baehr_p_richter_m_dictatorship_in_history_and_theory_bonapar

or to an action of arbitration that sometimes clearly favored the plebeians, as is plainly the case in 287 (the lex Hortensia, which made plebiscites obligatory for the entire people). In these five cases, the dictatorship looks like a procedure for conciliation, not a power for repression. The only exception is the episode of 439. But ever since Mommsen (Hermes, 1871), we have been aware how suspect this episode is; it was presumably embellished to justify the repression against the Gracchi, which rested on highly suspect legal grounds. Nevertheless, it is probable that this tradition, even if it is not historical, had already arisen by the end of the third century, and in any case by the time of the Gracchi. This was how dictatorship was viewed, and thus certain persons believed it was a remedy invented entirely to resist reforming tribunes.

2.Nevertheless, despite the existence of what was thought to be a precedent, the fact is that no recourse was taken to a dictatorship at that moment. Why? The reason is presumably that one aspect of this magistracy, which for two centuries had seemed not merely innocuous but advantageous, had by now become insupportable: And by this I mean its personal and noncollegial nature. Diverse traditions, perhaps not very reliable, but significant, in fact indicate to us that proposals or desires for a “dictatorship” or monarchical power were voiced by the adherents of the two Scipios, Africanus Major and Minor (Liv. XXXVIII, 56, 12; Cic., De Rep., VI, 12). The people were said to have offered the former a perpetual consulate and dictatorship. The friends of the latter were said to have urged him in 129 to obtain the grant of a “constituent dictatorship” to restore order in the State after the attempted coup and death of Tiberius Gracchus. This, as we can see, is no longer a dictatorship of a traditional type, but something very different: the candidacy of a “providential man,” enveloped in the aureole of his victories, for a vague and quite general quasi-monarchical mission to bring factions to heel. This comes so close to the climate of the first-century dictatorships, those of Sulla and Caesar, that the value of these sources has been doubted. Yet the question remains: If this tradition is false, why did the Romans refrain from invoking the “classical” type of dictatorship when faced with a true “sedition”?

3.Albeit distantly, dictatorship is present in the background of the history of the Gracchi. The solution adopted in 121 by the enemies of Caius Gracchus – namely, granting the consul L. Opimius a power of coercion without appeal, by a senatus consultum ultimum – is specifically called an imitation of dictatorship by Plutarch (CG, 18, 1). Nevertheless there is one essential difference: Opimius was not in charge alone – he had a colleague; and his powers were required to expire at a normal date.

reminiscent both of the famous Decemvirs of the fifth century and perhaps of the precedent manque´ of Scipio Emilianus in 129 (cf. above).

The lex Valeria also retroactively covered Sulla’s actions prior to his nomination as dictator (very end of 82), accorded him a personal guard, and so on. The dictatorship did not put an end to the proscriptions, “an afflictive penalty imposed by name on citizens without trial” (Cic., De Domo, 45); moreover, Sulla frequently exercised his right of extreme coercion, having recalcitrant individuals executed on the spot.

The Problems of Sullan Dictatorship

A.Authority and scope of powers. The very title he adopted shows that the powers he appropriated were without limit, and that the “constituent” competence might be exercised in all areas. This looks to be well outside the scope of the traditional dictatorship. Yet the latter also had an imperium maius, greater than that of all the other magistrates. In fact the only new feature is the unlimited “constituent” power.

B.Formal characteristics. Mommsen insisted very strongly on the differences from “classical” dictatorship, that is, an unspecified duration and unlimited powers. Wilcken, on the other hand, argued that the Sullan dictatorship had much in common with “the most ancient dictatorship, that of the fifth and fourth centuries, prior to its placement within reach of the provocatio and tribunician intercession.” To accept this thesis, we would need to be sure of a thorough understanding of this older dictatorship. For the dictatorship of Sulla was really entirely different from the relatively well-understood examples dating from the end of the third century.

C.We must not confuse the Sullan dictatorship with the Sullan regime. We now know (Badian) that in fact Sulla exercised the dictatorship for only a year, or at most eighteen months (end of 82–end of 81). He abdicated from it normally, contenting himself (in 80) with the consulate, after which he returned to being a “private man” – and effectively retired from Roman public life. That is to say that the fiction of a Sullan “quasi-monarchy” would be dismissed. The motivations (individual, spontaneous or not, etc.) matter little against the fact that the exceptional period lasted only a short time; a regular, constitutional situation was restored in 79.

On the other hand, the legislative and constituent mission was taken seriously. Here again, the real inspirations or afterthoughts matter little. What is absolutely certain is that the regime modeled by Sulla in 81–80, as regards public law, was in no way a monarchy.

Although this is not my topic, let us recall that this was an oligarchic regime that first of all tended to abolish most of the “popular” initiatives instituted since the Gracchi, particularly through an almost complete dismantling of the tribunician power. The Senate as a body was strengthened in number and influence. But furthermore, by reorganizing the exercise of magistracies, as well as the provincial governments, Sulla attempted to channel ambitions and provide, not only civil peace, but also a certain regularity in the competitions pertaining to the senatorial oligarchy.

The Meaning of the Sullan Dictatorship: Interpretations and Reality

Sulla had his partisans. During his lifetime, even though he had returned to being a “private man,” he remained a redoubtable power owing to the number of clients he had and the presence of his former soldiers. And even at the time of his death, and indeed still a generation later, we know that many aspired to imitate him (Pompey, for example), and met with the approval of some. But the rest, on the contrary, viewed him chiefly as a de facto “monarch” – the first Rome had ever suffered – and moreover as the very embodiment of the “bloody, grasping and voluptuous” tyrant (Cic., De Fin., III, 75). Yet even the latter group also regarded him as a legislator, a “new” though cruel Romulus (Sall. Hist., 55, 5) who restored the State. In this sense, the Sullan dictatorship of course bears a relationship with the temporary and exceptional “mission for the common good” evoked by the old word. And it is certainly for this reason that the word was used. Nevertheless the purely circumstantial aspects that made it something quite new, and far more unsettling, ultimately prevailed in the political “myth” (Umberto Laffi) and in historiography. Let us briefly review them:

a.This dictatorship comes only after a bloody civil war, itself the consequence of rivalries among military commanders over rich commands. It was preceded by victories and massacres which in reality had bestowed a de facto power upon the rebellious and victorious general. Thus, for the first time, the army becomes the instrument for the seizure of power. Hence this dictatorship is founded, as its precondition, on the new nature of the Roman army, the result of profound changes in the social and ethnic recruitment of soldiers across two decades. Even after Sulla’s abdication, the army (the veterans settled in the Italian colonies) would remain the skeleton of a sort of “Sullan” party.

b.By contrast with the always limited and specific missions of the dictatorships of the fifth and third centuries, this one involved the complete placement of all powers – military, judiciary, coercitive, but also legislative,

administrative, even religious – in the hands of a single man, to do whatever he wished, however he wished.

c. Finally, and above all, it was imposed by the systematic use of terror, executions without trial (the proscriptions), collective punishments inflicted on entire communities, and the physical crushing of the adversarial party even into the next generation (the lex Cornelia against the children of proscripts). This way of settling conflicts, if we may call it that, now became part of the interplay of Roman institutions for two generations: each party would in turn brandish it as a threat or denounce it as imminent.

The Dictatorship of Caesar

The regime Sulla intended to establish was supposed to avoid the very possibility of a return of personal power. Yet hardly was Sulla dead, and the battle of ambitions resumed at higher pitch than ever. External and internal crises conspired to prove, it seemed, that regular institutions were unable to cope. At that point two interlinked questions arose: Is it possible to accomplish or obtain anything whatever in the State without resorting to the personal power of a man strong enough and prestigious enough to impose his will? But on the other hand, can one reign innocently, is one not forced to “Sullanize,” will it be necessary to resort to civil war, executions, proscriptions? All these questions raised by the Sullan precedent explain the protagonists’ reactions in episodes such as those of Lepidus (78), the restoration of tribunician power in 70 (Pompey and Crassus), the pirate war (67) and the Mithridatic war (66), the Catilinian conspiracy (63), the exile of Cicero (58), the “war of the bands” (53–52) – each of them an occasion on which the dictatorship was mentioned, while recourse to it was avoided if possible (Cicero and the senatus consultum ultimum in 63; Pompey as consul without a colleague in 52). The specter of Sulla survived.

Caesar had been one of the probable candidates for personal power, among three or four others, since perhaps the very start of his career (Suetonius, Div. Iul., 9, 2). But he had to contend with his rivals, with his own family tradition that made him the political heir of Marius, and with the “Sullan constitution.” That his ambition resulted in another civil war at the end of his great command in Gaul was probably not his doing: sincerely or not, he did attempt to negotiate. In any case, his career was far more “regular” than that of Pompey until at least 59 (his first consulate). After that date, two facts are important: (a) During his year in office, Caesar demonstrated a considerable and exceptional political activity, establishing friendships and a “party,” but also legislating in various areas with an obvious

concern for public opinion and as a man of the State; (b) His renewed agreements with Crassus and Pompey make it clear that the game was now in the hands of men who had considerable armies, financial resources independent of the Treasury, and provincial territories which brought about something akin to an explosion of the traditional State. Moreover, through interposed “friends,” they controlled a fragmented, disordered, and increasingly impotent “civil” power in Rome itself. If there was to be a civil war, it would be a world war, opposing two men or two factions, to be sure, but also entire masses of the Roman world. Public opinion, though frightened (cf. the success of Curio, who thought he had averted the blow, in 50), was resigned. Thus one can easily predict the renewal of the excesses of the Sullan period.

1. Caesar would always have a special talent for throwing the blame for the war back upon his adversaries, along with the suspicion of wanting to remake Sulla (Caesar, in Cic. Att., IX, 7, C). Neither Pompey nor his friends in the Senate were able to escape the trap. Caesar constantly presented himself, by contrast, as the antithesis of Sulla, promoting the message – more or less justified – of his clemency. He did not avoid either civil wars or personal power (quite the contrary), but he did attempt to dissociate them from the memory of the proscriptions. With terror ruled out at least in its paroxysmal form (at any rate once the battles were over), he would have to imagine and find new models to furnish the basis and the legal and political form for the sovereign power he intended to exercise.

Nevertheless, it was dictatorship that came into play once again, but accompanied with many other powers, and in a prudent and gradual manner. It must be noted that for several months after the start of hostilities, Caesar’s constitutional position was all the more uncertain as he still hoped to negotiate with Pompey, or at least to rally enough senators and magistrates to get as much legality as possible on his side. It was for this reason that, at the time of the conquest of Italy and his first entry into Rome (49 B.C.), he contented himself with the proconsular imperium – and, of course, his de facto power. Not until December of 49, and in his own absence, did he arrange to be appointed dictator by a praetor (but the nomination was presumably confirmed by the people); and not until after the siege of Marseille did he return to exercise this magistracy in Rome, for just eleven days – time to get himself regularly and legally elected consul for 48.

As we know, the civil wars, from one end of the world to the other, lasted for four years, until 46. Caesar was almost constantly in the breach, and the outcome doubtful, although Italy remained firmly in his hands. Under these conditions, it is only from the end of 48 onward (after Pharsalus) that he was named dictator a second time (for one year) while he was simultaneously

consul. In April 46 (presumably), he was again appointed dictator, for ten years, an office that was renewable each year – which explains why it was reckoned into the Fasti. Finally, in January 44, he accepted the title of dictator for life (Dion, 44, 8, 4; Josephus, AJ, 14, 211). These dictatorships were quite in general – “rei gerundae” – and even if this was not formally specified, they also entailed a “constituent” power.

2. These dictatorships present several problems.

a.First of all: Why a dictatorship? Especially since Caesar concurrently arrogated, or had himself assigned, a considerable number of other powers or honors. This is not the place to list them exhaustively, but they were of a political and religious nature: the tribunician power, the office of consul, the right to make peace and war, to make laws, to command all the armies, to appoint magistrates directly or not, to use the Treasury, etc. Great attention must be paid to the honors, both triumphal (imperator for life, crowns, the right of presiding over festivals, triumphal costume, etc.) and religious, which the dominant ideology of the day held to be essential, especially where the plebs was concerned. The result was a veritable kingship, virtually without limit other than that of a human lifetime. Hence it is essentially as a dictator – perpetuus, then for life – that Caesar wished to be seen, and was in fact seen by posterity. And it is definitely for this reason that a few days after the Ides of March, at the same time as they harshly repressed the spontaneous emergence of a cult of Caesar, the consuls enacted a law banning the name of dictatorship from Rome forever, on pain of death.

It is probable that Caesar used the dictatorship at Rome as a kind of smoke screen for the kingship that he certainly desired, but that public opinion could not accept, or rather whose name it could not accept. For the thing existed – provided that one indefinitely extended the temporal duration of what would from now on be the “supreme magistracy” needed to found the State anew. So Caesar was reduced to this, despite Sulla’s precedent, which is why he applied himself so vigorously to saying and proving that he would not be a new Sulla: According to his own words at Piacenza (Dion, 4, 32, 5), he would reconcile force with justice. The dictatorship was necessary in order to unify and bind together all his powers, on the condition that clemency was added.

b.But these considerations do not exhaust the meaning of what is quite justifiably called “Caesarism.” Caesar had only a very brief time to sketch out the form and foundations of the new regime that he intended to impose on the entire world. But certain characteristics are quite clear:

1. It once again was a military power, obtained thanks to a faithful and effective army. Caesar, a new Alexander, had conquered the world. A new

Sulla, he had vanquished his “private enemies” in civil wars. He was “imperator.” And he created for himself, and utilized, a military clientele (cf. the role of the army even after his death).

2.It was a power based on many “friends” from broader social or geographical origins than those of traditional political leaders. These “friends” filled the Senate and magistracies, military commands or new “offices.” But they were in no way a “party” in the modern sense, even if Caesarism was understood to fit into the tradition of Marius and, in certain regards, of the Gracchi.

3.Surely more original is the aspect of Caesarism that we might call (in the modern sense of the word) “plebiscitarian” – seeking “popularity,” the support of Italian public opinion, but also that of the urban plebs, through conduct, through largesse (distributions, games, etc.), through an elevation of the network of his clientele almost to the world scale. But notwithstanding Napoleon III, behind these practices and words we must not seek any doctrine of “national representation” analogous to what was invoked by the two Bonapartes. It is at the level of the religious ideologies that were widespread among the urban masses of the day – in terms of public sentiment or indeed instinct, rather than public law – that we must understand this aspect of Caesarism. In Caesar’s time we find no formula of a “plebiscitarian” nature (of the type of the consensus omnium) analogous to those that would, by contrast, be used by his successor Augustus, who took them from the arsenal of the highly legalistic Cicero. Augustus, having learned the lessons of thirteen more years of civil war, realized that one must go masked, neither saying nor permitting to be said the word “king” or “dictator”; and he was able to reign and even found a monarchy (making everyone forget he had been a new Sulla in his youth) by affecting to be a plain citizen.

It was not my intent to offer an analysis of the forms of absolute power in the history of Rome. It is not for the era of the Republic – the only period in which the word “dictatorship” was used – that this should be attempted, but for the Imperial age. We would have to ask how the change came about from a sort of veiled monarchy (the Principate, which in principle assumed the permanence of a Res publica in which the Prince was only a cog in the machine) to the establishment of an autocratic power in which the monarch was the law incarnate. We would have to assume that religious aspects, whether pagan or Christian, had much to do with this. We would also have to investigate the exercise of personal power even in the time of the “Principate” – its tyrannical or bureaucratic deviations, its relationships with what remained of civil, intellectual, or moral “freedom.” This is not

my purpose. On the contrary, I have attempted to show how, quite aside from extralegal causes such as the consequences of having conquered the world or the changes in the nature and importance of the army, two attempts at taking personal power – one very brief, the other by contrast destined to endure – arose under cover of an official procedure that seemed to fit normally within the institutions of a city. A city: that is to say, an organism founded upon the rule of law and a certain balance of powers. Whatever the original nature of the Roman magistracy, at the end of the Republic it was contained and limited, and the Romans viewed these restraints as the most precious token of their liberty. By contrast, dictatorship, even if innocent, was like it or not the legal negation of this balance, because it implied the suspension of these rules of law, even if only provisionally. The Roman experience proved that the law is a formidable protection, provided that one does not permit the least exception to it, even in the name of the common good. By failing to recognize this principle, the Romans had no choice, as Tacitus says, but to “rush into servitude.” We will have to wait for the nineteenth century before the perception sets in, as Jules Ferry said in 1866 (Discours et opinions, Robiquet, I, 102), that the “doctrine of the common good is . . . the last refuge of despotism.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Franc¸ois Hinard and Claude Nicolet

On the origins of dictatorship considered as a magistracy integrated into the republican “system,” see Theodor Mommsen, Le droit public (French translation by P.-F. Girard), III, Paris, 1893, 161–207. Today this thesis has been rather generally abandoned in favor of the one that views dictatorship as an intermediate stage between kingship and republic. See notably Wilhelm Soltau, “Ursprung der Diktatur,” Hermes, 49, 1914, 352–68; Arnaldo Momigliano, “Ricerche sulle magistrature romane,” Buletino della Commissione Archeologica, 58, 1930, 29–55; Aurelio Bernardi, “Dagli ausiliari del Rex ai magistrati della Respublica,” Athenaeum, 30, 1952, 1–58; D. Cohen, “The Origins of the Roman Dictatorship,” Mnemosyne, 1957, 303–20.

Concerning the problems posed by this magistracy, notably in regard to constitutional law, one might consult, in addition to Mommsen, Clifton Walker Keyes, “The Constitutional Position of the Roman Dictatorship,” Studies in Philology, 14, 1917, 298–305; G. I. Luzzatto, “Appunti sulle dittature ‘imminuto iure’; spunti critici e ricostruttivi,” Studi de Francisci, III, Milan, 1956, 405–59; and as more specifically concerns the limitation on

duration: Ugo Coli, “Sui limiti di durata delle magistrature romane,” Studi Arangio-Ruiz, IV, Naples, 1953, 395–418; M. Sordi, “Sulla cronologia liviana del IV secolo,” Helikon, V, 1965, 3–44; A. Drummond, “The Dictator Years,” Historia, 27, 1978, 550–72. The problem of dictatorships comitiorum habendorum causa is addressed by Joachim Jahn, Interregnum und Wahldiktatur, Kallmunz,¨ 1970, 195, and A. Guarino, “Il vuoto di potere nella libera respublica,” Atti dell’Academia de Scienze Morali e Politiche de Napoli, 82, 1971, 288–312.

Lists of dictatorships have been furnished by Friedrich Bandel, Die romischen¨ Diktaturen, Diss., Breslau, 1910 (with indication of principal sources); Arthur Kaplan, “Religious Dictators of the Roman Republic,”

The Classical World, 67, 1973, 172–5; and J. Jahn, Interregnum (interregna and dictatorships comitiorum habendorum causa).

For a political analysis of the dictatorships of the last two centuries, one can notably consult Claude Nicolet, Rome et la conqueteˆ du monde mediterran´ een:´ 1) Les structures de l’Italie romaine, Paris, 1977 (particularly chapters XI and XII, pp. 393–455) and, for dictatorships discussed without being conferred, Nicolet, “Le De Republica, VI, 16, et la dictature de Scipion,” Revue des etudes´ latine, 1964, 212–30, and J.-P. Borle, “Pompee´ et la dictature,” Les Etudes classiques, 20, 1952, 168–80.

Sulla and Caesar (and, accessorily, the Triumvirs) have been the topic of many studies. More particularly one may consult Mommsen, Le droit public, IV (Paris, 1984), 424–70; Ulrich Wilcken, “Zur Entwicklung der romischen¨ Diktatur,” Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1940, 3–32; Vinenzo Giuffre,` Aspetti costituzionali del potere dei militari nella tarda “respublica,” Naples, 1973. Regarding Sulla, we will content ourselves here with mentioning, after C. Lanzani (Lucio Cornelio Silla dittatore, Milan, 1936), E. Badian, “Additional Notes on Roman Magistrates,” Athenaeum, 48, 1970, 3–14, followed by Briggs L. Twyman, “The Date of Sulla’s Abdication and the Chronology of the First Book of Appian Civil Wars,” Athenaeum, 54, 1976, 77–97, for the duration of his magistracy. As concerns his image, see Umberto Laffi, “Il mito di Silla,” Athenaeum, 45, 1967, 177–213 and 255–77, and Settimio Lanciotti, “Silla e la tipologia del tiranno nella letteratura latina repubblicana,” Quaderni di Storia, 3, 1977, 129–43 and 144, 1978, 191–225. For the dictatorships of Caesar, we will refer solely to a few important studies – in addition to those of Wilcken and Giuffre` cited above: Matthias Gelzer, Caesar, Politician and Statesman (transl. P. Needham), Oxford, 1968, for an overall view. On the second dictatorship, Paul Schnabel, “Die zweite Diktatur Caesars,” Klio, 19, 1925, 354–5; on the third one, D. Felber, “Caesars