ROMAN IMPERIALISMIN THE LATE REPUBLIC

By E. BADIAN

@ Basil Blackwell, 1968

63r r r r ro 7

Fint published 1967Sccond edition 1968

Printed in Great Britain by'Western Printing Services Ltd., Bristol

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

f-f-lHESE lectures were delivered at a vacation school in AncientI History o.rganised by the Universiry of South Africa in July

1965. At the kind suggestion of the Universiry, they are herepublished much as delivered. Simple annorarion has been added,and I should like to thank the University for allowing me thespace for this. tt should suffice ro draw the attention of the readernot expert in the subject to the main sources and to modern dis-cussions where more can be found. The text ofthe lectures has not,on the whole, been much changed: the only consistent adaptationhas been an attempt to eliminate that ubertas which-necessary ifthe listener is to follow the spoken word-becomes an irritani inprint. As the revision was completed in December 1965, it waspossible to insert at least some references to relevant work thathad appeared by that date.

I should like to thank all those colleagues who discussed pointsarising out of the lectures with me ar Pretoria: especially pro-fessors W. den Boer and C. P. T. Naud6, who, while busy withtheir own contributions to the occasion, found dme to improvemine; ProGssors G. van N. Viljoen and H. L. Gonin, who askedmany searching questions with exemplary courtesy; and alsoProGssor Mary 'White, of Toronto, who, on a short visit toEngland, was kind enough to read the typescript. They have allhelped to make what is necessarily a sketchy ffeatment of animportant subject a little less defective.

But it is my chief dury and pleasure ro thank my South Africancolleagues, both at the Universiry of South Africa and at otheruniversities and colleges (most of which I visited), for unfailingand-what is rarer still-self-effacing hospitaliry. Affrid th;

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problems facing their country (which are obvious indeed, thoughio the historian no more so than those of countries less aware oftheir own), it was gratifying to find an interest in Classical studies,and indeed in civilised uaditions in general, which, if there is anyvalue in those aaditions, cannot 6i1 to play ia Part in solving theProblems'

E. Beorersuniversity of lzeds, Englanil

December 1965

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND EDITION

\Y/HEN the first edition of this book-a Gw hundred copies,W published in a University of SouthAfrica series-wai re-

ported to be out of print, Sir Basil Blackwell ki"dly took chargeofpublishing it in a slighdy revised form, thus adding to the manybenefuia for which I owe him gratitude. Though there has nor yerbeen time for reviews that could be taken into account, variousfriends have made h"lpfrl commenb that have enabled me toimprove substance or style. I should especially like to menrionDr G.'W. Bowersock and Dr E. S. Gruen-

I have made no changes that would alter the basic nature of thebook or remove it too far from the series of lectures as actuallydelivered. Since modern documentation has in any case been keptto a minimum, there has been no need for frantic attempts tobring it up to date. The only important work bearing on the sub-ject that has appeared since the end of 1965 is C. Nicolet, L'Ordrequestre l'Epoque rpublicaine (1966), supplying, ar last, part of thelong-needed treatment the Equites the absence of which I hadnoted. This is clearly not the place for a full discussion of thatmassive work. I am happy to see that Nicolet's detailed investiga-tion has independendy led him to many of the same conclusionsat which I myselfhad arrived, on the economic and social basis ofthe orilo, on its interests and on its relations with the Senate. If heis right in his main thesis on the definition of the ordo (i.e., that the'public horse' was essential to it), as I am inclined to think he is, weshall have to change our terminology in specidist works on theperiod down to Sulla: I have always regarded the use of the term'Equites' in a wider sense as (for that period) proleptic (see myreferences to them in FC). However, as far as the period after

viivl

Sulla is concerned (and particularly that after the last successfulcensorship in 7o), it seems to me that Nicolet has done nothing toinvalidate the common use of the term in modern writers: hisattempt to find an association between the men explicidy called'equites' and the public horse for this period is a complete flure(see his pp. r89-r9z); and his final conclusion (p. 744) is only thatthe allusion to the public horse belongs essentially to the secondcentury and 'rien n'indique que les autres ne I'aient pas possdd6'!In fact, in the post-Sullan age, there was clearly no recognisedway of either acquiring equestrian status (since there was noeffective censorship and the parade of the cavalry had 6llen intodisuse), or, correspondingly, of stopping anyone with strfcientwealth and influence from claiming it. Provided he was free-born,no man of substance would easily be denied that dignified tide.It follows that there is, for this age, no reason for changing thenow traditional terminology.

The decision is more difcult for the age between C. Gracchusand Sulla. Nicolet's treatment of the Lex Repetundarum is perhapsthe least satisfactory part of his book, both in language and senseand from the stricdy epigraphical point of view (which, in fact, isnot considered at dl). Until that work is done again, it willprobably be impossible to decide which of the two possibledefinitions of the class of iudices (by wealth or by equestrianstatus) should be adopted. For the moment, the definition bywealth (a census of 4oo,ooo HS, as is-despite Nicolet's contentionto the contrary-the usual opinion of modern scholars) seems tome far the more probable: precisely because the Gracchani iudices,during the period down to Sulla, do not seem to have been des-cribed x equites Romani. Pliny's confused, but noteworthy,exposition (r.0. >oori 34), and the very fact of the wide extensionof the term in the last generation of the Republic and of its closeconnection with the ordo of publicani, seerns to make tlis primafacie the more likely solution, especially if Nicolet's attemPt todate the law obliging senators to return the horse after theGracchan legislation is rejected-as it surely must be, in the light

viii

of the well-known allusion to it in Cicero's de republica andCicero's equdly well-known care to avoid anachronism. If thequalifrcation for enrolment on thejury panel was possession of thepublic horse, and senators by definition did not possess the publichorse, their specific exclusion from the panel does not appear tomake sense; for we cannot in this instance (as in many others)operate with the concept of tralatician clauses, since this newdefinition of the panel was in fact one of the main points of theGracchan law.

I have set this out at some lengtl in order to justify my decision(not taken lighdy) to make no change ir -y terminology regard-ing the equestrian order in consequence of Nicolet's work. The'prolepdc'

use of the title 'Equites' for the Gracchani iudices,bxedon Cicero's usage from the point of view of his own generation,will continue to have advantages from the point of view ofhistorical exposition, even if (as I now more than ever believe) itis not stricdy accurate between C. Gracchus and Sulla. Meanwhilewe must all wait for Nicolet's promised prosopography, and forfurther and more expert work on the text of the Lex Repetun-darum.

Since the first edition went to press, Christian Meier's bookRes Publica Amissa has also appeared (Wiesbaden 1966). I hope ropresent my views on it in detail elsewhere. Here I would onlynote that, in what is relevant to the subject of these lectures, theviews he expresses are very close to mine, especially on the aimsand the role of the Equites in general and the publicani inparricular(pp.6+-gs); though it will be clear that we diverge on the appor-tionment of blame for the disintegration of the res publica.&,tfalo, N.Y.

Ocnber 1967

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CONTENTS

AmrsvrarroNs

L VIRWS AND IMPERIVM

II. THE .ECONOMIC MOTTVE'

il. TTIE SENATE AGAINST EXPANSION

W. NEW INTERESTS AND NEIX/ ATTITUDES

V. THE NEW IMPERIALISTS: THE MYTH

VI. THE NEW MPERIALISTS: THE FACTS

Nores

Irvonx or Nauns

xii

. I

. 1 6

. 2 9

. M

. 6 0

. 7 6

93

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)n

ABBREVIATIONS

Periodicals are abbreviated as inL'Anne philologique, with slightsimplifrcations that will cause no difficulty.

The following standard reference works are abbreviated in theusual manner:FIR'12 Fontes Iwis Romani Anteiustiniani, znd ed. (ed. Ricco-

bono)ILLRP Inscriptiones Latinae Liberae Rei Publicae (ed. Degrassi)MRR The Magtrates of the Roman Republic (ed. Broughton)OG/S Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae (ed. Dittenberger)ORF8 Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta,3rd ed. (ed. Malcovati)RE Pauly-Wissowa-Kroll, Real-Encyclopaeilie der lelassischen

Al t er tum sw i s s en s ch aftSIG8 Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd ed. (ed. Ditten-

berger)The following works are abbreviated as shown:

I

VIRTVS AND IMPERIVM

TMPERIALISMT in some sense is as old as the human race, or atI least as its social organisation. The extension of power by one'sown group over others is only a specid case of the victory ofone'sown side over others: in human terms, it does not call for an eipl:':nation. The narve joy in this that we find in Victorian imperialistsor (for that matter) in a modern football crowd is as obvious inCicero, with his numerous proud reGrences to the glory and thevictories of the Roman People-which are almost the onlyserious ideas he developed in public about the theory and practiceof politics beyond his own community!

What does call for ur exolanation. when it apoears in historvis that relatively I'tsh l.;Ji;;d"';i#k ;;r'i'J il;#:'ities for the extension of power. As in the curbiirg of privateambition. either or both of two nrotives mav lead to this: we mavcall them c

one. It had long butgrown the most primitive stage: indeed,as Mommsen recognised longago,3 most of the second century ischaracterised by a highly sophiiticated policy of avoiding annexa-tion. In the'West, Carthage had been left standing in zor, and itschances of furure prospcrity litde diminished. In tlre East, Philip Vof Macedon h"d ""il6"ted by re6 and " d;;iiiti"fprinciplehad to be taken. Titus Quinctius Flamininor, off6fttg itt"methods of Roman with the lessons of Greek history (which hewill certainly have known), ti"iti.d the Se44te tloiR-" -ottappear ", th! b"r"to, of tir. Greeks *trit"lfiltiti"g what was ineffect her traditional policy.4 So the'freedom of the Greeks' wasproclaimed in a theatiic"l rg"o9 at the Isthmian $F-"t of 196; andihough there was strong l"r!$pt" "-oog-titiou, ,.o"io^ fo,the ilitary occupation ri3t t"-.li.y?"rtresses in Greece,Flamininus in the end overcame it and, after the war with Nabis ofSoarta. withdrew all the Roman troops. The decision had beent"k r, *d was not ffiil; affi'ti" opposition of the greatScipio. lndeed, against the threat of advance by Antios ,Bo*p (under Flamininus' direction) intensfied its propagandaffii'io appear as the champion of Greek freedom against J, * , . r ' -? . " . ^

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rliyim"ttt to kings. and oppression. Once Antiog$us fud beendfeated, this line p-r.gyed unprofiable and was abandoned: intheir cold-blooded atdtude over this, the Romans showed to allwho would observe, their contempt of foreign opinion when it nolonger"mttered. To leave dl the Greels free would have led toanarchy, while Rome qow wanted order. But the principle ofnon-"r-g*"tior, *"s fie.io"d-i"deed, the very desire forCt showsits'#iensth: Rome wanted to be sure she would not have toi1ffirtiE "gain. Eumenes of Pergamum and (to a lesser exten{ theRepublic of Rhodes received large increases of territory andbecame the protagonists of the Roman order in Asia. In Europe,Macedon was left intact, though not allowed to e4pand in Greece;and the Greeks continued without supprvisign. It is clear that theS..pplt. hoped they would be able to"iq1t.4t"it own a.ffaips,'Eki"gilii"., "r loyj c[ents, when it was'asked for ordta.

lndeed, this did not work out i planned: during the next g-.1.- ]ration, as one p^fitt"f""irdidt kpt appealing tJRo-", *--d th"clients ignored advice frequendy given but never backed by force,the Senate-against its will, clearly-was drawn more and 661'" '3'-'"': '' " 'into perpetual-intervention, both io keep order and to restore its

""" "

f"di p'rertig.. Yet the fact is that do*tr to the war with Perseus , )'

*a "irio "n, it, +o Rgman governor or soldier was stationed ""r, ,.,, ",t1.'1.,.of the Adriatic, despite the astonishing successes that Roman arms ', , ' :""had won as far to the east as Mount Taurus, and the equallyastonishing failure to have Roman wishes in Greece consistendycarried out. :. 1. r,,r:,

When Macedon became more powerful and began to intrigueamong the Greek states, the Senate-righdy or wrongly---came tothe conclusion that another war would have to be fought. Ques-donable diplomacy,waq used;6 yet in the end there was again noannexation. The Aefre world after the battle-of Pydna_looked ^ ' '::.'-

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very different place from what it had been before. The kingdoffi C,,*.,, ,.., ,of Macedon was broken up into its four traditional constituent ." .,districts, which were made into separate 'free' states.6 A thousand "'n.',"'.',,",'

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AcJraeans, among them Polybius, were deported to Itdy, and no \,,t. .-:,,r,',doubt numbers of Greeks from other states. Rhodes was left c ':' ' j'-'humbled and its naval power broken. Pergamum had fallen into : - "'l .'

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disfavour and was thrown open to att"cks by hostile.neighbours, | -*"';Roman interference in Asia as in Europe had become open and un:"disguised, leaving no ltrang powery*h.." to keep order as

)i',.'",rrlr^before. Yet it was sdll true that not a single Roman governor or l',::"",.,.-'soldier stood east of the Adriatic. Methods had chanqed; but the )??"glggt,lt+d t.+qLdt Td indeedb"p:Tg, even more ofv,i9y. Ia,'I'he verfidlng alm, as betore, was to ayorcl annexatlon (w.r[ch,in terms of power, could easily have bCen iiosed). The first ,'.,,,.,,,method tried had been to leave one or two strong pov/ers to keep 2 .:,, . tt. ,order: they had become too strong and were thus Glt to- b.e ' .-'t'.) ,dangerous io Rome. ^ N-ory the qrrly "il.-rrl"tive that might ".hftE c'

jr r\ 'th"- was tried: #ffiJ;d fii;.ntation,

,$i|. ggnsanr. ,,,' ' 'inspection-even at the risk of anarchy. But the !'sirrinptin of

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Greece (agd it.ya; perhaps not so very difGrent from what fol-lowed), aconc* of Hellenistic powers had existed for a cenrurv.when i{ome rof iI""tly ifir;ad upon it. Th. Fin;ip+l H.eU#istic states, while often neaeed in riars on.r 6fr'ttt iil4ri.tand in i"t ffii't" ,#A#fih"" one another's infuence, seem, afterrwo qenerations of anarchy followine the death of Alexander the

: . 1 2r / - . | ' . " . ' , ' t ' 7)"^. t i \J lY ! _t r ar" l , ) . , :(rreat, to nave-recogrused an equlhbnum on tfie general matn-

tenance of which the independent existence of each of them W'"'''based. The Ptolemies, the Seleucids, the Antigonids, as well as

Roman imperialism can therefore still be said to have existed ine East; but it was not of the annexationist kind: it was of *hai

y" T"y call the 'hggggnonial' kind.s on the barbarian 1iinge of thetTptt:: ?""9,h. .$"1!tg{w.* "ever sropped. rn spainlrlgSardinia'no sertled ft8r"tor sardrrua no settled fiontier-gver existed, for decades slowion-dys:!, iy."ypfe,4, ^br. -*r'i:tb*kt ;;-dil;*d:ili,;q11g:!,. interrup!9,{,}1. -"nr'setbacks, g';i"*Uy .,lp;a.a it .occupred and paclfied zone. 'we hear few details of all these

smaller powers like Pergam"--,_B1thy"ia or even rhe Aetoliangpy',

appearance of any of them wpuld bavet {J l t | l ta a rNUr- ,

appearance of any of them_would lpe led to a major.catastrophe.Very probably, tiris *"r'ffiir"ly " r#"gniti"r of te li-liii"s ofthe various Hellenistic powers-it was based p.urgly on expedi-ency.t' But it was nerreitheless effective in i?'iif " .ehrrelystable world in the third century. The Hellenistic world, like thatof modern Europe for centuries before the Great \)Vpr, was. onebased on q^balanie that, as each power knew, h"d tS:, p?#;;f,*'at least i";iifrln'.., Ro-p policy, fro- dort as far back as *" "*frf.e ir, wasdifferent. Of course, for a long rime Rome had toT$:e theequality of some other powers: thus in the eerly treaties withCarthage recorded by Pollbius;]8 Indeed, before zr8 n.c. shecould hardly h*e ilenied eqaliry to Carthage or ro the grearpgygrq of tfrg_!as1, But right from the starr there was the deter-i"l""fit!f, to'dffiirte rylaiever was within reach and to build upstrength t ited that i"Jtt. Equaliry was concgded only b.yorrthe range of effective power, and every "il,.;-pl,y"s made tobuild up power where^it had shown itself deficiqt. It is clear thatthe Rom^ans always i;d; "p by heavily Jfiffi"U.ring their

smaller powers like Pergamum, Bithynia or even the Aetolian,andAchaean Leagues-they all had their part to play, and the i6leppearance of anv of them would have led to a maior catastroohe-

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operations, except in.a handful of spectacular cas.es: thpy were*:o&r,gt"+red.1o Hence, though tie facts are obi,iqs';.;;i,*"it:gryF,q1."j it easily overlooked. yet both the ii-il"riti., dthe drtterences berween \pr"r1f* policy towards civilised and to-wards barbarian stater "r.'lftittg. U/" -ort come back to themlater.

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rivals.lB By the middle of the fourth century, hegemony hadbeen claimed over Latium, while the Samnites were an equal"i?tiry----ot (as in the Latin War), 4ly. Py the time of the w.1, withPyrrhos, the wholg of ltaly, #ailf"i- "t a hegemonial sfhere,rl*d ni"torv istified the clm, By the end of the n,'enties it hadb."r "itiidd to thejacent islands and to tggl!9.4ps across theIonian and Adriatic Seas. Within the are.31,,thui'itIied out, inig-pendent states were, after a fmhion, didtt.d and even .ir-

, "e"d to exist: like the many Italian sates with their dilferent) tati"r, or the kingdoms and free cities of Sicily and lllyria.l6 But,'

whatever the exact status of those communities, in what Rome, regarded as essential--th9ir ^Qr9igqPgli.ry;they w-ere effectivelyotid.t Roman control. Thetlat of atrairi that we found so char-acteristic ofRoman policy in the second century, and so surprisingin its HellenittiJJifrdili, had always been the same' as far as Romewas ibricdrned.

On two occapions, as Rome came into contact with the Helle-nistic ncrl'of pbwers, it log!1ed,for a moment as though shemight adopt its sdards utd i i iff.t.ot traditions and olsp-isaon int that Greek world that so obviously attracted herleading ci$zens. First, in the Pege of Phoenice (zo5 n.c.) it sggngs-aeenuine attempt was made to secure co-9)stence 9n eq\ral fermsUr Philip viy leaving an insulating lryer of bufti itates be-tween the two powers. Had this succeeded, Rome might havestopped there (as far.qs the East was concerned)-at least long"",igh to U.."*Jf,ivad with-$g negtgnclPt of a polity ana balce of states. but Philip, ovi-confideht, began to interferewith the buffer states in Illyria while at the same time extendinghis power in the East. The causes of the Second Macedonian'Wari;; il; ;,tr;;-;"Ufy discussed. It is clear that it was in f*ct dto Roman suspicion of Philip's successes and ambitious policies onvarious fronti, seen against the background of his

'sab in theback' in the Hannibalic War. But I have elsewhere tried to bringout-{ertinly not as the only, but as a very obvious caus*whatis indeed obvious in Livy's account: the breakdown of the

6

Illyrian setdgryent, p th..g only point where the two powers merand directly-ahshd. An attempt had been made at Phoenice tosecure peace: but Philip had made it impossible. The result was thewar that established Roman hegemony over Greece and Mace-donial6

The next tuming-point came WfT,rjl,l rflq!,tg{"rence in ?,',"',' .Rome, Titus Quinctius Flamininus frcfih en'oyi fAntiochusIII and made them an ofGr in terms of cold-blooded geopolitics, ,r,,contrasting with his carefirlly developed public propaganda ': ' ' ,position: if the King kept out ofEurope, Rome would keep out of

',1, , ,.,Asia. There is no reason to doubt that he--and t}e Senate-meantit. But again an Easrern ki"g, d;#dti'd"nt in his #iiJngtlr,refused to setde.l?^Tle result was the war drat ended at Magnesiaand Apamea. U"flttn-"t least until the Parthians *.r r..oto be dangerous-there were no equals left. Rome never againbehaved as if there were.

fh;'i;;li{gcontradiction in Roman poliry---open aggression " .!L\i}, ,and expansionigrl against barbarians; hegemonial imperialism lt,c,,",., ,,'with careful didance of annexation towards cultural equals or ' "'supe{9gq-,thir pt,t.r adaptation of Aif$e for_ dgminagq.$*ot rfud"tiio.f;"- both cannor, of course, b-".r,hfftV"fy'6{i"' ' "plained, any more than any other phenomenon of any impoptance Lr" "land complexiry in historical "nq,riry. n@

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should follow. Firs!, it became clear to the Roman governing class .),, 1,,,:,,,,,,,1

atanearlystagethatlargeincreasesofterritorycouldnoteasilyls rt,r,tt,,,,-admilristered within the existine city-state constitution. Rather a': )', ",.,,,*ran change the latter-which ri"r K"rfrl;l"aHe, though minor

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adaptations (such as the pron-ragistrary) were freely tried-annexa-tion^ w"r, o' th. wholi, r.t;fr%ulili'k8a r.;';ffKaiil;-bttreat11. Wit| power expp4i+g beyond Italy, even this bgc3me tooburdensome, since it impid definite and often irhvientciymi"tm?nts on Rome. rrB. ih. further step toward, 4r. '6."' rr., u."llt;ry or king, controlled without a treaty. I-t must be confessed

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that under the Roman Repub\c rlg-real system of administering,,. , -.,,

overse$ territories was ever"o"Iv?d: those that were annexed, ..,,,,.-,1 ,, .,

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*rrr*, ttbti." that, dwn to the middlepJthg9999,4dqt thg seco,nd century,r>k ,la" E*4ct;+1t,t 1 ;.i'6' theatreb of war-rich

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. ' tall but one of the provincesremained_active theatres 1t,w1-n$in triumphs, bot ittly to the.,state. Sicily was PlgFlb,ry the only^." thrt-reo,rlerlv reelis.d a diiIus for the Ti6urv. The restone thairegd-ly :g*::S,1 {iiPlus,for the Tl:tZr*i::ltwere a "oorrt at"itifi^ffiy-*d, worse t4, itt qa$Xfft ,

'

Ro-" and Italy could hardly coP"*Xi+ thg {gmand-i'- SJlwonder, therefore, that the Senate was slow to start major warswhen it could be avoided-and cerainly no-t/h1.r$g q*, fl{,arurexation, which, more often than not, proved ineiely a preludeto a future of minor wars. {

(like most of Sicily urd Sardinia) *"r"*iy r1'. $;i"a sP\9resf action (pro uinciae) of a military commandant (at 6rst normally apraetor) .iho, tighrootil the end of the Republic,

.g:""T"d.:$:tih"t *"t not iar removed from a Permanent (tho"gh slighdyregularised) state of siege. But that is angthel ltory.tt Meanwhile

Moreover, early in the second century the Scipios had given aterrible warning to the majoriry of their peers. Adopting names-torepresent te oib* terrarrnt they claimgdlg h1yp conquered.(Afri-."ir*, Asiaticus, Hispallus), they had thieatened-not indeed amilitary tyranny, as some later Romans thought and some otgd:Tauthors still hanker after saying: for this was quite inconceivableat the time-no, they had threatened to acquire an ovelpoweringprestige that might make the egalitarian working of oligarchic!ot"-"ttpractically impossible. The Scipioshad gone down toefe"t; but iheir example remained, and the lesson was learnt:great overseas commands were careftrlly avoided-2'

There is another point to consider. We shall have to say someharsh things about the Senate in due course; but lets give praisewhere it is due. It is all the more necessary to stress that it looks asif concern over sandards of magistrates' behaviour in the pro-vinces was another powerful infuence in discouraging annexati,o-nand its "ot "qo*"", direct administration. There was troublequite early: in r7r n.c. major complaina came from Spain abotttie actiorx of governors there. Not much was done: some of themen were *"Il "ot-cted-u The Roman oligarc\, like othcr

oligarchies, was reluctant to punish its members for the sake of itssubjects. There was more trouble in the fifties.22 The excessivepowers enjoyed by the holderc of iruperiurn were bound to corrupt.What is more, they led to an excess of pride and individualism-for which Hellenistic cultural influence often gets the blame. Thiswould make men sand out against the Senate. Livy offers manyexamples of disobedient magistrates at the height of the Senate'spower. Some succeeded in their designs or at least went unpun-ished: it was never easy to exercise efGctive control. Nor couldthe mercurial popular assembly be relied on for a responsiblejudgment.a There can be no doubt that these considerationsweighed heavily with.qlrg S.enate as a.whole in its set policy ofminimising orr.", ciitiffielil"':"':' ) /:'

It is significant that the frrst serious attempt to deal with theproblem of misbehaviour in the provinces comes in r4g.'n In thatyeax L. Calpurnius Piso, the virtuous,l5lhu+p,.sqrnqned Frugi,passed tfre first law that was to enablefipised allieiat least to;# *f-rfh"t they had lost. A p..*aoeot quaestio repetundarumwas set up, to take the place of the all too frequent ail ho^c,cornmivsions of tLe Senate for this purpose. There *"i. rro tfu'!.ttio(if there were any), for th" time being.z5 Rightly, otte is iiiffiSfiothink. It became only too clear in the later Republic that severeextortion laws merely rB.ade. senatorial juries (and not only them)more unwilling totfr, *d *otJ amenable to the'sort ofappeal for sympathy for a Roman senator against wretchedforeigners at which Cicero (when it suited him) was such a master.Piso's law seems to have provided merely for restitution. Ob-viously, it was really meant to work. Now, what is most signifi-cant about it, perhaps, is its date. For in r49 the war againstCarthage had started, and it is clear that the Senate was beginningto realise that this time there was no solution short of annexation.In the sarne year, the praetor P. Iuventius Thalna was defeated by , ,the pretender Andriscus, who had united Macedonia (which the +,,,rRomans had &vided up) agairut the settlement of 167.28 Again,it is reasonable to thi"k th"t the Senate knew that another

II

t

t , , ' l

I

' w , ' )

experiment in non-annexation had failed. It is therefore interest-irr-

-*d.,lg the credit of the n"$gly;g@J g{9Siyfy.u' *?, y,.-,with large:scale further annexation imminent and inevitable, theymqde anhonq altggrpt to Protect their subjects against the worst"fi.m

bf mis61iiur on the part of magistrates. The Senate as awhole-as it was to show as late as 95, when it sent Q. MuciusScaevola to Asia,2?frfftiirf7z, when the consuls proposeda decree at least trying lotffilerresz8-the Senate, in r49 as atother times, took its rest'nsibilities seriously. This gives us theright of positing such considerations as among the motives for theavoidance of annexation.

As far as the Hellenistic Eaqt is concerned, an important politicalconsideration may b8''trd#"harly in tit" t""ttd ""o^to.y t.Flamininus discovered what monarchs had known for generations :the power of Greek public opinion. Gradually he c6nvlld theSenate to his views. Pq^litt"pl hegemony in the East traditionallydepended on at least " ffih of co-operation. Hence relationswi-th at least some gf.thg kings, leagues *d;ig"l weq*most ofthe time

(+ r ,

1 ; ,

motive power in policy is concerned, we must clearly follow themand ignore it.

As we have seen, the double standard of, behaviogT, Xe.twent back to a single basic attitude. Both the blliCos'e annexa-tio.r-rism and the hgemonial policF spring from deeply'rotedfeidTs of Roman life. It is these that we must now briefyconsider. .

The:Juei of Roman eristocratic liG were those characteristicof that form of sociery.3? High birth and merit (genus end' uirtus)were chiefy Adqdfed. The formerJescent from distinguishedancestors-was taken to be a. prima facle guarantee of the lafter,iposingloth a standard and a chdlenge. The llaer (uirtus) westhe real touchstone of achievement an$ ,re only claim that couldb"anced 6y the'new man', who diked the guarantee ofhighbirth. The aristocratic poet Lucilius, at the end of a long passagefull of high-sounding Greek sentiment, defined it in a few simplewords: 'commoda patriai prima Putare'. Virtus es an aristocraticRoman concept has been much discussed. It has,evrcn been sug-gested that originally the term qea,nt 1 primitive magic Power, akind of mana, which naturally inher'ed in leading men.88 Thismeaning, if it ever existed was, of coune, much changed by thesecond century, particularly as Greek philosophy began to affectRoman education. But the quality was always most fully em-bodied in the commander and statesman: it was very much apublic virtlue, and one of the ruling class-at least, as seen by thatclass. Its chief example was, as wehave seen, the man who, havingthe deeds of great ancestors as a model, administered the sate inwar and peace to its greatest 1$rg1ng* The Roman aristocracywas always conscious of its desny.

--

'What really counted, by the second centurf, is perhaps best seen

in the famous epiaphs of the Scipios.se It was-if one ignored afew Greek ideas that, as Lucilius' poetic discuspign shows, did notcount for so very much in the practical test-disCent, ofrces andmilitary success.

L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (consul 298 r.c.) boasts that his

forma uifiutei parisumafuit (thus making his bow to Greek admira-tion for beauty, but clearly distinguishing it from Roman uirtus).He goes on, in a very Roman way, to give proof of Iis uirtus,which is clearly what really counts: he gives his ofrces (consolcensor aidilis ryei fuit apud uos) and finally his great deeds in war(Tawasia Cisaunia Sannio cepit, subigit omne Loucanam opslesqueabiloucit). Barbatus' son (consul 259) claims to be, by commonconsent, the best man of all Romans (duonoro optumo fuise uiro).Ag"io he illustrates this with his ofrces (consulate, censorship,aedileship) and his victories (hec cepet Corsica Aleriaque arbe);fi".tly he cites lrds pietas in dedicating a temple, thus bringing in areligious element that is surprisingly rare elsewhere. But most elo-quent, perhaps, is the epitaph of a young L. Scipio, a son of thegreat Asiaticus, who died as a guaestorian of 33 and thus had nochance of demonstrating his uirtus in command and high admin-istration. He proudly claims: pater regefi Antioco nbegit. At leasthe could be proud of his father's uirtus.

Military success and the holding of office: these are the chiefclaims to uirtus. Within the aristocracy, as we all know, Romanpolitics, especially in the second cenrury 8.c., was a constantstruggle for prestige (dignitas), pursued with single-minded ambi-tion. It was a highly competitive society. But this presrige, as wehave seen even from contemporary evidence, found is chief sup-port in the holding of ofrce and in military success. This requisiteglory had to be gathered somewhere. And since in the secondcentury major wars, and wars against civilised states, were (as wehave found) on the whole against public policy, it had to begathered on the barbarian frontier. There it would not commit theSate (at least at any one time) to more than it could underteke; itwould not endanger Rome's public reputation; and the successesgained would not be so overpowering as to arouse fear and in*iiliaamong a man's peers. Triumphs were essential to the Roman wayof life and politics; and it is not surprising that triumph-huntingagainst barbarians became a recognised pursuit-a matter ofpolitical liG or death to many a Roman noble. Even in the first

tz r3

cenrury, a man's i.ffi'J r" ffit it could be used by *enemy to attack his character and damn his re1ffififfi.n0

flhe other aspect-the hegemonial poliry-goes back to anequdly characteristic tradition of the Roman aristocracy: that ofpatronage. From the very start of Roman history, power l menhad had free 'clients' attached to their persons and families. Thesemen, though legally free, were by custom-and by the facts ofpower---obliged to obey and serve their patron in return for hisprotection. In a wider sense ofthe word, every benefcium c:.cateda.relation of clientship, obliging the recipient to be prepared torender offcia. Naturally, the ability to conGr benefuia was, on thewhole, also an aristocratic privilege; so that, in addition to theirdirect dependants, upper-class individuals and fimilies vrere sur-rounded by a circle of others whom they had placed under anobligation and who were expected to repay them on demand.0

It was in this way, to a large extent, that the oligarchy main-tained its power for so long in the Roman state; and it was in thisway that rivals fought each other for ofrce and prestige: indeed,the latter wes, to a certain e4lqnt, visibly measured by the numberof clients a man codd HfsffIner.itrbly, these'relationshipsspread beyond the ciry of Rome and its territory, as Rome cameinto contact with places and peoples more and more remote-frstto Italy, then to the provinces, 'free' cities and even neighbouringmonarchs. Both collecdvely and as individuals, men abroad owedoficia to the Roman aristocrats who had conferred benefcia onthem, e.g. by governing them, by sparing them after victory, bylooking after their interests in Rome. It was a natural consequencethat Roman aristocrats, accustomed to seeing personal relation-ships, both within the community and outside, in these terms ofmoral relationships and duties based (ultimately) on the facts ofpower, should ffansfer this attitude to their political thinking: thatRome, in fact, should appear as the patron city, claiming thefficiaboof actual allies and subjects and of 'free' kings and citieswith which she had come into contact. These attitudes were woveninto the Roman noble's life. Ofcourse, it was the oligarchy, acting

through the Senate, that represented Rome-the patronal power-in its relations with those clients, thus reinforcing the bonds ofin&vidual clientship that personally united many of them ro grearRomarr houses. It was clear that the whole world owed offcia tothe great power acting through the men who governed it. AsRoman power increased, it became impossible, for those broughtup under this system, to see any relationship between Romans andforeigners, between Rome and foreign stetes, in other terms thanthese; and this explains what often-by our standards-;eemsarroqa{rqe arrd ev; naivetd in Roman b"h"oioor. the obiegf d;.'.ffit tlre strong was, to the Roman aristocrat, nothing Iless than *.6fl rnotJ h*. I

I J

II

THE .ECONOMIC MOTTVE'i - z t ! , , , / 1 . . - . . . .

T HAVE been trying to relate fhe complex nature of RomanI imperialism,..as it is found in the second century n.c., to thenature artd the conventions'of Romar,t

-aqistocratic society. In.elq-tysociety, there is inevitably a close .8ih;oit benveen the ""lu!tand way of lG-the Weltanschauung-of the leading classes ofthat sociery at home and the way in which the society, as led bythose classes, will act in its foreign relations. This is particularly sowhere, as in the case of Rome, a small and relatively isolatedsociety has, within a very Gw generations, found ie horizons vasdyextended, almost to the limits of the civilised world of its time;and where, moreover, it has entered that world as a superior and amaster, able to make others to a very large extent conform to itsown patterns. We shall see later that, at a different stage of socialand international development, the influence could go the otherway and the relations of eminent Romans with most of the outsideworld could impose a pattern on internal relationships. But at thepoint we have ieached that was sdll in the future, even thoughdimly visible. The constant interaction of the internal temper andcustoms of social life and the external environment of a society isan important and obvious field of study to the historian trying toevaluate both. Yet these aspects are often studied in isolation andthus individually distorted.

The modern student, accustomed to seeing history-at least atat second or at tenth hand-through the blood-red sPectacJes PfMarx, may by now have become impatient with my approach'observing that a discussion of Romen imperialism in terms ofpolidcs, strategy, social ethos and even psychology, surely misses

r6

n*,- a-- 9ctthe point: what fte will say) about revenuesr, m;rkets, exports?These (we are constandy taueht) are the real stdffof imperialism.

This view ir t"t ffifiCd?o'the student riffiifiartwith theiT"".. Variants of it have at times been-pr.9po""&d by dis-tinguished scholars:l we shall never escape contemporary fashions,and economic explanations ofpolitical events are commonly sup-posed to be one of the distinctively modern contributions tohistoricd research. Yet this seems to me an obvious case where wetend to see history through fiftifg spectacles. I shall not followup thc larger question of whether such views, even in the case ofour own society and the more recent past, tend to give an in-adequate and distorted explanation of historical events: though Iwouldnot deny the importance of economic motives for politicalactions, it seems to me clear that this importance can vary con-siderably in &fGrent conditions and even in different cases, andthat failure to recognise this, and over-emphasis on economicfactors, has led, not only to many mistaken historical interpreta-dons, but also to many wrong political decisions. However, our \lmain point at present is that no such motives can be seen, on the trwhole, in Roman policy, during the period that we are now l'considering.

Naturdly, we have one or two cases of economic privilegessecured for Romans and Italians: the best-known is freedom fromduty at Ambracia.s There is also that old favourite of economichistorians, the free harbour established at Delos n 7 s.c.s How-ever, those direcdy benefiting (particularly in the latter case) werenot Romdr aristocrats-though these may have got the odd slave alittle more cheaply-nor even, to a large extent, Roman citizens:apart from numerous Syrians and other Orientals, they wereItalians. M"oy of the'Romans' at Delos come from Oscan It ly.nThe protecting power, acting in the true spirit of a patron, wasmindful of benejcia to confer-at no cost to itself--on its loydallies. For in Italy the freedom and dignity of the Italian allies-whom moderns sometimes still miscall the'Italian Confederacy'o-had been mortally wounded by the Hannibalic'War and the

r7

two decades of disturbances that followed. Roman arrogance andlack of resped for the independence of the allies-whatever theirtreaty rights-were becoming painfully evident. But the Senate asa whole, though it could not always control its members, andthough it might at times not be unwillingqa"111!t Bp1rn* Powerp.rf.Ztly ph itt the Peninsula, catefu$-ffiffi1.'ffi obligationsffip64 !y spperior uirtus. Andthe upper class ofltaly was, on the*hol., ffi. There is no sign of selrLo, disconteni, no demandfor equaliry (not to mrntiop citize4s\iB)- until Roman demago-go"r,'fo, ih"lr o*tt$'dt* .Hft" with internal polics,create it in the rzos.6 Had the Senate not ft:lfilled its obligations-on the whole-to its clients' sadsfaction, the Social War wouldhave come much sooner and would perhaps have ended differ-

t entlv. Politics and even economics must be seen in their Romant 'I anstocratrc context.

Strange as it may seem to a generation nourished on Marx,Rome sought no major economic benefits. In their fourBro.vinces,the Rom"r.js simply i,n"ot oo "ollecting-with as little t.$itttf;fttftas posible-the tribute those regions had paid to their prwious*"rt"rr, the Carthaginians or their own king. Even the methods ofcollection, left essentially unchanged, brought little profit toRoman publicani. Of course, the Romaqs were too prudent inmatters

-financial to=giyg t1p established ftyfiuei; but they kepr

them as much fronJfiEffi"t fto- tffi* choice, "ttd -ottiybecause the alternativewassimply iftffiffitb. It is ffid"Jg,."

. w-e have seen) tlnt at this timey province was even ffii t"

""'S6r, except for peacefirl and prosperous Sicily. In Macedonia, int6T, rheroyal mines were for a time closed down, to avoid throw-ing them open to Roman speculators:? the motive has been ques-tioned and Livy arraigned; but since the fact can hardly be denied,it is difrcult to find any other plausible motive for such a thor-oughly un-Roman action. The tribute that the four regions ofMacedon had paid to their king was halved when they becameindependent republics. Perhaps it would have been unreasonableto demand the full amount from those weakened states. But

exploiters would hardly stop to think of this. [n fact, the tributewas perhaps imposed-as Frank pointed out-to pay for theexpenses of the war, which could not be charged to anyone else'saccount:E Rome had certainly come to feel that she should not, asvictor, be expected to pay for her wars.

So much for exploitation. The wars themselves, of course, werehlgltly profitable-especially the great Eastern wars. After the

,/ triumph of L. Paullus citizens had po more direct ta:res to pay.e\ tut"""y, slaves and works "f "rt ffitinto the city.to Thii *as

'the ancient law of war. No one would have dreamt of questioning

it. But, as we have already had occa,sion to see, neither this noranything else in fact made ih. S.o"t.ffiFfbr great wars, especi-"lly i" the rich East. Thslrrofits, whgqthgy;tarqe, were welcome

, * *"r" taken-ap ^ffit:;(";#{.fr,f|&-* a neli\Le'

&_q.ppltical ur3-rnillary-acrion; they were not activeh sought.Finally, markets. hr a well-known passage beloved of gconomic

historians, Scipio Aemilianus is made b/Ci..ro to rffie theRomans for not allowing Transalpine tribes to plant vines orolives, in order to make their own farms more profitable.llRostovtzeffcdled this'a prohibition on vine and olive culture inthe Western provinces' and seized on it as his crowning demon-stration of economic motives in Rome's foreign policy as early asr54 (or possibly rz5) n.c.r2 In fact, as Tenney Frank had by thenalready pointed out,ls and as Rostovtzefwould have seen, had helooked again at the text, the wording specifies the tribes ofTransalpine Gaul, and th.us excludes the other western provinces-such countries a.s Spain and Sicily, ricfi in vines and olives. Whateconomic sense is there in that?

But there is, in fact, another consideration that damns this ill-conceived theory. 'We must remember that the Republic, wherethis passage occurs, has rz9 B.c. as its dramatic date. Now, Romantreaties were kept in archives or even displayed in public, andCicero certainly had access to the one that contained the provisionhe here attacked. So would those who mattered among hisaudience. It is inconceivable that he should here be guilry of a

r8 r9

gross chronological blunder and refer to a treafy that was in factdarcd after r29: even Rostovtzeff's alternative of n5 will not do.Had Cicero made the incredible mistake, his fend Atticus, thatcareful chronologer, would have corrected it.la A Roman aristo-cratic reading public did not permit the sort of pseudo-history thatan Athenian orator could get away with in court. However, if thetrsrty concerned was already in existence in rzg, it must belong tothe campaign of r54-the only time before rz9 when Rome hadcome into contact with Transalpine Gauls to an extent that couldposibly involve such treaties. This campaign, as Tenney Frankstressed, had been entered into at the appeal of Massilia; and afterits end" as far as we know, the Romans, for a full generation, con-tinued to have no interest whatever in southern Gaul. Theycerainly did not own an acre of it, or have contects close enoughto lead to differences of opinion; and so Tenney Frank's.explana-tion of the treaty Cicero saw is ineviable: the term he objects tomust have been included at the request of Massilia, which itselfhad both agricultural and trading interests, and in fact probablyalmost a monopoly of trade in the area. 'We must only note, forfuture reference, that by Cicero's day, when the actual conditionsof r54 had long been forgotten, and men judged-as men willjudge-the past by the present, the interpretation that Cicerogives seemed the obvious one. The passage, therefore, is valuableevidence on his own day. o'

\/ The whole myth of economic motives in Rome's foreign poliryI at this time is a figment of modern anachronism, based on ancient, \ anachronism, like so many modern myths about the ancient world.

Though exposed by Tenney Frank long ago, it is still from time totime fashionably reaffirmed; but it should be allowed to die. Wemust add, bti"fly, that the destruction of Carthage and Corinth,sometimes cited against Frank's thesis, in fact confirms it: havingit in their power to setde on those splendid commercial sites (as,much later, they did), the Romans preGrred to plotrgh them up.Their motives were purely strategic and political: to strike atstrongly fortified centres of traditional anti-Roman leadership.

.We might compare the long hffdil over the foundation of a

settlement at Capua.l5hFg,,.*1._.ylgo of 148-6 show the Senate's traditional poliry

and fiffiifffffifrtr Macedoniahad to be annexed, "ftc, corriol.independence had turned out disastrous: the Romans, on thewhole, never made the same mistake f,wice. The same-from theRoman point ofview-applied to the small strip of Tunisia whichwas all that was lefr of Carthage and its empire.ls But Greece,despite all the troubles her cities had caused, w"i, fot rhe most parr,still not put under direct adminisrrarion; and a Greeklthehistorian Polybius.-was left to work out rhe details of the finalsettlement.l? In Africa, part of the small territory annexed wasimmediately handed over ro the possession of loyal allied citiesthat remained'free', i.e. outside the province.rs So iittle did Romecare aboutthe exploitation even of land that rightly belonged toher. (Or, if we prefer ir, so seriously did the Senare sri[ tale theduties

3f f at1ogq3,.:g .$:,*.gl.cr ofRome's economic inrerests.)-l h-e p9[cy ot mrruIJ![rng adminisrrative commirments and caringlitde for profit ffiA from provincial territories could hardlyappear more clearly.

And so it remained for the rest of the century. When AttalusIII left his \ir^rgdom ro Rome (quite without prompting, we maybe sure, and following a precedent that Rome had almost certainlydone nothing to create)r1e,,the Senate was not given a "h"rr". ofdiscussing the strange WffiWe may wel tlink that in someform it would have been accepted; but we cannot be sure even ofthat.

-As it happened, the tribune Tiberius Gracchus, through hishereditary connecrions with the royal house of pergamum,-heardof the testament first, and, needing money for his ambitiousdomestic schemes, he treated it as a vrindfall and passed a law inthe- Assembly accepting the inheritance and diveriing the profitsto his agrari{ plans.ro All this was done without consulting the_Senat9, even though this action was contrary to all precedent andbound to arouse strong opposition and the most serious alarm. Infact-a fact worth stressing, since it is easy to miss-it was his

2T

dealings with the Pergamene envoy that led immediately to thecharge that Tiberius was aiming at a regnum and thus to his down-fall.'r That he omitted the obvious conciliatory step of consolti"gthe Senate may in part have been due to his awareness of thepersonal antagonism he had by then aroused in it. But it is alsoionceivable that he was not at all sure that Senate policy wouldfavour accepting the bequest he so urgently needed. Tiberiuscould not afford to tal(e chances, if his scheme was not to be.feopardised. .n'

nce the People had accepted the bequest, the step-in thepolitical situation of the time-could not be reversed, and theS"tt"t" had to mal

major interest thirry years earlier ! The great road built by Cn.Domitius, meant to ensure-for the first time-land communica-tions between Italy and Spain, was largely given over to Massiliato protect, with (perhaps) the help of a Gw small Roman garri-,o.tt only years later-possibly as late as rr5-when dangerfrom the north became obvious, was a colony set uP on the site ofthe settlement of Narbo Martius: a key site, specula populiRomani ac propugnaculum tgainst'the Gauls.gz And this was done bythe faction o? Domitius himself;, whose son became one of thefounders of the colony; and it was done against the wishes of theSenate as a whole, which tried to deal with this colony as it haddeelt with the Gracchan Junonia. Naturally, the colony was apopularis catrsaiss it called up memories of C. Gracchus' venture* -*y impoverished citizens could expect to setde there and toprosper.

-Baut-pace many modern scholars-there is no record of

iny inte.est in it on the part of the F,quites, no record-of anybody'sbeing aware that it was an excellent commercial site, as ourscholan are, and as Romans also were by the time of the earlyEmpire.3a And the argument is not merely one from silence. Theabsrdity of its opposite is demonstrated by a litde-noticed inci-dent of i"tt y."tt 1"ter.s6

'When C. Marius, waiting for the Ger-mans in Gaul, found time heavy on his legions' hands, he madethem dig a canal from the Rhone (above the Delta) to the sea, by-passing ihe mouths that were always {lti"g up. Having dug thisgold-mine, worth a fortune even in tolls and dues, he presentedit,n his departure, to the loyal allied city o614x55ilia. (Naturally, theMassiliots proceeded to make the most of it.) This was the actionof the greit Popularis, the trusted champion of the Equites, justbefore roo B.c. It is a fit comment on Roman economic interests inGaul, then or earlier. By this time, however, failure to annex andgovern had had its usual consequences: when the Germans cameo*tt on Gaul, tlere was no Roman governor there to meet themor to impress the restive Gallic tribes with Roman strength--We allknow the result. After Marius' victories a province had to beestablished.s6

The ineviable conclusion ofall these considerations is that thereis no evidence for an expansionist plicy even after the Gracchi, ifwe think in terms of annexation. And we can "lt""dy see that thisdoes not fail to take account of the newly-formed (or at leastnewly-aroused) 'Equestrian'order, and of rhe very Plebs under itsdemagogic leaders-not to mention the Senate oligarc\ which,most of the time, still governed the state according to its old-established ideas.

This conclusion is borne out by the event for which, of allevents in the late second century, we have the best evidence-theJugurthine War. ln an old (but still valuable) paper,87 De Sanctisshowed that Sallust's account is utterly unreliable in its imputa-tions of incompetence and venality to the governing oligarchy.The fact is that Numidia was being treated according to the tradi-donal canons applied to client states that were troubled by internaldisorder: with advice and awtoritas-including both that ofpersonal patroni and that of the Senate as a whole, as weightilyexpressed in the embassy led by its princeps M. Aemilius Scaurus-but with no thought of armed intervention. Rome was accustom-ed to loyal obedience, and not least from the royal house ofNumidia under Masinissa and Micipsa. Moreover, there was, for along time, every reason to trust Jugurtha more than most bar-barian kings: after all, he had fought at Numantia, under ScipioAemilianus,e8 and had there met many young men who, by thisrime, were middle-aged men of considerable,irnpgryapc*e and in-fuence in the state.st'what Sallust describes "t'"tili#as, in themain, merely. thp natural unwillingness to think ill of an oldfti;;, *rt" 6t#'nis very position s"ipio', personal S'fimft:Jdation4o and whom it would have been rank dislovalty to susppctr - n -. ,.or to ill-treat without very good reason. we may ""[ thit g^f,*c; -ibility; it is at least a vice common to oligarchies, to which paral-lels are easy to find in more recent affairs-and one due to what isbasically an amiable human trait.

It is hardly necess:rry, nowadays, to re-argue the case for theSenate's policy in Numidia in greater detail. But if the oligarc\

25

is acquitted of positive crime and malice, there is a temptation toput another villain in its place. For De Sanctis the answer wasclear: the war was wanted by the Equites,al who profited by warand hoped to profit by its results. It was their aggressive inter-ventionism that-more even than Jugurtha's own actions-helpedto precipitate a costly war. Persuasively as he argues the case, wecan hardly accept it as it stands. We have already seen good reasonto believe that the Equites-to judge by the actions of theirc.hampioa Marius, who retained their support-did not, at anyrate, lrfiur for annexation. After all, opportunities for banking(their chief source of income) did not depend on it-as the verysituation we are discussing shows: for in Numidia there was amassive Italian colony at Cirta.a2 There will be more to say aboutthis. But it is dificuli to see that the unpredictable hazards of warwould have been more welcome to traders and bankers than thesecurity of peace; or that, after a war was won, their situation waslikely to be in any way improved,.,,",

Similarly the Pfebs: itro"gh,W#d by its tribunes, it was onlytoo willing-after the events of the past rrventy years-to believethe worst of the oligarchs, and though it undoubtedly demandeda vigorous policy, to restore the honour of the Roman name, thereis no sign ofany demand for conquest or annexation, or of delightin war as such. That this was not the point is shown by the factthat all pressure ceased when Marius took over; as for the Equites,it was only the murder of the ltalians in Cirta (at least some ofwhom will have been Romans, and all connected with Romanfamilies) that produced a marked efGct. There was an outragedclamour-and again there was every reason to believe the worst, inthe light of the developing differences between the two ordersthat prompted Varro's famous saying that C. Gracchus had madethe state 'rwo-headed'.nt The Senate's failure was naturally ex-ploited to the disadvantage of some hated figures. This explainsthe Mamilian commission.aa But again, there is no reason to thinkthat, apart from revenge, more was wanted than a serious effort torestore Roman honour and that secure Peace that is always in the

interests of trade and finance. 'What Marius promised, in hisintrigues against Metellus, was a quick end to the war. As forannexation, it was never even contemplated. Not only was Mariuspersonally entirely indifferent to it, as he was to economic exploita-tion-this his record in Gaul was to show; not only did he notmention either of these prizes in his propaganda before his election(which, even ifwe cannot accept Sallust's actual words, is probablywell mirrored in the speech that Sallust assigns to him after);aE buthe did not in fact annex an acre of Numidian soil after his victory.

The final setdement was entirely on traditional lines, dividingthe country berween an obscure Numidian (perhaps the onlymember of the royal family available) who got the eastern hal{,and Bocchus of Mauretarria, who got the western hal[ whichJugurtha had already promised him when he was still his ally.roBasically, it was the same setdement that a Senate commission hadimposed berweenJugurtha and Adherbal, and that Sallust, on thatoccasion, had viciously and unjustly attacked as corrupt and dis-honourable.a? The only real difference was that Bocchus, unlikeJugurtha on that earlier occasion, already possessed a large king-dom of his own, which he now retained in addition to half ofNumidia. He thus became far more powerful than the proposedsettlement on that earlier occasion would have made Jugurtha-to whose bribes Sallust claims it was due. But then (we may re-member) even the Scipios had been able to boast that it wasRoman practice to make friends of small chieftains and makethem into powerful kings.as 'We could hardly ask for plainer proofthat nothing had changed. Nor (as we have seen) did Marius, aftermaking this settlement that did not seem to confer any advantageon arry class at Rome, and that did not add an inch to Romanterritory, lose the support and the confidence of Equites and Plebs-quite the opposite: he was elected, in his absence, to anotherconsulship, which implied the command against t}re Germans andGauls. As we also saw, he was to repeat his policy with regard topeace settlements in Gaul-and, after this, receive a sixth consul-ship, without (to say the least) any recorded opposition from

27

disappointed supporters.as He had clearly dole prgcisely what.rr"ryoo" wantsd. At the same time, a long line of aristocraticstatesmen could look down with approval on this new man Per-meated with their spirit, who wanted nothing more than to bclike them.

m

THE SENATE AGAINST EXPANSION

I\TEITHER in the Jugurthine War, with all the bitter partyI \ politics that it called forth, nor in the German'Wars at theend of the second century, was the maditional policy of avoiding,,

. ".,{1,-major aggressive wars and administrative commitments abi:' t'-"doned: Numidia, where war had become inevitable, was notannexed after it; and Transalpine Gaul was at last made into aprovince (we do not know precisely when and bv *hqt-")..{bf th"U r""ron that non-ann"*"tioo had turned out ffi#'ry'*deven dangerous: two or three garrisons, plus the seryices thatMassilia could render, were insufrcient for the proper protectionof the invasion route into Italy. Indeed, not only had the tradi-tional policies continued unchanged: it looked as if the newelements in politics-the Plebs and the Equites-which under theleadership of demagogues seemed to be challenging the oligarc\in the running of the state merely wanted a.firmer policy (and, in

- its afup.{rce, were ready to susPect the worst), but had no desire to

'*'"ffiif. n a policy of "ggttin. *", *d territorial expansion.The continued loyalry they showed to Marius, who did notpromise or perform anything of that sort, sufrces to proye i.L.

That the Senate was still firmly in control on major irui wssoon conclusively demonstrated by the case of Cyrene, to whichwe have already alluded. This kingdom, after a fashion that hadbegun in the middle of the previous century, was left to Rome byits last king, Ptolemy Apion, when he died in 96. Now, it is farfrom clear precisely what the Romans did with it, although thecomplex .oid"o." h", b..n cat"frllyKr*Ed.l But what is ceitain isthat the Senate did not proclaim the annexation of the territoryand made no attempt to take over administrative responsibility. lnfact, in the unfortunate country the next rwo decades are mostly a

I

z8

period of anarchy, during which-strange as, in the circumstancesof the bequest, this must seem to us-there is barely a record ofany appeal to Rome, and certainly none of serious Roman interest.All that the Senate appears to have done was to arrange for thecollection of some of the profits. Even this was not properlyorganised: no regular system was installed; there is no reGrence topublicani during the next rwo decades or more.

'When the Romanswanted to import silphium-a valuable drug, of which Cyrenewas the main supplier-they seem to have paid for it (if we are totake Pliny's words at their face value).z 'W'e can see, not only theremarkable degree to which the Senate retained control of policy,but the absence of any major Pressure in the important field offoreign policy and imperial revenues-at a time when political

' struggles in the ciry were at their fiercest and (on occasion) theirmost violent. The People and the Equites clearly made no attemPtto force the Senate into expanding the sources oftheir profits, evenwhere this could be done as easily as it in fact had been done in thedays of Tiberius Gracchus. We shall see that the administration ofCyrene was properly taken in hand only n 75la-md even then(it is legitimate to think) only in a temporary form. Indeed, it isthis that gives us a clue as to what the Senate had originallyintended to do about the bequest of Attalus:8 the similarity bet-ween the fwo situations was so sffiking that, even in a sociery lessbound by tradition, the parallel would impose itself. To thehistorian, this is one of the most interesting aspects of the strdrgeaffair of Cyrene.

Cyrene in 96 was a wealthy, profitable and-under a Ptolemy-a well-organised country, where annexation would have beenboth lucrative and easy; yet it was allowed to slip into anarchy inpreference; and, in a period of bitter political controversy inRome, not a voice was raised in protest. This is a clear example ofRoman attitudes towards expansion and exploitation at this time,and indeed an outstanding one. But it is not the only one.'We cansee Senate policy at work elsewhere, along its traditional lines and(on the whole) equally unchallenged.

In Egypt a series of rather strange events-to which we shallretum in a dif,erent connection-led to another royal testament ofthe type we now know so well: Ptolemy Alexander I, in 88,followed several precedents in leaving his country to Rome.a Itwas surely the richest bequest ever received, far surpassing eventhat of Attalus III. The Senate (under rhe Populares Cinna andCarbo) did not bother to talce up the hereditas, merely taking careto collect a large debt owed to Romans. Nor, when things changedin Rome, did the victorious Sulla reverse that strange lack ofinterest in the rich prize that had so unexpectedly fllen to Rome.Far from it: he in fact sent Ptolemy Alexander I[, with his blessing,to claim the kingdom. And though this Ptolemy was almost atonce murdered, and this surely must have shown anyone whowould look that the Ptolemies were no lonser able to hold theirkingdom and that annexation could hardl| U.S. (not tomention the affront to Roman auctoritas that was implied in themurder of a king installed by Sulla)-though, moreover, onlydubious claimants to the vacant throne remained-yet, despite allthis, it'was not until the sixties that we can see any serious pressurein Rome to claim the estate of Ptolemy Alexander I. And eventhis pressure, for various reasons that do not concern us yet, in theend came to nothing.6

Egypt, despite scrappy evidence, is a striking case. Asia is betterattested. The Senate's care for the provincials of Asia is demon-strated, as late as the nineties, b-y th" mission of Q. MuciusScaevola Pontifex, to reform *1c strffrin-g province: not that weneed think this care intpir.dffiyt]' *;rd principles, since theconstant irritation and unrest presented obvious political dangers.oBut we must remember the original lex repetundarum, and bear inmind that at this time the Senate had not yet been 'reformed' bySulla. hr any case, whatever the motives, the poliry is clear. An-other aspect emerges, again according to pattern, in the case ofCappadocia and Paphlagonia.? They had been trouble-spots foryears. Mithridates of Pontus, with Nicomedes of Bithynia, hadinvaded Paphlagonia about ro4; they had partitioned it and for

3 r

some time held it in defiance of the Senate's orders. As so often,the Senate, for a long time, seemed not to care' Cappadocia, whichalso lacked a lawful king, was the next object of their intrigues: itwas no doubt in preparation for his attack on it that Mithridateswas there when he met Marius. Marius visited Cappadocia in 99,when he preferred to leave the city (it was said) rather than see thetriumphant return of his enemy Q. Metellus Numidicus.s It wasalso said-later-that he was looking for a chance of a miliarycommand for himself His words and deeds belie the ex postfactorumour, For when he met Mithridates in Cappadocia, he gave himthe famous warning: either to be stronger than Rome or to do herbidding.' It can hardly have been unexpected when Mithridates,oo "ooiid.tation, chose the more peacefirl alternative. Whateverhis immediate plans had been, it was clear that he could not face anultimatum so plainly delivered. The words had been those of aman who prefeirred peace (with honour for Rome) to an unneces-sary war; and it was probably as a result of this patrioti. Tdsuccessfirl firmness that Marius' enemies in Rome agreed to thesignal honour of his augurate in absence-an unexP-ect:d honour,difficult to explain without this, but one that enabled Marius toreturn to Rome with his dignitas safe and that led to a generalcompromise in his struggle with his enemies.

However, the Senate still failed to act decisively in Cappadocia:Marius' brave words were not followed

.ltj*r" SgfJ,.ll.hgfashion. Nor was anything done t'lffiie bid dilince tothe Senate's command in Paphlagonia. As a result of this, Mith-ridates proceeded to seize Cappadocia through a PuPPet king;-andNicomides, worried at this, sent an embassy to Rome, whichMithridates countered with one of his own. This time the Serutemade its purpose clear: the answer was that the kings must evacu-ate both Cappadocia and Paphlagonia. It was a stern command,which was bught to Asia by a weighty embassy headed-as anequally difrcult embassy to Numidia had been sixten y^earseirlier-by theprinceps Senatushimself, the (now) aged and infrmM. Aemilius Scaurus.l0 The outcome of all this, and its importance

in the history of Rome at this time, I have discussed elsewhere.What concerns us here is the obvious fact that even now noattempt was made to seize the vacant territories. In fact, they werdeclared'free', and the Cappadocians, disliking this dangerous andunaccustomed state, ultimately chose a king (Ariobarzanes),whom a Roman commander had to go to much trouble to instalfor them. Throughout this whole affair, Senate poliry is preciselywhat it had been in the same area in the second century: to Preventany dangerous accumulation of power-it was becoming clearthat Mithridates would have to be carefully watched-but to doso with a minimum of commitment. Even Sulla, when he installedAriobarzanes in his kingdom, seems to have had only allies and noRoman forces with him.

Now that we have incidentally come upon him, we may Pro-perly conclude this part ofour survey with L. Sulla. He, ofcourse,is the type and symbol of both the old and the new in the RomanRepub!.ic. For the moment, let us note that he fu"tly set his faceagainst any expansion. His treaty with Mithridatesll-an allianceof two dynasts against the government ofRome-cannot properlybe cited in support, since at the time he was not in a position todictate terms. But when he was alreadv securely in power,.he#"fr.? r. Murena fto- ffiffig vtiihridat.r *d tAitng$ -him back to Rome, compensating lim with a totally *irr#'"riumph.l! Moreover, we have seen Sulla's action in Egypt, whenhe could have won ready popularity by simply accepting thebequest made some years earlier and claiming that he had addedEgypt to the possessions of the Roman People-a claim that wasleft fo: another dynast to make, many years later.l3 We may also

' i#;l"ffi wholetf sulla's settlemenioithe n.publicao m"girtr"-cies. By raising the number of praetors to eight and that ofqu:restors to twenty he precisely provided-as Mommsen sawl4-for the administrative needs of the existing ten provinces, on thebasis of normally annual succession. The implication is clear: hedid not conceive, at least for the near future, of the annexation ofany'more provinces. His actions in the cases of EgyPt and of

3 332

Murena vrere not isolated incidents, but part ofhis general schemefor Rome as he meant to establish it.

Sulla rejected the easy chance of claiming glory for the annexa-tion of Egypt-a major acquisition if ever there was one. It isinteresting, next, to note that he nevertheless conspicuously choseto arrogate to himself the glory of having extended the bounds ofempire. He had, of course, celebrated a magnificent triumph-not to mention the vicarious glory of those of Murena and youngPompey'E-to surround his usurpation with the aura of glorythat, by impressing the populace, might help to erase his past anddezzle the eyes of those who disliked the armed present. But herrent even further. From the annals of the distant past, he seems tohave revived a long-forgotten ritual: he advanced the pomoeriumof the city-e solemn and laborious rite, diffrcult enough ofexecution to account for the toal neglect into which it had fallenfor centuries.lo This (we are told) only a marr who had advancedthe boundaries of Roman territory was entided to do-in fact,stricdy one who had done so in ltaly: there could be legitimatedoubt, since the ceremony had not been performed since Romanexpansion beyond Italy began. Sulla (we must suspect withMommsen) arrogated this right to himself by a trick in the besttradition of Roman legal dodges. Though he had not conquqredan acre ofnew territory "try*h.r. (that we ktto;p of), he e?terfd' -the boundaries of rtily, fo, administrativ. ffii*r, from theAesis to the Rubicol?-1eg a necessery or inescapable reform initself: the Rubico (as historians know to their cost) was not aconspicuous landmark. tt is dificult to find any good reason forthis action except in support of his ytomoerium ceremony-anddificult to find any legal basis for the latter except the unnecessaryreform.

'We can be sure that Sulla aimed at no conquest, nor foresaw

any in the immediate future. It is interesting (if the interpretationhere suggested is right) that, among many actions he took for theunderpiing of hii detested r6gie by display and glory*

*gg-" i.was a claim that was to make it appear that he had rcIievid,

conquest. Hemust have been aware that the traditional policythathe represented and reinforced was no longer one calculated to winactive popularity-and that its opposite, or an appearance of it,might now do so.

Since we have anticipated to this extent, let us anticipate a littlefurther: we are not bound to annalistic tradition. History is aseries of strands, increasing from beginnings as thin as fine hairs toform stout cords, inextricably interwoven so that beginnings andends are concealed. Sometimes a section at a given time will clarrfyrelationships hitherto unsuspected; at other times it is best tofollow individual strands before turning to the

.weav_e as,1.whole.The Senare government that Sulla.eitored iffit?iffi-.d

the general lines of the same tradition. There were indeed exten-sions of territory: in Isauria the conquests ofP. Servilius Vatia laidthe foundations of the proper territorial province of Cilicia, asdistinct from the oldprouincia.ls But this was not a case of annexa-tion for pro{it. Those hardy mountaineers, whom it took Serviliusat least three years to subdue, were surely going to cost more topolice and keep in order than they were likely to produce inrevenue. The conquest ful{illed the demand-which had turnedout to be inescapable-for a secure hinterland to the precariouscoastd strip of Cilicia and for proper protection of the allied citiesin the area. Seen from another point of view, ega:n, the Isaurianwar is not all that different from many other limited wars againstbarbarian ffibes, mostly fought further viest: in this case, at least,a genuine strategic need was happily combined with a comman-der's wish for a triumph.

Then, again, t}ere was Cyrene.le In zsl+ the quaestor (or ex-quaestor) P. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus was sent therc (propraetore, it seems, though Sallust does not actually say so), to endthe anarc\ that had been qllowed to prevail there for twenfyyears. This'was done "t th" ?tiS'tlc. of ,'o-" politician-pethaps(it has recently been suggested) the cons^ul Q. Cotta, whom Sallustdid rrot lik.. il.rt it is d]ftcult ttot to'&in$it. ro.ollus with themove, as consul designate in 75 and consul n 74-the man who,

35

as proquaestor under Sulla, had cdled in at Cyrene, seen the con-diotr f " country and done what, in his limited time, he coulddo to settle some of its problems and disputes. Ir" *y cese,in75l4someone vmth imperiuftt was at last specially sent there.

It must be noted thzt 75 was a year of famine and financialstringency-so much so that the consul C. Cotta had to make at".tfrl and apologetic speech to the People (which Sallust parodieswith great relish) and the praetorian candidate Q. Metellus wasalmosi lynched by a hungry mob.so Nothing could bedone to endthe famine until, in 73, funds at last aPPear to be available. A lawof the two consuls of that year (the lex Terentia Cassia) providedfor the purchase of extra grain in Sicily (at a fair price) and for itsdistribution to the People, at the rate of five moilii per man.21

'We

may wonder at the sudden affiuence, et a time when a major waraqainst Mithridates in the East had just begun, Sertorius in Spainoi", t ot yet defeated, and M' Antonius

'Creticus' was being very

unsuccessful against the over-powerful pirates: in fact, in everywav there were far more commitments than there had been in 75,when C. Cotta had ofGred uP his body in expiation for the in-evitable famine to the enraged crowd. The answer, of course, iseasy, once the right question is asked: the money from Cyrenehad come in. The People's right to profit by empire-established,as we shall see, by Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus-was beginningto break through the raditions of foreign Policy. The Senate hadto accept and even to encourage the organisation of a province forimmediate profit. The precedent was to be remembered.

Nevertheless, it was still a very hesitent step. The Sullan Senate,clearly, was unwilling to send a senior magistrate to unde-rtakeproper administration. A junior magistrate was chosen, with theb"rrt minimum ofpower.tt He could not be a danger to the stateor commit it to unwanted nouble. Moreover, it is not by *ymeans certain that there was henceforth a permanent administra-tion, with govemors regularly sent out.is In 67, another (aGnaeus) Lentulus Marcellinus is found at Cyrene as a legate ofPompey; and in that capaciry he performs some of the firnctions

36

that, had there been a governor, were properly the governor's.FIe even seems to supply a date for counting years ! The easiestconclusion is that there was no governor, and that P. LentulusMarcellinus (the quaestor) had been sent, not as'the frst of a seriesof regular governors, but on a special mission for a particularpurpose. 'What the purpose was, we have already seen: he was toreorganise the finances of the province and restore peaceftrl con-ditions, so that the Romans would at last derive a worth-whilerevenue from the royal estates there, which they had beenexploiting ever since the will of96, but (it seems) haphazardly andineffectually. A large sum of money was urgently needed torelieve the dangerous famine, and p. Lentulus' main task was tofind it. The choice of a quaestor was appropriate enough. Yet,however alarming the precedent, Cyrene was (of course) not anexample of annexation. Quite the opposite: it provides anorherexample of how, even at this late date, commitments were cut toa bare (indeed, an unsatisfactory) minimum-ofhow responsibilirythat was morally Rome's was avoided, rather than of a greedy orofrcious search for new responsibility.

Let us fir"lly consider L. Lucullus, who (as we have had reasonto suppose) was connected with the Cyrene affair. If the supposi-tion is correct, his ideas are clear even before he went out to AsiaMinor. But let us look more closely at this man whom Ferreroconsidered the founder of real expansionism in Rome and thecreator ofa new era in poliry'n-th. greatest ofRoman conquerors(at any rate before Pompey), who stormed through Asia Minor,first crossed t}re Euphrates, invaded Armenia and sacked its capitalTigranocerta. He had shown at home that he was ready to useuntraditional and unsavoury methods for the sake of gaining amajor command: he had intrigued with the mistress of aninfluential wire-puller, his own enemy P. Cethegus, in order teachieve this. Lr the field he was equally ready to ignore tradition:when battle was to be joined on an unlucky day (dies aterz it wasOctober 6th, 69, the anniversary of the batde of Arausio in ro5)and his officers drew his attention to this, he replied: 'But I shall

37

rnake it zlucley day for Rome.' And he went on to win the mostbrilliant victory in the annals of the Rcman Republic: !h: :*never saw *oih., like ir.'as The shades of P. Claudius Pulcherand of c. Flaminius could not have been more ostentatiouslydelied.

Lucullus advanced as far as Gordyene, intending (it was said) tomarch against the Parthians; and he was

-stopped only b;'$9mutiny Jf hi, -"tt. personal hostiliry and the obvious parallel ofthe storv of Alexander the Great have done their worst: there isoo noo reason for believing the unfulfilled intention.26 But the"hrig" i6elf is significant. Lucullus was accused of overweeningr-bitior' he *"i charged with ruling like an absolute monarchover Cilicia, Asia, Bithpi", Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus,Armenia and all the lands up to the river Phasis; of trying-toextend his proconsul", "o--*d and piling warj'rPon war to thisend. However exaggerated, these chaiges contain a modicum offfuth; we have alr-e-ady seen that L. Lucullus, the relative (\-".ri"g") of L. Sulla and the only one of his ofcers who, in 88,had reained loyal to the rebel marching on Rome,8z was not aconservative ,robl", but a man remarkably free from traditionalrestraints. He was an example of the kind of ambition that wasundermining the Republic. witness the fact that, deposed fromIu, prorinriiby Senaie and People, \e y-et clung to his command*i*ould .teo h"t" liked to invade Cappadocia, md his menrefused to follow him: a story that' this time, we may wellbelieve:sB ir was a matrer of making good his own failure, and theooint is not laboured against him in the source'^

Y"t what were his actual arrangements? Of course, they neverreached final form, and Pompey later deliberately reversed someof them; so that our information on them is not as good as weshould like. But we can see, in outline, what he meent to do. Firstof all, we nore thar he asked for the traditional commission of ten,.o"an and was going to Put his plans before them in thetraditional w"y. (ti fac-t, they *et" thete when Pompey tookover.)" He ceitainly meant to annex Pontus' This, of course, was

3 8

now necessary on traditional grounds: it had beerr left free oncebefore after defeat and had shown that it could not be trusted.We have had occasion to observe that, in such a case, the patternof mos maiorum demanded annexation. But Lucullus seems not tohave gone beyond this in any way. Machares, son of Mithridates,was recognised as king in the rest of his father's dominions, in theCrirnea and round the north and east of the Black Sea. Larer, afrerthe conquest ofArmenia, its vassals in Commagene and Gordyenewere also recognised. When Lucullus crossed the Euphrates at thestrategic site of Tomisa, fm from putting a garrison into thatimportant fortress long occupied by the Armenians, he presentedit to Ariobarzanes of Cappadocia-who could hardly even betrusted, on an objective assessment, to hold it securely for himselfonce he had it. Most astonishing of all: Syria and Phoenicia, fromwhich Tigranes of Armenia had expelled the miserable epigoni ofthe Seleucids, at least fourteen and perhaps eighteen years earlier,were returned to Antiochus XIII of that dynasty-again a manmost unlikely to be able to deGnd his properry, and one who hadnever in fact been master of those regions.so

Lucullus'personal ambition is by no means a negligible pheno-menon. Yet it is clear that, as far as foreign policy is concerned,he still stood firmly in the senatorial tradition of minimisingadministrative responsibiliry. He set our to win glory and wealthfor himself and (as he might argue) for the Roman People. But hedid not aim to annex territory, except that of Pontus, which zosmaiorum required him to. Nor, to his cost, did he aim to exploitprovincials.

It is tempting to look for the persistence of this attitude rightdown to the end: the long opposition to the ratification ofPompey's acta tfter his return from the Easr;3l the objections toM. Crassus' Parthian lMar;t, Cato's proposal that Caesar, after hisGallic victories, should be handed over to the enemy for perjury.esPerhaps the genuine remains of an old attitude of restraint enterinto these. There is reason to think, even at this late time, that thebest traditions of the oligarchy were to some extent surviving,

among men now often powerless to influence events' But one"*oi insist: considerations of principle were by now far toomuch interwoven with internal politics and personal antagonisms.

'We have had to abandon chronological order, to show that inour field, as in others, nothing at Rome changed quickly: in allits manifestations, that which in the end added uP to what we callthe Roman Revolution was a slow-an almost incredibly slow-Drocess, measured by what we are accustomed to nowadays. The^most

terrifying and violent upheavals-riots, seditions, murdersand full-scai" "i.ril wars-were remarkably unsuccessfirl in causingconvulsive transformations of the sort we regard as almost com-monplace. Right up to the early part of the first century, theforcesunleashed by-th. r"""hi were nor so much unable as (it

-seems)unwilling to press for major changes_ I the traditional lreignpoliry: tio, " -* like Marius rerained the trust and.the afectionf e""pt. and Equites in spite of-his tloroughly traditionalhurdling of foreign and imperial affairs._ And, following eventsalmost Io th" en of the Republic, we have seen that, even attimes of great internal tensions, the Senate and its rePresentativescould an did continue, on rhe whole, to pursue the traditionalpolicy. o--.r-\-: e-l^

All thi, time, of course, the Process of economic ffilttioi ofthe provinces was continuing. we shall have to look at it in mored.t. For the moment' lei us ttote that it was, in the secondcentury and for some time after, a very- slow Proc:ss' limited bythe small number of Roman citizens of the requisite wealth andsanding and by the comparalively srnall amount of capitalavailabl"e, most of which was tied up rnthe publica (taxes and armysupplies) or, when withdrawn from them, invested in land 1o*"ke ir, owner socially accepable. As for Italians: they would beconsidered and protecied; but they were in no position to dictatepoUcy.^

This must constantly be bome in mind when we notice thatrhere was, at the time with which we are now dealing, no Pressureon the Senate to increase economic opportunities: Egypt and

Cyrene did not become matters of public contention. There was,at most (as in Numidia), pressure to protect existing oPPortunities.What we do not know is how far, in the time before the Social'War,

senators themselves had economic interests abroad. EvenCato the Elder, it will be remembered, had been interested inrade through freedmen.ta This sort of indirect interest must havebeen common, on a small scale. But it did not add up to much.The lex Claudia had clearly been, on the whole, successful inconcentrating the interest of senators on Italian land and minim-ising the commitment of their wealth to the chancy business oftrade or even fi.nance. That this-fully in line with responsiblesenatorial thinking-had been its purpose is, of course, clear fromthe fact that no effort was ever made to repeal it;86 and its successis shown by the scandal that Cato seems to have caused-and bythe very foreign policies *rat we have been considering. No rulingclass whose interests were intimately bound up with overseasinvestment has ever behaved as the Senate did during the time wehave been considering. There had always, of course, been someexploitation of provincials by governors and their staffs. As early"r i7r *e have evidence of it, and of the Senate's unwiingness topunish it.30 But, as we saw, the prelude to further expansion inihe r4or was a law intended to deal with this (the lex Calpurniarepetunilarum); "ttd when this failed to be fully effective in duecour*e, it was-as we shall see-suPerseded by the legislation ofC. Gracchus, which distinctly improved matters.s? But this, inalry case, was on the whole the limit of senatorial profits from theprovinces.

It is only at the very end of the century that we perhaps beginto glimpse major overseas interests on the part of senators-notthai we can be at all sure even then. M. Scaurus, rhe princepsSmdtus, clearly kept up a profitable connection with the Equites,despite his position as head of the Senate and of the house of theMeielli. We remember how he was made one of the chairmen ofthe Mamilian commission, \Mith its Gracchani ^iudices.ss He, in afamous but desperately difcult phrase, *"t fi?i,iil probably at

40 4r

&r4 Q*9rYa2,*1his trial for ixiortion,-wittr berng rapinarum prouincialium sinus.ss'We

are left to guess \ow- th e rcpinae actuaily reached his pocket:however, h. t fitS#Aa iepetundarum ^,P?,PA^we lay

{trffih" ih"t h" at ^most

got his^share of the fftfttr& Cttters hadtaken during provincial commands, or was too lavishly enter-tained *h* he travelled through Asia. There is no real sign ofprovincial investment.

Marius is more important. 'We

cannot really prove his pro-vincial inreresrs either; but his connecrion with the Equites isobvious and need not be argued again at length; in particular, it isnotewothy that he joined them in 92 in t|r9 prosecution ofP. Rutilius Rufus.a0 The political situation of the moment, andold ininicitiae, can accounifot thir r P. Rutilius was a hanger-on ofthe Metelli who had remained loyal to them, and whom Mariushad no doubt learnt ro hate even in Numidia.al But it is at leastpossible that Marius' own economic interests, as well as his politicalo.r, *"r" involved in the case, together with those of the Equites'

There must always have been some investment overseas bysenators. But we have no reason to doubt that it was small, mosdyindirect, and marginal in its efGcts. This much th9 facls of policyforce us to conclue. For these men had the world at their mercf,and, even at their best, they were not superhuman in their code ofconduct. Scaurus' rapinae may be of the old-fashioned sort(whether or not he was g"ilty)- Marius, closely linked with.theiquites throughout his political career, may well have shared theirfiriancial inteiests. But then, Marius is a new type of consular,unusual in his age; and even he shows no initiative in foreignoolicy. His only lontribution to the exploitation of overseas landsi..*r to be the seftlement ofhis veterans in Numidia; and, as weshall see, it is very doubtful whether that was his own idea'

To sum up the conclusions we have reached: senatorial capital-which, by and large, far surpassed equestrian-was not availableon a large scale foioverseas investment before the Social War:equestrian was, on the whole, fully-committed and needed nf,laige-scale expansion-in fact, could probably not have coped

with one; the ltalians were not yet able to exercise politicalpressure; and the Plebs, while it certainly welcorned increasedbenefits, had no leaders to demand them. Hence the cases ofCyrene and Egypt; and, due to Roman conservatism, the latertraces of the same attitude in foreign policy. Sulla's, as so often, isthe really interesting case: pretendingr with hallowed andantiquarian ritual, to have achieved conquests, when in fact he hadavoided them. It is the first re