The Last Generation of the Roman Republic

Rating:
Summary: A Thorough and Compelling Analysis of the Late Republic
Review: Erich S. Gruen's scholarly work is one of the most concise studies on the politics and society of the late Roman Republic. Throughout the book, Gruen exhaustively reviews the socio-political spectrum of Rome from Marius to Caesar. This book is indispensable to the serious and novice scholars alike.

By accurately and concisely reviewing the composition of magistracies, senatorial rolls, and tribunes, from the time of Sulla to the Civil War, Gruen offers a compelling insight as to how the optimate and patrician oligarchy was continuing to do business as usual until the republic's final years. Gruen covers every aspect of Roman politics involving each class composing Roman society from patricians to plebeans, foreigners, and slaves. He studies all conceivable social institutions, how they were used by such classes and what their implications were in the broad context.

As with any study of this period, Gruen covers much detail on the development of the First Triumvirate and its principal actors: Crassus, Pompey, and Caesar. He shows how each continued their political aims as usual. It seems that Gruen's argument focuses on how the consequences of enfranchising virtually all of Italy into Roman citizenry after the Social Wars overextended the traditional stability of the nobilitas' oligarchy. Family alliances became fragmented and unstable and splintered the traditional system of rival clientelae to such a degree that it made the effective administration of the republic by the oligarchy impossible. Gruen also doesn't ignore the adverse effects of Rome failing to address the dangers of its professional legions whose allegiances were only to their commanders and not its political institutions.

Altogether a brilliant scholarly work that is indispensible to the study of this most important period of not only Roman History, but of our present history as well. In addition Gruen's work, "Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic" by Allen Mason Ward parallels the dilligent research and analyis on this subject with a stronger emphasis on the First Triumvirate and Marcus Licinius Crassus in particular. I would strongly recommend both books to anyone who has more than a fleeting interest on this subject.

Rating:
Summary: an engrossing description of late republic politics
Review: Gruen's book on the last generation of the Roman Republic is very easy to read and very scholarly, with extensive footnotes and bibliography. The crux of his arguement is that the generation of Caesar, Pompey, et al did not realize that their actions would cause the Republic to end. He cites many examples of senators who did not heel to Caesar, Pompey, or Crassus. In fact, most of the time their political enemies got the better of them. He examines the lists of the magistrates during this time, as well as different court battles. He stresses the factionality of Roman politics without becoming confusing with the different factions. The only problem I have with his premise is that he never really explains why "politics as usual" still contributed to the fall of the Republic and the rise of Augustus. This book is recommended to anyone interested in this time period of Rome who wants to read a different perspective on the events

Rating:
Summary: Last Generation of Republican Rome
Review: Gruen's book on the last generation of the Roman Republic is very easy to read and very scholarly, with extensive footnotes and bibliography. The crux of his arguement is that the generation of Caesar, Pompey, et al did not realize that their actions would cause the Republic to end. He cites many examples of senators who did not heel to Caesar, Pompey, or Crassus. In fact, most of the time their political enemies got the better of them. He examines the lists of the magistrates during this time, as well as different court battles. He stresses the factionality of Roman politics without becoming confusing with the different factions. The only problem I have with his premise is that he never really explains why "politics as usual" still contributed to the fall of the Republic and the rise of Augustus. This book is recommended to anyone interested in this time period of Rome who wants to read a different perspective on the events

Rating:
Summary: an engrossing description of late republic politics
Review: I'm a mere dilettante in the subject of history, but I found Prof. Gruen's book engrossing. Its prose conveyed a limpid, and therefore very credible, analysis of politics in the roman republic. It is still unclear to me whether Prof. Gruen meant to show that the end of the republic was an inevitable outcome of its political events. In any case, consumers of history who are interested in the late republic should not skip this satisfying work.

Rating:
Summary: It will change forever the way you see the Republic.
Review: This book is probably the most important book to have been written on the history of Republican Rome. If you have serious interest in the subject, you must have it. Having said that, it is not "light reading". Weighing it at just over 500 pages it is an exhaustively researched, densely written work of scholarship and erudition. Yet for all of its density, the style reasonably non-scholarly and it is possible to skim the more difficult passages and still capture the essence of what is being said.

Gruen thesis is that the Republic was not breaking down in its last generation and that there was nothing "inevitable" about what happened even up to the final months preceding the civil wars.

"The Ciceronian era, he writes in his introduction, "will here undergo examination in several different aspects. An unexpected portrait emerges: conventions were tenacious; no cascading slide downhill to destruction is evident; links to the past were more conspicuous than heralds of the future; tradition, not "revolution" predominated."

It should become apparent here that the principal target of this is none other than Ronald Syme whose magisterial work from the 30s, "Roman Revolution" so influenced succeeding generations. It was Syme's view (dubbed a "glib pronouncement" by Gruen in his conclusion) that the city-state was incapable of governing an empire; the imperial holdings had reached such a proportion that government and society required a fundamental overhauling. For Syme the fall of the Republic was inevitable - even desirable.

Gruen tenaciously refutes this view. He canvasses the historical record with an eye for detail that is almost supernatural. There are Chapters on Consular Elections, Legislative Activities, Criminal Trials, The Plebs and the Army, and Discontents and Violence. In each case the evidence is marshalled and often re-interpreted to prove his central thesis - nothing particularly out of the ordinary was happening - at least as far as the Romans were concerned. Gruen believes that we have arrived at our modern view of the period because we are so influenced by the result. "Events," he writes, "tend to be refashioned into a pattern pointing inescapably to the final collapse." Speaking of the year 52, he writes, "Romans would not have described the events of 52 as a breakdown of the Republic." And again, "Hindsight has caused modern obsession with the background of civil war. It has too long clouded perception of a central fact: the remarkable conventionality of Roman behaviour."

Along the way Gruen offers some startling new insights and interpretations. For example, it is widely believed that Caesar could not afford to return to Rome as a "privatus", because he feared he would be immediately prosecuted and eliminated from political life. "That analysis", he writes, "has found its way into virtually every work on the subject, an article of faith unquestioned by the keenest critics." He proceeds to utterly demolish this analysis and in so doing removes one of THE central underpinnings of the thesis that war was inevitable.

Another surprise is the treatment accorded C. Scribonious Curio. Usually considered a stooge of Caesar's, a puppet of the Big Men, Curio emerges from these pages as a brilliant and talented, but reckless, ambitious and perverse man -- a man with entirely his own agenda, to split Caesar off from Pompey; NOT to advance Caesar's cause, but rather his own. It becomes abundantly clear that he unleashed forces larger than himself, forces that he was unable to control, forces that ultimately contributed to the civil war.

At the very least I would urge anyone with even a passing interest in the Republic to read the introduction and the conclusion. They are pithy and lucid and pretty much tell the story. I have been reading about the Republic for much of my adult life. I am sorry that I came upon this work so late. It will change forever the way you see the Republic. And it absolutely MUST be read as a companion to "Roman Revolution".

Rating:
Summary: It will change forever the way you see the Republic.
Review: This book is probably the most important book to have been written on the history of Republican Rome. If you have serious interest in the subject, you must have it. Having said that, it is not "light reading". Weighing it at just over 500 pages it is an exhaustively researched, densely written work of scholarship and erudition. Yet for all of its density, the style reasonably non-scholarly and it is possible to skim the more difficult passages and still capture the essence of what is being said.

Gruen thesis is that the Republic was not breaking down in its last generation and that there was nothing "inevitable" about what happened even up to the final months preceding the civil wars.

"The Ciceronian era, he writes in his introduction, "will here undergo examination in several different aspects. An unexpected portrait emerges: conventions were tenacious; no cascading slide downhill to destruction is evident; links to the past were more conspicuous than heralds of the future; tradition, not "revolution" predominated."

It should become apparent here that the principal target of this is none other than Ronald Syme whose magisterial work from the 30s, "Roman Revolution" so influenced succeeding generations. It was Syme's view (dubbed a "glib pronouncement" by Gruen in his conclusion) that the city-state was incapable of governing an empire; the imperial holdings had reached such a proportion that government and society required a fundamental overhauling. For Syme the fall of the Republic was inevitable - even desirable.

Gruen tenaciously refutes this view. He canvasses the historical record with an eye for detail that is almost supernatural. There are Chapters on Consular Elections, Legislative Activities, Criminal Trials, The Plebs and the Army, and Discontents and Violence. In each case the evidence is marshalled and often re-interpreted to prove his central thesis - nothing particularly out of the ordinary was happening - at least as far as the Romans were concerned. Gruen believes that we have arrived at our modern view of the period because we are so influenced by the result. "Events," he writes, "tend to be refashioned into a pattern pointing inescapably to the final collapse." Speaking of the year 52, he writes, "Romans would not have described the events of 52 as a breakdown of the Republic." And again, "Hindsight has caused modern obsession with the background of civil war. It has too long clouded perception of a central fact: the remarkable conventionality of Roman behaviour."

Along the way Gruen offers some startling new insights and interpretations. For example, it is widely believed that Caesar could not afford to return to Rome as a "privatus", because he feared he would be immediately prosecuted and eliminated from political life. "That analysis", he writes, "has found its way into virtually every work on the subject, an article of faith unquestioned by the keenest critics." He proceeds to utterly demolish this analysis and in so doing removes one of THE central underpinnings of the thesis that war was inevitable.

Another surprise is the treatment accorded C. Scribonious Curio. Usually considered a stooge of Caesar's, a puppet of the Big Men, Curio emerges from these pages as a brilliant and talented, but reckless, ambitious and perverse man -- a man with entirely his own agenda, to split Caesar off from Pompey; NOT to advance Caesar's cause, but rather his own. It becomes abundantly clear that he unleashed forces larger than himself, forces that he was unable to control, forces that ultimately contributed to the civil war.

At the very least I would urge anyone with even a passing interest in the Republic to read the introduction and the conclusion. They are pithy and lucid and pretty much tell the story. I have been reading about the Republic for much of my adult life. I am sorry that I came upon this work so late. It will change forever the way you see the Republic. And it absolutely MUST be read as a companion to "Roman Revolution".

Rating:
Summary: Sweeping revisionism
Review: This impressive history isn't for everyone. In fact, it is targeted to a rather select audience: those with a deep understanding of the Age of Cicero. If you are not intimately familiar with the chronology and the "conventional wisdom" explaining the demise of the Roman Republic much of Gruen's work will be impenetrable and the gravity of his conclusions will be lost.

The author's thesis is simple: all previous secondary histories of the era are contaminated by a heavy reliance on the overblown rhetoric of a few ancient authors and a strong tendency to view the events of the period from the enlightened vantage point of the future. Gruen claims that an objective and dispassionate review of the period with no attempt to divine patterns of demise will show that the 70s, 60s, and 50s BC were largely business as usual. Whereas modern authors have described the last decades of the Republic as leading inexorably to civil war and revolution, Gruen claims that a Roman of that period would not have seen things that way.

Gruen doesn't limit his challenge to the traditional orthodoxy to a few examples. Rather, his revisionism is sweeping in scope. For instance, Gruen argues: 1) what has generally been construed as the moral rot of the last few decades was actually a common theme in Greek and Roman literature not confined to the Age of Cicero; 2) the ruling oligarchy did desperately cling to power as is often argued, but that didn't prevent a robust although non-interconnected string of reform legislation from being introduced throughout the period; 3) Republican Rome was dominated by individuals and small groups from its inception and a close review of the electoral returns at all levels show that the last years of the Republic show no major departure from precedent; 4) there is no evidence to suggest that the evaporation of the middle class led to a large and unified disgruntled constituency of urban poor bent on social revolution; 5) the armies of the Late Republic were no more "professional" or beholden to individuals than was usually the case (it should be noted that I found Gruen's evidence in this particular case to be exiguous and far from convincing); 6) Rome's system of imperial administration may have been undeveloped and exploitative, but that does nothing to explain the collapse of the Republic as the provinces stayed loyal to Rome before, during and after the Civil War; and 7) there has been far too much focus on the explanations proffered by Cicero and Sallust, whose work was largely the result of personal gripes and set forth for propaganda purposes. In other words, Gruen addresses and attempts to refute every commonly held belief on the decline and fall of the Republic. In some cases he makes a convincing case (challenging the notion that the Triumvirate utterly dominated the Republic from the 59 BC forward is one good example), while others appear to be more of a stretch (the aforementioned argument of the changing nature of the army is most notable is that regard).

In closing, "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic" is one of the most important and influential scholarly works on the period to appear in the past half-century. However, the book is not without its credible critics. One prime example would be the highly critical review by Michael Crawford ("Hamlet without the Prince" The Journal of Roman Studies Vol. 66 (1976) pp. 214-217), which this reviewer would suggest that all prospective readers consult.

Rating:
Summary: Sweeping revisionism
Review: This impressive history isn't for everyone. In fact, it is targeted to a rather select audience: those with a deep understanding of the Age of Cicero. If you are not intimately familiar with the chronology and the "conventional wisdom" explaining the demise of the Roman Republic much of Gruen's work will be impenetrable and the gravity of his conclusions will be lost.

The author's thesis is simple: all previous secondary histories of the era are contaminated by a heavy reliance on the overblown rhetoric of a few ancient authors and a strong tendency to view the events of the period from the enlightened vantage point of the future. Gruen claims that an objective and dispassionate review of the period with no attempt to divine patterns of demise will show that the 70s, 60s, and 50s BC were largely business as usual. Whereas modern authors have described the last decades of the Republic as leading inexorably to civil war and revolution, Gruen claims that a Roman of that period would not have seen things that way.

Gruen doesn't limit his challenge to the traditional orthodoxy to a few examples. Rather, his revisionism is sweeping in scope. For instance, Gruen argues: 1) what has generally been construed as the moral rot of the last few decades was actually a common theme in Greek and Roman literature not confined to the Age of Cicero; 2) the ruling oligarchy did desperately cling to power as is often argued, but that didn't prevent a robust although non-interconnected string of reform legislation from being introduced throughout the period; 3) Republican Rome was dominated by individuals and small groups from its inception and a close review of the electoral returns at all levels show that the last years of the Republic show no major departure from precedent; 4) there is no evidence to suggest that the evaporation of the middle class led to a large and unified disgruntled constituency of urban poor bent on social revolution; 5) the armies of the Late Republic were no more "professional" or beholden to individuals than was usually the case (it should be noted that I found Gruen's evidence in this particular case to be exiguous and far from convincing); 6) Rome's system of imperial administration may have been undeveloped and exploitative, but that does nothing to explain the collapse of the Republic as the provinces stayed loyal to Rome before, during and after the Civil War; and 7) there has been far too much focus on the explanations proffered by Cicero and Sallust, whose work was largely the result of personal gripes and set forth for propaganda purposes. In other words, Gruen addresses and attempts to refute every commonly held belief on the decline and fall of the Republic. In some cases he makes a convincing case (challenging the notion that the Triumvirate utterly dominated the Republic from the 59 BC forward is one good example), while others appear to be more of a stretch (the aforementioned argument of the changing nature of the army is most notable is that regard).

In closing, "The Last Generation of the Roman Republic" is one of the most important and influential scholarly works on the period to appear in the past half-century. However, the book is not without its credible critics. One prime example would be the highly critical review by Michael Crawford ("Hamlet without the Prince" The Journal of Roman Studies Vol. 66 (1976) pp. 214-217), which this reviewer would suggest that all prospective readers consult.