Over the centuries, many clans had faded away almost completely. The Julians, for instance, had found that descent from Venus did little to help them in reaching the consulship: only twice in two hundred years did they win the ultimate prize. Nor was it only their political stock that had gone down in the world. Far from the rarefied heights of the Palatine, stuck in one of the valleys where the poor seethed and stank, they had seen their neighbourhood gradually decline into a slum. What was once the small village of Subura had become the most notorious district in Rome. Like a stately ship taking in water, the lineaments of the Julian mansion had been submerged behind brothels, taverns and even – most shocking of all – a synagogue.
Privileges of birth, then, guaranteed nothing in Rome. The fact that the descendants of a goddess might find themselves living in a red-light district ensured that it was not only the very poor who dreaded the consequences of failure. At every social level the life of a citizen was a gruelling struggle to emulate – and, if possible, surpass – the achievements of his ancestors. In practice as well as principle the Republic was savagely meritocratic. Indeed, this, to the Romans, was what liberty meant. It appeared self-evident to them that the entire course of their history had been an evolution away from slavery, towards a freedom based on the dynamics of perpetual competition. The proof of the superiority of this model of society lay in its trouncing of every conceivable alternative. The Romans knew that had they remained the slaves of a monarch, or of a self-perpetuating clique of aristocrats, they would never have succeeded in conquering the world. ‘It is almost beyond belief how great the Republic’s achievements were once the people had gained their liberty, such was the longing for glory which it lit in every man’s heart.’16 Even the crustiest patrician had to acknowledge this. The upper classes may have sniffed at the plebs as an unwashed rabble, but it was still possible for them to idealise an abstract – and therefore safely odourless – Roman people.
Hypocrisy of this kind virtually defined the Republic – not a byproduct of the constitution but its very essence. The Romans judged their political system by asking not whether it made sense but whether it worked. Only if an aspect of their government had proven to be inefficient, or unjust, would they abolish it. Otherwise, they would no more have contemplated streamlining their constitution than they would have been prepared to flatten Rome and build her again from scratch. As a result, the Republic was as full of discrepancies and contradictions as the fabric of the city, a muddle of accretions patched together over many centuries. Just as the Roman streets formed a labyrinth, so the byways that a citizen had to negotiate throughout his public life were confusing, occluded and full of dead ends. Yet they had to be followed. For all the ruthlessness of competition in the Republic, it was structured by rules as complex and fluid as they were inviolable. To master them was a lifetime’s work. As well as talent and application, this required contacts, money and free time. The consequence was yet further paradox: meritocracy, real and relentless as it was, nevertheless served to perpetuate a society in which only the rich could afford to devote themselves to a political career. Individuals might rise to greatness, ancient families might decline, yet through it all the faith in hierarchy endured unchanging.
For those at the bottom of the heap, this resulted in painful ambivalences. Legally, the powers of the Roman people were almost limitless: through a variety of institutions they could vote for magistrates, promulgate laws, and commit Rome to war. Yet the constitution was a hall of mirrors. Alter the angle of inspection, and popular sovereignty might easily take on the appearance of something very different. Foreigners were not alone in being puzzled by this shape-shifting quality of the Republic: ‘the Romans themselves’, a Greek analyst observed, ‘find it impossible to state for sure whether the system is an aristocracy, a democracy, or a monarchy’.17
It was not that the people’s powers were illusory: even the grandest candidates for magistracies made efforts to court the voters and felt not the slightest embarrassment in doing so. Competitive elections were crucial to the self-image as well as the functioning of the Republic.
It is the privilege of a free people, and particularly of this great free people of Rome, whose conquests have established a world-wide empire, that it can give or withhold its vote for anyone, standing for any office. Those of us who are storm-tossed on the waves of popular opinion must devote ourselves to the will of the people, massage it, nurture it, try to keep it happy when it seems to turn against us. If we don’t care for the honours which the people have at their disposal, then obviously there is no need to put ourselves at the service of their interests – but if political rewards are indeed our goal, then we should never tire of courting the voters.
18
The people mattered – and, what is more, they knew that they mattered. Just like any electorate, they delighted in making candidates for their favours sweat. In the Republic ‘there was nothing more fickle than the masses, nothing more impenetrable than the people’s wishes, nothing more likely to baffle expectation than the entire system of voting’.19 Yet if there was much that was unpredictable about Roman politics, there was more about it that was eminently predictable. Yes, the people had their votes, but only the rich had any hope of winning office,* and not even wealth on its own was necessarily sufficient to obtain success for a candidate. The Roman character had a strong streak of snobbery: effectively, citizens preferred to vote for families with strong brand recognition, electing son after father after grandfather to the great magistracies of state, indulging the nobility’s dynastic pretensions with a numbing regularity. Certainly, a Roman did not have to be a member of the ruling classes to share their prejudices. The aim of even the most poverty-stricken citizens was not to change society, but to do better out of it. Inequality was the price that citizens of the Republic willingly paid for their sense of community. The class-based agitation that had brought the plebeians their equality with the patricians was a thing of the long-vanished past – not merely impossible, but almost impossible to conceive.
That this was the case reflected an irony typical of the Republic. In the very hour of their triumph the plebeians had destroyed themselves as a revolutionary movement. In 367 BC, with the abolition of legal restrictions on their advancement, wealthy plebeians had lost all incentive to side with the poor. High-achieving plebeian families had instead devoted themselves to more profitable activities, such as monopolising the consulship and buying up the Palatine. After two and a half centuries of power they had ended up like the pigs in Animal Farm, indistinguishable from their former oppressors. Indeed, in certain respects, they had come to hold the whiphand. Magistracies originally wrung from the patricians as fruits of the class war now served to boost the careers of ambitious plebeian noblemen. One office in particular, that of the tribunate, presented immense opportunities for grandstanding. Not only did tribunes have the celebrated ‘veto’ over bills they disliked, but they could convene public assemblies to pass bills of their own. Patricians, forbidden from running for plebeian offices, could only watch on in mingled resentment and distaste.