The Last Generation of the Roman Republic
by Erich S. Gruen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Erich S. GruenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1995-02-28
ISBN: 0520201531
Number of pages: 596
Publisher: University of California Press
Book Reviews of The Last Generation of the Roman Republic
Book Review: A Clarifying Retrospective Of The Late Republic
Summary: 5 Stars
The Roman Republic was strangely a very dynamic as well as rigid institution in which the causes of its demise have baffled scholars until the present day. Erich S. Gruen's scholarly work is one of the most concise studies on the politics and society of the Late Roman Republic. Throughout the book, Gruen exhaustively reviews the socio-political spectrum of Rome from Marius to Caesar and points to certain issues that collectively led it to its downfall. The book is also a challenge to previous works, particulary Syme's, claiming that the Romans clearly knew that the Civil War was coming.
Having no written charter or constitution to guide it, the Roman Republic relied on tradition and ad hoc enactments as precedent. Unlike the democracies of today, Roman suffrage was collectively manifested by two voting assemblies representing either 35 geographical classes (tribes) or votes by defined classes organized on the basis of wealth (i.e. the less money your class had, the less its vote counted.) Each assembly voted on certain ranges of legislation and were further segregated by a caste structure distinguishing commoners and the elite patrician nobility whose family clans originated from the earliest days of the Republic or the Monarchy. When the time to vote did come, suffrage was limited to the physical confines of Rome in the Forum or the Campus Martius: if you were poor and lived over 50 miles away from Rome, you probably voted little.
This system worked well in Rome for so long because, until about 90 B.C., the Roman citizenry was limited to those who lived in Rome and its colonies in Italy and overseas: other cities in Italy were treated merely as allies (socii) who had limited privileges in Roman society and no voting rights. The Roman aristocratic oligarchy thus had few problems in manipulating the needs and sentiments of these voting blocks. Those dynamics changed after Rome was forced to enfranchise all of Italy to settle a bitter insurrection by its Italian allies around 90 B.C. This resulted in a sudden surge in the size and power of the traditional voting blocks which, despite their attempts to organize them to their advantage, began eroding the traditional allegiances and methods of Rome's ruling families. The changing political dynamics gave populists and demagogues such as Clodius and Caesar much greater flexibility in projecting mass popular will on given agendas. Although corruption, plebicites, political trials, and outright violence to pass legislation was not new to Romans, these changes along with more subtle ones made them evermore common occurrences near the end of the Republic and, to a great degree, made the leadership of charismatic populists like Caesar to many an appealing solution to the woes of a failing republican system.
Through statistical analysis and references to classical texts, Gruen shows that Rome's elite seemed quite unaware of the big picture that Syme claims was so evident and, that these major changes were seen more as business as usual. Gruen shows how all of the important political offices such as the Consulship continued to be filled by either plebeian nobles or patricians as usual and that there were no major changes or concessions made during that time. By accurately and concisely reviewing the composition of magistracies, senatorial rolls, and tribunes from the time of Sulla to the Civil War, Gruen offers a compelling insight as to how the optimate and patrician oligarchy was continuing to do business as usual until the Republic's final years. Gruen covers every aspect of Roman politics involving each class composing Roman society from patricians to plebeans, foreigners, and slaves. He studies all conceivable social institutions, how they were used by such classes and what their implications were in the broad context.
As with any study of this period, Gruen covers much detail on the development of the First Triumvirate and its principal actors: Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar. He shows how each continued their political aims in methods that were a common staple to Roman republican politics such as strong-arming, bribery, nepotism, and patronage. Gruen's argument focuses on how the consequences of enfranchising all of Italy into the Roman citizenry after the Social Wars may have overextended the traditional stability of the nobilitas' oligarchy and yet not altered their perception of the new political reality. Gruen suggests that these new political dynamics may have fragmented traditional family alliances and their systems of rival clientelae to such a degree that it made their effective administration of the Republic impossible. Gruen also doesn't ignore the adverse effects of Rome failing to address the dangers of its professional legions whose allegiances were only to their commanders and not its political institutions.
Altogether a brilliant scholarly work that is indispensible to the study of this most important period of not only Roman History, but of our present history as well. In addition Gruen's work, Fergus Millar's "The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic" parallels the dilligent research and analysis on this subject with a stronger sociological emphasis on the location of the Forum as a political institution. This book is a study in erudition and I wouldn't recommend it as an introductory text on Roman history as its depth and scope would already require some advanced knowledge of the subject. I would strongly recommend both books to anyone who has more than a fleeting interest on this subject.
Summary of The Last Generation of the Roman Republic
Available for the first time in paperback, with a new introduction that reviews related scholarship of the past twenty years, Erich Gruen's classic study of the late Republic examines institutions as well as personalities, social tensions as well as politics, the plebs and the army as well as the aristocracy.Rome Books
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