Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T12:47:11.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Political Violence in the Republic of Rome: Nothing New under the Sun

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Abstract

At various times the Roman Republic faced outbreaks of domestic political violence, including riots and intimidation, assassinations and conspiracies to overthrow the government. Violence was particularly noticeable in the Early Republic and the Late Republic. These activities were quite similar to the terrorism and violence used by mobs and groups during the French Revolution and the tactics of fascists and leftists in Europe in the 1920s or 1930s. More accurately, the actions of mobs and others during the French Revolution and leftists and fascists in Europe were very similar to the techniques used in the Roman political system in the last five centuries BCE.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 David C. Rapoport, ‘Religion and Terror: Thugs, Assassins, and Zealots’, in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, New York, St Martin's Press, 1990, pp. 146–57.Google Scholar

2 Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G. A. Williamson, New York, Dorset Press, 1970, p. 147.Google Scholar

3 Rapoport, ‘Religion and Terror’.Google Scholar

4 Martines, Lauro, ‘Political Conflict in the Italian City States’, Government and Opposition, 3: 1 (196768), pp. 6991 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Yves Renouard, The Avignon Papacy: The Popes in Exile, 1305–1403, trans. Denis Bethell, New York, Barnes and Noble, 1970, pp. 17, 28–9. While the papal residence at Avignon later became one issue in the election of rival popes in the Roman Catholic Church, the initial reason for the relocation involved the safety of the pontiff and the need to govern the church free from the threat of violence.

5 Mark Toher, ‘The Tenth Table and the Conflict of the Orders’, in Kurt A. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of Orders, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1986, p. 301.Google Scholar

6 Staveley, E. S., ‘The Significance of the Consular Tribunate’, Journal of Roman Studies, 43 (1953), p. 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Alexander Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering in Rome: A Study in the Political System of the Late Republic, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999, p. 189.Google Scholar

8 Rachel Feig Vishnia, State, Society and Popular Leaders in Mid-Republican Rome 241–167 BC, London, Routledge, 1996, p. 46.Google Scholar

9 Jurgen von Ungern Sternberg, ‘The End of the Conflict of the Orders’, in Raaflaub, Social Struggles in Archaic Rome, p. 374; and Vishnia, State, Society, and Popular Leaders, p. 47.Google Scholar

10 Kurt A. Raaflaub, ‘From Protection and Defense to Offense and Participation: Stages in the Conflict of Orders’, in Raaflaub, Social Struggles in Archaic Rome, p. 219.Google Scholar

11 Africa, Thomas W.,‘Urban Violence in Imperial Rome’,Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2:1(1971),p.12;CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Nippel, ‘Policing Rome’, p. 23.Google Scholar

13 Bauman, R. A., ‘The Suppression of the Bacchanals: Five Questions’, Historia, 39: 3 (1990), pp. 334–48.Google Scholar

14 F. E. Adcock, Roman Political Ideas and Practices, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1959, p. 59.Google Scholar

15 Yakobson, Alexander, ‘ Petitio et Largitio: Popular Participation in the Centuriate Assembly of the Later Republic’, Journal of Roman Studies, 82 (1992), p. 50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Taylor, Lily Ross, ‘Forerunners of the Gracchi’, Journal of Roman Studies, 52: 1/2 (1962), pp. 1927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Frank Frost Abbott, A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions, 3rd edn, New York, Biblo and Tanner, 1963, p. 48; R. Develin, The Practice of Politics at Rome, 366–167 B.C., Collection Latomus 188, Brussels, Latomus, Revue d'Etudes Latines, 1985, p. 314; and D. C. Earl, Tiberius Gracchus: A Study in Politics, Collection Latomus 66, Brussels-Berchem, Latomus, Revue d'Etudes Latines, 1963, p. 44.Google Scholar

18 Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering, p. 195.Google Scholar

19 Africa, ‘Urban Violence’, p. 7; and Sherwin-White, A. N., ‘Violence in Roman Politics’, Journal of Roman Studies, 46: 1/2 (1956), p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering, p. 180.Google Scholar

21 Earl, Tiberius Gracchus, p. 81; W. W. How, ‘Cicero's Ideal in His de Republica’, Journal of Roman Studies, 20 (1930), pp. 24–32; and Arthur Keaveney, Sulla: The Last Republican, London, Croom Helm, 1982, p. 60.Google Scholar

22 Fergus Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic, Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures 22, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1998, p. 136; and Charles Matson Odahl, The Catilinarian Conspiracy, New Haven, CT, College and University Press, 1971, p. 26.Google Scholar

23 Fergus Millar, ‘Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War (150–90 B.C.)’, Journal of Roman Studies, 76 (1986), pp. 10–11, and Millar, The Crowd in Rome, p. 149.Google Scholar

24 Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering, p. 38.Google Scholar

25 Nippel, ‘Policing Rome’, p. 25.Google Scholar

26 Millar, The Crowd in Rome, p. 150.Google Scholar

27 Runciman, W. G., ‘Capitalism without Classes: The Case of Classical Rome’, British Journal of Sociology, 34: 2 (1983), p. 160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Adcock, Roman Political Ideas, p. 65.Google Scholar

29 Franklin L. Ford, Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism, Cambridge, CT, Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 47.Google Scholar

30 E. Badian, ‘Tiberius Gracchus and the Beginning of the Roman Revolution’, in Aufstieg und Niedeergang der romischen Welt: Geschichte und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung, New York, DeGruyter, 1972, pp. 714, 729–30; and H. H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero: A History of Rome from 133 B.C. to A.D. 68, London, Methuen, 1970, pp. 29–30. The surviving sources were generally written by Gracchus' opponents; as a consequence, they emphasize the danger that his reforms posed.Google Scholar

31 Badian, ‘Tiberius Gracchus’, pp. 723–4, and Earl, Tiberius Gracchus, pp. 80–3.Google Scholar

32 Ford, Political Murder, p. 55.Google Scholar

33 Abbott, Roman Political Institutions, pp. 96–7; and Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone, ‘The Background to the Grain Law of Gaius Gracchus’, Journal of Roman Studies, 75 (1985), pp. 20–5.Google Scholar

34 Ford, Political Murder, p. 58.Google Scholar

35 Nippel, ‘Policing Rome’, p. 27.Google Scholar

36 Sherwin-White, ‘Violence in Roman Politics’, pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

37 Ford, Political Murder, p. 60.Google Scholar

38 Keaveney, Sulla, pp. 46–7, 59.Google Scholar

39 Lintott, A. W., ‘Cicero and Milo’, Journal of Roman Studies, 64 (1974), p. 69 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Millar, The Crowd in Rome, p. 182.

40 Millar, The Crowd in Rome, p. 183; and Nippel, ‘Policing Rome’, p. 29.Google Scholar

41 How, ‘Cicero's Ideal’.Google Scholar

42 Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering, p. 165.Google Scholar

43 Odahl, The Catilinarian Conspiracy, p. 79.Google Scholar

44 Cf. ibid.Google Scholar

45 George A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343–1378, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1962, p. 206.Google Scholar

46 David C. Rapoport and Leonard Weinberg, ‘Elections and Violence’, in David C. Rapoport and Leonard Weinberg (eds), The Democratic Experience and Political Violence, London, Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

47 Paddy Griffith, The Art of War of Revolutionary France, 1789–1802, London, Greenhill Books, 1998, pp. 62–3; Colin Lucas, ‘Revolutionary Violence, the People and the Terror’, in Keith Michael Baker, The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture: Volume 4, The Terror, Oxford, Pergamon, 1994, p. 69; and George Rude, The Crowd in the French Revolution, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1959, p. 113.Google Scholar

48 Albert Parry, Terrorism: From Robespierre to Arafat, New York, Vanguard Press, 1976, p. 51.Google Scholar

49 Richard Bessel, ‘Violence as Propaganda: The Role of the Storm Troopers in the Rise of National Socialism’, in Thomas Childers (ed.), The Formation of the Nazi Constituency, 19191933, Totowa, NJ, Barnes & Noble, pp. 133, 138; and Ivan T. Berend, Decades of Crisis: Central and Eastern Europe before World War II, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998, pp. 303, 337.Google Scholar

50 Lucas, ‘Revolutionary Violence’, p. 64; and M. J. Sydenham, The Girondins, Westport, CT, Greenwood Press, 1961, p. 117.Google Scholar

51 Peter H. Merkl, ‘Approaches to Political Violence: The Stormtroopers, 1925–33’, in Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Gerhard Hirschfeld (eds), Social Protest, Violence and Terror in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe, New York, St Martin's Press for the German Historical Institute, 1982, p. 372; and Benjamin Ziemann, ‘Germany after the First World War – A Violent Society? Results and Implications of Recent Research on Weimar Germany’, Journal of European History, 1: 1 (2003), p. 89.Google Scholar

52 Adrian Lyttelton, ‘Fascism and Violence in Post-War Italy: Political Strategy and Social Conflict’, in Mommsen and Hirschfeld, Social Protest, p. 259.Google Scholar

53 James M. Lutz and Brenda J. Lutz, Global Terrorism, London, Routledge, 2004, pp. 40–1; and Mousseau, D. Y., ‘Democratization with Ethnic Divisions: A Source of Conflict?’, Journal of Peace Research, 38: 5 (2001), pp. 547–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 Martha Crenshaw, ‘The Causes of Terrorism’, in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall, 2003, p. 94.Google Scholar

55 Mary Beard and Michael Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic: Problems and Interpretations, 2nd edn, London, Duckworth, 1999, p. 70.Google Scholar

56 Africa, ‘Urban Violence’, pp. 8–9, 12.Google Scholar

57 Martines, ‘Political Conflict’, p. 71.Google Scholar

58 J. R. Hale, Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control, London, Thames and Hudson, 1977, p. 16.Google Scholar

59 Ludwig Jedlicka, ‘The Austrian Heimwehr’, in Walter Laqueur and George L. Mosse (eds), International Fascism, 1920–1945, Journal of Contemporary History 1, New York, Harper and Row, 1966, p. 132; Lyttelton, ‘Fascism and Violence’; p. 261, and Ziemann, ‘Germany after the First World War’, p. 92.Google Scholar

60 Hale, Florence and the Medici, p. 78; and Judith Hook, Siena: A City and Its History, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1979, p. 44.Google Scholar

61 Bessel, ‘Violence as Propaganda’, p. 135.Google Scholar

62 Berend, Decades of Crisis, p. 306.Google Scholar

63 Z. Barbu, ‘Rumania’, in S. J. Woolf (ed.), European Fascism, New York, Vintage Books, 1968, p. 157; and Constantin Iordachi, ‘Charisma, Religion, and Ideology: Romania's Interwar Legion of the Archangel Michael’, in Michael Lampe and Mark Mazower (eds), Ideologies and National Identities: The Case of Twentieth Century Southeastern Europe, Budapest, Central European University Press, 2004, p. 29.Google Scholar

64 Africa, ‘Urban Violence’, p. 7.Google Scholar

65 Marvin Becker, Florence in Transition: Volume I, The Decline of the Commune, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1967, pp. 21, 207.Google Scholar

66 Gerhard Botz, ‘Political Violence, Its Forms and Strategies in the First Austrian Republic’, in Mommsen and Hirschfeld, Social Protest, pp. 306, 318; Jedlicka, ‘The Austrian Heimwehr’, p. 132; Bessel, ‘Violence as Propaganda’, p. 138; and Andreas Wirsching, ‘Political Violence in France and Italy after 1918’, Journal of Modern History, 12: 1 (2003), p. 62.Google Scholar

67 Lyttelton, ‘Fascism and Violence’, p. 267.Google Scholar

68 Earl, Tiberius Gracchus, p. 8.Google Scholar

69 David E. Long, The Anatomy of Terrorism, New York, Free Press, 1990, p. 5; and Gary G. Sick, ‘The Political Underpinnings of Terrorism’, in Kegley, International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls, p. 51.Google Scholar

70 Badey, Thomas J., ‘Defining International Terrorism: A Pragmatic Approach’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 10: 1 (1998), p. 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar