Most of the newly acquired territories were organized as provinces under a Roman governor who possessed almost unlimited and uncontrolled power. While regulations for the rule of the provinces were made in each case by the Roman Senate, and they were not oppressive on the whole, the Senate did not make any provisions for compelling the Roman governor to obey these regulations. The governor had complete control of all the taxes of the province, which the people of the province were obliged to pay, while the governor could demand as much money as he pleased from its people for the expenses of his government and troops. These governors were often inexperienced in applying administrative practices, but they were eager to make a fortune during their short term in office that usually lasted a year. Hence, their rule often became a system of looting and robbery while they were ignorant about the needs of the province. The Senate soon found it necessary to have laws passed for the punishment of such abuses, but these laws were of little use in improving the condition. The provinces were soon filled with Roman tax collectors called publicani, who were allowed to collect the taxes for the state at great profit, collecting the amounts that were due to the Senate while pocketing surpluses, and therefore plundering the provinces worse than the greedy Roman governors themselves. With them came Roman money lenders who enriched themselves by loaning money at high rates of interest to the people of the provinces who were obliged to pay the extortionate taxes claimed by Roman governors.
Other consequences were that the governors who returned composed the rise of a new wealthy class at Rome that had effects on political life and society. In the first place, the income of the Roman government was so enormously increased that it was no longer necessary to collect direct taxes from Roman citizens. In addition, the wealthy class’s demand for luxuries resulted in a great increase in foreign trade, with the men who carried on this import trade to supply the demand becoming wealthy merchants. To handle the money in circulation, banks were formed where the wealthy class met to transact financial business. Large companies were also formed for the collection of taxes and for taking government contracts to build roads and bridges or to erect public buildings, with shares in these companies sold daily.
With increasing wealth and a growing population, there was a great increase in the demand for dwellings. Rents rose, and land in Rome greatly increased in value. A good form of paying investment was apartments for rent, and as the value of property rose, a larger return in rents could be secured by increasing the number of floors. Hence, owners began to erect high buildings with several stories. Meanwhile, wealthy Romans also then started to build fine residences along with using slaves as domestic servants.
The ambition of Roman politicians who sought office with the hope of gaining a governorship led to corruption in the government. When they wanted to be elected by those who attended assemblies in Rome, they took advantage of the habit of distributing free grain and bread among poorer people, as well as organizing single combats between slaves or condemned criminals, who in the past, during the wars with Carthage, had been forced to give added importance to the funeral of some great Roman. These fighters came to be called “swordsmen,” or gladiators, from a Latin word gladius, meaning sword. Officials in charge of public feasts, without waiting for a funeral, used to arrange a long program of such combats in amphitheatres built for this purpose, and were sure about pleasing the people by bribing them in this manner, or simply giving them money, and then gaining their votes, which in turn secured election to higher offices. Soon afterwards, there were combats between gladiators and wild animals, and Romans also began to build enormous courses for chariot races in a circus. This also meant that rather than demonstrating ability and worthy character in some minor office as a claim upon the votes of the community, Romans were now obliged to borrow money to pay for a long program of gladiatorial games or spending money on bribing voters. There was also not any salary or payment for expenses in carrying on the business of the government, since the government was not equipped with civil service staffs. These had to be supplied at the officials’ own expense, which could be recovered by gaining the governorship of a rich province.
Outside of Rome, small farms began to disappear as successful Roman nobles or wealthy citizens bought numerous farms that were combined into great estates, which were considered to be the most respectable form of wealth. It also no longer became necessary for a wealthy landowner to work a great estate with free, hired labour. After the end of the war with Hannibal, the Roman conquests had brought great numbers of prisoners of war to Italy who were sold as slaves and filled the estates of Italy and Sicily. When the supply of slaves from the wars failed, slaves also came from pirates who carried on wholesale kidnapping in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean and sold the victims at the slave market at Delos, and then brought to Italy and Sicily by Roman merchants. Their brutal treatment also led to slave revolts that could take several years to subdue, such as the First Servile War in Sicily in 135 B.C. led by a slave named Eunus that lasted until 132 B.C., which was followed by the Second Servile War that would last for another three years.
Wars that Rome fought abroad and the introduction of slave labour also led to the decline of agriculture. When the Roman sphere of interest had been confined to central Italy, farmers could do their planting in the spring, serve in the army during the summer, and return home to cultivate their farms in time for the harvest in the autumn. As the republic expanded, fathers and older sons were away from home for years while holding posts in the legions, and mothers were left to bring up the younger children alone. Often when returning soldiers came home, the family was gone and the farm was sold for debt and had been bought by some wealthy Roman of the city to become a part of a great plantation. Returning soldiers otherwise went into debt to debt in order to re-equip their farms, and if they had no way of repaying, they had to surrender their land and other property to their creditors.
At the same time, the markets of Italy were filled with cheap grain from Sicily, Africa and Egypt, collected as part of tribute was sold on the Roman market and depressed the price, and making old style grain farming less profitable. It was often given away by the government that arranged regular distributions of grain to the population as poverty increased. Small farmers could not compete, and slowly fell behind as they borrowed money and debts increased before they had to sell the farm. There was nothing left to do but to go to the city to look for free bread from the government, enjoy the games and circuses and increase to the poor class already there. If the home and farm remained, they were soon aware that hordes of slaves now cultivating the great estates were raising grain more cheaply, which would not allow them to support themselves and a family. Meanwhile, aristocrats converted their farms to cultivate cash crops, such as olive oil and wine, to make money to purchase imported articles, which was a habit that had been borrowed from Hellenistic and Carthagian society.
Many of the great estates were owned by Senators, which provided an economic basis for the power of the Senatorial aristocracy. Moreover, events of the Second Punic War damaged the popular cause and strengthened the prestige of the Senate. Democratic leaders who had been in control of the Roman state at the outbreak of the war went down in defeat when they tried to oppose Hannibal in the field, while Roman arms were rescued by aristocrats – Fabius Maximus and Scipio Africanus who came from old senatorial families. As a result, the supremacy of the Senate was reestablished, and remained unchallenged.
While the old constitutional forms were not overthrown, the Senators’ new economic power could influence political life by doing much to help impoverished former soldiers, and as a result, the various popular assemblies became instruments of senatorial policy through wholesale bribery. This became crushingly effective when the voting population of the city of Rome came to consist in large part of landless men who eked out a precarious living, and were easily influenced by bribes that the growing wealth of the Senators made it easy to offer to gain their support. Rome thus ceased to be a predominantly agricultural state from the time of the Second Punic War, . Class divisions were accentuated; slavery assumed great importance in economic life; admission to the ruling class came to be nearly closed to men not of Senatorial family; the individual ambition of military leaders and the soldiers’ eagerness for booty replaced land hunger as the predominant motive for continued military conquests. Meanwhile, the superiority of the Italian peasantry’s military virtues over all rivals made possible the continued expansion of the Roman state, but the republic would not survive prosperity.
There were difficult problems demanding settlement by the Roman Senate after the end of the Second Punic War. In Italy, there was above all the growing poverty of the small farmer and the disappearance of large numbers of farms that became part of the vast estates of large landowners. This meant the increase of the poor and unemployed as the poor farmers drifted into the cities. There was also the discontent of the Italian allies in Italy, who had never been given the vote or the right to hold office although they had contributed to Roman armies. Outside of Italy, there was the need for a complete reform of government in the provinces where small farmers began disappearing under the large plantation system while the population faced robberies and extortions of the Roman tax gatherers and governors, as well as the continuous pillaging and kidnapping by pirates that the Roman republic failed to prevent. In addition, there was the settlement of the frontier boundaries and the driving back of the invading Germanic iron age level developed barbarians who were threatening to overwhelm the Mediterranean world and its civilisation. Meanwhile, the rapid expansion of the Roman state and the flood of booty and tribute that brought new wealth to the city led to the decay of republican government. The fall in the status of peasant farmers also made it more difficult to recruit soldiers. All of these factors eventually resulted in the downfall of the republic.
The needs of the farming class in Italy failed to produce any effect on the selfish aristocrats of the Senate at the pinnacle of Roman society, most of whom had inherited wealth and political connections. Since military command and government of the empire were answerable only to the Senate, of which they were members, and called themselves the Optimates, or the better people, they composed a new oligarchy of the empire. A second elite was composed of Italian merchants, slave traders, entrepreneurs and bankers who poured into the newly acquired regions, forming themselves into a separate order of the equites, or equestrians, distinguished by their wealth and honorific service on horseback but connected with the old military elite. Since the Senate did not create a government bureaucracy to administer the empire, equestrian tax farmers became essential to provincial government. Companies of these equestrian publicans, or tax collectors, purchased the right to collect rents on public lands, tribute and customs duties from provincials. Whatever they collected beyond the amount contracted for by Roman officials was theirs to keep. They regularly bribed governors and commanders to allow them to exploit the local population, and gradually, some of them bought land and managed to achieve lower magistracies and even move into the senatorial order. The provincial governors likewise enriched themselves through extortion, collusion with dishonest government officials, contractors and tax collectors, and wholesale bribe taking. Ordinary citizens were aware of such abuses and felt increasingly threatened by the wealthy and powerful.
While aristocrats amassed vast landed estates worked by cheap slaves, ordinary Romans often lacked a family farm capable of supporting themselves and their families. However, there was a selfless noble patriot, Tiberius Gracchus (ca. 163-133 B.C.), a Roman tribune who undertook to become the leader of the people against the Senate and to save Italy from destruction by restoring the agricultural class, and became the first of the Populares, or political leaders appealing to the masses. After he was elected tribune in 133 B.C., he used to address the people with great feeling and tell them of the wrongs they suffered: “The beasts that prowl about in Italy have holes and lurking places, where they may make their beds. You who fight and die for Italy enjoy only the blessings of air and light. These alone are your heritage. Homeless, unsettled, you wander to and from with your wives and children … You fight and die to give wealth to others. You are called the masters of the world; yet there is no clod of earth that you can call your own.”
Great amounts of public land had illegally come into private hands over the previous century. With the support of like-minded aristocrats and commoners, Gracchus proposed a law that would limit the amount of public land an individual could hold to about 330 acres, limiting the total amount that a large landowner could own, and the protection and support of the farming class by redistributing the surplus of land recovered by the state to the landless poor who would then pay a small rent to the state, and could not sell this land. He also revived the dormant democratic constitution, and brought this law before the plebeian assembly where it was assured of support by the poor, while it would face certain failure in the Senate. Since 287 B.C., the measures of the assembly had been binding on all society, and only ten elected tribunes could veto its decisions. However, since most of the public land had been leased to the members of the Senate, this was met with bitter hostility.
When the aristocratic Optimates influenced one of the nine other tribunes to oppose the law in order to preserve their position, Gracchus made the unprecedented move of having him deposed by the assembly, which shocked many senators. Nevertheless, the law was passed and a three-member elected commission to oversee land distribution was established, which would prevent the rich from disregarding the law on the acquisition of new land. However, Gracchus also lost many of his supporters, who feared a popular democracy led by a demagogue would replace the senatorial oligarchy. Gracchus introduced another bill in 133 that provided for the treasury of the kingdom of Pergamum, bequeathed to Rome by Attalus III, to be used to help citizens receiving land to purchase livestock and equipment. This law also challenged the Senate’s traditional control over finance and foreign affairs, which also deeply disturbed the conservative elite, but Gracchus was protected by the immunity from prosecution that was accorded to tribunes. In order to prevent prosecution at the end of his office, he appealed to the assembly to reelect him for an unprecedented second term, which, to his opponents, appeared to be an attempt to make himself a democratic tyrant. Before the election was to take place, he and three hundred of his supporters were killed by a mob of senators and their supporters, which put down this threat to its rule and instituting agrarian reform at the cost of internal political bloodshed.
The Optimates could eliminate Gracchus as the Tribute of the Plebeans, but they could not eliminate the movement he had led. Ten years after Gracchus’s tribunate, his younger brother Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was elected to the same office in 123 B.C. and was re-elected for a second term. During this time, he tried to secure some reforms to improve the condition of the landless farmers by re-enacting his brother’s land law, and its extending participation to Latins and Italians, encouraged colonization as a means to provide citizens with land, and initiated an even broader and more radical reform program. He attempted to reduce the power of the Senate, which he believed was the cause of many of the troubles of the state, by persuading the assembly to create a powerful opposition party. He lowered the price of grain sold to the urban citizenry, thus temporarily disrupting the senatorial political machine. He also proposed to give the Italian allies the full citizenship that they had long wanted and giving all Latins the right to vote in the assembly, and thereby add to his political allies and shifting the balance of power away from the Senate. In order to check the power of senatorial magistrates in the provinces, he transferred to the equestrians the right to investigate provincial corruption, which would also counterbalance the Senate in political life. Moreover, in order to protect himself and his party from the anticipated reaction of the senate and prepare to avenge his brother’s death, he pushed through a law stipulating that only the people could condemn a citizen to death. This program was the first comprehensive attempt to deal with problems in Roman society, and proposed drawing a shift of power, drawing the equestrian order into political life, and making the assembly rather than the senate responsible for legislation. It also offered a solution to the problem of the allies, but this proposal angered the people as much as it did the Senate. However, this program failed since Gaius failed to be re-elected for a third time, and thereby lost the immunity of the Senate. He armed his supporters against action being taken against them by the senate, which resulted in fighting in which Gaius and about 3,000 of his supporters were killed in 121 B.C.
The efforts of the Gracchus brothers who had attempted to introduce social reforms from 133 to 122 B.C. to help the poorest elements of society. However, their killings signified the fracturing of the early republic, and a growing chasm between the upper and lower classes, as they were represented by the Optimates and the senate on one hand, and the plebeians on the other, which led to the beginning of one-man rule established through violent means to reform society. It was also apparent how political and military power could be subverted, as the power of the senate could not curtail the power of a military leader, and senators could undermine the constitution with its system of checks and balances by blocking legislation, with deadlocks only being broken by a dictatorship or military rule. The struggle between political and military leaders for control of the republican government eventually resulted in its overthrow in a prolonged civil war. The Roman senator Lucius Cataline and his supporters formulated plans to overthrow the government altogether, only to be exposed by Marcus Cicero and killed when escaped into Gaul. Civil wars erupted thereafter, which caused a gravitation toward having dictatorial rulers.
Leadership was not to be at the municipal level, as the Gracchus brothers had been, but a successful general called Gaius Marius who posed a challenge to aristocratic control in the senate where different representatives argued for advantages for different elements of society, including the military and the patricians, with prejudice to the interests that the plebeians had acquired and small farmers who had been forced out of possessing public land by the wealth and power of the patricians who caused inequality by pressuring senate representatives. He associated himself with the remnants of the Gracchius party who lacked an army to impose their reforms through the Senate, maintaining the Populares political faction against the Optimates supporters of the Senate. Marius was elected consul in 107 B.C., largely on the strength of his reputation as a soldier when he had taken command of a war against the king of Numidia, which had been an ally of Rome following the Third Punic War, Jugurtha, who had killed Roman merchants during the civil war there.
This war against Numidia from 112 to 106 B.C, had been badly mismanaged by generals of the senatorial party for five years amid accusations of corruption, incompetence and treason. On the other hand, Marius was not only a good soldier, but also a great organiser who was entrusted with the conduct of the war. In raising troops for this campaign, he made a most important change in Roman practice by managing to raise a professional army on his own. Instead of conscripting only citizens who owned a minimum of property and requiring them to equip themselves with arms, he summoned landless men and undertook to equip and train them from state funds on an overt and massive scale, and could look forward to receiving a grant of land at the end of their military service. This policy transformed Roman soldiers from drafted conscripts to long-service professional soldiers, which soon proved themselves to be far more effective on the battlefield. Professional soldiers in this new model army did not object to long campaigns fought far from home, and submitted more readily to rigid discipline and training while being devoted to their individual commanders.
The institution of these Marian army reforms that were implemented in 107 B.C. became permanent, and had various consequences for the future of the Roman state. On dismissal from military service, they came to depend wholly on support from the government, and the Senate was often unwilling or unable to supply veterans with money and land. The republic was thus weakened by the army that posed a powerful and decisive threat to the Senate. Meanwhile, the easiest and most certain path to power and influence in the state was through successful foreign war, even though the senate might oppose a victorious general. Although Marius was the first “new model” general, his military reforms also set the precedent for generals being able to marshal their troops against the government, as soldiers swore allegiance to their commanders, rather than to the republic.
When Marius returned from Africa after defeating Jugurtha in 106 B.C., another military crisis threatened Rome. Two powerful tribes of Celtic Germanic barbarians, the Cimbrians and the Teutons, together with Celtic Gauls, had been shifting southward and crossing the northern frontiers of the Roman possessions, leading to the disastrous defeat of six Roman armies. There was thus great anxiety in Rome, where the people elected Marius consul in 104 B.C., and sent him to fight against the northern barbarians. Despite a law that forbade successive consulships, Marius continued to hold them for the following four years until 100 B.C. During this time, he raised new armies, trained them, extended citizenship to allies on his own authority. He later defeated these Germanic tribes and almost destroyed the Cimbrians in 101 B.C. when they pressed into the Italian peninsula. After this victory, the Senate refused to provide veterans with farms as Marius had promised. Among other new social changes were the growth of the towns as the agricultural population was diminishing, and landed properties became increasingly larger by absorbing smaller holdings, while slaves replaced the labour of the free, which were worked by slaves that composed a danger to society and caused weakness in the state owing to the lack of optimal productivity, while the richest citizens held approximately two-thirds of conquered territory, either as a result of purchase or expulsion. The nobility no longer considered military service to be their primary honour and duty, and religion as a fundamental basis of the republic lost its prestige in an environment of increasingly greater complacency.
While Marius’s seven successive consulships constituted a gross breach of the constitution, the conduct of his soldiers was more ominous. Veterans would unite with leaders of the populares to seize control of the government, and pass laws that assigned them land in recompense for their services. While the populares did not maintain themselves in power long, and Marius himself helped would overcome their principal political leader, this would mark the breakdown of Senatorial supremacy and legality. Henceforth, military supremacy would control Roman politics, while volunteers for the military looked to military leaders rather than the state for their rewards, and the soldiers’ loyalty would allow them to intimidate the senate into granting their demands.
Dangers to Roman rule further complicated this breakdown of the administration of state law. Allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the Roman empire without being granted the same rights as Roman citizens, and were therefore maintained in a state of inferiority, such as their armed contingents receiving half the pay of citizens and subjected to physical chastisement, from which the soldiers of the legions were exempted, as well as being deprived of political rights, or sufficient legal protection against arbitrary conduct by local magistrates. They remained without the right of suffrage, and remained unable to change their occupations that were fixed on their master employers, could not take part in Roman political life, and could not marry a free citizen, or serve in the legions, apart from in times of extreme danger, and therefore not entirely accepted into the Roman communality, which led to demands for concessions.
Disputes over citizenship between Rome and their Italian allies led to a bitter civil war between 91 and 89 B.C., after the Senate blocked an attempt to extend the privileged legal status and the benefits of Roman citizenship to Roman allies. This was the first time that republican armies were used as the personal armies of their commanders, with soldiers being devoted to their commanders rather than the state. After the Italians were pacified with receiving Roman citizenship and thereby attaining equal status in 89 B.C., there were also slave revolts in Sicily from 104 to 101 B.C., where slave owners refused to comply with a Senatorial decree to free enslaved citizens of Roman allies. Another serious revolt was in the province of Asia from 88 to 84 B.C., when Mithirades IV, the king of Pontus, revolted against Roman rule and wiped out Roman and Italian settlers in the region, and set off revolts that spread to Greece. The contending parties in Rome struggled for command against the revolting peoples, when both the populares and the optimates recognised that control of an army offered a clear path to control of the state, which would lead to civil war in the first time that Roman generals used their armies against fellow citizens.
The consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla as the representative of the optimates was ultimately won the civil war in 88 B.C the first time he invaded Rome, and was elected consul in 82 B.C. He raised an army the following year to fight against Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus and former ally of Rome who ruled a kingdom on the south coast of the Black Sea and invaded Roman controlled western Asia Minor, which was another opportunity for Roman generals to take power, while the conflict continued until 81 B.C. On Sulla’s return, his armies defeated the Roman armies of the populares one after another before occupying Rome again. Sulla was given the army, and then refused to step down and marched his soldiers on Rome. At this point, Marius as the leader of the populares who sought reform, sought command for himself, and got the people’s assembly to transfer the command to him. With the help of his soldiers, Sulla then forced his appointment as dictator of the Roman republic from 82, which he maintained until resigning from office in 79 B.C. His first action was to slaughter four thousand of the populares and take away their property, and used some of their land to resettle his veterans, and thereby building a solid base of support.
Being possessed with special powers to reorganise the constitution, Marius forced the passage of a whole series of new laws that deprived the Assembly and the tribunes of their power to root out opposition, thus reducing their authority, and gave supreme leadership of the state to the Senate, while devising laws that would prevent any single man from again gaining supreme power as he had done. Legislation was passed forbidding the tribunes to pass a law without Senate approval. In order to weaken the military power of the magistrates, he abolished the practice of assigning military commands to praetors and consuls, which were to be held by proconsuls, or former magistrates, who would serve for a maximum of one year as provincial governors to prevent them from raising soldiers’ support. He also doubled the size of the Senate to six hundred, filling the new positions with men drawn from the equites. Jury courts were returned from the equites to the senators.
Little was done to resolve the problems of the republic, but more importantly, Marius and Sulla gave political leaders an example for acquiring power in the republic while destroying respect for law – dictatorship of a powerful individual with his own army. Despite all of the advancements the Roman republic had made in the past concerning the right of succession, Sulla’s dictatorship irreparably destroyed these safeguards for transition. Finding the new heir apparent would hereafter become a very dangerous proposition, with factions bitterly fighting each other for power, while the Roman republic remained engaged in separate wars to maintain control over its possessions, including the Seratonian War from 80 to 72 B.C. against Sulla’s authority on the Iberian Peninsula, the Third Mithriatic War in Asia Minor lasting another ten years, along with the Third Servile War beginning in 73 B.C. Following the two earlier Servile Wars that had taken place in Sicily where there was a disproportionate amount of disenfranchised slaves, a Third Servile War, a rebellion of seventy gladiators, professional slave fighters, led by Spartacus, an enslaved Thracian warrior, in Capua in 73 B.C., led to creating an army of over a hundred thousand former slaves who joined their cause and repeatedly defeated Roman legions while overrunning Italy and liberating slaves and gathered Roman weapons until 71 B.C., before it was brutally crushed by forces led by Crassus and Pompey. These conflicts would also contribute to undermining the stability of the republic, which was also weakened by domestic disputes.
After Sulla’s abdication and death in 78 B.C., the people began an agitation for the repeal of the laws that deprived them and their tribunes of all control over the government. They selected Pompey and Crassus as consuls in 70 B.C. Pompey was a capable military commander who had risen to prominence through campaigns in Africa and Spain, while both Pompey and Crassus won a share of military glory by winning the Third Servile War and thereby acquired greater popularity with the Roman population. They managed to get the hated laws of Sulla repealed to the benefit of the Populares. While neither wanted to overthrow the republican regime, each was ambitious with no scruple about brushing aside senatorial opinion or legal obstacles that blocked their ambitions. Repealing most of Sulla’s constitution opened the way for attacks on senatorial control, and for collaboration between ambitious generals and tribunes.
Pompey dominated Roman politics during the next ten years. He made a great name for himself by clearing the seas of pirates who preyed on Roman trading ships. He then took over a campaign in the east after 66 B.C. after King Mithridates of Pontus attacked Greece. He gained important victories in Asia Minor and Syria, where he crushed the remnant of the kingdom of the Seleucids under King Mithridates, made Armenia, Syria and Palestine Roman provinces. While Pompey was away in the east, Crassus and a number of his followers including Julius Caesar, intrigued against Pompey to consolidate his power. Caesar’s followers were building a power base for him among the ordinary people in the streets, took up the cause of Marius and quickly gained a foremost place among the leaders of the people. When Pompey returned to Italy in 62 B.C., hailed as the great conqueror of the Orient, he needed influence to secure the Senate’s approval of his actions in Asia Minor and land grants for his troops. The Senate refused Pompey these demands for two years, being jealous and fearful of excessively mighty individuals. Then Caesar, to gain the help of Pompey, stepped forward in Pompey’s support, and the two secured the backing of Crassus, who was the wealthiest man in Rome.
As Crassus and Pompey exercised power in Rome, Caesar sought to acquire his own political influence in a highly antagonistic political environment in which greater prominence over Pompey and Crassus could be acquired through military conquests, rather than be recalled to Rome where his standing could be lost. He therefore set through staging further territorial conquests, and thereby gain public prestige by invading Britain, which had hitherto only had trade links with the continent. As the proconsul of transalpine Gaul, he initially invaded Britain, which was then inhabited by at least twenty-seven Briton Celtic tribes headed by local kings or tribal chieftains who were unable to attain any permanent political union, on 24 August 55 B.C. as a reconnaissance in force. Indigenous Britons contested this landing against the Romans who established a fortified beachhead camp facing hostile local populations, prior to retreating for the winter while lacking sufficient resources to establish a long-term presence. A second larger invasion with a greater possibility of a successful invasion to subdue the Britons was staged on 7 July 54 B.C. A two-month presence would lead to advancing beyond the Thames, and the dissolution of a confederacy of tribes organised to resist Caesar under the chieftain Cassivellaunus. Caesar established alliance ties with local Briton leaders prior to returning to Gaul to suppress a revolt from the Gallic Celts. Caesar would then turn engage in civil warfare in the Roman republic, while Britain would maintain its independence until the next Roman invasion, ninety-seven years later under the reign of Claudius. Although Caesar had failed to subdue Britain after having had acquired possession of the coast before withdrawing back to Gaul, he had opened knowledge about a new region to the Roman empire with which a new trade route was established between the Britons and the Romanised Gauls, and brought Britain into the sphere of Roman influence through establishing connection with regional rulers who could turn to Rome for support.
While Caesar was serving as the governor of southeastern Spain in 62 B.C., he offered political support to Crassus in exchange for financial contributions, and successfully pacified local resistance to Roman rule, which was followed by conquering Gaul where Celtic tribes fought against the Romans from between 58 and 50 B.C, and making himself the master of the whole territory between the Upper Rhine and the Loire. He then returned to Rome in 60 B.C., where he was later elected to the consulship for 59 B.C. He thereafter received the extraordinary command of Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum, and Transalpine Gaul for five years, and planned to conquer the remainder of Gaul, and also establish a permanent Roman presence in Britain. A land bill settled Pompey’s veterans comfortably, and his settlement for the organisation of the newly conquered eastern territories was ratified. Crassus, whose influence came from representing the interests of the equestrian class, composed of men who could afford to serve in the cavalry, gained a tax contract in their favour. Pompey agreed to share power with Caesar and Crassus, and they thereby formed a triumvirate, or three-man rule, in 59 B.C., combining their respective political and military powers to gain control of the Roman government, in spite of opposition from the Senate. Pompey’s veterans provided the military core of the triumvirate’s strength, while each acquired commands for themselves – Caesar, the highest religious authority as the pontifex maximus who could pass divine laws and delay elections as signs from the gods, as well as a leader of the Populares, in Gaul, Crassus in the east who was fiscally able to maintain the triumvirate, while Pompey as Rome’s most accomplished general, who many political allies and military veterans supported, remained in Italy exercising general control of the Roman state, while also governing the Spanish provinces at the same time, and keeping a personal army at his command.
They eventually realized that this triumvirate that lasted until 54 BC could not function as a governing coalition. Crassus used bribes to influence the senate, the aristocracy, and the Optimates, while Pompey’s military prestige provided effective control over the military veterans and therefore their vote, whereas Caesar could control the masses. The election of Caesar to the consulship in 59 B.C. had only a step in his plans. After having new land legislation for the benefit of the people, ordering the redistribution of land to the poor, this managed to greatly increase his popularity with the common people of Rome, including Pompey’s veterans, in spite of causing animosity among many of the wealthy landowning senators who had the most to lose. Caesar then provided for his own future career, and could not be removed by his peers in the government while he was in office. It was clear to him that he must have an important military command in order to gain an army that he would raise with his own money.
Following the end of his term as consul, Caesar was made the governor of Illyria, Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, along with the command of four legions, for five years, rather than the customary single year, which was then renewed for another five years in 56 B.C. He saw this great opportunity in the northwest, in the vast territory that was occupied by the Helveti, the Gauls, the Belgi and the Veneti. The Senate did not trust Caesar, so they sent him to govern southern Gaul on both sides of the Alps for five years. Caesar took charge of his new province early in 58 B.C., and at once showed himself to be a military commander of great skill, using this province as a staging ground for the conquest of a vast area of western Europe. He subdued most of Gaul and seized possession of their territory from the ocean and the English Channel and eastward to the Rhine River by 55 B.C., either through conquest or forming local alliances. The Celts of Gaul was completely subdued in a final three-year military campaign by 51 B.C.
Caesar’s ambition continued to develop, as he believed that Rome needed an able commander, with an army behind him, who would make himself the permanent master of the government during this time. He therefore steadily pursued this aim, such as by writing a political pamphlet on a history of his campaigns in Gaul to tell to the Roman population, while his dedication to his troops made him immensely popular with his legions. His successes in overcoming the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul were followed by conquering the Germanic peoples on the left bank of the Rhine, and did not cause much damage after having crossed the Rhine twice. Caesar having become well acquainted with Germanic tribes also led him to raise auxiliary cavalry troop contingents from among them to serve in his legions due to his high opinion of their bravery, in exchange for pay, booty, and helped him win battles. This included serving in Caesar’s later conflict for leadership in the Roman Empire, and there were constantly Germanic soldiers in Roman service thereafter.
The triumvirate lasted until 53 B.C., when Crassus was killed during fighting against the Parthians (in modern Iraq), and thereupon Pompey and Caesar divided power between them, but civil war between them became inevitable. Pompey was made sole consul with extraordinary powers in 52 B.C., and used this office to suppress any Populares’ opposition in Rome, which resulted in receiving support from the senate and the Optimates. Caesar, as a remaining leader of the Populares, endeavoured to make terms with the senate to stand for consulship in absentia with a wide range of public support. Pompey was suspicious of Caesar’s ambitions and personal power as his military successes increased his popularity in Rome, and therefore considered him to be a threat to the republic. Meanwhile, the professional soldiers who now constituted a Roman army, with additional legions that Caesar had personally established, did not consider themselves to have responsibility as citizens to the government, but were greatly attached to their commanding general, and the veterans of Caesar’s campaigns were loyally devoted to him.
Pompey had the senate on his side, and the senators made an official edict that Caesar should resign from his command, forego his conquests in Gaul, and immediately return to Rome as a private citizen devoid of political legal immunity from adjudication, which would make him vulnerable to arrest as soon as he stepped down from political office, when he could be prosecuted for inciting violence against another consul, and using his position as the governor of Gaul to instigate wars that were not sanctioned by the senate. Upon receiving this summons in 49 B.C., he did not have any hesitation about his future action against a senate that was hostile to him, and therefore used force against the senators who renounced Caesar as an outlaw who refused to comply with this edict, and established Pompey as their new dictator on 7 January 49 B.C. Caesar and his troops moved his troops to the Rubicon River that divided Gaul from Italy, with the knowledge that it was strictly forbidden for a military leader to cross with arms or with an army, to cross. Caesar crossed this river with a single understrength Thirteenth Legion legion three days later, while there was mass confusion in Rome itself about whether to resist Caesar with two available legions, while others were deployed abroad. Although he did not have any legal right to lead his forces beyond this boundary in a clear declaration of war, the Roman population would not support their morally questionable political leaders, while several military leaders who had fought alongside Ceasar lent him their support. He then rapidly occupied northern Italy where he encountered little resistance in the face of lightly defended garrisons and found sympathisers for his cause against Pompey and his Optimates supporters who fled to the south, and then aimed to next take Rome by force with reinforcements from Gaul.
Since the senate was unprepared for Caesar’s swift response, they turned to Pompey who informed them that the forces at his command could not hold Rome against Caesar, especially as many local garrisons who Caesar encountered supporting him rather than offering resistance to them while he was a cult figure whose exploits in Gaul had captured the popular imagination. Pompey realised that the legions of Italy could not be trusted to mount a serious offence against Caesar as he was marching on Rome, while most of his most effective legions were in Hispania and in the east, he retreated to the south where he hoped to find new recruits against him, Pompey, the majority of the senators and a large number of nobles then fled to Greece. Being in possession of Rome, Caesar established a brief dictatorship and was then elected consul while establishing popular support in Rome through pardoning anyone who had opposed him and had not fled to Greece to ensure there would not be any popular uprising against him, which left the Roman local political structure intact and acting in his favour, while also garnering local popularity. He could then assume the role of lawful defender of Rome against the senate and Pompey’s army, and continued his advance southward down the Italian Peninsula to marshal further support for his challenge to the power of the Senate and its defenders led by Pompey, who eventually fled with his loyal forces to Greece in February and March, when Caesar besieged Pompey’s forces at Brindisium in March with a new total of six legions, prior to the evacuation of all of Pompey’s forces to Greece.
While Caesar was in control of Italy and declared his intention to the remaining Senate members to save the republic while denouncing Pompey as an enemy of the state, Pompey retained the advantage in this struggle for power, since he could draw men and supplies from the kingdoms he had conquered in the east. Moreover, he still held the great fleet with which he had overcome the pirates, and he was thus still maintained control over the sea lanes, while Caesar called on any naval forces loyal to his cause to converge on Brindisium until further warships could be built while preparing for a prolonged civil conflict. Furthermore, some of Pompey’s officers held Spain, and therefore Caesar was therefore obliged to face the followers of Pompey in the east and the west. With his customary swiftness, Caesar acquired control of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica where there was little resistance. While leaving Mark Anthony in control in Rome as Caesar’s ally, Caesar then turned to Spain, where they could pose a threat to Gaul, by June 49 B.C., where he cut off Pompey’s commanders’ supplies and forced them to surrender without fighting a battle. Having heard of Caesar’s departure into Spain, Pompey was preparing to cross over and again take possession of Italy. Before he could even begin the crossing, Caesar returned from Spain, slipped past Pompey’s warships, and landed his army on the coast of Epirus, while further Roman legions joined Caesar’s cause against Pompey.
Although his army was smaller than Pompey’s, they met on the field of Pharsalus in Thessaly, where Caesar inflicted a crushing defeat on 9 August 48 B.C. Without there being a succession plan in place, Caesar was declared as the dictator of Rome in October 48 B.C., with Mark Anthony as vice dictator. Pompey then escaped into Egypt in the hope of received armed assistance, where he was further pursued by Caesar. The Egyptian king, Ptolemy XIII, cut off Pompey’s head and sent it to Caesar as a present, instead of becoming embroiled in the Roman civil war, or see Pompey seem refuge from his sister and wife Cleopatra VII who were engaged in a bitter dynastic dispute. When Caesar arrived in Egypt and demanded Ptolemy pay their debts back to Rome, he met Cleopatra who was in the middle of a power struggle with this younger brother.
Their meeting later led to Cleopatra being put on the throne of Egypt, as Caesar took her side against her younger brother who was deposed in the Alexandrine War, and Cleopatra became the true power behind the throne in Egypt after marrying her brother Ptolemy XIV, while Caesar was appointed dictator of the Roman republic as the sole ruler. He then continued with further conquests by overthrowing his opponents in Asia Minor, where he sent his famous report to the Senate: “I came, I saw, I conquered” (veni, vidi, vici). The only other obstacles to complete Caesar’s complete control of the Mediterranean were all disposed of by March 45 B.C., defeating hostile forces under Pompey’s sons at Munda in Spain a little over four years after he had first taken possession of Italy with his army.
After Caesar achieved complete control of territories occupied by Rome and defeated all of his enemies, he then turned to reorganising the state and the empire, using his power with great moderation and humanity and making sure to show that his methods were not the same as those of Sulla. He intended his position to be that of a sovereign like Alexander the Great, but did not abolish the outward forms of the republic. He greatly increased the numbers of the Senate to nine hundred, and filled it with his friends and supporters, while maintaining sole control over the military. In addition, he began far-reaching reforms of the corrupt Roman government, such as completely reforming the government of cities by increasing the number of magistracies to broaden participation in the government, as well as extending Roman citizenship to provincials as a difficult to achieve symbol of belonging and ensuring personal freedom. Free grain distribution was curtailed, and he began to resettle part of the urban proletariat in colonies at Carthage and Corinth, or put them to work on public building enterprises. Most of his veterans were settled on land confiscated from his opponents in Italy, while others were established in colonies in the provinces, such as in Greece, Asia, eighty percent of North Africa, Spain and Gaul. Meanwhile, he did not make any pretense of returning Rome to republican government. He his power seem lawful by having himself made dictator for life in 44 B.C., and he took over the powers of the other leading officers of the state, thus making himself the first emperor of the Roman Empire.
However, there were still those in Rome who were not prepared to submit to the rule of one man. There were senators who felt betrayed by Caesar’s dictatorship, and saw his immediate removal as the only means of bringing back the true values of the free republic, whereas temporary dictatorships had been convened during times of crisis until a fully functioning republic could be restored. However, it appeared that Caesar never intended to relinquish his control. On 15 March 44 B.C., three days before planning to depart for a great campaign beyond the Euphrates to conquer the Parthians in the east, a group of some sixty senators led by Marcus Brutus and his brother-in-law, Gaius Crassus, former supporters of Pompey who received clemency from Caesar, at least sixty Senators approached and stabbed him twenty-three times in the senate to depose of the established tyranny of his overbearing authority. While they had thought they were overthrowing a tyrant, they did not understand that they could not restore the republic, as they did not have the support of the Roman population. The republic had been destroyed by military power and had decayed to wide a degree, which led to a civil war for thirteen years that eventually brought the end of the republic.
The assassination of Julius Caesar resulted in returning Rome to this civil war was sparked by his legal heir, his grandnephew, Gaius Octavius, renamed Octavian, who had been legally adopted by Caesar. He was considered to be too young to be considered dangerous by Caesar’s enemies. In spite of his youth and inexperience, being only eighteen years old, he managed to find supporters among Caesar’s veterans and secure a military command, and fought against Mark Anthony as the potential leader of Rome with the support of the Senate who named him a senator and imperium pro pratoere in 43 B.C., and was able to defeat his enemies Marcus Antonius, a former follower of Caesar’s who rivaled Octavian’s claim as political heir and the Senate. After some negotiations, Antony and Octavian combined their forces with those of a third Caesarian general, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus to form a second triumvirate, through which the Roman Empire was divided into three parts rather than start another civil war. Octavian was assigned the direction of affairs in Italy and the western provinces, Anthony took the provinces of the east, while Lepidus was given Sicily and Africa, not having the capacity and prestige to compete on equal terms against Octavian and Anthony. They defeated Caesar’s assassins in a final battle at Philippi in Greece in 42 B.C. Brutus and Cassius killed themselves. Octavian hereafter introduced a peace in a long period of peace and stability, otherwise known as the Pax Romana.
What were significant new developments during the history of Rome during these time periods?
Who exercised influence in society throughout this time? Explain why and how.
Three-step interview
1. Set up students in pairs in chairs – use the prompts provided, or any other questions about the current or previous readings.
2. Two students interview each other, and then summarise and synthesize their results.
3. Report the results to a different pair, and compare results.
4. Wrap up as a class with sample answers.
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