Law and Justice - Constitutional Crisis at Rome - 13.

1 Catiline
Janux
Transcript
>>>>Dr. Kyle Harper: In our last lesson, we looked at the career of
Tiberius Gracchus,
a great political figure, a reformer in the late Republic, whose career
represented the
beginning of a new phase of crisis in the late Republic. Tiberius
Gracchus perceived
the profound social and economic foundations of the political crisis that
threatened the
stability of the Republic, and his efforts at land reform which would
have limited the
upper end of land ownership on certain important categories of property,
instigated a coup
against him and ended up in his assassination. Blood was spilled in the
streets of Rome,
and it marked the beginning of a new phase of violence when violence was
a possible recourse
for political action within the internal political struggles of Rome. The
career of Tiberius
can be seen as fundamental for two different reasons. One is because the
political tensions
that his reform plan caused represented a deep division within the
Republic. One of
the fundamental tenants of republicanism, of the idea of a res publica,
of a public
thing, a commonwealth, is the ability of society as a whole to share a
common interest and
when there are differences within the society especially divisions of
wealth between the
extremely wealthy and the extremely poor to the extent that different
elements of society
don't share a common interest, it breaks down the consensus politics that
republicanism
requires. The second reason why Tiberius' career was such an ominous
beginning for a
new part of Roman history is because he was an innovator. The Roman
Constitution was an
unwritten constitution. And this is fundamentally different from our
conception of constitutionalism
today, because especially if you're an American you're accustomed to the
idea of a constitution
being a document. You can go see the U.S. Constitution in the National
Archives. You
can look it up on Google. It's a text that we can look at and refer to as
the highest
kind of law of the land, and when we think of constitutional law as this
higher level,
this higher order of lawmaking--rules for making rules as we said in an
earlier lesson,
we think of that in terms of a specific concrete text. But it's not the
case in the context

of the Roman Republic. There is no written constitution. The constitution

is the order
of society. It's the order of political life and in the Roman case it's
unwritten a body
of powers, traditions, and rituals that have authority, that have
legitimacy within this
society and the reforms the political efforts of Tiberius are dangerous
within that context
precisely because they innovate. He breaks precedent. He's willing to
have one of his
colleagues one of his fellow Tribunes thrown out of office. He runs for
reelection. He's
willing to break new ground, and within an unwritten constitution
unprecedented acts
are themselves a sort of dangerous precedent. They lead to even larger
political innovations,
and the death of Tiberius was a traumatic event. It rattled Roman
society, and his supporters
were distraught and infuriated at those who had carried out the coup, and
those who had
killed him hardened in their positions. They believe that they had killed
a man with kingly
ambitions who with intent on destroying the Republic itself. The Republic
was born in
an act of violence, Brutus' overthrow of the last king Tarquin and his
oath never to live
under a monarchy again, and the assassins of Tiberius Gracchus believe
that they acted
in that tradition. That they, their violence was legitimate that it
protected the state
against a would-be tyrant. And after the death of Tiberius these
different social divisions
harden into concrete factions that will vie with each other for supremacy
of the Roman
state for the next hundred years. Only 10 years after at the death of
Tiberius his brother,
Gaius Gracchus, again ran for office on a campaign of land reform. To try
and restore
the foundation of the Republic by distributing land to small farmers
especially to veterans
and to reestablish the ideal of the citizen-soldier-farmer that was the
foundation of the Republic. But
Gaius' career in 123 was to meet the same end as Tiberius. The
aristocratic factions
around the Senate again feared that Gaius aimed at more than simply
social reform, that
he would ride a wave of populist fervor into the kingly office himself.
And so Gaius again
was executed. There was an important difference though, between the
deaths of Tiberius in
133 and Gaius in 123, and the fundamental difference was that Tiberius
was killed in
an act of open mob violence that was completely unsanctioned by law. The
death of Gaius was

actually somewhat different, because the consul in 123 had the Senate had
the body of senators
pass a resolution, a new kind of resolution. So again we see political
innovation breaking
with precedent. The consul in 123 had the Senate decree an emergency
decree, what was
called the senatus consulte ultimatum, the ultimate decree of the Senate.
We can think
of it as an emergency decree that invested the console with exceptional
extraconstitutional
powers to act to preserve the safety of the Republic, and in 123 Gaius
Gracchus was killed
under the legal authority of this senatorial resolution, such as it was.
And this again
represented a new way of innovating, but a way of bringing violence into
the heart of
Roman politics. After the death of Gaius in 123 the two factions in Roman
politics, the
senatorial faction the optimates, and the common faction the populares
would vie for
supremacy of state. Over the next decade Rome would be racked by
political tension and violence,
even civil war. Civil wars that would carry across Italy, civil wars that
would spill
over into slave revolts like the revolt of Spartacus, civil wars that
would result in
dictatorships and re-foundings of the Roman political order. But through
it all, the idea
of the Republic managed to survive. But Rome was constantly harassed by
the threat of violence
and war, and it was in that context of uneasy peace in 64 that a
political campaign between
a radical populist named Catiline and a more moderate conservative
faction who put forward
a candidate named Cicero once again brought to bear these profound
tensions within the
social and economic order, between those with great wealth and those who
lacked land, would
bring it again into the heart of Roman politics and threatened to tear
apart the very fabric
of the Roman state.
MeasureMeasure
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