they felt to be the increase in Rome's power and wealth. The enormous opportunities for ruthless self-
aggrandizement by individuals threatened the state in two directions. If her subjects were exploited,
Rome might lose her Empire, for she had not the men or money to control such a vast area by brute
force: an element of consensus in her rule was essential. Again, if some members of the governing class
became a great deal more powerful than others, the essentially oligarchic system of the Republic would
be replaced by one less beneficial to the governing class as a "whole. Roman thinking ran on patriotic
self-control where we might stress the need for institutional checks on the power of individuals. In fact
some of the legislation they traditionally saw as encouraging the first can be interpreted as steps towards
the second: sumptuary laws to limit conspicuous consumption and largesse, extortion laws to check
greed and related abuses by Roman officials, canvassing laws to prevent men from buying their way into
office on the profits of Empire. But certain changes, such as making generals strictly accountable for
their booty, or taxing citizens enough so that the state could itself provide for discharged veterans, or
creating a police force that could control political violence, were not in keeping with the closely guarded
tradition of aristocratic independence. It was easier for the Senate to forgo a rich and strategic province
such as Egypt, which might give excessive scope to one of its members, than to make the great generals,
who behaved like kings abroad, toe the line when they returned home.
The standards for success were rising as the Empire grew. After the military triumphs of Marius in the
West and Sulla in the East, Pompey would not have been satisfied with the normal one-year
governorship after his consulship. Caesar, too, would be thinking of prolonged and extraordinary
commands. Eventually Pompey could not bear an equal nor Caesar a superior. But the Republic was
incompatible with the ascendancy of one or two. It was also incompatible with the notion that great
deeds exempt one from the legal restraints placed on one's peers, an idea Caesar is said to have voiced as
he surveyed the enemy dead after Pompey's defeat: 'They would have it so. Even I, Gaius Caesar, after
my great achievements, would have been convicted in the courts, had I not sought help from my army.'
Socrates knew that the laws must be obeyed even when they led to an unjust decision. By the start of the
Civil War in 49 the laws of Rome had been bent and ignored by powerful individuals too often to seem
worthy of obedience.