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of the mid–twentieth century insisting that because human beings are capable of freely initiating action, the future is not predictable and cannot be inexorably doomed to totalitarianism or to anything else. Furthermore, because we are plural as well as capable of initiative, we can on occasion act freely “in concert,” uniting to generate power and to establish a stable world of lasting institutions. Within such a world we can enjoy political freedom and bestow rights upon one another; within such a world, furthermore, we can share a common experience seen from multiple perspectives and develop the common sense so woefully lacking in the masses who followed totalitarian movements.

Twelve years after publishing the first edition of Origins, Arendt offered a long meditation on the foundation of political institutions in On Revolution, and it is here that the distinctiveness of Arendt’s thought is particularly marked. For those political thinkers who have seen a positive role for dictatorship have usually pointed to exceptional situations, times of hiatus in which a new order can be created only by the exceptional individual who conjures up his own legitimacy and who is absolved from ordinary legal and moral restraints. From Machiavelli to Weber and Schmitt, the message is that only the concentration of power in the hands of one outstanding man can overcome such crises. Without explicitly taking issue with that position,74 Arendt draws on the activities of the Founding Fathers of the American Republic to offer an alternative account that does not rely on dictatorship and its accompanying violence. Foundation is, she stresses, a matter of action, of initiative: But this does not imply the dominance of a single “man of action.” As she had indicated in The Human Condition, action is in principle a capacity belonging to all human beings, not just to charismatic individuals; furthermore, even the most outstanding leader cannot monopolize action, since he is quite impotent without coadjutors.75 The successful foundation of free institutions is an outcome of the human capacity not only to act but to “act in concert,” to generate power amongst ourselves, and to institutionalize that power by undertaking commitments to one another.76 In the American case,

The principle which came to light during those fateful years when the foundations were laid – not by the strength of one architect but by the combined power of

the many – was the interconnected principle of mutual promise and common deliberation.77

Free institutions are unpredictable and fragile, but they can on occasion be powerful and enduring, like the American Republic. That republic itself was in Arendt’s eyes very far from perfect, and she never had much expectation that even this flawed example would be followed elsewhere. She seems to have assumed that most states would remain autocracies or more or less representative oligarchies, some more civilized than others. If totalitarianism was an unprecedented disaster, political freedom was in her view an exceptional achievement. However, what both had in common was that, in defiance of attempts to reduce politics to a science, both in their different ways testified to the range of human possibilities and to the awe-inspiring unpredictability of human affairs.

77 Arendt, On Revolution, 215.

PART III

Ancient Resonances

periodically, especially in France, with reference successively to the Convention, Bonaparte, General Cavaignac in 1848, Louis Napoleon,´ Gambetta, and of course Boulanger – not to mention the famous “dictatorship of the proletariat” proclaimed in 1847, or the term’s extensive use in the 1930s by John Bainville and Elie Halevy,´ as precursors of Hannah Arendt. The historiographic study of this word and concept in the modern and contemporary period is relatively advanced, thanks to the already old work of J. Gage´ and A. Mathiez, and the far more recent work of S. Mastellone and P. Catalano. However, its use among the French positivists, well known in its day, has been generally ignored by recent criticism. I shall return to this point later. I would have avoided bringing up this historical or semantic problem, which lies outside my sphere of competence, had it not in fact originated in the actual historical reality it invokes – namely, the fate of the dictatorship in Rome from its origins to Caesar, or even to the constituent Triumvirs of 43 B.C. (Octavius, Lepidus, and Antonius). Indeed, it has been remarked (at least since Mommsen) that in Rome two entirely different political realities apparently went by the same name: first, a magistracy, exceptional to be sure, but legal and in some sense constitutional, which was invoked on a more or less regular footing between 501 and 202 B.C.; second, after a remarkable interruption of 120 years, the revival of this magistracy – at least in name – but in a form and under circumstances which were utterly different, already bringing it in the most formal terms quite close to the “modern” dictatorship of common parlance, as contemporary accounts themselves attest. By this reading, the semantic slippage cannot be blamed solely on the moderns; it is rooted in Roman history itself, where on the political level it already enabled Sulla, Caesar, and the Triumvirs to maintain a profitable equivocation around the reality of their powers.

It is this historical problem that I propose to address here. I shall attempt to show that this interpretation, while possible and perhaps accurate, nevertheless calls for many corrections of detail and a few serious doubts (excellently expressed by U. Wilcken in 1940). The two principal reasons for this situation are as follows: First, what we know (or believe we know) about the primitive, regular “dictatorship” is essentially founded on evidence dating no farther back than the first century B.C. – in other words, sources contemporary with the dictatorship of the second type which, knowingly or not, run the risk of the sin of anachronism. Second, it is certainly not inconsequential that men like Sulla or Caesar chose the term dictatorship, alone or in combination with others, to refer to their powers. It forces us to wonder about their reasons, most importantly as a function of what

public opinion they were trying to counteract – or to utilize. But in order to understand these reservations properly, it is worthwhile first to review schematically what I shall call the “dichotomous” (or Mommsenian) conception of Roman dictatorship.

I. “CLASSICAL” OR “REGULAR” DICTATORSHIP

Apart from certain exceptions which we shall discuss later, the roughly seventy-six dictatorships that occurred between 501 (the traditional date of the creation of this magistracy) and 202 appear to present common characteristics by which we can define them. By one formula, following Mommsen, we might say that these dictatorships are a temporary and exceptional revival of the kingship in all its power, invoked in a regular manner according to strict forms; or, in other cases, for the accomplishment of certain specific ritual or procedural duties that for some reason the ordinary powers of the city were unable to carry out properly.

As such, dictatorship in this period fits in normally among the regular institutions of the State (the names of the dictators appear in the Fasti, dictatorship heads the hierarchical list of magistracies in official documents, sacral law deals with its attributes as public law does with its authorities, etc.). But at the same time, through a certain number of rather clearly defined features, it differs spectacularly from the norms for a city’s magistracies – so much so that it may look like the result of a temporary suspension or even negation of general law:

A.As to the circumstances which call for its invocation: on the one hand, a series of precisely defined but uncommon duties (presiding over the Comitia in the absence of competent magistrates, performing the ancient propitiatory ritual of the clavus annalis, presiding over certain festivals, exceptional recruitment of the Senate, etc.); and on the other hand, according to the formula attested in 51 (Cic., De leg., III, 3, 9) and by the Emperor Claudius (ILS, 212, l. 28), “if a war or very substantial civil unrest arises,” that is, in the event of a crisis of the “the common good.”

Moreover, let us note that assessing such needs, in compliance with quite specific criteria (an absence of magistrates, for example), is the duty of the regular powers of the State – the magistrates, the Senate, and/or the people.

B.As to nomination: During this period, those powers who judged that there was reason to resort to a dictatorship are in no case permitted to invest themselves with this office. There are forms to be observed. The dictator (and the ancients sometimes believed this was the etymology of the word) must be nominated by one or both of the consuls. With one exception,

there is no election by the people, and even if the Senate approves or suggests recourse to a dictatorship, the ritual of nomination, with its religious forms – at daybreak, in Rome itself, etc. – remains indispensable.

C.As to collegiality: The dictator is by definition unique. One of the purposes of nominating him is precisely to establish unity of military command. Hence he has no colleague (in the Roman system, the colleges of magistrates were not required to act jointly, thus implying that each had the potential to oppose the others successfully). The dictator himself nominated – or more likely someone nominated for him – an adjunct who was nevertheless a subordinate, the Master of the Horse. (The only exception was 217 B.C.: cf. below.)

D.As to duration or term: The dictator is in fact nominated for a specific task. He must “abdicate” (this is a formal obligation) as soon as his task has been accomplished. At an uncertain date, a maximum duration of six months was introduced (Cic., De leg., III, 3, 9). In any case, the dictator cannot remain in power beyond the expiration of the term of office of the magistrate who nominated him. The one-year dictatorships included in the Fasti for the early period are highly suspect. The temporary, circumstantial nature of this magistracy was vital – until it ceased to be so with Caesar.

E.Finally, as to powers and competence: Being “a provisional revival of the kingship” (Mommsen), the dictatorship did not suppress other magistracies (as, curiously, all the Greek historians of Rome believed, Polybius at their head). Quite the contrary. But all magistracies submitted to its command. Of course, dictators nominated for a ritual or procedural task never in fact ranged beyond this limited purpose.

Those nominated for reasons of “the common good” had an essentially military brief, which might in some cases also be judicial (this precisely is one of the controversial problems). Moreover, unanimous tradition insists that originally (perhaps), a dictator was a magistrate (in fact the only one) whose total power of coercion was immune from the provocatio, i.e., from the right of appeal to the people, which more or less represented a type of habeas corpus that any citizen might invoke. But this is a much debated question.

Thus summarized, the principal characteristics of the “classical” dictatorship call for a certain number of remarks, without which the semantic slippage mentioned previously would be incomprehensible.

a. The most ancient dictatorships mentioned in the Fasti and in tradition are eminently suspect (possibly all of them up to 320 B.C.). Now, it is among these that we find five out of the six attested dictatorships created to “put down sedition” (the sixth and last was that of 287, and appears authentic).

We may therefore legitimately wonder whether this reason for nominating a dictator really existed in the earlier period. And yet this reason is politically the most interesting. The dictatorship of L. Quinctius Cincinnatus in 439, with C. Servilius Ahala as Master of the Horse, is particularly doubtful, owing to the variations in our tradition, the unquestionable exploitation of the episode in the period of the Gracchi, etc.

b. As to the procedures for nomination: A group of nine well-attested dictatorships occurred between 217 and 202, during the Second Punic War. Now, notwithstanding the curious redaction of the Fasti Capitolini (interregni causa, for 217), it appears certain that the people intervened for the first time to nominate Q. Fabius Maximus and his Master of the Horse, M. Minucius Rufus. By a subsequent law, the latter even had his power set equal to that of the dictator (as attested by an inscription).

In 211, on the advice of the Senate, the people were asked to elect a dictator to some degree directly (admittedly, only so as to preside over the Comitia, Liv. XXVII, 5). The resistance of one of the consuls shows that this intervention by the people in a procedure which until then had been alien to it was already a cause of divided opinion.

c. As to powers: One legal tradition (Festus, 216 L) appears to attest that though operating at first beyond the sphere of protection conferred by the right of provocatio, ultimately the dictatorship, like the consulate, became subject to this right. Yet at the end of the second century, during the Gracchian crisis, another tradition claimed that the dictatorship was precisely the only magistracy immune from the right of appeal. Moreover, it was not this characteristic which was faulted and kept it from being invoked against Caius Gracchus, because in 121 the consul Opimius was specifically granted coercive powers immune to provocatio.

It is necessary to set forth these few irregularities in the tradition handed down to us, which are still a matter of debate among specialists, if we are to understand an incontestable matter of fact: that the dictatorship vanished between 202 and 82 B.C., including in the years 133–121, during the Gracchian crisis, and 101–100 B.C., during the revolutionary agitation of Saturninus and Glaucia. This interruption itself helps explain the nature of the dictatorship of Sulla in 82. Here again, I shall content myself with a few remarks.

1. If we examine the six dictatorships “to put down sedition” listed in our tradition, we note that with one exception (that of 439, mentioned above), these all pertain not to blood-soaked repressive measures taken by the dictator against the authors of a sedition, but either to a vigorous foreign military action (mobilization) which in some way put an end to the trouble,