Europe: A History (37 page)
Within these assemblies, patronage groups played a vital role. In a hierarchical and highly compartmentalized society it was natural, indeed essential, for wealthy patricians to manipulate the activities of the lower orders and thereby to influence the decisions of popular institutions. To this end each
patronus
retained a following of dependent
clientes
. The patron expected his followers to support his policies and his preferred candidates. The clients expected a reward of money, office, or property. Serving a wealthy patron was the best road to social advancement. It was patronage that gave Roman government its characteristic blend of democratic forms and oligarchic control.
The network of assemblies, the rotation of offices, and the need for frequent meetings created a strong sense of belonging. Every Roman citizen knew exactly where he stood with regard to his tribe, his clan, his family, his century, and his patron. Participation and service were part of the accepted ethos. In formal terms, it was the popular assemblies which appointed the chief officials, and the officials who appointed the Senate. In reality, it was the senators who made all other institutions function to their advantage. Whoever dominated the Senate ruled the Republic.
The Senate, which held centre stage under both Republic and Empire, had a membership which fluctuated between 300 and 600 men. Its members were appointed by the consuls, whom it was called on to advise. But since the consuls were required to give preference to ‘experienced men’, and since senatorial patrons controlled all the major offices of state, the Senate could blithely perpetuate its hold on government. It was the core of a self-perpetuating élite. The dominant element within the Senate at any particular moment depended on the delicate balance of power between competing individuals, clans, and
clientelae
or ‘client groups’. But the same patrician names are repeated over and over through the centuries, until a tidal wave of upstarts finally swept them away.
With time, the efficiency of senatorial control declined in proportion to the growth of factionalism. When the Senate was paralysed through civil strife, the
only ways to keep the system running were either for a dictator to be installed by common consent or for one faction to impose its will through force of arms. This was the source of the string of dictators in the first century
BC.
In the end, the faction led by Octavian Caesar, the future ‘Augustus’, imposed its will on all the others. Octavian became the patron of patrons, holding the fate of all the senators in his hands.
The two consuls, the joint chief executives of Rome, held office for one year from 1 January. In its origins, their office was essentially a military one. They were proposed by the Senate and appointed by the
comitia centuriata
, which gave them the
imperium
or ‘army command’ for specific tasks. But they gradually assumed additional functions. They presided over the Senate, and, in conjunction with the Senate, held responsibility for foreign affairs. They supervised the management of the city’s internal affairs under the
praetores
, the ‘chief judges’ who ran the judicial system, the
censores
, who controlled taxation and the registration of citizens, the
quaestores
, who ran public finance, the
aediles
, who policed the city and ran the Games, and the
pontifex
, the high priest. In conjunction with the tribunes, they were expected to keep the peace between the Senate and the people. It is a measure of the consuls’ importance that Romans kept the historical record of the city, not in terms of numbered years, but in terms of the consulships.
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Thanks to the reforms of Marius and Sulla, the profile of the consulship changed. The practice of administering the provinces through
proconsules
, or consular deputies, extended its range of powers. On the other hand, direct control of the army was lost.
Roman government seems to be the subject of many misconceptions. It was in constant flux over a very long period of time, and did not attain any great measure of homogeneity, except, perhaps, briefly in the age of the Antonines. Its undoubted success was due to the limited but clearly defined goals that were set. It provided magistrates to settle disputes and to exact tribute. It provided an army for external defence, law enforcement, and internal security. And it supported the authority of approved local or regional élites, often through their participation in religious rites and civic ceremonies. The magic combination involved both great circumspection, in the degree of the state’s encroachment on established rights and privileges, and utter mercilessness, in defending lawful authority. In Virgil’s words:
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque imponere morem
parcere subiectis et debellare superbos.
(Make it your task, Roman, to rule the peoples by your command; and these are your skills: to impose the habit of peace, to spare those who submit, and to conquer the proud.)
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Yet Roman institutions seen through modern concepts can be deceptive. Under the Roman kingdom the monarchy was not hereditary, and it was limited by the Senate of the patricians which eventually overthrew it. Under the early Republic the two consuls, elected annually by the patrician Senate, received the full ‘power to command’. But they were closely constrained both by the dual nature of the office and by the right of veto established in 494 by the tribunes of the plebs. Hence the famous formula of SPQR—
Senatus Populusque Romanus
y
‘the Senate and People of Rome’—in whose name all authority was exercised. Under the late Republic and early Empire, most of the traditional magistracies and legislative bodies survived; but they were subordinated to the increasingly dictatorial pretensions of the executive.
Roman political culture determined how changing institutions actually worked. Political and religious life were always closely interwoven. The reading of the auguries accompanied all decision-making. Strong emphasis was placed on family or local authority. As a result, civic responsibility, the demands of military service, and respect for the law were deeply ingrained. Rotating offices demanded a high degree of lobbying and initiative. Under the Republic consensus was always sought through the taking of
consilium
(advice). Under the Principate (or early Empire), it was obedience that counted.
Roman law has been described as the Romans’ ‘most enduring contribution to world history’.
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Its career began with the Twelve Tables of 451–50
BC,
which were thenceforth regarded as the fount of ‘equal law’, the ideas that were equally binding on all citizens. It distinguished two main components, the
ius civile
(state law) regulating the relations between citizens, and the
ius gentium
(international law). It developed through the agglomeration of accepted custom and practice, as determined by
prudentia
or ‘legal method’. Over the years every point of law was tested, amended, or expanded. The praetors were the main source of this type of law-making until the ‘Perpetual Edict’ of the Emperor Hadrian put a stop to further amendments. Laws initiated by magistrates, the
leges rogatae
, were differentiated from the
plebiscita
or ‘popular judgements’ initiated by one or other of the assemblies.
The complexity and antiquity of legal practice inevitably gave rise to the science of jurisprudence, and to the long line of Roman jurists from Q. Mucius Scaevola (Consul in 95
BC)
onwards. It was a sign of deteriorating times that two of the greatest jurists, Aemilius Papinianus (Papinian, d. 213), a Greek, and Domitius Ulpianus (Ulpian, d. 223), were both put to death,
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LEX
]
The Roman army was the product of a society nurtured in perpetual warfare. Its logistical support system was as remarkable as its technical skills and its corporate ethos. For half a millennium, from the Second Punic War to the disasters of the third century, it was virtually invincible. Its victories were endless, each marked by the pomp of a Triumph and by a vast collection of monuments on the model of Titus’ Arch or Trajan’s Column. Its defeats were all the more shocking for being exceptional. The annihilation of three Roman legions in the German backwoods in
AD
9 was a sensation unparalleled until the death of the Emperor Decius in battle against the Goths in 251, or the capture of the Emperor Valerian by the Persians in 260. The Latin proverb
si vis pacem, para bellum
, ‘if you want peace, prepare for war’, summarized a way of life.
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LEX
I
T
is often said that Roman law is one of the pillars of European civilization. And so, indeed, it is. Latin
lex
means ‘the bond’, ‘that which binds’. The same idea underlies that other keystone of Roman legality, the
pactum
or ‘contract’. Once freely agreed by two parties, whether for commercial, matrimonial, or political purposes, the conditions of the contract bind the parties to observe it. As the Romans knew, the rule of law ensures sound government, commercial confidence, and orderly society.
Yet it must not be imagined that the legal traditions of Rome were bequeathed to modern Europe by any simple line of direct inheritance. Most of the Empire’s law codes fell into disuse with the disintegration of the Empire, and had to be rediscovered in the Middle Ages (see Chapter V). They survived longest in Byzantium, but did not by that route strongly influence modern law-making. Indeed, in terms of direct example, they probably most immediately affected the formulation of Catholic canon law.
What is more, even in the secular sphere the revival of Roman traditions had to compete with other non-Roman, and often contradictory, legal practices. Rome was only one of several sources of European jurisprudence. Customary law, in all its diversity, was equally important. In some countries, such as France, a balance was achieved between Roman and customary traditions. In most of Germany, the Roman law arrived in the fifteenth century, at a very late date. In England, exceptionally, the common law, modified by the principles of equity, was to gain a virtual monopoly.
Even so, the Roman distinction between the public and the private domains was to suit the purposes of Europe’s growing polities; and civil law in most European countries was to be based on codified principles in the Roman fashion (as opposed to the Anglo-American concept of legal precedent). In this regard, the single most influential institution came to be the French
Code Napoléon
(1804).
Whatever their connections, all educated European lawyers acknowledge their debt to Cicero and to Cicero’s successors. It was Cicero, in
De legibus
, who wrote:
Salus populi suprema lex
, ‘the safety of the people is the highest law’.
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One could equally say that the rule of law provides the people with the highest degree of safety.
During the
Pox Romana
, the Empire’s fortresses and frontiers were maintained by a standing force of some thirty legions. Many legions became closely associated with the provinces in which they were permanently stationed for generations, or even for centuries—the ‘II Augusta’ and the ‘XX Valeria Victrix’ in Britain, the ‘XV Apollinaris’ in Pannonia, or the ‘V Macedónica’ in Moesia.
Each legion counted
c
.5–6,000 men, and was commanded by a senator. It consisted of three lines of infantry—the
hastati, principes
, and
triarii
, each made up of ten maniples commanded by a ‘prior’ and a ‘posterior’ centurion; a body of
velites
or ‘skirmishers’; the
iustus equitatus
or ‘complement of cavalry’, consisting of ten
turmae
or ‘squadrons’; and a train of engineers. In addition, there were a large number of auxiliary regiments made up of allies and mercenaries, each organized in a separate cohort under its own prefect.
With time, the percentage of citizen-soldiers declined disastrously; but the backbone of the system continued to rest on the middle-ranking Roman officer caste, who served as centurions. Distinguished service was rewarded with medals, or with crowns for the generals; and loyal veterans could expect a grant of land in one of the military colonies. Discipline was maintained by fierce punishments, including flogging and (for turncoats) crucifixion. In later times, the decline of civilian institutions gave the military their chance to dominate imperial politics. The
gladius
or ‘thrusting sword’, first adopted from the Iberians during the Second Punic War, became, in the hands of the gladiators, the symbol of Rome’s pleasures as well as her invincibility.
Roman architecture had a strong proclivity for the utilitarian. Its achievements belong more to the realm of engineering than to design. Although the Greek tradition of temple-building was continued, the most innovative features were concerned with roads and bridges, with urban planning and with secular, functional buildings. The Romans, unlike the Greeks, mastered the problem of the arch and the vault, using them as the basis for bridges and for roofs. The triumphal arch, therefore, which adorned almost all Roman cities combined both the technical mastery and the ethos of Roman building. The Pantheon, first built by Agrippa in 27
BC
in honour of’all the gods’ and the Battle of Actium, carries a vaulted dome that is 4 ft 6 in (1.5 m) wider than St Peter’s. (It is now the Church of Santa Maria Rotunda ad Martyres.) The Colosseum (80
AD),
more correctly the Flavian Amphitheatre, is a marvellous amalgam of Greek and Roman features, and has four tiers of arches interspersed with columns. It seated 87,000 spectators. The vast brick-built Baths of Caracalla or Thermae Antoninianae
(AD
217)—where Shelley composed his
Prometheus Unbound
—are a monument to the Roman lifestyle, 360 yards (330 m) square. They contained the usual sections graded by temperature —the
frigidarium, tepidarium
, and
caldarium
, a
piscina
or pool for 1,600 bathers, a stadium, Greek and Latin libraries, a picture gallery, and assembly rooms. The Baths of Diocletian
(AD
306) were even more sumptuous. The grandiose Circus Maximus was devoted to chariot-racing; it was enlarged until it could accommodate 385,000 spectators,
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