Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research available in Hardcover, eBook
Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research
- ISBN-10:
- 0691140383
- ISBN-13:
- 9780691140384
- Pub. Date:
- 04/11/2010
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- ISBN-10:
- 0691140383
- ISBN-13:
- 9780691140384
- Pub. Date:
- 04/11/2010
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research
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Overview
Hölkeskamp offers a comprehensive, in-depth survey of the modern debate surrounding the Roman Republic. He looks at the ongoing controversy first triggered in the 1980s when the 'oligarchic orthodoxy' was called into question by the idea that the republic's political culture was a form of Greek-style democracy, and he considers the important theoretical and methodological advances of the 1960s and 1970s that prepared the ground for this debate. Hölkeskamp renews and refines the 'elitist' view, showing how the republic was a unique kind of premodern city-state political culture shaped by a specific variant of a political class. He covers a host of fascinating topics, including the Roman value system; the senatorial aristocracy; competition in war and politics within this aristocracy; and the symbolic language of public rituals and ceremonies, monuments, architecture, and urban topography.
Certain to inspire continued debate, Reconstructing the Roman Republic offers fresh approaches to the study of the republic while attesting to the field's enduring vitality.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691140384 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/11/2010 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
RECONSTRUCTING THE ROMAN REPUBLIC
AN ANCIENT POLITICAL CULTURE AND MODERN RESEARCHBy KARL J. HÖLKESKAMP
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2010 Princeton University PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-14038-4
Chapter One
FROM 'PROVOCATION' TO 'DISCUSSION' A PLEA FOR CONTINUATION
The current debate on the political culture of the Roman republic began almost twenty years ago and has lost little of its momentum since. For the first time in decades, the focus was not on the countless individual issues but on the really basic questions. The status, identity, functions, and interactions of citizen body and popular assemblies, of Senate and magistrates were problematized and reopened to discussion, thus raising fundamental questions about the very character and structure of the libera res publica. Essential issues in this debate are the relative importance and relations of institutions and procedures of deliberation and decision making, the nature of social hierarchies, rank, and reputation, of influence, authority and, last but not least, power and participation in the political life of this Republic, and indeed its whole political culture. There began a search for adequate terms for the peculiar sociopolitical order of the imperial Republic that attempted to clarify the basic meaning of terms like 'constitution,' 'democracy,' and 'sovereignty,' 'process,' 'structure' and 'ritual,' 'city-state' and its character as a 'state' (in whatever sense of this controversial concept), 'aristocracy,' 'meritocracy' and 'oligarchy,' 'élite' and 'ruling' or 'political class.'
This international discussion was triggered by Fergus Millar, who radically questioned a basic consensus, which had-in spite of many differences concerning approaches, perspective, and interpretation-been accepted in the field without serious challenge for almost a century. Up to then, it had been agreed that the social and political order of the libera res publica had been aristocratic or even 'oligarchic,' meaning that all institutions and positions of power were controlled by a particular kind of ruling class, which recruited not only magistrates, generals, priests, and senators from its ranks, but also the official representatives of the people, the tribuni plebis. Scholars had generally taken for granted that this ruling (or 'political') class-often called an "aristocracy of office" or the "senatorial aristocracy"-had an inner circle, the true nobilitas, consisting of those families with a consular tradition and a kind of virtually, though not formally, hereditary claim to the highest magistracy. This nobility also controlled the Senate, because the (higher) magistrates regularly returned into its ranks after their year of office; the Senate was taken to have been the central institutional organ of this aristocracy and, therefore, the actual decision-making and thus, in the full sense, 'ruling' body.
Millar has accused this established "orthodoxy" of a "remarkable distortion" of the true importance of the constitution's central institutions; he even calls it a distorted, if not completely false, view of the entire political order. He criticizes two specific aspects. According to him, the populus Romanus itself, "as represented by the various forms of assembly," was "in a formal sense the sovereign body in the Republican constitution"-and "the fact of this sovereignty has to be central to any analysis" of the "Republic as a political system." The Senate, on the other hand, was never a "parliament," let alone a "legislature" of a "representative" government. He believes that the traditional perspective not only plays down the institutionalized participation of the people (which no one in fact has ever doubted), but also dismisses it as merely "formal," "passive," "powerless," and "nominal," even as a "charade, managed from above"-namely, "determined by a self-perpetuating oligarchy." Since Matthias Gelzer's classic book on the nobilitas, the idea that Roman citizens, the inhabitants of Rome and Italy, and the whole imperium Romanum were linked in a complex system of patron-client relations had been generally accepted without further discussion. This dense network of vertical dependencies, mutual obligations, and duties was thought to include the 'ruling class' as well as all the other groups of citizens, reaching down even to the great mass of plebs and provincials. For Millar, it has been this "modern myth" that legitimated-again without further discussion-the conclusion that these complex interrelations secured the oligarchy's control over all votes, processes of legislation and jurisdiction, and, above all, the elections to the highest magistracies. And as a consequence, it was this control that in turn allowed the oligarchy to reproduce itself and ensure its position. These main points are-according to Millar-the basis of the generally accepted "fiction of a collective parliamentary rule of the Senate" and "misleading presuppositions" of a ruling class as a closed shop.
For Millar this leads to a second fundamental question, which he raised in his characteristically provocative way: "Was there a 'governing class,' an 'aristocracy,' or an 'élite'? Was it defined by descent, and if so, in what way?" He does not deny that there were-of course-patricians, who were "descendants of earlier generations of patricians." However, "nothing guaranteed a patrician a public office, a priesthood, or a seat in the Senate." Also there were "some persons in public life," who were called nobiles, because one of their ancestors "had held a major public office." But, according to Millar, this term was "social or political, not constitutional": a nobilis cannot be compared to-for example-an English peer and his hereditary constitutional rights. Millar denies the existence of such a situation in the Republic: "Even a person who was both a patricius and a nobilis had to compete for office." In his opinion, the resulting competition took place between individuals who as such (and not as members of a political class with a specific collective identity) promoted themselves in public life. In consequence, Millar flatly denies the existence of the nobility or of any homogeneous patrician-plebeian political élite in general; for him, to put it in a nutshell, neither an aristocracy nor an oligarchy ever existed in Republican Rome.
Only if we abandon these "fictions" and "misconceptions" can we truly understand the libera res publica. For Millar, the Republic was not simply a city-state but a true "direct democracy"-much closer to the Athenian democracy than most scholars would have been prepared to admit. This interpretation adds the Roman republic to the "relatively small group of historical examples of political systems" that "might deserve the label 'democracy'" at all-and therefore it is for Millar only fit and proper, and indeed high time, that the Roman people be restored "to their proper place in the history of democratic values." According to Millar, the populus Romanus itself was the sovereign true and proper-and not merely in an abstract formal, symbolic, or ideological sense. The assemblies of the people-the comitia centuriata, comitia tributa and the concilia plebis-always had the final word in the political process. This includes not only the election of magistrates, but also matters of foreign policy, decisions about treaties, war and peace, and, most importantly, the whole spectrum of legislative competences, ranging from issues of citizenship, the founding of colonies, and distribution of land to civil and criminal law, legal procedure, and even matters of the constitution.
Millar insists that real day-to-day political issues were not decided behind the closed doors of the curia by the Senate and its exclusive inner circle, but were publicly discussed, under the open sky, in the central civic spaces of the city-state Rome, such as the Forum Romanum, comitium, and the Campus Martius, and not only before and, in the true sense of the term, under the eyes of the citizens assembled there, but also among them. Therefore, these public spaces were the essential fields of activity, in the concrete as well as metaphorical sense of the term, for the individual actors playing the different public rôles that this "direct democracy" provided-as our sources for everyday political life show. According to Millar, these actors 'performed' as office holders or candidates going around in toga candida-as advocates in civil lawsuits, as prosecutors or defense counsels in political trials, as spokesmen, supporters of, or opponents to, the numerous issues that had to be presented and explained to the people of Rome, and that were often discussed heatedly before the people in formal assembly finally came to a decision. Moreover, Millar calls all these different functions mere facets or aspects of the single, most fundamental public rôle in this system-namely, that of the orator addressing the crowds in the political arenas of Rome. Only orators who were able to convince the assembled citizens of their views could hope for success and higher office.
Even Millar concedes that-in this sense-the political structure of the Republic was a "social system" after all, but only because it was based on human interaction in the most concrete sense. As all political action was at all times determined by the dense and small-scale topography of a 'city-state' and the direct face-to-face communication that resulted from it, political power always remained concentrated upon the space between forum and comitium-namely, the rostra, the platform from which orators addressed the crowds. What Millar calls the "direct democracy" of the Republic was clearly and obviously defined by this fundamental form of interaction in specific public spaces.
* * *
As Millar himself says, his intention in putting forward such deliberately one-sided claims is to force a debate with the supporters of the received "orthodoxy" about their fundamental "preconceptions," which he believes to have remained unchanged for decades: These "assumptions" are alleged to have dominated research on Republican Rome throughout the twentieth century. His implicit opponent in this dialogue turns out to be one of the prominent supporters of an older, indeed truly orthodox variant of the basic consensus-namely, Millar's own teacher Sir Ronald Syme. With a characteristic kind of aristocratic self-confidence, Syme had already formulated the inspiring principle of this orthodoxy in terms of a broad generalization in his famous book on the "Roman Revolution," magisterially declaring it a metahistorically valid universal truth: "In all ages, whatever the form and name of government" or "whatever may be the name and theory of the constitution," "be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade." Even Robert Michels's well-known 'iron law'-insisting on the "historical necessity of oligarchy"-could hardly be more explicit. And for Syme, "oligarchy" (be it "open or concealed") is not "a figment of political theory, a specious fraud, or a mere term of abuse," but "something real and tangible"-that is, "very precisely a collection of individuals," whose "shape and character" clearly "stands out, solid and manifest." 12 And that was certainly true for Rome: "In any age of the history of Republican Rome about twenty or thirty men, drawn from a dozen dominant families, hold a monopoly of office and power." On the receiving end, the amorphous and anonymous "other classes" were (at best) "susceptible to auctoritas, taking their tone and tastes from above"-in fact, the "lower classes" not only "had no voice in government," but Syme even denied them a "place in history."
As a consequence, political life was not characterized, according to Syme, "by the ostensible opposition between Senate and People, optimates and populares, nobiles and novi homines," let alone "by parties and programmes of a modern and parliamentary character," but simply consisted in nothing but "the strife for power, wealth and glory"-a never-ending struggle that invariably and exclusively took place within the closed circles of the senatorial aristocracy, "in the heart of the governing oligarchy, in court and cabinet." In the same context, Syme stated in his typically 'imperious' tone that the whole of Roman history, "Republican or Imperial," is "the history of the governing class"-"an aristocracy unique in duration and predominance." For him, this "oligarchy of government" and its "composition" always remained the "guiding," indeed "dominant theme of political history, as the binding link between the Republic and the Empire."
Sir Ronald Syme, Friedrich Münzer, the recognized and (rightly) revered doyen of Republican prosopography, and Matthias Gelzer-who has been listed among the founders of the consensus mentioned above, in spite of his reservations about an all-too-schematic model-agreed that the aforementioned "strife for power, wealth and glory," and indeed political conflict in general, took only one concrete form throughout the whole Roman republic: The formation of "aristocratic parties" or "factions" inside the nobilitas, which confronted each other in meetings of the Senate or even (at least during elections and in criminal trials) in the assemblies. However, this does not mean that these institutions were anything else but two stages of contest-and eventually even less than that: at least for the princeps, the "senate no less than the assembly of the sovran people was a cumbrous and unsatisfactory body to deal with." According to Syme, apparently alluding to a famous saying attributed to Caesar, "the Roman Commonwealth, "res publica populi Romani,'" was not only just "a name"-the "constitution" of the Republic (as well as, for different reasons, that of the Principate) was indeed nothing but a "façade," "a screen and a sham."
As a consequence, the kind of aristocratic 'parties' that Münzer and Syme envisaged could never influence the ordinary citizen body, let alone split the people as a whole into political groups. On the contrary, these 'parties' or 'factions' were exclusively alliances of leading families, sealed and stabilized-often for several generations-by typically "dynastic" forms of personal relationships-that is, by marriages and adoptions, personal obligations, political friendships and alliances between nobiles as heads of "noble houses," and downright "dynasties," patrician and plebeian. According to another prominent advocate of this approach, Howard Scullard, "an elaborate system of groupings and counter-groupings" had emerged by the mid-Republic, and it was this "system" that "formed the real, if unadvertised and unofficial, basis of Roman public life"; John Briscoe insisted as late as the early 1980s that it was "entirely natural, indeed inevitable, that such groups should have existed." At last, Roman Republican 'factionalism' had achieved the status of a metahistorical law of nature.
As Münzer and Syme explicitly pronounced, the one and only purpose of these "parties" was to obtain and maintain "power" in the state by holding the two highest offices, the dual magistracy of the consulship. The machinations of the "parties" and the typical "weapons" that their noble leaders held and wielded in order to achieve this one and only end were the true arcana imperii of the nobilitas throughout the entire Republic, from earliest times to its fall-and even beyond. And as "hardened prosopographers," they were confident that these arcana, though "concealed by craft or convention," could and did not "evade detection" by means of their particular method of investigating personal relations.
These assumptions and presuppositions gave rise to a specific concomitant "conception of the nature of Roman politics" that by definition, as it were, excluded the possibility that concrete issues, pragmatic problems, and programmatic differences could be (or ever become) the stuff that 'politics' was made of. Accordingly, 'politics' was understood as a kind of perpetual, unending hustle and bustle among the aforementioned leading figures as heads of individual families and representatives of their respective coalitions, the rise and "rule," "domination" and fall of dynasties and of one "governing party" following another, revolving around the central pivot of the consulate as an end in itself: to quote Syme again, it was the "lust of power" that was the "prime infirmity of the Roman noble."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from RECONSTRUCTING THE ROMAN REPUBLIC by KARL J. HÖLKESKAMP Copyright © 2010 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
List of Figures viiPreface to the English Edition ix
Preface to the German Edition xiii
CHAPTER 1: From 'Provocation' to'Discussion': A Plea for Continuation 1
CHAPTER 2: 'Reality' versus 'System': Conventional Conceptualizations of a'Constitution' 12
CHAPTER 3: From'System' to'Structure': New Questions about the Social Framework of Politics 23
CHAPTER 4: From'Structures' to 'Concepts': Problems of (Self-) Conceptualization of an Alien Society 44
CHAPTER 5: From'Concepts' to'Political Culture': The Benefi ts of Theory 53
CHAPTER 6: Between' Aristocracy' and 'Democracy': Beyond a Dated Dichotomy 76
CHAPTER 7: Consensus and Consent: Necessary Requirements of a Competitive Culture 98
CHAPTER 8: Symbolic Capital as Social Credit: Locating the Core of the Consensus 107
CHAPTER 9: An End of the Beginning: A New Ancient History and Its Topicality 125
Abbreviations 137
Bibliography 141
Index of Names 181
Index of Subjects 185
What People are Saying About This
This volume is written in an engaging and dynamic style, and makes an original contribution to ongoing debates within the field. There can be no doubt that Hölkeskamp is one of the top scholars working on the Roman Republic. His book represents a summary of the main scholarly questions aired over the last generation or so, as well as a plea for new directions and more dialogue. No equivalent book exists in any language.
— Harriet I. Flower, author of "Roman Republics"
"This volume is written in an engaging and dynamic style, and makes an original contribution to ongoing debates within the field. There can be no doubt that Hölkeskamp is one of the top scholars working on the Roman Republic. His book represents a summary of the main scholarly questions aired over the last generation or so, as well as a plea for new directions and more dialogue. No equivalent book exists in any language."—Harriet I. Flower, author of Roman Republics