Lecture 24: THE ARISTOCRATIC ETHOS AT ROME

Flowchart of the Roman Government

Curule Magistrates	ROMAN SENATE	Plebeian or Popular Magistrates
2 CONSULS (chief executives, age 42, presided over senate and assemblies, commanded armies in the field through imperium)	Auctoritas (combined influence and experience of its members)	10 PLEBEIAN TRIBUNES (civil liberties defenders, veto power, legislation, auxilium)
8 PRAETORS (judges of state tribunals, age 39, wielded imperium as provincial governors)	Senatus consultum (sense of the senate resolutions, legally non-binding but having the weight of law)
2 CURULE AEDILES (public works, public games)	All ex-magistrates entered the Senate for life.	2 PLEBEIAN AEDILES (public works of the “people”)
10 QUAESTORS (financial officers, age 30)	Senate determined foreign affairs (appointments to military and provincial commands) and finance (the amount of funds to be disbursed for warfare, festivals, and public works)
(cursus honorum)	Coins were struck EX S.C.
Elected by =>		Elected by =>
CENTURIATE ASSEMBLY		TRIBAL ASSEMBLY (a.k.a. Plebeian or Popular Assembly)
(193 centuries organized into 5 classes according to worth)		35 voting districts or tribes arranged geographically; organized according to residence)
The military and provincial authority or imperium of Consuls, Praetors, and Quaestors could be prorogued or extended for one year by the Senate.	The Senate and/or the Senate and the Roman People appointed DICTATORS in times of emergency.	31 tribes were rural; 4 tribes were urban (freedmen placed in these)
Consuls => Proconsuls Praetors => Propraetors Quaestors => Proquaestors	DICTATOR (absolute authority in Rome for 6 months; the restoration of Royal Power), wielded imperium both inside and outside the city.
DUAL POLITY	=>	Two governments operating at the same time in the same place

The results of the constitutional developments at Rome were best expressed by the Republican acronym, SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romani, “the Senate and the People of Rome.” The Romans saw themselves as engaged in a power-sharing relationship between the aristocratic Senate and its curule magistrates, and the democratic people and their magistrates. What held the Republic together for 5 centuries was the stabilizing influence of the Senate itself and the reliance on Roman family structure as the primary institution for political and social redress. Roman citizens readily consented to rule by an oligarchic regime, because the competitive character of the political system required that the oligarchs or Roman senators demonstrate their competency to lead. To become a Roman senator, an aristocrat had repeatedly to compete for election through an ascending hierarchy of political offices. The repeated reevaluation of politicians through an electoral process to some degree kept Roman senators accountable to their constituents. To become a senator, Roman aristocrats had to endure a winnowing process of rising through an ascending hierarchy of political offices, each one demanding and giving expression to new and more challenging skills. The Romans devised an expression for this process, the cursus honorum, “the race for the offices.” Senators perceived their political careers in highly public, highly competitive terms. They pursued Gloria et Honos, glory on the battlefield or through political success in the Assemblies or the Senate; honos, honor, meaning elected office at home. Political success required that individual aristocrats commit themselves to a political career from the time that they were prescient of mind as children.

Dual Polity at Rome possessed the distinct possibility of constitutional crises whenever the curule magistrates of the aristocratic wing of the government disagreed with the plebeian magistrates of the democratic wing. What prevented such conflicts was the mediating influence of the Senate. The Senate consisted of all ex-magistrates of Rome. As such, its membership represented the sum total of all wisdom and experience available in the Republican order. Although the Senate enjoyed no legally binding authority, it ruled by virtue of its auctoritas, the wisdom and influence of its members. Its members passed “sense of the Senate” resolutions known as senatus consulta, which had the de facto weight of law, since few standing magistrates were willing to challenge these resolutions and risk open conflict with the entire senatorial aristocracy.

Rank within the Senate itself was determined by how many offices one held. Those who held the highest offices, the consulship and/or the censorship, sat in the front rows of the Senate and were asked by presiding magistrates to speak out on the issues of the day. Customarily, the consul or tribune actively presiding over a Senate meeting would call on two highly distinguished ex consuls to speak that he knew held opposing points of view. Each would harangue the Senate about the issue before them for hours, and would include in his speech complaints about the decline in contemporary moral standards, the incompetence of the current crop of magistrates, various allegations of misconduct by rival senators, and any other gripes that came to mind. Typically any and all ex consuls present would get their chance to speak; however, the other senators would merely sit and listen, possibly exhorting those orating with cries of encouragement or derision. At the end of the day, the presiding magistrate would call for a vote by division or divisio. He would announce that all those patres who agreed with the distinguished ex consul so-and-so walk to one side of the hall and that all those who agreed with the opposing ex consul’s opinion walk to the other. Few senators actually got to speak, in other words, and most expressed their votes by walking from one side to the other and were known accordingly as pedarii, those who voted with their feet (as opposed to their voices). To be a decision maker, one had to hold the highest offices, particularly the consulship, which ennobled oneself and one’s family by making one member of the consular aristocracy at Rome. To obtain office, a young aristocrat had to construct an expanding base of constituents and display competency in military command and control, law, rhetoric, and finance.

Competing for office was so challenging that Roman aristocratic families would determine early on which of their male children they would push forward to seek political office. Parents would select their most talented sons to seek office, not necessarily the eldest. As children, sons of senators would be made to understand the significance of their place in society by memorizing the accomplishments of their aristocratic ancestors as preserved by their imagines. These were actual wax death masks of celebrated senators that sat in a shrine inside the entryway to the aristocratic household. They served as a daily reminder of the success, the importance, and the expectations of the aristocratic family and were brought out and worn by actors, hired by the family to reenact the personality of the ancestor through pantomime, during funeral processions whenever a member of an family passed away (including aristocratic females; Julius Caesar performed public funeral games for his aunt Julia, for example). Aristocratic children learned from watching their fathers just how public a senator’s life actually was. On days when Rome conducted public business, the senator would sit in his office, the tablinum, beneath the atrium of the Roman house in full view of his constituents or clients waiting to greet him out in the street. Once the doors to the house were open, it was possible to look directly in from the street to see the aristocrat seated at his table greeting his clients, who had queued up at the door waiting to salute him and to ask him for assistance in some matter, be it political, financial, legal, or personal. He would welcome as many relatives, friends, and clients as he had time for, greeting them by name (frequently whispered into his ear by a slave known as a nomenclator, who would also remind the senator of significant features of the client’s life -- name of wife, number of children, dates of birth, past dealings including loans outstanding or services extended in the past). The senator would never be alone. If public business required his presence he would leave his house and walk to the Roman Forum in the company of this following and would return with them at the end of the day.

The attendants of this following testified to the senator’s role in the Roman patron/client relationship. Senators and their constituents existed in a relationship of mutual dependency that while hereditary had to be renewed through mutual exchange of favors with each rising generation. An aristocrat inherited his relatives, friends, and clients from his parents, in other words, but the degree to which the patron/client relationship functioned as an institution depended on the activity and success of the senator himself. Senators were expected to assist their clients with matters occurring at the senator’s level of society -- the senator would lend clients money or find others to do so by acting as the client’s surety in a loan, the senator would defend the client’s interest in court, as his lawyer or at least as his character witness, the senator would speak and vote on behalf of wealthy influential clients such as publicans in the Senate house, or exert influence on behalf of the same with acting magistrates such as quaestors entrusted with disbursing state funds and conducting auctions. As a military commander, the senator would command his clients among others in battle and be sure to distribute portions of the booty obtained from military victory to them. These were a sample of the kinds of favors clients expected from their senatorial patrons. Clients were expected to support their senatorial patrons by helping to advance their careers, thereby making them more powerful and influential so that they could serve their constituents even better. Clients were expected to call on senators at their households and form part of their entourages in the Forum, acting as a symbol of the senator’s support and status. Clients obviously voted for their patron whenever seeking political office and helped the senator to canvass for the votes of others, oftentimes through bribery. Clients contributed financially to senatorial electoral campaigns, and contributed as well when a senator was convicted and fined for some political act of malfeasance. Clients spoke on behalf of senators as witnesses in court and volunteered to serve in any military command a senator obtained. This process of mutual exchange of favors ultimately benefited everyone and explains why the Roman family structure limited the need for less personal political institutions. People sought redress within the family structure by seeking the assistance of the “headman”, and he in turn shared his successes with them and worked on their behalf. Roman aristocrats perceived of their “families” as organic entities, pyramidal tents that had the potential to expand indefinitely at the base. At the top stood ones closes relatives and wealthy, influential friends who because of their worth voted in the top ranked centuries of the Equites and the First Class of the Centuriate Assembly. These people frequently had financial interests at stake in public contracts and derived direct financial benefit (or loss) from the senator’s political success (or failure). Beneath these stood the citizen solder small-farmers of one’s district who likewise voted in the First or Second Class and would volunteer to serve on military campaigns the senator expected to command during the course of his career. Beneath these stood freedmen and ex-slaves who engaged in commerce often directly related to the military or state contracting. Beneath these leaders of neighboring allied states who could provide financial and/or the military support of their cities in exchange for protection by the Roman senator. Beneath these stood leaders of provincial cities and peoples, likewise, dependent on the guarantees of a senatorial patron to protect their interest in the curia. By 133 BC the celebrated aristocratic family of the Sempronii Gracchi demonstrated that the Attalid Kings of Pergamum ranked among their clients. The Roman patron/client relationship held the potential to embrace all strata of Roman society and beyond by virtue of the dynamic character of recurring and renewable exchanges of favors. What determined the size and strength of a senator’s following ultimately was his success in the political arena.

By the height of the Republican era, age restrictions were imposed on candidates seeking offices. The first office an aristocrat could seek was the quaestorship at age 30. The quaestors were financial officials entrusted with dispensing public funds for services rendered to the state, for example, reimbursing publicans for construction of public monuments contracted out by higher ranking magistrates. Quaestors also carried the war chest of the consuls on campaign and would auction of booty at the battlefield. The ten aristocrats who obtained this office every year obviously had to have significant financial experience and acquired this by attending their fathers and uncles in the Forum, meeting influential financial figures, borrowing and lending money to friends and clients, and usually by being required as young adults to manage one of the aristocratic family’s several agricultural estates. Prior to holding the quaestorship, an aristocrat might seek a lesser office at the state mint, where he would supervise the striking of coinage bearing symbols of his own family’s past political and military success. Once gaining the quaestorship, a young aristocrat entered the Senate for life, but he sat in the back row and would seldom be called on to speak. To gain prominence in the Senate and to advance the interest of his clients, he needed to obtain higher office.

The next office he could seek was the curule aedileship. The aediles supervised market activities in the Forum, enjoying limited judicial responsibilities as a result. They might also be entrusted with letting public contracts and supervising the construction of public monuments, since they were entrusted with maintaining the public weal. However, they were mainly known for the week-long festivals they organized for the Roman deities on behalf of the Roman state. Although the Senate would authorize some limited amount of public money for the festival, the aedile was expected to raise his own funding, through clients and loans, to host outlandish games that would include animal hunts in the Circus Maximus, dramatic performances, and city-wide public banquets where make-shift tables would be erected in the streets and the entire Roman population would dine on meat and wine. Only two of any 10 members of a quaestorial college of a given year could win the aedileship, and the voters of the Centuriate Assembly tended to vote for the two candidates most likely to perform outlandish games. The tendency was for the two successful aedilicial candidates to rise ultimately to the consulship. The games of Julius Caesar were so outlandish that he became the darling of the Roman public, destined to obtain the consulship in suo anno, as soon as he obtained his 42nd year.

At age 39 an aristocrat, now 9 years a senator, could seek the praetorship, the chief judicial officers of the Roman state. Praetors did not so much preside as judges as they did oversee legal proceedings. They listened to legal suits to determine whether they were in fact actionable in a Roman court of law, and if so, assigned the suit to the proper tribunal. Through their edicts they also set the pace for Roman law during their year in office, declaring which statues they would recognize, for example, and which they would not. They might also be expected to preside over an assembly or the Senate in the absence of the consuls, and during major conflicts they could expect to receive a military command either in the form of a provincial governorship or as the commander of an army in some secondary military theater, the hot theaters being reserved for elected consuls. Praetors had to know the law, both civil and public, therefore, and know how to orate in public. Young aristocrats devoted considerable time to the study of law, again by attending their elders in the Form and even by visiting Senate meetings, standing and observing from somewhere in the back. They gained experience by defending the interest of their clients in court and by prosecuting notorious corrupt Roman ex-magistrates after their year in office. Rome had no office of public prosecutor, but the indictment of abusive Roman officials was regarded as a public duty, particularly if the abused parties were clients of one’s aristocratic family. Although it was hardly expected that a young prosecutor would succeed with the indictment (since the ex-magistrate usually had considerable funds with which to determine the outcome of the voting jury), he could nevertheless gain significant visibility through his oration and demonstration of legal skills during these public prosecutions. Again, Julius Caesar conducted several an all but indicted one notoriously corrupt politician, C. Antonius Hybrida (a political enemy of his family as well), but the man was spared by the auxilium of a tribune (a relative in fact), just as the jury was about to rule against him.

All of this prepared the aristocrat for his most challenging campaign, his assault on Rome’s highest office, the consulship, at age 42. By this point he would have demonstrated all the required skills, financial, legal, rhetorical, and military (through experience as quaestor and praetor). However, of the 8 available ex-praetors of any year, only 2 would succeed to the consulship. This winnowing process made the consulship the most highly competitive office of all; canvassing in the Forum was stiff (literally with candidates wearing starched, whitened togas), and bribery rampant. Aristocrats and their families generally went deeply into debt to borrow money to use to influence the outcome. Creditors would base their money-lending decisions like gamblers, determining which candidate was the one more likely to succeed, not only during the election, but later on the battlefield, where spoils of war would generate revenues sufficient to repay these loans with interest. Citizen soldiers would likewise scrutinize the candidates carefully and pay close attention to political conditions outside Rome, knowing full well that whomever they elected to Rome’s highest office would likely command them in the field. On election the successful consular candidates attained the pinnacle of their careers. They got the chance to pass legislation, convene the Senate, govern the state, and most importantly, to command the Roman legions in the field. Aristocrats obtained military experience like all Roman male citizens beginning at ages as young as 16 by serving with the armies of their relatives in command. Roman citizens were required to complete 16 years of compulsory military service, and most completed as many as 20 before they were no longer conscripted by the state. Aristocratic youths lived in the tents of their officer relatives, attended officer staff meetings, and frequently served as messengers riding orders from the general at the legion’s center to officers on the wings. In their 20s young aristocrats could hope to obtain by election or appointment subordinate positions as legates or military tribunes, thereby experiencing some aspect of command and control before seeking the quaestorship. The consul had to know not only how to array his army on the field, but how to protect it by building a fortified military camp, and how to feed and supply it by organizing complex logistical operations with merchants and publicans who followed Roman armies in the field. These merchants maintained the Roman army’s supply lines at considerable personal risk because they expected the likely hood of military success and stood to make huge fortunes by purchasing booty and slaves at military auctions conducted by the quaestor that they could resell for a profit at markets far removed from the front. The Roman consul was expected to lead his army and the Roman Senate and People generally to victory over some foreign foe, conquer foreign armies in battle, and sell foreign combatants into slavery. Victory on the battlefield gained the Roman consul or general acclaim by his troops as triumphing Roman general, or imperator. Once acclaimed by his troops in this manner, he would dispatch an embassy to the Senate at Rome, proclaiming the scope of his victory and asking the Senate’s leave to march in Rome in triumph. The Senate would actually conduct interviews with witnesses such as merchants returning from the field with prisoners to ascertain that the victory actually warranted a triumph. If so, the general would return to Rome to a ticker-tape parade through the city, preceded by his army, dressed in laurel, dressed himself in a red cape and gold crown to look like Jupiter for the day, riding in a chariot drawn by white horses, and leading foreign kings and princes as prisoners as well as wagon loads of booty in his train. The parade would proceed along the Sacred Way through the Forum up the steps of the Capitoline Hill to the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where the consul would perform the sacrifices. It would then make its way back to the Circus Maximus where the imperator would conduct lavish games and feed the public with the proceeds of his victory. He would devote 1/10 to the gods in thanks for his victory, another portion to the state treasury, still more bounties to his closest officers and to the troops who had served with him, and pay off all the debts he had acquired along his long and difficult career. He would hope in the end to have sufficient funds left over to plow back into his family fortune in order to lay the seed for the career of his own son, who would be expected to succeed him and surpass him in aristocratic glory. He would then take his place among the front seats of the Senate and continue to exert his energies on behalf of the family combine he had helped to construct.