This book makes the case that scholars should pay more attention to ancient claims that the political dissolution of the Roman Republic resulted from a breakdown of morality. Building on scholarship by the likes of Christian Meier, Egon Flaig, and Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp that emphasizes the importance of ideas and shared values in the political culture of the Roman Republic,[1] Belonick identifies a set of moral precepts that fall under the label “restraint values” or “restraint norms,” which he suggests played an essential role in preserving the stability of the Republican system of aristocratic competition for honors. Without insisting on a monocausal explanation for the fall of the Republic, he goes on to argue that the implementation of these rules began to malfunction around the time of the Gracchi, leading ultimately to the collapse of the entire edifice. The thesis is original and has its strong points, but it needs a more thorough fleshing-out to be truly compelling.
The book is divided into two sections, each with its own more-or-less discrete argument. The first part focuses on what might be called the prelapsarian Republic, making the case that codes of deference and self-restraint not only provided a source of prestige for approbation-hungry aristocrats but also inculcated a spirit of cooperation necessary for the survival of the system as a whole. Chapter 1, “Shame, Respect, and Deference,” examines the social regulation of elite behavior with special emphasis on the insights of Robert Kaster regarding the emotional frameworks of pudor and verecundia, which encouraged Roman aristocrats to worry about how their conduct might be perceived by others.[2] Chapter 2, “Moderatio, Modestia, and Temperantia,” provides the carrot to Kaster’s stick, examining the more positive virtues of moderation, humility, and self-restraint, for which a person could receive affirmative praise and be rewarded with honors. Chapter 3, “Setting Norms,” cops to the charge that most of the evidence for the importance of restraint norms in the Early and Middle Republic derives from Livy and other non-contemporaneous accounts. It sets out to overcome this difficulty by surveying the evidence for these values in the works of Plautus, the fragments of Cato, and other early sources. Venturing into more speculative terrain, this chapter also provides a compelling analysis of the importance of restraint as a means of fostering aristocratic cohesion as reflected in the early development of Republican institutions.
Part II shifts gears from what is essentially a synchronic overview of an idealized Republic to a narrative-driven account of the increasingly violent clashes that upended things in the period between 133 and 49 BCE. Chapter 4 offers a detailed micro-history of the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, in which Belonick stresses how competing claims of deference—to different groups within the senate, to one’s fellow magistrates, and to the Roman people—worked on both Tiberius and his rival tribune Octavius throughout their conflict over the agrarian law. Ultimately, “the ingrained values tugged like stretched elastic—then snapped” (95), as Tiberius took the unprecedented step of deposing his recalcitrant colleague. This move led to further escalation, as office holders became increasingly suspicious of one another and thus more willing to resort to extreme (ultimately violent) measures in response to an opponent’s perceived lack of restraint.
The progression of this “pathological feedback loop” (103) is charted in Chapter 5, “Uncertainty,” which carries the story down to the brink of the civil war between Marius and Sulla, the topic of Chapter 6, “Cataclysm.” Chapter 7, “The Lost Generation of the Republic,” the title of which offers a self-conscious nod to (and repudiation of) Erich Gruen’s weighty tome, charts the aftermath of the Sullan terror through portraits of leading historical players (Pompey, Catiline, Crassus, Cato, and Caesar) whose careers were all marked by conflict arising from the push-pull dynamics of ambition and restraint.[3] The story culminates in Chapter 8, “Restraint as Accelerator,” which recasts the dignitatis contentio that led to the crossing of the Rubicon as an irreconcilable dispute about which of the two rivals, Caesar or Pompey, was more unrestrained. The argument throughout this section is not so much that there was any meaningful decline of moral norms during the Late Republic. Rather, Belonick argues that the growing perception of decline ultimately rendered the whole system unworkable, as aristocrats vilified one another for transgressions both real and imagined and constantly struggled to (re)impose restraints on their supposedly degenerate opponents. A short “Epilogue” recapitulates the book’s main arguments, following a brief glimpse ahead to the redeployment of traditional restraint values in the service of a new political order under Augustus’ “restored republic.”
The relative brevity of the text compared with the scope of its arguments provides ample opportunity for the skeptical reader to raise objections. Even on a sympathetic reading, it is difficult to escape the sense that the author is sometimes too eager to shoehorn evidence into readings that support his thesis in ways that downplay or overlook material that might complicate (or even contradict) his version of events. For example, Polybius’ contemporaneous praise for the sophrosyne of Scipio Aemilianus (31.25.2-8) is adduced on two occasions (pp. 46, 54) as proof that self-restraint was linked to political distinction in the mid-second century BCE. But one could just as easily point to the fact that Aemilianus’ example is explicitly contrasted with the dissolute conduct “of the majority” (τῶν πλείστων) of Aemilianus’ peers to raise questions about the extent to which self-restraint was accepted as a normative value at this time.
As noted, discussion of the Middle and Early Republic is hedged by a proper sensitivity to the potential to be misled by the moral preoccupations of later sources. Such caution is harder to come by in the second part of the book, however. Its absence is especially noteworthy in the chapter on Tiberius Gracchus, where heavy reliance on Plutarch’s account should have prompted some acknowledgement of the biographer’s abiding interest in the theme of moderation, as well as consideration of the possibility that Plutarch’s presentation of this tribune’s supposed commitment to collegiality and restraint is informed by the programmatic contrast he draws between Tiberius’ “reasonable and mild” disposition and the “rough and passionate” character of his younger brother Gaius (Plut. Ti. Gracch. 2.4).
The scope of the analysis might also be said to reinforce Belonick’s thesis in disconcerting ways. There is no discussion, for example, of the so-called “struggle of the orders,” as that period of the Republic’s history is conveniently relegated to the status of “legendary times” (83, cf. 119). The reasons for the emergence of the patricio-plebeian nobility (not to mention the institution of the tribunate of the plebs) are described as “mysterious” (68)—no doubt because the existence of genuine political conflict in the Early Republic is considered a priori to be impossible. Moving into the realm of relatively secure history, Livy’s account of political infighting during the early years of the Hannibalic war also receives short shrift, to such an extent that the squabbling of Roman commanders that led to the disaster at Arausio in 105 BCE can be described as “extraordinary” (107), with no acknowledgement of the catastrophic lack of concord between Varro and Paullus in the run-up to Cannae (Liv. 22.38-45). Again, the argument would be more convincing if such issues were addressed head-on.
In keeping with the scholarly idiom of the works with which he is in closest dialogue (Hölkeskamp, et al.), Belonick loads his analysis with terminology borrowed from sociology. There are frequent references to “symbolic capital” (Bourdieu), “face” (Goffman—not acknowledged in the notes or bibliography),[4] the “dritte Instanz” (Simmel), and most of all “habitus” (Bourdieu again). The last of these terms is in fact central to the book’s argument, reappearing in the text every couple of pages. Most importantly, the concept of habitus offers a solution for the apparent paradox whereby Roman aristocrats continued to harp on the need for restraint even as this value appeared to be receding from political life. Belonick glosses the concept thus: “an immersive social context, presumed to be self-evidently correct and that becomes unconscious second nature … and that affected how Roman men thought and acted” (6). I would quibble only with the first element of this definition, insofar as the phrase “social context” is more suggestive of what Bourdieu might have designated as one of the “fields” within which an individual’s habitus (as an arbitrary or culturally prescribed “system of dispositions”) comes into play.[5]
Social contexts do have an important role to play in inculcating habitus, however, and it is precisely in this sense that I wish Belonick had done more to engage with the theory at the heart of his argument. If we want to take seriously the claim that restraint values formed a core element of the habitus of the Roman aristocrat, it is necessary to consider more fully how this habitus was produced and sustained. By focusing exclusively on the operation of restraint values within the field of politics, Belonick leaves a void in the center of his analysis. The formation of an aristocratic habitus began long before one entered the senate, after all. For my own part, I would suggest that it was in the context of the familial domus where one would have first learned to appreciate the value of restraint. Deference to authority was arguably just as important for the position of the paterfamilias with regards to his wife, children, and the enslaved members of his household as it was to that of a Roman magistrate vis-à-vis his colleagues, the senate, and the people. Consideration of the domestic field of social interaction and its impact on aristocratic habitus would also have provided an opportunity to close the loop on the problem of why restraint norms endured for so long even as they began to wane as a discernable feature of political life.
A more significant problem arising from Belonick’s reliance on the concept of habitus centers on the issue of class. This book focuses almost exclusively on the significance of restraint norms from the perspective of elite males of senatorial rank. When the populus enters the discussion, their role is confined to that of an arbiter of intra-elite competition, and it is simply taken for granted that their commitment to the values under consideration mirrored that of the elite. There is, however, no basis on which to posit a common habitus shared among elites and the lower orders in the Roman world. Differences in material resources and prestige, not to mention pedagogical traditions, militate against such an assumption. Here one might turn to a more flexible concept, such as ideology, to bridge the gap, but so far as I can see that word is entirely absent from Belonick’s text. That being the case, perhaps this is another area in which consideration of other social contexts beyond the field of politics might have provided a way to resolve the problem. Specifically, one could argue that the military camp, with its emphasis on strict discipline, provided common ground for the development of a shared commitment to restraint values in the habitus of both nobles and the low-born alike.
Although many of the above comments are couched in terms of criticism, they are offered in a spirit of sympathetic engagement with the provocative and original ideas set forth in this stimulating book. All in all, Belonick has called attention to an important if often overlooked aspect of the political culture of the Roman Republic. His book deserves serious consideration by anyone who works on the period.
Notes
[1] C. Meier, Res publica amissa. Eine Studie zu Verfassung und Geschichte der späten römischen Republik (Weisbaden 1966), E. Flaig, Ritualisierte Politik. Zeichen, Gesten und Herrschaft im Alten Rom (Göttingen 2003), K-J. Hölkeskamp, Reconstructing the Roman Republic: An Ancient Political Culture and Modern Research, trans. H. Heitman-Gordon (Princeton 2010), also C. Lundgreen, Regelkonflikte in der römischen Republik. Geltung und Gewichtung von Normen in politischen Entscheidungsprozessen (Stuttgart 2011).
[2] R. A. Kaster, Emotion Restraint, and Community in Ancient Rome (Oxford 2005).
[3] Cf. E. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley 1974).
[4] E. Goffman, Interaction Ritual (Chicago 1967), 5-45. The term comes in by way of Kaster’s account of restraint emotions, although Kaster himself does not engage deeply with Goffman’s work (op. cit., 153 n. 5).
[5] P. Bourdieu and L. J. D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago 1992), 94-110, 126-7; P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge 1990), 58. See also R. Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu, revised edition (London and New York 2002), chapter 4.