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just-late-roman-republic-things · 2 months

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Determinism, Dice Rolls, and Dickheads

So, @sextuscansextus posed a great question the other day: "If you were going to pin the BEGINNING of the downfall of the Roman Republic on the actions of one Roman, who are you blaming?" The pedant that lives in my brain immediately started asking more questions. Not to argue, but to explore. To enjoy. To attempt a political autopsy well outside my competence.

This post is my answer: who I blame most, and why.

Had the Die Already Been Cast?

Many folks (including sextuscansextus herself) have pointed out that the end of the republic was a complex process, and blaming it on one "key figure" doesn't really work. Historians don't just talk about the individuals who shaped history, but a web of other factors: geography, economics, religion, overvalued sparkly rocks, etc.

So, how much should we blame people like Sulla or Caesar? And how much should we blame systemic forces that pushed them and other Romans to act as they did?

A pure "systems" approach looks like Jared Diamond's book, Guns, Germs and Steel. It tries to explain why some societies colonized others, using physical geography and agriculture. Individuals could still make choices, but on a large scale, the societies followed the different paths permitted by their material situations.

Or, to more bluntly, Europe was destined to colonize the Americas because cows rule and llamas drool, wheat is better than potatoes, and Europe's coastline looks like it was drawn by a spider on cocaine.

This book is, shall we say, controversial.

Apart from issues with methodology, accuracy, and possible racism, the book invokes historical determinism. Determinism is the idea that events are inevitable: your behavior is determined by the state of your brain, your brain's state is determined by your genetics and environment, and every person is equally ruled by those factors. Free will is as nonexistent as Mark Antony's underwear.

Determinism Lite™️ might allow for individual free will, but still frames big shifts like the fall of the Roman republic as inevitable. Or, you might say it became inevitable after a certain event set it on the course to destruction. I think this is what sextuscansextus' question is really getting at. The point in Roman history when you say, "This is where it went wrong," influences who you think doomed the republic, and how you judge the leaders who followed.

But was it doomed? Did a civil war have to happen sooner or later? If an eagle had dropped a turtle on Julius Caesar's bald spot, would somebody else march on Rome instead?

Erich Gruen and Robert Morstein-Marx have other ideas.

Lucky Bastards and the Doomsday Clock

In The Last Generation of the Roman Republic, Erich Gruen asks: What was happening in Roman politics between 80 and 49 BCE? What changed, and what stayed the same? He catalogues every election, trial, law passed or blocked, military mutiny, incestuous clusterfuck - the detail is both impressive and mind-numbing. Then he compares it all to previous decades, and concludes...that in 50 BCE, the republic was not falling apart.

"But how can that be?" you may ask. "Look at everything that went wrong! Even the Senate house burned down!"

Gruen isn't saying there weren't crises during this time. What he's saying is that they don't reflect a fundamental decay in republican institutions, or mean the republic couldn't put itself back together. For instance, the burning of the Senate was followed by troops being called in to restore order and hold a trial for Clodius' murder, and Rome was then at peace for three years until Caesar invaded - for completely unrelated reasons. The two conflicts are not actually linked. And positive developments occurred in between them, but are usually overlooked by historians trying to explain why things went wrong.

Gruen's argument is multi-layered, and I can't summarize it all here. But he concludes that the Roman republic could have potentially survived much longer, if not for the personal, not systemic, conflict between Caesar and Pompey in 50 BCE. If he's right, then we can't say any of Caesar or Pompey's predecessors "doomed" the republic.

Robert Morstein-Marx takes Gruen's argument further. In Julius Caesar and the Roman People, he explores the lead-up to Caesar's civil war, and finds miscommunication, politicians waffling back and forth, and several times war was almost averted. Even after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he and Pompey nearly reached a peace deal. And several times Caesar was almost killed in battle, only escaping through pure luck.

Neither the civil war nor Caesar's dictatorship were inevitable. So besides "important people" and "systemic factors," Morstein-Marx names another force of history: sheer, bloody chance.

Not all historians agree with Gruen and Morstein-Marx. But let's suppose that at some point, the republic was in danger, yet there was a chance of restoring it to its prior health and stability. Whether you think there was a 90% or 5% chance of saving the republic in 52 BCE, try thinking in terms of probabilities, not a path of cause and effect.

Let's call this the "probability model." There are people and events who raise or lower the republic's stability, going all the way back to its founding, when Lucius Brutus' sons tried to overthrow it. It's like the Doomsday Clock, which doesn't measure how long humans have before destruction, but our risk of things blowing up in our face. The Doomsday Clock can go forward (riskier) or backward (safer), just like the Roman republic could start stabilizing in 52-50 BCE before a civil war destabilized it again.

In this model, we can't really say there is a "beginning of the end," or one person who started it. There was a series of events during which the republic collapsed, but they didn't necessarily cause each other, or all stem from a single source. You might as well ask which raindrop flooded your house.

But don't worry. We can still throw rocks at a guy who's been dead for 2000 years. We just have to rephrase the question a little.

What Was the Biggest Hit?

We can't say one man caused the republic to irreversibly decay, but we can say some men struck bigger blows than others, or struck it at a worse time.

Personally, I really like Gruen and Morstein-Marx's analyses. I agree with Gruen that the republic had reasonable prospects to survive in 51 BCE, and with Morstein-Marx's argument that Caesar and Pompey could have resolved their differences peacefully. But I think the republic's chances dropped dramatically after Caesar invaded Italy and Pompey fled to Greece - perhaps from 80% to 30%, if you'll forgive me for pulling numbers out of my ass. And the odds got worse as the conflict went on.

For the next 20 years, Rome was in a nearly constant state of civil war, autocracy, or both. It's hard to overstate how damaging both of those were to every level of society. Men like Augustus grew up without having ever seen a healthy republic, and many of the men that knew how to run one were killed. Public offices went unfilled, infrastructure decayed, mouths went unfed. Even if preserving the republic wasn't impossible yet, it became far, far more difficult. So if we're gonna point fingers, I think we should be looking at 50-49 BCE.

A lot of politicians fucked up at that point. You can argue that Curio drove a wedge between Caesar and Pompey, that Cato shut down the peace negotiations, that Marcellus declared war first, that Caesar started the war for real, and that Pompey tried to play both sides and it blew up in his face. It's possible that if any of these men had acted differently, no war would have happened. But if I had to pick one man to blame the most...

The Motive Matters, Too

Let's go back to that point about systems versus individual agency. How far were these politicians' choices constrained by their culture and environment? It doesn't change how badly they fucked up, but when it comes to blame, I'm harsher on people who choose evil of their own free will, rather than because they feel pressured into it.

In De Bello Civili, Caesar tells us why he defied the Senate for a year and invaded his own country. He tells us he wanted to protect the tribunes' rights, but the tribunes only came to him days before he crossed the Rubicon, so it doesn't explain why he let the situation get so dire in the first place. For that, we must look at his other stated reason: dignitas.

He wasn't afraid of a trial, assassination, or the anger of his soldiers. He did it for his pride, public image, honor, whatever you want to call it. And he put that pride before the lives of his countrymen and the safety of his country.

Now, the ancient Romans might have thought dignitas was a better reason than we do, but we can't blame Caesar's actions on Roman culture, either. 140 years earlier, Rome had had another great general. His name was Scipio Africanus. His career shares many similarities with Caesar's, and he was likely one of Caesar's heroes. But Scipio never turned his power against his country. He actually turned down being dictator and perpetual consul, and when his enemies politically cornered him, he accepted exile rather than forcing an ugly, drawn-out fight. Despite that embarrassment, he remained a legend through Caesar's time and to this day.

Or perhaps you want an example closer to Caesar's era and situation. We have one: Lucullus, whom Caesar actually served under at Mytilene. 16 years before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Lucullus was spurned for a triumph for his campaigns. He waited three years, living outside Rome all that time, before he finally got one. But during that time he demobilized his army and respected the Senate's laws, no matter how petty and personally motivated they were against him. He did not use the military as a threat.

When push came to shove, Scipio and Lucullus put the good of the republic before their own careers. Caesar did not. He chose to defy the Senate and take up arms against his countrymen, knowing full well he had other options available.

I blame Caesar not only for the size of the blow he inflicted on the republic, but also because the blow was so preventable, if only he had been a better man.

#holy shit this got long #it was super fun to write though!#gods i love talking about this stuff #jlrrt essays #historiography #roman politics #julius caesar #caesar's civil war #scipio africanus #robert morstein-marx #erich gruen #guns germs and steel #jared diamond #julius caesar and the roman people #the last generation of the roman republic #lucius licinius lucullus

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