When we try to divide the Republic into smaller periods, we run into problems similar to those just mentioned. Modern historians have generally divided the Republic into three periods – historians seem to like the Early, Middle, and Late formula. The challenge has been that it is not always easy to find unifying characteristics or agreed end-points for all three periods, such that new divisions have been proposed. For instance, Harriet Flower has kept the idea of using political systems as the criterion for defining periods, but suggested that the period from 509 to 33 BCE should be divided not into three, but into thirteen separate periods. She identifies five different forms of government between 450 and 88 BCE, each using the principle of government shared by leading citizens but operating in a slightly different fashion. She identifies a further four “transitional” periods with no clear government principles, two periods of Triumvirates (rule by three men), and a period of one-man rule in the dictatorship of Julius Caesar. In this book we will stick for simplicity’s sake with the traditional division into an Early Republic (509–287 BCE), Middle Republic (287–133 BCE), and Late Republic (133–31 BCE), but we should recognize that these periods are defined by historians and that some of the markers may be more useful for conversation than reflective of real changes in the Roman state.
Early, Middle, and Late Republics
The beginning of the Early Republic seems clear enough – it begins with the downfall of the monarchy in 509 BCE – but there is no clear end-point. Historians focused on internal developments see the unifying characteristic as the conflict between the patricians and plebeians and place the end-point at 287 BCE. This is the date assigned to the lex Hortensia, the Roman law that on this view ended the Struggle of the Orders. Others use a military perspective and prefer to end the Early Republic in 264 BCE. In this year the Romans sacked the Etruscan town of Volsinii and eliminated the last challenge to their power over the Italian peninsula. In the same year they launched an attack on Sicily that marked the beginning of the First Punic War, Rome’s first overseas military conflict and thus the first step in her acquisition of a territorial empire and control over the Mediterranean basin. The fact that historians have difficulty agreeing on a unifying characteristic suggests that perhaps there was not one, although we should also acknowledge that our evidence for this period is so limited that we may not be able to see it clearly.
The Middle Republic begins in the third century, wherever one chooses to end the Early Republic, and is generally agreed to end in 133 BCE with the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus. This period is the one that might be referred to as the “classical Roman Republic,” when the Roman government operated in the way that the elite Romans thought it should operate. That meant that power was shared among the elite of Rome, an elite that included wealthy persons of plebeian birth as well as noble-born patricians, and that the lower classes of Rome generally followed the lead of the elites. Externally the period was marked by Roman imperialism and the dramatic increase in the amount of territory subject to Roman power. In this period Rome conquered what is now Italy north of the Po River, Carthage, Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor, culminating with the twin sacks of Carthage and Corinth in 146 BCE. In 133 BCE, the Romans could justly refer to the Mediterranean Sea as mare nostrum, our sea.
The Late Republic is considered to run from 133 BCE to the battle of Actium in 31 BCE, and its unifying feature was the erosion of governmental institutions and the use of violence to resolve internal political matters, as described above. From the Gracchi to the Social War to Marius and Sulla to Caesar and Pompey to Antony and Octavian, this period was marked by a series of civil wars, whether in the civic spaces of Rome or on battlefields in Italy and overseas. We might even view this entire period as one approaching anarchy, as whatever written and unwritten rules that governed Roman society changed with such frequency that stability was hard to find. The triumph of Octavian/Augustus at Actium placed him in a position of sole military authority over the Roman state, just as Caesar had been after his victory over Pompey. Augustus, however, proved more successful in creating a stable system of government, inaugurating the period we know as the Roman Empire that lasted into the fifth century CE.
Conclusion: Historical Narratives
It has been common among historians, both ancient Roman historians and modern ones, to use the narrative of decline to paint a picture of the Late Republic in terms of a descent from an ordered government to chaos, as we saw Livy did (see Chapter 1). This perspective is especially popular when people want to compare modern governments to the Roman Republic.
Using that narrative assumes the perspectives of the elite; the transition from a republican form of government to one-man rule resulted in a loss of power for these members of society, who naturally saw it as a worse form of government. Adopting different perspectives allows for different narratives to emerge. For example, non-elites living in Italy gained opportunities for advancement that were closed to them under the Republic, such that they might have seen the rise of one-man rule as a mark of progress. To name one such person, an Italian writer named Velleius Paterculus wrote that he found himself unable to count the blessings that the battle of Actium conferred upon the world. The provinces, territories outside Italy ruled by Rome, also saw an improvement in their status under imperial rule; these areas had been subject to governmental abuse and corruption during the Republic, which the new system of government was able to minimize or eliminate.
It is part of our job as historians to make judgments based on the evidence that we find. As we proceed to explore the social and cultural history of the Republic, we need to observe whose perspective we are adopting, what other perspectives might exist, and what conclusions we might draw if we consider the view from other perspectives.
Discussion Questions
1 How would you personally apply the ideas of “progressive” and “declensionist” narratives discussed in Chapter 1 to the history of the Roman Republic as presented here?
2 What themes throughout the course of the Republic can you identify?
3 What differences can you see between the Early Republic and the Late Republic? How might you imagine the acquisition of a territorial empire might affect other aspects of Roman life (aspects that we will explore in the following chapters)?
4 How might the history of Rome and the growth of Rome be seen differently from the perspective of an elite leader of Roman society (for instance, a Senator) and an ordinary Roman (for instance, a foot soldier)?
Further Reading
1 Cornell, Tim(1995). The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC). London: Routledge.Although this book only provides discussion of the Roman Republic up to the beginning of the Punic Wars, it offers a tremendous synthesis of archaeological and literary material to provide a fundamental rethinking of the Early Republic. The relative lack of sources makes this period one of the most challenging to understand, and Cornell’s book provides useful clarity, even if some hypotheses must remain conjectural.
2 Flower, Harriet I.(2010). Roman Republics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Flower offers a new analysis of the different periods of Roman Republican history. Rather than dividing the Republic into only three phases, she argues instead for a series of six distinct Republican forms of government, along with several transitional periods too brief to be considered a stable system of government. Her approach has the virtue of helping us recognize the tremendous degree of change that must have occurred over a nearly 500 year period.
3 Rosenstein, Nathan(2012).