The Roman Republican Constitution and the Italian Confederation

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The Roman Republican Constitutionand the Italian
Confederation

• Formal Structure and Extra-Constitutional
  Realities

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The Roman constitution was a screen and a sham

• Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (15)

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Part One

• The Structure of the Roman Republican Constitution

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The Cursus Honorum

• Sequential Offices

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The outcome of the political struggles of the
early Republic was to remove the privileged
position of the patricians in almost all their
functions A new aristocracy was created which
in principle was dependent on popular election
and merit rather than birth. The plebs as a whole
gained recognition for their own officers, the
tribunes and plebeian aediles, without the former
resigning their extraordinary privilege of
sacrosanctity The reformed senate had not lost
its importance it was arguably stronger as a
result of becoming a gathering of all those who
had achieved eminence. However, the ultimate
sovereignty of the assemblies in elections and
legislation was now a cornerstone of the
constitution. The question which immediately
arises is, how democratic these assemblies
were.Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the
Roman Republic (39)
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Roman Republican Magistrates
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A Screen and a Sham?

• Aristocratic Auctoritas and Dignitas
• Patronage
• Contiones
• Electoral Bribery (ambitus)
• Open Balloting (until 139 BCE)
• Structuring of Assemblies (comitia centuriata and
  comitia tributa)

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Part Two

• An Outsiders Perspective

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Polybius on the Roman Constitution

• A Greek Looks at Rome

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Key Dates in Polybius Lifetime

• Ca. 200 BCE Birth in Megalopolis
• 198 BCE Achaean understanding with Rome and
  abandonment of Macedonia
• Lycortas, Polybius father, serves as strategos
  of the Achaean Confederation several times in the
  180s BCE
• Polybius in funeral entourage of the great
  Achaean statesman Philopoemen (182 BCE)
• Polybius selected as Achaean envoy in 181/80 BCE
  to Alexandria in Egypt
• Polybius elected hipparchos, or cavalry
  commander, of the Achaean Confederation for
  170/69 BCE
• Romans defeat Macedonia in 168 BCE round up
  suspected pro-Macedonians and incarcerate them in
  Italy (Polybius among them)
• Polybius as political hostage at Rome from
  168-ca. 150 BCE friendship with P. Cornelius
  Scipio Aemilianus composition of Histories
• Achaean War Romans destroy Corinth and dissolve
  Achaean Confederation 146 BCE
• After 146 BCE Polybius in Greece on Romans
  behalf helps to institute the new dispensation
  in Greece

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Plaster cast of relief sculpture found in Cleitor
thought to represent the Greek historian Polybius
Greece would not have fallen had it obeyed
Polybius in everything, and when Greece did meet
disaster, its only help came from him
Inscription on the Temple of Despoina near
Arakesion reported by Pausanias, 8.37.2
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Polybius on History and the Historian

• Experience in Politics and Warfare
• Cross-Examination of Eye-Witnesses
• Contemporary or Near-Contemporary History
• Wide Travel and Accurate Geographical Knowledge
• Historical Accuracy over Literary Style
• Utilitarian Function of History
• It is neither possible for a man with no
  experience in warfare to write well about what
  happens in war, nor for one unversed in the
  practice and circumstances of politics to write
  well on that subject. So that as nothing written
  with experience or vividness, their works are of
  no practical utility to readers. For if we take
  from history all that can benefit us, what is
  left is quite contemptible and useless.
  Histories, 12.25g.1-2

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Some Modern Assessments

• It is a well-known matter for regret by
  classical scholars on both sides of the Atlantic
  that Polybius should never have been recognized
  as one of the founding fathers of the USA.
  Evidence is available that he was read in the
  right places. Arnaldo Momigliano, The
  Historians Skin, in Essays in Ancient and
  Modern Historiography (1987) 77.
• Of the surviving works of classical antiquity,
  the importance of The Histories is of the first
  order. Polybius work provides far and away the
  most reliable account of a crucial period in
  world history it is the clearest statement on
  the working principles and methodologies of
  ancient Greek historians it serves as a
  biography of one of the most fascinating
  political figures in Greco-Roman history and it
  has had a pervasive and abiding impact on
  subsequent political theory.
• Craige Champion, Polybius, Dictionary of
  Literary Biography 176 (1997) 334

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Book Six Political Analysis of the Roman State

• How and under what type of constitution were the
  Romans able to subjugate most of the inhabited
  world in half a century? Histories 1.1.5
• Anacyclosis Theory--Biological Model of States
  (genesis, acme, decline)
• Mixed Constitution at Rome
• blend of monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic
  elements
• harmony through checks and balances
• Inconsistency? Roman Vulnerability or Durability?
• Reader-Response Theory (Greek and Roman
  audiences)--a politics of indeterminacy?
• Logismos, the quintessential Greek virtue, as the
  key element in the Roman constitution

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Logismos as reflected in Policies Roman military
camp
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Polybius on the Roman Republican Constitution
(Book 6)

• Rome as Greek Polis
• Greek Political Theory Applied to Rome
• Absence of Patronage
• Invisibility of Italian Confederation
• Hostility to Democratic Element
• Polybius Offense Demagogic Politics the Charge
  of his Political Opposition within the Achaean
  Confederation?