by Nancy Reagin
What is now described as the Roman Republic had emerged in the late sixth century BC, after the city of Rome threw out the kings who had ruled it before. By the first century BC, it was in name a democracy, in which every adult male citizen had the vote, and power derived ultimately from the people; hence the use of the phrase Senatus Populusque Romanus, known by its abbreviation SPQR, meaning that decisions were made in the Roman state by the People, with the Senate, the body composed of ex-magistrates, acting as the people’s leaders. In practice, however, the political mechanisms were biased toward the wealthy.
Marble statue of Augustus in military garb (the Prima Porta Augustus), a copy of a lost bronze original, first century BC.
The system was also becoming badly strained. The Roman state had acquired an overseas empire that stretched from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. The political structures that developed to rule a small city-state were not properly equipped for ruling a large empire. The empire had, moreover, brought in a great deal of wealth, which was being monopolized by the elite; this was causing serious social tensions and creating a dissatisfied urban poor, who could be exploited by ambitious politicians.
Furthermore, Roman culture associated political and military leadership, which meant that politicians generally needed to demonstrate their military prowess to achieve high office. This problem was compounded by reforms of the army that had been introduced in the early first century BC to address a problem that the Roman Republic had faced. Originally, men would be recruited into the Roman army only if they owned a certain amount of property. By the second century BC, this pool of citizen farmers from which the infantry had been drawn was diminishing. Rural families were increasingly driven off their farms (and into the cities) by the already rich, who replaced them with slave labor; as a result, there were not enough men from farming households to fill the army’s ranks. Abolishing the property requirement for service in the army and recruiting men who had no property addressed the military manpower shortage but left the rewards to be given to Roman troops (who at this point were not yet receiving regular payment) to the generals in command—effectively, this gave Roman generals their own private armies.
Octavius’s great-uncle Julius Caesar exploited this to become the most important man in Rome. In 49 BC, he invaded Italy with an army and was made dictator for a year.2 Caesar was able to get this motion through the Roman Senate because most of the members who opposed him had fled with Caesar’s main rival, Pompey. In late 48 BC, the Senate renewed Caesar’s dictatorship for a year, and in 46 BC, he was appointed dictator for the next decade. Caesar made himself perpetual dictator in 44 BC. Caesar had enough support in the Roman Senate to ensure that it supported these moves and enacted appropriate legislation; those who opposed Caesar had either fled or were too frightened to oppose him in any numbers. Assuming the powers of the Roman censorship, Caesar appointed new members to the Senate and increased their numbers to nine hundred men (from the three hundred the Senate had been before). All of these men would be Caesar’s partisans. Moreover, Caesar had acquired for himself the power to veto the Senate.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, La Mort de César (The Death of Caesar, 1867). This depicts the moment in 44 BC just after the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Portico of Pompey. Caesar’s corpse lies in the foreground, as his assassins go forth to proclaim their deed.
Caesar’s dictatorship was seen by some (with some reason) as being tantamount to reestablishing a monarchy in Rome. And so a group of conspirators brought about the assassination of Caesar on the Ides (15th) of March in 44 BC.
The eighteen-year-old Octavius, to the surprise of many, was named in Caesar’s will as his heir and became by adoption Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus. Modern scholars call him Octavian from this point on, and so shall I, though in fact he hardly ever used that part of his name, preferring to stick with Gaius Julius Caesar, for the associations it gave him with his great-uncle.
Portrait bust of Julius Caesar’s right-hand man and later Octavian’s rival, Mark Antony, first century BC.
Octavian moved quickly to secure his recognition as Caesar’s heir and establish himself as a major political force in the Roman state. He had to contend with Caesar’s right-hand man, Mark Antony, with whom he at first cooperated and then fought. By 31 BC, Octavian had eliminated Antony.
Octavian then set about reforming the Roman state in such a way as to leave himself in control but give the appearance of a restoration of the constitutional norms. In 27 BC, the Senate granted him the title “Augustus” (“the revered one”). It is by this title that we know him from this point on, and we call the Roman state after this point the Roman Empire, as opposed to the Roman Republic—though this distinct division was not recognized at the time.
“Sounds an Awful Lot Like a Dictatorship to Me”: Palpatine’s Subversion of the Galactic
Galactic empires in science fiction have been modeled on the Roman Empire since the “Foundation” stories of Isaac Asimov, first published in the 1940s. George Lucas follows in that tradition, and much of the political terminology of the Star Wars galaxy (e.g., “Republic,” “Empire,” and “Senate”) are also found in the Roman Empire and could be said to derive from that source.3 It is plain that the basic structure of Lucas’s history derives from the fall of the Roman Republic and the subsequent establishment of a monarchy.
The Senate of the Galactic Republic on Coruscant. Though it is much larger, it shares with the Roman Senate a central location from which the Senate is addressed, and the circular arrangement of the Senators reflects the semicircular arrangement in Maccari’s painting. (The Phantom Menace)
The Galactic Republic, as we see in The Phantom Menace, is democratic and governed by a Senate, just as Rome’s was. Senator Palpatine has a pseudo-Latin name that is reminiscent of those of later Roman emperors, such as Constantine, who ruled from 306 to 337. There are also echoes in his name of “Palatine,” the name of a hill that stands at the center of the Seven Hills of Rome and is the location of several ancient imperial Roman palaces. This is one of a number of pseudo-Latin names in the Star Wars universe; Valorum, the name of Palpatine’s predecessor as chancellor, is another. Beyond Coruscant, the architecture of Naboo resembles that of imperial Rome, and the victory parade at the end of The Phantom Menace is very like a Roman Triumph.
Senator Palpatine manipulates the Senate in the way at which Octavian proved most adept. He recognizes the problems faced by the Republic—in this case, corruption within the Senate and an excessively influential bureaucracy that hampers his making effective decisions in government—and Palpatine exploits them, as Octavian and his predecessors did. He gets himself made chancellor, as Octavian demanded that the Roman Senate make him consul, and before him, Caesar had himself made dictator. Palpatine then (in Attack of the Clones) further manipulates the Senate into granting him exceptional powers in order to face the emergency of the impending war with the Trade Federation. This may be compared to the appointment of Octavian, Mark Antony, and another of Caesar’s allies, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, as triumviri rei publicae constituendae (“triumvirs for the restoration of the Republic”), and the subsequent granting of special powers to Octavian. Palpatine promises (falsely) that he will give up those powers once the emergency has passed; similarly, Augustus claimed in his propaganda that he had given up his special powers (though, in practical terms, he retained real control).
The triumphal procession on Naboo. (The Phantom Menace)
As with the fall of the Roman Republic, it is important to remember that control of the Galactic Empire is highly dependent on the control of military force. Octavian became the dominant figure in Rome because he commanded the personal loyalty of Roman legions that had once been Julius Caesar’s. He subsequently maintained control by ensuring that the provinces where legions were to be stationed were (for the most part) under his command (as the ostensible representative of the Senate). Palpatine’s plot succeeds because he creates a private army of cl
ones over which he has direct control; this army enables him to murder the Jedi Knights, the only force capable of opposing him.
A religious element also provides a further connection between Palpatine and Augustus. Religion was extremely important to the Romans, if conceived of somewhat differently from how we understand it now.4 One of the ways in which Octavian secured his power was to acquire the post of chief priest, pontifex maximus (the title survives as “pontiff,” one of the official titles of the pope in Rome). In Star Wars, Palpatine is assisted in carrying out his coup by his position as Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, and the powers he gains from his knowledge of the dark side of the Force. Of course, Palpatine’s powers are of a different and more immediate nature, compared with the propaganda benefits that being pontifex maximus conferred on Augustus. Yet we should remember that several characters in A New Hope (including Admiral Motti, Han Solo, and Grand Moff Tarkin) describe the knowledge of the Force held by the Jedi and the Sith Lords as a “religion.”
There are, of course, a number of differences—Star Wars is far from being a slavish presentation of the history of Rome as a space fantasy story. Most clearly, Star Wars differs in the overt nature of Palpatine’s Imperial project, once it is brought out in the open. In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine stands in front of the Senate and proclaims the Galactic Empire: “In order to ensure the security and continuing stability the Republic will be reorganized into the first Galactic Empire! For a safe and secure society.”
The enthusiasm of the Galactic Senate for Palpatine’s proclamation of the Galactic Empire, which is greeted with loud applause, is paralleled by the Roman Senate’s enthusiasm for Julius Caesar. Lucas may well have had this in mind. Padmé Amidala and Bail Organa watch on, powerless, as the orator Marcus Tullius Cicero did in Rome.
Chancellor Palpatine proclaims the First Galactic Empire. (Revenge of the Sith)
By A New Hope, Palpatine has even gone as far as dissolving the Senate, leaving fear of the Imperial forces (especially of the Death Star) to keep the provinces in line. In a similar way, it can be argued that the presence of Roman legions throughout the provinces of the empire was as much about keeping the conquered territories under control as it was about defending the empire from foreign powers.
Augustus never went as far as dissolving the Roman Senate. Augustus kept the Senate going as a body, and in theory, it retained executive power, with Augustus merely its representative. Augustus is referred to by modern historians as an emperor, but the title he took for himself was princeps, “first man.”5 Subsequent Roman emperors maintained the pretense, though it rapidly became obvious that the actual scope for independent action by the Roman Senate was minimal.
Rather than proclaim a new form of state, Augustus went out of his way to give the impression that he had “restored” the old form, and that things had returned to how they were. That sort of rhetoric only occasionally appears in Star Wars. One instance is the moment in Revenge of the Sith where Palpatine congratulates his new acolyte Darth Vader on restoring peace and justice to the Galaxy, after Vader has murdered the Separatist leaders.
The Senate of the Galactic Republic is in many ways different from the Roman Senate. To start with, it is larger—there are 1,024 delegates to the Galactic Senate, whereas the Roman Senate had (for most of its existence in the Republic) only 300 members. Nor was the Republican Roman Senate geographically representative—it consisted of magistrates and ex-magistrates who belonged to the leading Roman families, drawn from the city of Rome itself and gradually from those areas and families in Italy that had been granted Roman citizenship. Only well after the empire was established were senators admitted who came from outside Italy. In the Galactic Senate, in contrast, each Senator represents a planet, a group of systems, or, in some cases, economic organizations (e.g., the Trade Federation). In this, it more closely resembles the U.S. Senate.
The causes of the wars that wrack Lucas’s Republic in the last years of its existence are also dissimilar to those that affected the Roman Republic. In Rome, the civil wars of the last century BC were primarily struggles between individuals vying for supreme power within the Roman state. There were some ideological elements to the struggle, as people fought to preserve the authority of the Senate or for the rich or for the poor, but much of this was cover for personal ambition.6 The internecine dimension to the fall of the Galactic Republic emerges into the open only in Revenge of the Sith, when the last of the Jedi fight for the Republic against the new Empire (though Palpatine has them painted as traitors to the Republic).
The wars that are seen in The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and most of Revenge of the Sith are different. We first see fighting between bodies that are represented within the Republic but have their own armed forces (Naboo and the Trade Federation). In possessing their own militaries, these planets are unlike the actual provinces over which Rome ruled directly and more like Rome’s so-called client kingdoms: states that maintained an appearance of independence, though they had to follow Rome’s lead (and were considered by the Romans to be as much a part of the empire they ruled as the provinces were). In Attack of the Clones, this has developed into Separatist insurrections within the Republic. These do have similarities to the Social War of 91–88 BC, in which many of Rome’s Italian allies seceded because Rome was unwilling to share more widely the privileges of Roman citizenship. Yet the Social War was over long before Octavian made his bid for power, and the Social War was not secretly being manipulated by any of the Roman leaders whose careers profited from their actions in it. There is in Lucas’s history a Galactic Civil War, but that term is applied to the later conflict between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance and is a reaction to Palpatine’s coup, not a precursor to it.
Palpatine is unlike Augustus in a number of respects. For one thing, he is a lot older. Octavian was eighteen when he began his political career, and although he lived to be seventy-six, he was already sole master of the Roman world by the time he was thirty-two. Palpatine is in his fifties when he first becomes chancellor and in his sixties when he assumes Imperial control (actor Ian McDiarmid was fifty-four on the release of The Phantom Menace and sixty when Revenge of the Sith was released).7
Palpatine is also much less favorably treated in the stories Lucas tells of him than Augustus is often treated in historical accounts. Palpatine is obviously the main villain of the Star Wars series, appearing in all but one of the movies and mentioned in the one (A New Hope) in which he is not seen. Palpatine is evil, and his actions cannot be seen as having any justification beyond his personal lust for power. He is also ruthless, quite willing to sacrifice his ally Count Dooku in order to draw Anakin Skywalker further toward the dark side.
Augustus was also ruthless when he needed to be. He ordered the execution of seventeen-year-old Caesarion, the child of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. Cleopatra had been Mark Antony’s ally and lover, but her younger children were allowed to live. Caesarion died because he was allegedly Julius Caesar’s biological son and so a threat to Augustus’s claim to be Caesar’s rightful heir.
Anakin Skywalker, having just executed Count Dooku at the encouragement of Chancellor Palpatine. (Revenge of the Sith)
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra, 41 BC (1885). This depicts the first encounter of Antony (the seated man in a helmet) and the Egyptian queen.
The orator Cicero had been Octavian’s supporter in the latter’s early career, promoting him against Mark Antony, whom Cicero hated, but when Octavian needed to make an alliance with Mark Antony, he was quite happy to allow Cicero’s name to be added to the list of those to be proscribed, in other words, listed as public enemies who could be killed with impunity. Palpatine takes similar actions against his opponents: he declares the Jedi enemies of the Republic.
Cicero’s head was hacked off by a centurion who caught up with him a short time after the proscription. Supposedly, Augustus regretted that in later life, but he still did it and continued
to show little mercy to those who crossed him. He also undoubtedly suspended the normal organs of the democratic state and presided over a military dictatorship. Yet he is often seen as a great man, who did what needed to be done in order to save what could be saved of the Roman state. He is the classic benevolent dictator, a strong leader of the type that Anakin Skywalker advocates to Senator Padmé Amidala in Attack of the Clones. As Cicero did with Julius Caesar, she rejects the idea as antithetical to the ideals of a republic.
The final way in which Palpatine differs from Augustus is, of course, that the Roman was successful. He established a system of rule for the Roman Empire that, despite many crises, lasted for centuries. It even survived the loss of its western territories and the original capital city; the line of Augustus’s successors can be said, with some justification, to stretch to Constantine XI Palaeologus, of Byzantium, who died defending his people against the Turkish storming of Constantinople in 1453. Palpatine’s Empire, in contrast, lasts for only twenty-three years before the forces of the Rebel Alliance destroy it.
A Tale of Two Emperors: Palpatine and Napoleon
The English literature scholar Anne Lancashire has observed that the references to the Senate and the Republic in The Phantom Menace conjure up Roman history and emphasize the idea of the cyclical nature of history.8 The notion of repeating cycles of history, in which the Star Wars narrative is grounded, perhaps reflects the influence of Joseph Campbell and Campbell’s ideas of the cyclical nature of myth. Yet references to the Senate, the Republic, and the Empire do not exclusively conjure up Rome.