Brutus and Cassius, the organizers of the conspiracy, expected all Romans to rejoice with them in the rebirth of “freedom.” But to the Roman people the freedom of the governing class had never meant very much; the armies (especially in the west) were attached to Caesar; and the Senate was full of Caesarians at all levels, cowed but biding their time. Mark Antony, the surviving consul, whom Brutus had been too scrupulous to assassinate with his master, gradually gained control of the city and the official machinery, and the “liberators” withdrew to the East. But a challenger for the position of leader of the Caesarians soon appeared in the person of Octavian, Caesar’s son by adoption and now his heir. Though not yet 20, Octavian proved an accomplished politician; he attracted loyalty as a Caesarian while cooperating against Antony with the Senate, which, under Cicero’s vigorous leadership, now turned against the consul. Cicero hoped to fragment and thus defeat the Caesarian party, with the help of Brutus and Cassius, who were making good progress in seizing control of the eastern provinces and armies. In 43 the two consuls (both old Caesarian officers) and Octavian defeated Antony at Mutina, and success seemed imminent. But the consuls died, and Octavian demanded and, by armed force, obtained the consulship; and the armies of Italy, Spain, and Gaul soon showed that they would not fight against one another. Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus (the senior Caesarian with an army) now had themselves appointed “Triumvirs for Settling the Constitution” for five years and secured control of Italy by massive proscriptions and confiscations (Cicero, Antony’s chief enemy, was among the first to die). They then defeated and killed Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (42) and divided the Roman world among themselves, with Lepidus, a weak man accidentally thrust into prominence, getting the smallest share. Octavian, who was to control Italy, met armed opposition from Antony’s brother and wife, but they got no help from Antony and were defeated at Perusia (41). Octavian and Antony sealed their alliance with a marriage compact: Antony married Octavia, Octavian’s sister. Octavian then confronted Pompey’s son Sextus Pompeius, who had seized control of the islands off Italy. After much diplomatic maneuvering (including another meeting with Antony), Octavian attacked and defeated Sextus; when Lepidus tried to reassert himself, Octavian crushed him and stripped him of his office of Triumvir (while with conspicuous piety leaving him the chief pontificate, now an office without power). Octavian now controlled the West and Antony the East, still officially as Triumvirs (their term of office had been extended), even though Lepidus had been eliminated in 36.
Each of the two leaders embarked on campaigns and reorganization in his half—Octavian in Illyricum, Antony particularly on the Parthian frontier. But Antony now married Cleopatra and tried to make Egypt his military and political base. In a war of propaganda, Octavian gradually convinced the western provinces, Italy, and most of the Roman upper class that Antony was sacrificing Roman interests, trying to become a Hellenistic king in Alexandria, and planning to rule the Roman world from there with Cleopatra. In 32, though he now held no legal position, Octavian intimidated most of Antony’s remaining aristocratic friends into joining him, made the whole West swear allegiance to himself, and in 31, as consul, crossed into Greece to attack Antony. On September 2 he defeated Antony and Cleopatra in a naval battle at Actium. Though in itself not a major victory, it was followed by the disintegration of Antony’s forces, and Antony and Cleopatra finally committed suicide in Alexandria (30). E. Badian Richard P. Saller Intellectual life of the Late Republic
The late Roman Republic, despite its turmoil, was a period of remarkable intellectual ferment. Many of the leading political figures were men of serious intellectual interests and literary achievement; foremost among them were Cicero, Caesar, Cato, Pompey, and Varro, all of them senators. The political upheaval itself leavened intellectual life; imperial senators were to look back to the late republic as a time when great political struggles stimulated great oratory, something the more ordered world of the emperors could no longer do.
The seeds of intellectual development had been sown in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries; the flowering came in the last generation of the republic. As late as the 90s bc the Romans still appear relatively unsophisticated. Greek intellectuals were absorbed in debates among themselves, giving only passing nods to Romans by dedicating untechnical works to them. In 92 the censors issued an edict closing down the schools of Latin rhetoric in Rome. Serious students such as Cicero had to go east in the 80s to receive their higher education from leading Greek philosophers and rhetoricians.
The centre of intellectual life began to shift toward the West after the 90s. As a result of the Mithradatic wars, libraries were brought from the East to Italy. The Hellenistic kingdoms, which had provided the patronage for much intellectual activity, were dismantled by Pompey and Octavian, and Greek intellectuals increasingly joined the retinues of great Roman senators such as Pompey. Private Roman houses, especially senatorial villas on the Bay of Naples, became the focus of intellectual life; it was there that libraries were reassembled and Greek teachers kept as dependents.
Roman traditions favoured the development of certain disciplines, creating a pattern that was distinct from the Greek. Disciplines related to the public life of senators prospered—notably oratory, law, and history; certain fields of study were judged fit for diversions in leisure hours, and still others were considered beneath the dignity of an honourable Roman. Areas such as medicine and architecture were left to Greeks and others of lower status, and mathematics and the sciences aroused little interest. Greek slaves especially played an important role in the intellectual life of the late republic, serving in roles as diverse as teachers, copyists of manuscripts, and oral readers to aristocrats.
By the beginning of the imperial era the maturing of Roman intellectual culture was evident. Caesar had commissioned Varro to organize the first public library in Rome, and Greek scholars such as the geographer Strabo moved west to pursue their studies in Rome. Grammar and rhetoric
The education of the Roman elite was dominated by training in language skills, grammar, and rhetoric. The grammatici, who taught grammar and literature, were lower-class and often servile dependents. Nevertheless, they helped to develop a Roman consciousness about “proper” spelling and usage that the elite adopted as a means of setting themselves off from humbler men. This interest in language was expressed in Varro’s work on words and grammar, De Lingua Latina (43?), with its prescriptive tone. Rhetoric, though a discipline of higher status, was still taught mainly by Greeks in Greek. The rhetoricians offered rules for composition: how to elaborate a speech with ornamentation and, more important, how to organize a work through the dialectical skills of definition and division of the subject matter into analytical categories. The Romans absorbed these instructions so thoroughly that the last generation of the republic produced an equal of the greatest Greek orators in Cicero. The influence on Roman culture of dialectical thinking, instilled through rhetoric, can hardly be overstated; the result was an increasingly disciplined, well-organized habit of thinking. This development can be seen most clearly in the series of agricultural works by Roman authors: whereas Cato’s 2nd-century De agricultura is rambling and disorganized, Varro’s three books on Res rusticae (37), with their division of soils into 99 types, seem excessively organized. Law and history