XIV: A flower on the edge of the meadow
Appendix: Poem 64 – Catullus’ Bedspread Poem
The Political System in Rome
Politicians in Rome followed an established ladder of power. At the top sat two chief magistrates, known as consuls. Male citizens of Rome (aged seventeen and above) elected the two consuls each year, and the Senate guided them, while also managing the civic purse and foreign relations. The first consuls had been plucked from the richest families; the first senators’ descendants were the patricians, or aristocrats, of Catullus’ Rome.
Before a man could even think about becoming a consul, he needed to gain some experience. As he approached the age of thirty, a budding patrician politician would strive first to be elected as a quaestor, whose tedious responsibilities involved supervising the treasury. At the end of the year, funds permitting, quaestors became life members of the Senate, and the more appealing prospect of running for the senior magistracies, aedile, praetor, then consul, suddenly became feasible. Beyond the consulship, men could become censors, who routinely examined the membership of the Senate.
The Senatorial magistrates
Before they could run for the senior magistracies, plebeian candidates, by contrast, could achieve the tribunate. Every year Catullus spent in Rome he would see ten tribunes of the people elected from the plebeian class, scurry off to their own assemblies to consider legislation, and veto measures, and each other, at will.
While the four aediles (two plebeian, two patrician) took charge of public works and entertainment, the eight praetors were as though deputies to the consuls, and oversaw legal matters, such as trials and disputes arising in the provinces. Few could wait until the end of the year, when they had the chance to proceed to a command overseas. The two consuls tended to progress to more senior foreign commands at the end of their year, too.
Men did not belong to political parties: they could change their allegiances at will. Some politicians aligned themselves with the optimates (‘best men’) who championed the Senate’s authority and sought to work with it; others with the populares, who sought a more liberal, reforming approach to policy by appealing to the tribunes to make their voice heard. Populares were often self-interested men who, cunningly veiling their personal ambitions, used the tribunes to propose legislation that would buy them the favour of the common man. The excessive ambition of individual tribunes would contribute to the fall of the Republic, a catastrophe that began less than a decade after Catullus died. A miserable period of civil war and dictatorship would take hold, at the end of which the Romans would bow their heads again to a sole ruler: the future Emperor Augustus.
753 BC: Rome is founded
509 BC: Overthrow of Rome’s last king
218 BC: Hannibal the Carthaginian invades Italy
204 BC: Cybele, the Great Mother, is carried to Rome
133 BC: Tiberius Gracchus becomes tribune
91–89 BC: The Social War (Italian allies demand Roman citizenship); Verona becomes a Roman colony
88 BC: Sulla becomes consul. Beginning of the wars with Mithridates, King of Pontus
80s BC: Civil war between Sulla and Marius
c.82 BC: Birth of Gaius Valerius Catullus
81 BC: Sulla is proclaimed dictator
78 BC: Death of Sulla
70s BC: Ongoing conflict between Rome and Mithridates
73 BC: Spartacus leads a slave revolt
71 BC: Crassus defeats Spartacus, Pompey pursues the stragglers
70 BC: Consulship of Pompey and Crassus
67 BC: Pompey vanquishes pirates at sea
66 BC: Pompey succeeds the general Lucullus in spearheading the wars against Mithridates
63: Suicide of Mithridates. Cicero becomes consul. Conspiracy of Catiline
62: Clodius infiltrates the Bona Dea festival
c.61 BC: Catullus