09c: The Costs of Success

Rome's conquests had brought new ager publicus, enslaved prisoners of war, and other material riches. Combined with the cultural riches of the Hellenistic tradition, it was all good. But serious trouble lay just beneath the surface. Without an official plan for dispersing the spoils of war, the generals and the Senate were free to do as they pleased with it. This of course helped the wealthy aristocrats more than the plebeian slugs who actually fought the wars. Supposedly the ager publicus was merely lent to the victorious generals, the senators, or their friends, but then as now, possession was nine tenths of the law. Advances in agriculture and the booming number of slaves had made it profitable to run large-scale plantations, or latifundia. Naturally, the wealthy patricians who wound up with the ager publicus were in perfect position to make a killing. They could have their latifundia worked with cheap slave labor, driving their small farmer neighbors out of business. Best of all, they could pretend to honor the mos maiorum by being successful farmers. Since the remaining small farmers could not compete with the latifundia, they were lucky just to get by. That is, the small farmers who had successfully survived the Second Punic War. The widows of soldiers who died in the war, uncompensated for the loss of their husbands, usually had to sell their land to the latifundia operators at ridiculously low prices. Some small farmers left because they couldn't even afford to pay their taxes. With nowhere else to go, these former small farmers and their families were forced to move to the big city, which almost always meant Rome.

By this time, the old patrician-plebeian breakdown had faded away, surviving only in the office of the Tribunate and the existence of the Popular Assembly. Thanks to the Sextio-Licinian laws of 367, the classes had been permitted to intermarry. This brought fresh blood into the upper class and giving ambitious and gifted plebeians something to shoot for. The old patrician class had been effectively replaced by the "nobility:" membership in the noble class was earned by being elected consul, or being the descendant of an ex-consul. Rome was still, to be sure, an oligarchy in keeping with the dear old mos maiorum. It's just that the ruling class had plebeian blood in it. As elsewhere, Rome had profited from its adaptability in allowing social mobility. The only drawback to being a member of the noble, or senatorial class, was that senators were expected to be above having business interests. According to the mos maiorum, it was assumed that senators were already wealthy farmers in need of no additional income. Since they still wanted additional income, the latifundia were an ideal business venture. Romans who chose not to be in the senatorial class and compete for slots on the cursus honorum could belong to the "equestrian class," or the class of knights. Once a term for Roman soldiers who served as cavalrymen, the equestrian class of the late Republic was made up of men who chose to focus upon their business interests instead of politics. These men were usually (but not always) from less established families, and less wealthy (temporarily). Some equestrians aspired to become members of the senatorial class, but for the most part they were comfortable making money and adopting individual senators as their patrons.

Also about this time the politicians began to sort themselves out into two factions called optimates and populares. Neither faction can be called a political party in the American sense, because neither had a particular agenda other than getting its adherents up the cursus honorum. The factions differed primarily in the noises they made in order to achieve political prominence. The populares talked furiously about their deep concern for the Roman masses. They applauded the powers of the tribunes and appealed to the Council of the Plebeians, but basically they just wanted to get their hands on the magistracies.  The optimates, for their part, tended to be the members of great noble families of the past and tended to make noises about the glorious mos maiorum.  As for the masses themselves, they seemed to see politics more as entertainment than anything else. Their votes were less important (by tradition) than those of the wealthy, but they genuinely enjoyed the drama of the annual political campaigns and the stray handouts they got at election time. The tribunes, who were supposedly protectors of the Roman People and had the power to veto anything they thought endangered the people, were usually bought and paid for by one or the other faction.

In the 130s BC and the 120s BC, the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus used the power of the tribuneship to its utmost, trying to help of the dispossessed small farmers and other urban riff-raff. They were both of the very noblest blood (their mother Cornelia, a patrician, was the daughter of Scipio Africanus), they realized something had to be done. Elected tribune for 133 BC, Tiberius tried to bolster the citizen military by taking ager publicus from the wealthy and giving it to the landless poor. This was of course interpreted as trying to build colonies full of personal clients. When Tiberius stepped down from his second tribunate in 131 BC, the optimates riled up a mob against him and he was killed.  Elected tribune a decade later, Gaius Gracchus took up his brother's program along with a plan awarding Roman citizenship to all Rome's Italian allies. While both of these initiatives were laudable and even necessary, the aristocracy was able to play on fears of the Gracchi violating the mos maiorum to build up a personal (or family) clientele. Like his brother, Gaius was murdered by optimate mobs in 121 BC. The aristocratic optimates had gained the upper hand over the reformers, and ambitious tribunes thought twice before messing with the establishment. But this was only for the time being. Something would have to give, and within fifteen years it did.