Peace (11 page)

The historian Polybius (
c
. 205–125 BCE) captured the plebs' isonomic impulse for peace and highlighted its flaws: “Peace is a blessing for which we
all
pray to the gods; we submit every suffering from the desire to attain it, and it is the only one of the so-called good things in life to which
no man
refuses this title.”
⁴⁷
Some Senators began bribing the Council to achieve their goals, creating rifts among plebs' and patricians' factions. The Senate's continued control over finances and individual Senators' over most of the land led to mob violence instigated by the Tribune Gracchus (
c
. 133), the first of two major internal forces that prevented domestic peace in the late Republic and in contrast to the intransigence Romans displayed in external affairs. Shortly after the plebeian uprising came that of non-citizen residents, whose numbers increased exponentially from early Roman expansion onwards. Their plight was similar to the plebs in that they were excluded from socio-political structures of a state in which they played essential economic roles. Since defeating Carthage, Romans tried to alleviate their dissatisfaction by selectively granting citizenship to conquered peoples as an incentive for Romanization and for them to compete among themselves instead of turning against Rome's authority. The Social War (91–88 BCE), the Civil War (88–83 BCE) and the Cataline Conspiracy (65–63 BCE) show these policies failed, but also redefined what it meant to be Roman, and what Rome itself meant.

The main antagonists of the Social War were Marcus Drusus and Lucius Sulla. Drusus, a Tribune, was murdered as he was preparing to pass a law granting citizenship to all Socii, Roman allies of the Italian peninsula, which incited a
social
revolution among the depraved. Now, citizenship was used as a bargaining chip during the Roman's peace negotiations with the Socii. Most accepted it gratefully, and Senator Sulla's legions crushed the rest; he was elected Consul the next year. The Senate demanded that Sulla revenge the ravages Rome suffered, but as he was raising legions in the south his military powers were revoked by the retired Consul Gaius Marius, who bribed the Plebian Council for this purpose. This time, Sulla led his legions against Rome itself, bringing Civil War battles to city streets and the countryside. As wealth became a greater
determinant of power than the pedigree of one's social and citizen status, Senators whose strength rested on the nobility of their names and whose fortunes had waned feared for their families' future. One of these, Cataline, led a conspiracy to kill the Consuls after he was denied the right to run for the office once, losing a second time. Had it not been for Cicero (106–43 BCE), the great orator to whom Cataline had lost, the conspiracy may have succeeded. In a series of brilliant speeches, which he was given dictatorial powers to implement, Cicero expressed ideas about war and peace that were to dominate the last oligarchic rulers of the Republic, the first Emperors and many Western leaders ever since. Coining the term “peace with honor,” he articulated the principles of just wars and their rules of engagement.
⁴⁸
“Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can actually be just. . . No war is considered just unless it is has been proclaimed or declared, or unless reparation has first been demanded.”
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Among the few popular pacific forces at work in the late Republic were philosophical practices of inner and social peace developed in two schools of Greek lineage: Epicureanism and Stoicism. Their predominance was already established by the early Roman Empire. Epicure (341–270 BCE) was an Athenian philosopher whose gathering place, the Garden, is often mistakenly associated with debauchery. He did preach for pleasure and against pain, which were for him and his many Roman followers the moral compass points of individual and social existence. But the psychic rather than physical pleasure they aimed for was limited to fostering freedom from, or indifference to, worldly worries (
ataraxia
). Epicureans claimed that a total absence of pain (
aponia
), their version of perfect inner peace, could be brought about by focusing on the everyday, as on mealtime conversations; forestalling in their eyes futile fears, as of death or the gods; and foregoing vainglorious ambition, as for status or glory. Withdrawing from political life, as Epicureanism all but required, was perhaps even less of an option for Romans than for Greeks, so more pragmatic later devotees like Lucretius (94–55 BCE) advocated a more committed Epicureanism. Military societies like Rome, he held, could be reformed by wise individuals, starting by actively uprooting war, the paramount pain. This idea was instituted in the form of Irenarchs (from Irene) an office that began in Hellenistic Greece and spread across the Roman Empire. These minor magistrates, respected elderly members of the communities in which they served, were often the only ones in remote areas and prevented disputes from escalating into conflicts through mediation.

Stoicism, named after the Athenian porticos (
stoa
) where its founder Zeno (333–264 BCE) taught, is generally seen as the superseding counter-philosophy to Epicureanism. Stoics rejected the passions (lust, greed, anger, etc., later called vices) where Epicureans did pain. They held that
the surest path to inner and social peace was not withdrawal but self-discipline, and that solidarity with those who practiced it could bring peace to the world. The effect of Stoic thinking can be traced in the word
virtu
, originally a quality of manly courageousness in battle, only later being associated with the pacific virtues of moderation and magnanimity. This significant semantic shift took shape with Panaetius (189–109 BCE), who argued that no one can be virtuous as long as they participate in, or even condone, war. In the same vein, Seneca (4–65 CE) assailed fellow Romans for being “mad, not only individually but collectively. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?”
⁵⁰
Stoicism, the former slave Epictetus (50–130 BCE) claimed, could bring “friendship in families, concord in cities and peace in states.”
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The limited extent that it did so is due to the Roman addition of selfless duty to self-discipline, which made Stoicism a favorite pose of the powerful and their staffs' unofficial code.

A writer who straddled these schools is Marcus Terentius Varros (116– 27 BCE), whose
Logistoricus de pace
is the earliest known historical study of peace and the model for this book. Based on past and present examples, a
logistoricus
articulated practicable principles, in this case on peace. By such methods, Varros put forth the concept that individuals are citizens of two societies at once: one universal, embracing humanity and divinities, the other circumstantial, based on birth. In his view, peace is not an exclusive or independent property of either society, but stems from all dual citizens asserting their rights and meeting their responsibilities. The influence of Epicureanism and Stoicism can be discerned in the number of officials, from Irenarchs to Emperors, who adhered to their pacific principles without relinquishing the primacy of mythological practices (until the rise of Christianity), also adapted from the Greeks. Pax thus came to indicate a state of mind as well as a social condition; more precisely, even in the midst of war, inner/internal peace became not only a possibility, but an actuality. Epicureanism and Stoicism were also reflective of the dichotomous basis of peace in the early Roman Empire, internality and externality, established after the high-level power struggles of the First and Second Triumvirates that set the stage for the Pax Romana.

Military might was the two Triumvirates' origin and end. The First was formed by secret concords between three Consuls in 60 BCE: Pompey, Crassus and Caesar. While Caesar was governing Gaul, enriching himself and his legions, Crassus died invading Parthia, Rome's main rival in the East. Fearing the end of his
imperium
in face of a Senate who now feared him, Caesar was blocked from running for Consul again. As he led his legions into Rome in revenge, Pompey was made Dictator to stop him. In the civil war that ensued, Caesar chased Pompey into Egypt then
conquered it. Within months of his triumphal return, secured by strategic clemencies and gifts, Caesar was made Dictator-for-life (de facto emperor), assassinated and deified. Caesar named his adopted son Octavian (63 BCE–14 CE) as heir. He formed the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Lepidus, openly dividing control over Rome's cumulative conquests. Antony took the rich eastern provinces from Greece to Egypt; Octavian the western, where the best legions were levied, from Britain to Italy; and Lepidus the less valuable ones of northern Africa. After bribing Lepidus' legions away from him, stripping his power, Octavian waged war against Antony, who had moved to the cosmopolitan city Alexandria, married Queen Cleopatra and named their children his heirs. More than an affront to Roman pride, this was a serious threat to a major source of grain. At the Battle of Actium (31 BCE), Octavian's forces defeated those of Antony and Cleopatra, who committed suicide.

Octavian was elected Dictator upon his return. Calming worries about renewed civil war, he soon reduced the number of legions by almost half. He placed most of the remaining along the borders where invasion was most likely and away from population centers, thus relieved of much of the burden of supporting a standing army that could be turned against them. The rest he used to keep internal order by creating special cohorts. As the poet Ovid wrote in praise of his patron, now the “soldiers bear arms only to check the armed aggressor.”
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Given the unending series of civil wars in the past century, Romans were delighted with the peace Octavian's reign seemed to be ushering in and did not hesitate in showing their appreciation. By closing the gates of Janus' temple an unamtched three times, Octavian earned three titles from the Senate: Imperator, from which “emperor” is derived, an honorific for victorious commanders; Princeps, from which “prince” is derived, a deliberately ambiguous noun close to “first-citizen,” which Octavian preferred to Rex; and Augustus, hence the month of August, meaning “revered one,” which he adopted as his everyday name. In the years to come he was also made Tribune, Praetor and Pontifex Maximus, all for life. Although one wonders how many titled roles it takes not to call a king a king, by ensuring that republican socio-political structures remained intact despite his de facto monarchical powers, Augustus founded both the Roman Empire and the Pax Romana, known to contemporaries as the Pax Augusta.

Augustus made guaranteeing internal peace and the rule of law the purpose of the state. His far-reaching reforms ranged from revitalizing the arts by patronage to renovating roads, which made transportation and postal communication the most efficient they would be until the invention of railroads. Making taxes more equitable, he also redirected their flow from the Senate to a Fiscus under his direct control, using funds to foster industries and encourage trade within the Empire. He reorganized the city
of Rome's relations with its provinces, dividing them between rulers who reported to him and others to the Senate, both with higher degrees of administrative autonomy than in earlier times. Peoples having no previous ties were now under a single, effective authority, yet local traditions were allowed to flourish like never before. The
Ara Pacis
or Temple of Peace, built on the Field of Mars (god of war known in Greek as Ares) at the Senate's request in honor of Augustus near the end of his life, testifies to the success of his peace policies. As the Pax Romana was coming to a close two centuries later, the Emperor Probus looked forward to when “the soldiers would no longer be necessary.”
⁵³
This statement perplexed the historian Falvius Vopiscus, and his retrospections on it are an accurate description of what the Augustan period of the Pax Romana in some ways was, in others tried to be:

It was as if he had said “There will no longer be a Roman army; the state, guaranteed by its own security, will dominate everywhere, will possess everything. Supplies will not be accumulated for war; the oxen will stay harnessed to the plough; the horse will be born for peaceful work. There will be no more wars and no more prisons. Peace will reign everywhere, as will the Roman laws, as will our judges.”
⁵⁴

Compared to the century of civil war that preceded it, falling short of this description of peace was infinitely better than having no peace at all. In the same spirit, the contemporary writer Velleius Paterculus (19 BCE– 32 CE) pandered that the “Pax Augusta, which has spread to the regions of the east and of the west and to the bounds of the north and south, preserves every corner of the world safe from the fear of brigandage.”
⁵⁵

The post-Augustan parameters of the Pax Romana were twofold. On one hand, internal peace was maintained by economic prosperity and an effective socio-political infrastructure, when it was at all. On the other, incessant external wars kept invaders out, the legions busy and brought in plunder by the conquest of new territories, when they were successful. This internal/external infrastructure barely survived the Emperors in Augustus' line: of the four, three were insane or became so with power, feared as cruel tyrants who disregarded law and lived lavishly. That Nero (r. 54–68), the last, was even accused of starting a fire that razed Rome is indicative. The founder of the brief Flavian Dynasty that followed rose in military ranks and was a general in Judea when he was proclaimed Emperor by his soldiers, the first but far from the last to be so honored. Vespasian's reign (r. 69–79) brought a return to legal and fiscal order, and he built another Temple of Peace (
Templum Pacis
). His two sons and successors, the first benign, the second prone to paranoia and persecutions, staunchly defended the Empire's borders. But they also bolstered autocratic rule by expanding the military. The so-called Five Good
Emperors of the subsequent Antonine Dynasty presided over the post-Augustan apex of the Pax Romana. Coins of the era celebrate
pax
, which by now did not mean “a restoration of external peace,” a dream long since forsaken, “but the imposition of internal peace,” well within the Emperors' power.
⁵⁶
Nerva, the Dynasty's founder, reigned for only 15 months (96–98) but a reputation for tolerance, benevolence and respect for law preceded and outlived him. The Empire reached its territorial zenith during the reigns of Trajan (98–117), first ruler to officially spare women and children in battle, and Hadrian (117–138), who pulled back borders in Mesopotamia and Britain to better defend them. Antoninus Pius (r. 138–161) and the Stoic Marcus Aurelius (r. 161–180) made Varros' dual citizenship their unofficial ideology, save that the two were with good reason believed to be united in Rome. They instituted the idea of “one empire, one peace” by which a small sect was steadily ascending, and their reigns became “bywords for peace and prosperity,” commonly referred to as the Empire's golden age.
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