history

Lecture 8: The 2nd Punic War, the Roman Revolution, and Fall of the Republic

Lecture 8: The 2nd Punic War; the Roman Revolution and the Fall of the Republic

The 2nd Punic War between Rome and Carthage was the conflict that sealed both nations fates – that of Carthage to be a declining power, soon to be destroyed, and that of Rome to be the masters of the Western Mediterranean and a true rival to the Hellenistic kingdoms to the East. The period after the 2nd Punic War is the time when the Roman Republic conquers the entire Mediterranean Basin and becomes an Empire while experiencing on-going and worsening social problems at home. The combination of these two facts will help lead to the ultimate downfall of the Republic after nearly a century of political murders, civil wars, and the assassination of Gaius Julius Cæsar in 44 B.C. After the final civil war between his successors, Marc Antony and Octavian Cæsar, which ends at the naval battle of Actium on September 2, 31 B.C., the Roman Republic is dead once and for all, replaced by a Roman Empire and State run by a single, military-supported man who often had hereditary power and allowed only those he chose to be advisors, usually landholders and/or priests who owed their positions to him, with the rest of society at the bidding of those in power. This structure would become the singular structure, with a few variants, as we will see in the rest of this class, for the next 1800 years, until a rag-tag group of British colonists would argue against it successfully. To best understand how the Republic got to that point, however, we need to understand the developments of the previous century – the 2nd Punic War and its effects on Roman society, and the Roman Revolution, which begins in 133 B.C. until Actium brings it to a close 102 years later.

 

A. The 2nd Punic War (218-202 B.C.)

The 2nd Punic War begins when the sons of the general who had been forced to surrender in the 1stPunic War, Hannibal and Hasdrubal, come to power in Carthage and launch an attack against the Romans who had humiliated their father Hamilcar Barca. Their father had made them swear an oath to take vengeance – Hannibal was 6-years old at the time, Hasdrubal was 4 – and this was an oath the two boys took very seriously!

Hannibal knew that a sea-borne invasion of Rome was doomed as long as the Romans controlled Sicily and Corsica, so instead, beginning in 218 B.C., he invaded over land – marching his massive army, including over 50 elephants, across NW Africa, across the Straits of Gibraltar, through southern Iberia (today Spain), across the Pyrenees into southern Gaul (today France), finally crossing the Alps separating Gaul from Italy, as depicted in a medieval church fresco below:

To facilitate this invasion, Hannibal set up supply stations along his route to try to keep his army (and elephants!) from starving – among the supply stations he set up were “New/Little Carthage” – today known as Cartegena – and “Barcaona” (aka. "city of the House of Barca") – today’s Barcelona, though, once across two major mountain ranges, Hannibal’s hungry army often had to pillage and forage for food throughout Italy – ensuring that the conquered peoples of Italy would not assist him against the Romans. By his arrival in Italy in 217 B.C., the Roman Consuls led their Legions out against Hannibal three times – and all three times, Hannibal’s army slaughtered the Romans: at Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannæ, all terrible defeats in which the Romans lost well over 1000,000 men – 70,00 at Cannæ alone. The Romans fell back into the city of Rome, which Hannibal’s over-extended army could not take, and a long, costly stalemate ensued for the next decade as Rome was unable to get Hannibal to leave Italy, but Hannibal could not take the city of Rome itself.

Finally, in 210 B.C., the son of the Consul who had lost the Battle of Trebia, Publius Cornelius Scipio, proposed an idea – rather than fight Hannibal directly, which had always led to slaughter, why not attack his supply bases in Iberia and force him to return home. By 209 B.C., New Carthage had been captured, by 206 B.C., all of Iberia had fallen to Scipio’s Legions – Scipio sent the head of Hasdrubal back to Italy and had it shot into Hannibal’s camp to announce the fall of Iberia. Once Hannibal had also lost the port of Tarentum, Scipio launched an invasion of North Africa itself in 205 B.C. The Romans gained the help of Carthage’s neighbors Numidia (modern-day Eastern Algeria) and Mauretania (modern-day Morocco and Western Algeria) with the promise of being made socii of Rome if the invasion was successful – an advantage Hannibal did not have in Italy. Finally, in 202 B.C. the two generals fought the final decisive battle at Zama in North Africa. Despite being outnumbered, Hannibal still nearly won the battle but, in the end, Scipio’s forces along with his African allies were too much and Hannibal was forced to flee. Rome had won the 2nd Punic War – and had gained an Empire in the Western Mediterranean besides. Not only did Rome now have African allies but also, in destroying Hannibal’s supply lines and bases, Rome had also conquered Iberia and Southern Gaul as well. Publius Cornelius Scipio gained a new honorific: “Africanus” – conqueror of Africa – as well as a new honor, to be Princeps – first to speak in the Senate (note – this is a term that will be important next week when discussing Augustus).

So the Roman Republic now had an Empire – but the 16 years of constant warfare and the new responsibilities of Empire put a great strain on the Roman state – a strain that would eventually break it. 

 

B. The 2nd Century and effects of the 2nd Punic War

Following the end of the 2nd Punic war against Carthage, the Republic fights numerous wars against numerous enemies, both foreign kingdoms and rebelling allies.  This requires an extension of the Punic war policy of enlisting soldiers in the legions for extended periods of time and paying them.  Not only is this a drain on the finances of the state, it is also a drain on the farmers who make up the majority of the army. To try to counter this somewhat, a Law was passed on the eve of the campaign against Carthage that made it illegal for Senators to engage in commerce or mercantile activities – they were restricted to holding only that wealth that derived from land holdings and the products of that land.  This is done for two reasons – reformers wanted to stop certain patricii from making a profit off the war effort and the Senators themselves thought that mercantile activities were beneath their dignitas– their inborn sense of dignity.  It was also a way to further differentiate themselves from the rising equities middle class of novus homos – “new men” who more recently made their money, as opposed to having inherited it.  This will be a very influential idea; nobles across Europe will be prohibited from mercantile activity until as late as the 18th century in many countries.  With the advent of the standing army – an army with a term of service measured in multiple years rather than months, many families who’s head of household were in the army were forced to begin selling their family farms beginning ca. 200 B.C. and, of course, the patricii who could only have wealth in land holdings were only too willing and able to buy them.  This led eventually to the system of latifundia – huge plantations owned by individual patricii or groups of patricii called “corporations” on which workers were essentially serfs – working for the landlord and not for themselves.  Meanwhile, the families who did not wish to stay on the latifundia migrated to the urban center of Rome to look for jobs – causing problems for the city typical to overpopulation – higher crime, shortages of services, etc.  This pattern went on for just over 60 years gradually but certainly getting worse and worse. Of course, this pattern is repeated in many societies around the world but remember, unlike most, Rome has to solve this problem since its army is only made up of those with sufficient wealth to qualify. As the “middle class” shrinks, so too does the army – right at the time that its responsibilities are getting greater and greater. Finally, after six decades of social crises coupled with Roman expansion, a man named Tiberius Gracchus would attempt to enact reforms to solve the crisis. This attempt, and the violent reaction to it, would spell the beginning of the Roman Revolution – the alternative plan of men like Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, would spell the end of the Republic.

 

C. The Gracchi

Tiberius Gracchus was a novus homo – a plebeian related by family to one of the most powerful families in Rome – his mother was the daughter of Scipio Africanus.  While his father was actually a Plebeian Consul at one point, he was still a plebeian and since inheritance passes through the father not the mother, Tiberius, and his brother Gaius, were still considered plebeians as well. Tiberius had served in Spain and had also been indoctrinated in Stoic philosophy, one of the tenants of which was “leave the world better than you found it”.  This drove his desire to reform a system he saw as broken, but one that benefited the Senators and other patricii, so when he was elected Tribune in 133 B.C., his agenda would come into direct conflict with those in power.

Tiberius’ plan was to issue a land reform through the Comitia Tributa, breaking up the latifundia into lots no bigger than 600 square acres – at this point, the largest were tens of thousands of square acres – and distribute the land to the families that had lost land and could demonstrate that someone in the family was a member of the Legions. To Tiberius, this would have the dual effect of increasing the self-sufficiency of the yeoman farmer and would return thousands of families to eligibility for the Legions at a time when these results were sorely needed. However, whenever Tiberius proposed his land reform, another of the 10 Tribunes vetoed it because, as the historian Livy writes, he was in the employ of the patricii of the Senate who would have to give up the most land. After numerous attempts were vetoed, Tiberius asked the Comitia Tributa to revoke the other Tribune’s office – which would have been legal in Pericles’ Athens as an ostracism but was not legal to do to a Tribune with sacrosanctius. Once 18 of the 35 Tribes had voted in favor of Tiberius’ plan to revoke the other Tribune’s office, he went to the Senate and announced that Tiberius was trying to “take over the State”. A group of Senators then went to the Comitia Tributa and, led by the Pontifex Maximus, murdered Tiberius Gracchus with a stool basing in his head! While denying a Tribune his office was not legal, certainly murdering one was even less so, yet no one was ever punished for the crime and a dangerous precedence was set – political murder had become acceptable. 

A decade later, in 124 B.C., Tiberius’ younger brother Gaius Gracchus became Tribune and not only proposed a land reform but also the storage of excess grain by the State to be distributed in times of drought or famine, known as Lex Frumentaria – the First Corn Law. He also led the Comitia Tributa to pass a law banning Senators from the lucrative office of tax collecting. This made Gaius very popular with the majority of the Roman people and he was re-elected Tribune twice, in 123 and 122 B.C. Then Gaius made a fatal error, he proposed citizenship for all Italians. This caused the people to desert him as they didn’t want to share their benefits with approx. 450,000 other non-Roman Italians. The Senators saw their chance and passed a Law called the Senatus Consultum Ultimum – the Senate gives the Consuls ultimate power to do what is necessary to make certain Rome is not harmed. Another term for this is “martial law”. The Consuls send troops to arrest Gaius, who instead commits suicide as the troops close in.

Could the Gracchi’s reforms have worked? There’s no way to know, of course, though these are ideas that have been proposed many times in various societies. What we do know is (a) the murder of the Gracchi opened up the possibilities for far greater violence in the Roman political system that had had no political violence between rival Romans since the establishment of the Republic in 509 B.C.E. and the crises that had inspired the Gracchi and others to propose solutions still had not been solved. The next attempt would be even more disastrous and would be inspired by both military needs as well as the ambition of two men: Marius and Sulla.

 

D. The Roman Revolution: Marius and Sulla

When a local warlord named Jugurtha attacked Numidia in 111 B.C., the Numidians turned to their Roman socii for help. The problem was, of course, as we have outlined, such help was almost impossible for Rome to provide after a century or so of these social crises. This would set a bad precedent – when Empires can’t protect their allies, allies start looking to attack what seems to be a vulnerable power. After a number of years of token forces chasing Jugurtha around unfamiliar territory with no success, a very wealthy novus homo named Gaius Marius was elected Consul in 104 B.C. with a plan not only to catch Jugurtha but also to stop attacks from Germanic tribes on Rome’s northern borders: let the poor in the army. Gaius Marius’ plan was to pay for this innovation was to pay from his own and his family’s wealth, and then accept repayment from the Senate upon success. This was obviously a huge gamble on Gaius Marius’ part since failure would have ruined him, but it also established an even more dangerous precedent than the immediate reaction to the Gracchi had – when the army was financed by a man or a family, their loyalty was, at best, divided between Rome and the man/family paying them. Gaius Marius’ plan was successful, not only did he defeat the Germanic peoples and secure the northern border, but his men also captured Jugurtha as well. Gaius Marius was also elected Consul 5 consecutive times – another breaking of precedent, which held that Consuls served a single one-year term only.

When Jugurtha was captured, it was by a part of the Legions led by a patricii named Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a distant relative of Scipio Africanus. Even though it was Sulla who actually captured Jugurtha, Marius received the credit as commander. This sparked a ruinous rivalry between the two men – made worse by the fact that Marius was a wealthy plebeian – new money – and Sulla was a patrician – old money – and Marius was the one in command. This rivalry would spark into numerous conflicts that would ultimately engulf the Roman state into its first, but hardly its last, civil war between rival warlords.

In this case, it was sparked by a dispute over who would command the Roman Legions against the Italians who, again being denied full citizenship rebelled in 91 B.C. Marius was given a command in the North while Sulla was given a command in the South. This so-called Social War demonstrated to his supporters that the aged Marius was no worse than a match for his former assistant Sulla, the favorite of the Senate and the patricii. When the King of Pontius, a Roman client-state, rebelled during the Social War, both men wanted the assignment, which promised to be lucrative. The Senate supported Sulla, Marius’ supporters gained the Consulship a few months later and replace Sulla with Marius in 88 B.C. – at which point, Sulla refused to surrender command. This began the first Civil War in Roman Republican history, which would rage until Marius’ death from natural causes in 83 B.C., with each side alternating in advantage and having their supporters in the Senate pass Senatus Consultum Ultimum against the supporters of the other side, depending who was on top at the time. Finally, after Marius’ death, Sulla entered Rome and received the ancient office of Dictator in 82 B.C. The office of Dictator granted sole imperium – the power to compel obedience under penalty of death, for a set period of time, usually no more than 18 months. The first Roman Dictator was Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus, who led the Romans to victory over invading northern Italian peoples in 458 B.C., saving the newly formed Republic from destruction and conquest and then, returned power back to the Senate, even refusing to stand to be the next year’s Consul. This tradition, no less powerful than the tradition (not law until the 1950’s) to not serve more than two terms as American President because Washington had not done so, was no going be to upheld, more or less, by the conservative patriciiSulla, who held the office of Dictator for nearly 2 years, until 80 B.C., during which time, he instituted reforms designed to limit the power of the Tribunes, the Comitia Tributa, and equites, and plebeians in general – to center all power again in the patricii class. Sulla also arrested nearly every supporter of Marius left alive – one, Gaius Julius Cæsar, was only saved by other family connections, but thousands executed during Sulla’s Dictatorship prior to his retirement.

 

E. The Roman Revolution: Pompey, Crassus, Cæsar, and the 1st Triumverate; Gaius Julius Cæsar: Dictator & Dictator Perpetua (Oct. 49-March 15, 44 B.C.)

When Sulla retired, the Senate named two of his supporters, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (aka. Pompey the Great) and Marcus Licinius Crassus, to be Consuls – after their first terms, each experienced military successes, Pompey in Iberia and Hispania (northern Spain and SW France) as well as in the East in the Levant as Rome expanded against Hellenistic kingdoms, and Crassus against the slave rebellion led by Spartacus. Eventually, in 70 B.C., each was named Consul for a decade – again, not the dangerous departure from custom and tradition in the name of stability. When their decade was nearly over, each sought a man to stand as Consul for one year, after which, the plan was, Pompey and Crassus would again gain the office of Consul for a decade while their “stand-ins” would be given some obscure military command and would hopefully not be heard from again. Each was thus looking a wealthy, ambitious, and easily controlled “partner” to serve as Consul for the year 59 B.C. Pompey’s choice fit the bill on the first two counts but was not exactly “easily controlled” – in a very close election that could have ended his career and perhaps changed the course of Western Civilization – or perhaps not, which you can decide for yourselves – Gaius Julius Cæsar was elected Consul.

After what was supposed to be his “one year”, Cæsar was given command of the Legions in North-Central Gaul (modern-day France) for a decade while Pompey and Crassus reassumed the office of Consul – in fact, the three man formed an informal partnership called the First Triumvirate in 59 B.C., though by 56 B.C., jealously and rivalry between the three men had the Roman state again preparing for the possibility of Civil War. While Cæsar was winning great victories against the Gallic peoples, Pompey was stuck in Rome dealing with all the issues of running a huge city with many poor people and difficult conditions. Making it more of a contrast, Cæsar began sending back his Gallic Texts, first-hand accounts of how great Cæsar was, how his brilliance was winning battles and gaining glory and land for Rome, how every man wanted to be him and every woman wanted to be with him, etc. The highlight of the Gallic Texts was the stories of his “conquest” of Britannia, which to Romans meant crossing “Ocean” a body of water that housed gods and monsters and made him something of a superhero, especially when this “conquest” was reported back to Rome in Cæsar’s own words! Meanwhile, at least Pompey could point to numerous triumphs over the course of his long career – Crassus’ sole military glory was in putting down a slave rebellion, which may be a great movie with Kirk Douglas, but isn’t much of a status point to the Romans, at least not after Scipio Africanus. So Crassus set out to gain some glory of his own in 54 B.C., taking his legions east to invade the Hellenistic state of the Parthians, who occupied the Persian plateau. In his first major battle, at Carrhæ, Crassus’ army was slaughtered and he himself was killed. The 1st Triumvirate was now down to two rival warlords, one in Gaul and the other in Rome. Despite a marriage alliance between them, the two men now recognized that each stood in the other’s way of being the most powerful man in Rome. When Pompey’s sister, Cæsar’s wife died shortly after Crassus, the bonds between the two were broken.

By 51 B.C., Pompey informed Cæsar that he would not be allowed to stand for Consul nor would he be renewed as commander unless he surrendered his army. Cæsar was now faced with a choice – either surrender his armies and submit to Pompey’s mercy, or march his army to Rome and try to enforce his position. Obviously, Cæsar chose the latter. Once his troops crossed the Rubicon River north of the city in 49 B.C., Cæsar was officially an invader – he now either won and became Rome’s conqueror or lost and faced certain execution. Cæsar’s more battle-experienced troops quickly defeated Pompey’s older forces – after driving them from Rome, he caught up to Pompey at Pharsalus in 48 B.C. and won a total victory. Pompey escaped briefly to Egypt, where he was assassinated by Egyptians trying to please Cæsar – who then had the assassins executed. Roman leaders don’t like non-Romans who were willing to kill other Roman leaders! Cæsar returned to Rome as its Dictator in October 49 B.C. The monumental statue he commissioned upon his triumph is depicted below. 

Unlike his predecessors, like Sulla, Cæsar did not execute or proscribe his enemies; he spent the first years of his Dictatorship campaigning in Egypt and the East, in the Levant. He also restructured debts for the poorest of Rome, increased the grain supply with a treaty with Cleopatra, the last Hellenistic Pharaoh of Egypt, with whom Cæsar also had an affair, redistributed land to the veterans of his army, reformed the calendar, and created a police force to help enforce the laws within the city of Rome. He was generally a popular Dictator, an office he held for an unprecedented 5 years, before the Senate, fearful of another Civil War should he retire, named him Dictator Perpetua – Dictator for Life, in February 44 B.C. Cæsar did hold this final office for “life” – it’s just that, for Cæsar, “life” would last just under another month. On March 15, 44 B.C., the Ides of March (a mid-month festival), a group of Senators, led by a relative of that Iunius Brutus who’d killed the last Etruscan King in 509 B.C., assassinated Cæsar as he entered the Roman Senate. If the Senator’s thought they had also assassinated the concept of Dictators, however, they would prove to be mistaken – once Cæsar was killed, two members of his extended family, Marc Antony and Octavian Cæsar, fought the assassins at Philippi in Greece in 42 B.C., and, after defeating them, teamed up with Marcus Æmilius Lepidus, Cæsar’s cavalry commander, to form the formal 2nd Triumvirate to rule Rome in the aftermath of Cæsar’s death. Inevitably, after a decade, the two leaders of this 2nd Triumvirate, Antony and Octavian, fought one final Civil War in 31 B.C., won by Octavian, who, while now master of the Roman world, as we will see next week, will be very careful to never call himself “Dictator”.  

The major point here is to note how, this fully functioning and highly successful Republic went from near total stability, especially in the ancient/classical world context, with no conception of political violence and near-universal adherence to the rule of law across social classes, to a total breakdown including political murder, martial law, traditions broken, private armies loyal to commanders and not the State, and numerous civil wars resulting in the destruction of that Republic in little more than a century. Add to this fact that, if you told the “average Roman” in 135 B.C. that this all was going to happen and in less than 50 years, they would need a Dictator to try to bring stability to the State and society and that, in just over 90 years, someone would be popular for calling himself Dictator Perpetuawith the majority of the Roman population, and that overthrowing that individual would lead not to a restoration of the traditional Republic but to a military Dictator Perpetua in all but name within less than 15 more years – they would have looked at you the same way you would look at me if I told you Clinton and Trump supporters will be out in the streets fighting every bit as violently as what is happening today in Syria, Libya, or the Ukraine in an all-out Civil War after the election. Yet, in a “peoples government” that had been stable and successful from at least 509-202 B.C., a period of 307 years if you put “instability” at the triumph over Hannibal, which nearly all historians would agree is too early, but is a few generations longer than America has existed, and more than double the time since the American Civil War 150 years ago – that is exactly what happened. And also note – we will not see “peoples government” again for 1800 years/the rest of this class as well.