Nero

[Cassius Loginus]

At the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, I am sympathetic with the pleb's power not with the Senate as the Senate always abused its power in order to gain prestige and wealth of the aristrocrats/senators. Nero's dysfunctional reign won and abused the pleb's political power. For the first time I admit that the Senate were right during Nero's reign that he was going too far with his artistic endeavours and the pleb's power proved to be a sham.

 

How can someone put a sound balance between the Senate and the plebs at this period of time? At the late Republic the Senate had the upperhand at the detriment of the plebs but when the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign, the Empire was a laughing stock of the whole world.

 

Please comment

[Primus Pilus]

At the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, I am sympathetic with the pleb's power not with the Senate as the Senate always abused its power in order to gain prestige and wealth of the aristrocrats/senators. Nero's dysfunctional reign won and abused the pleb's political power. For the first time I admit that the Senate were right during Nero's reign that he was going too far with his artistic endeavours and the pleb's power proved to be a sham.

 

How can someone put a sound balance between the Senate and the plebs at this period of time? At the late Republic the Senate had the upperhand at the detriment of the plebs but when the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign, the Empire was a laughing stock of the whole world.

 

Please comment

 

The Plebs had power long before Nero. The early principate allowed for more commonplace grain doles and public donatives, but this was not an advancement of plebeian rights by any stretch. Much was done to appease the mob and maintain their support, but it was not a process of political empowerment. Plebes were already very much a part of the senatorial and aristocratic processes in the later Republic. What you are talking about is economic class conflict, not the social order of Pleb, Equite, Patrician. I understand what you are getting at regarding the social "commoner" vs. the aristocrat, but that never really changed despite the arrival of the principate. I will grant that many of the princeps seemed to prefer freedmen for their inner circle of advisors more than members of the aristocracy, but this was no great advantage to the plebeian poor. The system of the old Republic remained largely in place regarding political appointments and the like. It was wealthy Plebs (and Patricians), whether Equites or Senators, who continued to hold magistracies, provincial governorships, etc.

 

There were advantages granted to plebs in the principate that were not necessarily always provided in the Republic. Various property rights through colonization and land allotments for retired veterans were more common, etc., and the alimentarius (state charity) system also grew enormously during the imperial period. While this had the obvious intention of aiding the poor, there is a big difference between this (along with the doles, etc.) and actual empowerment.

[caldrail]

Nero remains a controversial figure, and whilst I have to agree he was a loathsome character, he had style. Now its true he regarded himself as an artist and identified himself with Apollo, but then he was carried away with his own importance and lets face it, many people around were perfectly content to let him behave this way. nero enjoyed his power, but he wasn't maliciously cruel to the plebs as some emperors were to be. In fact, the plebs cheered him on by and large. In later times there was a slave who claimed to be Nero (and had a passing resemblance to him). It was very nearly a popular rising.

[ASCLEPIADES]

How can someone put a sound balance between the Senate and the plebs at this period of time? At the late Republic the Senate had the upperhand at the detriment of the plebs but when the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign, the Empire was a laughing stock of the whole world.

Salve, CL.

 

I'm not sure why do you consider "the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign".

 

It would be helpful if you could explain your thesis a little more.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Cassius Loginus]

How can someone put a sound balance between the Senate and the plebs at this period of time? At the late Republic the Senate had the upperhand at the detriment of the plebs but when the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign, the Empire was a laughing stock of the whole world.

Salve, CL.

 

I'm not sure why do you consider "the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign".

 

It would be helpful if you could explain your thesis a little more.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

What I mean is that the plebs were politically superior than the Senate.

 

[caldrail]

The senate wouldn't have thought so. I doubt Nero saw either senate or plebs as superior in any way apart from how entertainment they could afford to give him.

[M. Porcius Cato]

What I mean is that the plebs were politically superior than the Senate.

But this doesn't make any sense either. Plebeians and senators were not mutually exclusive groups. In fact, most senators WERE plebeians. What do you think a plebeian is?

[Cassius Loginus]

What I mean is that the plebs were politically superior than the Senate.

But this doesn't make any sense either. Plebeians and senators were not mutually exclusive groups. In fact, most senators WERE plebeians. What do you think a plebeian is?

 

 

Senators always came from the aristocracy with the exception of Cicero. Plebeians were of the lower class, the mob. When the mob was angry, havoc struck.

[The Augusta]

What I mean is that the plebs were politically superior than the Senate.

But this doesn't make any sense either. Plebeians and senators were not mutually exclusive groups. In fact, most senators WERE plebeians. What do you think a plebeian is?

 

 

Senators always came from the aristocracy with the exception of Cicero. Plebeians were of the lower class, the mob. When the mob was angry, havoc struck.

 

I think MPC has put forward an excellent question here. And here we are getting into the murky waters of terminology once again - as we did in the thread about Julius Caesar being an 'emperor'. I am with MPC on this one. Many consular families were plebeian. Equating plebeian with 'the mob' is erroneous in the extreme. 'The Mob' or 'The Rabble' as the Romans loved to term them, were the proletariat (and now I am guilty of borrowing a modern term myself - but it's to illustrate the point) as a whole - that vast body of people who did not aspire to the duties of magistracy which Cicero put forward in his De Officiis.

 

The statement that 'most senators came from the aristocracy with the exception of Cicero' - is also erroneous. The Junii were a plebeian family, to mention just ONE! The Claudians - those great stalwarts of aristocracy - had their Marcelli branch, which was plebeian, and the Marcelli boasted consulships within the life of Cicero himself.

 

As MPC points out, the line between Patrician and Plebeian was not so clear-cut, and perhaps your interpretation of the term 'plebs', Cassiius, is an understandable confusion of what the Romans themselves meant by 'the rabble'.

[Gaius Octavius]

What did the Romans call the 'rabble'?

[The Augusta]

What did the Romans call the 'rabble'?

 

Now that is an excellent question, GO. I'll go off and do a bit of digging about here, unless anyone can come up with an answer right away.

[ASCLEPIADES]

What did the Romans call the 'rabble'?

 

Now that is an excellent question, GO. I'll go off and do a bit of digging about here, unless anyone can come up with an answer right away.

Salve iterum.

 

The closest terms I was able to find are Popellus(i) and Plebecula(e).

The following is quoted from the not-always-so-egalitarian MT Cicero, Epistolae, Ad Atticum XVI , p. XLII:

 

"Accedit illud, quod illa contionalis hirudo aerarii, misera ac ieiuna plebecula, me ab hoc Magno unice diligi putat, et hercule multa et iucunda consuetudine coniuncti inter nos sumus usque eo, ut nostri isti comissatores coniurationis barbatuli iuvenes illum in sermonibus "Cn. Ciceronem" appellent.

 

Besides, the wretched starveling mob, the blood-sucker of the treasury, imagines me to be high in the favour of Magnus

[Primus Pilus]

Senators always came from the aristocracy with the exception of Cicero. Plebeians were of the lower class, the mob. When the mob was angry, havoc struck.

 

You are confusing some of the social/political structural components of Rome. Cicero was indeed a novus homo (new man) and a plebe (though his father was an equestrian), therefore making him a member of the extended aristocracy (not yet a nobile since Cicero was the first in his family to attain the consulship). Even if you define aristocracy by different terms, Cicero and other Plebeian new men were hardly equivalent to the people of the common mob.

 

Since you use Cicero as an example, it's important to understand that it was Plebeian aristocrats that dominated the senate in his era. There are exceptions of course, one notable patrician being Caesar, but Plebes had held equal if not superior political authority for two hundred years by this point.

 

Simply speaking, while the mob were plebs, so too was the aristocracy. The difference was economic disparity within the same social class, not a struggle between different social classes. These may seem an argument in semantics, but understanding some of these issues will help a great deal in your studies.

 

Cheers!

[ASCLEPIADES]

At the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, I am sympathetic with the pleb's power not with the Senate as the Senate always abused its power in order to gain prestige and wealth of the aristrocrats/senators. Nero's dysfunctional reign won and abused the pleb's political power. For the first time I admit that the Senate were right during Nero's reign that he was going too far with his artistic endeavours and the pleb's power proved to be a sham.

 

How can someone put a sound balance between the Senate and the plebs at this period of time? At the late Republic the Senate had the upperhand at the detriment of the plebs but when the plebs had the upper hand in Nero's reign, the Empire was a laughing stock of the whole world.

 

Please comment

After PP's explanation on the distinction between "plebs" and "mob", your statements still don't make much sense; the only "upper hand" was on the side of the Emperor.

 

The following quotation from GC Tacitus (Annales, Liber I, Cp. II) was still valid during Nero's reign and afterwards:

 

"Augustus won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees, while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws. He was wholly unopposed, for the boldest spirits had fallen in battle, or in the proscription, while the remaining nobles, the readier they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion, so that, aggrandised by revolution, they preferred the safety of the present to the dangerous past."

[caldrail]

What I mean is that the plebs were politically superior than the Senate.

But this doesn't make any sense either. Plebeians and senators were not mutually exclusive groups. In fact, most senators WERE plebeians. What do you think a plebeian is?

 

 

Senators always came from the aristocracy with the exception of Cicero. Plebeians were of the lower class, the mob. When the mob was angry, havoc struck.

 

Senators came from those who were wealthy. The aristocracy is a mis-applied term because membership of the senate was on the basis of how much cash you had, not who your father was, although I accept that people being people a senators son got preferential consideration, itself something very roman.

 

Whether or not the origin of a family was plebian is immaterial. What mattered was which social class you belonged to. You were either senatorial or not. Notice how much scorn is poured on Octavian for his families humble origins. I really do not believe that a roman senator regarded himself as a pleb.