By Maitreyee Kushe
When Rome conquered Greece in 146 BC, it ended up absorbing many of its advanced (for the time) political and philosophical theories, including Plato’s view of a republican government.
For Plato, the establishment of a republic was the way to a self-sustainable life, wherein each state would have citizens from various occupations, and every citizen would act as the foundation of the state and hold a part in it. In his text, Republic, he discusses five types of regimes, namely, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. As per his definition of it, aristocracy was the most ideal of them all, ruled by the wise to form a society based on law, order, and wisdom. Timocracy would be a state ruled by honour and duty (e.g., Sparta). An oligarchy would be ruled by wealth and land ownership (a free-trading city following market ethics, for example). While a democracy would be a state ruled by freedom and equality.
The collapse of these ideals would usher in tyranny (as defined by him as being ruled by despots with absolute power). According to him, the ideal republic would contain the attributes of all forms of the state except tyranny.
A republic would be characterised by a just and comprehensive rule of law and balances and checks that limit the consolidation of absolute authority by any one individual.
Furthering such criterion was Cicero’s Du re Publica, where he defined what we now know as popular sovereignty, which means a republic that belongs to the people, and thus participation in governance becomes every citizen’s fundamental right. Under these views, states where the people themselves seek to maintain justice while furthering the public good are republics. By comparison, an empire is a situation where one person or one group has the ability to consolidate absolute power to the end of furthering their own interests since there are no checks on them doing so.
While it is difficult to point out when exactly Rome turned into an empire, we see a breakdown in the ideals that upheld the Republic over time, sometimes unintendedly and sometimes by individuals acting out of pure self-interest, thus spelling out history as we know it.
The rest of these incidents was the economic transition of Rome’s small farming economy to something called Latifundia. We all know of the Roman Republic’s rather expansionist way of existence. A result of this was that the Roman middle class at the time spent years in military service and were unable to take care of their small farms that lay desolate as time went on. These farms began being obtained by the nobility through their political power and resources, and thus the large number of farms came to be combined under a smaller number of nobles, who employed slaves to work on them.
Due to the rise of this slave economy, the Roman people would be unable to even find work on these farms as serfs. This led to the Roman middle class becoming poorer with time. The answer to why this would contribute to Rome moving towards an empire lies in the argument of materialism (a branch of philosophy), which states that when someone can sustain himself or herself suciently, they will have higher political and spiritual needs, whereas when someone has to constantly worry about their basic needs, they cannot concern themselves with spiritual and political pursuits.
Essentially, an intellectually weaker middle class, brought about by their economic conditions at the time, could’ve been one of the reasons Rome ended up as an empire. Furthermore, when Rome captured new territory, it would establish a provincial governing system under a governor. However, their victory in these conquests was never certain, so these governments would’ve been set up hastily with little preparation. Over time, this made them an easy power grab for the governors. As an example, Caesar had been helped by three governors with military resources during the civil war.
In terms of military reforms, Marius replaced their forceful conscription of the financially able with voluntary enlistment. The new professional army would be one of the first to be paid for their services. Historically, serving in the army was considered both an honour and an obligation (valued as having “dignitas” in ancient Rome), with men joining the army to full their civic duty. Now, being a soldier became an occupation, with soldiers being rewarded by their generals, who in turn would get these rewards from the Senate. Over time, and with further expansion farther away from their homelands, these soldiers came to be more loyal to their rewarding generals than to the Republic itself.
There were attempts to fight these imbalances; one such attempt was made by Tiberius Gracchus. He’d planned to redistribute the lands that had been consolidated earlier by the nobles. To do this, he bypassed the Senate’s rule and deposed his fellow tribune who’d attempted to oppose him. While nobly intended, the result was the violation of the checks put in place to limit power consolidation while trying to pursue his cause. He was assassinated by a group of senators who felt threatened by his actions.
Another is the case of Sulla, who was given increased power to fight the enemies of the east during the Social War of 91 – 88 BCE. He would later march on Rome, as the war metastasized into a full-blown civil war, and establish what was effectively a military dictatorship. The Romans had a system in place where, instead of their usual two consuls governing for a one-year period, in the state of an emergency, this power would be given to one man so decisions could be made quickly. We actually get the word for dictatorship from the Latin title of dictator, as defined by this system.
To Sulla’s credit, he’d tried to restore the Republic by strengthening the Senate, checking the tribunes, revising laws, and such. However, we also know of him as having proscribed his political opponents, committed executions, and conscated their properties. Even if one argues that he gave up his power later on, there’s no doubt that this set the precedent for using military power to exert rule, a trait we associate with the empire to this day. He died shortly after resigning.
And finally, we have Caesar and Pompeius coming to power through a reward-seeking professional army, which they later used to limit or entirely bypass the Senate. They would claim to act for the people while seeking and consolidating authority to further their own ends. Most importantly, they passed their power and influence on to their sons and allies in a system of inheritance resembling an empire.
Why should we care about this? Well, while not without its faults (the institution of slavery can be thought of as an example), the Republic laid the foundation for most of our present-day ideals of democracy and what a government should look like. The constitution of the US, for example, was heavily influenced by the Republic, as the founding fathers used it as a model for their own government.
Concepts like the Senate, the three branches of the government, and the checks on power and vetoes can all be traced back to the Republic, sometimes even borrowing terminology directly. We have Roman law to thank for processes like trials by jury, civil rights, contracts, personal property, etc.
The evolution of political theory and thought we observe in later periods is said to have its foundations in Rome. What I’ve mentioned here are just a few of the contributions that we know of.
While the Republic of Rome undertook a signicant number of conquests, as an empire, Rome furthered this. Thus, it can be argued that the Empire actually helped to spread these ideals further, but the Empire hadn’t retained the ideas and methods of the Republic that we appreciate today.
We all know about Caesar’s assassination. Thought to be a noble cause by the people who undertook it, it would end up backfiring by making him a martyr and actually paving the way for an empire. Mark Antony’s speech after the fact made sure of it. We now recognize Octavian’s succession (Caesar’s nephew and primary heir) as the official beginning of the Empire, even though, as we saw, it had started exhibiting traits long before this.
Rome itself had been a monarchy before it became a republic. What would our governments look like today if we hadn’t adopted their ideas? Would it have led to a more politically diverse landscape in the present day? Or would the spread of ideas have been slow and uneven?
We’ve now degraded political thought to the mere separation between left- and right-wing opinions. As a consequence, even though most of us live in what we would describe as a democracy, we’ve hardly retained any of the founding principles upon which these institutions were built, though these changes have happened over vast periods of time. Would we be closer to the ideal if history had chosen the Republic over the Empire?
Waves of The Roman Republic
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