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The Senate after Sulla

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

J. R. Hawthorn
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Extract

We have most of us been surprised when, after reading the history of the late Republic, we first discovered that in the year 50 a motion was proposed in the Senate that Pompey and Caesar should both lay down their commands, that it was passed by 370 votes to 22, and that it was disregarded in the interests of the optimate leaders. Who were these 370 men, and why do we not hear more of them? We have read, of course, that the Senate consisted of this or that number at this or that time; and then we read all about the Claudii and Metelli, with scarcely a word about the massed ranks behind them. Yet there they are, and the picture is incomplete without them. It is likely that we shall never complete it satisfactorily—there are so many of them we do not know, and the few we do know are quite likely to be exceptional in some way—but we can at least make a start by considering the numbers involved and the likely divergence as well as the unity of their interests.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 1962 , pp. 53 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1962

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References

page 53 note 1 Appian, B.C. ii. 30.

page 53 note 2 The following facts have some relevance to retiring ages in Rome. (1) Under the lex Acilia the indices had to be between the ages of thirty and sixty. (2) In the early principate the age at which senators were legally free from their obligation to attend is stated by the elder Seneca to have been sixty-five, by the younger Seneca to have been sixty. Attendance on ordinary occasions was of course much less: to judge from the lex Cornelia de privilegiis, 200 members constituted a senatus frequens, and it was often difficult to whip up that number. Marcellus failed to do it for provincial business in 51 (Cic. Fam. viii. 5. 3). The presiding magistrate had the power to compel attendance, but, though Antony might bluster (Cic. Phil. i. 11), it is clear that this was not done.

page 54 note 1 Appian, B.C. i. 100. But the number 300 was not an invention of Sulla; it first appears in the abortive proposal of C. Gracchus. This increase in the size of the Senate was part of the programme of the moderate reformers, and in this Gracchus and Sulla were on the same side.

page 54 note 2 Att. i. 14. 5.

page 54 note 3 Assuming an average age at election of about two years above the minimum. Catulus was still in politics fifteen years after his consulship; Hortensius seems to have been retiring after about twelve. Yet twenty-five consulars seems a high figure; perhaps some found that ambition—their own or their families'—was satisfied by their year of office.

page 54 note 4 A curule aedile is not aedilicius for long; of plebeian aediles it seems from the lists in T. R. S. Broughton's Magistrates of the Roman Republic that about half become praetors.

page 54 note 5 Allowing for an average of five years from quaestor to tribune, and for four of the ten to hold further office. For the eleven years from 65 to 55 Broughton lists sixty tribunes, of whom twenty-eight are recorded to have become praetors. If Sulla's law banning them from further office had remained in force it would have changed all this. It would have been difficult to find ten young men a year willing to write off in advance their chance of the praetorship. The tribunate must then have become a consolation prize for older men (Quinctius, tribune in 74, was nearly fifty), or else have been held by non-senators. Tribunes were still not without power (cf. Cic. Clu. 74) and this danger was motive enough for the lex Aurelia.

page 55 note 1 e.g. H. Last in C.A.H. ix, chap. 2, regards Gracchus' proposal to double the numbers of the Senate as ‘moderate’ compared with turning them out of the extortion court.

page 55 note 2 Cf. Livy, , Epit. 89Google Scholar; Appian, B.C. i. 100. Sallust's story (Cat. 37. 6) that they included gregarii milites and men enriched by the proscriptions need not be wholly false; in a civil war there may be some unusual rankers, and the others would qualify by wealth. The presence of a very few parvenus would be magnified by hostile propaganda; we can safely dismiss Dionysios of Halikarnassos' ⋯κ τ⋯ν ⋯πιτυχ⋯ντων ⋯νθρώπων (v. 77).

page 56 note 1 Cic. Cat. ii. 18–19.

page 56 note 2 Cic. Clu. 98.

page 56 note 3 Ibid. 66, 70, 101.

page 57 note 1 Ibid. 87. Cicero also hints darkly that Staienus had received a similar sum, 600,000, to settle the trial of Safinius Atella, but he makes no detailed charge.

page 57 note 2 Verr. i. 38.

page 57 note 3 Verr. ii. 3. 145.

page 57 note 4 Cael. 17. Will someone please write us an article on the value of money in Rome ? Even some post-war books have used the basis of 1 sesterce = 2 ½d.

page 57 note 5 Verr. i. 38.

page 58 note 1 I have to thank Mr. J. P. V. D. Balsdon for drawing my attention to this passage.

page 58 note 2 Att. vi. 1. 5.

page 58 note 3 Ibid. i. 17. 9.

page 58 note 4 Verr. ii. 5. 45.

page 59 note 1 Plut. Pomp. 22.

page 59 note 2 Ascon. p. 61C.

page 59 note 3 Sall. Cat. 48. 5.

page 60 note 1 Caes. B.C. i. 1. 3.