Book Review Roman Republic

 THE ROMAN REPUBLIC: A Very Short Introduction by David M. Gwynn

The history of the Roman Republic is a popular and relatively familiar subject, the setting of numerous movies and several Shakespeare plays.  That history made a deep impression on the Republics that arose in the Renaissance and on the founders of the United States.  A small and rather nondescript city in Italy somehow conquered the entire Mediterranean world over 700 years or so and then destroyed itself in an orgy of internal strife.

Like the founders of our Republic, citizens of the world’s republics today should ponder the lessons of Rome’s successes and catastrophic collapse.

David M. Gwynn’s brief history is much more interested in the internal dynamics of the Republic than in Rome’s battles and wars.  The armies of the Republic were initially citizen armies, led by the Senatorial classes and manned by small citizen farmers. 

After Rome deposed its Kings, power was initially wielded almost exclusively by the Senatorial class.  This did not sit well with the plebians, and long struggles eventually gave much more power to the popular assemblies and their elected tribunes.  Compromises of this sort, together with awarding more of the privileges of citizenship to conquered peoples, stabilized the Republic for centuries.

Gwynn sees the seeds of Roman destruction in their very successes.  The Senate and popular assemblies proved somewhat unwieldy for ruling a vast empire.  Probably the most catastrophic flaw though, were the enormous inequalities that the plunder of empire brought.

By the late Republic, the peasant farmer was living on 230 sesterces per year, while membership in the equites class required a minimum of 400,000 sesterces and senators needed a million.  The wealthy were able to obtain vast tracts of land worked by the millions of slaves brought back by conquest, and the small farmer could not compete, losing their land by debt.

With the core of the Republican army gone, the army became professional.  This led to the rise of Warlords like Marius, Sulla, and later Pompey and Caesar.  These men were able to finance private armies with the fruits of foreign conquests.  Such men had the power to intimidate or defy the Senate and they fought bitterly for supremacy.  Julius Caesar ultimately triumphed and made himself dictator.  Partisans of the Republic like Cato and Brutus assassinated him, but by then the Republic could not be saved.  The horrors of the ensuing civil war were well captured by Shakespeare in Mark Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar:

Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Eventually Caesar’s adopted son Octavius defeated the Republicans and his rivals and became the ruler, though he only adopted the title “Princeps” for first among equals.

Today, with the Western world full of republics, many of them, like the US, threatened by powerful internal fascist movements, we need once again to look to Rome for the lessons of disaster.  Like Rome, the world has seen levels of inequality rise to enormous proportions, as the wealthiest have figured out how to loot the economy and governments and avoid taxes.  Like Rome, we have seen a decline in civic virtue.  Your can’t be a Republican Congressman, Senator, or Supreme Court Justice  today if you aren’t willing to lie publicly and under oath. As in the days of the decline of Rome, plutocrats spend vast sums to shape policies to their ends, especially in tricks to avoid paying taxes.