The Roman Republic, where did it all go wrong?

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire seems to attract much attention and debate, fuelled by Gibbon’s book on the issue. However, the disintegration of the Roman Republic doesn’t appear to be discussed as much. Recently Shadeswolf’s topics on the impacts of the Gracchi brothers and the Marian reforms triggers the question whether these two movements did sown the seeds for the decay of the Roman Republic. Did the rise of demagogues such the brothers Gracchi really trigger the chain events leading to the eventually civil war, or maybe it’s the personal ambitions of individuals that are to blame? Perhaps it’s the need for stability and a strongman to sweep aside the bickering, ineffective, and corrupt politicians. Many historians have often cited the social wars as the underlining factor for the civil war; with the Optimate faction trying to keep power within the elite class, while the Populares used the tactics to appeal to the common people, further dividing the people and classes into seemly warring factions. The question I’m wondering here is whether the Roman civil war was truly inevitable. And if so, was the fall of the Republic genuinely due to a revolution within the state? Lets not forget that the Roman Republic, though flawed in many ways, was nonetheless still one of the most successful civilizations in the ancient world, successfully conquering all of the Mediterranean and beyond. Yet within a century all of its existing structures and institutions were swept aside and replaced by a new form of government. The once supreme Roman Republic, where did it all go wrong?

Caesar wasn't Cincinnatus and the heirs of Caesar were at odds with the Senate.

Personally I feel that the republic's fall was inevitable. The problem was, that the very reforms the republic found necessary to keep itself a strong and powerful also made the rise of strong independent dictators with soldiers loyal only to themselves. To keep competitive with other civilizations and keep its territory under control they slowly eroded the foundation of the republic itself. But that is just me.

Nothing in history is inevitable. There are a gazillion different outcomes that could have happened instead of Augustus taking absolute control over the Republic's institutions (which remained in place deep into the 4th century; officially, the Roman "empire" was still the Roman Republic right up to the point Diocletian established the Dominate. Yeah, that kind of changes your outlook, when you think of the Roman empire as a military dictatorship, eh?).

Still, AFAIK (and I'm no expert), the Republican civil wars were the eventual result of centuries of conflict between the patricians and the lower classes over political power, something which eventually split the ruling class and subverted the Republic itself.

The fall was almost guaranteed by the kind of culture the romans created. also i believe their expansion and reception t great conquerors did not aid them.

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Originally Posted by Cultured Drizzt fan

Personally I feel that the republic's fall was inevitable. The problem was, that the very reforms the republic found necessary to keep itself a strong and powerful also made the rise of strong independent dictators with soldiers loyal only to themselves.

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Sallust, a contemporary historian, said this about Marius and his reforms: - "He enrolled soldiers not from the propertied classes in accordance with tradition, but accepting anyone who volunteered – members of the proletariat for the most part.... indeed if a man is ambitious for power he can have no better supporters than the poor; they are not concerned about their own possessions as they have none, and they consider anything honourable for which they receive pay." It is commonly accepted that Marius’ reforms of the recuritment into the army of men without land proved a key element in the civil wars of the late Republic. The loyalty of the soldiers was to the individual commander who raised troops for a particular campaign and not to the senate or state. Awards of money or land to veterans depended on the commander’s position in Rome. The soldier themselves were easily persuaded to fight or even to march on Rome on his behalf to secure their own pensions. Which is precisely what the likes of Marius, Sulla, and later Ceasar have done.

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

Still, AFAIK (and I'm no expert), the Republican civil wars were the eventual result of centuries of conflict between the patricians and the lower classes over political power, something which eventually split the ruling class and subverted the Republic itself.

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Yes there has been centuries of social conflict between the Patricians and the Plebeians. The Plebs want more political power and the patricians obviously wanted to hold on to the powers themselves. But the outcome of the civil didn't hand more power to the ordinary people. The installation of the monarchy, and the change from the republican to imperial governance meant that eletions for magistrates and many other posts were transfered directed to the emperor. So the transition from Republic to empire actually greatly reduced the power of the ordinary people. Does this mean the Plebs have lost the social conflict?

I'd say it's more akin to two dogs fighting over a bone and a third one ending up walking away with it.

And as said, nothing is inevitable. One could just as easily speculate that Cicero and his party, or Brutus and Cassius, or any of the other major players could have won the civil war, and that the infighting could have continued for another century or more, until some powerful foreign enemy either swept in and crushed everything or unified the squabbling Romans, or perhaps even until their empire collapsed. Octavian really was an unlikely victor. Hell, who's to say Sulla might not have clung to power and established the empire then and there?

It's all meaningless speculation, really. Interesting, certainly, but it serves no other purpose (besides entertainment) than to point out that what actually happened wasn't a predetermined outcome.

Lets all blame Marius! SPQR could've just not enrolled jobless, non-property owners. We either put 'em on welfare or let them become criminals, built prisons, put them in there and fed them. Government would have lost money either way and would have been hated by the people. Oops I think I just described USA there.

Sorry to be blunt but any civilization, some form of government will deteriorate if greed and selfishness aren't checked. Optimates and Populares were both greedy and selfish. We are still having the same problem Romans were having despite we renamed republic to democracy. Perhaps I'm to 'big-pictury' so I'll excuse myself before I get worse and let you do your thing.

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Originally Posted by Weebeast

We are still having the same problem Romans were having despite we renamed republic to democracy.

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For the sake of nitpicking, republic and democracy aren't exclusive, and the US is a republican democracy :-P The same goes for monarchism and democracy, yada yada, you know the tune.

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Originally Posted by Meneldil

For the sake of nitpicking, republic and democracy aren't exclusive, and the US is a republican democracy :-P The same goes for monarchism and democracy, yada yada, you know the tune.

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You can have a Republican Ditactorship too.

Also, you are incorrect, Meneldil. America is a Consitutional Republic, not a democracy.

It's both, according to modern usage of the terms.

The founding fathers said that they weren't a democracy, but a republic. However, at the time, democracy was understood to mean direct democracy only. Representative democracy was a novel concept, and not known under that name at the time.

I would say it ended with the age of emperors, that is of course the king of obvious, but I think the man that was Augustus shouldn't be ignored, he ruled the senate without the senate losing face. A lesser ruler wouldn't have been able to keep things nice and tidy.

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Originally Posted by Weebeast

Lets all blame Marius! SPQR could've just not enrolled jobless, non-property owners. We either put 'em on welfare or let them become criminals, built prisons, put them in there and fed them. Government would have lost money either way and would have been hated by the people. Oops I think I just described USA there.

Sorry to be blunt but any civilization, some form of government will deteriorate if greed and selfishness aren't checked. Optimates and Populares were both greedy and selfish. We are still having the same problem Romans were having despite we renamed republic to democracy. Perhaps I'm to 'big-pictury' so I'll excuse myself before I get worse and let you do your thing.

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Vast oversimplification. You cannot simply draw lines directly between now and 2000 years ago, pal. No matter how much political rhetoric in your country likes it that way.

Lack of a formal constitution.

Term limits etc. did not jibe with responsibilities beyond city-state level.

Weak bureacracy.

Slavery.

Personal obligation superceding national.

The Triumph.

Wining the Punic wars.

The Social War.

Where did it all went wrong? Well.. I believe the Republic could have been saved if Brutus had defeated Augustus and Mark Antony. They were the only ones left with Republican convictions backed up by an army. Once they were defeated, it was a matter of seeing who would become Emperor of Rome.

I would say that it was the Roman republic that killed "the republic". The republic failed to change itself into a institution that could have lead the growing area of Rome. The republic failed to understand that Rome had begun to be more then just city of Rome. So already when the Empire had been formed there really wasnt a Roman republic anymore. Rather just an oligarchy in city of Rome that treated the provinces as means of personal blunder. Unfortunately the same continued also during the reign of emperors. Basically the Romans were unable to shift their idea of Rome being a multinational empire from it being a city state at any point during their Empire and that was large part of their downfall.

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

I would say that it was the Roman republic that killed "the republic". The republic failed to change itself into a institution that could have lead the growing area of Rome. The republic failed to understand that Rome had begun to be more then just city of Rome. So already when the Empire had been formed there really wasnt a Roman republic anymore. Rather just an oligarchy in city of Rome that treated the provinces as means of personal blunder. Unfortunately the same continued also during the reign of emperors. Basically the Romans were unable to shift their idea of Rome being a multinational empire from it being a city state at any point during their Empire and that was large part of their downfall.

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Yeah, that's what I came to understand from a class I took on the history of Rome -- granted, it was just one 200-level class, but the professor was damn good at what she did. In her opinion, it was a change of attitude after the subduction of the Samnites and allies that led to Rome's eventual downfall; until then, wars had been conducted for the purposes of defending Rome, but after the city came to dominate all of the Italian peninsula its leaders gained a taste for victory and expansionism. As a result, not only would they begin to focus on constant expansion of power, rather than maintaining the status quo as before, but Rome's citizen-soldiers ended up being sent away to war for years, rather than for seasons. The results of this are pretty complicated, but basically Rome lost its social stability.

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Originally Posted by Quintus.JC

Sallust, a contemporary historian, said this about Marius and his reforms: - "He enrolled soldiers not from the propertied classes in accordance with tradition, but accepting anyone who volunteered – members of the proletariat for the most part.... indeed if a man is ambitious for power he can have no better supporters than the poor; they are not concerned about their own possessions as they have none, and they consider anything honourable for which they receive pay." It is commonly accepted that Marius’ reforms of the recuritment into the army of men without land proved a key element in the civil wars of the late Republic. The loyalty of the soldiers was to the individual commander who raised troops for a particular campaign and not to the senate or state. Awards of money or land to veterans depended on the commander’s position in Rome. The soldier themselves were easily persuaded to fight or even to march on Rome on his behalf to secure their own pensions. Which is precisely what the likes of Marius, Sulla, and later Ceasar have done.




Yes there has been centuries of social conflict between the Patricians and the Plebeians. The Plebs want more political power and the patricians obviously wanted to hold on to the powers themselves. But the outcome of the civil didn't hand more power to the ordinary people. The installation of the monarchy, and the change from the republican to imperial governance meant that eletions for magistrates and many other posts were transfered directed to the emperor. So the transition from Republic to empire actually greatly reduced the power of the ordinary people. Does this mean the Plebs have lost the social conflict?

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you can add to that also the soldiers would influence the people back home while away on conflict, therefore the enlarged family would do the generals bidding while he was away. Putting presure on the peoples tribunes etc.,

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Originally Posted by ShadesWolf

you can add to that also the soldiers would influence the people back home while away on conflict, therefore the enlarged family would do the generals bidding while he was away. Putting presure on the peoples tribunes etc.,

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I think that is a rather interesting reading of the Tribune's roll. In reality they were looking out for their own Senatorial future and those to whom they were also personally loyal. Yes, there were a number of reformist Tribunes, but these were in the minority compared to those such as Marcus Antonius, who was there to look out for Caesar's interests and their own future. Their future was not in the hands of the people, but rather in the hands of those who could bankroll future political campaigns.

I personally believe that there is no single reason the Republic fell, simply a confluence of circumstances that added together to reach some sort of critical mass. Personal armies played a huge part, but the Marian and Sullan 'party' politics of the 1st Century BCE and the subsequent use of the Dictatorship as a viable political position above and beyond the Consulship are also both issues that can't be ignored. Marians and Sullans both sought out constant waves of revenge upon each other for proscriptions and political wrongs that in turn created an endless spiral of violence that ultimately created a rupture that could never truly be healed (Cicero tried to heal it by seeking an alliance between the Patricians and Equestrians, but this came too late in the death spiral and as such no one was willing to ultimately agree to it - it was all or nothing). Once proscriptions and the Dictatorship became more mainstream politics there would always be those who were willing to exploit the opportunities they created.

I think the Republic went wrong when Caesar was outlawed, some Tribunes had a track record of corruption, but Mark Antony looking out for Caesar's interests doesn't mean he wasn't also concerned about the people. The same goes for other "corrupt" Tribunes.

I also think it is worth questioning the theory of wealth and power destroying the Republic, because there was plenty of late republican development that was clearly beneficial, Citizenship was granted to Italy, more allies elsewere, in contrast to the Dominate corruption trials and trials for offenses like bribery happened regularly enough so there had to have been at least some deterrent for those without any connection to Cicero, Hortensius and other top orators, the status of women improved to a level that wasn't seen again untill relatively recently, the Roman State began giving cheaper bread and housing to the poor, I could go on.

In the end whatever the shortcomings, however wealthy ambitious men used their money to undermine it's democratic value, or how much the Tribunes slept on the job the only way for the Republic to fall was through a civil war involving armies.

The best conclusion I think is the Senate just didn't have a plan for keeping the loyalty of the new armies of the late republic, and as a result it collapsed, like any government that raises an unlimited number of soldiers without bothering to make sure they would serve the government. It may sound rediculous, but take a look at all of the horrible governments in the world today that make the Roman Republic seem saintly, none of those ever collapse so I'm not convinced the Republic collapsed for those reasons.

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Originally Posted by Horatius

I think the Republic went wrong when Caesar was outlawed

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That takes an extreme apologist vision of Caesar - there is a perfectly good case for the senatus consultum being justified. Surely you can accept that the Sullan and Marian civil war through the 90s and 80s laid the foundations for the rise of personal vendettas and showed that the state had lost a monopoly on force? As such wouldn't it be possible to say that the Republic had already gone wrong at least half a century earlier?

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Originally Posted by Horatius

I also think it is worth questioning the theory of wealth and power destroying the Republic, because there was plenty of late republican development that was clearly beneficial, Citizenship was granted to Italy, more allies elsewere, in contrast to the Dominate corruption trials and trials for offenses like bribery happened regularly enough so there had to have been at least some deterrent for those without any connection to Cicero, Hortensius and other top orators, the status of women improved to a level that wasn't seen again untill relatively recently, the Roman State began giving cheaper bread and housing to the poor, I could go on.

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But the ultimate reasoning for those reforms, and the methods by which they were attained, were for the personal gain of a handful of the Senatorial class. The appeals to the plebs fueled the rise of the use of violence as a valid tool of political statement - running concurrently with the populares reforms was the rise in street gangs (See Clodius and Milo for example). Now, even if you think this was a valid way to make a statement, you can surely accept that it had destabilised the Republic?

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Originally Posted by CountArach

That takes an extreme apologist vision of Caesar - there is a perfectly good case for the senatus consultum being justified. Surely you can accept that the Sullan and Marian civil war through the 90s and 80s laid the foundations for the rise of personal vendettas and showed that the state had lost a monopoly on force? As such wouldn't it be possible to say that the Republic had already gone wrong at least half a century earlier?

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They definitely did, losing the loyalty of the army became the Republic's fatal flaw, but following the retirement and death of Sulla the Republic went back to operating, the Tribunes of the Plebs once more began to do their "jobs" of disrupting whatever they thought was unjust, the Senate returned to it's informal position of influence, and the Magistrates returned to power once more elected every year. The ultimate show of a stable government (a functioning Court System) was also very heavily restored and an endless number of trials flooded Rome. It doesn't matter how just or unjust, democratic or oligarchic the Late Republic was it did function well enough to need another Civil War to bring it down.

Also regarding the Senatus Consultam it clearly only had theoretical merit, Caesar had an army fully loyal to him, precedent from Marius and Sulla that it would follow him, and it is clear he was more powerful then the state, and it is even clearer that he was a better tactician then Pompey the Great. All Caesar needed to march on Rome was an excuse/provocation that he could show his men and the Senatus Consulta gave exactly that. It was a miracle that the Republic outlived the earlier civil war, but the Caesar vs Pompey one became it's death in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by CountArach

But the ultimate reasoning for those reforms, and the methods by which they were attained, were for the personal gain of a handful of the Senatorial class. The appeals to the plebs fueled the rise of the use of violence as a valid tool of political statement - running concurrently with the populares reforms was the rise in street gangs (See Clodius and Milo for example). Now, even if you think this was a valid way to make a statement, you can surely accept that it had destabilised the Republic?

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That did destabalize the Republic, but it wasn't enough to have that large of an impact, after the death of Clodius came the prosecution of Milo and restoration of the state. It took Legionaries to bring down the Republic, although violence by the Senatorial Class against itself did help. It also should be kept in mind that the term "vice" in the hands of Augustan moralists is not what we consider vice. The evil changes money brought to Rome according to Livy and Valerius Maximus included greater female independence (more emphasized then all others put together), greater rights of the lower orders, greater willingness of the upper orders to negotiate their place, the rise of the first legal professionals (jurists), immodest display of wealth, adultery by women, I could go on but you get the picture. None of the "vices" so hated by ancient moralists had any effect on the state, the most frequently hated vice is independence and adultery of women which had absoloutly no effect on anything at all (unless you could provide proof that the leading of armies against the state was done by women instead of men).

No matter what fault the Republic had, the root of it's destruction will always lead to Julius Caesar, and the root of the civil war will always lead to the Senate providing him with a way to keep his men loyal enough for a march on Rome and giving him an excuse, vice is especially unconvincing because women were cives sine suffragio who had no impact at all on the state, and the only example of an aristocrat uninterested in politics the moralists came up with was Lucullus (who was actually defeated politically).

Regardless of how it was that Julius Caesar rose to power, he never desired to destroy the republic or it's traditions. Even if he did wish to become dictator for life, he wasn't out to obliterate the senate or political institutions of Rome. He was trying to give some stability to a system that was unable to keep up with the pace of social changes wrought by it's own successes. It was the selfish act of his assassination that led to the true destruction of the republic IMO. The conspirators never really looked beyond their act to the consequences. What was their plan beyond assassination? Who stood to gain from this act? Who was to become the new leader of the Romans from among them? I doubt their motives were any more pure than Caesars. The powerful among the senate behind it just would not share power. What if Caesar had been allowed to live? Perhaps he would have ushered in a new form of Monarchical Republic-one more suited to the expanding empire.

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Originally Posted by rotorgun

Regardless of how it was that Julius Caesar rose to power, he never desired to destroy the republic or it's traditions. Even if he did wish to become dictator for life, he wasn't out to obliterate the senate or political institutions of Rome. He was trying to give some stability to a system that was unable to keep up with the pace of social changes wrought by it's own successes. It was the selfish act of his assassination that led to the true destruction of the republic IMO. The conspirators never really looked beyond their act to the consequences. What was their plan beyond assassination? Who stood to gain from this act? Who was to become the new leader of the Romans from among them? I doubt their motives were any more pure than Caesars. The powerful among the senate behind it just would not share power. What if Caesar had been allowed to live? Perhaps he would have ushered in a new form of Monarchical Republic-one more suited to the expanding empire.

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You mentioned your answer for the assasins, they didn't want a monarch. As far as civil wars go the Dominate was as bad if not worst than 20th century Latin America, the Principate saw the Year of the Four Emperors, The Year of the Five Emperors, The Deserters War, the Republic saw the Social Wars, the conflict between Marius and Sulla, conflict between Caesar and Pompey ending in the defeat of Pompey's sons, conflict between the assasins and Second Triumvirate, and Octavian vs Antony.

Note that nearly all the Republic's civil wars are localized after the outlawing of Caesar, considering everything else it was that act that could be said to bring down the republic. It is clear the Republic wasn't brought down by women gaining much higher status as Livy and Sallust hypocritically claim, it was done in by a couple of decisions by a small click of nobles who hated each other to death.