Читать книгу Why Rome Fell - Michael Arnheim - Страница 43

Millar took issue with Matthias Gelzer’s classic view, advanced in 1912, that the Roman Republic was dominated by “a homogeneous elite (or ‘aristocracy’ or ‘nobility’) controlling the mass of the people through a network of patronage relationships.” (Millar, Ibid., p. 92.)

Gelzer may possibly have overestimated the importance of patronage in elections, but it is hard to believe that it played no role at all, considering its antiquity and the fact that it was clearly still alive and well in the Principate, not a time when it could suddenly have sprung into existence. In addition, there was a persistent aristocratic ethos throughout Roman history. A.H.M. (“Hugo”) Jones described the people of Athens in the fifth century BCE as “…rather snobbish in their choice of leaders” (Jones 1957, p. 49) even though their regime was decidedly anti-aristocratic. The same can be said of the Roman plebs both during the aristocratic dominance of the middle Republic and in their support of Populares in the late republic.

Following Peter Brunt, Millar argued against Gelzer that “…such patronage relations cannot serve as the key to understanding the political process in Rome.” I will take Millar’s and Brunt’s points one by one.

The citizen body of Rome was too large for such a system to have operated effectively (Millar, as paraphrased by Guy Maclean Rogers as editor of Millar’s Rome, the Greek World, and the East.) Referring to patronage or clientela as a “system” is a mistake. This mistake sets patronage up as an “Aunt Sally” or straw man, making it easy to knock down. In fact, clientela was not a “system” and cannot, therefore, be expected to have “operated effectively”, whatever that is supposed to mean. Patronage was an informal social institution. And, of course, not every Roman would have been a patron or a client.

Patronage was “marginal” in the Republic but “…enjoyed a heyday under the principate” and “…flourished under the late empire” (Brunt 1988). There is little doubt about the importance of patronage in the later Roman Empire, more usually under the title patrocinium, which eventually morphed into the medieval seigniorial system. (See Arnheim 1972.) What about the Principate? The Epigrams of the Roman poet Martial, published between 86 and 103 CE, show that patronage was alive and well during the Principate but probably less political than social and financial. “With the commencement of the Principate,” writes Yavetz, “the emperors became in a sense the patroni of the entire urban plebs.” (Yavetz 1988, p. 152.) Garnsey, however, opines, “If everyone is a client, no one is.” (Garnsey in McGill, Scott et al 2010, p. 44.)

This misses the point. According to Yavetz’s cogent portrayal, the emperor was the patron “…of the entire urban plebs” but not of the whole population. There is a very big difference between the two. The plebs had long been opposed to the senatorial aristocracy and had their own champions, the Populares, culminating in Julius Caesar, a position which Augustus, as Caesar’s heir, prized and cultivated. Hence, the use of the tribunician power by Augustus and all his successors. But Augustus was careful to balance his position as champion of the plebs with his claim to be the restorer of the Republic.

Brunt’s idea that patronage relations during the Republic were “…fragile, peripheral, short-lived, and did not count for very much” may possibly be correct as far as the turbulent late Republic was concerned but less likely for the middle Republic. (Brunt 1988.) There is evidence of patronage going all the way back to the Menaechmi of Plautus (c. 254–184 BCE), which indicates that rich men liked to be the patrons of as many clients as possible.

I agree with Professor John North’s characterization of the Brunt view as one of “sweeping negativity.” Brunt’s position was largely an argument from silence, based on the fact that “…clients are much less conspicuous in the sources” than we would expect if patronage was as important as was traditionally believed. North’s comment is apt: “It is quite possible that the basic relationships of society, so familiar to contemporaries, should be assumed and rarely referred to in contemporary texts”. (North 1989, p. 155.) But in fact, as Garnsey admits and as Brunt’s own footnotes show, the sources are by no means silent on patronage.