§ 4. Roman political thought

§ 4. Roman political thought

Already under the Monarchy and certainly from the foundation of the Republic at the end of the sixth century BC, the Romans were presumably capable of formu­lating arguments to recommend or justify action in terms of shared moral and political values. There survive from the third century BC several brief contemporary accounts of the careers of great men, which allow us a glimpse of these values. Similar values are presupposed in the works of the early Roman poets, both drama and epic.

What the Romans would have done if left to their own devices is unknowable. For in the third century members of the Roman aristoc­racy began to come into close contact with the Greek world, with its long-standing traditions of philosophical investigation. The early Roman poets, around 200 BC, already show traces of experiments with the deliberate creation of new abstract nouns in Latin.

From this point onwards, the principal interest of Roman political thought lies in the fact that its exponents were for the most part actively engaged in public life and made sustained attempts to relate what they knew of Greek political thought to their percep­tions of the Roman political process.

The early stages of the story are obscure. Polybius, a Greek active in the affairs of his community of origin, who was interned in Rome from 167 BC, has left us a clear account of the Roman political system. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it was read by anyone until the first century BC. Nonetheless, it is possible to observe that Polybius held the same view of the development of the Roman political system as Cato the Censor (234-149 BC), a view which was also later adopted by Cicero: that the Roman political system as they knew it was the result of collective effort by the community as a whole over a long period. This view contrasts with the naive view widespread in the Greek cities that their constitutions were the work of single founder figures. It is likely that Polybius and Cato evolved their theories in the general context of discussions within the Roman elite about the changing nature of Roman society in the second century BC.

The principal contact made by Polybius in Rome was P. Scipio Aemilianus (c. 185-129 BC), and Aemilianus also travelled in the company of the Greek Stoic philosopher Panaetius. His association with Aemilianus was emblematic of the future, for it was Stoic philosophy which eventually predominated at Rome, rather than any of the other three main schools of philosophy in the Greek world after, Alexander: the followers of Plato (the so-called Academy), those of Aristotle (the Peripatetic school), and those of Epicurus (342/1-271/0 BC).

Again, little is known about the nature of the contacts between Panaedus and Aemilianus; but it is in the period immediately following these contacts that the first traces at Rome of theoretical argument about the nature and desirability of democracy, drawing on both Greek and Roman historical examples, can be detected. This period is that of the tribunates of Ti. Sempronius Gracchus and his younger brother C. Sempronius Gracchus (133 BC and 123-122 BC). They both attempted, in part successfully, to reform certain aspects of Roman political system and met their death a result. It is here that the beginning of the revolution, which replaced the Republic by the Principate is conventionally placed. This revolution undoubtedly provoked reflection about the tensions between the freedom of action of individual office holders and the need for some form of collective control. The final stage of these reflections is shown to us in the works Cicero.

On a broader front, the Romans need analyze and understand their possession of an empire, which by the end of the second BC covered much of the Mediterranean world. Polybius had already taken it for granted that a ruling state should consider the welfare of its subjects, if only on prudential grounds, and also that the subjects of Rome were entitled to criticize her conduct.

The early first century BC saw a number of major uprisings against Roman rule and it is in this context that one can place the Posidonius (c. 13 5-50 BC), another Stoic philosopher, a pupil of Panaetius and, like Panaetius before him, a close friend of members of the Roman elite. Most of Posidonius’ works are lost, but it is clear from the fragments, which survive that they covered almost the whole range of geography, ethnography, natural science and ethical philosophy, as well as including a history of the Roman world from the end of Polybius’ Histories down to his own day. Posidonius was concerned in general terms with the nature of the relationship between governors and ruled and with the obligations, which existed on both sides; but he was also concerned in particular with the Roman Empire and its subjects and with the position of the Roman ruling elite.

Posidonius was not unique. Just as in Greece works of history stood alongside philosophic works in the history of political thought (the classic case being Thucydides), so in Rome the writing of history formed one approach to the problems of political analysis. This is particularly clear in the case of a younger contemporary of Posidonius and Cicero, the Roman historian Sallust (86-34 BC). He chose two episodes of recent history, the attempt by Catiline to seize power in 63 BC and the war against an African kinglet, Jugurtha, in the late second century BC, principally to analyze the conduct of the Roman elite at home and abroad, but also to allow him to reflect on the reasons for the gradual disappearance of the consensus which had earlier existed within the elite and within the population of Rome as a whole. His general explanation, expounded in the prefaces to the two works, in terms of a decline in political morality brought about by greed for the riches of the Mediterranean world, is argued with much vehemence, and little sophistication. On the other hand, the speeches attributed to Marius or Caesar, for instance, contain subtle analyses of the distribution of political power in state and of the limits of tolerance.

In general the age of Cicero marks the Roman conquest of almost all forms of intellectual activity invented by the Greeks and the development of new forms on a substantial scale for the first time. Creative activity over the whole range lasted into the Principate of the first Emperor, Augustus, but hardly beyond.

What did occur in the Principate, however, was a revival of intellectual activity in the Greek world under Roman rule, on a vast scale, if not of great originality. Once again, the principal vehicle of analysis was works of history. For Greek historians, from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus (both late first century BC) and Strabo (64/3-after AD 23) in the age of Augustus to Dio at the turn of the second and third centuries AD, the Roman Empire was above all a system, which worked and worked well, requiring no further justification. This approach remained alien to Latin historians and was perhaps for all practical purposes unknown to them. On the whole, they used only the Greek material already available in the age of Cicero. Their concerns were very different.

The Principate, when there was an heir available, was from the outset a hereditary monarchy: in the words of Edward Gibbon, despotism tempered by assassination. The convenient fiction was very early developed that the Roman people vested its supreme power in each successive emperor, which led to important developments in Roman views about the sources of law. The elite had held power as a group under the Republic had undoubtedly lost it, despite the fact that the Principate could not of course dispense with their services. What is interesting is that new members of the Roman elite absorbed so rapidly the ideals of the traditional aristocracy. The early Principate saw continu­ing, if intermittent, opposition, not simply by those ambitious for supreme power, but above all to emperors regarded as enemies of free­dom. All depended on the personality and good will of the emperor. This fact underlay both the attempt of Seneca to develop a theoretical account of the proper conduct of a monarch and the harsher analysis by Tacitus of the tension between Principate and liberty.

Tacitus   (c.55-early II century) composed his Histories (originally covering the period AD 69-96) and his Annals (covering the period from the death of the Emperor Augustus in AD 14 to 68) during the reign of the Emperor Trajan. The beginning of this reign witnessed the delivery ofuPanegyricby Pliny the Younger (AD 61 or 62-early second century), in the course of which he claimed that Trajan had succeeded in reconciling Principate and liberty. Yet this reconciliation had no institutional basis, only a personal one. And the only conclusion to be drawn from the writings of Tacitus is that the two were essentially incompatible. One of his minor works, the Agricola, praises a man who was the loyal servant of a tyrannical emperor; the Dialogue on Orators concludes that the decline of oratory is the result of the end of the Republic. In his conclusion that a member of the Roman elite should serve even a bad master, Tacitus approaches the view of the Greek sources, though from a different direction, that the Roman Empire demanded acceptance because it was a system which worked and there was in any case no real alternative.

The most interesting document of the second century AD, however, is the so-called Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who ruled from 161 to 180. His early upbring­ing was the normal one of a member of the Roman elite; it was not until he was seventeen that he was adopted as heir by Antoninus Pius, who had no male child, and had himself been adopted by Hadrian as the latter's successor. In the course of his upbringing, Marcus did more than absorb the Stoic philosophy familiar in a diluted form to any educated Roman; he acquired a considerable knowledge of its principal doctrines. In a Stoic Utopia, only the wise were to rule. The Roman Empire, however, was not a Utopia and everyone had a general duty to perform the functions that were appropriate to his or her station in life. In the case of Marcus, these happened to be those of a Roman emperor. In general terms, the attraction of this aspect of Stoicism to members of the Roman elite is obvious. It was a world with strictly limited possibilities for change, and someone whose station in life was near the top of the pyramid of society was doubtless pleased to find that it was his duty to accept the position. Marcus, however, as we can see, agonized over his weakness and unworthiness. It is striking how extensively he uses military metaphors to describe his calling and duty. The language no doubt underlies the developments of the late Empire, where all forms of public service were described as militia.

Also of interest is Marcus's impatience with, and indeed contempt for, the men who formed his entourage. In the Greek world, there was a long tradition of blaming the misconduct of a ruler on the bad advice given by his courtiers, of saving the institution by attaching the blame for its malfunctioning elsewhere. But the Roman emperors seem to have accepted the absolute nature of their position and their responsibility. What there is little trace of, as long as the Roman emperors remained pagan, is any land of theory of the divine right of kings.