The Indo-European Roots of Roman Civilization:
The Military Ethos of the Roman Republic
Essentially, the Mediterranean city-states established by Indo-European (I-E) peoples were more settled versions of the basic I-E social organization based on Männerbünde. Forsythe describes “war bands” dedicated to raiding and fighting neighbors as common throughout the Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic world.[153] Leadership was based on military ability, and followers were sworn to fight to the death. In the early Roman Republic, aristocratic clans may well have been Männerbünde in the classic sense: the “current view,” of which Forsythe is skeptical because of weak documentation, is that the battle of Cremera in 478 bc (a major Roman defeat 30 years after the founding of the Republic at the hands of Veii, an Etruscan city) was essentially undertaken by an aristocratic clan (the Fabians, who held consulships during the period) prior to the complete takeover of military organization by the state.[154] In other words, during the earliest years of the Republic, these clans operated with some independence of the Roman state.
Presumably reflecting this Männerbünde organization, patron-client relationships were typical, with less wealthy people tied via reciprocal obligations to wealthy, powerful persons. This is likely a holdover from Indo-European culture in which warlords and their followers had mutual obligations. Forsythe notes that this mitigated social and economic disparities.[155] There were multiple levels, so a single person might be patron to poorer people and client to someone wealthier and more powerful than himself: “later Roman society was loosely bound together by a vast interlocking network of such relationships.”[156] Reflecting the non-despotic nature of Roman society (see below), patrons could be “accursed” for injustice against clients and hence killed or ostracized.
A hallmark of Indo-European culture is that military glory is prized above all else. Forsythe notes that around 311 bc, “Rome was a young and vigorous state headed by ambitious and energetic aristocrats, who were eager to utilize the state’s growing strength to enhance their own personal prestige and to further Rome’s influence and power.”[157]
Various data ... present the picture of a Roman aristocracy self-conscious of their power and that of the Roman state, ambitious for and reveling in military glory, and eager to advertise and catalogue their achievements for their contemporaries and posterity... . [Among aristocratic families, there was] a strong sense of family pride, tradition, and continuity.[158]
The Roman aristocracy was pervaded by a military ethos, according to which the greatest honor was won by victory in war, either by individual feats of valor or by commanding successful military operations. This ethos was not only maintained but even fueled by the competitive rivalry which characterized the Roman ruling elite... . Many of Rome’s Italian allies likewise possessed a well-established military tradition, so that the profitability of successful warfare (slaves and booty) bound the Roman elite, the Roman adult male population, and Rome’s allies together into a common interest in waging wars. The Roman state was therefore configured to pursue an aggressive foreign policy marked by calculated risk taking, opportunism, and military intervention. Consequently, during Republican times there were few years in which Roman curule magistrates were not leading armies and conducting military operations.[159]
It is a noteworthy comment on human self-deception that Rome developed moral rationales for many of their wars (as has been common throughout the history of the West into contemporary times).
Later Roman historians in describing the causes of various wars usually magnified, if not actually fabricated, the culpability of the enemy and suppressed or distorted any wrongdoing on the part of the Romans... . The Roman senate is seen to have been well-versed in foreign wars and quite capable of manipulating situations or of out-maneuvering enemy states so as to have a just cause for war to buttress an expansionist policy.[160]
A recent paper has argued that rationalization is an evolutionary adaptation for humans.[161] In the Roman case, such rationalization doubtless fueled ingroup pride.
Because of the prestige of a military career, aristocratic families tended to avoid the tribunate (which was composed of plebeians and dealt with intra-urban rather than military affairs), although lower-level aristocrats did become tribunes.
Forsythe also describes the fundamentally I-E social organization of the Gauls who occupied Rome in 390 bc. The Gauls were more loosely organized than the Romans or other Mediterranean city-states, but they also had a warrior elite dedicated to raiding:
Celtic marauding and overpopulation went hand in hand in enlarging the territorial extent of Celtic settlement and culture. Raids into new areas offered fresh opportunities for Celtic chieftains and their war bands to enrich themselves and to win prestige. At the same time, their plundering incursions often paved the way for more peaceful immigration and settlement; the Po Valley of northern Italy is perhaps the best example of this phenomenon.[162]
This intense commitment to a military ethic can be seen in Rome’s typical posture after defeat. When defeated by the Greek king Pyrrhus, rather than sue for peace, the Romans “respond[ed] with even greater effort to overcome the setback.”[163] When they eventually defeated Pyrrhus, Rome had arrived on the international scene, receiving an ambassador from Egypt.
The Roman Family
Larry Siedentop labels the dominant pre-Christian family structure of ancient Greece and Rome as Indo-European. It was a world in which “family was everything,” the paterfamilias acting not only as magistrate with power over all family members, but also as its high priest. In effect, the basic unit was a set of “small family Churches.”[164] Worship of male ancestors was fundamental, so that in a very real sense, each family had its own religion. Although based on blood ties among males, an adopted son could become part of a family by accepting the ancestors of his adoptive family as his own (labeled “fictive kinship” by anthropologists), while “a son who abandoned the family ceased altogether to be a relation, becoming unknown.”[165]
This was a patrilineal system, with women marrying into another family losing their original identity and adopting the ancestors of the husband. Importantly, the boundary of the family was also a moral boundary: “Initially at least, those outside the family circle were not deemed to share any attributes with those within. No common humanity was acknowledged, an attitude confirmed by the practice of enslavement.”[166] Affection and charity were compartmentalized—restricted within the boundaries of the family. This resulted in a combined familial sense of duty, affection and religious belief—pietas.
Property belonged not to the individual but to the family, with the eldest son possessing the land in trust for ancestors and descendants. Daughters could not inherit. Society was thus an association of families, not individuals. The fundamental chasm was between public and familial, not public and private.
While the family so construed formed the base of the social system, there were also wider groupings, the gens (extended family), clans (Greek: phratries; Latin, curiae), and tribes in ever wider circles of genetic distance. These extended groups consisted of families tied together not by genetic relatedness but by religious ideology, indicating that biological kinship was not of overriding importance: “These wider associations acquired their own priesthood, assembly, and rites.”[167] Cities developed when several of these larger groupings (tribes) came together and established a common worship. This did not erase the religious connotations of smaller-scale groups down to the family. “The city that emerged was thus a confederation of cults, an association superimposed on other associations, all modelled on the family and its worship.”[168] It was not an association of individuals.
The religiously based rules prescribed action in all spheres of life, leaving no room for individual conscience. Laws were seen as following from religion rather than the voluntary decision of legislators. This produced intense patriotism, as religion, family, and territory were intertwined. “Everything that was important
to him—his ancestors, his worship, his moral life, his pride and property—depended upon the survival and well-being of the city.”[169] Such attachment to civic gods was the main reason for the difficulty of combining cities in Greece. Exile was an extreme punishment because an exiled person had no legitimate identity.
As in other Indo-European aristocratic societies, the barrier between the ruling class and those they ruled over eventually became porous, and upward mobility was possible, albeit slowly. The aristocratic model of citizenship and the ethnic basis of aristocracy in Rome had decayed long before the Empire adopted Christianity (see Chapter 5).
There were also gradual changes toward ending primogeniture and reducing the power of the paterfamilias over extended branches of the family. Clients (little better than slaves originally) became free to own property.
Ideas of “natural hierarchy” and “natural inequality” are fundamentally aristocratic. Thus, Plato’s “just society” as depicted in The Republic was to be ruled by philosophers because they were truly rational, and he assumes there are natural differences in the capacity for rationality. This is the idea, expressed in the modern language of behavior genetics, that there are genetically based individual differences. Aristotle believed that some people were slaves “by nature,”[170] i.e., that the hierarchy between masters and slaves was natural. Reflecting themes common in Indo-European culture,[171] the ancients prized fame and glory (positive esteem from others) resulting from genuine virtue and military and political accomplishments, not indolence and love of luxury—but also not labor, because laborers were often slaves and the rightful booty of conquest.
Roman Public Religion
As noted above, an important aspect of religion involved “small family churches.” However, there was also a public religion that was “deeply embedded” in early Roman culture. Patricians were viewed as having “special religious knowledge.”[172] Data point to “an early nexus involving priesthoods, the senate, the patriciate, and religious authority.”[173] However, Rome gradually became more secular, so that the connections between patrician families and religion gradually became attenuated, and prominent plebeians were able to hold high religious office—an aspect of the general rise of plebeians to power and status in the Republic, and an example of the upward mobility possible in Indo-European-based cultures. The senate likely had a majority of priests before the second half of the fourth century bc, but after that “the increase in the number of magistracies is likely to have led to the secularization of the senate, as the prestige and importance of the priestly body of patres were eroded and there was an influx of senators with political and military backgrounds.”[174]
The Aristocratic, Non-despotic Government of
Rome
By all accounts, the early history of Rome prior to the Republic is shrouded in legend. Nevertheless, Forsythe notes that during the period when kings ruled, there was no indication of a hereditary principle.[175] Indeed, the Roman historian Livy wrote:
Kings once ruled the city. Nevertheless, it happened that they did not pass it on to members of their own house. Unrelated persons and some foreigners succeeded them, as Romulus was followed by Numa who came from the Sabines, a neighbor to be sure, but a foreigner at that time... . [Tarquinius Priscus] was prevented from holding public office in his own hometown due to his tainted blood because he was the offspring of Demaratus the Corinthian and a woman of Tarquinii, well-born but poor, so that she had to accept such a husband by necessity; but after he migrated to Rome, he obtained the kingship.[176]
It is particularly interesting that a man barred from advancement in his hometown because of “tainted blood” could succeed in becoming king at Rome. The case of Servius Tullius was similar: an Etruscan who became king after migrating to Rome, “to the greatest advantage of the state.”[177]
This is important because it indicates—consistent with other Indo-European cultures—that kings achieved their position on the basis of ability, probably as a result of election by their peers, and certainly not by heredity. As noted in this chapter, I-E society was a free-market system rather than a strongly kinship-based system: leaders of Männerbünde were able to recruit followers because of their ability to wage war successfully. Followers would be rewarded for their efforts, but would defect to other Männerbünde if they thought there were better opportunities elsewhere.
Roman kings were not generally despots, although there is some speculation that the last two kings behaved tyrannically;[178] if so, this experience may be why the Romans rejected kingship in favor of republican institutions. For the most part, the king was “first among equals”—the system labeled “aristocratic egalitarianism” by Ricardo Duchesne.[179] Kings were advised and likely elected by other aristocrats.
By the late sixth century bc, just prior to the Republic, Rome had a tripartite government—people, senate, and king. The people were divided into three geographically-based rather than kinship-based tribes, each with ten curiae that formed the basis for both military recruitment and voting, i.e., were the earliest political and military structure of the Roman state. In early Rome, aristocrats advised the king; after the kings, it became a body in its own right, the senate. The senate elected an interim king, or interrex, “until the people were summoned to a meeting of the comitia curiata [a military assembly; see below] at which time a candidate proposed by the presiding interrex received the affirmative vote of the people (lex curiata) and the endorsement of the senate (patrum auctoritas).”[180]
The two consuls established by the Republic as the most important political positions essentially inherited the military and judicial powers of the king, while the rex sacrorum inherited the king’s religious duties. Consuls had the power to raise troops and command them in war. Consuls were partners, not despots, and the actions of one could be blocked by the other. “Disagreement resulted in inaction.”[181] However, in times of crisis a dictator could be appointed by one of the consuls in response to a decree of the senate, and probably ratified by the comitia centuriata. Unlike the consuls who had a one-year term, dictators only had a six-month term.
With the establishment of the Republic, Rome came to be dominated by an aristocracy. An important component of this ruling aristocracy was a group of old and prominent families, the patricians. For a time, the patricians attempted to make themselves into a closed caste and monopolize the consulate entirely. A law against marriage between patricians and plebeians was enacted in 449 bc, but overturned just five years later; it was widely seen as tyrannical by later Romans.[182]
Another aspect of the aristocratic government of the Republic is that the highest offices (consuls and praetors) were elected by the comitia centuriata, a military convocation divided into centuries on the basis of wealth. Censors were responsible for assessing each head of household’s property and assigned him to a century. The wealthiest centuries voted first, and elections were usually decided before the poorer centuries could vote. The comitia centuriata had power to pass laws, declare war, ratify treaties, and served as a high court in capital cases.[183]
Nevertheless, the plebeians had some political representation. Tribunes of the plebs were the most important office after the consuls. Their duties were confined to running the city—“legislative and judicial business before the assembled people.”[184] “In later Roman political thought the plebeian tribunes were regarded as public watchdogs and the protectors of citizens’ rights.”[185] Most laws were enacted by these tribunes, but this was “usually pursuant to a decree of the senate.”[186] In the later Republic, beginning with the time of the Gracchi (131–121 bc), there was greater conflict, with “seditious tribunes promoting popular issues in opposition to the senate.”[187]
However, for much of the period of the Republic, there was genuine separation of powers. Forsythe attaches particular importance to the political settlements of 367 and 338 bc which launched Rome on to spectacular success. “Political power was distributed among the magistrates, the senate, a
nd the assembly of citizens so as to form the mixed constitution which Polybius praised so highly.”[188]
Another historian, Andrew Lintott, summarizes the separation of powers at Rome as follows:
At Rome it appears that the senate is the focus of politics. It is here that not only issues of foreign policy are debated but also matters like the quarrel between the praetor and the pontifex maximus. The senate is an accepted sounding board between the authority of the members of the executive, who would also for the most part be members of it.
However, it would be wrong to think of it as a unique or supreme authority. Indeed, it is characteristic of the Republic that there were multiple points of legitimate decision-making, which were normally not to be overturned by some higher authority (something that was to largely disappear under the monarchy of the Caesars). The magistrates—including the aediles, tribunes, questors ... and the commissioners for the founding and refounding of colonies—owe their position to the people in an assembly... . The popular vote might be subject to what were considered improper influences, but it also shows that such influences were not necessarily decisive.[189]
The Openness of Roman Society: Social Mobility
and Incorporating Different Peoples
As emphasized in this chapter, Indo-European social structure was based on talent and ability. Upward mobility was possible, and I-E groups in Europe tended to have relatively weak, permeable barriers between conquerors and conquered peoples—barriers that could be breached by the talented. This was also true in Rome. Upward mobility was possible, as was downward mobility.
Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition Page 7