august 5–18, 2019 | new york 23
to assume total power if civil unrest threatened the republic as a
whole. But the dictator had a maximum of six months in office,
after which he had to step down.
I’m crudely simplifying a complex and evolving set of arrange-
ments, but the core idea was the dispersal and balancing of power,
so that every segment of Roman society, apart from slaves, could
have some input, even as the Senate effectively, if not definitively,
called the shots. (It was a republic and emphatically not a modern
democracy.) What kept this contraption together, without a written
constitution, was something the Romans came to call the mos
maiorum, the “way of the elders.” Tradition, in other words, or what
we would call long-standing democratic norms—adherence to
precedent, give-and-take in political negotiations, respect for
proper procedures, a willingness to accept half-measures rather
than imposing zero-sum solutions, and, above all, loyalty to the
republic over one’s own ambition. Whenever someone seemed to
push against these norms, they were
demonized as a wannabe king.
The erosion of the mos maiorum
took a very long time—longer than
the entire history of the United
States. And it began, in many ways,
because of the republic’s success. As
Mary Beard’s new classic, SPQR,
vividly explores, Rome grew and
grew, butting up against and clash-
ing with regional neighbors, waging
war, gaining (and sometimes los-
ing) territory in fits and starts. But
a political system designed for a
relatively small city had to make
some serious adjustments as its ter-
ritory and prosperity and popula-
tion exploded. The fact that Rome
was in a semi-permanent war with
its neighbors—a “forever war” if
ever there was one—gave military
commanders greater and greater
clout, and the loot they hauled from
Africa to Asia overwhelmingly enriched the elites beyond any-
thing they had previously experienced.
These were decades and centuries of sudden growth in wealth
and territory, but also tension. The forever war required small
landowners to leave their farms untended for extended periods
to fight. Romans saw many of these small estates fall into decay
or ruin and begin to be bought up by wealthier landowners and
consolidated into vast estates. Over time, as the population
boomed and small agriculture waned, food resources became
stretched. Before too long, there were too few small landowners
to qualify for military service, and widening inequality began to
generate increasing resentment among slaves and the poor. And
into this fraught moment came the first real populists, the Grac-
chus brothers, who rose—from within the elites, as Trump and
many others have in the millennia since—in the 130s BCE.
The first, Tiberius, elected as tribune of the plebs, proposed a set
of land reforms to redistribute wealth. He knew he couldn’t get it
past the Senate and so did not even try to, as had been the norm;
instead, as Edward J. Watts details in his Mortal Republic, he
went straight to the People’s Assembly. Then he tried to get his fel-
low tribune thrown out of office to avoid his veto, and ran for an
unprecedented second term as tribune, at which point several sena-
tors, out of procedural tools, organized a small mob, grabbed what-
ever came to hand, entered the vote-counting arena, and clubbed
Tiberius and 300 of his supporters to death.
This kind of violence seems unthinkable in America today,though it was not so unusual in the decades before the Civil War,
when senators were repeatedly at each other’s literal throats on the
Senate floor. But look past the violence and the situation seems a
bit more familiar: deepening polarization, mutual mistrust, aban-
donment of norms, and trashing of precedents. Soon, it was pos-
sible to speak, very roughly, of two Romes: the rich Establishment
and the rising masses, the optimates and the populares, waging a
zero-sum war through Roman political institutions. In Cicero’s
words: “The death of Tiberius Gracchus and even before that, the
whole rationale behind his tribunate divided a united people into
two distinct groups.” The Latin word for groups is partes.
Tiberius’s cause was taken up by his younger brother, Gaius, who
ran for the tribunate, won, and proposed even more distribution of
land, new colonies for landless citizens, a major investment in roads
and infrastructure, the removal of some senators from juries, and
a subsidized grain dole for any Roman in need. It was something
for everyone but the elites—and
hugely resonant among the popula-
res. This time, the Senate responded
more deftly by getting a rival and
loyal tribune to outbid and undercut
Gaius. In a contentious public
assembly on the matter, scuffles
broke out, a supporter of the opti-
mates was stabbed with a writing
stylus, and a riot was avoided only
because of a sudden rainstorm. But
the day after, the Senate, deeply rat-
tled, gave authority to the consul to
do, as Mike Duncan puts it in The
Storm Before the Storm, his gripping
account of these years, “whatever he
thought necessary to preserve the
state.” A bloodbath ensued, in which
Gaius was slaughtered along with
3,000 of his followers, their corpses
thrown into the Tiber.
In The Storm Before the Storm,
Duncan quotes the great Roman his-
torian Sallust, who, looking back, pulled a “both sides” argument—
“The nobles began to abuse their position and the people their lib-
erty.” The Greek historian Velleius Paterculus more astutely noted
that “precedents do not stop where they begin, but, however narrow
the path upon which they enter, they create for themselves a high-
way whereon they may wander with the utmost latitude.” A cycle of
polarization had begun.As the turn of the first century BCE approached
and wars proliferated, with Roman control expanding
west and east and south across the Mediterranean, the
elites became ever wealthier and the cycle deepened.
Precedents fell: A brilliant military leader, Marius, emerged from
outside the elite as consul, and his war victories and populist appeal
were potent enough for him to hold an unprecedented seven con-
sulships in a row, earning him the title “the third founder of Rome.”
Like the Gracchi, his personal brand grew even as republican
norms of self- effacement and public service attenuated. In a telling
portent of the celebrity politics ahead, for the first time, a Roman
coin carried the portrait of a living politician and commander-in-
chief: Marius and his son in a chariot.
A dashing military protégé (and rival) of Marius, Sulla, was the
next logical step in weakening the system—a popular and highly
successful commander whose personal hold on his soldiers
appeared unbreakable. Tasked with bringing the lucrative East
back under Rome’s control, he did so with gusto, prompting aI FREPUBLICANISMAT ITS CORE IS ASUSPICION OFONE-MAN RULE,TRUMP HASEFFECTIVELYSUSPENDEDIT.PHOTOGRAPH: PREVIOUS SPREAD, ANGELO MERENDINO/GETTY IMAGES (HAIR)Y ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICTRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC1619FEA_AndrewSullivan_lay [Print]_35565047.indd 23 8/2/19 7:36 PMaugust5–18, 2019 | newyork 23to assume total power if civil unrest threatened the republic as a
whole. But the dictator had a maximum of six months in office,
after which he had to step down.
I’m crudely simplifying a complex and evolving set of arrange-
ments, but the core idea was the dispersal and balancing of power,
so that every segment of Roman society, apart from slaves, could
have some input, even as the Senate effectively, if not definitively,
called the shots. (It was a republic and emphatically not a modern
democracy.) What kept this contraption together, without a written
constitution, was something the Romans came to call the mos
maiorum, the “way of the elders.” Tradition, in other words, or what
we would call long-standing democratic norms—adherence to
precedent, give-and-take in political negotiations, respect for
proper procedures, a willingness to accept half-measures rather
than imposing zero-sum solutions, and, above all, loyalty to the
republic over one’s own ambition. Whenever someone seemed to
push against these norms, they were
demonized as a wannabe king.
The erosion of the mos maiorum
took a very long time—longer than
the entire history of the United
States. And it began, in many ways,
because of the republic’s success. As
Mary Beard’s new classic, SPQR,
vividly explores, Rome grew and
grew, butting up against and clash-
ing with regional neighbors, waging
war, gaining (and sometimes los-
ing) territory in fits and starts. But
a political system designed for a
relatively small city had to make
some serious adjustments as its ter-
ritory and prosperity and popula-
tion exploded. The fact that Rome
was in a semi-permanent war with
its neighbors—a “forever war” if
ever there was one—gave military
commanders greater and greater
clout, and the loot they hauled from
Africa to Asia overwhelmingly enriched the elites beyond any-
thing they had previously experienced.
These were decades and centuries of sudden growth in wealth
and territory, but also tension. The forever war required small
landowners to leave their farms untended for extended periods
to fight. Romans saw many of these small estates fall into decay
or ruin and begin to be bought up by wealthier landowners and
consolidated into vast estates. Over time, as the population
boomed and small agriculture waned, food resources became
stretched. Before too long, there were too few small landowners
to qualify for military service, and widening inequality began to
generate increasing resentment among slaves and the poor. And
into this fraught moment came the first real populists, the Grac-
chus brothers, who rose—from within the elites, as Trump and
many others have in the millennia since—in the 130s BCE.
The first, Tiberius, elected as tribune of the plebs, proposed a set
of land reforms to redistribute wealth. He knew he couldn’t get it
past the Senate and so did not even try to, as had been the norm;
instead, as Edward J. Watts details in his Mortal Republic, he
went straight to the People’s Assembly. Then he tried to get his fel-
low tribune thrown out of office to avoid his veto, and ran for an
unprecedented second term as tribune, at which point several sena-
tors, out of procedural tools, organized a small mob, grabbed what-
ever came to hand, entered the vote-counting arena, andclubbed
Tiberius and 300 of his supporters to death.
This kind of violence seems unthinkable in America today,
though it was not so unusual in the decades before the Civil War,
when senators were repeatedly at each other’s literal throats on the
Senate floor. But look past the violence and the situation seems a
bit more familiar: deepening polarization, mutual mistrust, aban-
donment of norms, and trashing of precedents. Soon, it was pos-
sible to speak, very roughly, of two Romes: the rich Establishment
and the rising masses, the optimates and the populares, waging a
zero-sum war through Roman political institutions. In Cicero’s
words: “The death of Tiberius Gracchus and even before that, the
whole rationale behind his tribunate divided a united people into
two distinct groups.” The Latin word for groups is partes.
Tiberius’s cause was taken up by his younger brother, Gaius, who
ran for the tribunate, won, and proposed even more distribution of
land, new colonies for landless citizens, a major investment in roads
and infrastructure, the removal of some senators from juries, and
a subsidized grain dole for any Roman in need. It was something
for everyone but the elites—and
hugely resonant among the popula-
res. This time, the Senate responded
more deftly by getting a rival and
loyal tribune to outbid and undercut
Gaius. In a contentious public
assembly on the matter, scuffles
broke out, a supporter of the opti-
mates was stabbed with a writing
stylus, and a riot was avoided only
because of a sudden rainstorm. But
the day after, the Senate, deeply rat-
tled, gave authority to the consul to
do, as Mike Duncan puts it in The
Storm Before the Storm, his gripping
account of these years, “whatever he
thought necessary to preserve the
state.” A bloodbath ensued, in which
Gaius was slaughtered along with
3,000 of his followers, their corpses
thrown into the Tiber.
In The Storm Before the Storm,
Duncan quotes the great Roman his-
torian Sallust, who, looking back, pulled a “both sides” argument—
“The nobles began to abuse their position and the people their lib-
erty.” The Greek historian Velleius Paterculus more astutely noted
that “precedents do not stop where they begin, but, however narrow
the path upon which they enter, they create for themselves a high-
way whereon they may wander with the utmost latitude.” A cycle of
polarization had begun.As the turn of the first century BCE approached
and wars proliferated, with Roman control expanding
west and east and south across the Mediterranean, the
elites became ever wealthier and the cycle deepened.
Precedents fell: A brilliant military leader, Marius, emerged from
outside the elite as consul, and his war victories and populist appeal
were potent enough for him to hold an unprecedented seven con-
sulships in a row, earning him the title “the third founder of Rome.”
Like the Gracchi, his personal brand grew even as republican
norms of self- effacement and public service attenuated. In a telling
portent of the celebrity politics ahead, for the first time, a Roman
coin carried the portrait of a living politician and commander-in-
chief: Marius and his son in a chariot.
A dashing military protégé (and rival) of Marius, Sulla, was the
next logical step in weakening the system—a popular and highly
successful commander whose personal hold on his soldiers
appeared unbreakable. Tasked with bringing the lucrative East
back under Rome’s control, he did so with gusto, prompting aI FREPUBLICANISMAT ITS CORE IS ASUSPICION OFONE-MAN RULE,TRUMP HASEFFECTIVELYSUSPENDEDIT.