the Republican system was the idea of citizenship, for the Romans “to have civitas — citizenship — was to be civilized.” [Holland Rubicon 12] It also meant the right to a legal trial, the right to vote, (as long as you were also a free man) and the right to hold property (including slaves). But the power of citizenship extended even farther than the rights and status it provided, it also allowed participation in the religious festivals that dominated urban life and as a result must have created a sense of community among those who held it. However the Romans felt that citizenship was an exclusive right of those living in their city (after all the root of citizen is civitas, meaning city), so when Rome’s triumphant legions extended Roman rule first across Italy, then across the entire Mediterranean world citizenship was, with a few exceptions, barred from Rome’s new subjects. Disdainfully called “provincials” these new acquisitions to the sphere of Roman rule were quickly taught their place. Exorbitant taxation, brutally corrupt governors appointed from a city hundreds of miles away, and required military service was not a recipe for an equal or sustainable relationship. Some Romans realized this and under the inspired leadership of the Gracchus brothers a political party rose up championing citizenship for all Italians. However an increasingly polarized political climate prevented any reform.
Inevitably the provincials, at least in Italy, rose up in revolt demanding citizenship, but after three years of bloody campaigning, the Roman legions emerged triumphant again and citizenship remained as exclusive as ever. A census report taken in 70 B.C, during the last century of the Republic, suggests that of the 55 to 60 million people under Rome’s yoke less than a million men held full citizenship[Baker]. Augustus and the emperors who followed him appear to have recognized the need for reform quite quickly and their reigns saw a general expansion of rights. By the reign of Emperor Claudius in 47 AD the number of citizens had risen to nearly seven million people[Baker]. The culmination of the lengthy march towards “universal” citizenship came in 212 AD when the emperor Caracalla granted citizenship to every free person within the empire (although female citizens still had less rights than male citizens). In a move that would have been impossible under the grinding stasis that the elites who dominated the republic had so long promoted, millions were liberated by a single swoop of the pen. “We have moved from an empire ruled by Romans to an Empire filled with Romans.” [Kulikowski, 309] This was a truly ground-breaking moment, for the Roman Empire was the first government to consider citizenship a right of all its members. Previous states recognizing the concept of citizenship, like Athens were just as dedicated to keeping it a reserve of those in the capital city as the Roman Republic had been.
While the idea of nearly universal citizenship was probably the Roman Empire’s greatest contribution to our modern world, most of the people living under the Roman eagle would have been even more grateful for the stability and peace Augustus brought them. The last century of the Roman Republic had been a brutal whirlwind of internal conflict featuring no less than five major civil wars. These resulted from two primary causes, political division and private armies. Division had always been present between Rome’s two great political groups, the pro-aristocratic optimates and the demagogic populares, but it widened into an unbridgeable chasm during the Republic’s waning years. Attempts by the populares to deal with the building crisis of land reform — the land of many Romans had been quietly stolen by wealthy Senators while they were away fighting one of Rome’s many foreign wars — were instantly vetoed by the optimates. As many populares soon discovered, the reward for attempting to legally solve Rome’s problems tended to be a swift dagger in the back. Eventually the populares found a solution. Why not make a private army out of some of the many desperate landless Romans and use the threat of force to push through their reforms? Of course the optimates realized that they could do the same, and Rome was thus pushed into a downward, seemingly unending spiral of internal chaos.
The great poet Horace describes the pessimism and war weariness caused by an on and off civil war that had consumed three generations and was fought everywhere from the shores of Spain to the gates of Rome to the Nile Delta in his Odes.
What does the bloodthirsty passage of time not leach away?
Our parents generation, worse than their parents’,
Has given birth to us, worse yet — and soon
We will have children still more depraved.
Clearly the prevailing sentiment during the final years of the Republic was not fear that the Roman people would lose their ancient rights to the tyranny of empire, but a disgust and distrust of the corrupt, faltering political system that had been unable to halt nearly a century of bloody civil wars fought for the glory of a few rich senators. Fortunately the model of rule established by Augustus would prove to be the perfect medication for the Roman world. Whereas the last century had seen five massive civil wars, the next 200 years would see only a single blip of chaotic internal fighting (in 69 AD “The Year of the Four Emperors”). The roads that had been allowed to slowly decay under the boots of thousand of legionaries were now repaved and expanded and it was now trade, not blood, that flowed along them. Long gone were the days when the best way for an ambitious young senator to embellish his name was to raise a private army and march off to conquer, loot, and enslave foreigners. Now emperors like Hadrian, Aurelian, and Constantine earned themselves glory by launching vast building projects to protect, enrich, and entertain their swelling ranks of citizens.[Kulikowski 23–25, 175, 245] The contrast was so great that Horace, just years after writing his predictions of doom could gush that “While Caesar (another of Augustus’s many names) holds the world in his hands, I need have no fear of civil war or a violent death.”[Holland, Dynasty 77] The security Augustus and his scions brought to the Mediterranean world meant that the focus of day to day life was no longer survival, but success.
Critics of the Roman Empire have long pointed out the flaws and cruelties of its rulers as prime examples of the moral depredation and physical oppression of the Empire. There is no doubt that many of the emperors were sadistic and ruthless; Caligula had suspected traitors executed as entertainment at dinner parties; Nero kicked his wife to death; Caracalla had his brother and his supporters massacred at a feast intended to celebrate their reunion. However cruelty was not anything that hadn’t been seen under the Republic. In fact the Empire succeeded in largely reigning in these diabolical excesses.
Once entire provinces had feared the grasping hand of Roman politicians and senators, but now the reign of terror was largely limited to those who had to regularly interact with the emperor on a face to face basis. During the late Republic the right to sit on juries trying senators was reserved exclusively for other senators[Everitt, Cicero 75]. The result was a clandestine agreement between senators that allowed them to get away with just about anything. The price was paid, of course, by the provincials who were squeezed dry by agreements between senatorial governors and tax collectors[Holland, Rubicon 40–42]. The most infamous case of this avarice is that of Gaius Verres, a senatorial governor of Sicily who used his bodyguards to loot temples and private homes and executed or imprisoned the crew of any boat whose possessions he desired[Everitt, Cicero 76–79]. Ultimately the most unique thing about Verres was not the scale or severity of his crimes, but the fact that he was successfully tried and punished (exiled to Southern Gaul where he live to the age of 77 in luxury) thanks to a young lawyer named Cicero, who would soon make a name for himself as Rome’s greatest orator. One of Augustus’s first reforms after taking sole power was to reform the taxation system[Everitt, Augustus 231]. Provincial governors would no longer be able to conspire with tax collectors and set tax rates at whatever they felt like, taking a large sum of the money for themselves. Instead an universal flat tax was placed on every inhabitant of the empire, to be paid directly to the State coffers. This brought an end to the era of governors ruling their provinces with an iron fist, even if the city of Rome itself now had to deal with a group of rulers just as controlling.
Although its name is now associated with despotism, decadence, and corruption the Roman Empire was one of the most progressive governments of its time. Where the Republic had hoarded wealth and power for the city of Rome, the Empire set about distributing wealth throughout all of its territories. Wealthy senators had looked down on tens of millions as their subjects, the Emperors looked at them as citizens. The Empire brought peace and prosperity to a generation that had lived through constant civil war and bloodshed. Yes, the emperors could be cruel, but this was not an unique vice of the Empire. Had the Senators not robbed their subjects blind and quickly silenced any possible voices of dissent? Tragically, as Emperor after Emperor slowly reduced the power of the Senate, letting its members live in comfort but without any power, they were unwittingly dooming their own reputations. For many of those senators would spend their free time writing the histories of Rome that have come down to us, mourning the loss of their “free republic” and casting the Empire as a system of brutal oppression ruled by a parade of madmen. It would be hard to get the situation more wrong.
Works Cited
Baker, Simon. “Roman Empire Population.” UNRV History. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Cicero, M. Tullius. “In Verrem.” Latin Texts & Translations. University of Chicago, n.d. Web. 30 Dec. 2016.
Everitt, Anthony. Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor. New York: Random House, 2006. Print.
Everitt, Anthony. Cicero: The Life and times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. New York: Random House, 2001. Print.
Holland, Tom. Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar. New York: Doubleday, 2015. Print.
Holland, Tom. Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic. London: Little, Brown, 2003. Print.
Kulikowski, Michael. The Triumph of Empire: The Roman World from Hadrian to Constantine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2016. Print.
