In his Fall of the Roman Republic published in 1988, Brunt was still right to note, with reference to Sallust’s description of the Republic as dominated by the pauci (Sall. Iug. 41.6–42) (see Chapter 10),4 that ‘modern writers usually accept his conception of the system as oligarchical’ (Brunt 1988: 14; there were occasional exceptions – see Hölkeskamp 2010: 14 n.8). Though Brunt himself does not fully subscribe to this definition, he offers only a limited qualification to it – not one that could trigger a general reopening of the question. At any rate, this was, indeed, the status quaestionis in the 1980s, before Millar had launched his challenge, and Brunt’s findings were not about to change the general picture. Similarly, Andrew Lintott, in a 1987 paper entitled ‘Democracy in the Middle Republic’, spoke of Millar’s ‘determined challenge to current orthodoxy’ (Lintott 1987: 36); the orthodoxy that he described, and sought to qualify, was definitely the one Millar had recently started challenging.
7.4 The Watershed of the 1980s
The study of Republican politics was, then, ripe for a wholesale revolution, which, not content with disputing particular points, would seek to change the paradigm. Now, it is in the nature of things that revolutionary accounts of the ancien régime tend to be somewhat less than charitable; nor is it customary for revolutionaries to give full credit to earlier attempts at partial reform. Nevertheless, it is obvious that the post-revolutionary state of the study of Republican politics is much better than the pre-revolutionary one. Since scholarly revolutions involve no chopping of actual heads and, moreover, tend to encourage rather than suppress useful counter-revolutions, we need not hesitate to aver that the accomplishments of this particular revolution far outweigh any of its alleged excesses.
Though criticised for attributing excessive importance to the Republic’s ‘constitution’ as such – above all, to the people’s exclusive right to pass legislation as an expression of popular sovereignty5 – Millar in fact, already in his original attack on the orthodoxy, went far beyond Staatsrecht in analysing the system and emphasising its democratic features. In his 1984 paper ‘The Political Character of the Roman Republic’, pointedly dedicated Polybio nostro, Millar sought to show that ‘Polybius was right [in his view that Rome had a mixed constitution] and his modern critics were wrong. We do have to see the power of the people as one significant element in Roman politics’ (Millar 2002a: 111).6 Millar’s account of the legislative activities of the assemblies is not confined to the question of their formal competence. He stresses the wide scope of popular legislation (and public debates in contiones), that included – already in the Middle Republic – issues relating to Italy and the provinces (often described by modern scholars as ‘foreign policy’, supposedly the exclusive prerogative of the Senate) (see Chapter 23; Chapter 24). Crucially, he notes that there is no certainty that bills on these or other important matters had been invariably approved by the Senate prior to their submission to the assembly (Millar 2002a: 121, 114–116, 119–120). He refers to a case reported by Livy (38.36.7–9) in which, in 188, four tribunes vetoed a bill conferring the suffrage on three Italian towns with a civitas sine suffragio because it had not been sanctioned by the Senate; they desisted, having been instructed (apparently, by senatorial circles), that ‘it was the right of the people, not the Senate, to give the vote to whom it wished’.
This case shows that, at the height of the mid-Republican concordia (with its inevitable conservative bias) it was accepted by the Senate that on some important matters, the people, on the initiative of tribunes, had the actual political legitimacy (as opposed to a mere formal right) to legislate independently (see Chapter 19). Admittedly, it also demonstrates that in other spheres of legislation, a prior approval by the Senate was considered necessary, at least by the Senate itself, and that numerous tribunes might be willing to defend the authority of the Senate against any perceived (even dubious) infringement; while, on the other hand, it also shows the mid-Republican Senate as relatively relaxed, and not automatically hostile to independent popular action (see Chapter 15). This was perhaps because it did not feel that its fundamental authority was under threat, as it sometimes did in the late Republic.
Thus, the glass of popular power can reasonably be seen as either half-full or half-empty in this case. But at all events it clearly shows that the people’s power to legislate (already before the Gracchi) was far from being a mere constitutional formality; that not all tribunes were under the thumb of the Senate; that concordia, in the ‘good old days’, was not merely another name for senatorial domination; and that mos maiorum, even as interpreted by the Senate or on its behalf, did not enshrine only the Senate’s prerogatives. Hence it is clear that a simplistic oligarchic model of Republican politics will not do. If one wishes, nevertheless, to use the term ‘oligarchy’ in some broader and more flexible sense, referring to the ability of the Roman elite to have its way with the people to the degree it did, this term cannot be employed as a matter of course, without explaining and qualifying it much more than was customary in the past.
Going back, now, to Millar’s paper that launched the debate – he talks, throughout it, of actual political realities created by the exercise of the people’s powers. Trials before the people were not just a theoretical possibility (though this would be the case in the last decades of the Republic) – they actually took place on a wide scale; he cites the famous forty-four accusations, presumably before the people, that Cato underwent in the course of his career (Millar 2002a: 136; Plin. HN 7.100; see ch. 31). As for elections, ‘all our evidence shows that those who aspired to office engaged in vigorous mutual competition for popular favour’ (Millar 2002a: 111).
This is said in the context of rejecting the view that ‘vertical links of obligation’ dominated Roman society and politics, swayed the votes of the people in assemblies and ensured the rule of the nobility. This view, fundamental to the old ‘orthodoxy’, is strongly rejected. The studies of Brunt, as well as Keith Hopkins and Graham Burton, are cited in rejecting the concept of stable aristocratic parties, and in asserting that the de facto hereditary element in the occupation of offices, including the higher ones, was weaker than often thought (Millar 1982, Hopkins and Burton 1983).
Rather than being controlled from above and entrapped in a net of personal dependence, the common people had to be persuaded, on all important political issues and whenever their votes were sought, by public oratory (see Chapter 32): ‘the greatest weakness’ of the traditional view, according to Millar, is that it has ignored the crucial importance of this (decidedly non-oligarchic, in his view) type of interaction between the people and its leadership. Influences from above are not ignored, but their divergent and often contradictory character is stressed: