The Storm Before The Storm

The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic

By Mike Duncan

But this was an age when a lie was not a lie if a man had the audacity to keep asserting the lie was true.
p. 146

The shadow of Julius Caesar hangs like a pall over the events of The Storm Before The Storm. Although the book primarily concerns the period between the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, in 133 BCE, and the end of the Civil Wars, in 81 BCE, it is impossible not to imagine the men vying for power in the late republic dancing like moths around an encroaching flame. They are powerless to stop its coming, not because they lack the ability, but because their cascading destruction of political institutions rotted the government from the inside out. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla declared himself dictator in perpetuity, the republican traditions, though badly bruised, held. They would not hold for long.

Duncan traces the erosion of these institutions (collectively termed mos maiorum, or “the way of the elders”) to the tribunates of Tiberius Gracchus and his brother Gaius. The Gracchi harnessed their populist influence to secure the passage of agricultural reform through the Assembly. This earned them many powerful enemies, who conspired to block further legislation; the tribunes responded with their own dirty tricks to win consecutive elections to the tribunate (in violation of mos maiorum). For their trouble, Tiberius was beaten to death in the forum, and Gaius allowed a servant to slit his throat before he could be cut down by an agitated mob. In the corsest, most accurate terms, the Gracchi ushered in a new era of populist politics and legislative ratfucking.

However, I think that Duncan downplays a bit the importance of the military precedents set during the second Punic War. Other than a passing reference to the consecutive consulships of Quintus Fabius in 215 and 214, Duncan mostly passes over the breaking of mos maiorum during that conflict. While Rome rarely faced an existential threat like the Carthaginian army, it was also rarely at peace. An ambitious leader could find a justification to bend the rules if he needed. Fabius, Scipio Africanus, and the other leaders at the end of the third century set a blueprint; the Gracchi, Marius, and Sulla took up their lessons a hundred years later. This is a minor critique, however. I agree broadly that the Gracchi shifted the political discourse and practice in Rome.

More importantly, Duncan does a pretty good job framing the changes in Rome during the late second century in the context of Rome’s expanding sphere of influence. Between their conquests in Africa, Spain, Greece, the unification of the Italian peninsula, and conflicts in Gaul and Syria, Rome was becoming an increasingly unwieldy administrative entity. The political institutions that had served it were, simply put, becoming archaic. The late republic needed a more decisive, agile executive leadership, and this need was exacerbated by the logistical limits of the age. This brought reformers like the Gracchi into conflict with conservative traditionalists in the Senate.

I’ve been spending a lot of time with Mike Duncan this year. I first started listening to his podcast The History of Rome when I was in grad school, but didn’t really commit to it until mid-March 2020, when suddenly I couldn’t leave my house or see anyone. Like many people, I started cooking more, and while I did, I would put on the podcast. Over French onion soup, I learned about the Punic Wars, and the formation of the legions. Hours lapsed into days into months, and in June, I found myself driving a moving truck across Wyoming, and Montana, and Washington, and as I did, Maximinus Thrax became the first emperor of common birth, and Diocletian styled himself a distant god, alone in his palace. Between The History of Rome and Revolutions, Duncan’s new podcast, I have spent maybe 200 hours of the past year listening, learning, and reading.

What a curious thing history can be. I remember, when I was sixteen, opening my AP US History textbook (the incomparable American Pageant) and realizing that there was a small section of September 11th, 2001. This was in 2005. I’m not sure it had ever occurred to me so vividly that history and contemporary, past and present, are separated by so meaningless a distinction. I remember September 11th. I mean, I remember it - where I was, what I was wearing, how my mouth tasted metallic when the weight of what I had just heard began to sink in. And now it’s in history textbooks.

What spending so much time immersed in history, not just Duncan’s book or podcasts, but also other books and documentaries and my studies, has taught me above all else is that in a very meaningful way it is actively detrimental to make a distinction between past and present and, I would wager, future.

Eleven days ago I watched a mob of criminal insurrectionists storm the US Capitol. Armed, chanting, they sought a range of goals. Some, surely, were just along for the ride. Some wanted chaos. Some erected a gallows and called for the lynching of the sitting Vice President. Some beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. Some aimed to intimidate, assault, and potentially murder the leaders of our legislature.

I ask you: do you think any of those insurrectionists know the story of Tiberius Gracchus?

And I also ask you: should we be concerned when past and present rhyme so closely, and our wings seem always in danger of igniting?