British Subtitle: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
American Subtitle: The Last Years of the Roman
Republic
Why
I Read This Book
When I
first saw this book in the bookstores, I turned my nose up at it. I had spent my teenage years being obsessed with
Roman history, and had already read much on the subject. I knew all this stuff already. Or at least, even if I didn’t know all the
intricate details, I knew all the stuff that was likely to be contained in a
brief survey history like this one. (If
the book had been an in-depth examination of one particular figure or event,
that would have been different, but this was a lightening quick survey of the
last 100 years of the Roman
Republic. There was unlikely to be much in this book
that I didn’t know.)
But
then, I was talking to a friend and fellow history buff over dinner one night, and
he said this was his favorite history book.
“It’s a great narrative history,” my friend says. “Tom Holland writes in such an engaging way
that I just got caught up in the book. I
finished the whole thing off in just two days.”
I
also share a passion for well-written narrative history. And despite the fact that I’ve already read much
on the end of the Roman Republic, I decided that if the book was as
well-written as my friend claimed, then I would give it a try. Sometimes it can be fun to hear a story you
already know told by a different story-teller, who might come at it from a
slightly different angle or emphasize slightly different things.
The
Review
This book
was recommended to me as a well-written narrative history which would be a
pleasure to read. And it did not
disappoint.
My
friend told me he got so absorbed in the book he finished it off in only two
days. I took 4 days myself, but I had a
similar experience. The book pulled me
in, and I had a hard time putting it down.
And
yes, as I suspected, I pretty much did know most of the stuff in here. But it was still fun to read it again from a
slightly different angle, told by a skilled story-teller. (And actually, it would be an exaggeration to
say I already knew everything in this
book. While perhaps 70% of the book was review
for me, on just about every page there was usually some piece of information
that was either new to me, or that I had once known and then forgotten.)
That
such an engaging history of the fall of the Roman Republic
can be written is partly due to Tom Holland’s excellent storytelling, but it is
also partly due to the richness of the source material itself.
For
those of us interested in ancient history, the last years of the Roman Republic
are especially interesting because of all the information that has
survived. Somewhat paradoxically, we
know more about the history, politics and gossip of the last 100 years of
Republican Rome than we do about many other more recent historical periods. (It’s counter-intuitive, but it is not always
the case that the older a historical period is, the less it is known.) As Tom Holland writes: “As it happens, the last twenty years of the Republic are the best
documented in Roman history, with what is, for the classicist, a wealth of
evidence—speeches, memoirs, even private correspondence” (Author’s preface,
xxvii). Although Tom Holland quickly goes
on to qualify this remark (it’s only a lot when you compare it to how sparse
our sources are for most of the rest of ancient history), there still exists
more than enough information to tell a good story about the different
personalities, factions, rivalries, and political maneuverings of ancient Rome.
Much
of Cicero’s
personal correspondence has also survived the centuries, and as he was a
frequent commentator on political events, we often get his opinions on all the
political events of the day, like a running commentary on history from beyond the
grave.
Indeed
the information is rich enough that Tom Holland could have made a book 20 times
the size if he wanted to. (His slim
volume clocks in at only 389 pages). And
in his rush to cram everything in, there are invariably some characters or
events that get short changed. (One
example out of many: the entire career of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (W)
is summed up in two sentences—“No sooner
had Sulla’s ashes been scattered in the wind than one of the consuls had
launched an uprising against the entire Sullan regime. The revolt had been speedily and brutally put
down.” (p. 122).)
At
other points, one sometimes gets the sense that Tom Holland is teasing the
reader by only alluding to a larger richer story. For example, when writing about Mark Antony
and Clodius, Tom Holland says, “Mark
Antony, moving on from his affair with Curio, had begun sniffing around Clodius’
much-loved wife, Fulvia, a breach of the codes of friendship that would soon see
the two men threatening to kill each other.” (p. 251). But why not give the whole story? Or why not relate the tale about how Mark
Antony attacked Clodius in the forum, and Clodius only escaped by barricading himself
in the stairs of a nearby bookstore?
The
brief quotations from Cicero’s
letters enliven the narrative with a first person eye-witness account of the history,
but here again the quotations are too brief.
The one sentence excerpts from Cicero’s
letters just made me want to hear more than Tom Holland was giving me.
And
in the course of the rushed narrative, other balls get dropped here and
there. Tom Holland recounts (briefly)
the career of Clodius’s antagonist Milo, and he also recounts the failed debt
relief rebellion of Marcus Caleius Rufus, but fails to mention that Milo was also part of that rebellion, and was also killed
in it. (I know this is just a survey
history, and you can’t include everything, but since Milo
had already been one of the characters in the narrative, it would have been
fitting to include this detail, and it would only have cost one extra
sentence.)
And
yet, for all the details I wish had been included, I have to admit the author
does do a very good job of writing a summary history. Tom Holland manages to put enough personal
details and intrigue in to keep the narrative interesting, while still moving
it along at a very fast clip. I’ll quote
a couple paragraphs to illustrate this.
(This isn’t going to fully make sense taken out of context, but hopefully
it will give an idea of how the book reads nonetheless.)
In his desperation to find a forceful
counterweight to Pompey, Cato had settled upon an extraordinary choice. His favoured candidate for the consulship of
52 was none other than Clodius’ old sparring-partner, the turbulent
street-brawler Milo. Once a ferocious partisan of Pompey, Milo had been unceremoniously dumped by the great man,
and was therefore happy to throw his lot in with Cato and his plans. Pompey warned his former protégé to stand
down, and when Milo refused threw his weight
behind rival candidates. But his fury
was, of course, nothing compared to that of Milo’s
deadliest enemy. For three years,
Clodius had been on his best behaviour, attempting to rebrand himself as a
sound and sober statesman, but the prospect of having Milo
as consul was too much. Like a reformed
alcoholic reaching for a bottle, Clodius returned to the streets. His old gangs were resurrected. In reply, Milo
bought up the gladiator schools. As 53
BC drew to a close, Rome
descended into anarchy. So too did the
Republic. For the third time in four
years elections were postponed, this time because the presiding official had
been knocked out by a brick. With all
public business in abeyance, club-wielding mobsters roamed the streets, while
law-abiding citizens cowered where they could.
It seemed that things could hardly become
any worse. Then, on 18 January 52 BC,
they did. Clodius and Milo met fact to
face on the Appian Way. Taunts flew; one of Milo’s
gladiators flung a javelin; Clodius was struck in the shoulder. His bodyguards hauled their wounded leader to
a nearby tavern, but Milo’s heavies, following
in pursuit, overpowered them. Clodius
himself was slung out of the tavern on to the road, where he was speedily
finished off. There, by the side of a
shrine to the Good Goddess, his corpse was left mangled and naked in the
dust. It appeared that the goddess had
at last had her revenge. (p.
289-290).
If
you’re a history geek like me, you might lament that this narrative is not as
detailed as it could have been, but you have to admit that kind of writing is
more than enough to keep you turning the pages!
I fully recommend this book to anyone interested in history.
*****************************************************************
Having
lamented that this book is too brief, I suppose I should ask the question: Is
there a better, more detailed narrative history book on the Roman Republic? Tom Holland himself seems to imply that the
selection is limited. “…back in the late nineties, when I first
began to contemplate writing about the downfall of the Republic, there were
almost no narrative accounts of Roman history.” (p. xv-xvi)
Tom Holland goes on to say that this has changed for the better, so that
nowadays, “books and films on the Romans
are legion” (p.xv). But has anyone
else stepped in to fill the gap of a well-written narrative history of the end
of the Republic?
If
anyone knows of a book recommendation for me, let me know in the comments section.
******************************************************************
I
debated whether or not to add this book to my list of favorite narrative history books. I tend to
define good narrative history as not only using a narrative style, but also
focusing in on only one main story or figure.
A book like this, which covers about a 100 year time span, I’d be more
inclined to put in the category of “survey history”. (Granted these distinctions exist only in my
own mind, and no one else is obliged to follow them.)
However,
since I included David Starkey’s Monarchy
as an addendum to my list—a survey history, but a survey history
that was done in a narrative style—I’ll put this book in the same
category. It doesn’t quite qualify for
my definition as a great narrative history, but it can certainly get an
honorable mention.
Connections
to Modern Day Events
Some of
the connections from ancient Rome
to modern day events are drawn explicitly by the author in his
introductions*. In particular, the
author sees the wars between Republican Rome and the Near Eastern monarchies as
parallel to America’s
current wars in the Middle East.
To
quote from part of that introduction: “…on
the 11 of September, 2001, for instance, I was writing about the Asiatic
Vespers, the co-ordinated massacre on a single night of 80,000 Roman and
Italian businessmen. The man responsible
for this atrocity was a power-hungry Near Eastern despot called Mithridates;
and the Romans, after giving his armies a punitive thrashing, had been content
to impose a swingeing peace treaty, but otherwise leave him be. For the next fifteen years, they were itching
to make good this mistake. Numerous casus
belli were adduced: among them that
Mithridates had broken the weapons sanctions imposed upon him, and that he had
been actively supporting terrorists. In the
end, the hawks had their way. War was
declared in 74 BC, and, after initial set-backs, Mithridates’ regime was
overthrown. And all this I was writing
about in the spring of 2002, as the first storm-clouds of the Iraq crisis
were starting to loom.
As I pressed on with my narrative,
over and over again, a day’s writing would be given an eerie coda by what I
heard on the evening news: as the Romans hunted Mithridates on a wild
goose-chase through the wilds of Armenia, so American special forces were
combing Tora Bora for Osama bin Laden; as the Roman people suspended many of
their traditional freedoms in order to give increased powers to the war against
cells of shadowy ‘pirates’, so sweeping new anti-terrorism laws were being
introduced; as evidence was fabricated against Antony and Cleopatra by the
future emperor Augustus, in an attempt to urge a nervous Senate to go to war,
so the British government was releasing its dossier of evidence against Saddam
Hussein. (p. xvii)
I’ve
got to confess, when I initially read that section, I rolled my eyes. If you read a lot of modern history books,
you may be finding these constant attempts to draw parallels to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars a bit cliché by
now. (For example, in The Great Upheaval, Jay Winik
draws a modern day parallel with Russia’s
War against Turkey. In Three Empires on the Nile, the British fight against Muslim fanatics
in the Sudan is also
explicitly compared to modern day US foreign policy. Basically any history book published these
days that contains any type of East-West conflict is going to be explicitly
compared to Iraq and Afghanistan.)
And
yet, I suppose just because it’s becoming cliché doesn’t mean it’s not
valid. Every era of history if you look
at it carefully can offer up some sort of parallel to the problems of every
other era. And while this is certainly
not unique to the study of ancient Roman history, it doesn’t mean the parallels
that Tom Holland has found are not real enough.
Anyway,
continuing on in the next couple of paragraphs in the same introduction, Tom
Holland draws tentative parallels between the contradiction of Republican Rome’s
imperialistic policy, and republican America’s imperialistic policy.
Tendentious parallels, perhaps thrown up by
circumstance—and yet suggestive all the same.
Rome was the first and—until recently—the only republic ever to behave
towards its neighbors as an undisputed superpower, patronising strongmen here,
overthrowing them there, throwing its weight around as and when it
pleased. The end result, of course, was
to be empire, and the rule of an emperor: an imperium which in the early years of the twenty-first century it became
something of a newspaper cliché to see as prefiguring the pax Americana. Yet
while the comparison of George W. Bush’s Washington with the Rome
of the emperors was clearly wide of the mark, the mingled arrogance and anxiety
which characterized the Republic’s attitude towards its own greatness, the
temptations of overweening power and the dread of offending the gods, did
indeed, I think, as I was writing Rubicon, have a certain haunting contemporary resonance.
In 2003, just before the toppling of Saddam
Hussein, a British newspaper polled numerous historians across the world,
asking them to nominate the event which they felt most interestingly paralleled
the crisis over Iraq. Some mentioned Suez; others Munich; a few even the build up to the First
World War. None, however, ventured back
beyond the twentieth century; certainly none thought to peer into the gloaming
of the classical past. A distant,
far-away period, of which we know nothing?
Maybe. Even so, I remain convinced
that for those who wished to use history as a guide to understanding why
America was bound to go to war in the Middle East, to fathoming the temptations
offered her by her power, and the imperatives of her hunger for revenge, the
obscure date of 74 BC offered far more food for thought than either 1939 or
1956.
Even now, with American hegemony
looking infinitely more frayed than it did in the first years of the
twenty-first century, the drama of the Republic’s greatness and collapse
continues to cast an eerie shadow. Yes,
the Romans who conquered the world, and lost their liberty in doing so, are a
people alien and strange; but perhaps that is precisely why we find it so hard
to look at them, and not identify in their ambitions and agonies certain glimmerings
of ourselves. (p. xviii-xix).
And
here we come to the end of the Republic.
“…the Romans who conquered the
world, and lost their liberty in doing so.”
Is he implying that this is the course America is on? Well….maybe.
This
is perhaps where things get a little bit murky.
Undoubtedly Tom Holland seems to believe that there are some sort of
parallels between ancient Republican Rome and modern day republican America. Undoubtedly he believes there are some
lessons to be learned here. But exactly what those lessons are is
spelled out neither in his introduction nor in his narrative. Many themes are hinted at (the contradiction
between republic and empire, for example) but no definitive case is made.
This
is mostly due to the nature of the book.
Tom Holland’s book is, unapologetically, a narrative history. It is concerned with telling the story of the
major figures and is not an analytical examination of why the Roman Republic
eventually ended in dictatorship. (No
doubt that analytical book is out there somewhere.) Although Tom Holland draws the reader’s
attention to some themes, most of the causes of the end of Republican Rome must
be inferred by the reader.
So,
What Caused the End of the Roman
Republic?
Among
the various themes that get hinted at in Tom Holland’s book are:
* The political culture of Republican Rome,
which encouraged such a vicious atmosphere of competition among its
citizens. This intense competition lead
on more than one occasion to bloodshed rather than compromise.
* The rapid expansion of Rome’s territory during the 1st century BC,
which the republican system of government may not have been equipped to deal
with
* The influx of wealth into Rome from her newly
acquired Eastern provinces, which in turn caused many citizens to become more
concerned about money than about civic duty
* The increasing gang violence in the city
of Rome, which
the republic (without an official police force) was ill-equipped to deal with
* Related to the above point: the
disenfranchisement of the lower-class citizens, which gave them less of an investment
in preserving the institutions of the Republic.
(Tom Holland also theorizes that this is why Sulla’s and Caesar’s troops
followed their generals into illegality.
For the lowly soldier, denied an opportunity to participate in the
Republic’s civil institutions, the army was their sole source of community and
their only real loyalty.)
* After about 40 years of civil war, the
weariness of the citizens with the different fighting factions, and the desire
to have a stable government, even if it meant the end of the Republic.
To me though,
what stands out most strongly is that the ancient Romans put such great faith
in their republican traditions, institutions and laws that many of them never
seemed to realize that laws and constitutions do not enforce themselves. The Roman Senate never realized that whoever
controls the largest army ultimately gets to decide the law.
As
long as the army’s leaders agreed to play by the republic’s rules, the republic
could exist. But as soon as someone at
the head of a powerful army decided they didn’t want to play by the rules
anymore, then there was little the Senate could do about it.
Julius
Caesar is most famous for crossing the Rubicon with his armies in defiance of
the Senate’s order, but Tom Holland points out that the system was broken long
before Caesar. There had been a period
of about 40 years of violence and illegality in Republican Rome that Tom
Holland traces all the way back to Sulla, as the first Roman general to defy
the Senate and impose his own will by force.
Sulla
had been ordered by the Roman law to hand over command to his rival
Marius. Instead, Sulla chose to ignore
the law, and march his legions on Rome. As Tom Holland relates the event:
Sulla, first in consternation and then in
mounting fury, retired to his tent.
There he did some quick calculations.
With him at Nola he had six legions…Marius, back in Rome, had no legions whatsoever.
The maths was simple. Why, then, had Marius failed to work it out,
and how could so hardened an operator have chosen to drive his great rival into
a corner where there were six battle-hardened legions ready to hand? Clearly, the prospect that Sulla might come
out of it fighting had never even crossed Marius’ mind. It was impossible, unthinkable. After all, a Roman army was not the private
militia of the general who commanded it, but the embodiment of the Republic at
war. Its loyalty was owed to whomever
was appointed to its command by the due processes of the constitution. This was how it had always been, for as long
as the Republic’s citizens had been going to war—and Marius had no reason to
imagine that things might possibly have changed.
(p. 69)
Yes,
the Romans laws said that a commander
could never disobey the Senate, or march his legions on Rome.
But what did the laws matter the minute Sulla had six legions behind
him, and decided he was going to do what he liked?
The
lesson here seems to be that anytime enough military power is centralized in
one place, the republican laws and the constitution become as worthless as the
paper they are printed on. (This, by the
way, has since been repeated many times—see: every example in history of a coup
d’état against a democratic government.)
From
the floodgates opened by Sulla’s example, Tom Holland traces a whole series of
other republican strongmen who blatantly disregarded the Republican
constitution: Marius himself, Cinna, Sulla again, Pompey, Crassus, and finally
Julius Caesar. And then after Caesar, his
lieutenants Lepidus and Mark Anthony, and then finally Octavian.
Ironically,
the same blind faith in republican laws exhibited by Marius against Sulla was
later repeated by Cato against Julius Caesar.
Just as Marius had backed Sulla into a corner, and expected Sulla to
meekly hand over his legions rather than disobey Roman law, so Cato seems to
have had the same blind faith in the force of Roman law when he attempted to
back Caesar and his legions into a corner 40 years later.
This
point also ties in with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The more foreign wars Rome fought, the more legions it needed to
create. The more legions it created, the
more powerful the leaders of those legions then became.
Connections
With Other Books I’ve Read
Although I
call myself a history nerd, I do have to confess that I’m a person of limited
intelligence, and almost all of my historical knowledge comes from either
narrative histories, or historical fiction rather than real hard
hitting academic history books.
And
although I’m sometimes embarrassed to admit how much of my historical knowledge
comes from historical fiction, it definitely has its benefits for a certain
type of person. Some of us have a
certain type of mind which is very likely to forget dry facts, but can latch
onto and remember a story almost perfectly.
It’s
been over 20 years since I first read the historical fiction novels The First Man in Rome and The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough (I
read these books when I was 14), but I can still remember them. Not every word, of course, but certain scenes
still stick out vividly in my mind.
(Which is impressive considering how much else I’ve managed to forget over the years). So when I
read Tom Holland’s account of the rivalry between Gaius Marius and Sulla, and
the Italian War, and Mithridates, I could still remember all of these events
from Colleen McCullough’s fiction. (For
example, Tom Holland tells the story of how Mithridates pours molten liquid
gold down Manius Aquillius’s throat, which is a scene I still vividly remember
from reading The Grass Crown 22 years
ago.)
Regular
readers of this blog are probably sick of - hearing - me - praise Colleen McCullough’s
Masters of Rome series. But if you’re interested in
this time period, and you like historical fiction, I can’t recommend these
books highly enough.
The
books cover exactly the same time period that Rubicon covers—tracing the last
years of the Roman Republic, starting all the way back with the rivalry of
Gaius Marius and Sulla and continuing until the deaths of Anthony and
Cleopatra. Compared to the scant 390
pages of Rubicon, Master of Rome is epic in length—7 books
in total, each one of them running close to 1,000 pages. But while it may not be a quick read, if you’re
a history nut then you’ll find the rich details of these books incredibly
rewarding in a the way that the all-too-quick summary in Rubicon is not. (And don’t just
take my word for it. Fellow bibliophile
and history nut Peter Bratt also strongly recommends these books: The bulk of my fiction reading involved Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series, which consisted of seven different books that amounted to over 6,500 pages of enjoyable historical fiction. This series certainly deserves the title of my favorite work of fiction in 2011).
Granted
Colleen McCullough’s books are not perfect—they have a heavy pro populares (W) bias, which
means it’s always good to read them next to a more neutral historian like Tom
Holland to keep perspective.
[In
McCullough’s somewhat biased version of history, it is the Senate’s
conservatives who deserve most of the blame for the fall of the Roman Republic. It is implied that if the conservatives had
not been so pig-headed and obstructionist on problems such as land reform or
increasing the citizenship franchise, then the populares would not have had to resort to extra constitutional
measures to get their much needed reforms through. This theme isn’t quite as prevalent in Tom
Holland’s book, but he does mention a couple times the problem of the Senate’s
xenophobia and conservatism.]
Also
for more historical fiction on the same period, see the first two books of
Robert Harris’s Cicero -
trilogy. (The third book
is still being written at the moment.)
(If
someone knows of other good historical fiction covering this period, please let
me know in the comments section.)
As
for my old school papers, two of them relate directly to events
covered in Rubicon: my high school
paper on the Catiline Conspiracy, and a college paper on organized gang warfare in the Roman Republic.
Footnotes:
*The
edition of this book I have contains two author’s introductions—one written on
initial publication in 2003 (p. xxi-xxx), and another updated introduction
written in 2013 (p. xv-xix).
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