Ancient Roman Leaders

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For an elite Roman male, the cursus honorum was intensely competitive, as it inspired him to be as successful as he could at the earliest possible age, to not only live up to his ‘watching’ ancestors, but to better their achievements and therefore, honour his family. A magistrate of any rank, had only a year to create a name for himself, as ‘ … each age group, equal in years and notionally equal in prestige, progressed together through a series of elections in which they competed with each other for public favour and political power’ (Beard and Crawford, p. 53). From this competitiveness and the result of a growing empire, which those in power were struggling to control, came men who exposed and exploited flaws in the constitution. The support of the people, including the poor had always been important, as they were the ones who would vote for you; however, this new politician saw the flaws as a way to personal power, one that increasingly needed the support of poor.

Tribune, Tiberius Gracchus has been attributed by scholar’s# with being one of the first politicians to use the poor to achieve success. It is unclear if Tiberius deliberately chose a populist cause to champion, but his agrarian law of 133 BCE under the guise of increasing the number of small farmers in Italy, to make them eligible for conscription into the army, was possibly that. Plutarch attributes Tiberius with saying, the poor, ‘… fight and die to protect the wealth and luxury of others … but they do not possess a single clod of earth which is truly their own.’ (Plutarch). Appian confirms Tiberius’ opinions at this time, by describing a speech where he sympathises with the poor, saying that they were increasingly destitute and as a result, declining in popula...

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...ure personal power in the 70s and 60s BCE. Gaius Julius Caesar used the same methods to rise in power in the 60s BCE. In the year 60 BCE, Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus formed an alliance (a "triumvirate") to informally rule Rome. Technically, the Senate still had power, but they used the army to override the Senate with the unspoken threat of violence.

Caesar ruled alone, the Senate declared him ‘Dictator for Life’ and began on a huge program of populist reforms. He enacted debt reform, launched a huge public building program and expanded citizenship to people in northern Italy. He exercised his own personal power and not the power of the republic. Rome became his vs a res publica. Guardians of the republic were up in arms and they worried that Caesar was establishing himself as king. Therefore, republicans in the Senate, led by Brutus, assassinated Caesar in 44 BCE.

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