Читать книгу Why Rome Fell - Michael Arnheim - Страница 41

Millar condemns as a “circular” definition this conclusion by Christian Meier as quoted by Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp (2010) about the aristocratic monopoly of office in the Republic: “Whoever played a part in politics belonged to the aristocracy, and whoever belonged to the aristocracy played a part in politics.” (Millar, Ibid., 94.) In fact, it is not circular at all. A parallel would be to say something like this: Any animal with a single horn on its head is a unicorn, and every unicorn has a single horn on its head. In other words, the class of animals with a single horn is closed. If you come across an animal with a single horn, you know that it must be a unicorn. And, if you come across a unicorn, you know it must have a single horn on its head. In other words, the two classes, that of unicorns and that of single-horned animals are coextensive.

This is not at all illogical. In fact, there are two aristocratic models that contrast with it. It is quite possible, for example, to have a society where political office is reserved to only certain aristocratic families or individuals while other aristocrats are left outside the magic circle. It is also possible for an aristocracy to be open, so that, while all or most of its members are engaged in politics, outsiders are not excluded. This latter model is actually a better fit for the Roman Republic than Meier’s closed model because novi homines, or “new men,” were able to gain admission to the dominant elite from an early date.

According to persistent tradition, at some time in the early Republic, a protracted Conflict of the Orders broke out between the patricii (patricians) and the plebeii (plebeians). Some modern writers have suggested an ethnic distinction between the two orders. Livy more plausibly identifies the patricians, the dominant elite in the early Republic, as descendants of the original senators appointed by Romulus. (Livy 1.8.) In the absence of evidence, it would be idle to speculate on the origins of the two groups.

But that should not prevent us from accepting the historicity of a conflict between the ruling elite and an element of the population excluded from power. It would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater to agree with Fergus Millar in consigning the fourth century (BCE) and the Conflict of the Orders to the realm of myth, as cited above. (Millar 2002, p. 85 f.) We have a very detailed account of the Conflict of the Orders from Livy writing in the time of Augustus, on the basis, as mentioned above, not only of tradition but also of earlier historical accounts.

There certainly are some problems with the details of the Conflict of the Orders as they have come down to us. One question that has exercised scholars is why several of the early consuls, including Lucius Junius Brutus himself, appear to have been plebeians at a time when only patricians were supposedly eligible. The answer may be that the clear distinction between the orders may only have developed later, but this is a puzzle-problem to which there is no definite solution.

Even if the details and dates of this protracted struggle as recounted by Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and other ancient sources are fictitious, there can be no doubt that from at least the third century BCE, the dominant elite in the Roman Republic was a combined patricio-plebeian aristocracy, which controlled not only the high magistracies of state, but also the senate, and the state religion. (See Stuart Stavely 2014.) It is significant that, from the fourth century BCE, every senatorial family was forever labeled as either patrician or plebeian, and the only way one could switch from one order to the other was by adoption, though entry to the plebeian part of the aristocracy was open to novi homines from outside.