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It is almost impossible to imagine a more fortuitous chapter to read this week than chapter 11 of Ronald Syme’s The Roman Revolution. Titled, “Political Catchwords,” it outlines the rhetoric of political culture in first century BC Rome.
The first paragraphs frames the discussion in Syme’s typically uncompromising way:
In Rome of the Republic, not constrained by any law of libel, the literature of politics was seldom or edifying. Persons, not programmes, came before the People for their judgement and approbation. The candidate seldom made promises. Instead, he claimed office as a reward, boasting loudly of ancestors or, failing that prerogative, of his own merits.
And the reminder:
Crime, vice and corruption in the last age of the Republic are embodied in types as perfect of their kind as are the civic and moral paragons of early days; which is fitting, for the evil and the good are both the fabrication of skilled literary artists.
Syme, however, also reminds us that the invectives to which Roman politicians subjected each other did not turn them into snowflakes. In fact, “On the contrary. The Romans possessed a feeling for humour and a strong sense of the dramatic…It was a point of honour in a liberal society to take these things gracefully.” He tells of Caesar inviting Catullus for dinner which echoes President Trump’s recent invitation to Alec Baldwin to join him for a meal of McDonald’s hamburgers at the White House. For Romans of the Republic, the freedom to endure and even appreciate (if not enjoy) invective was central to the notion of libertas and the loss of political freedom under the principate “was not the worst feature of monarchy — it was the growth of servility and adulation.” Syme goes on to not, however, “Nobody ever sought power for himself and the enslavement of others without invoking libertas and such
fair names.”
Of course, in appreciating the freedom of speech in Roman politics, Syme reminds us that it remains an aristocratic game. This required the careful balancing in rhetoric of the rights of the people and the authority of the Senate. The former should never impose itself on the latter and appeals to the mos maiorum served as a rhetorically expedient brake on change. In the Late Republic, however, Syme accepts Sallust’s critique of Pompey and Crassus: “whether they asserted the People’s rights or the Senate’s, were acting a pretence: they strove for power only.”
Syme theorizes: “The political cant of a country is naturally and always most strongly in evidence on the side of vested interests. In times of peace and prosperity it commands a wide measure of acquiescence, even of belief. Revolution rends the veil.”
Whatever the bankruptcy of the oligarchs, the soldiers, however, were at least “sincere,” and perhaps the most useful as Civil War loomed: “Octavianus had the veterans, the plebs and the name of Caesar: his allies in the Senate would provide the rest.”
