The contemperorary writer Varro called these factions the ‘two heads’ of the republic. It is a fitting image, for in the war of attrition that marked the last decades of the republic, there were striking similarities between the two sides. For example, both sides claimed to be defending the republic. On the other hand, they disagreed profoundly over the question of what was to be defended. The conservative constitutionalists claimed they were defending the republic from assault by the revolutionary state-wreckers, while the populists said they were defending the republic from corruption at the hands of a self-serving aristocratic élite.
The political slogan for both sides was the same too: ‘Liberty’. But, predictably, their definitions of this word were very different. The constitutionalists were fighting for their traditional freedom to exercise their dignity equally and without interference from others in the pursuit of a glorious career; the people they feared were tyrants, would-be kings and powerful individuals who put their interests above those of the republic. The populists, on the other hand, were struggling for the people to have freedom from domination by the élite, and the freedom to pass their own laws. Between these two political groups and their increasingly entrenched positions the pendulum would swing dramatically and violently.
The battlefield of this struggle was the Plebeian Assembly; the weapon of choice for both sides was the popular vote. The legacy of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus was to give the people’s assembly a new, more authoritative role in the republic at the expense of the Senate. But while the Plebeian Assembly had become more powerful, it was also more susceptible to exploitation. Most Roman citizens who made up thirty-one of the thirty-five electoral tribes lived far away from the city, and it was impractical and costly for them to vote. As a result, the majority never did. Those who could afford to leave their farms tended to be the landed gentry whose sympathies lay with the conservative élite in Rome rather than with the needy. Only the urban mob could be counted on to make up the majority of voters, and they could be easily influenced: the poor might see it in their interests to be swayed by a wealthy benefactor with money to spend; small businessmen and traders by the patronage of their aristocratic customers; former slaves by loyalty to their old masters. In one way or another the voters could be bribed. And as money from the empire flowed into Rome, bribery became rampant. The Gracchus brothers may have shown the potential of the people as a political weapon, but in the last decades of the republic that weapon could be used by both sides.2
Thus armed, the populists and the conservative aristocrats in the Senate joined battle. Spoiling for a fight after the murders of the Gracchus brothers, it was the populists who landed the first blows. In the 110s BC anti-corruption laws were passed to curb the excesses of provincial governors. Senators were tried and driven out of public life. At the same time the two sides clashed over another flashpoint issue: how were military commands to be allotted – by the Senate or the people? When aristocratic generals proved to be failures in Roman wars against enemies in North Africa and Gaul, the senators responsible were brought to trial by the people for incompetence. They were then promptly replaced with men not of high birth but of proven ability, and on the say-so of the people, not the Senate. On this basis the general Gaius Marius won an unprecedented series of consulships between 108 and 90 BC, even though he had no senatorial ancestry.
The populist cause went as far as all-out war. Between 90 and 89 BC the armies of the Roman republic went into battle with its disgruntled Italian allies. That bloody, violent war, known as the Social War, came to an end when the Senate agreed to extend Roman citizenship to all Italian communities in Italy south of the river Po. Roman citizenship brought with it the benefits of protection against the arbitrary actions of aristocratic office holders. It was another success marked up by those championing liberty for the Roman people.
The backlash came in the 80s BC. When Rome clashed with King Mithridates of Pontus, a contender for power in the east, the Senate appointed an arch-conservative, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the consul for 88 BC, to take command of the war. The campaign promised much booty for both the general and the soldiers involved. The appointment was short-lived, however. A tribune of the people vetoed Sulla and proposed instead that the great general Marius be enticed out of retirement and once again given command. Conservative generals peremptorily forced from office in this way would usually have acceded to the sovereign will of the people, however outraged they were. Not Sulla. His response was efficient and devastating. First he won the loyalty of the army under his command. He claimed that if Marius were to win the appointment, it would be veterans from his previous campaigns who would be chosen to reap the rich rewards of victory in the east, not they. The appeal to the soldiers’ financial interests worked. The allegiance of the army sealed, Sulla then marched on Rome, killed the tribune responsible for the veto against him, took over the republic by force in a lightning coup d’état and appointed himself dictator. This position had its origins in an ancient republican office that gave one man emergency powers for a short period of time. Sulla, however, decided to make the office serve one specific purpose: to destroy his political enemies.
After finally defeating Mithridates in 83 BC and stripping the eastern provinces of wealth, Sulla returned to Rome, defeated his opponents in a battle at the gates of the city, and then proceeded to wreak a brutal and violent revenge on the populists. Proscription lists were posted in the Forum, and Sulla’s soldiers and supporters were charged with hunting down his enemies. Many were killed in the city or forced to flee, their property confiscated. The dictator Sulla’s raft of legislation, designed to cripple the power of the populists and bolster that of the Senate, was equally reactionary.
Among the new laws was a decree that political offices had to be held in a strict sequence according to the hierarchy of magistracies. It was thus rendered impossible for upstart populists to be fast-tracked straight to the consulship by the people’s vote. The Senate was also enlarged from three hundred to six hundred members, swollen by the intake of Sulla’s supporters. The most provocative laws, however, concerned the office of tribune of the people. This magistracy became a shadow of its former self. Now no tribune, once elected, could stand for any other office (thus the office was made unattractive to men of ambition); a tribune’s every bill had to meet the prior approval of the Senate; and, in addition, the office was stripped of its power of veto. The pendulum of conservative reaction had swung emphatically against the populists.
His clinical and bloody work done, Sulla returned the republic to the Senate, then retired to Puteoli and the pleasures of a private life in 79 BC. It took the best part of the following decade to restore the ancient powers of the tribunes and to untie the hands of the popular assemblies. The consul who won lavish praise from the people for restoring the last of the tribunician powers in 70 BC was a surprise to many people. He was Rome’s most successful general of the day, and he had proved it by winning two triumphs before he was forty. His reputation, however, had germinated in a bloodier, darker time: he had once been the savage henchman of Sulla. Indeed, as the general who, on behalf of the conservatives in the Senate, had spent much of the 80s BC going to war against the leading populists of the day, he had earned the nickname the ‘Teenage Butcher’. His real name was Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus – Pompey ‘the Great’.3