A Companion to the Roman Republic E-Book
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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World
- Sprache: Englisch
This Companion provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of Roman Republican history as it is currently practiced.
- Highlights recent developments, including archaeological discoveries, fresh approaches to textual sources, and the opening up of new areas of historical study
- Retains the drama of the Republic’s rise and fall
- Emphasizes not just the evidence of texts and physical remains, but also the models and assumptions that scholars bring to these artefacts
- Looks at the role played by the physical geography and environment of Italy
- Offers a compact but detailed narrative of military and political developments from the birth of the Roman Republic through to the death of Julius Caesar
- Discusses current controversies in the field
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Seitenzahl: 1796
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011
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Contents
List of Maps
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Maps
Abbreviations
PrefaceRobert Morstein-Marx and Nathan Rosenstein
PART I Introductory
CHAPTER 1 Methods, Models, and HistoriographyMartin JehneTranslated by Robert Morstein-Marx and Benjamin Wolkow
The Heroes of the Past: Mommsen, Gelzer, Syme
Prosopographical Method and the Importance of Personal Relations in Roman Politics
New Concepts: “Crisis” and “Historical Process”
New Methods: Comparative Studies of the Lower Class and Demographic Modeling
The Decline of Patronage as a Comprehensive Explanation and the “Communicative Turn”
The Struggle for Democracy
Elite Continuity and Senatorial Influence
Assemblies
Public Politics
Looking at the Roman Republic from the Present
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 2 Literary SourcesEdward Bispham
Ideological Histories
A Late Bloom…
Making a Roman Past
“Making a Roman Past”
Guide to Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
CHAPTER 3 Epigraphy and NumismaticsMark Pobjoy
Epigraphy
Numismatics
Guide to Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
CHAPTER 4 The Topography and Archaeology of Republican RomeMario TorelliTranslated by Helena Fracchia
The Beginnings of the Republic
The Patrician Republic
The Middle Republican Phase
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 5 The Physical Geography and Environment of Republican ItalySimon Stoddart
Introduction
The Broad Structural Outlines
The Northern Apennines
The Central Apennines
The Pre-Apennines of Latium and Campania
The Southern Apennines
The Apulian Plateaux
The Calabrian Apennines
Plains and Coasts
The Implications of Landscape Relief
The Maritime Approaches
Geography and History
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
PART II Narrative
CHAPTER 6 Between Myth and History: Rome’s Rise from Village to Empire (the Eighth Century to 264)Kurt A. Raaflaub
The Wolf and the Twins
Myths
Tradition and Distortion
Consequences and Principles
Outlines of a History
Early Republic: crisis and expansion
The Wolf as a Symbol
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 7 The Mediterranean Empire (264–134)Daniel J. Gargola
The First Punic War (264–241)
Italy and Illyria, 241–219
The Second Punic War (218–201)
Rome and the Mediterranean World, 201–134
Rome, 201–134
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 8 From the Gracchi to the First Civil War (133–70)C. F. Konrad
The Ghost of Tarquinius, 133
The Allied Question, 132–124
The Great Reformer, 123–121
The Confidence Gap, 121–105
The Savior of Italy, 104–98
The Unification of Italy, 97–89
The March on Rome, 88
The First Civil War, 87–82
Sulla the Fortunate, 82–78
The Last, Best Hope? 78–70
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 9 The Final Crisis (69–44)W. Jeffrey Tatum
A New Beginning
Pompey the Great
Cicero and the Catilinarian Conspiracy
The Return of Pompey
The First Triumvirate
The Conference at Luca
Caesar in Gaul
The Outbreak of Civil War
Dictator
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
PART III Civic Structures
CHAPTER 10 Communicating with the GodsJörg Rüpke
Superhuman Members of Society
Parting with the Gods
Paying for the Gods
The Presence of the Gods
Sharing Time
Communicating with the Gods
Legitimizing Men
Involving All
Excluding Others
Conclusion
Guide to Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
CHAPTER 11 Law in the Roman RepublicMichael C. Alexander
Evidence
Chronology
Sources of Law
Custom
Private Law and the Praetor’s Law
Criminal Law
Law outside Rome
The Jurisconsults
The Advocates
Jurisconsults and Advocates
Guide to Further Reading
Acknowledgments
>Notes
CHAPTER 12 The Constitution of the Roman RepublicJohn A. North
Introduction
Early Developments
Constitutional Working in the Late Republic
Change and Conflict
Characterizing the Roman System
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 13 Army and SocietyPaul Erdkamp
Introduction
Battles and Raids in Early Rome
Hoplites and Citizens in the Early and Middle Republic
The Conquest of Italy (c.400–270)
Overseas Expansion (264–149)
Managing Military Manpower during the Mid-Republic
The Food Supply of the Roman Armies in the Middle Republic
The Aftermath of Success: Crisis or Change?
The Army of the Late Republic
Masters of the State
Epilog
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
PART IV Society
CHAPTER 14 Social Structure and DemographyNeville Morley
Cicero’s Rome
Orders and Status Groups
Relations of Production
Domination and Dependence
Demography and Decline
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 15 Finding Roman WomenBeryl Rawson
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
PART V Political Culture
CHAPTER 16 The City of RomeJohn R. Patterson
Introduction
Elite Political Competition at Rome
The Growth of the Metropolis
Living Conditions in the City
The Changing Nature of Political Space
Supplying Rome’s Needs
Conclusion
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 17 Aristocratic ValuesNathan Rosenstein
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 18 Popular Power in the Roman RepublicAlexander Yakobson
The Nature of the Debate
The Senatorial Perspective
Cicero’s Laws and the People’s Power
Playing the “Popular” Card
Popular Legitimacy and the Stability of the System
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 19 PatronageElizabeth DeniauxTranslated by Robert Morstein-Marx and Robert Martz
Patronage, the Exchange of Favors, and Social Harmony
The Duty of Assistance
Patronage and the Networks of Power
Patronage and Careers
Conclusion
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 20 Rhetoric and Public LifeJean-Michel DavidTranslated by Robert Morstein-Marx and Robert Martz
Circumstances and Conditions of Civic Oratory
The Development of the Art of Oratory and Efforts to Control its Power
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 21 The Republican BodyAnthony Corbeill
A Body Politic with Two Political Bodies
Body and Soul
Creating Us and Them
Questioning the Truth of Nature
Guide to Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes
PART VI The Creation of a Roman Identity
CHAPTER 22 Romans and OthersErich S. Gruen1
Hellenic Traditions and Roman Origins
Pythagoras and Rome
Manumission and Incorporation
Alien Cults and Institutions
Phoenicians and Carthaginians
The Gallic Impression
People of Color
The Jewish Presence
Conclusion
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 23 History and Collective Memory in the Middle RepublicKarl-J. Hölkeskamp
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 24 Art and Architecture in the Roman RepublicKatherine E. Welch
Architecture
Art
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 25 LiteratureWilliam W. Batstone
Introduction
Beginnings
Roman Comedy
“Satire is Wholly Roman” – Quintillian
National History – Satiric History
Oratory and the Rhetoric of Advocacy
Catullan Lyric and the Individual Voice
“Roman Philosophy”
Conclusion
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
PART VII Controversies
CHAPTER 26 Conceptualizing Roman Imperial Expansion under the Republic: An IntroductionArthur M. Eckstein
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 27 The Economy: Agrarian Change During the Second CenturyLuuk de Ligt
Sources and Obstacles
Slaves and Peasants: Approaches and Problems
Toward a New Interpretation?
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 28 Rome and ItalyJohn R. Patterson
Introduction
Rome’s Conquest of Italy in the Late Fourth and Early Third Centuries
The Italians and the Consequences of Imperial Expansion
Tensions between Rome and Italy: The “Social War”
Italy in the Aftermath of the Social War
Peasants, Slaves, and the Changing Face of Italian Agriculture
Tota Italia
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
CHAPTER 29 The Transformation of the RepublicRobert Morstein-Marx and Nathan Rosenstein
Defining the Problem
Three Influential Modern Theories
Coming Unglued: The Loss of Elite Cohesion
Guide to Further Reading
Notes
Bibliography
Index
BLACKWELL COMPANIONS TO THE ANCIENT WORLD
This series provides sophisticated and authoritative overviews of periods of ancient history, genres of classical literature, and the most important themes in ancient culture. Each volume comprises between twenty-five and forty concise essays written by individual scholars within their area of specialization. The essays are written in a clear, provocative, and lively manner, designed for an international audience of scholars, students, and general readers.
ANCIENT HISTORY
Published
A Companion to the Roman ArmyEdited by Paul Erdkamp
A Companion to the Roman RepublicEdited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein-Marx
A Companion to the Roman EmpireEdited by David S. Potter
A Companion to the Classical Greek WorldEdited by Konrad H. Kinzl
A Companion to the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel C. Snell
A Companion to the Hellenistic WorldEdited by Andrew Erskine
A Companion to Late AntiquityEdited by Philip Rousseau
A Companion to Ancient HistoryEdited by Andrew Erskine
A Companion to Archaic GreeceEdited by Kurt A. Raaflaub and Hans van Wees
A Companion to Julius CaesarEdited by Miriam Griffin
A Companion to ByzantiumEdited by Liz James
A Companion to Ancient EgyptEdited by Alan B. Lloyd
In preparation
A Companion to Ancient MacedoniaEdited by Ian Worthington and Joseph Roisman
A Companion to the Punic WarsEdited by Dexter Hoyos
A Companion to SpartaEdited by Anton Powell
LITERATURE AND CULTURE
Published
A Companion to Classical ReceptionsEdited by Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray
A Companion to Greek and Roman HistoriographyEdited by John Marincola
A Companion to CatullusEdited by Marilyn B. Skinner
A Companion to Roman ReligionEdited by Jörg Rüpke
A Companion to Greek ReligionEdited by Daniel Ogden
A Companion to the Classical TraditionEdited by Craig W. Kallendorf
A Companion to Roman RhetoricEdited by William Dominik and Jon Hall
A Companion to Greek RhetoricEdited by Ian Worthington
A Companion to Ancient EpicEdited by John Miles Foley
A Companion to Greek TragedyEdited by Justina Gregory
A Companion to Latin LiteratureEdited by Stephen Harrison
A Companion to Greek and Roman Political ThoughtEdited by Ryan K. Balot
A Companion to OvidEdited by Peter E. Knox
A Companion to the Ancient Greek LanguageEdited by Egbert Bakker
A Companion to Hellenistic LiteratureEdited by Martine Cuypers and James J. Clauss
A Companion to Vergil’s Aeneid and its TraditionEdited by Joseph Farrell and Michael C. J. Putnam
A Companion to HoraceEdited by Gregson Davis
In preparation
A Companion to Food in the Ancient WorldEdited by John Wilkins
A Companion to the Latin LanguageEdited by James Clackson
A Companion to Classical MythologyEdited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone
A Companion to SophoclesEdited by Kirk Ormand
A Companion to AeschylusEdited by Peter Burian
A Companion to Greek ArtEdited by Tyler Jo Smith and Dimitris Plantzos
A Companion to Families in the Greek and Roman WorldEdited by Beryl Rawson
A Companion to TacitusEdited by Victoria Pagán
A Companion to the Archaeology of the Ancient Near EastEdited by Daniel Potts
This paperback edition first published 2010
© 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Edition history: Blackwell Publishing Ltd (hardback, 2007)
Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A companion to the Roman Republic / edited by Nathan Rosenstein and Robert Morstein–Marx.p. cm. — (Blackwell companions to the ancient world. Ancient history)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN: 978-1-4051-0217-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-4443-3413-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)1. Rome–History–Republic, 510–30 B.C. 2. Rome–Civilization.I. Rosenstein, Nathan Stewart. II. Morstein–Marx, Robert. III. Series.DG235.C65 2006937’.02—dc22
2005021926
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For Erich Gruen, in honor of his 70th birthday, and for Joan Gruen, in memoriam
Maps
1The Western Mediterranean2The Eastern Mediterranean3Italy and the islands4Central Italy5Central and southern Italy, c.2186The physical landscape of republican Italy7The city of Rome from the mid-2nd to the mid-1st century8The area of the Forum from the mid-2nd to the mid-1st century9The triumphal routeIllustrations
3.1Oscan inscription of L. Mummius at Pompeii3.2a–cTerminus set up by Gracchan commissioners near Atina in Lucania3.3The Polla stone3.4Magistri inscription of 99 BC from northern Campania3.5Cast bronze bar3.6Cast bronze as Janus/prow3.7Production of coinage by striking3.8Denarius of Sulla3.9Denarius of P.Nerva3.10Denarius of Kalenus and Cordus3.11Denarius of M. Brutus and L. Plaetorius Cestianus4.1Plan of Cosa (mid-2nd century)4.2The temples of the Area Sacra di Largo Argentina15.1Stone stele of husband and wife21.1The “Arringatore” (Aulus Metellus)24.1aSanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, Praeneste24.1bSanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia, Praeneste24.2Forum Romanum, 5th to 3rd centuries BC24.3Ionic temple in the Forum Holitorium, Rome, early 2nd century BC24.4Temple of Hercules of the Muses, Rome, 180s BC24.5Round Temple in the Forum Boarium, Rome mid-2nd century BC24.6Temple B, Area Sacra di Largo Argentina, Rome, late 2nd century BC24.7Reconstructed elevation of the fac¸ade of the Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, 2nd century BC24.8Drawing of the tomb of C. Cestius, Via Ostiense, Rome, late 1st century BC24.9aTomb of Caecilia Metella, Via Appia, Rome, mid-1st century BC24.9bTomb of Caecilia Metella, Via Appia, Rome, mid-1st century BC24.10So-called Tomb of the Baker, Rome24.11aRoman Theater, reconstructed section24.11bGreek Theater, reconstructed section24.12Theater of Pompey24.13Houses on the lower Palatine Hill, Rome, mid- to late republican periods24.14a and bHouse of Sallust, Pompeii, plans of 2nd- and 1st-century BC phases24.15Vicus Patricius as depicted on the Severan Marble Plan24.16Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, plan, first phase, 2nd century BC24.17Roman replica of the so-called Discophoros, 5th century BC24.18Muse (Melpomene), late 1st century BC24.19a“Esquiline Historical Fragment,” probably early 3rd century BC24.19b“Esquiline Historical Fragment,” line drawing,24.20House of Sallust, Pompeii24.21Reconstructed elevation of the interior of a House at Fregellae, early 2nd century BC24.22Early Second Style Wall Painting, House of the Griffins on the Palatine, Rome, late 2nd century BC24.23Second Style Wall Painting depicting allegory of Macedonia and Asia, villa at Boscoreale, 1st century BC24.24Second Style Wall Painting, Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii, 1st century BC24.25Second Style Wall Painting, Odyssey Landscapes, Rome, 1st century BC24.26Mosaic floor with emblema showing scene of Theseus and the Minotaur, House of the Labyrinth, Pompeii, 1st century BC24.27Tetrastyle atrium with opus sectile floor, “House of Championett,” Pompeii, 1st century BC24.28Scene of riderless horse from frieze on the pillar monument of L. Aemilius Paullus, Delphi, mid-2nd century BC24.29Census scene from the so-called Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus, early 1st century BC24.30Panel depicting Victories and Shield, Piazza della Consolazione, Rome, 1st century BC24.31Portrait head, c. 1st century BC, Osimo, Museo Civico24.32Portrait head, c. 1st century BC (“Marius”)24.33Portrait head of Pompey24.34Portrait head of Julius CaesarNotes on Contributors
Michael C. Alexander is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research has focused on the history of the late Roman Republic, particularly the criminal trials of the period. He is the author of Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 BC to 50 BC (1990) and The Case for the Prosecution in the Ciceronian Era (2002).
William W. Batstone is currently Associate Professor of Classics at the Ohio State University. His research interests are primarily in the literature of the Republic and the ways in which modern theoretical perspectives can help us to understand how it bears value and meaning for us. He is the organizer of the Three Year Colloquium of the APA, “Interrogating Theory – Critiquing Practice.” His many publications include forthcoming articles on “The Point of Reception Theory” (in R. Thomas and C. Martindale (eds.), The Uses of Reception) and “Plautine Farce, Plautine Freedom: An Essay on the Value of Metatheatre” (in his Defining Gender and Genre in Latin Literature).
Edward Bispham teaches Ancient History at Brasenose and St. Anne’s Colleges, Oxford. He has published on Roman legislation, colonization, politics, and religion. His research interests lie in the history and archaeology of Italy, and his current projects include a (multi-author) revision of Hermann Peter’s His-toricorum Romanorum Reliquiae and a history of the late Republic.
Anthony Corbeill is Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas and author of two books, Controlling Laughter: Political Humor in the Late Roman Republic (1996) and Nature Embodied: Gesture in Ancient Rome (2004). His current research explores the kinds of distinctions that the Romans made between the categories of sex and gender, and includes treatment of grammatical gender, bisexual gods, and hermaphrodites.
Jean-Michel David is Professor of Roman History at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. His research focuses on the social, political, and cultural history of the Roman Republic. His works include Le Patronat judiciaire au dernier siècle de la République romaine (1992), La Romanisation de l’Italie (1994) (translated as The Roman Conquest of Italy, 1997), and La République romaine (2000).
Luuk de Ligt is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leiden. His research interests include the social and economic history, demography, legal history, and epigraphy of the Roman Republic and Empire. He is author of Fairs and Markets in the Roman Empire (1993) and numerous articles, most recently “Poverty and Demography: The Case of the Gracchan Land Reforms,” Mnemosyne 57 (2004): 725–57. He is also the editor (along with E. A. Hemel-rijk and H. W. Singor) of Roman Rule and Civic Life: Local and Regional Perspectives (2004).
Elizabeth Deniaux is Professor of Roman History at the University of Paris X Nan-terre. Her research focuses on Roman society and political life in the late Republic. She published an introduction to the French edition of Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (1977) and compiled a bibliographic addendum for its republication in 2001. She is the author of Clientèles et pouvoir à l’époque de Cicéron (1993), Rome, de la cité-Etat à l’Empire, institutions et vie politique (2001), and editor of Rome, pouvoir des images, images du pouvoir (2000). She is a member of the Franco-Albanian mission and the organizer of the colloquium, “Le canal d’Otrante et la Méditérranée antique et médiévale” (publication forthcoming).
Arthur M. Eckstein is Professor of History at the University of Maryland at College Park. His principal research interests lie in Roman imperial expansion under the Republic, and in the Greek and Roman historiographical response
to that expansion. He is the author of numerous articles and three books: Senate and General: Individual Decision Making and Roman Foreign Relations, 264–194 B.C. (1987), Moral Vision in the Histories of Polybius (1995), and The Mediterranean Interstate Anarchy and the Rise of Rome (forthcoming), and coeditor of “The Searchers”: Essays and Reflections on John Ford’s Classic Western (with Peter Lehman, 2004).
Paul Erdkamp is Research Fellow at the Department of History, University of Leiden. His research interests include Roman warfare, rural society, ancient economy, and demography. He is the author of Hunger and the Sword. Warfare and Food Supply in Roman Republican Wars, 264–30 BC (1998) and The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (forthcoming).
Daniel J. Gargola is Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. His research focuses on the intersections between politics, religion, and law in republican Rome. He is the author of Lands, Laws, and Gods: Magistrates and Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican Rome (1995).
Erich S. Gruen is Gladys Rehard Professor of History and Classics and Chair of the Graduate Program in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley. His works on Roman republican history include The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (1974), The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (1984), and Culture and Identity in Republican Rome (1992). His most recent book is Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans (2002). He is currently working on a long-range project tentatively entitled Cultural Appropriations and Collective Identity in Antiquity.
Karl-J. Hölkeskamp is Professor of Ancient History at the Institute of Classical Studies, University of Cologne. He is especially interested in the history of republican Rome, its political culture and society on the one hand, and in the history of archaic Greece, the emergence of the polis and of written law on the other. Recent publications include Sinn (in) der Antike. Orientierungssysteme, Leitbilder und Wertkonzepte im Alterturn (coedited with J. Rusen, E. Stein-Hölkeskamp, and H. Th. Grütter, 2003); SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS. Die poli-tische Kultur der Republik – Dimensionen und Deutungen (2004), and Rekonstruk-tionen einer Republik. Die politische Kultur des antiken Rom und die Forschung der letzten Jahrzehnte (2004).
Martin Jehne is Professor of Ancient History at the Institute of History, University of Dresden. His main topic of research for some years now has been the history of the Roman Republic, especially its political system and social structure, but he is also interested in the establishment of monarchy in early imperial times and in Classical Greece, especially its international relations. His publications include Der Staat des Dictators Caesar (1987), Koine Eirene. Untersuchungen zu den Befriedungs- und Stabilisierungsbemühungen in der griechischen Poliswelt des 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (1994), and Caesar (3rd edn, 2004), and, as editor, Demokratie in Rom? Die Rolle des Volkes in der Politik der römischen Republik (1995).
C. F. Konrad teaches Classical Studies at Texas A&M University, and conducts research in Roman government, religion, and law, and in Greco-Roman historiography. He is the author of Plutarch’s Sertorius: A Historical Commentary (1994) and editor of Augusto augurio: Rerum humanarum et divinarum commentationes in honorem Jerzy Linderski (2004), and is currently working on a study of Roman dictators.
Neville Morley is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Bristol. His interests encompass ancient economic and social history, historical theory, and the place of antiquity in nineteenth-century debates on modernity. His recent publications include Theories, Models and Concepts in Ancient History (2004) and articles on demography, decadence, and migration, and he is currently completing a book on ancient trade.
Robert Morstein-Marx is Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research currently focuses on the intellectual, ideological, and communicative dimensions of late republican politics. He is the author of Hegemony to Empire: The Development of the Roman Imperium in the East from 148 to 62 BC (1995) and Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (2004).
John A. North taught some Greek and more Roman history in University College London from 1963 until 2003. Having been Head of the Department of History for much of the 1990s, he is now Emeritus Professor of History. Most of his published research has concerned the religious history of the Romans and of the Roman Empire, including Religions of Rome (with Mary Beard and Simon Price, 1998). Currently, he is working as a member (and co-director) of a funded project, based in University College London, to provide text, translation, and commentary on the Lexicon of Festus.
John R. Patterson is University Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, and Director of Studies in Classics at Magdalene College. His publications include Political Life in the City of Rome (2000) and survey articles: “The City of Rome: From Republic to Empire,” JRS 82 (1992) and (with Emma Dench and Emmanuele Curti) “The Archaeology of Central and Southern Roman Italy: Recent Trends and Approaches,” JRS 86 (1996).
Mark Pobjoy is Senior Tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford, having formerly been Fellow and Tutor in Ancient History at the College. His interests range from Latin epigraphy and classical historiography to the poetry of Virgil, while his principal speciality is the political history of Roman Italy. His publications include articles on Latin inscriptions and the coinage of the Social War, while his major current project is a work on the history of Capua under Roman rule.
Kurt A. Raaflaub is David Herlihy University Professor and Professor of Classics and History as well as Director of the Program in Ancient Studies at Brown University. His special interests focus on the social, political, and intellectual history of archaic and classical Greece and republican Rome, and more recently on the interaction between Egypt and Ancient West Asia on the one hand; Greece and Rome on the other. Recent publications include Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (coauthored, 2005), The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (2004), and War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (coedited with Nathan Rosenstein, 1999).
Beryl Rawson is Professor Emerita and Visiting Fellow in Classics at the Australian National University. She has written on the social, cultural, and political history of Rome (late republican and imperial), and has particular interest in the family and in children and childhood. Her publications include The Politics of Friendship. Pompey and Cicero (1978), The Family in Ancient Rome: New Perspectives (1986), Marriage, Divorce, and Children in Ancient Rome (1991), The Roman Family in Italy (with Paul Weaver, 1997), and Children and Childhood in Roman Italy (2003).
Nathan Rosenstein is Professor of History at the Ohio State University. His research focuses on the political culture, economy, demography, and military history of the middle and late Republic. He is the author of Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic (1990), Rome At War: Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic (2004), and various articles, and the editor (along with Kurt Raaflaub) of War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (1999).
Jörg Rüpke is Professor for Comparative Religion (European Polytheistisms) in the Department of Religious Studies of the University of Erfurt and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy. He is also coordinator of the German Science Foundation’s Priority Research Programme 1080: “Roman Imperial and Provincial Religion.” His special interests are in the history of religion in the ancient Mediterranean and the sociology of religion. Recently, he coedited Rituals in Ink (2004) and published a three-volume prosopography of Roman priests (Fasti Sacerdotum, 2005). An English translation of his Die Religion der Römer: eine Einführung (2001; Italian edition 2004) is forthcoming.
Simon Stoddart has held posts in Cambridge (Junior Research Fellow, Magdalene College; University Lecturer and University Senior Lecturer), Oxford (Charter Fellow, Wolfson College), Bristol (Lecturer and Senior Lecturer), and York (Lecturer) and has recently retired as editor of Antiquity. He has directed several fieldwork projects in Central Italy (Casentino, Gubbio and Nepi) and has written or edited books on Etruscan Italy, the Mediterranean Bronze Age, the Gubbio fieldwork, landscapes, and the Celts.
W. Jeffrey Tatum is the Olivia Nelson Dorman Professor of Classics at the Florida State University. He is the author of The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher (1999) and numerous articles on Roman history and Latin literature. He is currently finishing a commentary on the Commentariolum Petitionis and working on a biography of Julius Caesar.
Mario Torelli is Professor of Archaeology and the History of Greek and Roman Art at the University of Perugia. His many publications include, most recently in English, Tota Italia: Essays in the Cultural Formation of Roman Italy (1999), and, as editor, The Etruscans (2001).
Katherine E. Welch is Associate Professor at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Her interests focus on Roman Italy and Roman Asia Minor, and they include architecture, sculpture, and painting. She has worked at numerous excavations around the Mediterranean and is currently on the staff of the excavations at Aphrodisias in Turkey. She is the author of The Roman Theater from its Origins to the Colosseum (2004), coeditor of Representations of War in Ancient Rome (with Sheila Dillon, 2005), and has written articles on topics such as Roman theatres and stadia, the basilica, Roman topography, portrait and votive sculpture, and the sculptural and painting decoration of Roman houses.
Alexander Yakobson is senior lecturer in the Department ofHistory atthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests focus primarily on late republican politics and elections and the early principate. He is the author of a number of articles on the late Republic and early principate and of Elections and Electioneering in Rome: a Study in the Political System of the Late Republic (1999).
Map 1 The Western Mediterranean
Map 2 The Eastern Mediterranean
Map 3 Italy and the islands
Map 4 Central Italy
Map 5 Central and southern Italy, c.218
Map 6 The physical landscape of republican Italy
Map 7 The city of Rome from the mid-2nd to the mid-1st century. Dotted lines indicate approximate locations. See Maps 8 and 9 for greater detail in the city center.
Map 8 The area of the Forum from the mid-2nd to the mid-1st century
Abbreviations
The abbreviations used in this volume for ancient authors and their works as well as for collections of inscriptions are as given in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition. Abbreviations of journals may be found in L’Année philologique or, in some cases, The American Journal of Archaeology 104 (2000), pp. 10–24. Additional abbreviations of which readers should be aware are: DNP for Der kleine Pauly: Enzyklopädie der Antike, edited by H. Cancik and H. Schneider (16 vols., Stuttgart 1996–2003); LTUR for the Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, edited by E. M. Steinby (6 vols., Rome 1993–2000); and ROL for E. H. Warmington, The Remains of Old Latin (4 vols., Cambridge, Mass 1935–40), cited by volume, page number, and, in some cases, item number.
All dates are BC unless otherwise specified.
Preface
When Al Bertrand first approached us about undertaking this volume in the Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World series, in the spring of 2000, the need for it seemed self-evident. Older works like the venerable surveys of H. H. Scullard were very dated both in their overall approach to the subject and their presentation of major controversies. Meanwhile, the continuing archaeological exploration of Italy had vastly enriched our picture of early Rome as well as the Republic. Increasingly sophisticated analysis of the literary aims and research methods of the Latin historio-graphical tradition had heightened the challenge of confronting the great evidentiary problems of republican history. A sociological approach and a reorientation of perspective from Rome to the imperial periphery had combined to revitalize our understanding of Roman imperialism. Even the study of politics had moved well beyond prosopography and the play of factions; “political culture” had moved to the front and center, and types of evidence formerly neglected were being scrutinized with methods relatively new to the Roman historian. We felt that the time was ripe for a book that could provide students, scholars, and general readers with an up-to-date, one-volume companion to the history of republican Rome, comprising a series of essays on central themes and debates by a number of leading scholars in the field. Although we expected its primary readership to be undergraduate and graduate students, we also hoped that the volume would highlight some of the best recent work in various areas of specialization and thus be of interest to scholars both inside and outside this particular area of study. In the meantime the Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic edited by Harriet Flower has appeared, boasting excellent contributions by a number of distinguished scholars, a few of whom have also contributed to our volume. That admirable work went far to meet the need just described, yet we hope readers will agree that there is still room for another book of this nature. In keeping with the generous parameters laid down for the series, the Blackwell Companion to the Roman Republic is considerably larger, which should allow for more exposition, analysis, and narrative over a wider variety of topics in greater depth and detail.
Our broad goal has been to present a variety of important themes in republican history as it is currently practiced while still retaining the narrative force and drama of the Republic’s rise and fall. Our introductory section emphasizes the raw material of ancient history – not simply the evidence of texts and physical remains, but broader questions of the models and assumptions that scholars have brought to these artifacts, whether consciously or not, and that continue to shape their interpretations of them. The section opens with a broad historiographical survey of scholarship on the Republic from the early twentieth century up to the present. Chapters 2 and 3 on literary sources, and epigraphy and numismatics introduce readers to crucial types of evidence for the Roman Republican historian, while Chapter 4 surveys the development of the archaeological “face” of the Roman city from the beginning of the Republic to its end. Scholars are also now more than ever aware of the role that the physical environment and landscape have played in shaping the human actions that have taken place within them: hence Chapter 5, “The Physical Geography and Environment of Italy.” Part II consists of four chapters of compact but relatively detailed narrative of military and political developments from the city’s origins to the death of Julius Caesar. The central goal of this part of the book is to delineate clearly the diachronic framework for the distinct thematic chapters to follow, where analysis and problems of interpretation can be more fully treated. The remainder of the volume is organized under several broad rubrics intended to highlight recent research and current debates in the field. Part III, “Civic Structures,” examines the fundamental underpinnings of the Republic (religion, law, the constitution, and the army) while Part IV (social structure, demography, and Roman women) surveys the wealth of studies that have enriched these topics in recent years. Part V, “Political Culture,” examines the city of Rome, aristocratic values, popular power, patronage, rhetoric and public life, and reflects the important, new research on these subjects that has energized and enlarged the study of the Republic’s political history. Included here is Chapter 21, “The Republican Body,” which exemplifies how contemporary studies of republican cultural history are opening important new perspectives on the ways in which power and authority were constructed and wielded in the political arena at Rome. The contemporary focus on the process by which a collective sense of “Romanness” was forged out of the rich diversity of Italy (Romans and “others,” history and collective memory, art, literature) is examined in “The Creation of a Roman Identity” (Part VI). The final, seventh part treats a selection of perennial “controversies” (imperialism, agrarian change, Rome’s relations with Italy, and the Republic’s “fall”).
While the seven parts of the book group obviously related themes or types of study, readers should not allow this structure to obscure the many connections that exist between chapters that appear in different sections. We have attempted to mark the more direct interconnections by cross-referencing, but it may also be helpful to highlight in advance a few such points of contact that may not be immediately obvious from a mere perusal of the list of contents. The physical remains, topography, and monuments of the city of Rome during the Republic are discussed in some detail in various parts of the volume: not only Chapters 4 and 16, those most explicitly focused on the urban environment, but 23 (on Roman “collective memory”) and 24 (art and architecture) as well. A reader exploring “political culture” or the current debate about Roman “democracy” would do well to start with Chapter 1, which contains an extensive critical review of recent work in this area, before moving on to Part V; and Chapter 23 relates just as closely with this group as it does with those in its immediate proximity. Similarly, readers particularly interested in Part IV’s exploration of society should look also to Chapters 13 (on the army), 16 (city of Rome), 19 (patronage) and 27 (economy). Chapters 4 (archaeology) and 20 (rhetoric and public life) contribute notably in their own right to the topic of Part VI, “The Creation of a Roman Identity.” Finally, the special problems posed by the literary sources for the early Republic are discussed extensively in the relevant narrative chapter (6) as well as, rather more briefly, the introduction to literary sources in Chapter 2.
Inevitably, some topics and issues are more fully explored than others. Certain omissions proved impossible to remedy within the limitations of time and space under which we were working: so, for example, we regret the lack of an introduction to archaeological methods and approaches to Republican history, and also of a study of the provinces as such. Yet we hope that in sum these chapters will convey the wide interest of much of the work currently being done in Roman Republican history, broadly defined. We are particularly pleased to present here the work of a number of leading international scholars who normally write in languages other than English, and we hope that one of the chief merits of this volume will be to introduce Anglophone students (and perhaps some scholars) to this important body of work.
We warmly thank all of our contributors for their good humor, mostly good timing, and tolerant submission to our occasional editorial hectoring. Those who submitted contributions in foreign languages were very generous with their time in responding to our many queries. We also wish to thank the many others who lightened the burden of bringing this project to fruition. The series editor, Al Bertrand, was responsible for the inception of this book and has remained a constant source of help and encouragement throughout its long and at times difficult gestation. We also thank Angela Cohen and the production staff at Blackwell for their responsiveness and patience. Translations of Chapter 1 by Benjamin Wolkow and of Chapters 19 and 29 by Robert Martz served as the basis for the final versions, and Denice Fett ably shouldered much of the enormous burden of compiling the bibliography. Mark Pobjoy assisted us enormously by correcting a number of potentially confusing slips in the bibliography. Finally, and most importantly, we would like to thank our families, Sara, Eric, and Matthew, Anne and Zoë, for their understanding and support through this project which consumed so much of our time and attention.
Robert Morstein-Marx
Santa Barbara, CaliforniaNathan RosensteinColumbus, Ohio
PART I
Introductory
CHAPTER 1
Methods, Models, and Historiography
Martin Jehne Translated by Robert Morstein-Marx and Benjamin Wolkow
Posterity has always been fascinated with the Roman Republic. The main reason is doubtless the enormous expansion by which the small city-state gradually created a great empire which – at least in its longevity – remains unsurpassed in the Western world to this day among large-scale political organizations that attracted quite broad allegiance. But the complex internal organization of the Roman community has also drawn the attention of later generations. Among the senatorial elite of the Roman Empire the Republic was looked upon as the good old days in which freedom still ruled (see, e.g., Tac. Agr. 2.2–3, Hist. 1.1.1, Ann. 1.1.1); even to the Christian world of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages it appeared as a period of exemplary accom-plishments;1 to the political thinkers of the Renaissance and early modern age it offered inspiration for the development of models of moderate participatory government;2 in the nineteenth century Theodor Mommsen reconstructed it as a political system based on immutable principles of law;3 in the first half of the twentieth century Matthias Gelzer and Ronald Syme emphasized personal relationships as the central structural characteristic of Republican politics;4 in the second half of the twentieth century the interest in social conflict intensified5 and a “crisis without alternative” was diagnosed for its last phase;6 at the end of the twentieth century the Roman Republic was even portrayed as an ancestor of modern democracy.7 It is in the nature of historiography that such differing approaches and interpretations are all an expression of issues and interests specific to the eras in which they arose, for historical study necessarily draws its questions and concepts from its own time. Nevertheless, this colorful spectrum of reception demonstrates how rich a source of intellectual stimulation the Roman Republic can be, and will certainly remain.
In order to benefit fully from these perspectives and indeed merely to understand the Republic itself, it is absolutely necessary to develop models. In broad terms, a model is the ordering of a series of specific pieces of information by means of a hypothesis about their relationship, ignoring details that may be seen as irrelevant from a given perspective.8 Such assumptions about relationships are unavoidable if one wishes to give an account that does not consist simply of isolated details. This means that every account is based on models of this type; yet even the author is not always aware of them, and even less often does an interpreter make them explicit for the reader. In the sketch that follows of the major interpretations in modern historiography of the political system of the Roman Republic (for this will be my focus, for the most part) I shall particularly emphasize the analytical models that underlie these interpretations, for only by means of models of this kind can scholars’ claims to an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of the Roman Republic take shape. At the same time, models may be judged by their capacity to integrate as comprehensively as possible the basic data that can be gleaned from the sources for the Republic. Finally, one should keep in mind that a model is always selective, since it is based on decisions regarding the importance or unimportance of data that will be seen differently from differing perspectives, or indeed often also from differing historical experiences, with the result that new models will be developed. It is in the nature of the matter that no model is permanent.
The Heroes of the Past: Mommsen, Gelzer, Syme
Any attempt to come to grips with the concepts employed in describing and analyzing the Roman Republic must begin with the great nineteenth-century scholar Theodor Mommsen, who described the rise and fall of the Roman Republic in three substantial volumes of his History of Rome.9 Mommsen’s history of the Republic is written in a gripping style, interspersed with colorful character-descriptions of the protagonists such as Cato, Cicero, and Pompey, and driven by the firm conviction that there are historical missions before which nations and individuals can fail or prove their mettle, and necessary historical processes which it is the job of the historian to discover. The work was a worldwide literary triumph, to such an extent that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1902. This was naturally due to the stylistic and intellectual brilliance of the account, but also to a considerable degree to Mommsen’s relentlessly modernizing judgments adduced with great self-confidence, which made for exciting reading among the educated public to whom the work was directed (and still does among readers of today). For Mommsen, politics in the Roman Republic was the concern and creation of a dominant aristocracy based on office holding rather than blood which devoted itself for many years entirely to the service of the community and presided over its rise to empire, but then in the late Republic foundered in chaos and egoism as well as mediocrity. Thus came the historical moment for the genius of Caesar to found a popularly oriented monarchy and thereby to lead the empire to the only form of government that remained viable.
For many decades the study of the Roman Republic as a whole remained under the spell of Mommsen’s History of Rome, but even more of his Römisches Staatsrecht (“Roman Constitutional Law”), in which he systematically laid out the institutions of the Roman state along with their rules and competences as well as their coordination, supported by a careful marshalling and assessment of all available sources.10 Momm-sen’s extraordinary achievement of systematization makes this work an enormously impressive juridical edifice that has put its stamp on our conceptions of the Roman state to this day. However, at the root of the success of Römisches Staatsrecht lay an appeal not unlike the way in which the History of Rome had drawn its narrative pace and its cogency from the compelling premises that the author had made the foundations of his work. The nineteenth-century study of legal concepts was dominated by the idea that a state’s legal system was founded on inborn and timeless principles of law whose discovery was the noblest task of the legal historian; and Mommsen, a jurist by training, proceeded from this basic conviction which he then applied to the Roman state. Core elements of Mommsen’s construction, such as the all-embracing power to command (imperium) possessed by the king which was supposed never to have been substantially limited in the Republic, the idea that the citizen’s right to appeal against the penal authority of the magistrates (provocatio) was a basic law of the newly founded Republic, and in general the concept of the sovereignty of the People, are consequences of the fiction of immutability with which he approached the subject. All of these ideas have since been thrown into doubt or proven to be improbable by scholars without, however, abandoning Mommsen’s edifice completely.11 This is indeed probably quite unnecessary, for, even if hardly anyone today still accepts Mommsen’s conception of an underlying, immutable legal system,12 nevertheless his immensely learned and intelligent reconstructions of the antiquarian details are indispensable for scholars as well as for students interested in how the Roman Republic functioned.
Against this strong emphasis on legal structure, which in Mommsen’s construction seemed to determine the nature of Roman politics, a contrary interpretation was published already in 1912 whose influence is likewise still felt in the present: the sociohistorical account of Matthias Gelzer.13 The basis of his argument was a new definition of the political governing class, the nobility, to which, according to Gelzer, only the descendants of a consul could belong, while in Mommsen’s view some lower offices – specifically the curule aedileship and the praetorship – also sufficed. Building on this premise, in the second part of his work Gelzer identified relationships based on personal ties and reciprocal obligation as a defining element of politics and of the pursuit and exercise of power. Gelzer was Swiss, and his experience with the political conditions of small communities certainly helped him to develop a new perspective, as did also his outsider’s stance with regard to the thought of the great Mommsen, a perspective he could more easily adopt than his German colleagues. But the core of his new approach, which was more widely accepted only some years later, lay in a clear emphasis upon the idea that the content of politics as well as the effectiveness of political action was essentially dependant on personal connections within upper-class families and between these and their clients – that is, citizens lower down in the social hierarchy who were tied to them by patronage. Gelzer, who described himself as a social historian and thus explicitly distanced himself from Mommsen’s legal-historical perspective,14 thereby made it possible to recognize the primacy of personal relations over policy in Roman politics. This was seen as a place in which alliances based on the direct exchange of services dominated the struggles for power in the public sphere, which were almost exclusively about personal advancement and prestige. Friedrich Münzer, starting from Gelzer’s new conception of Roman politics, later exaggerated the principle of personal alliance and developed his theory of enduring family “parties” forged by means of marriage connections; in so doing he surely gave too much weight to kinship.15
Building on the views of Gelzer and Münzer, but with a wholly distinct stamp, Ronald Syme then investigated the transition from Republic to Empire.16 Clearly inspired by Hitler’s rise in Germany and even more by that of Mussolini in Italy, as well as by the establishment of a formally liberal constitution by the despot Stalin, Syme adopted the style of Tacitus to describe the path to sole rule taken by Octavian, the young adopted son and heir of Caesar, and simultaneously practiced the prosopographic method with unsurpassed virtuosity. Prosopography (from the Greek prosopon: “person”) refers to the scholarly method whereby as much biographical data as possible are gathered about people of a given social class in order to glean evidence primarily about social mobility, but also regional mobility. Prosopographic research, if it is to be taken seriously as a scholarly approach, is therefore social history and not biography for its own sake. In any case, Syme was able to make use of Münzer’s research and described in great depth the complex web of personal relationships connecting the members of the narrower ruling groups and also the wider upper class. In this research the central theme, which he presented with great force, was the connection between Octavian’s rise to power with the entry of the leading men of the Italian cities into the senatorial aristocracy. Syme summarized the political credo that underlay all his research in the famous dictum: “In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the fac¸ade; and Roman history, Republican or Imperial, is the history of the governing class.”17 Accordingly, whoever wishes to comprehend a form of government or its transformation should not concentrate too exclusively on the personalities of the leading men but must analyze the party that is grouped about its figurehead.
Prosopographical Method and the Importance of Personal Relations in Roman Politics
Only with Syme did the view laid out in Gelzer’s work of 1912 – that the core of the organizational and power structure of the Roman Republic was to be found in the institution of patronage and in the friendships and enmities of the nobles (nobiles) – reach its triumphant culmination, from which it was to dominate scholarship after World War II. Personal relationships were now seen as Rome’s fundamental social glue and the essential basis of power in the Republic to which martial success, wealth, rhetoric, communicative skill, and public representation certainly contributed, but essentially as means of broadening and consolidating bands of personal adherents. Prosopographic works collected evidence about the Republican elites and examined their relationships.18 Penetrating case studies illuminated the background of political machinations by relating the ties and obligations of the agents and bringing into focus what was at stake for them at any one time in the relentless pursuit of power. Against a background so dominated by personal ambition and so little shaped by political substance, scholars were inclined to see in popular initiatives – that is, the policies of certain tribunes of the People since the time of Tiberius Gracchus in 133, who pushed laws through the popular assemblies contrary to the will of the senatorial majority – only a method of increasing one’s personal prominence, and no deeper sociopolitical concerns.19
Among those who advanced the prosopographic study of personal associations, Ernst Badian merits special distinction for his numerous important contributions since the 1950s, which unfortunately have not yet been assembled in a single volume.20 A further high point of this line of research is Erich Gruen’s copious investigation of The Last Generation of the Roman Republic.21 Gruen comprehensively reevaluated the unusually rich source material of the post-Sullan Republic in order to reconstruct the conflicts and struggles for power of that crucial period. His emphasis falls clearly on the political class, whose personal ties and machinations he meticulously laid open to view without, however, neglecting the broader upper class and the plebs. The eruption of civil war in 49 is the culmination of this multifaceted study; the central thesis is that the Roman Republic was intact at its core, or at any rate not at all at the point of collapse, but that it was brought to ruin by the historical accident that an individual by the name of Caesar, as talented as he was unscrupulous, began and won a civil war. Even if the main thesis has not won general acceptance, Gruen’s book nevertheless remains indubitably a standard work on Roman politics in the last decades of the Republic (see also Chapter 29).22
To Badian also goes the credit for fully applying to Roman foreign policy the idea that personal connections were the main determinant of action. In his classic Foreign Clientelae he traced the development of obligations of loyalty which bound Rome with other communities, and which generally began asymmetrically as a result of Roman victories but at any rate increasingly manifested a clear imbalance of power in the course of Rome’s rise to empire.23 These relationships were based on the reciprocity of services rendered and consequent obligations of gratitude that were similar to the connections between patrons and clients at the heart of Roman society. In addition Badian also worked out the connections between Roman politicians and communities and individuals in the empire, which could also be described following the patron – client model. Badian thereby placed emphasis on an enormous network of personal relations which partially replaced governmental administration.
New Concepts: “Crisis” and “Historical Process”
Much of what I have outlined, necessarily sketchily and very selectively, still counts today as part of our basic fund of historical knowledge about the Roman Republic. The works mentioned above mark unmistakable advances; nobody would wish to return to the state of the subject before the investigation of the Roman elite launched by Gelzer and Syme and carried forward to such a high level by Badian, Gruen, and others. Building on this solid foundation of knowledge about the political class, Christian Meier – in his attempt to improve our understanding of why and how the Republic broke down – focused on the practice of politics and its deficiencies.24 He was able to establish that the limited substance of politics and the great concentration on persons encouraged rather than hindered the mutability of coalitions, and therefore that the scholarly approach that concerned itself with long-standing family alliances and explained decisions as the successes of one or another party was inconsistent with the evidence of our sources, which furnished evidence for swiftly changing relationships.25 Yet if politics was not characterized by stable factions, this does not mean that the study of personal connections was pointless; rather (according to Meier) such connections were so multifarious and overlapping already in the middle Republic that the capacity to mobilize them in any specific case was not to be taken for granted, nor in any case could they suffice to attain the intended goal: specifically, to win an election.
For the period of upheaval in the late Republic Meier substituted the concept of “crisis” for the term “revolution,” which had been widely employed since Mommsen and Syme but was first given precision and theoretical depth by Alfred Heuss.26 Yet since in the late Republic there was no new social class seeking to drive out the old elite – and therefore no class struggle – and since the civil wars were not conducted even with the pretence of bringing a different type of political structure into existence, the concept of revolution can only be used in a diluted sense, as a process of fundamental change brought about by the considerable use of violence.27 Meier makes use of a conception of crisis as a stage in which massive problems that are also perceived by contemporaries force either the decisive restoration or collapse of a system; this is considerably better suited than “revolution” to illuminating the conditions of the late Republic.28
For the fall of the Republic, Meier coined the phrase “crisis without alternative” (see also Chapter 29).29 He meant by this that at this time many political actors, if not necessarily all, were conscious that some things were not working as they should in the Republic, but that nobody knew how to repair the damage, and those who might have wielded political power in the system still felt sufficiently secure that no one had the idea of forming an entirely new political structure. Contemporaries were therefore aware of a crisis and also sensed that the crisis was fundamental and could not be made to go away with a few small reforms, but there was neither a plan nor even a kind of vague longing for the removal of the system.
As Meier made clear in his introduction to the new (1980) edition of Res publica amissa, his analysis of how politics functioned amounted to a new theory of political association based on the idea of extreme flexibility in forging alliances, and therefore that all remaining assumptions of similarity to modern political parties had finally to be abandoned.30 Moreover, Meier enriched the understanding of political developments in the Roman Republic by means of his conceptualization of “historical process.”31 This refers to a model of historical change in which a definite direction of change can be recognized which is produced by the actions of individuals and groups, the stimuli (“impulses”) of the “historical process.” The concept of historical process involves differentiating between primary and secondary effects of actions: primary effects are the intended consequences of actions; secondary effects, the unintended results. Processual developments are marked by the predominance of secondary over primary effects, that is to say that the results of agents’ actions slip out of their control. Meier argued that this was the case in the late Republic, the last phase of which indeed he characterized as an “autonomous process,” that is, a development in a distinct course that could no longer be changed by the actions of any of the participants.32 Every attempt to halt or turn back this development only promoted its further advance through its secondary effects. The direction of the historical process had become fully independent of agency.
New Methods: Comparative Studies of the Lower Class and Demographic Modeling
