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IMPERIUM ROMANUM BETWEEN REPUBLIC and EMPIRE by JOHN RICHARD SON

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IMPERIUM ROMANUM BETWEEN REPUBLIC and EMPIRE by JOHN RICHARD SON IMPERIUM ROMANUM BETWEEN REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE By JOHN RICHARD SON The representation and perception of imperial power (to borrow for a moment the title of this volume) sounds, at first hearing, like a description of a fairly simple process, whereby one group of people, presumably the Romans, produced by image or by word an account or picture of the empire which was then received and interpreted by others. Such a process is indeed one of great interest and importance for understanding of the impact of the Roman empire on the ancient world. However, it is not the subject of this paper, which addresses instead another, and perhaps prior set of questions: What did the Romans think the empire was? How did they represent it to themselves and perceive it themselves? And how did that perception affect the nature of the empire and of the imperialism, which created it? 'Empire' is not a simple notion. Even if we confine our attentions to the period since the end of the nineteenth century, when the idea of imperialism first began to be discussed and explored systematically, it is clear that the imperial structures and activities of, for instance, the British and French empires or of the USSR and the USA show enormous differences between them. In antiquity, what we now call the Persian and the Athenian empires in the fifth century BC were widely disparate, not just in terms of scale but also of concept and of the relationship ofthe rulers to the ruled. To come closer to the subject-matter of this volume, it is clear enough that within the history of Roman imperialism between the emergence of Rome as a Mediterranean power in the third and second centuries BC, when imperial activity consisted in sending armies out from the city against foreign foes in foreign lands, and the situation of the second century AD, when the Roman emperor ruled an extensive and varied empire, whose boundaries required defence and whose territories were governed and administered, we are dealing with a quite different sort of structure, both in terms of practice and of concept. My questions amount to this: When and why and how did these changes come about? And what effect did they have on the process which we call Roman imperialism? These are large questions, and demand a much larger treatment than can be given in a brief paper. When first I began to explore this area, it seemed to me best to look at what is perhaps the most obvious change, the shift in the idea of imperium as 'power' to that of imperium as a piece of 137 JOHN RICHARDSON - 9789004401631 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:19:52AM via free access territory over which that power was exercised. One change which seemed to coincide with this was the use of the term imperium Romanum itself. In my opinion, this was a phrase, widely used in the imperial period, which did not seem nearly so frequent at an earlier stage. Indeed, further investigation revealed that it does not occur either in epigraphic or literary contexts before its appearance in the historian Sallust, writing in the 40s BC. I However, this straightforward observation proved less helpful for the meaning of the word imperium than might have been hoped, since it was clear on further investigation that in the three passages in which Sallust uses the phrase, once in the Bellum Catilinae and twice in fragments of the Histories, the sense of imperium is still that of 'power' of the Roman people, not their territory.2 If there was a change in the possible range of meanings of the word, it was not to be identified so easily as by a change from imperium populi Romani to imperium Romanum. It became clear that the only way to proceed in such an investigation was by systematic examination of the meanings (drawn from context, both in terms of content and of syntax) of imperium in late republican and Augustan writers; and alongside this, I decided to look also at provincia, since that was a word which was intimately connected with imperium, and which had, at least in some contexts, a territorial significance already in the republican period. In this paper I concentrate on imperium 3 Firstly Cicero, both because he is undoubtedly a republican source and because sufficient of his work survives to give a reasonable chance of observing his usages over a period of years in the late republic. I began by collecting, by use of the PHI disk, all those passages in which Cicero uses the word imperium. These are passages, not individual uses of the word, and some passages, of course, use the word several times. By my reckoning, Cicero has 545 passages in which he uses the word imperium; of these, 285 of the 545 (that is 52.3%) are about the power of a magistrate or pro­ magistrate, and this is by far the largest single meaning in his works. Another twelve refer to the power of kings, and two others to the power of both kings and magistrates. This result is hardly surprising, but it does illustrate that, for Cicero at least, the predominant context in which the word I As noted in my article 'Imperium Romanum: empire and the language of power', Journal ofRoman Studies 81 (1991), 1-9,atp.6andn.49. 2 Sallust, Bel/um Catilinae 10.1-3; Histories 2 fr. 70; Histories 3 fr. 2. 3 The results of this investigation will probably shortly emerge as a book; in this paper I give a sketch of some preliminary fmdings, and suggest one or two even more preliminary conclusions, and for this purpose I concentrate on imperium alone. 138 JOHN RICHARDSON - 9789004401631 Downloaded from Brill.com09/29/2021 07:19:52AM via free access is used is one in which it signifies the power of an individual, and not 'empire' in any sense at all, much less a territorial sense. The next most common usage is of states and peoples: some eleven passages are about foreign (that is non-Roman) states;4 but 174 passages are about the Roman people, making this the second most common usage, after that referring to the imperium of Roman magistrates and pro-magistrates (31.9% of the total of 545 passages). The contexts of these occurrences indicate that once again the meaning is of the 'power of the Roman people', which is what Sallust meant when he used the term imperium Romanum; though, surprisingly, of these 174 a large number (151 on my reckoning) use imperium to refer to the Roman state itself, rather than simply its power. 5 One notable example is from Cicero's Fourth Catilinarian Oration, where he describes the conspirators as attempting to install the Allobroges in the ruins of the city and amongst the ashes of the imperium, showing that in this passage at least, setting fire to Rome burns down the imperium. 6 In passages like this, the imperium, the power of the Roman people, stands for the state itself; and it is interesting that in several places in this list, the context is the well-being or survival of the imperium, by which is meant not just the external territories of the Romans but the state as a whole. 7 And also, and 4 Cicero, In Verrem 2, 2.14; 3.15; 4.20; 5.98; Ad Quintum Fratrem 1.2.7; Pro Flacco 64; De Republica 1.28; 1.47; 1.50; De Officiis 1.76; De Senectute 59. 5 Cicero, Pro Roscio Amerino 51; 131; In Verrem 2, 1.54; 1.82; 2.85; 4.68; 5.8; 5.51; 5.97; 5.98; 5.115; 5.150; Pro Fonteio 15; 17; 32; 35; 36; Oratio perdita 7 (Pro Comelio), fr. 27; Pro Lege Manilia 11; 12; 14; 26; 32; 41; 48; 54; 55; 60; 64; In Catilinam 1, 12; 33; In Catilinam 2, 3; 19; In Catilinam 3, 1; 9; 19; 20; In Catilinam 4, 4; 7; 12; 19; 21; De Lege Agraria 1.2; 1.6; 1.18; 1.19; 2.35; 2.73; 2.86; Pro Murena 6; 24; 58; 75; Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo 20; 33; Pro Archia 28; Pro Sulla 3; 23; 28; 32; 33; 86; Ad Atticum 1.19.7; Ad Quintum Fratrem 1.1.34; Pro Flacco 1; 60; 69; De Domo 19; 20; 129; 132; 133; 143; Post Reditum ad Quirites 9; Post Reditum ad QUirites 21; Ad Familiares 1.7.4; De Haruspicum Responsis 4; 18; 19; 29; 49; 51; De Provinciis Consulan·bus 5; 6J3; 18; 33; Oratio. perdita 16 (De Rege Alexandrino) fr. 4; fr. 7; Pro Balbo 13; 22; 25; 31; 34; 49; 51; Pro Caelio 14; 59; Pro Sestio 1; 17; 19; 20; 50; 53; 57; 58; 66; 101; 116; 129; 139; De Oratore 1.159; 1.196; 1.20\; 2.168; In Pisonem 48; 84; Pro Plan eo 70; Pro Rabirio Postumo 6; Pro Scauro 48; De Partitione Oratoria 105; De Republica 1.67; 2.5; 2.10; 3.24; Ad Familiares 15.1.5;. 15.4.10; 15.4.14; Pro Ligario 7; De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 2.76; Pro Rege Deiotaro 11; De Amieitia 11; De Divinatione 1.27; 1.92; De Officiis 2.26; 3.86; 3.87; 3.88; Philippieae 2.54; 2.92; 3.10; 3.13; 3.30; 3.37; 4.8; 4.13; 5.37; 5.39; 5.48; 7.15; 11.31; 13.14. 6 Sic nos in his hominibus qui nos, qui coniuges, qui liberos nostros trucidare vo1uerunt, qui singulas unius cuiusque nostrum domos et hoc universum rei publicae domicilium delere conati sunt, qui id egerunt ut gentem Allobrogum in vestigiis huius urbis atque in cinere deflagrati imperi conlocarent, si vehementissimi fuerimus, misericordes habebimur (Cicero, In Catilinam 4,12).
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