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The Res Publica of the Tribunes. Tribunician Legislation and the Political Strategies of the Roman Mid-Republican Elite

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The Res Publica of the Tribunes. Tribunician Legislation and the Political Strategies of the Roman Mid-Republican Elite The Res Publica of the Tribunes. Tribunician legislation and the political strategies of the Roman Mid-Republican elite. (218-180 BC) ———— Roberto Ciucciovè Dedicated to my parents and to Joanna Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1 CHAPTER I A Problematic Legislative Corpus: the Tribunician Statutes at the End of the Third Century (218-204 BC). 1.1 plebiscitum Claudianum (218 BC) [de senatoribus Rotondi] 14 1.2 lex Metilia (217 BC) [de aequando magistri equitum et dictatoris iure Rotondi] 20 1.3 lex Metilia (217 BC) [de fullonibus dicta Rotondi] 30 1.4 lex Minucia (216 BC) [de triumviris mensariis Rotondi] 34 1.5 lex Oppia (215 BC) [sumptuaria Rotondi] 38 1.6 a) plebiscitum Carvilium (212 BC) [lex Carvilia de exilio M. Postumii Pyrgensis Rotondi] 43 b) plebiscitum (211 BC) [de exilio Cn. Fulvii Flacci Rotondi] 1.7 plebiscitum (211 BC) [de imperio M. Claudii Marcelli Rotondi] 48 1.8 lex Atilia (210 BC) [de dediticiis Rotondi] 51 1.9 lex Lucretia (210 BC) [plebiscitum de dictatore creando Rotondi] 56 1.10 lex Publicia (209 BC) [de cereis Rotondi] 60 1.11 lex Cincia (204 BC) [de donis et mulieribus Rotondi] 62 CHAPTER II The Tribunician Statutes from the plebiscita on Scipio Africanus to the lex Sempronia (204-193 BC). 2.1 rogatio (204 BC) [de imperio P. Scipioni abrogando Rotondi] 69 2.2 plebiscitum (202 BC) [de imperio in Africa Rotondi] 2.3 plebiscitum (201 BC) [de imperio in Hispania Rotondi] 2.4 lex Licinia (196 BC) [de III viris epulonibus creandis Rotondi] 78 2.5 lex Marcia Atinia (196 BC) [de pace cum Philippo facienda Rotondi] 82 2.6 lex Valeria Fundania (195 BC) [de lege Oppia sumptuaria abroganda Rotondi] 89 2.7 lex Sempronia (193 BC) [de pecunia credita Rotondi] 96 CHAPTER III From the lex Valeria to the lex Villia. Tribunician legislation in a decade of great political and social transformations (188- 180 BC). 3.1 lex Valeria (188 BC) [de civitate cum suffragio Formianis et Arpinatibus danda Rotondi] 105 3.2 lex Petillia 187 BC [de pecunia regis Antiochi Rotondi] 110 3.3 lex Orchia (182/181 BC) [de cenis Rotondi] 119 3.4 rogatio Pinaria (180 BC?) [annalis Rotondi] 123 3.5 lex Villia (180 BC) [annalis Rotondi] Conclusions 129 Bibliography 133 Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to my supervisor Dr Federico Santangelo, who supported and encouraged me throughout my doctoral journey with great generosity. A special note of thanks is due to Dr Michele Bellomo, who provided valuable guidance on many aspects of my thesis. I owe much gratitude to the late Professor John Moles, who inspired my research and to whose memory I also dedicate this work. Introduction The status quaestionis and the background of this work The interest in the tribunate of the plebs has been a recurring theme in the historiographical research on the Roman world from the ancient times to our own. This introduction will seek to chart some of the main scholarly contributions on the tribunate, starting from the early modern period, and indeed from a major figure of the Italian Renaissance: Niccolò Machiavelli.1 The title that the great Florentine historian and political thinker gave to the third chapter of his Discourses on the First Decade of Livy is: ‘Quali accidenti facessono creare in Roma i Tribuni della plebe, il che fece la repubblica più perfetta’.2 What immediately stands out is the positive conceptualization of the tribunate that emerges from the title of that essay. In Machiavelli’s perspective, the Roman Republic, thanks to the existence of the tribunate, achieved a higher standard of political efficiency: 'perfetta', evidently derived from the Latin perficio/perfecta, an adjective that may be translated in English as ‘accomplished’. The Republic was therefore more balanced, and eventually stronger because of the tribunate. This assessment is even more significant if one looks back to what the character of Quintus Cicero in De legibus (3. 19) says about that very magistracy: in seditione et ad seditionem nata (‘originated from civil discord and aimed to create new strife’), a formula that captures what had been, in his own view, the initial historical context of the tribunate of the plebs and its political aim. 3 A further issue emerges, involving not only the constitutional remit and political significance of the tribunate, but the very idea of what the Roman Republic was about, for the character of Cicero’s brother as well as for Cicero himself. Furthermore, debates on the same question also unfolded amongst Cicero’s contemporaries and peers, especially on how the brief of the tribunate had changed across the centuries, as well as that of other Roman magistracies. Lily Ross Taylor wrote very 1 Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, I, 3. 2 See the English translation by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella in the Oxford World’s Classics (2008), p. 28: 'The Circumstances that Caused the Creation of the Tribunes of the Plebeians, Making the Republic More Perfect'. 3 Cf. Wiseman (1971) 162 n. 1, where Cicero himself is regarded to have ‘deliberately avoided the tribunate because of his 'senatorial' sympathies’. See the commentary by Dyck (2004) 492-494. It is remarkable that Dyck links the statement of Quintus back to the Sullan period, as a ‘reaction against the use of the office by P. Sulpicius’ (492). On this point see the study of Lanfranchi (2015), esp. the final chapter: ‘L’image des tribuns de la plebe. Conflicts et enjeux de modèles interprétatifs’, at 549-644. 1 insightful and, in a way, definitive words on this problem, particularly on the importance of considering the historical creation and development of the tribunate as a crucial and distinctive feature of the Roman political system.4 The attempt to circumscribe the tribunician magistracy within defined boundaries is not, in my view, the most helpful path to pursue in addressing such a complex historical matter. Quintus’ understanding of the tribunate is remarkable, and is exactly the opposite of what underlies the definition given by Machiavelli; it is also strongly corrected in Marcus’ later intervention in the dialogue.5 Quintus resorts to the word seditio to describe, as we said, not just the origin of the tribunate, but also the political aims of the magistracy itself. 6 From these few initial words, it does emerge what the main issue one has to address in approaching this complex topic: in which respects the history of the tribunate of the plebs at the time of the Roman Republic should be reframed. What we are looking at, in fact, is not just one tribunate, but many, at least as many as the number of observers who across the centuries commented on or wrote about this magistracy. The tribunate of the plebs is a hotly contested and controversial feature of the Roman res publica. The consequence of its complexity is that any attempt to approach it would result into the risk of missing many of the specific aspects that are intrinsically part of the magistracy. In light of these concerns, the best way to approach the issue is to attempt an analysis that will consider the tribunate under two main headings: the constitutional scope of the magistracy, which has been the main focus of an important strand of German scholarship, particularly of Theodor Mommsen7 in the nineteenth century and, in the last century, of two major historiographical contributions by Jochen Bleicken; and, on the other hand, what one could regard as a more practice-orientated approach to the tribunate, which focuses mainly on its contribution to the legislative process and on its crucial political and economic consequences.8 Bleicken’s 1955 study on the tribunate, Das Volkstribunat der 4 Taylor (1962) 19-21. 5 Leg. 3. 23. On this passage cf. n. 6. 6 The noun seditio is translated in the Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, Oxford, 1969 with ‘an insurrectionary separation (political or military); dissension, civil discord, insurrection, mutiny, sedition’. Pfaff (1921) 1024 offers significant historical insights into the political meaning of the word seditio. In spite of the fact that Quintus considers the tribunate as a pestifera potestas (Leg. 3. 19), his brother’s assessment of the tribunate is not much more positive in itself: the magistracy is regarded as a necessary political institution, whose main use is to prevent the potential cruelty of the common people (vis populi multo saevior, 3. 23). The vis of the people, therefore, has to be thought of as the political parallel of the tribunician potestas, which Marcus regards as ‘excessive’, nimia. Hence, Cicero’s view of the tribunate is not so easily defined. That magistracy is a danger, but is essential to prevent a greater threat: seditio. 7 Mommsen (1887-1888) 1037-1048. 8 Bleicken (1955) and (1975). 2 klassischen Republik. Studien zu seiner Entwicklung zwishen 287 und 133 v. Chr., building on the earlier works of Mommsen and Niccolini, set out to rethink the controversial political nature of the tribunate. The task that the scholar addressed was arduous, especially for the early Republican period, before the Second Punic War. The juridical terminology, in fact, does not lend itself to a straightforward definition for the centuries preceding the Hannibalic War, and this is due to a serious lack of reliable primary sources that could offer a comprehensive and exhaustive historical perspective. Without any doubt, the most interesting, and disputable, point that Bleicken made concerns the absence of any revolutionary character of the tribunate after the 287 BC, in the aftermath of the promulgation of the lex Hortensia. The revolutionary character of the tribunate is not just to be identified with its political aims at the very beginning of its history, at the end of the sixth century BC.
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