SOURCE: de Blois, Lukas. “The Perception of Expansion in the Works of Sallust.” Latomus 47, no. 3 (1988): 603-19.

[In the following essay, de Blois examines Sallust's works to see how he perceived the effects of Roman expansion, noting his moralizing approach, his view of social reality, and his ideas about the process of history.]

Res … quae ab exiguis profecta initiis eo creuerit ut iam magnitudine laboret sua …

(Livy I, Praef. 4).

Modern scholars regard Roman expansion in the last two centuries of the republic (c. 220-30 B.C.) as one of the main causes of the civil wars in the first century B.C.¹. By 300 B.C., if we may believe Starr and Finley, Rome was no longer a simple agrarian state, and from that time onwards a spectacular growth set in². The Roman territory expanded, the urbs Roma became a large city with a mixed population, the number of the Roman citizens increased abruptly as a result of the enfranchisement of freedmen, Latins who had the ius migrationis and—after 88 B.C.—Italians, and the geographical frontiers within which the military, political and administrative acts of the Roman authorities took place, widened. Public institutions were, however, only partly adjusted to the altered circumstances, which enabled the ruling élite to extend its patronage to the provinces and gave soldiers, tax-farmers and usurers free play for all kinds of private enterprise. Between 88 and 30 B.C. the traditional rulers of the Roman state, the members of the leading families of nobiles, no longer had events completely under control. Nor were they able to settle conflicts between powerful generals, who had armies and provinces behind them, partly because these conflicts became mingled with political and social contrasts in Rome and Italy³.

In this article I should like to examine the works of one author from the period of the Roman civil wars, Sallust, in order to investigate how he perceived the consequences of Roman expansion⁴. Sallust has been chosen because he played an active part in politics and gave thought to the causes of the Roman civil wars of his age in a historical perspective.

Sallust was acquainted with the growth of the Roman territory, which he regarded as a continuous process from the beginning of the republican era to its culmination in his own time. In Historiae I, 11, he wrote that Roman domination reached its furthest point in 50 B.C., when all of the Gauls, as far as the river Rhine and the Ocean, had been subjugated⁵. In his view this process, which had already begun in the days of the kings, accelerated when Roman military skill and public virtue came into full swing in the freedom of the republic, after the last king had been deposed⁶.

To Sallust, the conquered territories were not yet an integral part of a Roman cosmopolis. The provinces and client states were still dominated foreign country from which money and glory could be obtained. It is significant in this respect that Sallust sometimes referred to the conquered territories as a collection of entities under Roman hegemony: reges … nationes … populi. This he did in his Coniuratio Catilinae 10, 1 and in Historiae IV, 69.5. We sometimes find something similar in Cicero, for example in De Officiis II, 26⁷.

Sallust was also acquainted with the growth of the city of Rome into a large metropolis with a mixed population. He did not altogether approve of it. In Cat. 37, 4-5, he wrote: Sed urbana plebes, ea uero praeceps erat de multis causis. Primum omnium qui ubique probro atque petulantia maxume praestabant, item alii per dedecora patrimoniis amissis, postremo omnes quos flagitium aut facinus domo expulerat, ii Roman sicut in sentinam confluxerant.

Sallust was also aware of the fact that the Roman campaigns and Roman politics were taking place inside ever-increasing geographical frontiers. In his Coniuratio Catilinae Sallust showed that the Catilinarian conspiracy had ramifications in Rome, Etruria, North Africa, Spain and Gallia Narbonensis⁸. In his Bellum Iugurthinum we see that he realized how much decision-making in Rome could be influenced by events and pressure groups outside Italy, as in the case of Marius's election campaign in 108. In B.J. 65, 4, he wrote: Itaque et illum (i.e. Gauda, a Numidian princeling) et equites Romanos, milites et negotiatores, alios ipse, plerosque pacis spes impellit uti Romam ad suos necessarios aspere in Metellum de bello scribant, Marium imperatorem poscant.

Marius acted in that year as a lieutenant to Metellus in a protracted war against the Numidian king Jugurtha⁹. In his Historiae Sallust described wars which were waged in areas as far removed as Spain and Cilicia. The ‘international’ contacts of Sertorius, Lepidus and Mithridates, the way in which the struggle against these and other enemies was interwoven with existing conflicts in Rome and Italy, and the importance of the military commands lasting for more than one year, which were conferred upon Marcus Antonius, the father of the triumuir, Lucullus and Pompey, did not escape his notice either¹⁰.

Sallust associated Roman expansion and the unthreatened dominating position of Rome in the Mediterranean world which ensued from it with the material prosperity, the changing, more selfish political behavior and the altered way of life of the Roman governing élite, with the lack of political discipline among the commons, and with the dissensions which arose between people and nobles, but he did so in a moralizing manner, combining over-simplified general explanations with more perceptive individual observations. He sharply criticized the ever-increasing power and wealth of a small group of nobles who shamelessly enriched themselves in the provinces and client states, lived in great luxury and used their money and influence to monopolize the best and most lucrative offices for themselves and their favourites, while they hindered poorer members of their class from obtaining honourable posts. According to Sallust they turned money into the decisive argument in politics instead of valour and dedication to the state, and they inspired their followers and other Romans with ambitio, auaritia, desidia and luxuria¹¹. Sallust had Catiline say, in Cat. 20, 6-9, to some of his adherents, in a speech which he put in his mouth:

Ceterum mihi in dies magis animus accenditur, cum considero quae condicio uitae futurae sit, nisi nosmet ipsi uindicamus in libertatem. Nam postquam res publica in paucorum potentium ius atque dicionem concessit, semper illis reges, tetrarchae, uectigales esse, populi, nationes stipendia pendere; ceteri omnes, strenui boni, nobiles atque ignobiles, uolgus fuimus sine gratia, sine auctoritate, eis obnoxii, quibus, si res publica ualeret, formidini essemus. Itaque omnis gratia, potentia, honos, diuitiae apud illos sunt aut ubi illi uolunt; nobis reliquere pericula, repulsas, iudicia, egestatem.

And in B.J. [Bellum Jugurthinum] 41, 4-7, we read:

Ita quod in aduorsis rebus optauerant otium postquam adepti sunt, asperius acerbiusque fuit. Namque coepere nobilitas dignitatem, populus libertatem in lubidinem uortere, sibi quisque ducere, trahere, rapere. Ita omnia in duas partis abstracta sunt, res publica, quae media erat, dilacerata. Ceterum nobilitas factione magis pollebat, plebis uis soluta atque dispersa in multitudine minus poterat. Paucorum arbitrio belli domique agitabatur, penes eosdem aerarium, prouinciae, magistratus, gloriae, triumphique erant; populus militia atque inopia urgebatur, praedas bellicas imperatores cum paucis diripiebant.

Sallust believed that the growth of Roman power and wealth went hand in hand with moral decline and that both processes culminated in his own time. In Cat. [Bellum Catilinae] 36, 4, he wrote that at no other time the condition of imperial Rome had seemed more pitiable to him. The whole world, from the rising of the sun to its setting, subdued by her arms, rendered obedience to her; at home there was peace and an abundance of wealth, which mortal men deem the chiefest of blessings. Yet there were citizens who from sheer perversity were bent upon their own ruin and that of their country¹². In Cat. 53, 2-5, the author argued in a beautiful paradox that the Romans used to be a match for greater adversaries because of their superior uirtus, but that in his own time, in which luxury and idleness had corrupted the citizens, they were able to survive the errors of generals and other magistrates thanks only to their number¹³. In Historiae I, 11-12, we find similar statements, although here Sallust is more pessimistic about earlier Roman generations.

Sallust's perception of the process of Roman expansion and its consequences was concrete and qualitative in character. He recorded directly observable aspects of the process and approached its social consequences as a form of moral decay without commenting that the shifts in wealth and power may have been caused by purely quantitative changes, which led to a differentiation according to property, occupation and political influence within the Roman élite and to great social problems in Roman society as a whole¹⁴. In the first century B.C. the expansion of Roman territory led to difficult, lingering conflicts, far away from Italy, which compelled the senate to appoint competent generals to commands lasting for over a year and to invest them with ample authority in large areas¹⁵. If the Roman nobles who were appointed to these commands were successful and treated their soldiers sensibly, they could commit their armies to themselves and win a great deal of support among the members of the native élite in the districts in which they sojourned and among merchants, usurers and veterans, who had immigrated from Italy. They acted as protectors and spokesmen of these clientelae, who were to them an important source of income in the form of ‘gifts’ and interest¹⁶. The growing number of new provinces and vassal states made it easier for the small group which had real power in Rome and could offer protection to win these clientelae and increased the number of negotiatores, procuratores, adventurers and native nobles looking for effective protectors in Rome, but made it more difficult for the senate to exercise proper control.

Owing to this continuous growth a critical limit was exceeded. Cicero clearly realized what effect the expansion of the Roman territory had on the power of the small group of leaders in Rome. From Cilicia, where has was proconsul in 51 B.C., he described how much money powerful men like Pompey and Marcus Brutus were drawing from usurious practices in Asia Minor and Cyprus. In 50 B.C. he wrote to Atticus that Caesar was politically in the wrong, but that he had nevertheless managed to unite eleven legions behind him. The oligarchs in Rome were too late with their action against Caesar; they had allowed him to become too powerful in Gaul¹⁷.

In Sallust's time the powerful who had enriched themselves in the areas dominated by Rome were equalled in wealth only by a few nobiles from old families who were in receipt of various inheritances and who married into prosperous families, like L. Domitius Ahenobarbus and P. Metellus Scipio, and by those like M. Licinius Crassus, the later triumuir, Sulla's freedman Chrysogonus and M. Aemilius Lepidus, the consul of 78 B.C., who had become fabulously rich by buying land and other goods at advantageous prices during Sulla's proscriptions. According to Heichelheim, fortunes came into being in the first century B.C. which were comparable in size to those of Hellenistic sovereigns. Jaczynowska and Shatzman give a ‘prosopography’ of these fortunes. Until 60 B.C. the three largest were probably those of Sulla, Crassus and Pompey. After that year Caesar joined the group. On Crassus' wealth we read in Pliny the Elder (N.H. 33, 134): … Marcus Crassus negabat locupletem esse, nisi qui reditu annuo legionem tueri posset. In agris HS MM possedit. Quiritium post Sullam diuitissimus …

This was probably not entirely correct: Pompey may have been even richer. Other wealthy men were at that time Lucullus, L. Domitius Ahenobarbus, M. Aemilius Lepidus—the consul of 78 B.C.—and a few equites, women and freedmen¹⁸. Some of the very wealthy were hardly or not at all active in public service. Cicero mockingly called them ‘piscinarii’, because they were more interested in the fish ponds on their estates than in the welfare of the state¹⁹. The few very wealthy potentes who had soldiers, large fortunes and ‘foreign clientelae’ at their back, i.e. Pompey, Crassus, Caesar (at least after about 56) and a few optimates, towered far above the rest of the Roman élite in possessions and political influence. In the Roman provinces in Asia Minor Greek cities had a keen eye for it; they transferred their homages and cult-offerings from the ‘Roman benefactors’ collectively to individual governors and to the powerful who really dominated their areas. The senate was seldom mentioned in their decrees of cult and honour. The governing élites of those Greek cities had acted likewise before, when another Hellenistic dynasty or prince had taken over and they had had to adjust themselves, demonstrating new loyalties by the institution of a new cult²⁰.

The potentes could afford expensive election campaigns for themselves and their favourites, could achieve popularity with the lower populace in Rome and with their own soldiers by means of gifts and could place poorer senators in their debt by means of donations and loans. Less wealthy senators without special means of power tried to compete with the powerful and their favourites in the election-contests, ran into debts and saw their careers blocked. Sallust noticed these consequences of the altered balance of power within the élite. In a few of the speeches he puts into the mouths of his dramatis personae, he hints that many lower senators had the impression that the powerful were thwarting them in their attempts to build up an honourable career by setting up mock trials against them and by bribing voters. These parui senatores felt curtailed in their freedom and saw with envious eyes how noui homines from the circles surrounding the potentes were making headway and were penetrating into the senate and the lower offices of the cursus honorum; a few of them even became consuls. Catiline found quite a few supporters among those frustrated senators²¹.

Within the Roman élite patronal relations were formed, more so than in former days. Parui senatores and equites who wanted to make a career rallied round the powerful and were given money and support in return. Crassus managed to consolidate his position in the senate in this way and Caesar obliged indebted senators to him by giving them a share in his spoils from Gaul²². In various respects these relations were forerunners of the Imperial Age. Parui senatores and equites not only had to keep on good terms with the powerful, on whom they had become more or less dependent, but also with their favourites, agents, women and freedmen, who had been dragged along by the rising power of their patrons and who so to speak shared their actual power, even though they remained relatively low in the esteem of the traditional Roman and Italian élite. There were only differences of degree between Chrysogonus, Balbus, Fulvia and Sempronia on the one hand and the women and freedmen in the direct vicinity of emperors like Claudius and Nero on the other²³.

The continuing growth of the res Romana also resulted in a form of professional differentiation, slightly so within the ruling élite, but rather more in the social layer beneath. From Roman literature from the time of Sallust, particularly from Cicero's letters, we get the impression that many Roman nobles were actively involved in military undertakings in their youth and that during their careers the members of the oligarchy became acquainted with all kinds of administrative work in a more or less fixed order of offices. Nevertheless there was more specialization than before. After about 100 B.C. Roman society had become enlarged and more comprehensive and, partly under Greek influence, cultural life had, particularly in Rome itself, become more varied. These processes had made room for legal experts and orators in the social layer beneath the élite proper. Among the senators juridical experts had existed from the days of the early republic; the most famous were nobles themselves. Men like those still existed in Cicero's times, but according to this author (De Officiis II, 65) the status of the profession was stained by the emergence of jurists from lower origins²⁴. Likewise homines militares like the Scipios, Flamininus and Aemilius Paullus had existed before within the élite proper. They hardly differred from their first century counterparts, like Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, and Marcus Licinius Crassus, but the latter had to compete for the great commands with men who were more one-sidedly military specialists, like Marius, Sertorius, Licinius Murena and Gabinius, some of whom were new men or senators of the second generation²⁵.

Lower down the social ladder were experienced, all but professional officers like Afranius, Petreius, Manlius and Labienus, centurios who spent half their lives in the armies, and soldiers who kept enlisting in the successive wars²⁶. The continuing expansion of the Roman empire, converging with civil wars, created this possibility. From the time of Marius onwards the Roman armies knew all kinds of tactics and forms of armament. Units had been added to the armies from the dominated areas and the soldiers had to fight in all kinds of landscapes and against enemies using different battle techniques²⁷. This called for all-round experienced officers, both at the top and in the middle cadre. Commanders who had only acquired a little military experience in their youth were really no longer capable of leading difficult campaigns in distant regions and had to rely on subordinates, with the exception of natural talents like Sulla and Caesar. In B.J. 85, Sallust had Marius mock nobiles, who let others do the real military work on campaigns while they quickly tried to learn something from Greek military manuals and descriptions of battles in the works of Roman historians. Sallust is undoubtedly taking things a bit far here. In his commentary on the Bellum Iugurthinum, G. M. Paul remarks: “Some memory of Marius' consular speech may have been preserved in oral tradition …, but the speech in ch. 85, like that of Memmius in ch. 31, is Sallust's own composition …”²⁸. Nevertheless it is a valuable indication, because it shows that similar reproaches did exist in Sallust's time and were understood by the reading public. It is interesting that Sallust, who himself descended from the social layer of local nobles from the Italian cities outside Rome, puts these invectives into the mouth of Marius, a homo nouus from the élite of the coloniae and municipia in Italy, which until well into the Imperial Age yielded knights and senators with a militarily tinged career²⁹.

Although according to Polybius VI, 19.4, no one could hold office in Rome before he had completed ten annual military campaigns, in the higher circles in Rome the enthusiasm for actually fighting probably already started to dwindle in the middle of the second century B.C. Earl points out that from that time onwards there were problems in finding recruits among the youthful members of the ruling élite and that in the period 152-133, there were complaints about their cowardice and incompetence from the seat of war on the Iberian peninsula³⁰. In a passage dealing with the command in the Roman army in the second and first century B.C., Nicolet remarks: “Cicéron marque à plusieurs reprises le manque de ‘vocations militaires’ chez la plupart des chefs politiques de son temps, et la prosopographie permet de distinguer au contraire les quelques-uns (Afranius, Petreius, Licinius Murena. Labienus …) qui, dans le cadre d'un cursus traditionnel, commencent à se distinguer par des services militaires à coup sûr volontairement prolongés”³¹. This development was probably partly caused by a certain differentiation in the education of the youth of the Roman élite. Some specialized in law as part of their education, others applied themselves to rhetoric and yet others tried to qualify for military work as contubernales of experienced commanders. To Cicero this differentiation was already an established fact. Christes comments on this: “Es ist zweifellos nicht altrömisch gedacht wenn wir Cicero die ‘Berufe’ des Feldherrn, des Staatsmann, des Redners und des Juristen gegeneinander abwägen sehen. Zu Ciceros Zeit haben die immer vielfältiger und komplizierter gewordenen Aufgaben der Regierung und Verwaltung eines immer grösseren Herrschaftsbereiches mit den Mitteln eines Gemeindestaates zu zunehmenden Schwerpunktbildung auf die eine oder andere dieser Tätigkeiten im Leben des Einzelnen geführt”³².

All this sheds new light on the criticism Sallust levelled at the nobiles. They assumed big fortunes and monopolized the consulate, while they did not really deserve it, because they were to be found in the front ranks of fighting armies much less often than their forefathers. This kind of reproach constituted an attack on the traditional system of authority. Finley has recently pointed out that in Greek and Roman societies obedience to the leaders of the community depended on, among other things, their visible presence in military undertakings³³.

Sallust described in a moralizing way the directly perceptible consequences of the pluriform process of differentiation caused by the expansion of the res Romana. He saw the increased differences in wealth within the élite, which he interpreted as a result of the auaritia of the powerful³⁴. He also saw the altered balance of power in the élite which he explained as a result of the craving power of the potentes, who turned the Roman republic into a plutocracy and hindered poorer, deserving fellow members of their class in their attempts to obtain honourable offices. He was aware of the importance of the homines militares within the ruling élite and the social layer beneath and he had an eye for the collective interests of Sulla's veterans, even after 79³⁵. He also knew the criticism that was levelled at magistrates with insufficient military experience who were incapable of successfully coping with difficult wars and he sensed that the followers, women and freedmen who lived in the direct vicinity of the powerful, played an important part in politics in Rome³⁶. But Sallust linked those perceptive individual observations to over-simplified general explanations. He did not explicitly bring the continuing expansion of the res Romana into his explanation of the events and he left the structure of the state out of consideration. To him, as to almost all his contemporaries, the public institutions were still an established fact³⁷. Are we to attribute this way of perceiving the consequences of Roman expansion to Sallust's lack of interest in social and economic problems or may he even have been somewhat naive in these areas? Various modern scholars seem to opt for this solution. Earl writes: “To explain the fall of the Roman Republic, historians invoke a variety of causes, political, social and economic. Sallust saw only the working of ambitio and auaritia”. Syme remarks: “He (i.e. Sallust) interpreted a process of economic change and political adjustment in terms of morals, and he fell an easy prey to conventional notions about old Roman virtue”³⁸. These views do not do justice to what Sallust achieved within the intellectual horizon of his age. Sallust was keenly aware of the financial effects of debt on all classes of society and of the distress suffered by the victims of the civil wars. He correctly regarded the veterans of the new semi-professional armies as separate social groups, he understood the interests of Roman and Italian merchants and financiers and in his Historiae he gave a clear description of the slaves' revolt under Spartacus³⁹. What is more, he keenly portrayed the consequences of the pluriform process of differentiation outlined above.

We should rather search for the cause of Sallust's perception of the consequences of Roman expansion in three converging factors. The first is the strong moralistic tradition in Roman historiography. According to Skard, whose analysis I find quite convincing, in his moralizing approach Sallust was probably following Cato Maior and the annalists and not Thucydides, his most important Greek example⁴⁰. In the beginning of his work, Thucydides related the size of the war he was describing to the growth of the means of power of the belligerents and regarded the increased maritime traffic as one of the main causes of that growth⁴¹. In his Archaeologia (Cat. 6-13) on the other hand, Sallust demonstrated a completely different approach: the flourishing and the decline of uirtus were all-important. In Cat. 6-7 the author ascribed the successes achieved by the Roman republic in the first centuries of her existence to the uirtus of the leaders and the citizens, which, after the period of the kings, was able to develop at liberty, unhampered by tyrannical suspicion towards the very best. In this approach, notably in Cat. 36.4 and 53.2-5 (see p. 608) Sallust may also have borrowed something from the third book of Plato's Laws, in which an increase in the size and material welfare of a society is also attended by moral decline⁴².

The second factor is the lack of a quantifying abstract approach to social reality. Only since the days of David Hume and Adam Smith has this approach been part of the study of social relations and it did not penetrate into historiography until well into the nineteenth century. Finley has recently commented that the impact of abstract economic analysis of social relations was not detectable in studies on slavery in antiquity until the end of the nineteenth century, i.e. the age of Bücher, Ciccotti and Eduard Meyer⁴³.

The third factor is a certain ambiguity in Sallust's perception of the historical processes which governed his age. Observation of historical events and social phenomena may lead to empirically based generalisations inductively arrived at, but it may also get bogged down in describing disconnected matters with a connective explanation not formed empirically. When discussing certain aspects of social reality, an author may make general, traditional statements which are not empirically founded and of which certain parts contradict incidental observations he includes in his account of facts and events. Something similar is the case with Sallust. When he speaks of the civil wars of his age in a general sense, he tends to take the tradition regarding the conflict of the orders between the patricians and plebeians as a starting-point and he names plebs and principes as the contending parties. This he does for example in the speeches he puts into the mouths of Memmius (B.J. 31, 17) and Licinius Macer (H. III, 48)⁴⁴. When, on the other hand, he is discussing concrete events, he shows that he has an eye for the group character of Sulla's veterans, the different kinds of Romans and Italians in North Africa and their interests, and the heterogeneity in the Roman town dwellers and the ruling élite⁴⁵. Things are no different in the second letter to Caesar. In his suggestions for reforms, the author of the letter implicitly takes the old-fashioned peasant army as a starting point, whereas in B.J. 84-87, 1 and Cat. 11, 1-4, Sallust had clearly pointed out what had changed in the recruitment and the mentality of a large part of the armies since the days of Marius and Sulla⁴⁶. In this respect the second letter to Caesar shows greater affinity with catchwords and issues of earlier populares than with the present situation in Sallust's times. We do find this ambiguity not only in the works of Sallust. Cicero's letters reveal a keen insight into the interests and peculiarities of groups and individuals in Roman society, but in his De republica examples from Roman history and Greek notions have merged into a fairly abstract construction, which is not empirically compared with facts from Cicero's own time. Cicero's De legibus, however, is more down to earth, offering practical solutions to existing administrative problems, although the ‘laws’ in book III have been written in the archaic form of the Twelve Tables⁴⁷. In Appian's Bella ciuilia I, 1-6, the struggle of the orders in the early republican period and the civil wars of the first century B.C. are portrayed as one continuum, with the escalation in misconduct as a difference between the two. In his account of the concrete facts, however, Appian described a more complex and large scale society than that of the age of the struggle of the orders and, like Cicero, he showed that he had an eye for the increased heterogeneity in the various layers of the Roman population⁴⁸. Plutarch, Appian's contemporary, did not see any difference between politics in a world-state or a city-state⁴⁹. Of the important literary sources on the history of the civil wars only Cassius Dio directly and explicitly connected the form of government to the scale of the Roman empire. He claimed in 44, 2, 4 that for a polis which is already so big itself, i.e. Rome, and rules over the most beautiful and the best part of the world and over all kinds of peoples and nations of such diverse natures, it is impossible to have a steady and harmonious life under a republican government. He thought a monarchy would in that case be more practical and more successful.

The ambiguity outlined above is sometimes also apparent in practical politics. Caesar's murderers undoubtedly knew that the Roman urban populace was rather different from its counterpart in the early republic and that as a whole it no longer clung as strongly to the traditional form of government and the old ruling families as before. Like Cicero (Att. 130 [=7, 7], 5), they could have known that the farmers and the people from the financial sector desired otium, if necessary under an autocracy⁵⁰. Nevertheless, after the murder of Caesar they marched through Rome bearing the old symbols of liberty and vainly appealing to the old stories about the end of the tyranny of Tarquinius Superbus and the beginning of the republic⁵¹.

Both in practical politics and literature of the age of the civil wars over-simplified general explanations co-existed with more perceptive individual observations. The perception of Roman expansion and its consequences in the works of Sallust offers a fine example of this duplicity.

Notes

1. See, for example, H. Gesche, Rom. Welteroberer und Weltorganisator (Munich. 1981), p. 149, and M. I. Finley, Politics in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1983), p. 17 ff.

2. See C. G. Starr, The Beginnings of Imperial Rome in the Mid-Republic (Ann Arbor. 1980); M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth, 1983²). p. 83 ff.; cf. C. Nicolet, Rome et la conquête du monde méditerranéen, I. Les structures (Paris, 1979²), p. 74 ff.

3. See H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero (London, 1973³), p. 1-158; E. Badian, The Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic (Ithaca, 1971²), p. 44 ff. and 76 ff.; K. Crist, Krise und Untergang der römischen Republik (Darmstadt, 1979), p. 182-405; W. M. Beard and M. H. Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (London, 1985), p. 69 ff. and 72 ff.

4. By Sallust's works the following are understood: the Coniuratio Catilinae (Cat.), the Bellum Iugurthinum (B.J.) and the Historiae (H.). The authenticity of other works to Sallust's name that have come down to us, is not certain. The Epistulae ad Caesarem are used now and then, because they contain ideas and views from the circles of the populares, with which Sallust must have been familiar, and because they were probably written by Sallust's time, ep. 1 in 46 B.C. and ep. 2 in 51/50 B.C. See C. Becker, Sallust in ANRW [Auslieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt] 1.3 (Berlin-New York, 1973), p. 742 ff., and G. A. Lehmann, Politische Reformvorschläge in der Krise der späten römischen Republik. Cicero De Legibus III und Sallusts Sendschreiben an Caesar (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980), p. 55 ff.

5. H. I, 11: Res Romana plurimum imperio ualuit Seruio Sulpicio et Marco Marcello consulibus omni Gallia cis Rhenum atque inter mare nostrum et Oceanum, nisi qua paludibus inuia fuit, perdomita. See Cat. 7-10. The letters to Caesar, which were probably not written by Sallust himself, but which do contain ideas and views current in the circles, in which Sallust moved, also speak enthusiastically of Caesar's achievements in Transalpine Gaul, see Ep. ad Caes. 2, 4.3 (… per te populi Romani imperium maximum ex magno fieri) and 2, 12.5 (… Gallica gente subacta populi Romani summum atque inuictum imperium). K. Büchner, Sallust (Heidelberg, 1960), p. 89, therefore takes the author of the letters for an ‘imperialist’.

6. See Sallust, Cat. 7, 1-5; cf. Cat. 9, 1: Igitur domi militiaeque boni mores colebantur, concordia maxuma, minuma auaritia erat, ius bonumque apud eos non legibus magis quam natura ualebat. In H. IV, 69.5, in a passage put into the mouth of Mithridates, Sallust was more pessimistic about the motives of earlier Roman generations: Namque Romanis cum nationibus, populis, regibus cunctis una et uetus causa bellandi est, cupido profunda imperi et diuitiarum. Here he saw less difference between the Romans of his own times and those of earlier periods, as he generally did in his Historiae (cf. H. I, 1-18).

7. See n. 6 above, and Cicero, De Officiis II, 26: … regum, populorum, nationum portus erat et refugium senatus.

8. See Cat. 21, 3; 26-27; 40-41. In Cat. 16, 5, Sallust told that Catiline thought to have a good opportunity at hand in 63 B.C. because the senate and the magistrates did not have an (experienced) army at hand: In Italia nullus exercitus. Cn. Pompeius in extremis terris bellum gerebat …

9. See B.J. 63-73.

10. See H. I, 93-103; 127-134; II-III passim, especially II, 98; III, 2-4; 16-42; 88; IV passim; V, 17 ff. See R. Syme, Sallust (Berkeley-London, 1964), p. 188 ff.

11. See Cat. 10-13; 16; 36, 4 - 39, 3; cf. H. I, 1-18; Epp. ad Caes. 1-2 passim. See V. Pöschl, Grundwerte römischer Staatsgesinnung in den Geschichtswerken des Sallust (Berlin, 1940), p. 12-58; Büchner, op. cit., p. 117 ff. and 320; D. C. Earl, The Political Thought of Sallust (Cambridge, 1961), p. 11 ff., 18 ff., 28 ff., 41-59 and 111 ff.; J. Christes. Bildung und Gesellschaft (Darmstadt, 1975), p. 190-196; G. M. Paul, Sallust in T. A. Dorey, Latin Historians (London, 1966), p. 93; E. Lefevre, Argumentation und Struktur der moralischen Geschichtsschreibung der Römer am Beispiel von Sallusts Bellum Iugurthinum in Gymnasium 86 (1979), p. 274 ff.; D. F. Conley, The Stages of Rome's Decline in Sallust's Historical Theory in Hermes 109 (1981), p. 379-382. Sallust was not alone in his opinions. After 200 B.C. members of the Roman ruling circles were quite concerned at luxuria as a symptom of moral decline. This anxiety expressed itself in a series of leges sumptuariae. See Earl, op. cit., p. 43 ff., and D. Daube, Roman Law (Edinburgh, 1969), p. 117-128 (on the leges sumptuariae). The debt problem was probably one of their concerns too. Heavy spending in competitive conspicuous consumption brought many families who did not ‘earn’ enough abroad, to ruin. B. D. Shaw, Debt in Sallust in Latomus 34 (1975), p. 188-196, has demonstrated that debt as an extension of luxuria was one of the critical factors dominating the post-Sullan period, in reality and in Sallust's interpretation of the events, but the problem might have existed also in the second century B.C. Sallust illustrated his message with a number of characterizations of important persons, in which he was probably influenced by the Roman tradition of pedagogical exempla and imagines; see H. Drexler, Die moralische Geschichtsauffassung der Römer (Darmstadt, 1980²), p. 259 ff. [=Gymnasium 61 (1954), p. 170 ff.]. According to Syme, op. cit., p. 214 ff., Sallust wanted to warn his contemporaries in the first period of the second triumvirate by reminding them of similar events in the recent past.

12. Cat. 36, 4: Ea tempestate mihi imperium populi Romani multo maxume miserabile uisum est, quoi quom ad occasum ab ortu solis omnia domita armis parerent, domi otium atque diuitiae, quae prima mortales putant, adfluerent, fuere tamen ciues, qui seque remque publicam obstinatis animis perditum irent.

13. Cat. 53, 2-5: Sed mihi multa legenti multa audienti quae populus Romanus domi militiaeque, mari atque terra, praeclara facinora fecit, forte lubuit attendere quae res maxume tanta negotia sustinuisset. Sciebam saepe numero parua manu cum magnis legionibus hostium contendisse; cognoueram paruis copiis bella gesta cum opulentis regibus, ad hoc saepe fortunae uiolentiam tolerauisse; facundia Graecos, gloria belli Gallos ante Romanos fuisse. Ac mihi multa agitanti constabat paucorum ciuium egregiam uirtutem cuncta patrauisse eoque factum uti diuitias paupertas, multitudinem paucitas superaret. Sed postquam luxu atque desidia ciuitas corrupta est, rursus res publica magnitudine sua imperatorum atque magistratuum uitia sustentabat ac, sicuti effeta parentum ui, multis tempestatibus haud sane quisquam Romae uirtute magnus fuit. Certainly Sallust had perceived the growth in numbers of the Roman citizenry!

14. See P.A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (London, 1978²), p. 1-19; K. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978), p. 1-115; L. de Blois, De Romeinse Revolutie in Lampas 11 (1978), p. 109 ff.; Gesche, op. cit., p. 110 ff. and 125 ff. On the process of differentiation see Hopkins, Conquerors, p. 74 ff.; Beard and Crawford, op. cit., p. 60-71.

15. See H. III, 2-4 (M. Antonius); 16-42; V, 17 ff. (Pompey); Plutarch, Lucullus 5 ff.; Pomp. 25 (in which he portrayed Pompey's position in 67 as: … οὐ ναυαρχίαν, ἄντιχρυs δὲ μοναρχίαν. See R. T. Ridley, The Extraordinary Commands of the Late Republic in Historia 30 (1981), p. 296 f.; H. Kloft, Prorogation und ausserordentliche Imperien 326-81 v. Chr. Untersuchungen der Verfassung der römischen Republik (Meisenneim am Glan, 1977), p. 91 ff. We see a parallel development in the cura annonae after 58 B.C. in Rome; see G. Rickman, The Corn-Supply of Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 1980), p. 52 ff.; this task also became too heavy to be handled by one of the regular magistrates, as just another duty among their other obligations.

16. E. Badian invented the term ‘foreign clientelae’. See his Foreign clientelae (Oxford, 1958), p. 1-14 and 285 ff.; cf. his Imperialism, p. 44 ff. and 76 ff. See Sallust, B.J. 26; 64-65, 4, and Paul, op. cit., p. 86 ff. and 173 ff.; Cicero, Ad Atticum 116 (=6, 2) [ed. D. R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero's Letters to Atticus, III (Cambridge, 1968)].

17. Ad Att. 115 (=6, 1); 116 (=6, 2); 128 (=7, 5); 130 (=7, 7). On the expansion of trade and the interests of the merchants which spread further and further across the Mediterranean area see J. Rougé, Recherches sur l'organisation du commerce maritime en Méditerranée sous l'empire romain (Paris, 1966), p. 421 ff.; F. R. Cowell, Cicero and the Roman Republic (1973), p. 94 ff. and 114 ff.; K. Hopkins, Taxes and Trade in JRS [Journal of Roman Studies] 70 (1980), p. 101 ff. Overseas trade also became more and more important for food supplies in Rome. See Rickman, op. cit., p. 1-25 and 120 ff.; Cowell, op. cit., p. 490. On the activities of the publicani see E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners, Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 1972); C. Nicolet, Économie, société et institutions au II^esiècle av. J.-C.: de la lex Claudia à l'ager exceptus in AESC [Annales: Economics, Societies, Civilisations] 1980, p. 871 ff.

18. See F. M. Heichelheim, An Ancient Economic History, III (Leiden, 1973), p. 125 f.; M. Jaczynowska, The Economic Differentiation of the Roman Nobility at the End of the Republic in Historia 11 (1962), p. 487-495; I. Shatzman, Senatorial Wealth and Roman Politics (Brussels, 1975), p. 18-46, 99-109, 116 ff. (Crassus), 149 (Lepidus) and 239-439. Cf. R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1974), p. 343 f. See Plutarch, Crassus 2, 2 ff., and Sallust, H. I, 55.18 (Lepidus), on the activities of Crassus and Lepidus during Sulla's proscriptions.

19. Ad Att. 19 (=1, 19), 6; 21 (=2, 1), 7.

20. See S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power. The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1986), p. 42 f. and 29 ff.

21. See Cat. 20, 6-9, quoted above, p. 607; 31, 7 f.; 33, 1 ff.; 39, 1; B.J. 31, 12 ff. See Z. Yavetz, The Failure of Catiline's Conspiracy in Historia 12 (1963), p. 497 ff. On the curtailment of the libertas of the lower senators by the pauci see Earl, op. cit., p. 55 ff. and 114. See on the iudicia with which the powerful thwarted their competitors E. S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley, 1974), p. 260 ff., and P. Macgushin, C. Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae. A Commentary (Leiden, 1977), p. 210. Noui homines and parui senatores did hold lower offices, and sometimes the praetorship, but only seldom penetrated into the consulate; see T. P. Wiseman, New Man in the Roman Senate (Oxford, 1971), p. 95 ff., 143 ff. and 209 ff. (prosopography); P. A. Brunt, Nobilitas and Novitas in JRS 72 (1982), p. 1-17; P. J. J. Vanderbroeck, Homo novus again in Chiron 16 (1986), p. 239-242. This was still the case under Caesar, see H. Bruhns, Caesar und die römische Oberschicht (Göttingen, 1978), p. 138-166.

22. See Appian, B(ella) C(iuilia) II, 17 (Caesar's generosity during his stay in Luca). See Shatzman, op. cit., p. 116 ff. (Crassus), 122 ff. (Caesar) and 143 ff.; Syme, op. cit., p. 19-21. Cf. Sallust, Cat. 20, 8 (… aut ubi illi uolunt); see p. 607.

23. G. Alföldy, Römische Sozialgeschichte (Wiesbaden, 1984³), p. 76, correctly comments: “… die eigentliche Stärke der Diktatur Sullas beruhte neben der Treue seiner 120.000 Veteranen auf der Loyalität der 10.000 Cornelii, die seine Freigelassenen waren …”; cf. Appian, B.C. 1, 104. On Claudius' women and freedmen see: V. M. Scramuzza, The Emperor Claudius (Cambridge [Mass.], 1940), p. 80 ff. and 89 ff.; F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977), p. 74 ff.; R. P. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge, 1982), p. 63 ff. On Sempronia see Sallust, Cat. 25; see Büchner, op. cit., p. 134 ff.; Macgushin, op. cit., p. 163 and 302 f. On Fulvia see Cat. 23, 3 f.; 26, 3; 28, 2; cf. Shaw, op. cit., p. 195. On the position of the freedmen during the Late Republic see S. Treggiari, Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic (Oxford, 1969). Octavian's cohors amicorum after 44 B.C. offers an interesting comparison; see A. Alföldi, Oktavians Aufstieg zur Macht (Bonn, 1976), passim. Balbus was one of his followers; see Alföldi, op. cit., p. 31 ff.

24. Cicero probably meant to disparage jurists who did not come from the nobilitas but from families of parui senatores and equites. See W. Kunkel, Herkunft und soziale Stellung der römischen Juristen (Cologne-Vienna, 1967), p. 6-37, Prosopography of Roman jurists in the republican period, and 38-44; Christes, op. cit., p. 136 ff.; Hopkins, Conquerors, p. 80 ff. A parallel to the emergence of near-professional jurists from lower orders, i.e. the equites and the social layer beneath, is offered by the rise of bankers, some of whom came from Italian towns. See Heichelheim, op. cit., p. 122 ff.; J. Andreau, À propos de la vie financière a Pouzzoles: Cluvius et Vestorius in Les “Bourgeoisies” municipales aux II^eet I^ersiècles av. J.-C. (Paris-Naples, 1983), p. 18 f. The continuing growth of Rome and the Roman empire created more room for them too. Another parallel is offered by the rise of a few military men from lower orders into the senate; see Wiseman, op. cit., p. 209 ff. (Prosopography), nos. 9, 21, 41, 50, 81, 96, 98, 101, 105, 156, 182, 184, 206, 220, 248, 314, 394 and 474; cf. R. Syme. The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1966⁶), p. 90 f. (on Carrinas and Fango). Sallust, Cat. 37, 6 (… ex gregariis militibus … senatores) disparaged Sullan officers who had risen to membership of the senate, like Cicero did to jurists from lower orders in De officiis II, 65.

25. On the strongly military orientation in the careers of Roman aristocrats in general see W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327-70 B.C. (Oxford, 1979), p. 10-41; P. A. Brunt, Laus imperii in P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, Imperialism in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1978), p. 163. On the careers of some famous uiri militares among the nobles in the second century B.C. see for example A. E. Astin, Scipio Aemilianus (Oxford, 1967); H. H. Scullard, Roman Politics, 220-150 B.C. (Oxford, 1973²). On Sulla see A. Keaveney, Sulla. The Last Republican (London-Canberra, 1982). On L. Licinius Lucullus see Sallust, H. IV, passim; Plutarch, Lucullus 2 ff.; 5 ff.; J. Van Ooteghem, L. Licinius Lucullus (Namur, 1959). On M. Licinius Crassus see B. A. Marshall, Crassus. A Political Biography (Amsterdam, 1976); A. M. Ward, Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic (Columbia, 1977); E. S. Gruen, M. Licinius Crassus. A Review Article in AJAH 2 (1977), p. 117-128. Crassus was not the champion of the equites, or the publicani, and he was not a popularis either. He was an independently operating rich nobilis who fulfilled the usual amalgam of administrative and military tasks in his cursus honorum. On Marius see T. F. Carney, A Biography of C. Marius (Assen, 1961), p. 15 ff.; Paul, op. cit., p. 165-171 (ad B.J. 63); Wiseman, op. cit., p. 209 ff., no. 248; see Plutarch, Marius 2 ff. See on Sertorius: Sallust, H. I, 87-126; II, 28-35; 53-70; 88-98; III, 81-89; Plutarch, Sertorius 3 ff.; see A. Schulten, Sertorius (Leipzig, 1926); T. R. S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic, II (New York, 1952), p. 81. On Pompey see: Sallust, H. II, 15-22; II, 92-98; III, 88; V, 17 ff.; Plutarch, Pomp. 2 ff.; M. Gelzer, Pompeius (Munich, 1959); R. Seager, Pompey. A Political Biography (Oxford, 1979). On Licinius Murena see: Cicero, Pro Murena 20 and 89; R.E. [Real Encyclopaedie] 13.1 (1926), p. 446 ff., Licinius 123; Broughton, op. cit., p. 113 and 580 f.; Keaveney, op. cit., p. 84, 93, 95 and 115. On A. Gabinius see: E. M. Sanford, The Career of Aulus Gabinius in TAPA [Transactions of the American Philological Association] 70 (1939), p. 64-92; E. Badian, The Early Career of A. Gabinius in Philologus 103 (1959), p. 87-99.

26. On Afrianus see: Broughton, op. cit., p. 266 and 528; Wiseman, op. cit., p. 209 ff. (Prosopography), no. 9. On Petreius see: Broughton, op. cit., p. 600; Wiseman, op. cit., no. 314; K. Vretska, C. Sallustius Crispus. De Catilinae coniuratione, I-II (Heidelberg, 1976), p. 677; Macgushin, op. cit., p. 285. On Manlius Torquatus, one of the most important Catilinarian commanders in the battle at Pistoria, an ex-officer from Sulla's army, see Vretska, op. cit., p. 678; Macgushin, op. cit., p. 162. On T. Labienus see: R.E. 12.1 (1924), p. 260 ff., Labienus 6; Broughton, op. cit., p. 198, 268 and 578; Wiseman, op. cit., no. 220. Wiseman, op. cit., p. 209 ff., Prosopography, has offered more examples, see above n. 24. Many of those near-professional officers were Romans and Italians who had settled for the best career available to them, filling the posts of military tribunes, when the nobles and other senators began to prefer less than ten military campaigns in this function and to become legates instead, after only one or two turns as military tribune: see R. E. Smith, Service in the Post-Marian Army (Manchester, 1958), p. 58; S. Demougin, Notables municipaux et ordre équestre à l'époque des dernières guerres civiles in Bourgeoisies, p. 287 ff.; P. Castrén, Cambiamenti nel gruppo dei notabili municipali dell'Italia Centro-Meridionale nel corso del I secolo a.C., ibid., p. 93 f.; H. Aigner, Die Soldaten als Machtfaktor in der ausgehenden römischen Republik (Innsbruck, 1974), p. 141 ff. On the middle level officers in the Roman army see J. Harmand, L'armée et le soldat à Rome de 107 à 50 av.n.ère (Paris, 1967), p. 324-341 (centurions) and 342-408 (officers); C. Nicolet, L'ordre équestre, II (Paris, 1974), p. 847; Id., Le métier de citoyen dans la Rome républicaine (Paris, 1976), p. 184 ff.; Id., Conquête, I, p. 317 ff.; J. Suolahti, The Junior Officers of the Roman Army in the Republican Period (Helsinki, 1955), passim, esp. p. 142; E. S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley, 1974), p. 62 ff. (on Pompey's officers) and 116 ff. (on Caesar's officers, cf. Harmand, op. cit., p. 342 ff.); E. Gabba, Republican Rome. The Army and the Allies (Oxford, 1976), p. 35; B. Dobson, Die Primipilares (Bonn, 1978), p. 3-5; H. C. Boren, Rome, Republican Disintegration, Augustan Reintegration: Focus on the Army in Thought 55 (1980), p. 56 ff. On the recruitment of soldiers in that time see: Smith, op. cit., p. 46 ff.; Harmand, op. cit., p. 245 ff.; Nicolet, Conquête, p. 303 ff.; cf. Gabba, op. cit., p. 23 ff., and Hopkins, Conquerors, p. 75.

27. See Harmand, op. cit., p. 41-50 (auxilia), 55-98 (armament), 137-150 (reconnoitring) and 151-212 (logistics); Nicolet, Conquête, p. 312 ff.; L. Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army (London, 1984), p. 57 ff.

28. Paul, op. cit., p. 4, 97 ff. (ad B.J. 31) and 207 ff. (ad B.J. 85).

29. On Sallust's descent and career see: D. C. Earl, The Early Career of Sallust in Historia 15 (1966), p. 302-311; Syme, Sallust, p. 5 ff. and 29 ff.

30. See Earl, Political Thought, p. 44 ff. and 50 f.; Harris, op. cit., p. 36 ff.: cf. Sallust, B.J. 8, 1.

31. Conquête, p. 322.

32. Op. cit., p. 136; cf. p. 137 ff. and 150 ff.; cf. Cicero, De Officiis II, 65-66, on jurists (65) and orators (66).

33. See M. I. Finley, Authority and Legitimacy in the Classical City-State (Copenhagen, 1982), p. 2 and 19 ff.; cf. Id., Politics, p. 25 ff. Cf. Sallust, Cat. 7, quoted above.

34. Cat. 12-13; 20, 7 ff., quoted above, p. 607; 33, 1 ff.; B.J. 31, 12; 41, quoted above, p. 607; H. I, 11 ff.

35. See Cat. 11, 4 ff.; 16, 4; 37, 6 (on Sulla's soldiers and veterans); H. II, 15 ff. and 98 (on Pompey's position in Spain); III, 2 ff. (on M. Antonius' command against the pirates) and V, 17 ff. (on the Lex Gabinia and the events preceding its introduction).

36. See B.J. 28; 31, 2 ff.; 36-39; 43; 65, 4; 85, 11 ff.; 31 ff. (criticism on the military failures of the nobiles); cf. H. III, 48, 17 ff.; see Cat. 17, 4 (a few of the Catilinarii); 25 (Sempronia); 40, 6 (the messenger P. Umbrenus, according to Macgushin, op. cit., p. 214, a libertus who had worked his way up to be an important merchant in Gaul); 50, 1 ff. (liberti and clientes of Lentulus; duces multitudinum); 59, 3.

37. See Chr. Meier, Res publica amissa. Eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik (Wiesbaden, 1966), p. 201 ff.; cf. Earl, Political Thought, p. 11 ff. and 111 ff.; cf. Lehmann, op. cit., passim, esp. p. 73 ff. Reform proposals in Cicero's De legibus III and the Letters to Caesar did also take the existing institutions for granted and tried to accomodate these institutions to the new situation.

38. See Earl, op. cit., p. 59; cf. p. 120 ff.; see Syme, op. cit., p. 17.

39. See Cat. 16, 4 ff.; 17, 2; 20, 7 f.; 21, 3 f.; 33, 1 f.; see Shaw, op. cit., p. 188-196; see Macgushin, op. cit., p. 114 and 189 f. (on the debt problem); cf. Vretska, op. cit., p. 401 ff.; Yavetz, op. cit., p. 486 ff. See B.J. 65, 4, on the interference of equites with commercial interests and merchants from Northern Africa in the consular elections of 108 B.C.; see above, p. 606.

40. See E. Skard, Sallust und seine Vorgänger (Oslo, 1956), p. 92 ff.; cf. Earl, Political Thought, p. 44; Syme, Sallust, p. 168; E. Badian, The Early Historians in T. A. Dorey, Latin Historians (London, 1968²), p. 5 f. and 7 ff.

41. Thucydides I, 2-15.

42. Plato, Laws III, 676A-683E, particularly 678E-681D; cf. IV, 704A-707D, in which Plato's judgement of the maritime expansion is much less favourable than that of Thucydides, and 713A-E. It is possible that in Cat. 6, 2 Sallust is referring to a passage in Laws 676E-681D, in which Plato described how a few isolated families, who had survived a flood, united in a polis and had a legislator combine the various family traditions in a single legislation. This adjustment was not without difficulties. In Cat. 6, 1-2 Sallust wrote about the oldest Romans: Urbem Romam, sicuti ego accepi, condidere atque habuere initio Troiani, qui Aenea duce profugi sedibus incertis uagabantur, cumque eis Aborigenes, genus hominum agreste, sine legibus, sine imperio, liberum atque solutum. Hi postquam in una moenia conuenere, dispari genere, dissimili lingua, alius alio more uiuentes, incredibile memoratu est quam facile coaluerint ita breui multitudo dispersa atque uaga concordia ciuitas facta erat. Here the process of unification progressed smoothly.

43. See M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth, 1983²), p. 11-50, particularly p. 39-45.

44. See B.J. 31, 17: Maiores uostri parandi iuris et maiestatis constituendae gratia bis per secessionem armati Aventinum occupauere. Vos pro libertate, quam ab illis accepistis, nonne summa ope nitemini? Atque eo uehementius, quo maius dedecus est parta amittere quam omnino non parauisse (from a speech put into the mouth of Memmius, tribune of the plebs). See also B.J. 41, 5 f.; H. III, 48 (speech of Licinius Macer in 73 B.C.) and Ep. ad Caes. 2. 5, 1 (In duas partes ego ciuitatem diuisam arbitror, sicut a maioribus accepi, in patres et plebem …) and 5 (Ita paulatim populus … dilapsus est …).

45. See Cat. 16, 4; 37, 6; B.J. 84, 2; see B.J. 26, 1; 65, 4, quoted above, p. 606. See Cat. 17 ff.; 37, 4 ff. See Syme, op. cit., p. 166 ff. and 171; J. Blänsdorf, Populare Opposition und historische Deutung in der Rede des Volkstribunen Licinius Macer in Sallusts Historien in Der Altsprachliche Unterricht 21 (1978), p. 65.

46. Ep. ad Caes. 2, 5. In Ep. ad Caes. 2, 5, 7 f., the author proposed a colonisation of poor citizens, mixed up with new citizens: Hos ego censeo permixtos cum ueteribus nouos in coloniis constituas; ita et res militaris opulentior erit et plebs bonis negotiis impedita malum publicum facere desinet (par. 8). This sentence presupposed the old methods of recruitment, described by Polybius VI, 19 ff.

47. See J. Christes, Beobachtungen zur Verfassungsdiskussion in Ciceros Werk De republica in Historia 32 (1983), p. 461-483. See Cicero, De legibus III, 6-11.

48. See Appian, B.C. II, 120: “They (i.e. the murderers of Caesar) thought that the genuinely Roman people were still as they had learned that they were when the elder Brutus expelled the kings. They did not perceive that they were counting on two incompatible things, namely, that people could be lovers of liberty and bribe-takers at the same time. The latter class were much easier to find of the two, because the government had been corrupt for a long time. For the plebeians are now much mixed with foreign blood, freedmen have equal rights of citizenship with them, and slaves are dressed in the same fashion as their masters. … Moreover the distribution of corn to the poor, which takes place in Rome only, draws thither the lazy, the beggars, the vagrants of Italy. The multitude, too, of discharged soldiers who were no longer dispersed one by one to their native places as formerly … was at this time (March 44 B.C.) encamped in temples and sacred enclosures …” [translation into English by H. White, Appian's Roman History, III (London, 1972)].

49. See G. J. D. Aalders, Plutarch's Political Thought (Amsterdam, 1982), p. 27.

50. See Cicero, Ad Atticum 130 (=7, 7), 5: … an publicanos, qui numquam firmi sed nunc Caesari sunt amicissimi, an faeneratores, an agricolas, quibus optatissimum est otium? Nisi eos timere putas ne sub regno sint qui id numquam, dum modo otiosi essent, recusarunt. Cf. Appian, B.C. II, 20, on a similar longing for the rule of a strong man, i.e. Pompey, in Rome in the turbulent days of Clodius and Milo, about 52 B.C.

51. See Appian, B.C. II, 119 ff.; cf. the well-known denarius showing the cap of liberty, two daggers (symbolising the murder of the tyrant, i.e. Caesar), and the legendum EID. MART. (i.e. the Ides of March, the day Caesar was murdered), which was coined by Caesar's murderers, see V. Ehrenberg - A. H. M. Jones, Documents Illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius (Oxford, 1967⁴), p. 56, no. 4.