Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

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AmericanChopper

The Republic didn’t fall because it ran out of enemies. It fell because the centre of Roman power was incredibly disconnected from the source of Roman power. The source of Rome’s power came from a small number of people who had extraordinary leadership and military command talents, who were able to win the victories required to expand Roman territory beyond the top half of the Italian peninsula. Yet the senate, responsible for wielding the power won by these generals, were just a bunch of aristocrats and demagogues, who routinely saw Rome’s most competent generals as their greatest threat. This tension exists for the entire republic era, and you could just as easily predict that Romans would have to start “looking inwards for power” after the Pyrrhic War.

The senate had a well established history of turning against its greatest generals by Caesar’s time. You mention the defeat of Carthage, but who defeated Carthage, and what happened to them afterwards? Scipio Africanus did at the Battle of Zama, and he was promptly exiled from Rome afterwards by his political rivals (and was lucky to avoid execution really). It is absolutely no surprise that the Roman republic eventually fell to an extremely competent general leading an extremely loyal army, after having the senate try to take him down a peg.

The major link in the chain that you're missing here is the breakdown in the elaborate series of checks-and-balances that underpinned the Roman Republic. For most of the Republic, the army consisted of a citizen militia commanded by military leaders whose terms measured months at most, not years. Even if they possessed "extraordinary leadership and military command talents," generals never spent years in the field with their soldiers. As Rome got bigger and wars became further-flung, you begin to see people in charge of armies for much longer which allowed them to build up the ironclad loyalty required to lead an army against Rome. Scipio Africanus is an early example, but this sort of thing became much, much more common in the late Republic.

I wholeheartedly disagree that those checks and balances actually did underpin the republic in any way. The senate always attempted the keep them in place, but always abandoned them in a crisis. The first Punic war was won by a dictator of Rome. The only thing that changed over time was the scale of the crises that Rome got itself into.

Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times, and consistently failed any time they were tested during conflict. It’s like how people say Athens never had the position of “dictator”, yet for every significant crisis Athens got into, it found itself ruled by a dictator.

Wasn't the dictator aspect built into their system though? I thought the point was that Rome felt dictators were needed in times of crises. I think the term was 6 months.

Is this analogous to the modern concept of martial law, perhaps, in today's democracies? Including the restrictions placed on them legislatively (albeit few)!

Partially, I'd say. It's been a while since I've read about it, but martial law is a suspension of normal restrictions on police actions. I'm not sure if there are other pieces involved.

A roman dictator on the other hand was anointed by the Senate to "get shit done" until the scourge was over or 6 months, whichever comes first. Normally in Roman times, they tended to shy away from single authority. Even the military was divided between two consuls so that if one got any funny ideas, the other could effectively repel their attack. During a dictatorship though, the anointed would have supreme authority over all things Roman. They could wield armies and the state coffers at their disclosure. This rarely happened and the senate really tried to only anoint people that were worthy of it.

Cincinatti, the capital of Ohio, is actually named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus who famously saved Rome twice. He was farming when he was anointed dictator and was very reluctant to stay in politics unless needed. It's a fantastic story.

There's perhaps some relationship, and of course "martial law" can have a wide variety of definitions under different political contexts, but I think it's worth pointing out that the Roman Republic worked pretty differently to most modern democracies despite some nominal similarities. Most of the executive offices of the Republic were extraordinarily weak by modern standards (and had more checks on them than their modern equivalents). This extended to the dictatorship which was really more akin to appointing a temporary executive with the power to run a single part of the government with fewer (but still some!) checks on their authority for a short period of time.

All western democracies have these features today, and martial law would simply be one way in which they can be used. More broadly they would include basically any “emergency” powers that governments have to suspend ordinary democratic processes. If you look at the way the role of dictator worked in Rome, then most of the world has been run by legally appointed dictators for the past two years. With ordinary legislative processes suspended, public scrutiny and engagement in governance severely drawn back, and with new laws typically being announced via executive authority at press conferences rather than being debated and voted on by representatives. Factually these are what would be described as dictatorships. History is full of examples where dictators have temporarily assumed that level of power for the benefit of the people they’re governing, but the word is such a PR nightmare that no 21st century western dictator would ever accept the label.

I'm glad you brought up the Roman dictatorship, because it's a great example of the way checks and balances worked in the Roman Republic. There were nearly 100 dictators prior to the 2nd century B.C.E. - often appointed in times of crisis - and not a single one attempted to seize control of the state. There are probably a number of factors that led to this (the fact that dictators were only granted their powers within the realm for which they were appointed; the fact that dictators could only last 6 months at maximum; the fact that dictators couldn't legislate; the fact that the tribunes of the plebs were absolutely outside the authority of the dictator; etc. etc.)

> Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times

There weren't any peaceful times. Almost literally. Rome was at war for all but 6 years of the entire Republic.

I don't know that much about the Roman Republic and Empire, but I think your commentary misses a few facts:

The Roman Republic, as a political entity, was able to muster enormous resources relative to its size, and in the midst of calamitious circumstances too. The best example is the Republic raising legion after legion with which to challenge Carthage, and maintaining the loyalty of all of the cities allied to it, after Hannibal's army had defeated it in a string of battles, and finally, killed a significant fraction of its male population at the battle of Cannae.

I assume it was the construction of the Roman government, with its elected leaders, and the political culture of the Roman polity, that viewed the people as the source of all power (as exemplified by SPQR), that inspired this cohesion and loyalty, and it was these qualities that were the primary and ultimate source of its power.

Roman generals in later centuries frequently seized power to become emperors, and this in turn undermined the basis of Roman power, which was a large subsection of the population and fraction of power centers being integrated into the political establishment through elected positions, and consequently having a stake in the success of the state. So the suspicion the elected leaders had towards generals may have been well-founded, and been the reason the elected government maintained power for as long as it did.

I don’t think Rome had a significant resource advantage over its enemies during the second Punic war. Carthage was very wealthy at that stage, benefitting massively from their conquest in Iberia.

It’s also a mistake to say that Rome inspired significant cohesion and loyalty. The only groups that remained loyal to Rome during the second Punic war were the northern Latin cities. Many cities in the south defected to Hannibal, a lot of the Gallic tribes that had peaceful arrangements with Rome took the opportunity to restart aggressions, Macedonia and many Greek states also took the opportunity to start various conflicts with Rome.

The characteristic of the senate that you could credit to some extent was that they would simply never surrender. That seems to be a very strong Roman cultural value during that period. Rome lost every battle it fought in Italy during the second war. After Cannae they had almost no army, and Hannibal took his army to Rome, and Rome refused to surrender, and Hannibal… left. Because he didn’t have the resources to besiege Rome, and Carthage hadn’t managed (and never did manage) to reinforce him. So he spent a around a decade in control of large areas in southern Italy, unable to fully defeat Rome, and Rome unable to evict him from the peninsula, and with no realistic prospect of ever being able to.

And they never did. Scipio Africanus removed Hannibal from Italy by first conquering Carthaginian Iberia, and then launching a campaign in Africa. This caused Carthage to recall Hannibal home, where he was subsequently defeated by Scipio, ending the war.

It’s also worth noting that Scipio’s campaign in Africa was not properly funded by Rome. His army had a large contingent of volunteers, and the campaign was mostly funded by his private supporters.

Had a 5th century Roman emperor refused to surrender, after suffering the losses the Roman Republic did in the Second Punic war, his generals and governors would have defected and seceded, respectively. Especially once that emperor tried to press more men into service after over 100,000 had already been killed by an invading force. The Senate was able to remain in power because of a cohesion that didn't appear to be present in rival states or the Late Roman Empire.

The fractious nature of Senate politics was a consequence of a culture and set of institutions that encouraged and allowed domestic conflicts to be settled within the confines of established political processes, so that the Senate as an institution, while often beset by bitter internal political strife, did not face challenges from external centers of power within Roman society. The power and resiliency that this gave the Senate allowed it to maintain control even when Rome was under extreme stress, like it was in its depopulated state during the Second Punic War when it managed to raise two dozen legions.

>>The only groups that remained loyal to Rome during the second Punic war were the northern Latin cities.

You're correct that there was a lot of defection, but most cities in the Italian peninsula remained loyal to Rome.

Your idea of a cohesive and loyal republic here seems to hinge entirely on the fact that the senate never surrendered, which isn’t nearly as remarkable as you’re making it out to be. Carthage didn’t surrender in the 3rd war either, but they were certainly not a highly cohesive entity at that stage.

During the second Punic war nearly half of the republic defected, and almost all Roman allies turned on them. Including a pro-Carthaginian uprising in Sardinia, and and outright defection of Syracuse to Carthage.

I guess you’re free to interpret things however you want, but “cohesive and loyal” is such an incredibly creative interpretation of the Roman republic during Hannibal’s invasion.

The Senate didn't surrender, and still maintained the loyalty of the wider governing apparatus that collected resources for its campaigns. To be able to raise two dozen legions after the losses suffered in the first three years of the Second Punic War, suggests to me an extraordinary level of social cohesion and stability of government rule.

I believe you are incorrect about the defections as well. One source supporting this notion is Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC", which, by way of Wikipedia, claims:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War#Hannibal_cros...

However, the majority of Rome's allies remained loyal, including many in southern Italy.

Immediately preceding the excerpt you chose to copy:

> Several of the city states in southern Italy allied themselves with Hannibal, or were captured when pro-Carthaginian factions betrayed their defences. These included the large city of Capua and the major port city of Tarentum (modern Taranto). Two of the major Samnite tribes also joined the Carthaginian cause. By 214 BC the bulk of southern Italy had turned against Rome.

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