Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic

ROMAN IMPERIALISM IN THE LATE REPUBLIC

By E. BADIAN

@ Basil Blackwell, 1968 63r rrrro 7

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION f-f-lHESE lectureswere delivered at a vacation schoolin Ancient I History o.rganisedby the Universiry of South Africa in July 1965. At the kind suggestion of the Universiry, they are here published much as delivered. Simple annorarion has been added, and I should like to thank the University for allowing me the spacefor this. tt should sufficero draw the attention of the reader not expert in the subject to the main sourcesand to modern discussionswhere more can be found. The text ofthe lectureshasnot, on the whole, been much changed: the only consistentadaptation has been an attempt to eliminate that ubertaswhich-necessary if the listener is to follow the spoken word-becomes an irritani in print. As the revision was completed in December 1965, it was possible to insert at least some referencesto relevant work that had appearedby that date. I should like to thank all those colleagueswho discussedpoints arising out of the lectures with me ar Pretoria: especiallyprofessorsW. den Boer and C. P. T. Naud6, who, while busy with their own contributions to the occasion,found dme to improve mine; ProGssorsG. van N. Viljoen and H. L. Gonin, who asked many searching questions with exemplary courtesy; and also 'White, ProGssor Mary of Toronto, who, on a short visit to England, was kind enough to read the typescript. They have all helped to make what is necessarilya sketchy ffeatment of an important subject a little lessdefective. But it is my chief dury and pleasurero thank my South African colleagues,both at the Universiry of South Africa and at other universities and colleges(most of which I visited), for unfailing and-what is rarer still-self-effacing hospitaliry. Affrid th;

Fint published 1967 Sccond edition 1968

Printed in Great Britain by 'Western Printing Services Ltd., Bristol

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problemsfacingtheir country (whichareobviousindeed,though io the historian no more so than thoseof countrieslessawareof their own), it wasgratifying to find an interestin Classicalstudies, and indeedin civiliseduaditions in general,which, if thereis any valuein thoseaaditions,cannot6i1 to play ia Part in solving the Problems' E. Beorers universityof lzeds,Englanil 1965 December

vl

INTRODUCTION

TO THE SECOND EDITION

the first edition of this book-a Gw hundred copies, \Y/HEN published in a University of SouthAfrica series-wai reW ported to be out of print, Sir Basil Blackwell ki"dly took charge ofpublishing it in a slighdy revised form, thus adding to the many benefuiafor which I owe him gratitude. Though there hasnor yer been time for reviews that could be taken into account, various friends have made h"lpfrl commenb that have enabled me to improve substanceor style. I should especially like to menrion Dr G.'W. Bowersockand Dr E. S. GruenI have made no changesthat would alter the basic nature of the book or remove it too far from the seriesof lectures as actually delivered. Since modern documentation has in any casebeen kept to a minimum, there has been no need for frantic attempts to bring it up to date. The only important work bearing on the subject that has appearedsincethe end of 1965is C. Nicolet, L'Ordre öquestre ä l'Epoqueräpublicaine (1966),supplying, ar last, part of the long-needed treatment the Equites the absenceof which I had noted. This is clearly not the place for a full discussion of that massivework. I am happy to seethat Nicolet's detailed investigation has independendy led him to many of the same conclusions at which I myselfhad arrived, on the economic and social basisof the orilo, on its interests and on its relations with the Senate.If he is right in his main thesison the definition of the ordo(i.e., that the 'public horse' was essentialto it), asI am inclined to think he is, we shall have to change our terminology in specidist works on the period down to Sulla: I have always regarded the use of the term 'Equites' in a wider senseas (for that period) proleptic (see my references to them in FC). However, as far as the period after vii

Sulla is concerned (and particularly that after the last successful censorshipin 7o), it seemsto me that Nicolet has done nothing to invalidate the common use of the term in modern writers: his attempt to find an associationbetween the men explicidy called 'equites' and the public horse for this period is a complete fülure (seehis pp. r89-r9z); and his final conclusion (p. 744)is only that the allusion to the public horse belongs essentiallyto the second 'rien n'indique que les autresne I'aient paspossdd6'! century and In fact, in the post-Sullan age, there was clearly no recognised way of either acquiring equestrian status (since there was no effective censorship and the parade of the cavalry had 6llen into disuse),or, correspondingly, of stopping anyone with strfücient wealth and influence from claiming it. Provided he was free-born, no man of substancewould easily be denied that dignified tide. It follows that there is, for this age, no reason for changing the now traditional terminology. The decisionis more difücult for the age between C. Gracchus is perhaps and Sulla. Nicolet's treatment of the Lex Repetundarum the leastsatisfactorypart of his book, both in languageand sense and from the stricdy epigraphical point of view (which, in fact, is not considered at dl). Until that work is done again, it will probably be impossible to decide which of the two possible definitions of the class of iudices (by wealth or by equestrian status) should be adopted. For the moment, the definition by wealth (a censusof 4oo,oooHS, asis-despite Nicolet's contention to the contrary-the usual opinion of modern scholars)seemsto me far the more probable: preciselybecausethe Gracchaniiudices, during the period down to Sulla, do not seemto have been described x equites Romani. Pliny's confused, but noteworthy, exposition (r.0. >ooriü34), and the very fact of the wide extension of the term in the last generation of the Republic and of its close connection with the ordo of publicani, seernsto make tlis prima facie the more likely solution, especially if Nicolet's attemPt to date the law obliging senators to return the horse after the Gracchanlegislation is rejected-as it surely must be, in the light viii

of the well-known allusion to it in Cicero's de republicaand Cicero's equdly well-known care to avoid anachronism. If the qualifrcation for enrolment on thejury panel was possession of the public horse, and senatorsby definition did not possess the public horse, their specific exclusion from the panel does not appear to make sense;for we cannot in this instance (as in many others) operate with the concept of tralatician clauses,since this new definition of the panel was in fact one of the main points of the Gracchan law. I have set this out at somelengtl in order to justify my decision (not taken lighdy) to make no change ir -y terminology regarding the equestrianorder in consequenceof Nicolet's work. The 'prolepdc' 'Equites' useof the title for the Gracchaniiudices,bxed on Cicero's usagefrom the point of view of his own generation, will continue to have advantages from the point of view of historical exposition, even if (asI now more than ever believe) it is not stricdy accuratebetween C. Gracchusand Sulla. Meanwhile we must all wait for Nicolet's promised prosopography, and for further and more expert work on the text of the Lex Repetundarum. Since the first edition went to press, Christian Meier's book ResPublicaAmissahasalso appeared(Wiesbaden 1966).I hope ro present my views on it in detail elsewhere.Here I would only note that, in what is relevant to the subject of theselectures,the views he expressesare very close to mine, especiallyon the aims and the role of the Equitesin general and thepublicaniinparricular (pp.6+-gs); though it will be clear that we diverge on the apportionment of blame for the disintegration of the respublica. &,tfalo, N.Y. Ocnber 1967

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CONTENTS AmrsvrarroNs

xii

L VIRWS AND IMPERIVM .ECONOMIC MOTTVE' II. THE il.

TTIE SENATE AGAINST EXPANSION

W. NEW INTERESTS AND NEIX/ ATTITUDES

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. 1 6 . 2 9 .

M

V. THE NEW IMPERIALISTS: THE MYTH

. 6 0

VI. THE NEW MPERIALISTS: THE FACTS

. 7 6

Nores

93

Irvonx or Nauns

III

)n

ABBREVIATIONS Periodicals are abbreviated asinL'Annöe philologique,with slight simplifrcations that will causeno difficulty. The following standard reference works are abbreviated in the usual manner: FIR'12

FontesIwis Romani Anteiustiniani, znd ed. (ed. Riccobono)

ILLRP

LatinaeLiberaeReiPublicae(ed. Degrassi) Inscriptiones

MRR

The Magßtratesof the RomanRepublic(ed. Broughton)

OG/S

Orientis Graeci InscriptionesSelectae(ed. Dittenberger)

ORF8

Fragmenta,3rded. (ed.Malcovati) OratorumRomanorum

RE

Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopaeilieder lelassischen Al tertumswissenschaft

SIG8

Sylloge InscriptionumGraecarum,3rd ed. (ed. Dittenberger)

The following works are abbreviatedas shown:

I

VIRTVS

AND IMPERIVM

TMPERIALISMT in some senseis asold asthe human race, or at I leastasits socialorganisation.The extensionof power by one's own group over othersis only a specid caseof the victory ofone's own sideover others: in human terms,it doesnot call for an eiplä:': nation. The narvejoy in this that we find in Victorian imperialists or (for that matter) in a modern football crowd is as obvious in Cicero, with his numerous proud reGrencesto the glory and the victories of the Roman People-which are almost the only seriousideashe developedin public about the theory and practice of politics beyond his own community! What does call for ur exolanation. when it apoearsin historv

isthatrelatively I'tshl.;Jäi;;d"';i#k

;;r'i'JäÄ öil;#:'

Frank,ES/R

T. Frank, EconomicSurveyof AncientRome (i, rqll)

ities for the extension of power. As in the curbiirg of private ambition. either or both of two nrotives mav lead to this: we mav

Frank,Rf

T. Frank, RomanImperialism(tgrS)

terms,.the utjlg znd the honestum.The individual may realisethat the pGiiuit ofhis ambition may be bad for his health or happiness; or he may come to question the principle of competition and the pursuit of power and distinction as a motive force. Similarly the 'We community. are not going to be concernedwith the meritsof this: in the first caseone may speakof prudenceor pusillanimity, in the second of saintlinessor neurotic decadence.Our point is only that both these motives, in their different ways, are signs of sophistication, overcoming the deep-seatedurge for domination and power. 1, .,....l Poliry at Rome, as we all now know,z was in practice determined by a governing.gligarchy, which reached its zenith in the secondcentury n.c. Its attituile to our questionwasa highly complex

Rostovtzeff, SEHHW M. Rostovtzeff, Socialanilhonomic History of the HellenisticWorlil (tq+t) Rostovtzeff, SEHREL M. Rostovtzeff, Socialanilkonomic History of the RomanEmpire, znd ed. (ed. P. M. Fraser,1957) Naturally, I have had to rely on my own past work and, to save space(and not through arry arroga.ntdesireto put myselfon a level with the preceding works), have abbreviated my own books as follows: FC

ForeignClientelae(264-70 B.C.) (1954)

SGRII

Studiesin Greekand RomanHistory (tg6+) tcl

call themc ,'

i : t

\'t\

l ; ' "

!?

l

'

t ' ;:

rivals.lB By the middle of the fourth century, hegemony had been claimed over Latium, while the Samnites were an equal "i?tiry----ot (asin the Latin War), 4ly. Py the time of the w.1, with "t a hegemonial sfhere,rl Pyrrhos, the wholg of ltaly, #ailf"i-ää *d ni"torv iästified the cläm, By the end of the n,'enties it had b."r "itäiidäd to theääjacent islands and to tggl!9.4ps acrossthe Ionian and Adriatic Seas.Within the are.31,,thui'itüIiedout, inigpendent stateswere, after a fmhion, däidtt.d and even äüöä.ir, "e"d to exist: like the many Italian sates with their dilferent free cities of Sicily and lllyria.l6 But, ') täati"r, or the kingdoms and whatever the exact status of those communities, in what Rome , regarded as essential--th9ir ^Qr9igqPgli.ry;they w-ereeffectively otid.t Roman control. Thetlatö of atrairi that we found so characteristic ofRoman policy in the secondcentury, and so surprising in its HellenittiJäJifrdili, had always been the same' asfar asRome was ibricdrned. On two occapions,as Rome came into contact with the Hellenistic äncärl'of pbwers, it log!1ed,for a moment as though she might adopt its sädards utd äi üöi äiff.t.ot traditions and olspisaäon intä that Greek world that so obviously attracted her leading ci$zens.First, in the Pege of Phoenice(zo5 n.c.) it sggngs-a eenuine attempt was made to secureco-9)üstence9n eq\ral ferms äUr Philip viy leaving an insulating lryer of bufti itates between the two powers. Had this succeeded,Rome might have stopped there (as far.qs the East was concerned)-at least long ""ä,igh to U.."*Jf,äivadää with-$g negtgnclPt of a polity anä a baläce of states.but Philip, oväi-confideht, began to interfere with the buffer statesin Illyria while at the same time extending his power in the East.The causesof the SecondMacedonian'War discussed.It is clear that it was in f*ct düä ;,tr;;-;"Ufy il; i;; and ambitious policies on to Roman suspicion of Philip's successes 'sab in the of his the background against seen fronti, various to bring tried I have elsewhere But War. back' in the Hannibalic caus*what obvious out-{ertäinly not as the only, but asa very is indeed obvious in Livy's account: the breakdown of the 6

Illyrian setdgryent, p th..gonly point where the two powers mer and directly-ahshäd. An attempt had been made at Phoenice to securepeace: but Philip had made it impossible. The result was the war that establishedRoman hegemony over Greece and Macedonial6 The next tuming-point came WfT,rjl,l rflq!,tg{"rence in ?,',"','. Rome, Titus Quinctius Flamininus frcöfihö en'üoyi öfAntiochus ,r,, III and made them an ofGr in terms of cold-blooded geopolitics, ': ' ' , contrasting with his carefirlly developed public propaganda position: if the King kept out ofEurope, Rome would keep out of ',1, , ,., Asia. There is no reasonto doubt that he--and t}e Senate-meant it. But again an Easrern ki"g, dü;#dtiä'd"nt in his #iiJngtlr, refused to setde.l?^Tle result was the war drat ended at Magnesia and Apamea. U"fülättn-"t least until the Parthians *.rä r..o to be dangerous-there were no equals left. Rome never again behaved as if there were. fh;'i;;äli{gcontradiction in Roman poliry---open aggression " .!L\i},, and expansionigrl against barbarians; hegemonial imperialism lt,c,,",.,,,' "' with careful döidance of annexation towards cultural equals or ' supe{9gq-,thir ptö,tü.r adaptation of Aiüf$e for_dgminagq.$

*ot rfud"tiio.f;"- both cannor,of course,b-".r,häfüftV"fy'6{i"'' "

plained, any more than any other phenomenonof any impoptanceLr" "l and complexiry in historical "nq,riry. n@ , .5,t,.,,,-,t, , should follow. Firs!, it becameclear to the Roman governing class.),, 1,,,:,,,,,,,1 atanearlystagethatlargeincreasesofterritorycouldnoteasilyls rt,r,tt,,,,)', ",.,,, a': admilristered within the existine city-state constitution. Rather ' *ran change the latter-which ri"r K"rfrlö;l"aHe, though minor . ,' adaptations (suchasthe pron-ragistrary) were freely tried-annexa-

tion^w"r,o' th. wholi,r.t;fr%ulili'äk8a r.;';ffKaiil;-bt treat11. Wit| power expp4i+g beyondItaly, eventhis bgc3metoo burdensome,since it impöiöd definite and often irüöhvöiüent ciymi"tm?ntson Rome.rrBä.äih. further steptoward, 4r. '6."' rr.,u. ü 'i "llt;äry or king, controlledwithout a treaty.I-tmustbe confessed .J that under the RomanRepub\c rlg-realsystemof administering,,. , -.,, overse$ territorieswas ever"äüo"Iv?d: thosethat were annexed,..,,,,.-,1 ,, ., -,,,, 7 ,,

*"r"ää*iy (likemostof Sicilyurd Sardinia)

r1'.$;i"a

sP\9res

öf action (prouinciae)of a military commandant (at 6rst normally a praetor) .iho, tighrootil the end of the Republic, .g:""T"d.:$:t ih"t *"t not iar removed from a Permanent (tho"gh slighdy regularised) state of siege.But that is angthel ltory.tt Meanwhile qt thg seco,ndcentury, -middlepJthg9999,4d ' -::to - - the "*ärrr*, ttbti." that, däwn :'; E*4ct;+1t,t 2 - * P t : 1 P ' ' 11 ;.i d I \ -,la" " ' r>k .'t '6' theatrebof war-rich all but one of the provincesremained_activetheatres 1t,w1-n$

in triumphs, bot iöttly to the.,state.Sicily was PlgFlb,rythe only the Ti6urv. The rest ' ^." a diiöIus for the thairegd-ly reelis.d onethrt-reo,rlerlv :g*::S,1 {iiPlus,for Tl:tZr*i::lt

worset4, itt qa$Xfft , werea "ooärrt at"itifi^ffiääy-*d, Ro-" and Italy could hardly coP"*Xi+ thg {gmand-i'-SÄJl wonder, therefore,that the Senatewas slow to start major wars when it could be avoided-and cerainly no-t/h1.r$g q*, fl{, arurexation,which, more often than not, proved ineiely a prelude

{ to a future of minor wars. a had given Scipios the century the second in early Moreover, terrible warning to the majoriry of their peers.Adopting names-to represent üte oib* terrarrnt they claimgdlg h1yp conquered.(Afri."ir*, Asiaticus, Hispallus), they had thieatened-not indeed a military tyranny, assome later Romans thought and some otgd:T authors still hanker after saying: for this was quite inconceivable at the time-no, they had threatened to acquire an ovelpowering prestige that might make the egalitarian working of oligarchic impossible.The Scipioshadgone down to !ot"Ä-"ttpractically remained, and the lessonwas learnt: example äefe"t; but iheir great overseascommands were careftrlly avoided-2' There is another point to consider. We shall have to say some harsh things about the Senatein due course; but letüs give praise where it is due. It is all the more necessaryto stressthat it looks as if concern over sandards of magistrates' behaviour in the provinces was another powerful infuence in discouraging annexati,o-n direct administration. There was trouble and its "ot "qo*"", major complaina came from Spain abott n.c. r7r in quite early: tie actiorx of governors there. Not much was done: some of the The Roman oligarc\, like othcr men were *"Il "ot-cted-u

oligarchies,was reluctant to punish its membersfor the sakeof its subjects. There was more trouble in the fifties.22 The excessive powers enjoyed by the holderc of iruperiurnwere bound to corrupt. What is more, they led to an excessof pride and individualismfor which Hellenistic cultural influence often gets the blame. This would make men sand out against the Senate.Livy offers many examples of disobedient magistrates at the height of the Senate's power. Some succeededin their designs or at least went unpunished: it was never easy to exercise efGctive control. Nor could the mercurial popular assembly be relied on for a responsible judgment.a There can be no doubt that these considerations weighed heavily with.qlrg S.enateas a.whole in its set policy of

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minimising orrÄ.", ciitüiffieälil"':"':' ) /:'

It is significant that the frrst serious attempt to deal with the problem of misbehaviour in the provinces comes in r4g.'n In that yeax L. Calpurnius Piso, the virtuous,l5lhu+p,.sqrnqned Frugi, passedtfre first law that was to enableäfipiösed allieiat least to they had lost. A p..*aoeot quaestiorepetundarum ;# *f-rfh"t was set up, to take the place of the all too frequent ail ho^c,cornmiv sionsof tLe Senatefor this purpose. There *"i. rro tääfu'!ßä.ttio (if there were any), for th" time being.z5Rightly, otte is iiiöffiSfio think. It became only too clear in the later Republic that severe extortion laws merely rB.ade.senatorialjuries (and not only them) more unwilling totäfrä, *d *otJ amenable to the'sort of appeal for sympathy for a Roman senator against wretched foreigners at which Cicero (when it suited him) was such a master. Piso's law seemsto have provided merely for restitution. Obviously, it was really meant to work. Now, what is most significant about it, perhaps, is its date. For in r49 the war against Carthage had started, and it is clear that the Senatewas beginning to realise that this time there was no solution short of annexation. In the sarneyear, the praetor P. Iuventius Thalna was defeatedby Ä, , the pretender Andriscus, who had united Macedonia (which the +,,,r Romans had &vided up) agairut the settlementof 167.28Again, it is reasonable to thi"k th"t the Senate knew that another

'w,')

experiment in non-annexation had failed. It is therefore interest-

y,.-, g{9Siyfy.u' irrÄ--*d.,lgthecreditof then"$gly;g@J *?, imminent and inevitable, they

t,,

with large:scalefurther annexation mqde anhon€q altggrpt to Protect their subjectsagainstthe worst "äfiä.m bf mis6ä1iäüiöuron the part of magistrates.The Senateasa whole-as it was to show as late as 95, when it sent Q. Mucius when the consulsproposed Scaevolato Asia,2?fröföftäiiärf7z, Senate,in r49 as at a decreeat leasttrying lotffilerresz8-the This gives us the seriously. rest'önsibilities its other times, took motives for the the right of positing such considerations asamong avoidance of annexation. As far asthe Hellenistic Eaqtis concerned, an important political in tit" t""ättd ""o^to.y t. consideration may b8''ätrd#"harly had known for generations: Flamininus discovered what monarchs the power of Greek public opinion. Gradually he c6nvöllöd the Senateto his views. Pq^litt"pl hegemony in the East traditionally of co-operation. Hence relations depended on at least " ffiüäh weq*most of leagues *d;ig"l wi-th at least some gf.thg kings, the time<arefully wätc[ed, to secureand retain the'aBproval of ' l those who inattered. It was a civilised and interconnected world, where-as in ours-political agtions at once received'?ät pubI liciw. Ttus had to b"'ää"ääered; and the war againstP"rt.,tt, *ith ißfräir;i{it&s, made it even clearer. Very diferent was the situa'frontier': there no one (except perhaps a tion o^pthe barbarian ^*' ; äiill},'for their private profi d gteadfräred what was done to a Liguriur ot tb.ri^arf'[fi6ä. Th; TBöö;ä of Roman war and policy ltt Sp^itt-"t, in particular, A. Schulteninsiste&O-is one of

too humane to punishhim; whereupon he returned to Rome, was allowed to resume his citizenship and soon rose to be praetor again.ar Thus a double standard of bphaviour developed. In the Easr, a hegemonial policy was pursued in a Ciüäöüi *d, oo th5; wholE, fairly civilised way, at least without violence and open i{äöhä+ and certainly (aslong asit proved possible) without direct control and maior wars. But againstthe barbarians.where oubliciw need

notbe-dieä""d *hä",'i'adenillly,a"'gi"äüäf"aüääfi5"r the frontier did not, on the whole, lead to any major n"*.dhffiifj*'' J ment at any one time, so that the whole processwould not easily become obvious-there policy was openly brutal and-aggresive, and triumph-}ffäiing an-acceptedt..hniqo".

of cour'se, in this"&siihtffiii$ whar'waspermittedtowards

,rot " ,ingl. commander came d seriouifiäim as a result: not the perfidious massmurdgrer Ser.SulpiciusGalburo whom Cato tried io attack, but whdiumiväd to be an honoured master of Roman oratory; nor C. Hostilius Mancinus, who made a treaty w1+ +" Numantines which he probably knew the Senate would dishonour: handed over to them, naked and bound, in expiation, he found (ashe had no doubt expected) that the barbarians were far

barbariansand what towar$, Hellenes(i.e., at this time, civilised states)the Romans weräfiiting themselvesinto a Greek tradition that went back a long time. In Greece it can be demonstrated as early as the 6fth centuryisg while in Roman policy, as late as the First Macedonian'War, there is no sign ofsuch a distinction.s0And so, even if talesofRoman behaviour in the'West did filter tioppgh . to Greek cities, the Romans had nothing to fe;u: it is döubtfti{ whether anyone other than a few philosophers"öäled. As for the principle of fetial law, that no war was acceptable to the gods unlessit was waged,in dgf!;ncpof one'sown country or one'sallies -whether dtir üTHd iä'äiü"" tribes is not quite ".rt"ir; though in theory it probably did-'n But, asis well known, the law was by now a mere ritual, robUed of all real content. The Romans had *eväffiq quite early developed ritual ^* a standard technique. f,or " "lliance with a state&'/örää to certai; attack fr"llüeoÄ ''to -"k. and to defend it when the attack came. A variant of this can be observed, with a, further loosening of the legal element, in the ultimatum that precedbdthe Second Macedonian'War.s5But in the second century, though it is possible that the ritual was still 'Wars-none performed-perhaps even as late as the Jugurthine of our sourcespays the slightest attention to it, arrd as far as its

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liUail ää ti;;A;.{; a-ä'-t' "np"'"ll"td.y Romanhistory.Yet

( +r, 1;,

motive power in policy is concerned, we must clearly follow them and ignore it. As we have seen, the double standard of, behaviogT,Xe.t went back to a single basic attitude. Both the bälliCos'eannexatio.r-rismand the hägemonial policF spring from deeply'röoted feidüTäs of Roman life. It is these that we must now briefy consider. . The:üJuei of Roman eristocratic liG were those characteristic of that form of sociery.3?High birth and merit (genus end' uirtus) were chiefy Adqdfed. The formerJescent from distinguished ancestors-was taken to be a.prima facle guarantee of the lafter, iäposingloth a standardand a chdlenge. The llaer (uirtus) wes the real touchstone of achievement an$ ü,reonly claim that could böää"anced 6y the'new man', who diked the guaranteeofhigh birth. The aristocratic poet Lucilius, at the end of a long passage full of high-sounding Greek sentiment, defined it in a few simple 'commoda patriai prima Putare'. Virtus es an aristocratic words: Roman concept has been much discussed.It has,evrcnbeen suggested that originally the term qea,nt 1 primitive magic Power, a kind of mana, which naturally inher'ed in leading men.88 This meaning, if it ever existed was, of coune, much changedby the secondcentury, particularly as Greek philosophy began to affect Roman education. But the quality was always most fully embodied in the commander and statesman: it was very much a public virtlue, and one of the ruling class-at least, as seenby that class.Its chief examplewas, aswehave seen,the man who, having the deedsof great ancestorsas a model, administered the sate in war and peace to its greatest 1$rg1ng* The Roman aristocracy -was always consciousof its desüny. 'What really counted, by the secondcenturf, is perhaps best seen in the famous epiaphs of the Scipios.seIt was-if one ignored a few Greek ideasthat, asLucilius' poetic discuspignshows, did not count for so very much in the practical test-disCent, ofrces and military success. L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (consul 298 r.c.) boaststhat his

forma uifiutei parisumafuit(thus making his bow to Greek admiration for beauty, but clearly distinguishing it from Roman uirtus). He goes on, in a very Roman way, to give proof of Iis uirtus, which is clearly what really counts: he gives his ofrces (consol censoraidilis ryei fuit apud uos) and finally his great deeds in war (Tawasia Cisaunia Sannio cepit, subigit omneLoucanamopsülesque abiloucit). Barbatus' son (consul 259) claims to be, by common consent, the best man of all Romans (duonorooptumofuise uiro). Ag"io he illustrates this with his ofrces (consulate, censorship, aedileship) and his victories (hec cepet Corsica Aleriaque arbe); fi".tly he cites lrdspietasin dedicating a temple, thus bringing in a religious element that is surprisingly rare elsewhere.But most eloquent, perhaps, is the epitaph of a young L. Scipio, a son of the great Asiaticus, who died as a guaestorian of 33 and thus had no chance of demonstrating his uirtus in command and high administration. He proudly claims: pater regefi Antioco nbegit. At least he could be proud of his father's uirtus. Military successand the holding of office: these are the chief claims to uirtus. Within the aristocracy, as we all know, Roman politics, especially in the second cenrury 8.c., was a constant struggle for prestige (dignitas),pursued with single-minded ambition. It was a highly competitive society. But this presrige, as we have seeneven from contemporary evidence, found is chief support in the holding of ofrce and in military success.This requisite glory had to be gathered somewhere. And since in the second century major wars, and wars against civilised states,were (aswe have found) on the whole against public policy, it had to be gathered on the barbarian frontier. There it would not commit the Sate (at least at any one time) to more than it could underteke; it would not endanger Rome's public reputation; and the successes gained would not be so overpowering asto arousefear and in*iilia among a man's peers.Triumphs were essentialto the Roman way of life and politics; and it is not surprising that triumph-hunting against barbarians became a recognised pursuit-a matter of political liG or death to many a Roman noble. Even in the first

tz

r3

cenrury,a man'si.ffi'J r" ffit

it couldbe usedby *

enemy to attack his character and damn his re1ffiüfiffi.n0 flhe other aspect-the hegemonial poliry-goes back to an equdly characteristic tradition of the Roman aristocracy: that of patronage. From the very start of Roman history, power l men 'clients' had had free attached to their personsand families. These men, though legally free, were by custom-and by the facts of power---obliged to obey and serve their patron in return for his protection. In a wider senseofthe word, every benefciumc:.cateda. relation of clientship, obliging the recipient to be prepared to render offcia. Naturally, the ability to conGr benefuiawas, on the whole, also an aristocratic privilege; so that, in addition to their direct dependants, upper-classindividuals and fimilies vrere surrounded by a circle of others whom they had placed under an obligation and who were expected to repay them on demand.0 It was in this way, to a large extent, that the oligarchy maintained its power for so long in the Roman state; and it was in this way that rivals fought each other for ofrce and prestige: indeed, the latter wes, to a certain e4lqnt, visibly measuredby the number these'relationships of clients a man codd HfsffIner.itrbly, spread beyond the ciry of Rome and its territory, as Rome came into contact with placesand peoplesmore and more remote-frst 'free' to Italy, then to the provinces, cities and even neighbouring monarchs. Both collecdvely and asindividuals, men abroad owed oficia to the Roman aristocrats who had conferred benefcia on them, e.g. by governing them, by sparing them after victory, by looking after their interestsin Rome. It was a natural consequence that Roman aristocrats, accustomed to seeing personal relationships, both within the community and outside, in these terms of moral relationships and duties based (ultimately) on the facts of power, should ffansfer this attitude to their political thinking: that Rome, in fact, should appear as the patron city, claiming the 'free' kings and cities fficiaboüof actual allies and subjectsand of with which shehad come into contact. Theseattitudes were woven into the Roman noble's life. Ofcourse, it was the oligarchy, acting

through the Senate, that representedRome-the patronal power -in its relations with those clients, thus reinforcing the bonds of in&vidual clientship that personally united many of them ro grear Romarr houses.It was clear that the whole world owed offcia to the great power acting through the men who governed it. As Roman power increased,it becameimpossible,for thosebrought up under this system, to seeany relationship between Romans and foreigners, between Rome and foreign stetes,in other terms than these; and this explains what often-by our standards-;eems arroqa{rqe arrd ev; naivetd in Roman b"h"oioor. the obäiääe tlre strong was, to the Roman aristocrat,nothing I gf d;.'.ffitää I lessthan *.6fül rnotJ h*.

IJ

n*,- a-- 9ct

II

THE

.ECONOMIC MOTTVE' i-

zt!,,,/

1..-....

T HAVE been trying to relate fhe complex nature of Roman I imperialism,..asit is found in the secondcentury n.c., to the society.In.elq-ty nature artd the conventions'ofRomar,t-aqistocratic benveen the ""lu!t society, there is inevitably a close .8ih;äoit Weltanschauung-of the leading classesof and way of lG-the that sociery at home and the way in which the society, as led by those classes,will act in its foreign relations. This is particularly so where, as in the case of Rome, a small and relatively isolated society has,within a very Gw generations,found ie horizons vasdy extended, almost to the limits of the civilised world of its time; and where, moreover, it hasenteredthat world asa superior and a master, able to make others to a very large extent conform to its own patterns. We shall seelater that, at a different stageof social and international development, the influence could go the other way and the relations of eminent Romans with most of the outside world could impose a pattern on internal relationships. But at the point we have ieached that was sdll in the future, even though dimly visible. The constant interaction of the internal temper and customs of social life and the external environment of a society is an important and obvious field of study to the historian trying to evaluate both. Yet these aspectsare often studied in isolation and thus individually distorted. The modern student, accustomed to seeinghistory-at least at at second or at tenth hand-through the blood-red sPectacJes Pf Marx, may by now have become impatient with my approach' observing that a discussion of Romen imperialism in terms of polidcs, strategy, social ethosand even psychology, surely misses r6

the point: what fte will say) about revenuesr,m;rkets, exports? These (we are constandy taueht) are the real stdffof imperialism. This view ir t"t äffifüiCd?o'the student riffiifüiartwith the Variants of it have at times been-pr.9po""&d by disiäTä"".. tinguished scholars:l we shall never escapecontemporary fashions, and economic explanations ofpolitical events are commonly supposed to be one of the distinctively modern contributions to historicd research.Yet this seemsto me an obvious casewhere we tend to seehistory through äfiftiüfg spectacles.I shall not follow up thc larger question of whether such views, even in the caseof our own society and the more recent past, tend to give an inadequate and distorted explanation of historical events: though I wouldnot deny the importance of economic motives for political actions, it seemsto me clear that this importance can vary considerably in &fGrent conditions and even in different cases,and that failure to recognise this, and over-emphasis on economic factors, has led, not only to many mistaken historical interpretadons, but also to many wrong political decisions.However, our \l main point at present is that no such motives can be seen,on the tr whole, in Roman policy, during the period that we are now l' considering. Naturdly, we have one or two casesof economic privileges securedfor Romans and Italians: the best-known is freedom from duty at Ambracia.s There is also that old favourite of economic historians,the free harbour establishedat Delos n ß7 s.c.s However, those direcdy benefiting (particularly in the latter case)were not Romdr aristocrats-though thesemay have got the odd slavea little more cheaply-nor even, to a large extent, Roman citizens: apart from numerous Syrians and other Orientals, they were Italians. M"oy of the'Romans' at Delos come from Oscan It ly.n The protecting power, acting in the true spirit of a patron, was mindful of benejcia to confer-at no cost to itself--on its loyd allies. For in Italy the freedom and dignity of the Italian allieswhom moderns sometimes still miscall the'Italian Confederacy'o -had been mortally wounded by the Hannibalic'War and the

r7

two decadesof disturbancesthat followed. Roman arroganceand lack of resped for the independence of the allies-whatever their treaty rights-were becoming painfully evident. But the Senateas a whole, though it could not always control its members,and though it might at times not be unwillingqa"111!t Bp1rn* Power obligations p.rf.Ztly phä itt the Peninsula, catefu$-ffiffi1.ä'ffi ffipöö64 !y spperior uirtus. Andthe upper classofltaly was, on the *hol., ääffiä. There is no sign of selrLo, disconteni, no demand for equaliry (not to mrntiop citize4s\iB)- until Roman demago.Hft"ä with internal poliücs, go"r,'fo, ih"lr o*tt$üö'dt* create it in the rzos.6Had the Senatenot ft:lfilled its obligationson the whole-to its clients' sadsfaction, the Social War would have come much sooner and would perhaps have ended differt entlv. Politics and even economics must be seenin their Roman t ' I anstocratrccontext. Strange as it may seem to a generation nourished on Marx, Rome sought no major economic benefits. In their fourBro.vinces, the Rom"r.js simply i,n"ot oo "ollecting-with aslittle t.ää$itttf;fttft as posible-the tribute those regions had paid to their prwious *"rt"rr, the Carthaginians or their own king. Even the methods of collection, left essentially unchanged, brought little profit to Roman publicani. -financial Of course, the Romaqs were too prudent in to=giyg t1p establishedftyfiuei; but they kepr matters

choice,"ttd -ottiy them asmuch fronJfiEffi"t fto- töffi* It is ffid"Jg,." the alternativewassimplyiftffiffitb. because province was t" at this timeäy evenffii tlnt . w-ehave seen) ""'S6r, exceptfor peacefirland prosperousSicily. In Macedonia,in t6T, rheroyal mineswerefor a time closeddown, to avoid throwthe motive hasbeenquesing them opento Romanspeculators:? but since the factcanhardlybe denied, arraigned; and Livy tioned motive for sucha thorplausible it is difrcult to find any other oughly un-Roman action. The tribute that the four regions of Macedonhad paid to their king was halvedwhen they became independentrepublics.Perhapsit would have beenunreasonable to demand the full amount from those weakenedstates.But r8

exploiters would hardly stop to think of this. [n fact, the tribute was perhaps imposed-as Frank pointed out-to pay for the expensesof the war, which could not be charged to anyone else's account:ERome had certainly come to feel that sheshould not, as victor, be expectedto pay for her wars. So much for exploitation. The wars themselves,of course, were hlgltly profitable-especially the great Eastern wars. After the ,/ triumph of L. Paullus citizens had po more direct ta:resto pay.e the city.to Thii *as tut"""y, slavesand works "f "rt ffiötinto \ 'the ancient law of war. No one would have dreamt of questioning it. But, as we have already had occa,sionto see,neither this nor great wars, especianything elsein fact made ih. S.o"t.ffiFfbr "lly i" the rich East. Thslrrofits, whgqthgy;tarqe, were welcome

^ffit:;(";#{.föär,f|&ä-* ,' *ä *"r" taken-ap

aneli\Le

&_q.ppltical ur3-rnillary-acrion; they were not activeh sought. Finally, markets.hr a well-known passagebeloved of gconomic to rffie the historians, Scipio Aemilianus is made b/Ci..ro Romans for not allowing Transalpine tribes to plant vines or olives, in order to make their own farms more profitable.ll Rostovtzeffcdled this'a prohibition on vine and olive culture in the Western provinces' and seizedon it as his crowning demonstration of economic motives in Rome's foreign policy as early as r54 (or possibly rz5) n.c.r2 In fact, as Tenney Frank had by then already pointed out,ls and asRostovtzefwould have seen,had he looked again at the text, the wording specifies the tribes of Transalpine Gaul, and th.usexcludesthe other western provincessuch countries a.sSpain and Sicily, ricfi in vines and olives. What economic senseis there in that? But there is, in fact, another consideration that damns this ill'We must remember that the Republic, where conceived theory. this passageoccurs,has rz9 B.c. asits dramatic date. Now, Roman treaties were kept in archives or even displayed in public, and Cicero certainly had accessto the one that contained the provision he here attacked. So would those who mattered among his audience. It is inconceivable that he should here be guilry of a

r9

gross chronological blunder and refer to a treafy that was in fact darcdafter r29: even Rostovtzeff's alternative of n5 will not do. Had Cicero made the incredible mistake, his füend Atticus, that careful chronologer, would have corrected it.la A Roman aristocratic reading public did not permit the sort of pseudo-history that an Athenian orator could get away with in court. However, if the trsrty concerned was already in existencein rzg, it must belong to the campaign of r54-the only time before rz9 when Rome had come into contact with Transalpine Gauls to an extent that could posibly involve such treaties. This campaign, as Tenney Frank stressed,had been entered into at the appeal of Massilia; and after its end" asfar aswe know, the Romans, for a full generation, continued to have no interest whatever in southern Gaul. They cerainly did not own an acre of it, or have contects close enough to lead to differencesof opinion; and so Tenney Frank's.explanation of the treaty Cicero saw is ineviable: the term he objects to must have been included at the request of Massilia, which itself had both agricultural and trading interests, and in fact probably 'We almost a monopoly of trade in the area. must only note, for future reference, that by Cicero's day, when the actual conditions of r54 had long been forgotten, and men judged-as men will judge-the past by the present, the interpretation that Cicero gives seemedthe obvious one. The passage,therefore, is valuable evidence on his own day. o' The myth of economic motives in whole Rome's foreign poliry \/ I at this time is a figment of modern anachronism, basedon ancient , \ anachronism, like so many modern myths about the ancient world. Though exposedby Tenney Frank long ago, it is still from time to time fashionably reaffirmed; but it should be allowed to die. We must add, bti"fly, that the destruction of Carthage and Corinth, sometimes cited against Frank's thesis, in fact confirms it: having it in their power to setde on those splendid commercial sites (as, much later, they did), the Romans preGrred to plotrgh them up. Their motives were purely strategic and political: to strike at strongly fortified centres of traditional anti-Roman leadership.

.We

might comparethe long hffdil

over the foundationof a

settlement at Capua.l5

hFg,,.*1._.ylgo of 148-6showtheSenate's traditionalpoliry andfiffiifffffifrtr Macedoniahad to beannexed, "ftc, corriol.ä independencehad turned out disastrous: the Romans, on the whole, never made the same mistake f,wice. The same-from the Roman point ofview-applied to the small strip of Tunisia which was all that was lefr of Carthage and its empire.ls But Greece, despiteall the troublesher citieshad caused,w"i, fot rhe most parr, still not put under direct adminisrrarion; and a Greeklthe historian Polybius.-was left to work out rhe details of the final settlement.l? In Africa, part of the small territory annexed was immediately handed over ro the possessionof loyal allied cities that remained'free', i.e. outside the province.rs So iittle did Rome care aboutthe exploitation even of land that rightly belonged to her. (Or, if we prefer ir, so seriously did the Senaresri[ tale the duties f at1ogq3,.:g .$:,*.gl.cr ofRome's economic inrerests.) 3f h-ep9[cy ot mrruIJ![rng adminisrrative commirments and caring -l litde for profit ffiA from provincial territories could hardly appear more clearly. And so it remained for the rest of the century. When Attalus III left his \ir^rgdom ro Rome (quite without prompting, we may be sure,and following a precedentthat Rome had almost certainly done nothing to create)r1e,,the Senatewas not given a "h"rr". of discussing the strange WffiWe may wel tlink that in some form it would have been accepted;but we cannot be sure even of that. it -As happened,the tribune Tiberius Gracchus,through his hereditary connecrionswith the royal houseof pergamum,-heard of the testament first, and, needing money for his ambitious domestic schemes,he treated it as a vrindfall and passeda law in the-Assembly accepting the inheritance and diveriing the profits to his agrari{ plans.ro All this was done without consulting the even though this action was contrary to all precedent and _Senat9, bound to arousestrong opposition and the most seriousalarm. In fact-a fact worth stressing,since it is easy to miss-it was his 2T

dealings with the Pergamene envoy that led immediately to the chargethat Tiberius was aiming at a regnumand thus to his downfall.'r That he omitted the obvious conciliatory step of consolti"g the Senate may in part have been due to his awarenessof the personal antagonism he had by then arousedin it. But it is also ionceivable that he was not at all sure that Senatepolicy would favour accepting the bequest he so urgently needed. Tiberius could not afford to tal(e chances,if his scheme was not to be .n' .feopardised. Önce the People had accepted the bequest, the step-in the political situation of the time-could not be reversed, and the S"tt"t" had to mal<ethe bestof what it found. Forced to carry on Tiberius' acrual scheme, it had to get the funds. As we shall see, this situation was not unique: it was to become a common setting for annexation and exploitation in the later Republic. Even so, it was decided to minimise commitments as far as possible. The 'free' (asAttalus had intended),rt cities of the kingdom were left and five men were sent to Pergamum to organisethe royal property on behalf of Rome. Their leader-ensuring that no irreiponsible step was taken-was none other than the PontiGx P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, Tiberius' chief enemy and Moi-ot murderer.2s There would be no unnecessaryannexation. In fact, what was done was probably much the same as later in Cyrene, when its king left it to Rome in 96: there the proper organisation of a province was not even begun until 7J, and then only because All that was done disorder had become endemic and dangerous.2a (ine{Iiciently,it seems)was to arrangeto draw someof the profits. That this policy was alsopursuedin rl3 is-even in the absenceof clear direct evidence-a legitimate and even necessaryconjecture: in Rome, when an unusual situation arose, it was natural to consult nos maiorum;and in 96 there would still be senatorsalive who remembered-what the archives would in any caseshow-how a similar bequesthad been dealt with in rll. We mry find confirmation in a small fact: the name of the province of Asia. When Aristonicus attempted to seizewhat he

claimed was his inheriance, various Roman commanders were sentout to fight him-last of them M' Aquillius (cos.n9), who, as proconsul, completed the setdement.26Naturally, their ytrouincia for the waf, was Asia, as (e.g.) that of the Scipioshad been against Antiochus.26Long before Sulla-in fact, asfar back aswe knowa Roman commander was not allowed to leave his prouinciawiüout specialpermission: in t7r, in a causecöläbre,a consul trying to do so had been peremptorily stopped by a Senate embassy.s? Conseguently, in a major war, the definition of the prouinciahad to be wide and elastic, to ensure that the commander would be able to do his legitimate task without restriction. Hence 'sicilia'. 'Africa', 'Asia' are allotted esprouinciae,even though thosewords embraceareasmuch wider than the probable scenesof action. As we have bri.fy seen,the Romans never evolved a systemof civil provincial administration: the conditions of warrime were standardisedand continued in adapted form. Hence the Tnouinciae of Sicilia, Africa or Asia becamethe provincesof Sicily, Africa and Asia-even though still much smaller than the areasro which the name concernedproperly applied. Asia owed irs name to its origin in e prouincid,not to a previous proclamation of annexation.We may compare and contrastBithynia, duly annexedrn74z' and left under that name (aspart ofa largerprovince) afterits reoccupation. Had Amalus'kingdom beenformally annexedir r33, we may well believethat its name would have beenthe province of Pergamum. In 6cq there was-as so often-no annexation until revolt and disorder had made it inevitable. Theprovince kept its militaryname. 'Vfhile Policy is, on the whole, similar in the West. triumphhunting (aswe have seen)continues to perform its essentialfunction in the domestic Roman political and social framework, and small-scale annexation is an inevitable consequence(e.g. in the Balearic Islands or in lllyria),sg large opportuniries for major expansion are ignored. A war in Transalpine Gaul, lasting from rz5 until at least rzo, with several commanders winning great victories, did not lead to the establishmentof a provinceeo-and that in an areawhere we are sometimestold the Romanshad had a 23

major interest thirry years earlier ! The great road built by Cn. Domitius, meant to ensure-for the first time-land communications between Italy and Spain, was largely given over to Massilia to protect, with (perhaps) the help of a Gw small Roman garri,oÄ.tt only years later-possibly as late as rr5-when danger from the north becameobvious, was a colony set uP on the site of the settlement of Narbo Martius: a key site, speculapopuli Romaniacpropugnaculumtgainst'the Gauls.gzAnd this was done by the faction o? Domitius himself;, whose son became one of the founders of the colony; and it was done againstthe wishesof the Senateas a whole, which tried to deal with this colony as it had deelt with the Gracchan Junonia. Naturally, the colony was a it called up memories of C. Gracchus' venture popularis catrsaiss impoverished citizens could expect to setde there and to *ä -*y -Baut-pace many modern scholars-there is no record of prosper. iny inte.estin it on the part of the F,quites,no record-of anybody's being aware that it was an excellent commercial site, as our scholan are, and as Romans also were by the time of the early Empire.3aAnd the argument is not merely one from silence.The absürdity of its opposite is demonstrated by a litde-noticed inci'When C. Marius, waiting for the Gerdent of i"tt y."tt 1"ter.s6 on his legions' hands, he made heavy mans in Gaul, found time them dig a canal from the Rhone (above the Delta) to the sea,bypassingihe mouths that were always {lti"g up. Having dug this gold-mine, worth a fortune even in tolls and dues,he presentedit, än his departure,to the loyal allied city o614x55ilia.(Naturally, the Massiliots proceeded to make the most of it.) This was the action of the greit Popularis,the trusted champion of the Equites,just before roo B.c. It is a fit comment on Roman economic interestsin Gaul, then or earlier. By this time, however, failure to annex and govern had had its usual consequences:when the Germans came äo*tt on Gaul, tlere was no Roman governor there to meet them or to impressthe restive Gallic tribes with Roman strength--Weall know the result. After Marius' victories a province had to be established.s6

The ineviable conclusion ofall theseconsiderations is that there is no evidence for an expansionist plicy even after the Gracchi, if we think in terms of annexation. And we can "lt""dy seethat this does not fail to take account of the newly-formed (or at least 'Equestrian'order, and of rhe very Plebsunder its newly-aroused) mention the Senateoligarc\ which, demagogic leaders-not to most of the time, still governed the state according to its oldestablishedideas. This conclusion is borne out by the event for which, of all events in the late second century, we have the best evidence-the Jugurthine War. ln an old (but still valuable) paper,87De Sanctis showed that Sallust's account is utterly unreliable in its imputations of incompetence and venality to the governing oligarchy. The fact is that Numidia was being treated according to the tradidonal canonsapplied to client statesthat were troubled by internal disorder: with advice and awtoritas-including both that of personal patroni and that of the Senate as a whole, as weightily expressedin the embassyled by its princepsM. Aemilius Scaurusbut with no thought of armed intervention. Rome was accustomed to loyal obedience, and not least from the royal house of Numidia under Masinissaand Micipsa. Moreover, there was, for a long time, every reason to trust Jugurtha more than most barbarian kings: after all, he had fought at Numantia, under Scipio Aemilianus,e8and had there met many young men who, by this and inrime, were middle-aged men of considerable,irnpgryapc*e in the fuence in the state.st'what Sallustdescribes"t'üä"tili#as, to think ill of an old natural unwillingness main, merely. thp

S'fimft:J fti;;ä, *rt" 6t#ä'nisverypositionä s"ipio',personal dation4oand whom it would have been rank dislovalty to susppctr- n-. ,. or to ill-treat without very good reason. we may ""[ thit g^üf,*c; ibility; it is at least a vice common to oligarchies, to which parallels are easyto find in more recent affairs-and one due to what is basically an amiable human trait. It is hardly necess:rry,nowadays, to re-argue the casefor the Senate'spolicy in Numidia in greater detail. But if the oligarc\ 25

is acquitted of positive crime and malice, there is a temptation to put another villain in its place. For De Sanctis the answer was clear: the war was wanted by the Equites,al who profited by war and hoped to profit by its results. It was their aggressiveinterventionism that-more even than Jugurtha's own actions-helped to precipitate a costly war. Persuasivelyas he arguesthe case,we can hardly acceptit asit stands.We have already seengood reason to believe that the Equites-to judge by the actions of their c.hampioaMarius, who retained their support-did not, at any rate, älärfiäur for annexation. After all, opportunities for banking (their chief source of income) did not depend on it-as the very situation we are discussingshows: for in Numidia there was a massiveItalian colony at Cirta.a2There will be more to say about this. But it is dificuli to seethat the unpredictable hazardsof war would have been more welcome to traders and bankers than the security of peace;or that, after a war was won, their situation was likely to be in any way improved,.,,", by its tribunes, it was only Similarly the Pfebs: itro"gh,W#d too willing-after the events of the past rrventy years-to believe the worst of the oligarchs, and though it undoubtedly demanded a vigorous policy, to restorethe honour of the Roman name, there is no sign ofany demand for conquestor annexation,or of delight in war as such. That this was not the point is shown by the fact that all pressureceasedwhen Marius took over; asfor the Equites, it was only the murder of the ltalians in Cirta (at least some of whom will have been Romans, and all connected with Roman families) that produced a marked efGct. There was an outraged clamour-and againtherewas every reasonto believethe worst, in the light of the developing differences between the two orders that prompted Varro's famous saying that C. Gracchushad made 'rwo-headed'.nt The Senate'sfailure was naturally exthe state ploited to the disadvantage of some hated figures. This explains the Mamilian commission.aaBut again, there is no reasonto think that, apart from revenge, more was wanted than a seriouseffort to restoreRoman honour and that securePeacethat is always in the

'What Marius promised, in his interests of trade and finance. intrigues against Metellus, was a quick end to the war. As for annexation,it was never even contemplated.Not only was Marius personally entirely indifferent to it, ashe was to economic exploitation-this his record in Gaul was to show; not only did he not mention either of theseprizesin his propagandabefore his election (which, evenifwe cannot acceptSallust'sactualwords, is probably well mirrored in the speechthat Sallustassignsto him after);aEbut he did not in fact annex an acre of Numidian soil after his victory. The final setdement was entirely on traditional lines, dividing the country berween an obscure Numidian (perhaps the only member of the royal family available) who got the easternhal{, and Bocchus of Mauretarria, who got the western hal[ which Jugurtha had already promised him when he was still his ally.ro Basically,it was the samesetdementthat a Senatecommissionhad imposed berweenJugurthaand Adherbal, and that Sallust,on that occasion,had viciously and unjustly attacked as corrupt and dishonourable.a?The only real difference was that Bocchus, unlike a large kingJugurtha on that earlier occasion,already possessed dom of his own, which he now retained in addition to half of Numidia. He thus becamefar more powerful than the proposed settlementon that earlier occasionwould have made Jugurthato whose bribes Sallustclaims it was due. But then (we may remember) even the Scipios had been able to boast that it was Roman practice to make friends of small chieftains and make 'We could hardly ask for plainer proof them into powerful kings.as (as changed. Nor we have seen)did Marius, after that nothing had making this settlementthat did not seemto confer any advantage on arry class at Rome, and that did not add an inch to Roman territory, lose the support and the confidenceof Equitesand Plebs -quite the opposite: he was elected, in his absence,to another consulship,which implied the command againstt}re Germansand Gauls. As we also saw, he was to repeat his policy with regard to peacesettlements in Gaul-and, after this, receive a sixth consulship, without (to say the least) any recorded opposition from 27

disappointed supporters.as He had clearly dole prgcisely what .rr"ryoo" wantsd. At the same time, a long line of aristocratic statesmencould look down with approval on this new man Permeated with their spirit, who wanted nothing more than to bc like them.

m THE SENATE AGAINST EXPANSION in the Jugurthine War, with all the bitter party I\TEITHER I \ politics that it called forth, nor in the German'Wars at the end of the secondcentury, was the maditional policy of avoiding,, . ".,{1,t'-" major aggressivewars and administrative commitments abäi:' doned: Numidia, where war had become inevitable, was not annexed after it; and Transalpine Gaul was at last made into a province (we do not know preciselywhen and bv *hqt-")..{bf th" äU r""ron that non-ann"*"tioo had turned out ffi#ää'ry'*d even dangerous: two or three garrisons, plus the seryicesthat Massilia could render, were insufrcient for the proper protection of the invasion route into Italy. Indeed, not only had the traditional policies continued unchanged: it looked as if the new elements in politics-the Plebs and the Equites-which under the leadershipof demagoguesseemedto be challenging the oligarc\ in the running of the state merely wanted a.firmer policy (and, in were ready to susPectthe worst), but had no desireto - its afup.{rce, '*'"ffiif. ön a policy of "ggtÄtin. *", *d territorial expansion. The continued loyalry they showed to Marius, who did not promise or perform anything of that sort, sufrcesto proye i.L. That the Senatewas still firmly in control on major iöruöi wäs soon conclusively demonstratedby the caseof Cyrene, to which we have already alluded. This kingdom, after a fashion that had begun in the middle of the previous century, was left to Rome by its last king, Ptolemy Apion, when he died in 96. Now, it is far from clear precisely what the Romans did with it, although the complex .oid"o." h", b..n cat"frllyKr*Ed.l But what is ceitain is that the Senatedid not proclaim the annexation of the territory and made no attempt to take over administrativeresponsibility. ln fact, in the unfortunate country the next rwo decadesare mostly a

z8

period of anarchy,during which-strange as,in the circumstances of the bequest,this must seemto us-there is barely a record of any appealto Rome, and certainly none of seriousRoman interest. All that the Senateappearsto have done was to arrange for the collection of some of the profits. Even this was not properly is no reGrenceto organised:no regular systemwas installed; there 'When the Romans publicaniduring the next rwo decadesor more. of which Cyrene drug, valuable wanted to import silphium-a was the main supplier-they seemto have paid for it (if we are to 'W'e can see,not only the take Pliny's words at their face value).z remarkabledegreeto which the Senateretained control of policy, but the absenceof any major Pressurein the important field of foreign policy and imperial revenues-at a time when political ' strugglesin the ciry were at their fiercest and (on occasion)their most violent. The People and the Equitesclearly made no attemPt to force the Senateinto expandingthe sourcesoftheir profits, even where this could be done aseasily asit in fact had been done in the daysof Tiberius Gracchus.We shall seethat the administration of Cyrene was properly taken in hand only n 75la-md even then (it is legitimate to think) only in a temporary form. Indeed, it is this that gives us a clue as to what the Senate had originally intended to do about the bequestof Attalus:8 the similarity between the fwo situationswas so sffiking that, even in a socieryless bound by tradition, the parallel would impose itself. To the historian, this is one of the most interesting aspectsof the strdrge affair of Cyrene. Cyrene in 96 was a wealthy, profitable and-under a Ptolemy -a well-organised country, where annexation would have been both lucrative and easy; yet it was allowed to slip into anarchy in preference; and, in a period of bitter political controversy in Rome, not a voice was raisedin protest. This is a clear example of Roman attitudes towards expansion and exploitation at this time, and indeed an outstanding one. But it is not the only one.'We can seeSenatepolicy at work elsewhere,along its traditional lines and (on the whole) equally unchallenged.

In Egypt a seriesof rather strange events-to which we shall retum in a dif,erent connection-led to another royal testament of the type we now know so well: Ptolemy Alexander I, in 88, followed several precedents in leaving his country to Rome.a It was surely the richest bequest ever received, far surpassingeven that of Attalus III. The Senate (under rhe PopularesCinna and Carbo) did not bother to talceup the hereditas,merely taking care to collect a large debt owed to Romans.Nor, when things changed in Rome, did the victorious Sulla reverse that strange lack of interest in the rich prize that had so unexpectedly fällen to Rome. Far from it: he in fact sentPtolemy Alexander I[, with his blessing, to claim the kingdom. And though this Ptolemy was almost at once murdered, and this surely must have shown anyone who would look that the Ptolemies were no lonser able to hold their (not to kingdom and that annexation could hardl| U.äS.ä mention the affront to Roman auctoritasthat was implied in the murder of a king installed by Sulla)-though, moreover, only dubious claimants to the vacant throne remained-yet, despite all this, it'was not until the sixtiesthat we can seeany seriouspressure in Rome to claim the estateof Ptolemy Alexander I. And even this pressure,for various reasonsthat do not concern us yet, in the end came to nothing.6 Egypt, despitescrappyevidence,is a striking case.Asia is better attested.The Senate'scare for the provincials of Asia is demonstrated, as late as the nineties, b-y th" mission of Q. Mucius ScaevolaPontifex, to reform *1c strffrin-g province: not that we need think this care intpir.dffiäyt]' *;rd principles, since the constantirritation and unrestpresentedobvious political dangers.o and bear in But we must remember the original lex repetundarum, 'reformed' had not at this time the Senate yet been by mind that Sulla. hr any case,whatever the motives, the poliry is clear. Another aspectemerges,again according to pattern, in the caseof Cappadocia and Paphlagonia.?They had been trouble-spots for years. Mithridates of Pontus, with Nicomedes of Bithynia, had invaded Paphlagonia about ro4; they had partitioned it and for

3r

some time held it in defianceof the Senate'sorders. As so often, the Senate,for a long time, seemednot to care' Cappadocia,which alsolacked a lawful king, was the next object of their intrigues: it was no doubt in preparation for his attack on it that Mithridates was there when he met Marius. Marius visited Cappadociain 99, when he preferred to leave the city (it was said) rather than seethe triumphant return of his enemy Q. Metellus Numidicus.s It was he was looking for a chance of a miliary also said-later-that command for himself His words and deedsbelie the ex postfacto rumour, For when he met Mithridates in Cappadocia, he gave him the famous warning: either to be stronger than Rome or to do her bidding.' It can hardly have been unexpectedwhen Mithridates, oo "ooiid.tation, chose the more peacefirl alternative. Whatever his immediate plans had been, it was clear that he could not face an ultimatum so plainly delivered. The words had been those of a man who prefeirred peace(with honour for Rome) to an unnecessary war; and it was probably as a result of this patrioti. Td successfirlfirmness that Marius' enemies in Rome agreed to the signal honour of his augurate in absence-an unexP-ect:dhonour, difficult to explain without this, but one that enabled Marius to return to Rome with his dignitas safe and that led to a general compromise in his struggle with his enemies. However, the Senatestill failed to act decisivelyin Cappadocia: Marius' brave words were not followed .ltÄj*r" SgfJ,.ll.hg fashion. Nor was anything done tö'älffiiäe bääiöd ödiliänce to the Senate'scommand in Paphlagonia.As a result of this, Mithridatesproceededto seizeCappadociathrough a PuPPetking;-and Nicomides, worried at this, sent an embassyto Rome, which Mithridates countered with one of his own. This time the Serute made its purposeclear: the answerwas that the kings must evacuate both Cappadocia and Paphlagonia. It was a stern command, which was bÄught to Asia by a weighty embassyheaded-as an equally difrcult embassy to Numidia had been sixteön y^ears eirlier-by theprinceps Senatushimself,the (now) aged and infrm M. Aemilius Scaurus.l0The outcome of all this, and its importance 32

in the history of Rome at this time, I have discussedelsewhere. What concerns us here is the obvious fact that even now no attempt was made to seizethe vacant territories. In fact, they werö declared'free', and the Cappadocians,disliking this dangerousand unaccustomed state, ultimately chose a king (Ariobarzanes), whom a Roman commander had to go to much trouble to instal for them. Throughout this whole affair, Senatepoliry is precisely what it had been in the sameareain the secondcentury: to Prevent any dangerous accumulation of power-it was becoming clear that Mithridates would have to be carefully watched-but to do so with a minimum of commitment. Even Sulla, when he installed Ariobarzanes in his kingdom, seemsto have had only allies and no Roman forces with him. Now that we have incidentally come upon him, we may Properly conclude this part ofour survey with L. Sulla. He, ofcourse, is the type and symbol of both the old and the new in the Roman Repub!.ic. For the moment, let us note that he fu"tly set his face against any expansion. His treaty with Mithridatesll-an alliance of two dynastsagainstthe government ofRome-cannot properly be cited in support, since at the time he was not in a position to dictate terms. But when he was alreadv securely in power,.he

ä#"fr.? r. Murenafto- ffiffig

'

vtiihridat.r*d tüAitnäg$ -

him back to Rome, compensatinglim with a totally *iäärär#ä'" riumph.l! Moreover, we have seenSulla'saction in Egypt, when he could have won ready popularity by simply accepting the bequestmade some years earlier and claiming that he had added of the Roman People-a claim that was Egypt to the possessions left fo: another dynast to make, many years later.l3 We may also

n.publicaom"girtr"iä#;lä"ffiäwholetf sulla'ssettlemenioithe cies. By raising the number of praetors to eight and that of qu:restorsto twenty he precisely provided-as Mommsen sawl4for the administrative needs of the existing ten provinces, on the basis of normally annual succession.The implication is clear: he did not conceive, at least for the near future, of the annexation of any'more provinces. His actions in the casesof EgyPt and of 33

Murena vrere not isolatedincidents,but part ofhis generalscheme for Rome ashe meant to establishit. Sulla rejected the easychanceof claiming glory for the annexation of Egypt-a major acquisition if ever there was one. It is interesting,next, to note that he neverthelessconspicuouslychose to arrogate to himself the glory of having extended the bounds of empire. He had, of course, celebrated a magnificent triumphnot to mention the vicarious glory of those of Murena and young Pompey'E-to surround his usurpation with the aura of glory that, by impressingthe populace,might help to erasehis past and dezzlethe eyes of those who disliked the armed present. But he rÄrenteven further. From the annalsof the distant past, he seemsto have revived a long-forgotten ritual: he advanced the pomoerium of the city-e solemn and laborious rite, diffrcult enough of execution to account for the toal neglect into which it had fallen for centuries.lo This (we are told) only a marr who had advanced the boundaries of Roman territory was entided to do-in fact, stricdy one who had done so in ltaly: there could be legitimate doubt, sincethe ceremony had not been performed sinceRoman expansion beyond Italy began. Sulla (we must suspect with Mommsen) arrogated this right to himself by a trick in the best tradition of Roman legal dodges.Though he had not conquqred an acre ofnew territory "try*h.r. (that we ktto;p of), he e?terfdöä'

the boundaries of rtily, fo, administrativ.ffii*är,

from the

Aesis to the Rubicol?-1eg a necesseryor inescapablereform in itself: the Rubico (as historians know to their cost) was not a conspicuous landmark. tt is dificult to find any good reason for this action except in support of his ytomoeriumceremony-and dificult to find any legal basisfor the latter except the unnecessary reform. 'We can be sure that Sulla aimed at no conquest, nor foresaw any in the immediate future. It is interesting (if the interpretation here suggestedis right) that, among many actionshe took for the underpiÄing of hii detestedr6giÄe by display and glory* *gg-" was a claim that was to make it appear that he had rcIievid,

i.

conquest.Hemust have been aware that the traditional policythat he representedand reinforced was no longer one calculatedto win active popularity-and that its opposite, or an appearanceof it, might now do so. Sincewe have anticipated to this extent, let us anticipate a little further: we are not bound to annalistic tradition. History is a seriesof strands,increasingfrom beginnings asthin asfine hairs to form stout cords, inextricably interwoven so that beginnings and endsare concealed.Sometimesa sectionat a given time will clarrfy relationships hitherto unsuspected;at other times it is best to as,1.whole. follow individual strandsbefore turning to the .weav_e The Senaregovernment that Sulla.eitored iffüit?iffi-.d the generallines of the sametradition. There were indeed extensionsof territory: in Isauriathe conquestsofP. ServiliusVatia laid the foundations of the proper territorial province of Cilicia, as distinct from the oldprouincia.lsBut this was not a caseof annexation for pro{it. Those hardy mountaineers,whom it took Servilius at least three years to subdue,were surely going to cost more to police and keep in order than they were likely to produce in revenue. The conquest ful{illed the demand-which had turned out to be inescapable-for a securehinterland to the precarious coastd strip of Cilicia and for proper protection of the allied cities in the area. Seenfrom another point of view, ega:n,the Isaurian war is not all that different from many other limited wars against barbarian ffibes, mostly fought further viest: in this case,at least, a genuine strategicneed was happily combined with a commander's wish for a triumph. Then, again, t}ere was Cyrene.le In zsl+ the quaestor(or exquaestor) P. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus was sent therc (pro praetore,it seems,though Sallust doesnot actually say so), to end the anarc\ that had been qllowed to prevail there for twenfy years. This'was done "t th" ?tiS'tläc.of ,'o-" politician-pethaps (it hasrecently been suggested)the cons^ulQ. Cotta, whom Sallust ro.ollus with the did rrot lik.. il.rt it is d]ftcult ttot to'ä&in$it. consul n in and designate move, as consul 74-the man who, 75

35

asproquaestor under Sulla, had cdled in at Cyrene, seenthe condiüotr äf ü" country and done what, in his limited time, he could do to settlesomeof its problems and disputes.Ir" *y cese,in75l4 someone vmth imperiufttwas at last specially sent there. It must be noted thzt 75 was a year of famine and financial stringency-so much so that the consul C. Cotta had to make a t".tfrl and apologetic speechto the People (which Sallust parodies with great relish) and the praetorian candidate Q. Metellus was almosi lynched by a hungry mob.so Nothing could bedone to end the famine until, in 73, funds at last aPPearto be available. A law of the two consuls of that year (the lex Terentia Cassia)provided its for the purchaseof extra grain in Sicily (at a fair price) and for'We distribution to the People, at the rate of five moilii per man.21 may wonder at the sudden affiuence, et a time when a major war aqainstMithridates in the Easthad just begun, Sertorius in Spain 'Creticus' was being very oi", t ot yet defeated, and M' Antonius unsuccessfulagainst the over-powerful pirates: in fact, in every wav there were far more commitments than there had been in 75, when C. Cotta had ofGred uP his body in expiation for the inevitable famine to the enraged crowd. The answer, of course, is easy,once the right question is asked: the money from Cyrene had come in. The People'sright to profit by empire-established, as we shall see,by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus-was beginning to break through the raditions of foreign Policy. The Senatehad to acceptand even to encouragethe organisation of a province for immediate profit. The precedentwas to be remembered. Nevertheless,it was still a very hesitentstep.The Sullan Senate, clearly, was unwilling to send a senior magistrate to unde-rtake proper administration. A junior magistrate was chosen, with the b"rärt minimum ofpower.tt He could not be a danger to the state or commit it to unwanted nouble. Moreover, it is not by *y means certain that there was henceforth a permanent administration, with govemors regularly sent out.is In 67, another (a Gnaeus) Lentulus Marcellinus is found at Cyrene as a legate of Pompey; and in that capaciry he performs some of the firnctions

that, had there been a governor, were properly the governor's. FIe even seemsto supply a date for counting years! The easiest conclusion is that there was no governor, and that P. Lentulus Marcellinus (the quaestor)had been sent,not as'thefrst of a series of regular governors, but on a special mission for a particular 'What the purpose was, we have already seen:he was to purpose. reorganise the finances of the province and restore peaceftrl conditions, so that the Romans would at last derive a worth-while revenue from the royal estates there, which they had been exploiting ever since the will of96, but (it seems)haphazardly and ineffectually. A large sum of money was urgently needed to relieve the dangerous famine, and p. Lentulus' main task was to find it. The choice of a quaestor was appropriate enough. Yet, however alarming the precedent, Cyrene was (of course) not an example of annexation. Quite the opposite: it provides anorher example of how, even at this late date, commitments were cut to a bare (indeed, an unsatisfactory) minimum-ofhow responsibiliry that was morally Rome's was avoided, rather than of a greedy or ofrcious search for new responsibility. Let us fir"lly consider L. Lucullus, who (aswe have had reason to suppose)was connected with the Cyrene affair. If the supposition is correct, his ideasare clear even before he went out to Asia Minor. But let us look more closely at this man whom Ferrero considered the founder of real expansionism in Rome and the creator ofa new erain poliry'n-th. greatestofRoman conquerors (at any rate before Pompey), who stormed through Asia Minor, first crossedt}re Euphrates, invaded Armenia and sackedits capital Tigranocerta. He had shown at home that he was ready to use untraditional and unsavoury methods for the sake of gaining a major command: he had intrigued with the mistress of an influential wire-puller, his own enemy P. Cethegus,in order te achieve this. Lr the field he was equally ready to ignore tradition: when battle was to be joined on an unlucky day (diesaterzit was October 6th, 69, the anniversaryof the batde of Arausio in ro5) 'But and his officers drew his attention to this, he replied: I shall

36

37

rnake it zlucleyday for Rome.' And he went on to win the most brilliant victory in the annalsof the Rcman Republic: !h: :* never saw *oih., like ir.'as The shadesof P. Claudius Pulcher and of c. Flaminius could not have been more ostentatiously delied. Lucullus advanced asfar as Gordyene, intending (it was said) to march against the Parthians; and he was -stopped only b;'$9 mutiny Jf hi, -"tt. personal hostiliry and the obvious parallel of the storv of Alexander the Great have done their worst: there is oo nooä reason for believing the unfulfilled intention.26 But the "hrig" i6elf is significant. Lucullus was accusedof overweening he *"i charged with ruling like an absolute monarch r-bitior' Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, over Cilicia, Asia, Bithpi", Armenia and all the lands up to the river Phasis; of trying-to and piling warj'rPon war to this extend his proconsul", "o--*d chaiges contain a modicum of these end. However exaggerated, ffuth; we have alr-e-adyseen that L. Lucullus, the relative (\ -".ri"g") of L. Sulla and the only one of his ofücerswho, in 88, had reäained loyal to the rebel marching on Rome,8zwas not a conservative,robl", but a man remarkably free from traditional restraints. He was an example of the kind of ambition that was undermining the Republic. witness the fact that, deposed from Iu, prorinriiby Senaieand People, \e y-etclung to his command .teo h"t" liked to invade Cappadocia,md his men *i*ould refused to follow him: a story that' this time, we may well believe:sBir was a matrer of making good his own failure, and the him in the source' ^ooint is not laboured against Of course, they never arrangements? actual Y"t what were his reversed some deliberately later reached final form, and Pompey as good as we not of them; so that our information on them is should like. But we can see,in outline, what he meent to do. First of all, we nore thar he askedfor the traditional commission of ten ,.o"an and was going to Put his plans before them in the traditional w"y. (ti fac-t, they *et" thete when Pompey took over.)" He ceitainly meant to annex Pontus' This, of course,was 38

now necessaryon traditional grounds: it had beerrleft free once before after defeat and had shown that it could not be trusted. We have had occasion to observe that, in such a case,the pattern of mosmaiorumdemandedannexation. But Lucullus seemsnot to have gone beyond this in any way. Machares,son of Mithridates, was recognised asking in the rest of his father's dominions, in the Crirnea and round the north and eastof the Black Sea.Larer, afrer the conquestofArmenia, its vassalsin Commageneand Gordyene were also recognised.When Lucullus crossedthe Euphratesat the strategic site of Tomisa, fm from putting a garrison into that important fortresslong occupied by the Armenians, he presented it to Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia-who could hardly even be trusted, on an objective assessment, to hold it securelyfor himself once he had it. Most astonishingof all: Syria and Phoenicia,from which Tigranes of Armenia had expelled the miserableepigoniof the Seleucids,at leastfourteen and perhapseighteenyearsearlier, were returned to Antiochus XIII of that dynasty-again a man most unlikely to be able to deGnd his properry, and one who had never in fact been master of those regions.so Lucullus'personal ambition is by no meansa negligible phenomenon. Yet it is clear that, as far as foreign policy is concerned, he still stood firmly in the senatorial tradition of minimising administrative responsibiliry. He set our to win glory and wealth for himself and (ashe might argue) for the Roman People.But he did not aim to annex territory, except that of Pontus, which zos maiorumrequired him to. Nor, to his cost, did he aim to exploit provincials. It is tempting to look for the persistenceof this attitude right down to the end: the long opposition to the ratification of Pompey's acta tfter his return from the Easr;3l the objections to M. Crassus'Parthian lMar;t, Cato's proposalthat Caesar,after his Gallic victories, should be handedover to the enemy for perjury.es Perhapsthe genuine remains of an old attitude of restraint enter into these.There is reasonto think, even at this late time, that the best traditions of the oligarchy were to some extent surviving,

among men now often powerless to influence events' But one insist: considerationsof principle were by now far too "*oi much interwoven with internal politics and personal antagonisms. 'We have had to abandon chronological order, to show that in our field, as in others, nothing at Rome changed quickly: in all its manifestations, that which in the end added uP to what we call the Roman Revolution was a slow-an almost incredibly slowDrocess,measuredby what we are accustomedto nowadays. The ^most terrifying and violent upheavals-riots, seditions, murders and full-scai" "i.ril wars-were remarkably unsuccessfirlin causing convulsive transformations of the sort we regard as almost commonplace.Right up to the early part of the first century, theforces unleashedby-th. ör"""hi were nor so much unable as (it -seems) unwilling to press for major changes_I the traditional lreign poliry: tio, " -* like Marius rerainedthe trust and.the afection äf e""pt. and Equites in spite of-his tloroughly traditional hurdling of foreign and imperial affairs._And, following events almost Io th" enä of the Republic, we have seen that, even at times of great internal tensions, the Senateand its rePresentatives could anä did continue, on rhe whole, to pursue the traditional policy. o--.r-\-: e-l ^ of All thi, time, of course,the Processof economic ffiltätioi more in at it look to have shall we continuing. was the provinces d.tä. For the moment' lei us ttote that it was, in the second century and for some time after, a very- slow Proc:ss' limited by the small number of Roman citizens of the requisite wealth and sanding and by the comparalively srnall amount of capital availabl"e,most of which was tied up rnthe publica(taxesand army supplies) or, when withdrawn from them, invested in land 1o *"ke ir, owner socially accepable. As for Italians: they would be consideredand protecied; but they were in no position to dictate poUcy. ^ This must constantly be bome in mind when we notice that rherewas, at the time with which we are now dealing,no Pressure on the Senate to increase economic opportunities: Egypt and 40

Cyrene did not become matters of public contention. There was, at most (asin Numidia), pressureto protect existing oPPortunities. What we do not know is how far, in the time before the Social 'War, senatorsthemselveshad economic interests abroad. Even Cato the Elder, it will be remembered, had been interested in rade through freedmen.taThis sort of indirect interest must have been common, on a small scale.But it did not add up to much. The lex Claudia had clearly been, on the whole, successfulin concentrating the interest of senatorson Italian land and minimising the commitment of their wealth to the chancy businessof trade or even fi.nance. That this-fully in line with responsible senatorialthinking-had been its purposeis, of course,clear from the fact that no effort was ever made to repealit;86 and its success is shown by the scandal that Cato seemsto have caused-and by the very foreign policies *rat we have been considering. No ruling class whose interests were intimately bound up with overseas investment has ever behaved asthe Senatedid during the time we have been considering. There had always, of course, been some exploitation of provincials by governors and their staffs.As early "r i7r *e have evidenceof it, and of the Senate'sunwiüingnessto punish it.30 But, as we saw, the prelude to further expansionin ihe r4or was a law intended to deal with this (the lex Calpurnia repetunilarum);"ttd when this failed to be fully effective in due cour*e, it was-as we shall see-suPersededby the legislation of C. Gracchus,which distinctly improved matters.s?But this, in alry case,was on the whole the limit of senatorialprofits from the provinces. It is only at the very end of the century that we perhapsbegin to glimpse major overseasinterestson the part of senators-not thai we can be at all sure even then. M. Scaurus, rhe princeps Smdtus, clearly kept up a profitable connection with the Equites, despite his position as head of the Senateand of the house of the Meielli. We remember how he was made one of the chairmen of He, in a the Mamilian commission, \Mith its Gracchani ^iudices.ss famous but desperatelydifücult phrase,*"t öfiä?i,iil probably at

4r

ü&r4Ä

Q*9rYa2,*1

his trial for ixiortion,-wittr berng rapinarumprouincialiumsinus.ss 'We are left to guess\ow- th e rcpinaeactuaily reachedhis pocket: iepetundarum^,P?,PA^we however, h. ät fitS#Aa ^most lay of the fftfttr& Cttters had his^share got ih"t h" at {trffih" taken during provincial commands, or was too lavishly enterhe travelled through Asia. There is no real sign of tained *h* provincial investment. 'We cannot really prove his proMarius is more important. vincial inreresrseither; but his connecrion with the Equites is obvious and need not be argued again at length; in particular, it is notewothy that he joined them in 92 in t|r9 prosecution of P. Rutilius Rufus.a0The political situation of the moment, and old ininicitiae, can accounifot thir r P. Rutilius was a hanger-on of the Metelli who had remained loyal to them, and whom Marius had no doubt learnt ro hate even in Numidia.al But it is at least possiblethat Marius' own economic interests,aswell ashis political äo.r, *"r" involved in the case,together with those of the Equites' There must always have been some investment overseasby senators.But we have no reasonto doubt that it was small, mosdy indirect, and marginal in its efGcts. This much th9 facls of policy force us to concluäe. For thesemen had the world at their mercf, and, even at their best, they were not superhuman in their code of conduct. Scaurus' rapinae may be of the old-fashioned sort (whether or not he was g"ilty)- Marius, closely linked with.the iquites throughout his political career,may well have sharedtheir firiancial inteiests. But then, Marius is a new type of consular, unusual in his age; and even he shows no initiative in foreign oolicy. His only lontribution to the exploitation of overseaslands i..*r to be the seftlementofhis veteransin Numidia; and, aswe shall see,it is very doubtful whether that was his own idea' To sum up the conclusions we have reached: senatorial capital -which, by and large, far surpassedequestrian-was not available on a large scalefoioverseas investment before the Social War: equestrian was, on the whole, fully-committed and needed nf, laige-scale expansion-in fact, could probably not have coped

with one; the ltalians were not yet able to exercise political pressure; and the Plebs, while it certainly welcorned increased benefits, had no leaders to demand them. Hence the casesof Cyrene and Egypt; and, due to Roman conservatism,the later tracesof the sameattitude in foreign policy. Sulla's, as so often, is the really interesting case: pretendingr with hallowed and antiquarian ritual, to have achieved conquests,when in fact he had avoided them. It is the first real sign that new forces were beginning to stir.

43

now been given leadershipwere bound to make themselvesfelt in due coursel Led by dissidentand ambitious members of the olithe nongarc\ itsel{ who were pursuing their own PurPoses,own aware of their political classeswere bound to become in the game of politics and hence, where their own i-port*"" interestswere concerned,to challengethe oligarchy and to extort consessionsin foreign policy as well as in donr.estic affairs. The astonishing fact is thai Roman conservatism which caused the chanqesto come glout as sloq,ly g they did and which, right up ,o th". ""a, |,äbHGd a real dg#Ii over foreign policy between the governing classand the governed. Ai in other spheres,it was the Gracchi who had been the originators, setting in motion forces that were ultimately able to over'We have noted Ti. Gracchus' use of turn establishedpractices. purposes.l It was the first domestic popular for bequest Attalus' major tasteof the benefitsof empire. time that the Plebshad had a Hitherto there had been distributions after a triumph, and the provinces of the Roman People had been laid under t^#-tä6üfüfis for the purpose of pre-electio4.geperosityby aristocratic candiddid not add up to ates. But these were isolated o'.LF.ii"ifin"t much. Attalus had made the Roman People heres,and this time there was a leader who saw to it that it äp?dthe full benefitsAs conservativesßared at the time, the precedent was bound to have far-reaching effects. Hitherto the benefits of ernpire-and they were not large, if we exclude, as we must, the immediatq benefits ofmilitary victory-had gone to the ruling classand those it choseto associatewith it. As Ti. Gracchusis said (by his brother)

to have put it: those who had fought to win them had not even a roof over their heads.2This is what he set out to change. C. Gracchus himself sarted from this point: it was this same idea that, with the greater clarity and logic that distinguisheshim, he carried a good deal firther. To what extent he was following in his brother's footsteps, carrying out his announced intentions, we shall never know. Tiberius, to us, is a dim figure, seenthrough the distorting mirrors of his enemies' propaganda on the one hand and his brother's on the other. His plans and motives are hardly worth investigating. But what Gaius did was certainly following up the implications of Tiberius' action in assuring the firll benefit of Attalus' bequestto the Plebs. Going several stepsfurther, he applied the principle on a large scale.He undertook nothing less than to rationalise the system of provincial administration (a task which, of course, he did not live to complete) and to convert the profits to the benefit of the Pmple of Rome as a whole, as far as, in the conditions of his time, this could be done. His reforms have been discussedoften enough, and this is not the placefor a list or a general discussion.Nor are we here concerned with the question 'parry' interests. I will merely rePeat the warning of factional or I have often expressed:that no major political action can find one exdusive explanation, and that difGrent ways of approach are always legitimate and, in fact, necessary.In particular, politicians inevitably act with an eye to political profit; and this aim must neither be ignored and denied nor occuPy us to the exclusion of anything else. My comments on C. Gracchus in this Present context are (I hope) valid and important; they do not claim to be an exclusive explanation-indeed, I have myself elsewhere had occasionto stressother facets-and should not be criticisedfor not being what they do not setout to be. In any case,our investigation will show a carefirl-and, in its context, surely intended-inter"or-..tiotr in the major reforms undertaken by that remarkable man. Cicero charges C. Gracchus with having pretended to care for the Treasury, while in fact draining it dry. The charge, often

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w NEW INTERESTS AND NEW ATTTTUDES OR, naturally, there was a new breathin Roman politics, by the endof the secondcenturys.c. The new intereststhat had

repeatedin our sources,is basedon contemPorary charges:compa^tethe anecdoteof the honestL. Piso, who queuedupto-collect Lis share of the cheap grain, the distribution of which he had strongly opposed.t lvtodern scholarssometimesdeny that ü. h* of C. Gr;;hus involved a subsidy-thereby demonstrating the arrogancethat is the besettingsin of a certain type of appro"* ," the iources. The evidence is conclusive: in Particular, we have Cicero, who contrastsC. Gracchvs' magnalargitiowith the moilica of M. Octavius' law.a Since he must have had the evidence for this statement, while we-with the best will in the world-know practically nothing about the day+o-day price of wheat in Rome at this time, an argument that rejects tfie former by starting from the latter must be dismissedasnonsense.This has had to be stated at length, sinceit is important to recognisethat the grain law did in fact involve r mogni laryitio-i.e. a considerable subsidy from public funds. But this wes not all. C. Gracchus also, for the first iime, distributed provincial land to the Roman and Italian poor.6 In view of what we have seenof the Senate'scare for the interests of provincials-a care that was genuine enough rÄrithin its limits, it slems, even though it would balk at sacrificing a senator to thgm -we can understand that chagrin at the popularity that this measurewould gain for Gaius will have been reinforced, aTong at the precedentset: at the franlc thoughtfirl senat;rs,by uneasiness claim that empire was for the benefit of the ruling people. The application consequences-foreseeable consequences---offurther 'We have comman. of Gaius' logic might horrify any honest mented in passingon the fierce resistanceby the Senatemajoriry to the proposal to colonise Narboo-even though there were sound rir"tägi" reasonsfor reinforcing tlat splen&d site, whici experienced soldiers (such as most senatorswere) could lardly gainsay. There were honourable men who thought that this approach to empire should not be allowed to spread. But Gaius' ideas were not at the naive level suggested by, Diodorus: to provide a dole so asto gain a following for himselet This is his enemies'proclaimed view of him, as transmitted, e.g.,

'We must not be uncritical in accepting it. As I have by Cicero. said: one motive of a politician is always that of securing a following. But Gaius had more serious aims, which he pursued with unusual logic. As fu as the Treasury was concerned, the crucial'We reform was that in the collection of the new Asian tribute. have seen that, up to the middle of the century, few of the provinces had been profitable and constant warfare had been a drain on Roman resources.Down to the fall of Carthage, Sicily was probably the only province that yielded a regular surplusperhaps it was the most profitable even for some time after, until the slavewars came and began to ruin it. But Sicily was under the lex Hieronica, which no honourable senator could attempt to abolish where it was, and no realistic politician would think of using elsewhere.s lt was the addition of Asia that made the real difference. The facts are clear, perhaps more so in the ancient sourcesthan in most of the modern books. On its wealth and possibilities-which we need not doubt C. Gracchuscould see: for he was an intelligent and educated man, and connected with Pergamum by family ties -we have the explicit testimony of Cicero, applying aslate as66, when Rome had severalmore provinces than shehad had in rz3. Even then it could be said (probably with some exaggeration,but at least without that obvious distortion that would produce what rhetors calledfrigus) that the others merely paid for themselves, while Asia was by far the most profitable oflands.o The provincial revenuesof the Roman People at that time amounted to about 5o million denarü (seebelow), from (perhaps)melve provinces; the sum-sdll only about 8,ooo alents, to convert to the common way of calculating such large sums-was considerably more than the proceedsof half that number of provinces in r33: the annexation of Asia, in its day, must have made a positively shattering difference. Under the administration of Cicero's client L. Flaccus, a Roman was said to have paid goo,ooo sesterces(: 22J,o@ denarü or 3T|,talents) for the taxes of Tralles alone !1oThe wealth of Asia, as compared with most other provinces, explains its

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peculiar position in both Roman and international affairs from its coming into Roman possessionright down to the end of the Republic. It is a phenomenon that deservesattentionIt cannot be pure chance that with the acquisition of this goldmine the theory of the systematicexploitation of the provinces for the benefit of ihe ruling people first appearsin Roman politics. It nature both of the Roman was,basically,Asia that transformedthe .We need not doubt that all empire and of Roman attitudes to it. informed about the though 133: in foreseen this could not be had no Ro-mansplg-bably wealth of the kings of Pergamum, the 'ffiff.fthis was one very accurate idei of the äcto"l {igures thing that the commission of five was to find out. In the end it was M'Aquillius who made the arrangements,and made them for a new piovince. M' Aqrrilli$, we are informed, was one of those was the talk of ttt"o *hot.^rcq.uütal on a charge of repetundae Rome *d f,##f,to C. Gracchoi th. b"i"i"g need for a new law on this crime.ll In fact, the judicial asPectsof his lex remained to plague the unhappy province undl Q. Mucius Scaevolawas sent äoito reform it- As for finance,we cannot tell how Aquillius hao arrangedthe taxesof Asia-perhaps (in view of the bribes he had pocketed) not for the maximum benefit of the Roman People.lz Technically, we may tal<eit for granted that he Put the Roman People in the place of the deceasedKing and that-as elsewherethe quaestorhad to collect the taxes due. $9gr. Roman magistr"t"i h*d shown that they could not beiitiifieö once they were out of the Senate'ssight: Aquillius was one of the prime examples. It is not di{frcult to imagine, in view of later attested parallels, that men who extorted money from the provincials would seeto it that quite a bit stuck to their hands before it reached the Treasury in Rome. In the past, with no province really l maj9r sourceof profit (exceptfor Sicily, well and safelyregulatedby the unique lei Hieronica),this had not mattered so very much, from the public point of view. There was not very much to be lost. No* matters were different. It is very likely that, whatever the faults of the settlement of Aquillius, the amounts that began to

+8

come in after he left the province and normal administration began to function (in rz6, presumably, so that tJre{irst regular tribute would reach the city late in rz5) proved nothing lessthan staggerirg. A man like C. Gracchus, in love with honesty and efüciency, must have thought it a major challenge: here was a chance of ridding Roman public finance of much ofits happy-go-lucky procedures; of protecting the exploited provincials, while actually increasing revenue to an extent quite undreamt of,, and applying to it the idea of his brother Tiberius, that such revenuesshould be used for the good of the People. This, and nothing less,was the aim of C. Gracchus'major reform.ls The proceedsof the wealthiest province-so much the wealthiest that even unsatisfactory methods of collection had produced vast sums-were to be properly securedfor the Treasury, and that in easilybudgetableform; the provincials were to be protected from the proved rapaciry of magistrates, who were to ceasecollecting money and to return to their proper function ofjudicially watching over both collectors and taxpayers; and in the exerciseof this function they were to be subjected to a stringent law and made answerable to a tribunal no longer manned by their too indulgent Peers. Meanwhile the Treasury, filled from this source,and assuredof a regular income, could use a für portion of it for the benefit of the People.f This is surely the basisof the Gracchanreform. Much falls into place and our admiration for this man increases.To a large extent (it must be stressed)his schemewas successful.The grain subsidy and other expensesbenefiting the People did not actually exhaust the Treasury, ashis enemieshad claimed; the long-range budgetno doubt helps to account for ing made posible by censorialocatio th. ."s" with which armies were henceforth put into the field, against the Numidians and then the Germans, in spite of disaster after disaster:this time there was no sign of the seriouseconomic strain that had been so noticeable a generation earlier. As long as Asia was safe, there was no'w no need for scraping and pinching. The Senate'scarefi.rlattention to Asia in the nineties, which I have often tried to point out asa neglectedthread in Romur politics of

the period,la becomeseasilyintelligible. Moreover, the Gracchan law-courts also seemto have worked-at leastfor a long time. We tend to think of Rutilius; but that was thirry years later, and there are few well-meant reforms that retain their primitive glory for a whole generation. As a salutary anddote, we would do well to remember Cicero's enthusiasticpraise for equestrianjuries in the Perhapsspecialpleading, in part. But in fact we know Verrines.r6 that some senators were convicted, and no one (in their cases) suggestsmalice. To underline the strictnessof the courts at their best,in this period, we have the caseof C. Cato (consul rr4): this man, to the amazementof later generations,was convicted of the misappropriation of the pdtry sum of (probably) 8,ooo sesterces (: 2,ooo denarü, or $ talent).16 Of course, as we know, the system broke down in the end, owing to factorsthat C. Gracchusprobably shouldnot be expected to have foreseen.Like the best-laid schemesof mice and economists, it failed to anticipate future developments that, to the censorioushistorian, seeminevitable. It would take us too far out of our way to investigate this in detail. Sufice it to say that what happenedwas, above all, that the systemproved a goldmine for the publicani,who thus came to dominate the very classthat C. Gracchushad put in charge of the jury courts: a classthat had always been of varied composition, and probably based on hominesmunicipalesand domi nobiles.But there is every reasonto think that the trial of Rutilius was not the culmination of a long process(no sourceimplies this), but a suddenexplosion, due to an unusual situation that concentratedthe worst potentialities into a horrible actualiry.lT The shock and the horror are unmistakable in our accounts: they should help to emphasisethe long successof C. Gracchus'scheme,well comparableto the best of thoseof our own public planners. However, what concernsus is the obvious fact that henceforth, if they but thought about it, and if certain opportunities presentedr themselves,both the Plebs and the most powerfirl section among the Equites (aswe may call the new class)could hope for benefits

fi"- #;"ä;t*fm; and from further enlargemenrof the empire. This, for our presentenquiry, is perhapsthe chief effectof the reforms of the Gracc"hi. Yet, as we have seen,it took a long time for the consequences to be Glt. The main reason, of course, is simply Roman traditionalism: a full generation passedbefore it occurred to anyone that a serious challenge to the Senate on principles of foreign policy was possible.It took even longer to develop an dternative 'We policy. have seenthat theJugurthine'War brought to a head the suspicion of the ruling classthat (asSallust saw) had long been building up and now erupted into open attacks on the superbia nobilitatis.But there was as yet no alternative policy-not even alternative leaders. The choice of Q. Metellus proved, for the moment, quite satisfactory and ended discontent. It was only Metellus' failure to plrt a speedy end to the'War, and the mischanceof Marius' intrigues againsthim, that led to Marius' election.l8 Even then, after a. passing difficulty, Metellus got his triumph-no. mean achievement for a man who (whatever modern scholarsmay have to say on who really won the war againstJugurtha) had obviously not finished his war and had no right to that honour.le It shows the hold that the oligarc\ still retained. Of course,Marius was örtunate, up to a point: he was an alternative leader, free from the taint of nobiliry and with impeccable equestrian connections. Unfortunately, he had no ideas:his aim was merely to succeed.As we have seen,his settlement of Numidia is not only fully traditional, but in fact revived the Senate'searlier dispositions.The next developmentwas due to another man, following up what C. Gracchushad begun. We have noticed how, in specialcircumstances,C. Gracchus' schemefor overseassetdementhad been successfullyrevived a few yearslater, in the caseof Narbo.zo Twenty years after C. Gracchus,it was carried much further by L. Appuleius Saturninus. It was Saturninus who, in ro3, enabled Marius to satisfr his obligations of patronage towards his army by distributing large holdings (of roo iugera eech)to his veteransin Africa.zl Unlike

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C. Gracchus' colony at Carthage, these holdings-for the most part not in colonial form-survived, and their importance for tle later Romanisation of Africa is well known.sz That the idea was not the general's,but the tribune's, seemsclear. For one thing, Marius had been consul in the preceding year, and had been back in Rome; yet nothing had been done for his veterans.And yet the man who hadjust been dispensedfrom the laws to hold a second consulship could almost certainly have had something done, had he known what to do. Moreover, we find Saturninus himself developing and generalisinghis idea in his next tribunate:'as the samesourcetells us, he now planned for settlementsofveterans in Sicily, Greece and Macedonia, as well as those in Gaul that were 'War.3s meant for the veterans of Marius' German Indeed, this excessiveambition is what embroiled him with Marius and led to his downfall.2aHowever, the idea itself was not forgot-ten: it was taken up and vigorously pursuedby Sulla in Corsica, by Pompey in the East,and then by Caesarand the Emperors.zsThe settlement of soldierson conquered land becamea standardbenefit that the ruling people could expect; and, at leaston occasion,the poor of the city and of ttaly shared in it. It is about this time that we seethe Senate,for the first time, take effective action against piracy. [n roz (as far as we can tell), the praetor M. Antonius, perhapswith consularimperium,was sent to a new prouincia of Cilicia-a prouincia that was not really a territorial province, but the name of a command against the pirates basedon that coast.26It has always been recognisedthat this new departure-the engagementofconsiderableforceson this quite new task of clearing the seas-was to some extent due to pressurefrom equestriancircles. Moreover, M. Antonius, a man with many Arpinate connections, was one of Marius'. friends and protdgds.It is not fancifirl to seein his selectionthe work of the man who, in this very year, was consul for the fourth time and who, incidentally, had in that very year helped the much-defeated Q. Catulus to a consulshipthat he probably no longer expected.rt He was always the friend of the Equites.

'We

must add-so obvious that they tend to be overlooked'We Italian traders. remember that mäv of the Italian traders in the East come from southern Italy and Ä*y, at this time, are not Roman citizens; but the Senate,in its role of patron of the ltalian allies, carefully watched over their interests in the provincesthus incidentally disrracting attention from certain things that were happening in kaly. By roo, of course,we are within i decadeof the Social'War. The problem of Allied enfranchisemenrappeared to have faded into the background, afrer the acure phasäof the rzos. But that is at ieast to some extent due to the nature and interestsof our sources.That it was very much there still is clear from some small facts: Marius' illegal enfranchisemenrof rr,vo Camertine cohorrs on rhe battle{ield; the settlement of Italiarr 4ong with Roman vereransin Africa (to judge by the families later found there); Saturninus' attempt to secuieroundabout enfranchisement for Italians yia the army and colonisation. and the reaction of the Roman Plebs to this;'finally the action of the censors_ of 9716, M. Antonius and L. Flaccus, in opening the crizenlists to ellieswho had no right to be rhere.ssThis brings us back firll circle to M. Antonius: a picture of the man begins to emerge, very diferent from Cicero's pious fictions.'We neid not doubt that the vigorous action against piracy, at a time when Rgme hardly -cou$ 1fford ir, was (at least in part) deliberately taken for the sake of the Italians affected, when Italian dissatisfaction at home was becoming dangerous. M. Antonius, the friend of Marius and of the ltalians, musr have his proper place in this. The pressureon the Senatefrom the new classescan be discerned; and, not unexpectedly, it is Marius and his circle whom we find transmitting it. But, just asin rheJugurthine'War, ir is a limited pressure-a pressurefor the protection ofexisting interests, and in general for a more vigorous policy than the Senätewould wilingly have chosen:we must remember rhat, at this very time, the Germans were undefeated,the slave war in Sicily was going very badly, and there was fighting in Spain and perhaps in

J3

a Roman governor. 'We have seenthe limits of equestrianPressure:it was, as yet, far from alarming. The first alarming incident was -of a very different nattre; and it occurred in 89, while the Social'W'ar was still raging in Italy. This tiÄe it was not a question of financiersor demagogues,of the new classesbrought into prominence and made consciousof ,fr.i, inr"r"rt, by th""Gr"""hil It was the innate'?ficFof the olisuddenly to control its membert-*gä"t garchy-its inabiliry'd.ng.r, in the stanthe däffiF with coupled ,eal ,""o ä be the the century, the second in Even dards of many of thosemembers. them set ambition and greed of individual nobles had sometimes at odds with the consideredpoliry of the Senate.But that ambition had usually found fairly harmless ourlers (harmless from the point of view of public poliry) on the barbarian frontier in Ligori", Spain and other such plr."tt many were allowed a1d "rräo "o.o^*aged to indulge their ambition and their greed; others who diä so against the Senate'swishes or to excessusually

got away with it and did no grear damage to the public inrerest. In their dealls wit{r majo-r powers and civilised srares,rhe representativesofRome showed, on the whole, a praiseworthy ,"ni of responsibility, and t}re Senateassertedsuficient control over them, so that ougrageous behaviour was rare indeed and confined to conditions.of spegafi1r.qn, Havrng (as we have seen) *g"S"jg{_ econoruc lnrerestsabrg3$sSgman anstocratswere lessürcliried to n v ! let personal factors impede their judgmenr. The dichotomy in Roman policlt which we noticed at the beginning, is refectä in differeni standards of individual behavio"ur *ä of collecdve control. By 89, many factors had combined to undermine that state of affairs.Above all, Roman nobles had simply becomei'creasingly and_excessively arrogant and confident. For one thing, tlieir heads were turned by excessivepowers and excessivehonours in the provinces. The Roman governor, with his permanent emergency powers, subject to no appeal and defactoro-no-enforceable" law, would have had to be more than human to [iä'6trI*Jäär*.-: ation and self-restraint. Änd ifany praetorialr or consular governor became the patron and benefactor and saviour of famous cities, with statues and heroic honours to him everywhere; if the queestorM. Annius could have gamesfounded in his honour,ssit was not surprising that even the civilised part of the non-Roman world gradually came to appear beneath serious notice and unworthX ql,*gt* consideration. The consent of the governed came tö matial fessand less.outside the parts directly controlled, Rome had had no major war ro fight for a long time. Ali the wars in the East, from ,oö to rzo n.c.lhad endedIn triumph ""a *richment; in the nineties of the first century, the worfu had seen the spectacleof the great ldngs of Asia Minor meekly-as usual -accepting the Senate's command, conveyed to them by the auctoritasofan unarmed commission. The effect can again be most typically seenin Sulla-the man whose acrions so often summarise and illustrate all that one has ro say about his period. when strila had installed Ariobarzanes in his kingdonr- (without meeting

54

5J

Thrace.aoThere is as yet no Pressurefor expansion.As we have seen, it is very probable that the Equites had as m19h a1 they wanted, since their numbers were comparatively small and their capital normally fully employed. In Asia itself-where, even in tied u5 thä sixties, elergeparr of the capital of the societateswas Off tiEi altogethet-"fY$.Irofitable an they were not häving that an e1tent to a few years later, the situation had cleteriorated neces-"d. th. mission of M. Scaurusand that of Q. Scaevola Marius against sary.so Even earlier, the diplomatic succtcss. Bf sensitive räüöf iö'very welcome btought have must Milhridates investors. In any case,however' aswe shdl increasinglysee,good business could be done without annexation. We must remember NicomedesIII of Bithynia, who could nor send Marius auxiliary forces becauseso many'of his subjectshad been taken away as slavesby Romans.g1Despite control of the law-courts in Rome, it was perhaps-or. .ä-fortable for some to be beyond the imperiumof

seriousopposition) in 95, he met a Parthian embassyon the banks of the Euphrates. It was the first time that the rwo powers had come into diplomatic contact. Sulla ceremonially took up his seat between Ariobarzanes, the loyd and dependent client, and the Parthian envoy-thereby indicating that he regarded the Parthians in the samelight as Cappadocia.(And this was well rurderstood by the Parthian King: the envoy, on his return, was execüed for submitting to it.)3s The incident is worthy of contemplation, as showing the attitude of Roman nobles towards what remained .We must bear it in mind when outside the orbit of their influence. we come to the incident of 89 r.c. The story is most fully told by Appian.s Some years after Sulla's return to Rome, Mithridates had again occupied Cappadocia and had expelled Nicomedes IV from Bithynia, hoping that Rome's preoccupations nearer home would prevent her from interGring. In 89, with the Social War approaching its end, the Senatesent an embassyto restorethe two kitgt. It was headedby M' Aquillius, son of the man who had organisedAsia (and therefore one of the petrons of the whole area) and a friend and prot6gd of C. Marius: he had been Marius' chief legate in Gaul (ro3) and later his colleagueasconsul ror, and Marius had successfully deßnded him (with the help of M. Antonius) against an It was perhapsdue to Aqoilextortion charge a Gw years1ater.35 lius' hereditary connections that he soon succeededin getting a force of allies together and (with the help of C. Cassius,governor of Asia) in restoring the kings. His mere Presencehad been enough, and there was no resistance.Mithridates, cautious as before, again preferred to pull out and wait for a better chance. But Nicomedes, the restored King of Bithynia, had issued promissory notes for large sumsto the commandersrestoring him *d to various eminent men in their suite: it was coming to be an expensivebusinessto be restored to one's throne by Romans. As he had no funds for immediate Payment, and his future ProsPects looked very uncertain (particularly in view of Mithridates' behaviour in the past), Aquillius and his friends decided that they

s6

must try to get their money as soon as they could. They blackmailed Nicomedes into plundering Pontic territory, partly perhaps (if we may give them the benefit of the doubt) in order to impress Miduidates with a show of strength, but largely to get him some funds to pay his debts. But Mithridates was not prepared to be insulted and intimidated: the result, before long, was the First Midridatic War. Appian makes out (no doubt from his source) that Aquillius positively wanted to start a war, without reGrenceback to Rome (he insistson this), and that this was the real aim ofhis pressureon Nicomedes. On generalgrounds this might appearquite credible; but it is belied by the factsof the caseasAppian himselfgives them, and it may be regardedasan obvious expostfactocomment. When Mithridates sent an embassy to protest at the raids into his territory, the reply he received was in fact anything but provocative or insulting. The Romans replied that'they would not wish Mithridates to suffer harm at the hands of Nicomedes, but would not permit Nicomedes to be attacked by armed force'i.e., Mithridates could not expect reparationsand would not be allowed to extort them (it is this that makesthe chief object of tlq '' ' exercis;--,$ggy.ipf.rirg of booty-.lear); but that, if h"" r.ftäoäf from retaliating, there would be no further attacks.It looked asif Aquillius had achievedhis limited objectives,and the reply quoted makesit clear that he had no intention of going further. ".. .^pgllutithridates, outraged by what had happened, refused to ni:gotiate. He felt strong enough to fight, and he now had an excellent pretext: indeed, it looks as though he was already regretting his earlier decisionto pull out, perhapsin the light of more accurateinformation about the strengthofthe forcesactually at Aquillius' disposal. His propaganda line could now be the one that is reproduced for us, on a later occasion,by Sallust: that the Romans were seekingto subject the whole world to their greed, that they were latronesgentium.s6Having his pretext, he at once invaded-not Bithynia, which had technically been the guilty pury, but Cappadocia,where he easily expelled the unfortunate

57

and quite guildess Ariobarzanes. At this point, of course, the Romans had no option but to fight, even though their forces were inadequate and their allies unreliable. M' Aquillius, captured by Mithridates, was killed by having molten gold poured down his tlrroat-a public illustration of the King's ofücial casusbelli. It was the first time that a major war had been brought about by an individual Roman acting on his own initiative. Yet, despite what was to be said about it latqg.,.ipErose(it seems)from a mispävo."tion: it is clear calculation rather than from ffilffit. really not Aquillius, who Mithddates, and that it was ultimately wanted to fight. Unaccustomed to opposition, and treating easten kings ashelples clients (in thq.lighp of pastvictories and past and

Aquiiius bff;äe"älnto war while tfung to pr.i.o, servliliry), though it can even satsifyhis own greed urd that ofhis associates; be argued that he may have conceived of the raids asa py Roman tradition) legitimate terrorising operation and that, had he succeeded,he would have earned nothing but praise in Rome. The real signficance of the incident is that it was an attempt at blatant enrichment by a senator at the expenseof a king who, up to that point, had loyally obeyed Rome's command-and an attempt entered into, as was to appear only too clearly, without adequate consideration of the probable consequencesand without even sufücient force to back it at all plausibly. SinceAquillius was such a close associateof Marius, it has inevitably been asked whether Marius was also.involved. Certainly Marius, by now, had no fear at the propect of an easternwar. Having failed to gain the distinction he wanted in the Social'War, he had withdrawn from it in disgust: he now seemedeagerfor a specialcommand that would at last bring him another appeal to save his country and would fulfil the seer'spromise of a seventhconsulship.s?PerhapsMarius had been one of those who had lent Nicomedes money towards his restoration,or had beenpromised somefor favouring it: with his Asian connections, he could hardly fail to be courted. h *y he we cannot prove it-that case, it is very likely-though and actually situation handling of the approved of Aquillius' J8

welcomed the war that resulted from it. The personal foreign interestsof Roman senatorshad made an impressiveentranceon the stageof history. The Jugurthine War had already produced the suspicion rhat the ruling classwas sacrificing the national interest to that of its individual members. It was of coursetrue (and always had been) that great men received worthy presentsfrom their clients abroad for the patronal services that they performed. That was mos maiorum,inextricably interwoven with ancient social conventions. It was only when things went wrong, and when slowly developing suspicion was stirred up by orators, that people began to suspect this traditional practice.ss At the time (as we saw) they were wrong: there is no evidencethat the presentsthatJugurtha must undoubtedly have given to his Roman patrons made any differenceto Roman policies. 9f Ag-rh:$t$e in the moraliry of the upper classis becoming visible: rhe 3fffi were now enormous,

+fugfS"&tt that therewasno longerTyJf_9+ 1ogive careful consrderatronto the consequences of the putsuit'of private interestsin public policy. It was an early sign of the storms to come.

J9

v THE NEW TMPERIALISTS: THE MYTH rf-1HE

Social War and the civil wars that followed hastenedthe I declitreand completely changedthe picture. Theyhad a Profound effect on both the moral climate and the social and political structure of the Roman Republic. Let us first look at the social and economic results. We have noted that in the secondcentury there does not-at leastuntil near the end-appear to be any large-scale exploitation of the Empire. Individual members of the ruling oligarchy derive their profits, lawful and illicit. But the Senateas a whole seems sincerely concerned (though not always successfirlin its efforts) to stop the illicit sort; and excessivepro{its by citizen contractors are for a long time discouraged-as is clear from the outstanding exampleof the Macedonianmines.l On the other hand, trade and finance by Romurs and by Italians flourish under official Protec'free' territories, particularly in the East. tion, in provinces and But again, there is no sign of serious exploitation. ln the free harbour of Delos, where the Italians attain the summit of their power and prosperity, that of the Syrian colony almost equals theirs.2C. Gracchus,for the leading and most urterprising men of non-senatorialrank, laid the foundations of the wealth and power that would end by rivalling those of the Senate.But there were few of them; and, aswe saw, their capital was probably too limited for any major expansion of investments, even had the chance offered. In fact, imperialism in its economic aspectsis still very restrained, in comparison with the size of the empire and the extent of Roman Power and infuence. The war that began in 9r and lasted, in some form, until about 8o had one important result, and an immediate and practical one 60

-one so familiar that we are in danger of overlooking its consequences: Italy received the Roman citizenship. The chief consequence was the transformation of the Roman upPer class.This, of course, was what Roman upper-classopponents of this reformmen like the consul L. Marcius Philippus and those senatorsand equites who rallied in his support in gr-had always feared.sNot indeed that there was a flood of new men in the highest places:it is unlikely that anyone had seriously expected this. Syme and others have fully demonstrated the extreme slowness of this particular process,due to the restraintsof the system and to the conservatismof the Roman electorate.In 63 n.c., defending L. Murena-a man of distinguished and long-standing praetorian family who had won the consulateagainsta.nobilisof ancient,but not recently prominent, lineage-Cicero had to meet a strong primafacie presumption that such a successcould be due only to corrupt practices.aThe most interesting feature of his remarkable and instructive speechon that occasion is the fact that this argument could not be simply laughed out of court: the immense seriousness with which the orator treatsit-devoting a large part of his speechto its thorough refutation-shows as nothing else can the enduring and even increasingright to high ofüce of the old nobilitas. HJwever. "t lätuei t.l7öfiab"tticul*arlv where the

of #itfi1äbd -.o L"d by midcomitiatributaelected-the*iriöfue century become a steady stream; and most of Italy was by then represented among the back-benchers: hominesnoui et parui neverthelesscould at times-ryake their presence senatores,6.who of felt. Many of thesemen belong.d to th.'#üä€ipal aristoc^racies Italy and had wealth not out of place even in the Roman Senate.s (financiers and And many of them were related to the negotiatores traders) who, generations ago, had already been making their fortunes overseas.At the same time, all of them were amply endowed with Italiur lurd. In this way new links were forged and maintained between Senateand Equites, who had been drifting 'threw daggers apaxtfor political reasonsever since C. Gracchus into the forum' and who had reachedan impasseof opposition by

6r

90 B.c. Sulla himse[ by his adlectionofabout 3oo equitesinto the Senate,had made a decisive start.?Flenceforth there is no clear boundary between the orders, in status or interests. The postSullan-much more than tlre immediate pre-Sullan-Senate is linked with the equestrian order through its lower representatives, sharing interests and interrelationships; and this wes soon to eppear clearly in politics: not only in the provincial interests of senators, which now take on increasing importance and more clearly defined shape(as we shall soon have occasion to see), but in the accord of 7o over the law-courts. This accord, acceptedby the best men in the Senateand causing no dissatisfaction among the Equites, would have been quite inconceivable a generation earlier-indeed, when the consul Q. Servilius Caepio tried'to achieve something very like it in ro6 r.c., it lasted only for a short time and was much disliked.s Now, agreement continues undisturbed until the nature of the law-courts themselves is radically changed under the Empire. Nothing c:rn more clearly illustrate the immense change-despite occasional dlfferences between them-that had come over the relationship between the fwo orders; and it was, of course,againstthis background, much better known to him than it is to some moderns, that M. Tullius Cicero developed his scheme for t concordiaordinum to save the Republic-for which he has many times been unreasonably criticised. But the ordo equesteritself demands our careful scrutiny. It is odd that until quite recently it had never been properly surveyed and discussed,in spite of all the interest that modern scholarship has shown in this period. The details of how the early equites Ronani (limited in numbers and duly enrolled by the censorsand alone entided to certain specified privileges) were merged arrd submerged in the in-flated ordoequesterof Cicero's day are, in , important respects,still impenetrable and, it *y case,carurot be' discussedhere.e The fact is that equestrian status in Cicero's day was basedon a mere qualification ofwealth;lo hence the wealthiest element was dominant, particularly the publicani of the big

This, however, meant that the ordoequester.unlike most societates. things at any period of Roman history, was radically transformed almost overnight by the Socid War. For once, the food-gates were open, and all municipal notables, as far as we can see,could soon claim tobe equitesRomani.The effectsof this must have been considerable, and only some of them (of relevance to us) can be considered here. The conuentu.sof Italians in the provinces (including Roman citizen$ had always been in a favoured position, owing both to the presence of those Roman citizens and to the protection that the Roman state accorded to tlre nearest of its clients. But now they were no longer clients. They were all full members of the master race. It was these men (the prouinciales)who were the chief advisers of the governor, sitting on his consilium,providing his juria and his agents, and (in general) furnishing that necessary element of local expertise and continuiry that the Roman official machinery conspicuously lacked. They, among hostile or fawning subjects,were the only men whom the governor could fully trust. As Cicero makes clear to his brother Quintus, they were also his chief temptation and worry.rr Especially as they must on no account be oflended: the governor's future-even his caput,i.e. his status as a full and honoured citizen-depended on them and on their Roman friends and associates,the senatorsand equites who sat on the juries. A {älsestep could end a great man's career. L. Lucullus, by , fair and reasonablesettlement of debts in the ruined province of Asia, incurred their dislike-and had to pay the penalty, with Senateand People *iti"g to divest him of his powers, despite the friends and relations he had among the noblest in the land.rs Things had been very different in the nineties. L. Lucullus was recalled in disgrace, and it was several yearsbefore he was, almost contemptuously, allowed to triumphlt -a blow that broke his strong and acute nünd and made him end an active life in shallow seliindulgence and ultimately madness. Speech after speech by Cicero, in prosecution and defencethe Venines, the pro Flacco, the pro Fonteioand others-attests the

63

power and the connectionsof theseprovincial Romans, many of whom, a generation ago, would at best have been cliens of the great Roman families. And we can see the multiPlicity of their and large provincial landowners interests,espublicani,negotiatores -all interlaced. They were all citizens now, and the richest of them equitesRomani: the publica (and especiallythe taxes) were open to them, and they could combine them with other interests asa whole, therefore,was in a formidable power. The ordoequester this infusion of new blood and new by immensely strengthened capital, and (not least important) new experience of provincial business.These men could exercisepower hitherto undreamt of and form ambitions hitherto inconceivable.The'resourcesof the provincesaccumulatedin their hands.Their dedicationsto Roman magistrates survive in large numbers-from Delos, Aegium, Argos, Cos; from Agrigentum and Panormus (to take only those representedin our most accessibleselection of inscriptions).ra Their immense wealth and power are sometimes illustrated in starding flashes-all the more startling (to us in our ignorance of the basictone of ancient life, even at well-attestedperiods) when, asso often happens,they arouseno interest in our sourcesand no comment asbeing out of the ordinary. The Civil'War, particularly, forced some of theseinterestsinto ---often unwelcome-publicity. In the 'free ciry' of Utica a body of 3oo seemsto be a kind of governing body of the Romatr conuentus:no doubt the wealthiest among the communiry, from are distinguished. They chose to whom the other negotiatores support the Pompeiansand at one time seemto have been practically in control of the ciry; but they were punished by Caesar.l8 (note aratoresque ln the little town of Thysdra Italian negotiatores In of wheat.lo bushels had deposited the combination) 3oo,ooo Sp"ir, Romans (including Roman ktightt) of local origin or connectionsfight prominently on both sides:there is Q. Pompeius Niger of ltalica, who is the Caesarians'champion in a famous duel that gives our pedestrian author the churce of emulating the grand historical tradition; Baebius, Flavius and Trebelliut ("ll

'their tfuee equitesfrom the little town of Asta) desertto Caesar, horsesalmost covered with silver' (as the author disapprovingly notes), and report that all the Roman knights in the Pompeian army (ie. all those recruited in the province?) had wanted to desert,but had been found out and imprisoned.lT A Caesarian party sent to (Jrsao contains senatorsand knights, including some (knights, presumably) belonging to the ciry.tt Of the 3,ooo knights who fell at Munda, some were from Rome, others from the provinces.le 'We cannot tell how many of all theseand other men mentioned were veterans recently setded there, how many enfranchised natives (as----onewould think-Q. Pompeius Niger was), how many settlers of ltalian origin and how many actual Italian businessmen.No doubt all theseclasses were represented.They all now formed the ruling classof provincial society and politics, dominating the provinces of the Roman People, and in constant touch with their associates, their friends and their families at home. The ordoequester had absorbedttalian notablesand (like the roll of citizens as a whole) had thereby become wide open, recruiting new strength from provincial sources.It is strangethat the story hasnot beenproperly told. Even Rostovtzefl who well knew how greatly the enfranchisementof Italy increasedthe resourcesof this class',was unfortunately the captive of his own theory of an overtidi"g conflict between the proletariate and the upper class: he saw in rhe ordo equesterof the Ciceronian age only a force that 'strerigthened the ranks of the edsting order' against proletarian revolution-a view that has an element of truth, but, like many such, is all the more misleading on account of it-and that supported the Roman government's policy of imperialism which he claims to recogniseeven in the secondcentury.soWe have already seen that this last view fies in the face of the evidence; and we must now note the havoc that it wrought-except where his profound knowledge of the facts broke the shacklesof theory-in his whole interpretation. There is a major task----orrather, severalmajor tasks-still to

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6S

'We cannot do it here. Let us, however, briefy glanceat be done. two provinces, representativein their diversity, for which we have rather more detailed evidence.tl In Asia, as is well known, Italian interests were prominent enough-and ltalians sufüciently hated-for Mithridates' order for the slaughter of Italians to meet with overwhelming success. 8o,ooo Romans-as they now were, in law as well as in nameare said to have been killed in one day.zr It was only in 8r, after Sulla'svictory and the return of setdedconditions in the Roman world, that any large number of men expelled from the province can have returned. In 74 there was no massacre;but we can be certain that the old memory causeda massexodus of Romans. It took some time to reconquer Asia and make it safefor exploitation once more. Lucullus' settlement is probably to be dated around 7o.To what extent the Romans in the province had soon recovered and consolidated their power there is clear from the pro Flacco,dealing with the situation only a few years later. The speechis (it might seem to us) quite disproportionately full of Roman interestsin Asia: three Roman knights in the province (t. lt); an estate at Cyme belonging to a Roman orphan and bought by a Greek with money he has borrowed from two Romans (apparently coming to Rome for the purpose: s. 46); 'free' city) owned by property at Temnus and at Apollonis (a Decianus, one of the prosecutors (5rf. and 7of.); payment of a large debt extorted by the Roman Castricius-member of a family of negotiatores well known in the East-from Tralles (Slt); the interestsoflurco and Septimius(87f.). And there are two very odd incidents: Cicero's client, asgovernor, had (it seems)got hold of the estate of a Valeria who had died intestate---one of his actions that even his attorney can hardly j"rofy as anything but dubious (a+f,); and Falcidius,a Roman living (asis clear) in Asia, had given the governor 5o talents (: t,roo,ooo HS)-or so he said-and had almost ruined himself by doing so: this man (we learn) had paid goo,oooHS for the taxes of Tralles alone (9of.)no doubt regarding this as a sound investment. As can be seen,

much of the speechis taken up with the interests of Roman citizens in Asia. But we know, in a more general way, that even by 66 the Romans had fooded back--only three or four years after the completion of thp r.econquest.In that year, Asia was by far the the Treasury, atd *osi of the principi source "f%üäüd'for property of the honourable gentlemen of the tax companies was invested there; otherswere engagedin businessthere and had most of their capital actually in the province : a large number of citizens was involved in all this; moreover, asCicero points out (asa wellknown and universally acceptedfact), a collapseof credit in Rome itself was the inevitable consequence of even a mere threat to Asia.z3So much had been restored in a very few years. Next, Transalpine Gaul.zaAs we have had occasionto notice, there is no sign of seriousRoman interest there before the German wars.'We can therefore all the more easily observe the speedof Roman penetration after. It was aPparently the German wars that first led to the establishment of a regular province-and to penal confiscation of land. This kind of purrishment seemsto have been Seatly extended in the province during the next few decades,as Around the middle 8oso.c., repeatedrevolts had to be suppressed. we gei a sudden glimpse of what was going on in the province. An early speechof Cicero's (the pro Quinctio of 8r, dealing with events of a few years earlier) turns on the exploitation, by two Roma4s in partnership, of a highly productive farm and ample grazng lands in Gaul. Even as early as that, this was apparently nothing at all out of the ordinary, and no word of explanation or comment is given-or felt to be needed-for this background. Around 7s, the govemor M. Fonteius (later another of Cicero's clients) is found evicting Gauls from land that had been confiscated-some (if not most) of it apparently by Pompey on his way to Spain.r5Cicero, speaking in the early 6os,insiststhat helv)t confiscations were specially characteristic of the province. By that 'reGrta negotiatorum, plena ciuium Romanorum'. time it'was in the province is carried out w'ithout no he adds, business In fact,

67

the intervention of a Romur cttizen, no money changes hands without being recorded in a Roman ledger. But there is not only finance (always the specialiry of Roman citizens). The large numbers of Romans in the province are analysed for us as con'publicani agricolaepecuarii sisting of the colonists at Narbo and ceteri negotiatores'.2oThe stresson land, of course,fully confirms what we have inferred must have been the position asearly as the 8os. It is at this time that the old prohibition of vine and olive culture, which Cicero found in an early trea.ty,z1must have talen on the significance that he then (as we saw) retrojected-misleadingly for the modern scholar-right back to its origin. In fact, the prohibition, as is clear from the wording quoted, does not apply to all land in the province (asis often mistakenly suggested by modern interpreters): it is limited to land in the hands of the natives (transalltinae gentes).It would in any casehave been di-fficult to believe, at this time, in a provision forbidding the growing of vines and olives on land held urywhere by Roman citizens; but as it happens,there is no mention of thern in the prohibition asreported-surely not through Cicero's carelessness. The old treaty had developed-accidentally, but much to the liking of many Romans-into a highly protective measure, favouring, not so much Italian land as against provincial, as the interests and the profits of the numerous Italians whom we find owning and holding land in the province at this time. The development is a measureof the change in the situation as a whole. We have looked at two provinces. But, where we have the evidence, a similar picture can be glimpsed in others. Cicero's lefters of recommendation (Book xiü of his ktters to hß Friends) provide interesting material, despite their superficially dull uniformity. Large interests,landed and commercial, can be documented in several provinces. There is other sporadic evidence, illuminating even the most obscurecornersof the Roman world. In lllyria, Salonaewas probably conquered (by C. Cosconius) as late as 78 r.c., in one of the border wars that-as we sawcontinued in this period as before.28By the time of the Civil 68

'W'ar,

its Roman conuentuswas a firm and important ally of Caesar.zeThe island of Issa,long a 'free' city, is found sending an embassyto call on Caesarduring his proconsulate:the embassy is hea.led by a Gavennius, clearly " Rom"n cirizen.soThe Illyriur city of Lissus, in fact, appearsto have been handed over io its Roman conuuttusby Caesarat some time (we cannot tell how long) before the Dyrrhachium campaign, possibly owing ro some act of disloyalty on the part of the narives.sl There is no doubt that imperialism, in the senseof exploitation by the mling po'wer, developed enormously after the enfranchisementof Italy and the consequenrstrengtheningof the equestrian order. The rapidity of the Romans' return to Asia (followed, no doubt, by further expansionthere), of their penetration of the province of Transalpina and even of little-noticed Illyricum, and the speedwith which they succeededin seizing an important and powerfirl position there, is particularly starrling in view of the general sloyness of transformations-political and economicunder ancient conditions. Nothing quite like this, probably, can be seenin antiquiry, except perhapsthe Greco-Macedonianpenetration of the Middle East after Alexander the Great. In Romarr history, certainly, the phenomenon is unusual.tt will be our next question whether and to what exrent this affectedimperialism in 'W'e the other main sense-that of actual expansion. have seenthat right up to the Social War there is no evidence of expansionist pressure by the Equites; and perhaps we have even caught a glimpse of the answer to our question about what followed. However: what differencedid the enormousincreasein the power and the resourcesof the order make to foreign policy? It might seem obvious, from all the facts we have been investigating, taken in tlre context of our modern experience,that the ordo equesterof the age of Cicero, with its greatly increased capial and its power in the law-courrs, urd with its almost uncannily dynamic expansionin the provincesof the Roman People, must have been constantly pressing for ftrrther increasesin- its opportunities by further extensionof the frontiers, for more roorn 69

as itself a form of imPerialism. There is surprisingly linle evidence that at this time trade preceded the flae. Thisir surprising becausein the secondcentury i". i" {ind largJcolonies ofitalians beyond the boundaries of the empire in its irict sense-at Delos, at Cirta, and in other places

still technically 'free'. Yet in the first century, despite the far larger reso'rces and the rapidly increasing p.o.tritioo of the provinces that we have noticed, there is litde evidence for such movements. In distant Noricum (it has been said)ec Roman appear by the middle of the firsr century; but reviewers lr"do: have been very hesitant to believe it, and the evidence for such infiltration during the late Republic appears rather weak. Le Germany, Caesar reGrs to trade with the Suebi;soand manvincluding no less an authority than Sir Mortimer WheeleCl_ have taken him to meart Romar traders. yet it is surely odd that CaesardoeslTt s1yso: why not 'nosrri', sinceit was anything but selievident? such silence is ar least suspicious. tn inäeperident Gaul ft.efore Caesar's conquesr) ro-. Rom*r, objects b-egin to spreadnorth. Bur again, they appearto be few;s? äd th.rJi, oo real reason to think that it was Romans who carried them-no mention, e.g., in Caesar,who could hardly have failed to come acrosssuch men. Of course, there are the Roman negotiatoresat Cenabum, who were massacredat the outbreak of the final revolt.ss But bv then caesar ha{ bgen figlolg in Gaul for six years-long .noogh fo, the army (and its rich boory, nor ro -.ntion its neeJ of suöp[es) to have attracred the usual following of civilians. rh"t this was the origin of the Romans rhere is suggestedby the fact that amonE them there was killed an equeshonestuswho, by Caesar'scom] mand, was in chargeof the food supply ofthe army. It is not dif[cult to deducethe nature of the main 'business'done by theRomans at Cenab-um.The pi99ur-ewe are given of the Belgae at the beginalmost uncorrupted by imports of luxriries lrns ofthe'war-still from the Province-makes it clear that thäre h-ad,at least, not beenany very thorough and far-ranging penetration by Romaru.oo Similarly in Syria, with which we stirted. Before annexationas Rostovaeff acknowledges,thou#lrg"ooddly denies that it is significanco-there is a remarkable TJaiffiof ltomans; yet afterwards they soon appear in large numbers. perhaps one should not pressmere arguments from silence: we cannot deny that a certain

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to ploueh back its profits and thus expand them. It might seem-so orr. ti.d not Prove it. Thus for Tenney Frank' who .Uii."i6"t knew Roman economic 6istory better dran almost anyone else has ever known it, and who was the foremost oPPonent of those who (like Rostovtzeff) saw an imperialist policy based on economic motives in Roman expansion in the second century-even Lucullus' ä, t""""y Frank there w^as1o_question about it: L. and the Rome; in interests fülor. ,o *rr"* Syria aruroyed those was tn$t' to result was that Pompey, whom they had learnt there would be ,oCrrir"r"a for Lucullus,'on the understanding that 'Three years later all: after annexarion profitable ,ä-" highly ^k elements same the when reward (^fte, Zoi th" righ* had their . . . pirates of seas ""*birr"d in a defiand that Pompey clear the and *J ifr" ye,o efter commissioned him to destroy Mithridates orsanize the East in a seriesof provinces which would b-eopen " development".'i, Fortunately, this thesis.hT To, io io--.r.ial has foond general ".""pr*ri".; but even where not accePted'it *or" oä.o been igntred-by scholarslessfamiliar with economic therehirrory than Franf-than considered and refuted; and it is It revived's fashionably times at for", "t least as a general thesis, the positive at look we will thus now be ivotth our while (before .o*"rr, of Roman'imperialism' towards the end of the Republic, and at its real base$ to show that the conclusion to which our "rgo-.ot in the precedingpagesseemsto have been leading with it wäs pt"sor" from the Equites, after-the iräsistible for""lthrt Social War, that trrnsformed the nature of Roman rmperialisl and made ir consciouslyexpansionist-is in fact totally-invalid; o."p, for what *e h^rrealräadydiscused at length, the thorough exoläit"tion of the empire witirin its existing boundaries,and of ter'ritori., beyond thoseboundaries,which we mayjustly describe '

amount of trade will have been carried on by Roman citizens,in Syria as in Gaul. But it is surely significant when a dearth of evidenca..aloqt their doings before annexation contrasts both with abüädää& of it after and with the ample attestationof their presence,both in literature and in the documents, within the bounds of the empire. We should probably accePt the conclusion suggestedby the evidence:that,it the time we are considering,Roman capital was, on the whole, concentrating on the thorough penetration of the existing provinces.Under the protection of the Roman name, and of magistt"teswho sharedin theseinterestsand whose future was in the hands of the businessmen'sassociatesin Rome, this was very much easier and more convenient than pioneer work in ,"*ot" Pafts-and by now, Partsnot under Roman control were in fact getting more and more remote. [n other words: theperhapsparadoxical-effect of the transformation and explosive to se-ems gto*ih in manpower and resourcesof the ordoequester the all it was, of as empire the upon inward, " totoittg b".o f,ate vast resourcesnow available.That this would not have remained the casefor long can easilybe argued: there was to be no chance to find out. But it does seemto be true of at least a moment in time-and, of course, it makes the startling development of Roman penetration in the existing provinces, on which we have commented, very much easierto understand. There is arrotLet point to consider. The very wealthiest of (a1least of those in the ciry) were prgb-ably Roman negotiatores rather than in trade. This was the traditional form sdll in finance of Roman negotia,andwe have it attestedfor Gaul and elsewhere. And this kind of business,far more than trade, could be very satisfactorilycarried out in setdedand dependentclient states-as Roman senatorswere also to find. Kings were always clamouring to be recognised or supported against enemies, and they were chronically short of money and forced into borrowing, both to pay for thlse servicesand even to keep up with the accumulating ioi.r"tt they already owed. For the really large-scalefinancier72

and, as we shall see,he was more likely to be a senator than a 'We knight-kings were profitable business. remember how, even around roo, Nicomedes III had had massesof his subjectssold into slavery.a1In the first century we find that a senatusconsufuurn had apparently forbidden the malcing of loans to foreigners in Rome.a2A. Gabinius, as tribune (07) or asconsul (58), confirmed the prohibition.as By 58, aswe shall see,it was both highly necessary and bound to be ineffective. But the efGct of this regulation was that the most lucrative businesswas reserved for those who could'obtain exemption from the law at the handsof the Senateaa -and that their interest rates became all the higher. We shall come back to this. But it is at this point and in this rather unexpected connection thet equitesRornaniappearin high politics, and make it clear how litde they cared about annexation-or needed to. As early as 88, we find someone-and it is surely Romanfinanciers-lending a large sum of money to an Egyptian king (Ptolemy Alexander I) to enable him to collect a feet and regain his throne.a6The circumstancesof the time were exceptional, since Mithridates had made investment in Asia temporarily impossible, and some people no doubt had money to spare.As a security, they got a will bequeathingEgypt to the Roman People. 'When Alexander failed to regain his throne and was killed in the attempt, the Senate(by then under the Cinnani) made sure they got the money back; but no action was taken to annex the kingdom: this, as we had occasionto notice earlier, still seemedto be too contrary to traditional policy. It was only twenry yearslater, in very changed conditions, that the action of reclaiming the money could be interpreted by those in favour of annexation aspro heredegestioas-eventhen unsuccessfirlly,asit turned out. In the early fifties, a similar situation arose.a?Some equestrian circles had lent what was probably an even larger sum (6,ooo talents: r{{,ooo,ooo HS) to Ptolemy Auletes who, though he had occupied the Egyptian throne, was much concerned to securerecognition: for his legitimacy was impugned and there

were at that time circles in Rome-led by M. Crassus,who had represented similar interests even some years earlier-that favoured annexation, basedon the old testamentarydisposition. But in j9, for the large cash payment mentioned, Caesar as consul secured Ptolemy's recognition, and the old will is not heard of again. A little later, however, Ptolemy was expelled by his suhjects: his large investment had bought him only a year's respite. He now began trying to get some Roman to restore him-an issue that kept politicians agitated for years. In the end, he borrowed the truly fantasticsum of to,ooo talents(: 2{o,ooo,ooo 'equestrian census' and more than the total HS)-6oo times the of Roman revenuesfrom the provinces before Pompey's eastern conquests.a8This was the sum he paid to Gabinius-and perhaps to others who backed Gabinius' action-in order to be restored and have a Roman garrison to protect him. We happen to know about this only becausea marr called C. Rabirius Postumus-son of an old client of Cicero's-arranged the loans and, when Ptolemy returned to Alexandria, became his minister of finance, to seethat the interest was paid and the debt collected; and because both Gabinius and Rabirius were later prosecutedfor their parts in the affair and defended by Cicero.ae This incident is the best example we have of the enormous sums now at the disposal of Roman capitalists, and of the infuence they could exercise on international a{fairs. It also satisfactorily proves that this influence was not exercised in favour of annexation and direct control. lndeed, we begin to seethat there might after all, in a specialcase, be something to be said for being well away from the scrutiny of a Roman governor. Nor-since this is the point with which we started-had the Equitesmuch to do with the annexationof Syria.'Wehave already seen that they seem to have shown little interest in that region before its annexation. The latter was entirely conditioned by political and strategic considerations of a traditional sort. For Antiochus XIII, to whom Lucullus had given the counry, was almost at once captured, and a pretender called Philip, after paying

a heavy sum to the governor of the adjacentprovince of Cilicia, was at that time struggling hard to maintain himself against two Arab chieftains. Soon he too disappearsfrom our accounts,and Antiochus briefy returns.so Whatever precisely was happening, it is clear that Lucullus' experiment had failed and that by the time of Pompey's arrival the Seleucidshad shown themselves completely incapable of holding what they had been given: peace could no longer be guaranteed without annexation. Lucullus himself, had he steyed on, might well have had to change his mind: he would hardly have left mere disorder behind him. The local siruation sufrces to explain the decision: there is no need even to tlink that Pompey was dreaming of a Parthian War, or that the Syrian coast was a basefor pirates.6l 'We do not know for certain what Pompev did with the taxes of Syria; or, for that matter, with thoseofnitliy"i"-fonrus, which 'We he also organised as a province. hear of pactioresby cities withpublicani, in which Gabinius, as governor, interGred: within a few years the publicani were clearly becoming a scourge and Gabinius, at what he must have known was great risk to himsel{, took strong action againstthem, in deGnceof nations bom to be slaves.srThis makes it most probable (though admittedly not certain) that Pompey h"d extended the sysremthat had worked so well-for the Treasury-in the case of Asia, i.e. censoria locatio.(This, of course,would also help to explain the numerous attempts made after that time to get censorselected.) Naturally, such a policy would also gain him friends among the richest of the Equites-not to mention senators: it is a very reasonable assumptionthat many senators,by now, had an interest (perhaps even an open one) in theselucrative contracts,and that M. Crassus, when he worked for remission of the Asian contract in the late sixties, had more motives than mere benevolenceand justice.ss Indeed, the enormous sumsinvolved in the contracts would much more easily be found, if the larger fortunes of senatorswere also engaged-and this is surely how there could still be enough left over for Ptolemv Auletes.

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THE NEW IMPERIALISTS: THE FACTS t]-1HE

imperialism (in Tenney Frank's sense)of the Equites I turns out to be a myth-another example of compelling modern analogies applied without due scrutiny of the ancient background. But what about the tlgbrJ,At we have seen,even the glory of conSulla had recognisedthat it *"rfi#$&tFto quest; and Pompey did not fail to celebratea magnificent triumph and gamesto paradehis own. Cicero's speecheslare full of naive patriotic appeals.Moreover, the actual profits of empire now had to go to the Plebsasmuch asto the upper classes-not, of course, becauseof any newly-developed sympathy for it, but becauseof its greatly increasedpolitical importance in the struggles of the oligarchs. This power, ever since the Gracchi, had often been demonstrated to full effect. The Plebs had come to regard the economicbenefitsof empire, first handedover to it by the Gracchi, as its birthright. Again urd again we seethe ideasof the Gracchi and of Saturninus taken up, and the oligarchy has to submit, in 'We have seenhow a shortageof at least some casesunwillingly. grain and money brought about some action on Cyrene n zsl+, after the Senatehad neglected it for rwenty years.sIt was this precedent that P. Clodius remembered when, in 58, at another time of shortage,he wanted to gain support for himself by making the grain distribution an entirely free gift. This, ofcourse, imposed an unparalleled and unbearable strain on the Treasury.3 But Clodius calmly proceeded to provide the necessaryfunds by passinga law annexing Cyprus-another rich Ptolemaic posses'free'. The proceeds of the royal estates sion, still recognisedas alone were to come to 7,ooo talents and proved welcome indeed in 56.4

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lt is easyenough to seethe line t}rat goesfrom Tiberius Gracchus' useof the Attalid inheritance, through the organisation of Cyrene, to the culmination of the Cyprus incident. As in the other cases, the Senatecould not resist.For Clodius' law was there to stay, for obvious political reasons,and the money simply had to be found. And so the virtuous M. Cato himself went out to sell the King's property and ensure that every last penny was squeezedout and accounted for;6 and the King committed suicide in shame and despair.The organisation of the new province was setdedby the Senate:it wasjoined to Cilicia and received itslex prouinciaefrom P. Lentulus Spinther, first proconsul of the united province. Thus the Senate assumed full responsibility. The thinking of the majority of its members was by now no longer guided by principles of--even limited-morality: such opposition as rhere was, to this most disgracefirlact of Roman imperialism aparr from rhe Gallic'War, was obvioudy basedto a large extent on reasonsof internal politics and personalantagonism.br 63, when P. Servilius Rullus proposed a major distribution of overseaslands to Roman settlers(to the detriment, no doubt, of vast numbers of natives), it was not on moral principle that men like Cicero (in the speeches de lege agraria), opposed him and his backers-and the People turned the proposal down becausethey were persuadedthat it was an attack on the absentPompey. It was Pompey who was the People'schief hero and benefactor -t}e man who carried the ideas of the Gracchi in this field to their dazzling conclusion.Compared to him, P. Clodius is merely an isolated brigand. Pompey, of course, was an efücient administrator, who did not abandon the tradition of avoiding excessive administrative commitments. lndeed, he could hardly have done so: for since Sulla the shortageof administratorshad been worse than ever. Pompey addedterritory to Cilicia, organisedBithyniaPontus (asa single immense province, in order to savepersonnel) and annexed Syria. Moreover, he was a great founder of cities in all those areas(especi"lly i" Bithynia-Pontus, which was shorr of them), in order to simplify what administration was undertaken.

Pompey did not irresponsibly burden the state.cIn fact, he found the perfect soludon. The separation of libertas and immunitashrd been theoretically possibleever sincethe Romans first came acrossit in the Seleucid kingdom; it had occasionallybeen practised soon after (notably 'free' in the case of the tribute imposed on the Macedonian republics efter 167)7 and was accepted in the orgarrisation of Greece in 146. In Sicily, in the lex Rupilia of t3z, we find the 'freedom' of the ciuitatesliberaehedged about with numerous restrictions, all to the economic profit of Rome.8 br the first century irnmunitasis still often conferred, but as a specialfavour. However, it seemsto have been Pompey who first systematically extended this idea to client princes. His eastern provinces were protected, as had been the tradidon, by a layer of client states acting asbufGrs-tradition, but now first worked out consistently and coherenth, *d with attention to the frontier as a whole. Pompey (ashe himselfwas to say)t found Asia a frontier province 'With and left it in the heart of the empire. Pompey, the client princes become a real part of the empire (reichsangehörig,rn Mommsen's word), in a sensein which they never had been before. They now pay tribute to the Roman People. The bestknown case is Judaea.lo How widely the principle applied, we are not told. But there is a well-known fact that mav be informative if scrutinised. ln his triumph, in addition to ,"th., extravagant claims of victories won and cities founded, and the booty (zo,ooo talents: 48o,ooo,oooHS) depositedin the Treasury, he assertedthat he had raised the uectigalidof the Roman People from 2oo,ooo,oooHS to j4o,ooo,ooo HS.1l Of course,he is obviously claiming more than his due: Bithynia had been left to the Roman People by will tn 74,hed been cleared of the enemy by Lucullus and had never again been lost. The fact that it was Pompey who had organised it was, in a way, accidental. However, even so, the 'free' figures conclusively show the tribute coming in from clients.Pompey had added two provinces (plus a strip of Cilicia). These couJd, by themselves,never have produced r.7 times as

much as all the ten old provinces together. Sincehe certainly did not increase the revenue from eight of those provinces, which were not concerned in his war, and probably-ir view of the state of the country-did not add much to the sum squeezedout of Asia, it follows that a large part of the increasemust have been due to a consistent policy of taxing clients. ln fact, Pompey had combined the advantagesof the traditional policy (freedom from administration) with the chief advantage (as it now was) of imperialism-large revenues. Vectigalia were clearly a prime consideration of Pompey, as they had been of C. Gracchus. The People h-dly neededCicero to remind them of whar ro expec: uectigalianow.meant their own profits. Pompey, of course,did not act entirely on political theory. He aimed at keeping the support of the masses,asothers did, and he usedhis chanceof doing more to merit it. However, we must see him in his context. He merely carries to extremes what is the common tone in his day. For it is the senatorsthemselveswho now take the lead in imperialism in both its principal senses:in exploitation and in aggression. Not surprisingly (in the Roman schemeof thing$, it is the political class,not the various nonpolitical pressure-groups,that ultimately decides d1e temper of policy. The moral eflects of the Social and Civil Wars of the decade after 9r have often been noted and need no elaboratetreatment. Sulla showed what an unscrupulous and selfish man could now hope to achieve with an army of have-nots closely attached to himself and accustomed to the devastation of Italy-an army resembling its leader in its unhesitatingpursuit of its own profir, 'Sulla without any considerationfor its country. In Syme'swords, could not abolish his own example."t He did try, of course, by administrative checks and saGguards,which added up to a wellconceived and (on paper) promising setdement.ls But for many reasons-which this is not the place to discuss-he failed. Henceforth it was apparent to anyone who considered the matter with detachment that immense wealth and personal power were

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within the reach of any man who could obtain a large enough command and, winning the loyalty of his men, was prepared to use it with sufücient lack of scruple. 'Worse sdll, perhaps: Sulla's victory and its consequences Sulla had shown proclaimed the bankruptcy of the oligarc\. that outstanding successcould be achievedby ruthlesspursuit of self-interest.The hollowness of the aristocretic res publica now stood revealedfor all to see: the arcanumimpeii was out, that its rulers and chief benefrciariesno longer seriously believed in it.14 They had adopted successas their chief criterion. The lessonwas bound to sink in sooner or later. Those-and especiallyordinary Italians-who had suffered for their loyalry to the res publica, although, after all, it had never brought them very much profit, were bound to remember. A generationlater it becameclear that they and their sonswere no longer willing to defend what their rulers had so shamelesslyabandoned. So much for the general efGct on the fabric of society. As for the point that particularly concerns us: we have seen that reand expansion and exploitation, in the straints on aggressiveness not entirely due to moral scruples.Victory were secondcentury, and conquest, at any rate, remained in principle desirable ends. The motives that had restrained dreams of personal glory (and enrichment), and of the aggrandisementof the Roman People in accordancewith the censors'ritual prayer, had largely been social and political ones.They had gradually ceasedto oPerate.Thisas we have seen-was becoming clear even by 89.tu It was when it was just beginning to appear that the decadeof internal war and rebellion smashedthe strained fabric. After Sulla, men could seekpower and profit without restraint and useit without fear of really firm opposition. Both leaders and men, in the new era, were going to be much more ready for adventureand its rewards. Pompey wes one of the first to learn the new methods-from his father, who had probably been the first to learn them from Sulla,r6and then under Sulla himself. He turned them first against the lawfirl government and then against his benefactor Sulla.r?

Holding impeium without a break from 83 to his consulshipin 7o,he acquired immense clientelaeand probably immense wealth in all the westem provinces; then, after his consulship, he refused to take up a paltry province and waited for his chance. It came in 'With e7f', and. he eagerly seized it. ufter contempt-openly displayed-for his rivals and enemies, he used it to become the patron of the East, which, without consulting Senateor People, he organised like a monarch. The financial profits of this deserve to be stressed.teAt the end of his Asian campaign Pompey distributed the sum of 16,oooalents (nearly 4oo,ooo,oooHS) to his soldiers, who had already received prize money and a great deal of booty in the campaign. 6,ooo HS went to eachsoldier, and the senior oftcers (we know the names of menry) received, altogether, the magnificent sum of roo,ooo,oooHS. It hasbeen shown that centurions probably got twenty times as much as common soldiersand tribunes tzo times as much: a similar distribution in 66 indicates Pompey's scales. If so, it can be calculated that Pompey, at the time of the final distribution, had eight (rather depleted) legions. With these whole-heartedly loyal to him, he would have power such as no man in Rome had ever had, dwarfing the resultsof the great wars of the secondcentury; not ro mention the fact that Sulla had shown to all that the new armieshad no thought for the respublicaand a good deal for those who led and rewarded them.le Not only power due to devoted veterans, but wealth as the basisof a more solid and lasting ascendancy.Marcus Crassusas we all know-said that no one was wealthv who could not afford to pay for a legion.zo Marcus Crassus,by display and magniloquence, attained and still rehins the reputation of having beenthe richestman in Rome, at leastin his day. In jJ B.c.he made it abundandy clear, before leaving for the East, in order to safeguard the attachments he had won in his absence,which was expectedto be prolonged.2r He sacrificeda tenth of his estateto Hercules (we may be sure that he computed it generously), feastedthe whole people, gave every ciazen enough to live on for

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three morrths, and then announced that he still had 7,ooo talents left-no one should be in any doubt that he was a man worth remembering even when away. His forttne, we may say (recogoirirg that we have only his word for it, and that he did nothing to understate the fact$, had amounted to about 8,ooo talents before the display. Certainly enough to pay for a legion or two: and someof the private soldiers,at any rate, were not expensive,22 ofücerswould be men whom one had in one's pay in any case,as politicians. Pompey did not advertisehis wealth: he had no need to. Yet he could have bought Crassusout without feeling the pinch. The personal profits of the eastem campaign were enormous. As we saw in the caseof Nicomedes asearly as 89, Roman commanders now expected to be well rewarded for aiding an ally-and in default of money they might accept a promissory note, with regular payment of interest. The 16,ooo talents distributed to the army (a quarter of it to the senior officers)give us some idea of what must have been the scaleof the commander's own profit. Naturally, investments on this scalecould not go into Italian land: there was not enough of it. Fortunately, we can form some idea of what happenedto at leastsome of them. Cicero, in Cilicia, ttad to look after the repayment of huge sumsowed to Pompey by AriobarzanesIII of Cappadocia.With this man, Pompey had had no personalcontact: their only relation was thet Pompey had witnessed and approved the transfer of power from his grandfather (AriobarzanesI) to his father (AriobarzanesII)-a very indirect and entirely hereditary benefcium.zs There is no doubt that the poor king paid heavily for it. He also had other debts,of which we shallhave more to say.Cicero found sescentis and trying hard to him besiegeda Pompeiprocuratoribus Thirry-three talents was all interest that he owed. pay at least the he could find per month, and this was in fact not (though it was nearly) enough to cover the interest. Pompey was pleasantand accommodating about it aX: clementerid fert.z No wonder: after all, he hardly neededthe capital and, if he got it back, would only have to find a place for reinvesting it. With all prominent Romans 8z

in businessin a big way, investment oPPortunitiesfor large sums cannot have been unlimited. Not to mention the advantage of having Ariobarzanesbound to himself by his debt. Pompey knew both businessand politics. A calculation is worth attempting (though necessarily uncertain). At the legal rate of interest $o/o per month) this interest means a principal of 3,3oo talents-and even if (asis very likely) the great man was not satisfied with the legal maximum, he will hardly have been getting more than rwice as much; which still leavesa tidy sum (r,65o talentsor 4o,ooo,oooHS) for the indebtednessof a king for whom Pompey, after all, had not done very much. 4o,ooo,o@ HS, one might point out, was just enough to provide roo men widr the minimum equestrian census. IJnfortunately we cannot tell whether the principal consisted of a sum acftally invested in the kingdom or in a promissory note by Ariobarzanes' father for servicesrendered: we shall not go far 'We can now imagine what wrong if we assumea little of both. other kings and dynasts,with whom Pompey was in closecontact and for whom he had done a great deal, owed him or had paid him. The ro,ooo talents that Rabirius Postumus had scrapedtogether for Ptolemy Auletes pale into insignificance in comparison with such sums-not to mention the miserable 8,ooo talents that were apparently, even at his own optimistic valuation, the total property of Marcus Crassus. Then there were the cities. From his province Cicero writes a lefterz5to the govemor of Bithynia, which Pompey had organised as a province, asking him to help one Cluvius of Puteoli (of a family of financiers) to collect his debts-which, without official help, he thinks will be a hopelesstask; Mylasa, Alabanda, Carian Heiaclea, Bargylia and Caunus owe him money, as well as 'Agitur various private individuals. And Cicero adds discreetly: res Cn. Pompei etiam.' Cluvius, as scholarshave recognised,was 'Mit Pompey's financial agent. Drumann summed it all up: Schuldscheinenbeladenkehrte er nach Italien zurück.'26Pompey left the East not only as its patron, but to a considerableextent 8l

(and one hard to realise nowaday$ literally as irs owner. Having assignedit to cities and kings and to the Iioman people as far as administration was concernäd,he held the mortgagjonds; and, unlike a modern investor in foreign states,he ."Ja U" sure that financial control meant political cöntrol, aswell as a safeincome. One can only wonder how much he invested in the numerous cities that he actually founded and where he was worshipped as letistes. This was busines on a grand scale,dwarfing the doings of the negotiatoresthat tend to fill our textbooks. Indeed, "s we have seen,thesemen might well be only the agentsof senators.pompey was the outstanding example; the greaiest of the owners ofih" captive world. Others had their share.We all know about the noble Brutus: cicero was as shockedas each student still is when it first dawned on him.zz Brutus' loan to Cyprian Salamishad been made when he was on the island "r " p-tirr"t. man, and a young man at that (not yet quaestorian),under his uhcle M. Cato T Jq/6.'8 And sincesuchloans were illegal under the lex Gabinia, he charged 48o/ointeresr instead of the legal no/o and used rwo 'lvhen procuratoresas men of straw. the Salaminians fell into arrears,one of thesemen, Scaptius,went to Cicero's predecessor Ap. Claudius, got himself appointed prefect, was given a force of cavalry-and proceeded to Cyprus to sqoe.z. -oo"y out of the bouleof Salamis-to such effect that (we are told) äve of them starved to death while he held them besieged in the council chamber. But that failed to get him *y -oi.y, and as a result Cicero had to ake cognizance of the affair. Ae refused ro reappoint ScaptiuspreGct (we hear incidennlly that this gave grear offence, since such appointments were regarded "r oJrrnal"*d were expected by the great men in Rome interested in such btrsiness),but ordered the Salaminiansro pay-which rhey were willing to do, at the legal rate of interest.-At this point Scaptius produced a senatusconsuhumthat Brutus had proc'red and^that (a) gave legd exemption from the lex Gabn;a to this whole trursaction; and (b) gave similar exemprion from the maximum 84

interest rate and ordered the contract to shnd as signed (i.e. at 4ffi instead 9f y%).Brutus had assumedopen reiponsitiliry, when he saw his financial interesrs endangered,-andhaä evidentiy had n9 dificulry in securing the suppoit he wanted. Cicero_who detestedthe whole affair, but *"t oot willing to be a marryr on behalf of his principles-could do tto -orJ tlan refuse io adjudicate on tlose terms, and held the matter over for his successor, who would no doubt be more complaisant.This is only an outline of the famous Scaptiusaffair. But it is clear thrt .rr.r, an unusually- honest governor could not risk giving serious offence to such asBrurus, who could get senatorial?""rä., passed in his private interest even in the most disreputablecircums-tances -not to mention offence to Cicero's own friend Atdcus, whose aid Brutus had enlisted, and who 'now begs his dear friend to let Scaptiush1v9 a troop of horse-only a little one, just fifty swords-which he Glt sure would make the Salaminians sel reeson'.2tIt is to Cicero's credit that he acted even ashe did; and it is clear *nt ßw others would have done so. The amount of the loan cannot be ascertained,since we have no idea how much the Salaminianshad been able to pay and for how lo-ng. It has been worked oü (exempligratia) th"i, if th.y never did p^y &y,of the inreresr due (which is in fact unlikelyj, the sum borrowed in 56 need have been only rz talents to give a debt of zoo talents(the actual figure we have) in 5o.s0Thiiis a measureof_tle profits that were made by senatorswho-to say the least-did not have a repuarion for being unscrupulous: wL can imagine what dealsan Ap. Claudius or a p. Clodius would be involved in. The most alarming feature of the whole case,however, is the fact that senators-even philosophersamong themwere quite pfepared to profit from their position in ordir to pur -th. themselves above the law-and that in this thev could ,."or" total and unquestioning support of the Senatäas a whole, apgarendy as a matter of course. Attempts to protect the weak became-as has so often been the result of *ell-meant social legislation-merely anorher way of reinforcing the profits of the

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powerftrl. The lex Gabinia, as far as the provincials were conl"rned, had only made the terms of loans much worse than they need have been. The sameBrutus had also lent Ariobarzanesmoney: no doubt (in the light of what we have seen) ü: Ki"g needed i1.1o pal Ariobarzanes really could not pay this additional iro-p.y.-nut debt: he was bankrupt and in fear of his life ! Even so, Brutus was so persistentthat Cicero-who, no doubt, did not want to aPPeaI qui^teunreasonableto his Roman friends and enemies-managed ä ,qrr"."" no lessthan roo talentsout of him over six months: prop-o.tionately more (he tells "t) q* Pompey-had got (2oo irl.tttt in six months).31Thus, even if the King's debt to Brutus was lessthan a quarter of what he owed to Pompey, it was quite a sizable sum to o*" to a young man barely of quaestorian status. For throughour it is Brutus' age and status that lends terrible significance to his financial manoeuvres. :Ih"r" are the best-known casesillustrating the way in which the empire of tl: Roman senatorsnow profited personally from 'We know them well because People. They cannot be unique. Cicäro happänedto ger involved in them and to write about them, in letters that happento be preserved.There wer€ many provinces that had no Cicero astheir governor, and Cicero'sown behaviour, as well as that we seeof that of his friends and of the Senateas a whole in theseaffairs, clearly shows us-as against the attempts of apologists among historians-that we have here stumbled upon *h.t i". -"y t"!".d aswidespreadand indeea typi"-d' We-need hardly "dd i*"-ples from men's actual governorships' Things *.r" obrriorrtly "äry much worse when men of the cast of mino of the hot ooäbl" brotot (not to mention worse) had supreme power, without appeal and with little ßar of punishment (p19irid.d th"y pl"y"d^ ihe political game in Rome with reasonable "are), ov"i the ilves and ptopetrybf a whole province-and.when ple"ry of Roman friends, both in their retinue and at home, ä*p."t.d to be satisfied.As early as7o, the Vertinesshow us what " Ä* could at leasthope to get away with-and that a new man' 86

with no claim to nobility. It is human nature-as our own generation has seen-to refuse to believe what seems monstrous and simply to closeone'smind to it, however well-attestedit may be. There have been those who have urged that Verres was not typical. Yet we have little seriousreasonfor such a view. He was unfortunate in having Cicero as his prosecutor. Had he been luckier at this final stage,there is no real doubt that he would have survived in Rome, reaching honour and a consulship, and perhaps joining in the defence of the Republic against Caesar. \Vhere Cicero speaksfor the defence,as he usually did, the caseis made to look very different. Yet we can often tell, by his incidental admissionsand appealsto precedent, what was regarded as fair and tolerable, and by how much his clients at times surpassed even that very generous measure.No administration in history has ever d"noi"J itself so whole-heartedly to feecing its subjecis for the private benefit of its ruling classasRome of the last age of the Republic. It is, as usual, the litde touches-the reGrences to what did not (apparently) arouse astonishment or disgust-that prove most revealing. Thus, before Cicero's governorship the cities of Cyprus had been accustomedto pay zoo talents a year (- 4,8oo,oooHS) to the Roman governor-i.e. to men ashonourable as P. Lentulus Spinther-in order to escapehaving troops quartered upon them in winter;3z and that, of course, after M. Porcius Cato, honest and unrelenting, had removed 7,ooo talents from the island when it was annexed. We begin to understand why the Salaminianswere hopelesslyin debt to Cato's young kinsman. All this is well known, to those familiar with the evidence.s Laws like the lexJulia were probably not even intended to strike at the chief beneficiariesof the system.It is pretty clear that Caesar and his friends ignored them as light-heartedly as anyone. i.I"tur"lly, there are now no limits except äiinäin.#. ä" calculated aggressionby Rome's representatives.Again a small case may be cited as typical, for motives and techniques.saM. Scaurus,Pompey's proquaestor, had been left with two legions, 8l

-went home. He pro praetore,to look after Syria when Pompey decided to take up for his own benefit an idea that Pompey, for political reasons,had abandonedand to attack the Arabian dynast Ar.t"r. This man had done homage to Pompey and had given no pretext for war.35Yet Scaurushad no scruplesabout launching Lis att"ck. Things did not go asplanned, and in the end the young commander had to ask Antipater (of the Jewish dynasty) to mediate and get him the best terms possible. For payment of a lump sum of 3oo talentsby Aretas, Scauruswithdrew. (He was later, ascurule aedile,to boastquite unashamedlyof his victory.)g 'We are not told whether the money went to the treasury or into Scaurus' pockets-probably a little of both. But it is clear that Rome's international behaviour had followed thd line indicated as early as 89 and had degenerated, at its worst, into highway robbery. The natural consequencesbecome clear with M. Crassusand C. Caesar.Crassus,in his Parthian war' was mere$ following in Pompey's footsteps. For Pompey himself-for his part, as we have seen, following in Sulla's-had made an agreement with Phraatesof Parthia when he neededhis helP against Tigranes of Armenia; had calmly broken it when Tigranes submitted to him; had written Phraatesan insulting letter when he dared to complain and then crossedthe Euphratesand even the Tigris to punish him. to an agreement with Lr the end Phraatesseemsto have come 'We must remember that, Tigranes, and no harm came of it all.3? with characteristic behaving while Sulla, earlier, only a generation had never had king, insolenie towards the envoy of the Parthian any intention of breaking the agreementhe had made with him-38 The difference is apparent. And Pompey's actions gave Crassus his idea. Parthia was clearly just another client state, and one whose insolence had shown that it had not been sufficiently humbled; and M. Crassus,asclearly, was the man to do it, to his own political and (no doubt) economic advantage: the wealth that Pompey had gained in the Eastcan safelybe assumedto have been aspowerful a motive ashis glory. ln 5J, after obtaining the

good fortune that Parthia, essentially unstable, was in no position to take advantage of her own strength and Rome's weaknessand that no better opponent remained. We have seenthe attested hatred for Rome among the subjectsshewas exploiting. But they remained impotent. Very di:fferent,of course,is the story of C. Caesar,the greatest brigand of them all, applying and perfecting the lessonsof Pompey both at home and abroad, with a single-mindednessnot weakened (asin Pompey's case)by scruplesabout traditional forms or by desire for the approval of his peers. The sweet reasonableness of the Commentaiescannot disguise the fact that Caesar started a major foreign war and then a civil one-for a variety of reasons, as we all know, but chiefy (as he at times comes close to ad'We mitting) for his personal glory and profit. know how well he succeeded.Unfortunately we have no lettersof Cicero's to give us a deailed idea of Caesar'sprofits in Gaul and their investment. In this as in other respectshe was more fortunate than his rival. 'buy' But we have some facts, above all the millions spent to 'enormous friends in Rome: an wage'nofor thc tribune Curio (the figures vary from ten to sixty million sesterces);4lr,5oo talents(36,ooo,oooHS) for the consul L. Paullus;a2large-though ultimately ineffectual-loans to Cicero (who, as we have seen before, behaved in ways that were unintelligible to his less scrupulous contemporaries);asnot to mention his well-known liberalitasto those who joined him in Gaul, from L. Balbus and the'ghasdy Mamurra'4 to Cicero's young friend, the lawyer C. Trebatius Testa, to whose prospectsof quick enrichment Cicero never fails to refer in their surviving correspondence.aEAt his which time (admittedly) he had conquered triumph in arby not only Gaul, but the world-Caesar, in addition to lavish banquets on 22,@o triclinia and gifts to all citizens, not to

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8g

province of Syria, he invaded Parthian territory without pretext or declaration of war.se The result was Carrhae, and a dangerous conflict ended (temporarily) only by Aggustus,-.fgp..oncearro-

ganceandgr..d l'"a fb;ä th.iflffiK*ffiff,"ff

Ro-.',

mention gamessuchasno one had ever seenbefore, paradedbooty worth 65,ooo talents and gold crowns weighing 2o,4r4lbs in the procession,and gave each soldier 5,ooo denarif(Pompey in Asie had been able to afford only r,5oo). These figures are official and well-attested.{0 And in view of Caesar's actions, there is no doubt that, at leastin some cases,the öpportunity for such profits had been deliberately sought and created. This is the striking diference between the late and the middle Republic. It has recendy been arguedn? that Caesar was not really an imperialist: he did nothing aggressive at the start of the Gallic War, but was merely led from one thing to another; and at the end of it all, after (admiaedly) much cruelty and plundering, he merely created client states(under the supervision of the Aedui and Arverni) rather than a province, and did not tax Gaul too heavily. The points are worth making, and repeating in our context: there is much about Caesarthat can fairly be called traditional, much that was dictated by circumstancesrather than deliberately willed. Yet there is another side. That Caesar did not aim at the conquest of t}e whole of Gaul at the very start of the war is certain; but no lesscertainly, he was not merely led on by circumstances, but, with callous brutality and treachery (sur: passingthe worst that Roman commandershad done in secondi"ntury Sp^io), seized every chance of further conquest, never stopping until (by 57) conquestwas total. After that, of course, leläUa no longer withdraw, even if he had wished to (which there is no reason to suppose). Moreover, he had learnt all Pompey's lessons.There was no need to saddleRome with the direci administration of a vast tribal area, as had been donewith such dire consequences-in second-century Spain. Pompey had founil the happy solution: they could be taxed without being governed. Admittedly, ten million denariidoesnot seema heavy iar