Power To The Poor

[M. Porcius Cato]

Good point, however you should note that nobiles without money (such as Sulla, Caesar, Catillina) had some difficulty reaching the higher offices.

 

Yes, but it wasn't a cakewalk for nobiles with money either -- with a name like Licinius and enough money to field an army, Crassus sure got some stiff competition from that provincial named Pompey.

[sylla]

I simply can't understand what would you require to consider any regime as a plutocracy; from Merriam-Webster:

1 : government by the wealthy

2 : a controlling class of the wealthy

The Roman Republican nobiles widely fitted both acceptations.

Did they? Seems to me that there were plenty of nobiles that--far from being wealthy--were saddled with so much debt that it would take the wealth of a whole nation (*cough* Gaul! *cough*) to pay it off.

Good point, however you should note that nobiles without money (such as Sulla, Caesar, Catillina) had some difficulty reaching the higher offices.

Yes, but it wasn't a cakewalk for nobiles with money either -- with a name like Licinius and enough money to field an army, Crassus sure got some stiff competition from that provincial named Pompey.

Sulla, Caesar and Catilina were excellent examples of troubled plutocrats; even so, as far as we know, they were never poor and they never had to work for their daily living as regular Roman proletarians did (or any of us, BTW).

 

Roman electoral campaigns were simply so fantastically expensive (elephants and other exotic animals included) that even the most opulent nobiles may eventually get broken; no matter how well supplied they might have been, they could always spent more than they had.

 

For the beginnings of their respective cursus honorum, the not-so-wealthy nobiles systematically required sponsors; his first wife for Sulla, Sulla himself for Catilina and no less than Crassus for Caesar.

 

BTW, the provincial Pompey was filthy rich form the very beginning, with enough money to field a couple of legions on his own.

 

We know that because the Roman biographers (eg, Plutarch) were rather well aware of the huge economic resources required and they regularly tried to follow the path of the money.

 

For the record, the answer for MPC's question ("Did they?") is definitively "yes, they did"; within this single post we have more than enough evidence of the huge economic requirements for the Roman Republican electoral campaigns. No blue-collar worker could have ever became even a questor without either a wealthy sponsor or suddenly becoming rich by inheritance and/or military spoiling; period.

 

I have not been able to identify so far any single hereditary nobile that may have been a blue-collar worker across or immediately previous any successful electoral campaign; in fact, not even any novus homo either (obviously, military command was definitively no blue-collar work).

 

If you are aware of any bona fide example, just name your primary source(s) so we might be able to check out the evidence; thanks in advance.

Edited July 19, 2009 by sylla

[Kosmo]

The fact that the poor did not gain high office does not mean that they were powerless or that only the rich got elected.

There was a huge amount of prejudice against "blue-collars" in all societies but modern and speaking of their access to power it's anachronistic.

Having a good education was highly important in Rome and that did not meant only reading and writing but knowing greek and rhetoric as well and education was not cheap. We see this thing in many modern democracies as well with a sort of monopoly on power in some countries by people graduated from Ivy League, Oxbridge or ENA.

Some wealth was necessary for a political career as was the case in most republics in history. And as usual political power was the base of wealth.

There are many examples of roman politicians that were not very wealthy in the beginning but gain power and wealth during their political career. Cicero came from a family of provincial equites and his lawyer skills made him among the most powerful people of his day.

[Ingsoc]

The fact that the poor did not gain high office does not mean that they were powerless or that only the rich got elected.

There was a huge amount of prejudice against "blue-collars" in all societies but modern and speaking of their access to power it's anachronistic.

Having a good education was highly important in Rome and that did not meant only reading and writing but knowing greek and rhetoric as well and education was not cheap. We see this thing in many modern democracies as well with a sort of monopoly on power in some countries by people graduated from Ivy League, Oxbridge or ENA.

Some wealth was necessary for a political career as was the case in most republics in history. And as usual political power was the base of wealth.

There are many examples of roman politicians that were not very wealthy in the beginning but gain power and wealth during their political career. Cicero came from a family of provincial equites and his lawyer skills made him among the most powerful people of his day.

 

The ordo equester weren't blue collar workers, far from it they were rich as much (and in many time more) than Senators. The fact that "New Men" like Cicero came from the Italian cities and had no ancestors in the Senate doesn't mean they were poor either.

[sylla]

The fact that the poor did not gain high office does not mean ... that only the rich got elected.

Really? Because that seems like a full contradiction.

There was a huge amount of prejudice against "blue-collars" in all societies but modern and speaking of their access to power it's anachronistic.

Why "anachronistic"? For one, at least in some Hellenic poleis blue-collar (without quotation marks) workers had indeed access to elected magistratures (or if you prefer, manual workers).

Having a good education was highly important in Rome and that did not meant only reading and writing but knowing greek and rhetoric as well and education was not cheap. We see this thing in many modern democracies as well with a sort of monopoly on power in some countries by people graduated from Ivy League, Oxbridge or ENA.

Education was certainly not cheap; however, it was not an absolute requirement. As previously stated, huge amounts of money were required essentially for electoral promotion.

We see this thing in many modern democracies as well with a sort of monopoly on power in some countries by people graduated from Ivy League, Oxbridge or ENA.

Democracy and plutocracy are certainly not mutually exclusive. However, it's hard to find any modern equivalent for the Roman Republican nobiles, ie an almost entirely hereditary aristocracy with almost absolute monopoly of magistratures who never have to engage in manual or professional work of any kind for their daily living, as they were completely reserved for military and political activities (rhetorics included).

Some wealth was necessary for a political career as was the case in most republics in history. And as usual political power was the base of wealth.

Indeed; it is the degree of high dependence on economic resources in extremely unequal societies which let us define plutocracies. In fact, it's hard to imagine any better example than ancient Rome, either Republican or Imperial.

There are many examples of roman politicians that were not very wealthy in the beginning but gain power and wealth during their political career.

As previously stated, only if they were sponsored by a rich patron or if they became suddenly rich by inheritance or military spoiling. Besides, that, you haven't been able so far to point any single example; that might be because you have not been able to found any after an extensive search and/or because it is easier to make unsourced general statements.

Cicero came from a family of provincial equites and his lawyer skills made him among the most powerful people of his day.

As Ingsoc rightly pointed, MT Cicero was born rich, even if not in Rome. Edited July 19, 2009 by sylla

[M. Porcius Cato]

it's hard to find any modern equivalent for the Roman Republican nobiles, ie an almost entirely hereditary aristocracy with almost absolute monopoly of magistratures who never have to engage in manual or professional work of any kind for their daily living, as they were completely reserved for military and political activities (rhetorics included).

 

Let's be clear about our terms, shall we? All nobiles were descended from those who had previously attained high-ranking office (e.g., consul or praetor). Did the nobiles form "an almost entirely hereditary aristocracy with almost absolute monopoly of magistratures [sic]"? They certainly did not.

 

Unlike the inherited titles of the ancien regime of France (where whole families were ennobled) or the hereditary peers of England (where only individuals were ennobled), the nobiles of the Roman republic were not granted any magistracy without the vote of the people, and the nobiles had to compete with each other as well as with new men for these votes. With the number of offices strictly limited and the number of nobiles potentially increasing exponentially from the birth of the republic, math dictates that the vast majority of nobiles would never be heard from again, never attaining any magistracy whatever, let alone achieving the rank voted to their ancestors. Thus, unlike the way the House of Lords used to operate, the Roman senate was almost always utterly bereft of the eldest sons of its most illustrious nobiles, often with centuries passing before an old noble name popped up again in the senate. Don't let the Cornelii and Fabii fool you -- for every Cornelius, there was another Larcius, Menenius, Aebutius, and Pinarius shaking his head at the downfall of his family's fortune.

 

Not only were nobiles crowding each other out of the senate, so too were non-nobiles. Between men whose families had never held any senatorial rank whatever (the prototypic new man) and men whose families had contributed consuls (the prototypic nobile), there were men hailing from families whose members had never risen above quaestor, aedile, tribune, and praetor. Between 78-49 BCE, 7 non-nobiles held the consulship (11.5%), 91 non-nobiles held the praetorship (51% of known praetors), 27 non-nobiles held the aedileship (56.25% of known aediles), 80 non-nobiles held the tribuneship (71% of known tribunes), and 154 non-nobiles were ordinary senators (77% of known pedarii). Thus, after Sulla, the majority of magistracies were held by non-nobiles. (Before Sulla, I don't think we have enough names to do a similar statistical analysis, but I'd be happy to be corrected.) Now what kind of hereditary aristocracy is it where the majority of offices aren't even held by the 'aristocrats'??

 

Now what about the way magistrates earned their living? It's almost certainly true that the majority of them weren't wage-earning manual laborers, but so what? I'm sure the majority of them weren't computer programmers either, which is about as relevant -- the fact is that wage-earning manual labor was not the most common way to make a living. For most of the history of the republic, senators were drawn from property-owners who earned their money in agricultural goods, rents, and the like. Some of these senators (like Cato the Elder) had grown up working in their fields with their family slaves before going off to risk their necks in war. Others, like Cicero, came from families that washed clothes in urine. Maybe farming and piss-washing isn't "blue collar" enough for you, Sylla, because Cato and Cicero had other talents as well (gods forbid!), but the notion that magistracies were inherited by a bunch of soft plutocrats is just wrong.

[sylla]

Unlike the inherited titles of the ancien regime of France (where whole families were ennobled) or the hereditary peers of England (where only individuals were ennobled), the nobiles of the Roman republic were not granted any magistracy without the vote of the people, and the nobiles had to compete with each other as well as with new men for these votes.

That Edited July 19, 2009 by sylla

[sylla]

Sorry, I entirely missed your post.

What about the equestrian order? Did not the ordo equestris include EVERYONE with the required census (viz 400,000 sestertii) WHO WAS NOT A SENATOR - that is everybody the censors had not added to the list of senators? Including both those individuals assigned to the 18 equestrian centuries (those who held the equo publico) AND those with the required census in the centuries of the first class?

The inclusion of the Roman citizens in the equestrian order was an official appointment; money was an absolute requirement but not enough by itself.

What about the equestrian order? Also including the sons of senators who were not old enough or distinguished enough to have been added to the senate - like Pompey?

If those senators (or their sons) had ascendants of consular rank (as was the case for Pompey), they were nobiles by definition.

And could not a patrician who had fallen on bad economic times (like the young Sulla) fall out of the equestrian order completely and be registered in the capiti censi

They couldn't fall out, because they were never in; patricians were nobiles by definition, even on bad economic times; that was presumably the most relevant of their residual prerogatives (the Jus Imaginum).

And wasn't everybody who was not a member of the 22 or so surviving patrician clans (regardless of their economic or social status) a plebian?

They were indeed by definition, as long as we are talking here about true Roman citizens.

Oh, and the real working poor (the industrial population of the city of Rome may have had more influence on politics than has generally been assumed if you believe Fergus Millar's "The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic".

That's a big "IF".

The issue is too extensive and it would require an additional thread.

 

By now, let just say the Roman Republic undoubtedly had prominent democratic features, especially the obvious fact that the Nobiles wasted immense amounts of money, effort and sometimes even personal risk to court the votes of the mob.

 

However, the Roman popular vote was hardly representative as compared with any regular definition for democracy, modern or ancient (ie, one citizen = one vote); contrary to Millar statements, an extreme social stratification was forever evident: the urban voters had only 4 of 35 tribal votes and were always outnumbered by the rural voters, no matter how few voted in each rural tribe; the latter were easily controlled by the wealthy ladowners (ie, nobiles and equestrians).

The former applied to the Comitia Tributa; the Comitia Centuriata (for the election of the superior magistrates) was more complex, but it was equally biased in favor of the wealthier classes.

 

That indirect voting system was applied to both the designation of elective magistrates and the legislative decisions of the popular assemblies.

In modern terms, Cuba may be arguably as democratic and representative as Republican Rome at its best moment (or maybe even more).

 

And we have still not even considered the obvious geographical restraints (voters could only vote in Rome, excluding most provincials and soldiers) and the effect of ambitus.

The purported independent legislative capabilities of the comitia centuriata were essentially theoretical at best and almost never verified in practice by our available sources.

In fact, the fate of Tiberius Gracchus and his men in 133 BC is our best evidence for what happened when radical popular politicians believed that such theory was for real.

Edited July 21, 2009 by sylla