Even Tom Holland, whose unconventional (and superbly written) Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic has been highly acclaimed, fails to break out of this dominant paradigm.
Much in his account of Roman society is accurate: the grotesque and growing inequalities the poverty of the slums the oppression of women, slaves and minorities the arrogance of the ruling class and the sneering snobbery that pervaded Roman society.4 Parenti is good, too, on the contrast between optimates and populists, rejecting the traditional view that the two sides employed similar methods or, worse, that while the optimates were virtuous moderates, the populists were dangerous, self-interested extremists.5 This is the view of our primary sources (especially Cicero), and it has been followed closely by traditional ancient historians.
Parenti’s subject is the struggle between conservative optimates (‘the best men’) and reformist populares (‘the populists’) in the Late Republic (133 to 30 BC). It is a joy to read such an impassioned and wholly justified condemnation of one of the most corrupt and rapacious ruling classes in history-especially when you know that sanctimonious hypocrites like Cicero have been held up to generations of students as models of rectitude.3 Such were the steadfast republicans upon whom most classical historians gaze so admiringly.2
#Parenti caesar free#
But they take little notice of how these same ‘constitutionalists’ swindled public lands from small farmers (in violation of the law), plundered the provinces like pirates, taxed colonised peoples into penury, imposed back-breaking rents on rural and urban tenants, lacerated debtors with usurious interest rates, expanded the use of slave labour at the expense of free labour, manipulated auspices to stymie popular decisions, resisted even the most modest reforms, bought elections, undermined courts and officeholders with endless bribery, and repeatedly suspended the constitution in order to engage in criminal acts of mass murder against democratic commoners and their leaders. They emphasise how Cicero and other ‘constitutionalists’ boasted of a republic founded on law and selfless virtue. So they explain away Caesar’s assassination in terms that are rather favourable to the assassins. Many latter-day historians are immersed in this age-old ruling ideological perspective. How about this, for example, as a condemnation of the Roman ruling class and its apologists past and present? This book can be strongly recommended as an introduction to Roman history at its most turbulent.
Niall Ferguson’s recent reinterpretation of British imperialism has shown where such arguments can lead.1 Parenti has made a useful contribution, but there is much more to be done to construct an anti-imperialist history of antiquity.
His analysis of classical antiquity is incomplete, however, and leaves open the argument whether or not Roman imperialism was historically progressive. Michael Parenti’s attempt to write ‘history from below’ or ‘people’s history’ therefore comes as a welcome blast of fresh air. Roman history is academically retarded and politically reactionary. A review of Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome (The New Press, 2003), £14.95
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