‘The Roman Revolution’ is not a term that was used in ancient times. But it has been widely accepted by historians who see the transition from Republic to Principate as the product of profound social transformations. In other words, it is not an established historical event so much as the subject of modern sociological theorizing. ‘The period witnessed the violent transfer of power and property,’ wrote its chief interpreter, ‘and the Principate of Augustus should be regarded as the consolidation of the revolutionary process.’
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In this scenario the chief victim was the old Roman aristocracy. The chief revolutionary was Caesar’s heir, the young Octavius—a ‘chill and mature terrorist’, a gangster, a ‘chameleon’ who presented himself in turns as bloodthirsty avenger or moderate peacemaker. The resultant changes included the ruin of the established governing class, the promotion of new social elements, the domination of Rome by ambitious Italian outsiders, and, with their support, the emergence of a
de facto
monarchy. The key to Roman politics lay in the patronage of the rival dynasts—especially Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Octavius. The key to understanding the essential mechanisms lies in the art of prosopography—which analyses the detailed careers of a class in order to uncover the inducements which animate them. (Syme, relying heavily on the work of Münzer, did for Roman history what Lewis Namier did for Georgian England.) ‘Political life’, he wrote, ‘was stamped and swayed not by the parties and programmes of a modern parliamentary character, not by the ostensible opposition of Senate and People … but by the struggle for power, wealth, and glory.’
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Particularly important in an age of civil war was a politician’s ability to control the army and to satisfy the soldiers with lands, money, and respect. Fighting, it would seem, was only a secondary preoccupation for successful generals.
LUDI
T
HE
people who have conquered the world’, wrote Juvenal, ‘now have only two interests—bread and circuses.’ ‘The art of conversation is dead!’ exclaimed Seneca. ‘Can no one today talk of anything else than charioteers?’ The
Ludi
or ‘Games’ had become a central feature of Roman life. Originally staged on four set weeks during the year in April, July, September, and November, they grew to the point where the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum were in almost permanent session. At the first recorded Games in 264
BC,
three pairs of slaves had fought to the death. Four centuries later, the Emperor Trajan laid on a festival where 10,000 persons and 11,000 animals perished.
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Professional gladiators provided shows of mortal combat. Marching in procession through the Gate of Life, they entered the arena and addressed the imperial podium with the traditional shout:
AVE, CAESARI MORITURI SALU-TAMUS
(Hail Caesarl We, who are about to die, greet thee). Nimble
retiarii
with net and trident faced heavily armed
secutores
with sword and shield. Sometimes they would join forces against teams of captives or exotic barbarians. The corpses of the losers were dragged out on meat hooks through the Gate of Death. If a gladiator fell wounded, the emperor or other president of the Games would signal by ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ whether he should be reprieved or killed. Promoters exploited the rivalry of gladiatorial schools, and advertised the feats of famous performers.
One programme which has survived listed a fight between .
T v Pugnax Ner III
and
M. p Murranus Ner III
, i.e. two fighters from the Neronian school in Capua, each with three wins, one fighting with (T)hracian arms—small shield and curved sword—and the other in Gallic (M)yrmillo style. Pugnax came out v(ictor), whilst Murranus ended up p(eritus), dead.
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The thirst for grand spectacles gradually led to the practice where gladiatorial shows were interspersed with
venationes
or ‘wild-beast hunts’, by full-scale military battles, and even by naval contests in a flooded arena. In time, acts of gross obscenity, bestiality, and mass cruelty were demanded. Popular stories elaborated scenes of spreadeagled girls smeared with the vaginal fluid of cows and raped by wild bulls, of Christian captives roasted alive, crucified, set alight or thrown to the lions, or of wretches forced to paddle in sinking boats across water filled with crocodiles. These were only passing variations in an endless variety of victims and torments. They continued until the Christian Emperor Honorius overruled the Senate and put an end to the Games in
AD
404.
Nothing, however, roused such passions as chariot-racing, which began in Rome and continued in Byzantium. Traditionally, six teams of four horses careered seven times round the spine of the circus, competing for vast prizes. Sensational spills and fatal crashes were routine. Huge bets were placed. Successful charioteers became idols of the mob, and as wealthy as senators. Successful horses were commemorated by stone statues: ‘Tuscus, driven by Fortunatus of the Blues, 386 wins.’
Racing was in the hands of the four corporations—Whites, Reds, Greens, and Blues, who supplied the competing stables, teams, and drivers. The ‘factions’ of circus supporters were responsible for many a riot. In Byzantine times they were institutionalized, and were once thought to have formed the basis for incipient political parties. This theory is now largely abandoned; but faction-like associations were still performing in late Byzantine ceremonies. The Christian Church always frowned. ‘Some put their trust in chariots and some in horses; but we will remember the Name of the Lord Our God.’
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Overall, it is a cynical picture. Shifting alliances of convenience predominate over parties of principle. Political concepts—Cicero’s
libertas populi, auctoritas
Senatus, concordia ordinum, consensus Italiae
—are presented as mere slogans and catchwords. The Roman constitution was ‘a screen and a sham, a mere façade for men’s baser instincts’. The old aristocracy could be bought. The new men were driven by greed and vanity. They were the ‘trousered Senators’, the ‘ghastly and disgusting rabble’ of Caesar’s provincial dependants; the ‘thousand creatures’ installed in the Senate by the second triumvirate; the servile apologists and propagandists whom Octavius hired to win public opinion and to distort history. Behind the scenes lurked the bankers, the millionaire paymasters, the
adventurers—C. Maecenas, L. Cornelius Balbus from Gades, C. Rabirius Posthumus, treasurer of Alexandria.
In this scenario, therefore, the turning-point occurred already in 43
BC,
during the proscriptions of the second triumvirate which followed Caesar’s death and in which, to his discredit, Octavian took the lead:
The Republic had been abolished … Despotism ruled, supported by violence and confiscation. The best men were dead or proscribed. The Senate was packed with ruffians. The Consulate, once the reward of civic virtue, now became the recompense of craft or crime.
Non mos, non ius
… The Caesarians claimed the right and duty of avenging Caesar… Out of the blood of Caesar the monarchy was born.
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The rest was an epilogue. All cried ‘Liberty’, and all longed for peace. ‘When peace came, it was the peace of despotism.’
None the less, it is not possible to dismiss all the works of Augustus (r. 31
BC–AD
14) as the fruits of propaganda. He undoubtedly had a seamier side but, importantly for the Romans, the omens were with him. Suetonius tells the story how the future Emperor’s mother had been entered by a serpent during a midnight service in the Temple of Apollo nine months before his birth. But then a comet had appeared in the sky when he first celebrated the
Ludi Victoriae Caesaris
. And on the eve of Actium, where he left the battle to subordinates like Agrippa, he met a Greek peasant driving an ass along the shore. ‘I am Eutyches [Prosper],’ said the peasant, ‘and this is my ass Nikon [Victory].’
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The nature of the early Empire, or Principate, is particularly deceptive. The Emperor Augustus achieved lasting power for himself and his successors, not by the abolition of republican institutions, but by collecting all the offices that controlled them. He made himself
Imperator
or ‘Supreme Commander’, Consul, Tribune, Censor,
Pontifex Maximus
, and Proconsul of Spain, Gaul, Syria and Cilicia, etc. As a result, he possessed powers as extensive as many an autocrat; but he did not exercise them through centralized autocratic channels. He replaced the pseudo-republic of the senatorial oligarchy with a quasi-empire, whose old institutions were obliged to work in a new way. As
Princeps senatus
, a new office, he acted as chairman of the Senate, whose membership was drawn either from ex-magistrates, whom he would have appointed, or from imperial nominees. He left the Senate in charge of roughly half the provinces, into which all the Empire was now divided; but he subjected their deliberations to an imperial veto. Dictatorial powers were delegated to former municipal offices such as those of the
Praefectus Urbi
in charge of criminal jurisdiction, or of the
Praefectus Annonae
, in charge of trade, markets, and the corn dole. Similarly, numerous boards of
Curatores
or Commissioners, overseeing everything from roads and rivers to the repair of public buildings, now answered solely to the Emperor. The growth of a more formal autocracy was a development of Christian times, especially in the Eastern Empire, where Persian influences were strong. (See Appendix III, p. 1223.)
The main law-making procedures of the Republic were gradually abandoned. But many of its statutes remained. The
comitia tributa
was occasionally summoned to confirm laws passed by other bodies; and the
senatus consulta
or ‘decisions of the Senate’ were still issued. From the second century
AD,
however, the Emperor became the sole source of new law—through his edicts, or ordinances, his rescripts or ‘written judgements’ on petitions, his
decreta
or rulings on judicial appeals, and his mandates or administrative instructions. By that time the Senate had been replaced as the supreme court of appeal by the Emperor’s praetorian prefect.
CONDOM
I
N
18 BC, and again in
AD
9, Emperor Augustus attempted to increase the fertility of the Empire’s population through decrees curbing abortion and infanticide. From this and other sources it is clear that the Romans were familiar with many methods of contraception, including herbs: spermicidal douches containing cedar gum, vinegar or olive oil, vaginal pessaries soaked in honey, and condoms fashioned from goats’ bladders. One Roman writer advised: ‘Wear the liver of a cat in a tube on the left foot… or part of the womb of a lioness in a tube of ivory.’
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Research into medieval practices once suggested that the necessary mentality for ‘diverting nature’ was simply not present.
2
But this view has been revised. Examination of church penitentials shows that the subject was much discussed, especially since the ‘sins of Onan’ can reasonably be taken to include
coitus interruptus.
3
Dante’s hints in
Paradiso
xv (106–9) about Florence’s ‘empty family houses’ and about ‘what was possible in the bedchamber’ leave little to the modern imagination. The increase of urban prostitution increased an interest in avoiding pregnancy. The Cathars, too, were notoriously non-pro-life. In the 1320s, the inquisitors succeeded in persuading a Cathar priest’s lover to reveal their techniques:
When [the priest] wanted to know me carnally, he used to wear this herb wrapped up in a piece of linen …about the size of the first joint of my little finger. And he had a long cord which he used to put round my neck when we made love; and this thing or herb at the end of the cord used to hang down as far as the opening of my stomach … It might happen that he might want to know me carnally twice or more in a single night. In that case, the priest would ask me before uniting his body with mine: Where is the herb? … I would put the herb in his hand and then he himself would place it at the opening of my stomach, still with the cord between my breasts.
The only detail missing was the name of the herb.
4
Historical demographers studying Italian merchant families and English villages have concluded that births must have been kept artificially low in both the medieval and modern periods.
5
In the eighteenth century, lechers like James Boswell made no secret of using ‘armour’. Their Continental counterparts talked of ‘English overcoats’ or ‘umbrellas’. Their hero was the mysterious Captain Condom, said to have been either physician or commander of the guard at the Court of Charles II.
6
The first pope to have condemned contraceptive practices was supposedly Clement XII in 1731.
Modern campaigners for birth control did not advocate contraception in the cause of permissiveness. Marie Stopes, though packed with nymphomaniac drive, was also an old-fashioned romantic. In
Married Love and Wise Parenthood
, she was arguing to give women the chance of relief from child-bearing and of enjoyable love-making within marriage.
7
Military authorities who distributed ‘French letters’ to troops on the Western Front were concerned both for the soldiers’ health and for civilian relations. Abortion remained the principal technique in the Communist world, as in the Roman Empire. In the West, contraception was not linked to changing sexual mores until the availability of ‘the Pill’ and of free clinical advice for unmarried adolescents in the 1960s. Yet, as a jingle of the 1920s recalls, success was nowhere guaranteed:
Jeanie, Jeanie, full of hopes
Read a book by Marie Stopes.
But, to judge from her condition,
She must have read the wrong edition.
8
With the passage of time, the vast corpus of Roman law had to be repeatedly codified. There were three such partial attempts in the Codex Gregorianus
(AD
c.295), the Codex Hermogenianus (c.324), and the Codex Theodosianus (438). Similarly, in the Edict of Theodoric (before 515), the so-called Breviary of Alaric (506), and the Burgundian Code (516), barbarian rulers attempted to summarize the law which they found in provinces captured from Rome. Yet the main work of systematization was undertaken under the Emperor Justinian. Between them, the fifty Decisions (531), the Institutes (533), the Digest of the Jurists (534), the Revised Code (534), and the Novels (565) covered every aspect of public and private, criminal and civil, secular and ecclesiastical law. It was through the Justinian law-books that this huge heritage was transmitted to the modern world,
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