Early Rome: The Republic and Violence in Politics

Sources

Strong-arm Tactics. Crime was probably common on the streets of Rome. Men were killed as spectacle in the arena. The Republic collapsed in a famous series of civil wars. It is easy to imagine, then, that Roman politics was always conducted by force, but for most of the Republic this idea was surprisingly false. There are perhaps traces of uprisings and riots in the early years after the fall of the kings, but these are hard to pin down. For periods about which more is known—the third and most of the second century b.c.e. —there is nearly no political violence. The problems started around the time when two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, became tribunes in 133 and 123 b.c.e., respectively. Both wanted to redistribute the use of some publicly owned land from the wealthy to the poor. There was resistance from some but not all of the other nobles. Both brothers pressed proposals through the assemblies by means that were probably legal but contrary to some interpretations of political custom. Both were then lynched by followers of conservative nobles. In both cases one should note the haphazard forces that were gathered and their improvised weaponry (e.g., broken benches). The conservative ringleaders were tried; one was exiled, the other acquitted. Even when violence had been introduced, it was hardly normalized. After several further decades marred by only a few killings (and, some say, abuse of the courts against political enemies) the stakes were raised dramatically. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, an already famous general, used his army to seize power in 88 b.c.e. and reconfirm it in 82. He had himself named dictator but retired after a few years, and the government was not permanently altered. Such a direct seizure of power did not occur again until Julius Caesar took Rome in 49 b.c.e., but the lesson was not forgotten in the interim. At several points between 71 and 50, Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey “the Great”) kept forces near the city as an implicit threat. On a lower level, but more directly active, were the gangs of

Titus Annius Milo and Publius Clodius Pulcher. throughout the 50s to intimidate political opponents in the assemblies and the courts. This came to a head in 52 when Clodius was killed in a clash with Milo’s men. Pompey was then authorized to come in with his soldiers and restore order—and not incidentally to take sole control over the government.

Sources

Michael Grant, History of Rome (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978).

Andrew W. Lintott, Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).

Wilfried Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).