Article Summary

An increasingly familiar analysis begins with a vague tale involving rising dissatisfaction with elites, spiralling inequality, and growing political instability. The “twist” is that this describes not a modern Western society, but republican Rome. These comparisons often tend to be shallow, and therefore potentially misleading; is there anything to be learned from them? To answer this question, I turned to the book Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny by Edward J. Watts.

The key lessons I took from Watt’s narrative could be summarised as follows.

First, the high degree of social cohesion in early Roman Republic — the critical advantage that helped them defeat their rivals — was the result of the main source of prestige being not wealth but honours, which were completely controlled by the Republic. Elites competed for such honours by providing services to the state, thereby channelling ambition into pro-social causes. Such a system was probably possible for two reasons. First, the elite was generally small and completely based in the city of Rome. Second, it was composed of wealthy landowners among whom there was little variation in wealth. These two factors taken together probably meant that the only way to rise in status was to obtain the honours granted by state service.

Second, once Rome began to expand, wealth began to increase due to the spoils of foreign conquest and later the gains from trade. Such wealth began to make the honours bestowed by the state seem somewhat quaint. But aspirant politicians also began to use this wealth to promote themselves, such as by hosting larger gladiator games. Such self-promotion was then leveraged to win offices. This new channel of self-promotion reduced the ability of the state to first require some pro-social efforts in order to obtain an honour. Before, you could only acquire honours by doing the state some service. Later, you could really only acquire honours by first acquiring wealth.

Once wealth was used to lock-in power, power was used to lock-in wealth. This positive feedback loop eventually incurred a populist backlash, the energies of which were used by successive politicians to undermine the system, to introduce dynastic politics, and eventually to establish an autocracy.

For a political system to avoid the descent into demagoguery, it needs to prevent a positive feedback loop forming between wealth and power. While the strength of that feedback loop varies across the West, it still seems to pose difficulties in many countries. Eliminating it either requires a reduction of inequality, or else creating a mechanism to prevent people from using wealth to influence the rules and processes regarding the selection of political elites.

But breaking this loop alone cannot create a cohesive society. For that, a social reward along the lines of the Roman honours system could be useful. In the below essay, I speculate about some ideas for how this idea could be implemented in a modern society. It involves creating a bottom-up selection process in small groups. Safeguards against nepotism or dominance by the wealthy could be overseen by a group that has no monetary wealth and/or children, as such a group would not have the ability and/or incentive to favour their children.

To understand how I came to take these lessons from the book, read on.

Introduction

The ghost of the Roman Empire looms over any discussion on the fate of societies. In the last decade, the course of events has causes the number of comparisons to rise. Trump tried but failed to be a Caesar-like figure in wielding populist sentiment like a weapon against democratic norms. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, compared the 2015 European migration crisis to the Völkerwanderung that heralded the end of the Western Roman Empire.

But does the story of the very different Roman society actually have lessons for our own? To answer this question, I turned to Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell into Tyranny by Edward J. Watts, Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. It outlines in detail the events that led to Rome transitioning from essentially a highly cohesive aristocracy to the oligarchic autocracy founded by Augustus. The story starts not when Rome was at its most extensive, but when it was most cohesive — for it was this cohesion that enabled the rapid expansion that would come later.

A Demonstration of Roman Social Cohesion

In 280 BC, after the collapse of Alexander the Great’s empire, mainland Italy was invaded by Pyrrhus, a Greek king who aimed to conquer. He won his first encounter with the Romans but at a cost of between one-sixth and one-half of his most highly trained soldiers. Despite being victorious, he could not continue to sustain such losses. Even worse for Pyrrhus, he couldn’t win the allegiance of any significant Roman allies in the south of Italy, and the Romans had no difficulty in replacing any killed or injured soldiers. He therefore needed to negotiate with the Romans.

His strategy for this negotiation included lenient terms and expensive presents. The Romans were initially close to accepting this offer but ultimately rejected it as the humiliation of defeat could have put Roman hegemony over Italy at risk, resulting in more threats in the future.

*An unimpressed Fabricius (left) negotiates with an exasperated Pyrrhus (centre)*

The formidability of the Romans became more apparent in the course of a negotiation over the exchange of prisoners. Noting that the Roman interlocutor, Fabricius, was relatively poor, Pyrrhus decided to offer Fabricius “so much silver and gold that he would be able to surpass all the Romans who are said to be most wealthy.” Fabricius refused the offer and Watts recounts his reply as follows:

Fabricius, we are told, responded to Pyrrhus by informing him that his assumption was incorrect. Though he did not possess great material wealth, Fabricius told Pyrrhus, he did hold the highest offices in the state, he was sent on the most distinguished embassies, he was called upon to publicly express his opinions on the most important issues, and he was praised, envied, and honored for his uprightness. The Roman Republic, he continued, provided everyone who goes into public service with honors more splendid than any possession. It also regularly made an account of the property of Romans and could easily find anyone who had become wealthy dishonorably. What good would it do, Fabricius supposedly concluded, for him to accept gold and silver when this would cost him his honor and reputation? How could he endure a life in which he and his descendants were wealthy but disgraced?

Pyrrhus did not win and eventually left Italy for good. But the above example illustrates an interesting point. Fabricius valued honour over possessions and wealth. And more importantly, wealth could not be used to purchase honour.

Because honour could only be attained by public service, the energies of the most ambitious Romans were channelled towards the common good. According to Watt, “Romans of the third century instead judged each man’s merit by the offices he held, the honors he earned, and whether his achievements equaled those of his ancestors.” This meant that the “Republic dictated what sort of service an individual gave, it determined what sorts of rewards he would receive, and it paid these rewards out in a form of social currency that it alone controlled.”

The system of honour included a series of offices known as the cursus honorum, where at a given age one was eligible to be elected to a certain post only if one had completed a previous position. The first step involved serving 10 years in the military. After this position and on becoming 30 years of age, one was eligible to run for the position of quaestor (thereby becoming deputy to a provincial governor or a financial administrator). This would last for one year. After this and on reaching 36, one could have served as an aedile. After being an aedile or a quaestor, and being at least 39 years old, one could have run to be a praetor.

Quaestors, aediles, and tribunes were all elected by the popular assembly and the concilium plebis. After being a praetor and attaining the age of 42 years old, one could have run for the consul position which was perceived as the peak of a career. Again, this position lasted for one year. Consuls and praetors were both elected by the comitia centuriata, which in practice was dominated by the wealthy.

This system lay within a constitution that seemed to balance the influence of the plebeians and the patricians. Interestingly, it was one where the Senate, made up of former high office holders, only had advisory power in theory but in reality exercised a great deal of informal influence and deference such that little happened without their approval. In a similar discordant fashion, the concilium plebis where the plebeians were represented had a great deal of power in theory — after 287 BC it could unilaterally make laws which bound all Romans — but it rarely exercised this prerogative, partly due to influence from wealthy plebeians.

This divergence between theory and practise would prove to be a vulnerability later on. But initially, the pro-social nature of the elites along with a system that helped build consensus resulted in a constitution which Polybius deemed “irresistible and certain of obtaining whatever it determines to attempt.”

The Roman System under Pressure

But as Polybius also noted, the strengths and weaknesses of a system are truly revealed when crisis strikes. This would occur when the First Punic War with Carthage started in 264 BC.

Roman sphere of influence before the Punic Wars. Source — *Roman sphere of influence before the Punic Wars.* *Source*

The war didn’t start well for the Romans. Faced with repeated naval setbacks and the loss of hundreds of ships due to stormy weather, they could only win by cutting off Carthage’s supply route over sea to Italy. But their treasury was empty, and the people were not willing to pay more taxes to build more ships. The Roman elites stepped in:

Instead, “the ambition (philotimia) and patriotism of the leading men” provided the funds to pay for the fleet. Some backers were individuals, others were teams of a few men, but all paid as much as their means permitted to build and outfit a ship, with the promise that they would be repaid only if the expedition succeeded. Roman elites would gain the glory for this victory and, in 241, they did. The new Roman armada decisively defeated the Carthaginian fleet.

Ultimately the First Punic War ended when Carthage sued for peace in 241 BC, despite the fact that it was far richer than Rome. For Watt, the decisive advantage for Rome came from the fact that its elites completed with each other to provide the greatest service to their home city, for which the city repaid them with honour.

But Carthage wasn’t going to give up so easily, and so came the Second Punic War in 218 BC when the Carthaginians, led by Hannibal, invaded Italy via the Alps. The Romans were slow to recognise this for the challenge it was, resulting in then-consul Flaminius aiming for a quick victory over Hannibal in order to shore up his political authority. The Romans failed to win, losing 15,000 men.

Switching leadership to Fabius Maximus, they then adopted a then-novel strategy of delay and attrition, which worked for a while. After getting tired of this and some even coming to see it as cowardly, the Romans switched back to looking for a quick victory and elected a Consul who promised an end to the strategy of delay. This again resulted in disaster, and Rome itself seemed to be under threat. Reverting back to the strategy of delay, they even shifted towards what Watt called an ancient version of total war as around 70 percent of the citizen population aged 17-60 enrolled in the military.

Political support for this strategy lasted for over a decade. When money ran short, Senators and other wealthy Romans lent money to pay for the war. The coin was devalued.

Carthage finally surrendered in 202 BC, but the war deeply changed Roman politics. The military had expanded dramatically, the monetary system was fundamentally altered, and new command posts were created with longer terms so that strategy could be executed more consistently than one-year terms could allow.

Consequences of the Wars

Aside from the significant institutional changes, two trends proved especially dangerous.

First, population declined due to the ravages of war. The number of male Roman citizens seems to have fallen from around 270,000 in 233 BC to 137,000 in 208 BC. But this meant that there were more opportunities per capita for those who survived: for example, after the war there were numerous economic and agricultural opportunities due to land being confiscated from conquered cities. New colonies were also established in Northern Italy.

Rapid population growth followed in peacetime, with around 328,000 male citizens registered in the first census taken after the war. But growth continued past the point needed to compensate war losses, and ultimately farms were subdivided among sons to the point where holdings were too small to raise a family on. There was thus a relative decline in living standards, and many started moving to the cities.

Second, wealth began to rush into the Republic but was concentrated in the hands of a few. Contracts for new infrastructure projects, such as the gigantic Aqua Marcia, were bid on by and ultimately awarded to Roman elites, who made vast amount of profits.

The wealthiest Romans started to invest in land, industrial properties, money-lending, and trade syndicates. Watt describes the example of Cato the Elder in detail. Along with investing in pastures, forests, and hot springs, he became a regular lender in commercial lending and even circumvented laws designed to prevent senators from getting involved in trade in order to invest in commercial shipping.

Another example was Scipio Africanus, defeater of Hannibal. After the victory, he awarded himself 700,000 denarii, an award which made him the richest person in Rome. In comparison, the monthly wage for a soldier was 10 denarii, and they received a bonus of 40 following the victory.

Scipio used his newfound wealth to boost his public profile by funding games and monuments. This initiated a trend whereby money would become essential to the pursuit of public office. The games funded by magistrates became ever grander. Comparable gladiatorial shows went from having 25 pairs of gladiators in 200 BC to 120 pairs in 183 BC. Feasts became more opulent, temples more numerous, and luxury villas and products began to appear.

The growth of large fortunes was persistent: according to Watt, “Crassus, the richest Roman a little more than a century later, at one point controlled a fortune worth nearly forty times what Scipio possessed.” Unlike that of Scipio’s, it was a paper fortune and therefore more liquid, making it easier to manipulate and grow.

And now we come to what is perhaps the most important part of the book:

The ancestral honors and public offices that a man like Fabricius could proudly claim mattered more than private wealth seemed quaint in this sparkling new Roman world of seaside villas, bronze couches, and overseas conquests. The political structure of the Republic still managed to channel the ambitions of elite Roman men toward offices and honors that only the state could offer. But second-century elites were also becoming increasingly enamored with advertising their wealth and business acumen, areas of achievement over which the Republic had much less control. The Republic’s monopoly on the rewards that leading Romans sought was beginning to loosen. As it did, some of the established families who were falling behind economically became increasingly concerned that they could not compete effectively in this new environment.

Efforts were made to curb the increasing role of money in politics. Secret ballots were introduced to render bribes less effective. Special courts were created to investigate extortion and other abuses of power carried out by Roman governors, in order to prevent them from using the wealth so acquired to influence politics in Rome itself.

The growing role of money probably helped families monopolise power. According to Turchin and Nefedov in Secular Cycles, “the proportion of consuls with consular ascendants increased from 45 percent in 249–220 to 64 percent in 139–110. In other words, the nobles actually tightened their grip on consular power toward the Gracchan period. The same dynamic is observed when looking at consuls with consular fathers: from 30–38 percent before 170 to 58 percent in 139–110.” But at the same time as the number of consuls with consular fathers was increasing, the number of consuls with consular sons was decreasing. This is because the level of intra-elite competition was intensifying: it was harder to get a position, so small advantages such as having a father as consul seem to have become more important. But the higher level of competition also meant that it was harder for someone to ensure that their son became a consul.

Recall that this is happening at the same time that many Italians are getting poorer, moving to the cities, and growing frustrated at the inability of the Republic to control corruption and inequality. That was the cue for the populists.

*The Gracchi – Sculpture by Eugène Guillaume*

Among the populists, Tiberius Gracchus was initially the most prominent. Starting out as a golden child of the establishment, his fortunes turned for the worse when a treaty he negotiated was denounced by the elites. But it was popular among the masses, so he decided to capitalise on this support by proposing a reform to give a land holding to some of the Roman poor. The principle behind this move — redistributing wealth — alarmed his opponents in the Senate, who refused to endorse the proposal.

He reacted by bringing his proposal to the concilium plebis — a large break from tradition which destabilised the constitution by disturbing deliberative checks and balances. It encountered considerable resistance. Leading up to the vote, voting urns disappeared, fanning the flames of anger and leaving the people on the verge of rioting. When his co-tribune Octavius tried to block it, Tiberius pointed out his conflict of interest as a holder of large amounts of public land and encouraged the people to remove him from office. Now that Octavius’s person was no longer sacrosanct (a property attached to being a tribune) an angry mob tried to attack him, from whom be barely escaped. Tiberius was partly responsible for this turn of events:

Tiberius fanned the flames of public anger by encouraging rumors that political opponents had threatened him and poisoned one of his friends. This sometimes led crowds of angry supporters to accompany him through the city. Tiberius’s household attendants physically removed Octavius from the Rostra, and a mob of his supporters threatened to assault Octavius after his removal. Tiberius never ordered or even condoned violence, but he did make regular use of the threat of it.

But as his term was coming to an end, Tiberius began to fear that the violence meted out to others would come back to him. He told his supporters that his enemies would kill him. He thus stood for a second term as tribune, a move that was legal but unprecedented. In the end, a mob led by the pontifex maximus Scipio Nascia went to the assembly where votes were being cast, a riot broke out, and Tiberius was clubbed to death, along with around three hundred other Romans. As Plutarch would later say, this was the “first outbreak of civil strife in Rome that resulted in the bloodshed and murder of citizens since the expulsion of the kings.”

After his death, Tiberius’s land reform was allowed to go through, but this did not stabilise the system. Tiberius’s brother Gaius followed up with an even more radical vision, but he too was killed in 121 BC, along with around three thousand followers, when the Senate authorised the killing without trial of Roman citizens if necessary to defend the Republic.

At this stage in Roman history, we have entered the stage where violence has become a common occurrence.

Once the Gracchi brothers were dead, Roman elites thought that they could keep the population quiet by providing them with the benefits that the Gracchi promised. However, as Watt notes, the appeal of the Gracchi lay in the fact that they were against that establishment — they identified a politically profitable approach of railing against corruption and Senatorial arrogance. This was not something the establishment could co-opt.

In the meanwhile, however, a small group of families consolidated the power they had. Watt cites one author who said that elite consolidation of power induced “unlimited and unrestrained greed that invaded, violated, and devastated everything, respecting nothing and holding nothing sacred.”

Bad religious omens and instances of sexual impropriety involving the Vestal Virgins only amplified Roman discontent – despite the fact that the economy continued to grow and the military continued to mostly win. Large fortunes grew to previously unimaginable levels.

It was inevitable that someone would seek to mobilise and weaponise this discontent — and this would be Gaius Marius (who would later marry Julia, the aunt of Julius Caesar). He particularly targeted the Metelli, one of the families who had entrenched themselves in the Roman power structure. He accused them of prolonging a war to hang on to power, a war that he claimed he would manage more effectively if he were given command. The tribunes put the question to the concilium plebis, who voted overwhelmingly to give command to Marius.

He now needed to raise an army. Fewer Romans were meeting the minimum property qualification for military service, so Marius broke with precedent and recruited from the Roman poor, who were both the most enthusiastic and had most to gain. This would have very significant consequences later on, but in the meanwhile, the move helped Marius win a string of victories, making him Rome’s most prominent politician in the process.

He wanted to keep this position, but he had no reforms to make and others began to outdo him on the populist front. In particular, some of his allies were suspected of fomenting violence that resulted in the death of a tribune in 101 BC. When they were pushing through a new land redistribution law, violence was again used by both sides to stop either voting or the exercise of vetos.

Matters dramatically escalated when an ally of Marius sent a gang to kill the leading candidate for a consul position, in order to get the position himself. This was going too far even for Marius, and the Senate authorised him to use all means to deal with the situation. He arrested his former allies and detained them in the senate house, but then a crowd attacked the building, using rooftiles as projectiles. His former allies died, along with many other officeholders.

In the midst of this volatile political activity, some of the structural problems facing Roman society remained. Rural areas laboured under economic strain. The population of Rome was booming, but instead of building the necessary infrastructure to serve the greater number of residents, Roman politicians preferred to win popular support by creating entitlement programmes, such as the subsidised grain programme initiated by Gaius Gracchus.

In addition, a large proportion of the residents in the city Rome were Italians without Roman citizenship. These people did not have the privileges of Roman citizens, such as the entitlement to grain. Moreover, non-Roman Italian cities lost out on tax revenue when these people migrated to Rome. There was significant resentment of this situation.

It was in this context that a tribune named Drusus wanted to remove a check on senatorial corruption. But as this would only benefit Senators, he needed a popular measure to pair it with to make it acceptable. For this, he decided to found more colonies in Italy for Roman citizens by taking land from non-Roman Italians.

This triggered even more resentment and in an effort to defuse the brewing crisis this caused, he proposed a massive enlargement of Roman citizenship to all Italian allies. But this seemed like capitulation to many Romans, who were loath to dilute the privileges they possessed. The anger was so extreme that he was stabbed to death in 91 BC.

Their hope of compromise gone, most of Central and Southern Italy rebelled in what would be called the Social War. The Romans partly defused the rebellion by embracing Drusus’s proposal and extending citizenship to loyal allies and any individual Italians who asked for it. Some southern resistance remained, but this was gradually worn down by Roman campaigns in which Lucius Cornelius Sulla played a key role. A member of an old but faded patrician family, Sulla’s main skill was that he knew how to manipulate the emotions of soldiers — an increasingly important skill, as we will see.

While the Social War was happening, parts of Greece and much of Asia rebelled, crashing the Roman economy. Sulla was initially given command to take on the main instigator, a king in northern Anatolia called Mithridates. But some of Sulla’s rivals such as Marius did not want him to lead the war, as victory would certainly have propelled Sulla to new levels of wealth and power. A mob controlled by one of them forced Sulla to flee the city, and the command fell to Marius.

But what Sulla lost by violence he was willing to take back by violence, and he had an army under his control that, a few officers aside, was willing to follow him to Rome. Against this force Marius and his allies could mount no serious defence, so Sulla took Rome. According to Watt, what this showed was that “that the sort of armies of poor soldiers that Marius had debuted in the 100s would choose loyalty to their commanders over loyalty to the Republic if the commander was sufficiently inspiring and the material benefits were great enough.”

Sulla’s declared intention was to make the Republic work again. To restrain populist impulses, he limited the power of tribunes, and prevented anyone who held that position from holding another office ever again. They could no longer propose laws. Furthermore, he ordered the execution of those he deemed public enemies, including forty senators and one thousand six hundred equites, whose properties he redistributed to his supporters. Failure in Roman politics was becoming associated with death rather than anonymity or disgrace, and his actions created precedents that would later be used to build an autocracy.

Another bad practice of Sulla was his willingness to bribe his soldiers. He allowed them to attack cities such as Athens and redistribute the resulting plunder among themselves, as a way to ensure their support and his popularity. As a consequence of this, when Sulla’s rivals tried to raise an army to confront him, they could not attract soldiers unless they promised plunder. Their reluctance to do this saw their soldiers defect to Sulla.

After reforming the republic Sulla returned to private life, but his Republic did not return to functionality. The lack of competent tribunes meant that urban populations turned to rioting as a way to express displeasure, such as in 75 BC. And there would be incompetent imitators of Sulla, such as Lepidus.

Moreover, revolts in the periphery such as Spain and Thrace demonstrated that the Republic did not manage to regain the monopoly on violence essential for governance. In fact, in order to prosecute such conflicts, it had to rely upon two warlords: Pompey and Crassus, who had helped bring Sulla to power. Watt notes that if either of them had wanted a civil war, the state would have been unable to stop it.

Pompey was a commander somewhat in the mould of Sulla. For example, when dealing with the revolt in Spain, Pompey in some instances paid the salaries and expenses of his own troops (until a food shortage made it impossible), thereby winning the loyalty of his army.

Crassus in contrast was renowned for his greed. When he took most of the plunder from an Umbrian city during the civil war, Sulla’s opinion of him dropped, and it was even alleged he personally added people to proscription lists in order to get their property. He frequently stated that one was only wealthy if he could fund a legion. As a way to grow his own influence, he often funded those seeking office.

For a while, Pompey and Crassus essentially shared power and worked within the republican framework. This was an unstable equilibrium. People grew jealous of Pompey — a young Julius Caesar even supported giving Pompey a command because he thought it would incite further jealously of Pompey, weakening his position the long term.

Such jealously came to the fore when Pompey was returning from victory in Asia. Some such as Cicero suggested that Pompey would march on Rome. In the end, Pompey disbanded his army — a praiseworthy but ultimately counterproductive move, as it meant that he had no leverage to get the Senate to approve the various settlements he had made in Asia. In addition, the law giving land to his tens of thousands of veterans was neglected. On this and many other issues the system was gridlocked, mainly due to the actions of Cato the Younger.

At around this time Julius Caesar was elected consul. He saw that enough people had been estranged by the gridlock there was an appetite to build a broad coalition of supporters to overcome it — an insight that gave rise to the first triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar.

He used this support to circumvent a gridlocked Senate, appealing directly to the concilium plebis to pass a land redistribution law. Pompey neutralised their opponents’ threats to use violence to block the law.

The new laws generated considerable popularity for Caesar, which he used to obtain a command in Gaul. But while Caesar was away and racking up victories, Crassus died, and Roman politics deteriorated into gang violence. This could only be contained by Pompey who increasingly underwrote the normal functioning of the political system.

The death of Crassus meant that there was no balancing factor to hold back the rivalry between Pompey and Caesar. Pompey for example indicated that he would prevent Caesar becoming consul while the latter was still in command. But Caesar feared that without an army, he could be prosecuted or even assassinated. The Senate passed resolutions asking both Pompey and Caesar to disarm: an unlikely scenario. Instead, Pompey took control of all Italian forces. Ultimately the Senate backed Pompey, and the tribunes loyal to Caesar fled.

Both men had long been preparing for a confrontation. But once Caesar entered Italy from Gaul and crossed the Rubicon, Pompey abandoned Rome for Greece. Initially it seemed that Pompey would win, as his forces outnumbered those of Caesar: twice the infantry and seven times the cavalry. In addition, he won the initial battle outside the city of Dyrrachium.

But Caesar’s forces were more experienced, which resulted in a decisive victory at Pharsalus. Pompey fled to Egypt where he thought he would be protected. Instead, the king had him executed.

The way was now free for Caesar to establish his dominance. This he did through making himself indispensable to his supporters. For example, he promised to partly compensate his veterans with land that he himself would purchase, meaning that he would need to be alive for them to receive recompense. He also distributed some gold and silver out of his own funds to soldiers and other Roman citizens, and funded entertainment and construction. After being elected dictator, he turned the consulship into something that he could award upon those he saw as deserving.

Caesar would later be assassinated, but his assassins could never manage to get the political initiative, mainly because they didn’t have any plan for what to do after he was killed. In addition, it was clear the Caesar’s methods and benefactions had won the affection of the populace.

Three figures would try to jostle to be Caesar’s political heir: Marc Antony, a consul; Lepidus, who was Caesar’s deputy as master of the horse; and the eighteen-year-old Octavian (later Augustus) who was named by Caesar as his legal heir in his will. Even though he had no official position in the state, soldiers loyal to Caesar flocked to Octavian, who in many ways skilfully built up his own public image. Thus began dynastic politics. Antony tried to discredit Octavian by alleging that Octavian was trying to assassinate Antony, a tale which few believed and only prompted Octavian to recruit more soldiers with a hefty bonus.

While Antony and Octavian turned against each other, the Senate also turned against Antony, and even allied with Octavian to defeat him. But after Octavian defeated Antony, the Senate refused to give him credit even as it acknowledged those who did little or no fighting. Matters worsened when the Senate ordered Octavian’s troops to serve under Brutus. As he was one of Caesar’s murderers, the order was of course ignored.

Antony however was not destroyed, and meanwhile had joined forces with Lepidus. The Senate voted Antony a public enemy, but had no army with which to confront him. They tried to ignore Octavian and negotiate directly with his soldiers to enlist their servics, which only had the effect of enraging both them and Octavian. Ultimately, Octavian entered and took control of Rome, becoming consul.

He then joined together with Lepidus and Antony in a second triumvirate, with the common objective of eliminating their mutual rivals Brutus and Cassius, who were plundering the East with the support of nearly a hundred thousand troops. Once this was done, they divided up the provinces among themselves — Africa to Lepidus, Gaul and the East to Antony, and the rest to Octavian.

But the balance of power slowly shifted to Octavian. Lepidus retired to private life after his legions abandoned him for Octavian. Antony had become romantically involved with Cleopatra, which was causing him to make strange decisions like forcing Roman client states such as Judea to give territory to her and then to lease it back. When an invasion of Parthia went catastrophically wrong, it was blamed on his attachment to her: that he left her too late and rushed back to her, thereby neglecting the campaign. It emerged that in his will, he gave bequests to his illegitimate non-Roman children with Cleopatra. As such provisions were illegal under Roman law, his reputation in Italy nosedived.

Antony’s blunders made it easy for Octavian to portray himself as the protector of Roman liberty against the manipulative Cleopatra. He even extracted a personal oath of allegiance from all of Italy to legitimise that role — as Watt notes, a highly unrepublican practise.

Octavian would defeat Antony at sea and would then go on to conquer Egypt itself, taking personal possession of the lands previously owned by the Egyptian royal family which he would use to patronise Roman soldiery and citizenry alike.

After a series of five civil wars, the Roman population were ready to purchase order at the expense of autocracy, a point well understood by Octavian. Now, he was the source of “freedom from fear, freedom from famine, and freedom from danger.” Unrivalled, he designed a new order in which he was central, but which retained a patina of republicanism. The system he built was sufficiently stable that it survived numerous incapable emperors. While it collapsed in the West, it survived in the East until 1453. According to Watt, it was “as close to permanent as any political system in the history of the world.”

Reasons for the Fall of the Republic

The above history indicates that there is some truth to the old view that inequality or immiseration can undermine a constitutional order. The deteriorating living standards of those in the Italian countryside contrasted with the growing affluence of the elites, and the tension generated the political energy for those who wanted to assail and subvert the Republic.

Interestingly, Watt does not really blame the growth in inequality for the fall of the Republic. Rather, he says that:

Rome’s republic could have been saved if Tiberius Gracchus had found a compromise with his opponents in 133 BC, or if Livius Drusus had managed to get Romans to accept his citizenship extension to all Italy, or even if Sulla’s commanders had refused to follow him when he chose to march on Rome in 88 BC. Even at the time of Augustus’s birth in 63 BC, there was a chance that the Republic could still survive.

Furthermore, he also adds:

Rome’s republic, then, died because it was allowed to. Its death was not inevitable. It could have been avoided. Over the course of a century, thousands of average men, talented men, and middling men all willingly undercut the power of the Republic to restrict and channel the ambitions of the individual, doing so in the interest of their own shortsighted gains. Every time Cato misused a political procedure, or Clodius intimidated a political opponent, or a Roman citizen took a bribe in exchange for his vote, they wounded the Republic. And the wounds festered whenever ordinary Romans either supported or refused to condemn men who took such actions. Sulla, Marius, Caesar, and Augustus all inflicted mighty blows on the Republic, but its death was caused as much by the thousands of small injuries inflicted by Romans who did not think it could really die. When citizens take the health and durability of their republic for granted, that republic is at risk.

Watts seems to imply that an admonition to politicians and others not to abuse norms is sufficient. But in politics, demand often creates its own supply; if the system becomes plutocratic and thereby an object of grievance, at some point a politician will profit by championing the excluded and neglected.

A more promising approach lies in preventing such frustration from arising in the first place. This means finding ways to constrain inequality and to reduce or prevent immiseration. How could this have been done in the Roman context?

First, an inheritance tax could have been introduced much earlier (one was eventually introduced by Augustus). They could even have introduced a land-value tax.

Second, generals could have been prevented from appropriating plunder. As we saw in the case of Scipio, such plunder generated massive fortunes. But a side-effect of this was probably also immiseration, as slaves were a significant component of plunder — around 150,000 were captured by Aemilius Paullus after conquering Macedon in 167 BC — and this allowed the development of massive estates by landowners. At the time of Augustus, around 250,000 were sold every year. Without such slave power, the wages and land holdings of poorer Romans would probably have been bigger.

A third approach could simply have been not to have executed such extensive military campaigns. Did Rome conquer too much? The existence of plunder probably provided an incentive to the Roman leadership to wage war. Victory meant that they won huge fortunes, but they did not bear the entire cost — recall that the entire population seems to have been taxed to fund campaigns. But some level of military intervention seems to have been inevitable, given the instability in the Mediterranean world following the fall of Alexander the Great’s empire.

But the negative effect of the military campaigns is not limited just to death and destruction: it probably also had a key role in the overproduction of elites. Why is this something to be concerned about? As Peter Turchin has argued, it takes more than just inequality to undermine a constitutional order. Some part of the elite also needs to defect from their fellow elites to provide leadership to the disaffected. Such defection is more likely when the number of aspirants exceeds the number of posts available.

As discussed above there certainly seems to have been a higher level of intra-elite competition, which Turchin and Nefedov take to represent elite overproduction. How did this arise? Perhaps the enlarged military resulted in more on the first rung of the cursus honorum, and these people then wished to continue climbing the same hierarchy — a kind of hill-climbing behaviour whereby people tend to climb whatever hierarchy they find themselves on. But the growth of elite positions was more or less fixed until the time of Sulla, who doubled the size of the Senate. These two factors combined would have implied greater competition.

There could be other explanations: maybe nobles had too many children, but not much could have been done about that. Alternatively, young nobles may have become more desperate to get into the elite because political power was being used to grow vast fortunes and thereby lock-in political power. If true, this would draw us to our previous conclusion that inequality should have been contained.

Lessons from the Fall of the Roman Republic

Is there a lesson here for today’s society? One might say that inequality should be avoided. As I discussed elsewhere, there is some truth to this for today’s society. But inequality was only bad in the Roman context because it undermined a previous reward system that resulted in a high degree of social cohesion.

To recap briefly, what made the early Republic so effective was that it oriented people towards acquiring honour rather than wealth, and honour could only be obtained by serving the Republic. Furthermore, this honour was perceived as more important than wealth. This system was effective as long as the quantities of wealth were small. Once villas came into the equation, the rewards of honour became comparatively unimpressive. People became ready to trade one for the other. The real coup de grâce for the old system came when wealth could be used to buy honour.

Such a reward system does not seem to exist anywhere in the West today. There are certainly career tracks, but these vary so much across different parts of the public and private sectors that the common currency used to evaluate one’s social position often tends to be money. Where some structure resembling a cursus honorum with distinct stages still exists, such as in academia, it seems to have degraded for other reasons, such as overspecialisation and working to maximise metrics such as citation counts.

But there would be significant conceptual and practical challenges to creating a similar cursus honorum today: our economy and society is far more complex than that of the Roman Republic, the elite of which was also quite small and geographically concentrated. In addition, wealth was mostly based on land, which was heritable. In this sense it was easy to devote themselves entirely to state service, as their wealth was presumably not in doubt. Perhaps such a social reward system only works where there is already a guarantee of prosperity.

Designing a Social Reward System in a Western Society

With these provisos in mind, it is an interesting intellectual exercise to think about how, if at all, one could introduce a social reward system into the modern world.

One way of creating type of cursus honorum is to develop the template I lay out in Chapter Six of my online book. To summarise that briefly, it is a type of tournament designed to select a pool of people who are conscientious, creative, and somewhat charismatic. It would do so by providing different groups the chance to engage in a common project. In the first stage, done at a local level, groups of 25 would undertake a project. After the completion of this, they would nominate a Prime Contributor — a person who they should see as having contributed most to the project, thereby selecting for conscientiousness.

In the next stage, people with a common interest would take online classes (online, so as to provide for a degree of differentiation in the courses offered which cannot be done in the physical world). The Prime Contributors would get to propose a project related to the area in which they take an online class, which should aim to replicate a technology or cultural work, to master a given technique, or another project which would help increase the creative potential of the young Fellows. They would need to get the support of 50 people within their age cohort — so only 2pc of the population would get to the stage where their project gets to go ahead. This round should select for some mix of persuasiveness and communication ability, which roughly approximates to charisma.

In the third round, the remaining Prime Contributors must propose a project that has a creative dimension, and this must get the support of at least 200 of their cohort to be funded. Those that do we could collectively call the Telarchy (meaning leadership by those whose goal is the Telos – the ultimate or final Good). So only 0.5pc of a cohort would have the opportunity to propose a project, and this right need not be exercised immediately. The project could be of a political, cultural, business, or academic nature.

Now, in light of the discussion of the Roman system, how could we improve the above scheme? What weaknesses could it have?

A first lesson from the above history is that we must always be on guard for the role of money, and its ability to corrupt. Imagine wealthy parents who wanted to get their child into the Telarchy. How could they do it?

One possibility is that they could bribe the people along the way. This could be a problem in initial rounds because the groups are quite small and locally-based. For example, if their child was nominated a Prime Contributor, they could sponsor a holiday or reward for the group.

The fact that the second round is not locally based and involves larger groups should make bribery more difficult. Making the voting process secret would add another layer of protection.

But there is still a risk that the parents could simply find 200 people, and say that if their child is eventually selected as a Telarch, each of the 200 would receive €100 each. For €20,000, they could go a long way to ensuring their child is selected.

One way to avoid this is to simply make it illegal for any sort of bribery to take place. But I doubt that would be sufficient. Where such laws exist, they are sometimes circumvented, as those who enforce the rules may themselves become corrupt and use money as a way to push the interests of their own children. Definitively breaking that loop means creating a group of people without children, without wealth, or without both.

Celibacy as a Guard against Financial Influence

First, we could ensure that just those responsible for enforcing the specific rules discussed above are celibate, so they don’t have any children to promote. However, there is still the possibility that they could promote their close relatives. But as this is a weaker connection, abuse is less likely.

As for whether such a condition could help ensure the longevity of a community, it is instructive to note that among the longest-surviving institutions today there are many monasteries — and this is probably because those who are part of them don’t have any children for whose benefit they might otherwise abuse the institution. More generally, given that the monastery is their only way of having a legacy, they are less likely to act parasitically towards it.

But the monastic life is not for everyone, and the monastic tradition has been in decline. This could have two sources. First, a pull factor into monastic life may have been a genuine desire for a life contemplating God. Without a God at its centre, it is too early to tell whether a Metasophist system would be able to exert a similar pull. But the push factor encouraging people to take on a religious life has also gone: religious orders provided a socially recognised role for those not in the position to inherit a property or occupation. In a world of wealth, this initial push factor may not exist. Celibacy may not then be an all-weather solution, in the sense that it may not be possible to find a sufficient number of people who are both willing to be celibate and to serve in a sort of judicial-legislative role.

A Wealthless Elite?

Another possibility for breaking this feedback loop is to ensure that those enforcing the rules should not be able to acquire wealth. As they themselves would not then be able to use wealth to favour their relatives, they would be less likely to allow others to do so. This means we would need an alternative way of rewarding people — and for this we can take inspiration from the Roman system. Like the early Romans, could we create a kind of social reward that would be able to compete with wealth?

The basic principle for the creation of a social reward system is that the main prizes it offers should not be purchasable by currency, thus providing a sort of firewall against the influence of money. An example of this could be where in return for spending years devoted to the Community, you get the privilege of living in an area or town where property is not available on the private market.

To elaborate this example further, imagine the Community grew to be large and we wanted to create a capital town. You would only be able to live there if you made a recognised contribution or served in a key role. The more beautiful the town, the more interesting its activities, and the more virtuous its population, the greater the value would be of that right to enter and live in that place.

Smaller examples come to mind. One could get the right to access or reside in a certain part of a city — something like the Béguinages in Bruges and other cities in the Low Countries — or just a room in a house, perhaps with dining rights.

It would be interesting to think about creating a series of positions or ranks where one gets access to progressively nicer goods — going from say, a room to house, or access to a better dining hall. In this sense, the monetary dimension of their life would become quite small, because the main needs of life would be looked after. They wouldn’t need monetary wealth, and the rewards they get would not be monetisable. Therefore, they wouldn’t be able to use money to undermine the system, making them the best guardians against the influence of money.

Of course, it is important also to realise the limits of this system. First, it cannot completely replace monetary compensation as providing for the full range of goods a person uses would be overly complex for anything more than a very small group.

Second, the rewards it offers are only as prestigious as the community which offers them. And communities and organisations are only prestigious to the degree that they are powerful or unusually creative. Making such a system works thus means that the community would need to have or be getting control of a significant amount of resources. That could only be done by actively supporting the creation of charitable organisations, co-ops, or companies, which would grow by addressing needs currently unmet.

However, before becoming discouraged, it is worth recalling our initial aim: to create a part of the elite that has no monetary wealth, so they cannot purchase illicit advantages their children. This group wouldn’t need to be large – between twenty to fifty people would suffice – as long as they have the power to ensure that the system is not abused by families to monopolise wealth and power.

Conclusion

The above history of the Roman Republic has two key lessons for Metasophism.

First, if we want to have a truly cohesive society, the role of money as a motivator needs to be constrained, especially among the governing elites. Restraining inequality is one possible way to do this. As inequality grew in the Roman Republic, large fortunes were used to game or undermine the usual selection mechanism of the Roman Republic. This eventually resulted in the norms being hollowed out, and the system being used as a vehicle for the accumulation of wealth and power by others.

However, simply constraining inequality is insufficient to create an effective system of governance. For this, we would also need a social reward system so that the efforts of the elite are channelled into pro-social causes. What was already a somewhat delicate construct in the agricultural economy of Roman times is a far more complex task in the modern economy. But I provided a template for how to select creative and competent elites across society, and how to eliminate the role of money in this selection and as a reward.

Finally, such a system requires the creation of a community that has significant amounts of assets to distribute. In order to create such, there would be a need for a large amount of people willing to commit to a common mission, and creating a model that attracts and benefits people.

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How Inequality Killed the Roman Republic