10. The Death of the Republic

News of Caesar’s victory reached Rome in October, but he did not return for nine months. This period was spent in the East, mainly in Egypt where, as is well known, Caesar entered into an amorous relationship with Cleopatra.

In addition to fathering a son with the Egyptian queen and putting down a dangerous rebellion, Caesar also led a short and successful military expedition against Pontus. It was at this time that he was supposed to have uttered the celebrated words: “I came, I saw, I conquered” – veni, vidi, vici.

Naturally, in all this time he did not neglect business. His conquests in the East provided him with a new supply of booty, with which to replenish his depleted coffers in Rome. The cash was much needed, since unpaid soldiers are likely to mutiny. Eventually, this actually happened, forcing Caesar to return to Italy in haste. Mark Antony did not show his master’s skill in dealing with this situation, probably because his attentions appear to have been fully occupied by a beautiful mistress.

Having secured the East, Caesar returned to Rome with a spectacular triumph, which further strengthened his position and weakened that of his enemies. In the course of four days in August 46 BC huge processions wound their way through the streets of Rome, including a statue of Cleopatra together with Venus (who was supposed to be Caesar’s ancestor).

After the processions came the games, a lavish spectacle featuring wild beast hunts, in which for the first time giraffes were seen in Rome. The whole extravaganza ended with a feast. In Caesar’s absence there had been a shortage of grain, and now the populace looked to their saviour to provide all their needs. This extravagant show must have cost him a fortune.

He continued to use his wealth to bribe his opponents. His legions were never far away in the background to intimidate them if that became necessary. However, having installed himself as master of Rome, Caesar took care not to push the aristocracy too far. His measures were surprisingly moderate – and therefore disappointing to the populists.

Unlike his forerunner, Sulla, and against all expectations, Caesar did not launch a reign of terror, with proscriptions and executions of his enemies and the confiscation of their property. In those cases where estates were taken from his rivals and ended up in the hands of his supporters, they were auctioned or sold.

All this was intended to win over the rich and powerful to Caesar’s cause and to neutralise the extreme republicans. This explains why he so quickly ‘forgave’ many of his enemies and tried to attach them to his cause.

Although he posed as ‘the People’s Friend’, and had leaned on the masses to strike blows against the Senate and the aristocratic party, Caesar had absolutely no intention of handing power to the plebs. That is why, once he was installed at Rome, he made strenuous attempts to conciliate the aristocratic party. This must have come as a disagreeable surprise to his partisans on the streets, who expected to be allowed to loot and burn the houses of the rich as soon as Caesar returned. Instead, he kept strict order on the streets.

In fact, as soon as he was in power Caesar took measures to clip the wings of the popular party by banning all clubs and associations unless they had a licence, which very few did. The dictator was not willing to share power either with the conservatives or with the populists. Why should he? The new ruler of Rome had to appear as a force above all classes, representing ‘the State’. This is a common feature in all Caesarist or Bonapartist regimes.

He severely restricted the number of people eligible to receive dole in the form of free grain. But the army was another matter. The bill for the army was by now colossal, since every soldier was due to receive the equivalent of a lifetime’s wages, as well as a plot of land. The delay in meeting these expectations was causing unrest in the army.

When some of his soldiers protested about the lavish spectacle put on by Caesar on his return from Egypt, he had them immediately executed and their heads displayed in the forum “to encourage the others”, to use Voltaire’s expression. But he had to take care to preserve and strengthen his real power base, which was the army. He therefore used the money looted from the East to pay the soldiers and created new colonies to give to his soldiers land on retirement (a very important objective for a Roman soldier).

To some extent this measure was used to resettle part of the poor population in Rome. This was doubtless a popular measure, which was intended to remind the masses that ‘Caesar was on the people’s side’ and to arouse echoes of the tradition of the Gracchi and the populares of the past.

However, these schemes had nothing in common with the revolutionary agrarian policies of the Gracchi. There must have been disappointment that these new lands were not in Italy but in the provinces. But it was by these means that Caesar could go some way to satisfying the masses’ hunger for land without expropriating the big latifundia of the slave-owners in Italy.

The convulsions, revolutions and civil wars of the previous half century meant that many Romans and Italians had fallen seriously into debt. The harsh laws governing such situations placed them completely at the mercy of voracious money lenders, casting many into utter destitution. Caesar was aware of this, and the dangers that it posed to social stability. But what was to be done? He faced a dilemma that was well expressed by the historian, Michael Grant:

On the one hand, something must obviously be done to rescue the ruined debtors. On the other hand, however, the rehabilitation of these unfortunate men must not be allowed to turn into a general cancellation of debts, which would destroy private property, the basis of the entire social system, and thus plunge Rome into a state of revolution: and that was what even moderate conservatives greatly feared.

During the months that had elapsed since the beginning of the civil war, the debt crisis had become much greater. This was partly because of a shortage of currency. Money had been withdrawn from circulation to be hoarded until times became better, and such cash as could still be found had gone to pay the rival armies. This meant that whereas debtors were now receiving pressing claims for repayment, they were unable to respond to them and had to forfeit their land and other possessions instead, at wretched prices.^[1]

To placate the poor, he introduced some restrictions on the laws relating to debt and bankruptcy, and suspended rents for twelve months. However, he failed to cancel all debts, which was one of the most pressing demands of his supporters. One of the reasons for this was that Caesar himself was owed huge sums of money by many people who he had ‘helped’ (and turned into clients) by lending them money in the past.

It was now time to call in these debts, or at least to remind the debtors of where their loyalties lay. To Caesar, cancelling debts would be like cutting off an arm – or probably some other, even more painful, extremity. None of his measures came close to touching the property of the slave owners. As Grant remarks:

Creditors, of course, complained bitterly. But some of them were prepared to admit that they had expected even worse. At least Caesar had not proved the totally revolutionary destroyer of private property that he had been widely feared to be. Indeed, it was reassuring for property owners to note that, even if the senior senators were against him on political grounds, the able financiers were mostly on his side. So confidence began to come back, and men started to lend money once again.^[2]

Caesar balanced between the classes, now appealing to the poor against the rich, now leaning on the rich to suppress the poor. But all the time he was concentrating power into his own hands. Caesar kept up the appearance of maintaining the Republic, and the Senate thanked him for it by licking his boots.

When he had first entered Rome after crossing the Rubicon, the Senate granted Caesar dictatorial powers but only for eleven days – just enough time to rig the consular elections. Later it made him dictator for four months, one year, ten years and finally for life. His triumphant return from Egypt gave this august body an excellent opportunity to display its utter servility before the military jackboot. It heaped honours upon him. It even voted to erect in the heart of Rome a statue of Caesar on a chariot with a globe in his hand and an inscription designating him a demi-god.

A rebellion in Spain led by Pompey’s sons was quickly put down and when the news of Caesar’s victory reached Rome the Senate once again lost no time in grovelling before their new master. They bestowed upon Caesar the title of ‘Liberator’, replete with unconscious irony, and even consecrated a temple to Liberty in his honour.

Later he was granted unprecedented honours: sacrifices on his birthday (something reserved for kings in Greek mythology), annual prayers for his health and well-being, and so the list goes on and on. And while the Senate heaped honours and praises on Caesar, with every passing day he was strengthening his power and forging new chains for the Republic.

The Caesarist party now had its boot placed firmly on the neck of the Senate and the people of Rome. It was also the war party. Partly, this was to add to Caesar’s greatness. But war had a more immediate and practical aim – it was the only way to fill the state’s coffers.

The economic crisis in Rome was unprecedented. After years of revolutions, upheavals and civil war, the treasury was bankrupt. Yet Caesar distributed land to his veterans and ordered the construction of lavish public works, of libraries, canals, even a harbour. To pay for all this, there had to be new wars every year, like the war Caesar planned against Parthia.

Pursuing his internal revolution, Caesar increased the number of senators from 600 to 900 to reward his own party and undermine the old aristocracy. But far from increasing the Senate’s weight and power, this was merely another way of expressing its irrelevance.

All the real decisions were now taken by Caesar and his entourage. From his point of view, it made sense to pack the talking-shop of the Senate with loyal supporters and thus weaken still further the specific gravity of the old aristocratic party.

Ronald Syme writes on the composition of Caesar’s party and the character of those adherents with whom he stuffed the Senate:

Many of Caesar’s partisans were frank adventurers, avid for gain and advancement, some for revolution. […]

Caesar’s following was heterogeneous in composition – at its kernel a small group of men paramount in social distinction, not merely nobiles but patrician; on the outer fringe, many excellent Roman knights, ‘the flower of Italy’.^[3]

These ‘excellent knights’ were a collection of bankers, speculators and tax-farmers, who provided a reliable support for the Caesarist party. The huge increase in the numbers of senators was therefore not just a means of diluting the senatorial power and increasing that of Caesar: it was also very good for business.

Naturally, those promoted to senatorial rank – many of whom were provincials from Gaul and Spain with no connection with the old senatorial aristocracy – would not only be grateful to their benefactor but would also be anxious to express their gratitude by paying important sums of money into his coffers.

And if he arranged, as he did, that the senators should be the men he wanted, he also found ways to mould the leading offices of state to his own pattern. Under his direction as dictator, the annual elections to the consulships and other offices still continued. But he secured the passage of a law allowing him to ‘recommend’ quite openly to a large proportion of the more important posts – and indeed to fix who their holders should be, for a number of years ahead. In the old days the consuls had been rulers of the state. Now, they were convenient henchmen for Caesar: and their posts were appropriate ones to hand to loyal supporters as a recompense for their services.^[4]

The assassination of Caesar

Caesar announced a reform of the calendar with 365 days – the basis of our modern calendar. Behind this was a definite idea. The old calendar was in a mess, and he wished to introduce order out of chaos at all levels. The dictator decided even what day of the week it was! Naturally, one of the months was named after him (July).

He had himself declared dictator for life, although it was supposed to be a temporary office. He appeared in a purple toga, this being the colour traditionally associated with royalty. Finally, he consorted with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, though still married to Calpurnia, his third wife. In other words, he was behaving like an oriental despot.

Inevitably, the question was raised of making Caesar king. It is likely that these rumours were spread by his enemies as a provocation. The title of king was hated in Rome ever since the distant days when the Tarquins were expelled from the city.

Caesar, who in practice enjoyed almost all of the attributes of a monarch, understood very well the risks entailed in accepting such a title. On one occasion, his faithful supporter and friend Mark Antony publicly offered him a golden crown, which he made a great show of rejecting, hurling it away from his person with great force.

It is obvious that the whole thing was a prearranged show designed to prove to the people that he had no ambitions to wear a crown. And why should he? A man who holds real power in his hands is not interested in possessing the outward signs and insignia of power.

On the contrary, Caesar was quite content that an impotent Senate should carry such meaningless insignia, as long as it was he, and not they, who actually ruled. Caesar did not overthrow the Republic, but only the empty shadow of a thing that already lacked all real substance. Hegel understood the situation very well:

His position was indeed hostile to the republic, but, properly speaking, only to its shadow; for all that remained of that republic was entirely powerless. Pompey, and all those who were on the side of the senate, exalted their dignitas auctoritas – their individual rule – as the power of the republic; and the mediocrity which needed protection took refuge under this title. Caesar put an end to the empty formalism of this title, made himself master, and held together the Roman world by force, in opposition to isolated factions.^[5]

The diehard republicans could only curse under their breath as they witnessed the inexorable decline of the senatorial power. Conservative republicans like Cicero had to be content with whispering in corners or writing sarcastic letters like the following:

Caesar who had taken the auspices as for a comitia tributa, held a comitia centuriata, and between twelve and one o’clock announced the election of a consul to hold office till 1 January, which was the next day. Thus I may inform you that no one breakfasted in the consulship of Caninius. However, no mischief was done while he was consul, for he was of such astonishing vigilance that throughout his consulship he never had a wink of sleep.

You think this a joke, for you are not here. If you had been you would not have refrained from tears. There is a great deal else that I might tell you; for there are countless transactions of the same kind.^[6]

In this way, Rome and all its world-wide sovereignty became the property of a single man. The extreme republican wing of the aristocratic party was implacable in its opposition to Caesar, whose connections with Cleopatra and the kings and despots of the East made his intentions even more suspect.

The aristocrats stifled their indignation when Caesar sent a Gaul into the Senate but could do nothing about it except complain furtively for fear of Caesar’s spies, who were everywhere. The enemies of Caesar were now on the defensive.

While the majority of the old senatorial aristocracy acted in a cowardly fashion in surrendering power to a man they hated and despised as much as they feared, the extreme republican faction, feeling the last vestiges of power slipping inexorably from their hands, resorted to desperate measures: they decided to get rid of Caesar.

A decisive step was taken in February 44 BC, when the Senate finally voted to make Caesar dictator for life. This was the final act of self-abasement of this miserable and spineless group of men. But for some it was the last straw.

A conspiracy was organised by a small group of senators headed by Brutus and Cassius, who hit on a plan childish in its simplicity: the problem was Caesar, and therefore his removal was the solution. Once Caesar was assassinated the republic would be restored and everything would be as it was before. Cicero, Brutus and Cassius imagined that Caesar’s rule was a mere accident, and the entire position of affairs to be dependent on his individuality.

The chief organiser of the conspiracy was Gaius Cassius Longinus, a man with great practical energy who had come over to Caesar’s side after the battle of Pharsalus, but who evidently thought he had not been sufficiently rewarded for his services. He won over his brother-in-law, Marcus Brutus, who had a special place in Caesar’s affections (some thought he was Caesar’s natural son).

Brutus is generally held to be a man of noble character (“This was the noblest Roman of them all”, wrote Shakespeare).^[7] But he defended the same class interests as the others – the interests of the old aristocratic, senatorial class.

The conspirators believed that if this one individual were out of the way, the republic would be ipso facto restored. Possessed by this delusion, they plotted the assassination of the individual who, in their mind, was responsible for all their ills. The outcome of all this is well known. On the Ides of March (15 March) 44 BC, only days before he was due to leave for a military campaign in the East, Caesar was murdered on his way to the Senate.

One of the great mysteries is why he had no real protection. He had even dismissed his personal bodyguard of Spaniards. Was this an excess of confidence? Or was it the result of his fatalistic Stoic philosophy, as Shakespeare implies:

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.^[8]

Whatever the reason, the conspirators had it easy. They surrounded Caesar, who, having been stabbed twenty-three times, finally covered his face in his cloak and collapsed in a pool of blood under the statue of Pompey, it was said. According to Suetonius, some said that when Brutus struck his blow, Caesar said: “You too, my son.”^[9]

The conspiracy succeeded in its immediate objective. But his murder could not save the Republic. It immediately became clear that the Roman state had been transformed, and it was impossible to put the clock back.

The conspirators imagined that by eliminating one man they could save the system. But the results of their actions were diametrically opposed to their intentions. Instead of restoring the Republic, they only succeeded in ushering in the Empire. The problem of this analysis is that its basic assumption was false. All attempts to revive a corpse that is already beginning to smell bad are doomed to failure.

The Republic was dead because the old economic and class relations that created it had disappeared long since. Caesar only gave it a shove and it collapsed. All that was left was an empty husk, which was blown away by the first puff of wind.

Even the tactics adopted by the conspirators revealed a fatal weakness. Individual terrorism is always an expression of weakness. The assassins believed that one bold stroke for ‘liberty’ would galvanise the old aristocratic party to fight in its own defence. But that party was already in ruins, split and demoralised. It was not even prepared to fight in its own defence. As Michael Grant says:

Curiously blinkered by their own traditions, the Roman nobility just did not realise that they could not simply pick up the threads where it had dropped them at the beginning of the Civil War. For the power was no longer theirs to recapture: it had passed for ever into the hands of the general who could marshal the most formidable armed forces.^[10]

Augustus

In the moment of truth Brutus and the other conspirators found themselves isolated and rapidly crushed. By their actions, far from saving the Republic, they accelerated its destruction.

The leader of the Caesarist party was at first Mark Antony, who took advantage of the outrage of the mob at Caesar’s murder to consolidate his position. In the confused and turbulent situation that followed, he was forced to manoeuvre and arrive at an uneasy compromise with Brutus and Cassius, who were allowed to leave Rome and establish a base in the East.

Antony was greedy for power and lost no opportunity to fill his pockets, as Syme points out:

Invective asserts, and history repeats, that the consul Antonius embezzled the sum of 700 million sesterces deposited in Rome at the Temple of Ops.^[11]

But Antony’s position was still insecure, and he had an important rival for the leadership of the Caesarist party: a clever, cold and calculating young man called Gaius Octavius (Octavian), who was Caesar’s great-nephew. Since Caesar had no children by Calpurnia, and they had adopted Octavian, he was also Caesar’s legal heir.

At first, they were on a direct collision course. Amidst rumours that Octavian was plotting his assassination, Antony left Rome with an army to take over the province of Cisalpine Gaul, which was governed by one of Caesar’s killers, Decimus Brutus. The Senate declared in favour of Brutus and appealed to Octavian, who had assembled his own private army, recruited from some of Caesar’s old veterans. With this army Octavian defeated Antony during the siege of Mutina (new Modena) in April 43 BC. But in November that year they patched up their differences and formed the Second Triumvirate together with the general, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.

They then went onto the offensive, defeating Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in October 42 BC. In September 40 BC, Octavian and Antony agreed to divide the provinces of the Republic into three spheres of influence. Octavian took control of Spain and Gaul, while Antony took over the East, and Lepidus was left with only the province of Africa (roughly present-day Tunisia, Northeastern Algeria and Western Libya). This pact was known as the Brundisium Agreement. It could not last.

Octavian, who had boundless ambition, started calling himself ‘Divi filius’ (‘son of the God’). This was a direct imitation of Caesar, who had been deified as Divus Iulius (‘Divine Julius’). Later he simply styled himself ‘Imperator Caesar’. Imperator, a military term for a victorious general, is the origin of our word Emperor.

The triumvirs immediately embarked on a ferocious campaign of proscriptions against anyone perceived as having sympathies for the assassins of Julius Caesar. The methods of the Caesarists are described by Ronald Syme:

The consequences of compelling a general to appeal to his army in defence of life or honour were now apparent – the generals themselves were helpless in the hands of the legions. The proletariat of Italy, long exploited and thwarted, seized what they regarded as their just portion. A social revolution was now carried out, in two stages, the first to provide money for the war, the second to reward the Caesarian legions after victory.

War and the threat of taxation or confiscation drives money underground. It must be lured out again. Capital could only be tempted by a good investment. The Caesarian leaders therefore seized houses and estates and put them on the market. Their own partisans, astute neutrals and freedmen of the commercial class got value for their money in the solid form of landed property. Freedmen, as usual, battened upon the blood of citizens.

The proscriptions may not unfairly be regarded as in purpose and essence a peculiar levy upon capital. As in Sulla’s proscription, nobiles and political adversaries might head the list: the bulk is made up by the names of obscure senators or Roman knights. The nobiles were not necessarily the wealthiest of the citizens: men of property, whatever their station, were the real enemies of the Triumvirs. In concord, senators and business men upheld the existing order and prevented a reconstitution of the old Roman People through a more equitable division of landed property in Italy; now they were companions in adversity. The beneficiaries of Sulla suffered at last. The Triumvirs declared a regular vendetta against the rich, whether dim, inactive senators or pacific knights, anxiously abstaining from Roman politics. That was no defence.^[12]

Octavian not only had the opportunity of robbing the state treasury. He also had behind him the richest men in Rome:

The diversion of public funds was not enough. Octavianus also won the support of private investors, among them some of the wealthiest bankers of Rome. Atticus, who refused to finance the war-chest of the Liberators, would not have looked at this venture. No matter: Caesar’s heir secured almost at once the financial secretaries and political agents of the Dictator.^[13]

Sooner or later Octavian was bound to come into a head-on collision with Mark Antony for possession of the immense wealth of Egypt and the East. First Octavian got rid of Lepidus, the weakest link in the Triumvirate, and sent him into exile.

Then he manoeuvred to turn public opinion in Rome against Mark Antony, using his relations with Queen Cleopatra to discredit him. He illegally obtained Antony’s will in July 32 BC, and exposed it to the Roman public. It promised substantial legacies to Antony’s children by Cleopatra, and instructed that his body should be shipped to Alexandria for burial. These shocking revelations caused outrage in Rome, and the ground was psychologically prepared for war.

At the naval battle of Actium in Greece (2 September 31 BC), Octavian’s forces decisively defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra, although by all accounts the battle itself was a bit of a farce, ending in Octavian’s fleet chasing the enemy back to Egypt, where Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. All power was now concentrated in the hands of one man – Octavian, who is known to history as Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome.

The natural result of Caesarism was the Empire, where all traces of the old republic vanished without trace. The hypocritical Augustus kept up the pretence of respect for the Senate and the republican forms, making a great show of handing back his triumviral powers to the Senate after his triumphal return from Egypt.

Instead of the title of ‘king’ or ‘dictator’, the absolute ruler of Rome humbly took the informal title of princeps civitatis, or ‘First Citizen’, but everybody knew that it was just pretence. Octavian retained the imperium, or command, of the bulk of the Roman legions throughout his life, and over time he was formally granted the powers of legislative initiative and veto by the servile Senate.

On 16 January 27 BC, he was ‘granted’ the title of Augustus, which would become an imperial title for centuries to come. The great Roman historian, Tacitus, summarised the new order founded by Augustus masterfully in the first book of his Annals:

When the killing of Brutus and Cassius had disarmed the Republic; when Pompey had been crushed in Sicily, and, with Lepidus thrown aside and Antony slain, even the Julian party was leaderless but for the Caesar; after laying down his triumviral title and proclaiming himself a simple consul content with tribunician authority to safeguard the commons, he first conciliated the army by gratuities, the populace by cheapened corn, the world by the amenities of peace, then step by step began to make his ascent and to unite in his own person the functions of the senate, the magistracy, and the legislature. Opposition there was none: the boldest spirits had succumbed on stricken fields or by proscription-lists; while the rest of the nobility found a cheerful acceptance of slavery the smoothest road to wealth and office, and, as they had thriven on revolution, stood now for the new order and safety in preference to the old order and adventure.^[14]

For over a century the Roman ruling class had desperately strived for order. At last, their wish was granted, by the common submission and plunder of all classes by the mailed fist of military despotism.

The state is transformed

The rise of autocratic rule had been prefigured in the latter period of the Republic. The intense class struggles of the period had already produced a series of strongmen including Marius and Sulla, and later Pompey and Caesar. An explanation for the transformation of the Roman state under Caesar and Augustus must therefore be sought beyond the subjective will of any ‘Great Man’, or the many battles that made up the various civil wars of the period.

Marx famously explained, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances already existing, given and transmitted from the past.”^[15] And the individuals whose actions make up the history of the downfall of the Republic lived in a society that had already been fundamentally and irrevocably changed.

The rise of slavery had destroyed the free Roman peasantry that had been the backbone of the Republic. In the absence of a free peasantry, the state was obliged to rely on a mercenary army to fight its wars. This was the soil upon which the phenomenon of Caesarism took root and flourished.

The formation of a mass lumpenproletariat in the cities introduced a powerful destabilising factor into Roman politics. The rival parties alternated in power, and took advantage of the opportunity to slaughter their opponents. The internal cohesion of the state was fatally undermined, as nobody recognized the authority of the other side, or the validity of its laws and statutes, as Hegel affirms:

The sovereignty was made dependent on the people – that people which was now a mere mob, and was obliged to be supported by corn from the Roman provinces. We should refer to Cicero to see how all affairs of state were decided in riotous fashion, and with arms in hand, by the wealth and power of the grandees on the one side, and by a troop of rabble on the other. The Roman citizens attach themselves to individuals who flatter them, and who then become prominent in factions, in order to make themselves masters of Rome.^[16]

Eventually, the class struggle at Rome reached a complete deadlock. The real cause of this situation was the inability of the poor plebeians to unite with the slaves in their struggle against the ruling oligarchy. In the last analysis, the Roman lumpenproletariat shared in the fruits of the exploitation of the slaves and the plunder of the provinces. This doomed the Roman revolution, which had begun with the Gracchi, to failure.

The contending classes fought each other to a standstill, but neither could prevail. Under such circumstances, the state itself becomes the master of society, imposing its absolute rule to prevent society from devouring itself in internecine conflicts. It is in this fact that we can find the real cause of the Republic’s downfall.

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels pointed out that the class struggle eventually ends either in the total victory of one of the classes, or else in the common ruin of the contending classes. The fate of Roman society is the clearest example of the latter case.

Wars, civil wars, slave uprisings and constant factional strife between different layers of the ruling class for possession of the state, led to a state of utter prostration and exhaustion of the contending classes. This fact was already understood by the idealist, Hegel, when he wrote:

We see the internal contradiction of Rome now beginning to manifest itself in another form; and the epoch which concludes the second period is also the second mediation of that contradiction. We observed that contradiction previously in the struggle of the patricians against the plebeians: now it assumes the form of private interest, contravening patriotic sentiment; and respect for the state no longer holds these opposites in the necessary equipoise. Rather, we observe now side by side with wars for conquest, plunder and glory, the fearful spectacle of civil discords in Rome, and intestine [civil] wars.^[17]

History knows many revolutions and it is customary to refer to the changes made by Caesar and his followers as ‘the Roman Revolution’. But in fact it was a revolution that affected only the political superstructure. It did not alter in any way the existing property relations in society. Rather, it saved them.

Caesar and his successors plundered the slave-owning oligarchs and stole their estates. But in the last analysis, they stood for the defence of the slave system and allied themselves with the wealthy oligarchs and bankers to save private property from ‘anarchy’ and the mob. In fact, it was only by abandoning the rule of the Senate and the Republic that the slave system, and with it the wealth of the slave owners, could be preserved.

The fruits of plunder

Under Augustus, the wealth of the rich flourished to a scale unheard of even in the most decadent years of the Republic. They lived lives of extravagant luxury, a world of palaces of marble imported from far distant lands, of Greek statues and fabulously beautiful mosaics. Augustus boasted that he had found Rome “built of brick and left it in marble”.^[18]

Deprived of political power, the Roman ruling class could enjoy all the more thoroughly the fruits of its economic power, dissipating the wealth of society in endless feasting. And what feasts! A dining room typically held three broad couches, each of which seated three individuals, thus allowing for a total of nine guests. But the feasts of the super-rich had many more guests to entertain. Their couches were not made of wood, but of costly materials, such as ivory and bronze.

Armies of slaves toiled in the kitchens to prepare the most extravagant dishes. The food and wine were naturally served by slaves in silver utensils. The Cena Trimalchionis (Trimalchio’s Dinner), written by Petronius Arbiter, provides a vivid account of wealthy Romans during the first century AD.

The character of Trimalchio was a freedman (an ex-slave) who had made his fortune speculating on the shipping trade: a typical example of the nouveaux riches of the period. His guests are treated with numerous dishes, including a roasted pig stuffed with sausages, a hare decorated with wings to resemble Pegasus, and various foods arranged in the shape of the twelve signs of the zodiac. But there was even more exotic fare, such as sow’s udders, stuffed snails, peacock tongues, fried dormice, stuffed larks’ tongues and so on and so forth. All was to be washed down with great quantities of wine poured by naked waiters.

In addition to the temples and statues of marble, the Roman elite also patronised the literary arts, always of course for their own glorification and that of the emperor. Ovid’s Metamorphoses concludes with the metamorphosis of Julius Caesar into a god, and thereby the metamorphosis of the Republic into the Empire. Another of Rome’s most famous poets, the freedman, Horace, was supported in his poetic career by Augustus’ right-hand man, Gaius Maecenas.

Virgil, the greatest of all Latin poets, was commissioned to write The Aeneid by none other than the emperor himself. The poet repaid his benefactor in verse, placing the following words in the mouth of Jupiter:

From this glorious source a Trojan Caesar will be born,

who will bound the empire with Ocean, his fame with the stars,

Augustus, a Julius, his name descended from the great Iulus.

You, no longer anxious, will receive him one day in heaven,

burdened with Eastern spoils: he’ll be called to in prayer.

By such means, the humble first citizen of Rome traced his heritage to the foundation of Rome itself, and placed his destiny in the heavens for the rest of eternity. Past, present and future, there was no escape from the Emperor.

But beneath its thick coating of marble and propaganda, the imperial state was nothing more than a vast machine for the holding down of millions of slaves and the extraction of plunder from the provinces. In time, it would devour Roman society itself.

Endnotes

[1] Grant, Caesar, pp. 121-4.

[2] Ibid., p. 124.

[3] Syme, The Roman Revolution, p. 51.

[4] Grant, Caesar, p. 185.

[5] Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 313.

[6] Cicero, Letters, Vol. 3, p. 358.

[7] Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 5, Scene 5, line 74.

[8] Ibid., Act 2, Scene 2, lines 34-9.

[9] Ziogas, ‘Famous Last Words: Caesar’s Prophecy on the Ides of March’, Antichthon, Vol. 50, pp. 134-153.

[10] Grant, Caesar, p. 198.

[11] Syme, The Roman Revolution, p. 131.

[12] Ibid., pp. 194-5.

[13] Ibid., p. 131.

[14] Tacitus, In Three Volumes, Vol. 2, Annals, Book 1, p. 245.

[15] Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, p. 2.

[16] Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, p. 311.

[17] Ibid., p. 307.

[18] Suetonius, The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, p. 70.