Rome Had Tribunes for a Reason. America Needs Them Too
Why “The American Tribune?” How does a political office from the Roman Republic relate to the issues currently plaguing America and present a potential solution to our current societal ills? Why does the visage of Tiberius Gracchus grace our masthead?
Because if there was a civil innovation in the Roman Republic’s body politic that enabled it to survive without pulling itself apart for as long as it did, it was the addition of the tribuni plebis.
Instituted after the Republic nearly dissolved due to fighting between patricians (descendants of 100 men Romulus made Senators) and plebeians (everyone else), the tribunes of the plebes protected them from oligarchic predation, while attempting to align the interests of the leadership class and the vast majority of Roman citizens in a way that was beneficial for all. It was created out of a recognition that a polity is defined by the flourishing of its people, and that much as the consuls must steer the ship of state in the right direction, there ought be a force to ensure the consuls are steered in the right direction.
The tribunes were, at their best, something special. They were men who used their social position, influence, and training as men of prominence to look to the long-term health of the state and the people, and so to resist tyranny of every sort. In providing a bulwark against predation, they encouraged both virtue and flourishing, pushing the consuls and the class from which they came to be great rather than rapaciously exploitative of the Roman people. They were not unlike America’s Founding Fathers—members of our gentry who used their prominence to fight for their people—in that regard.
The greatest of these was Tiberius Gracchus, a man who stood up for and attempted to preserve the dispossessed yeomanry in a way that would keep the ship of state from capsizing. A man who attempted to use the long-time horizons and personal virtue typical of the best of his blue-blooded class to fight for and help restore the fortunes of the Roman people. A man who aimed to save Rome, from the storm of dispossession, envy, degradation, and tyranny on its horizons.
I call what he attempted to do “aristocratic populism”. It is an attempt to avoid the society-wrecking consequences of the politics of envy, while also avoiding the just as disastrous outcomes of a rapacious and predatory elite dispossessing the Roman people.
Such a position is needed in America now. Yet further, and perhaps more importantly, the mindset behind it is needed now. We need greatness, honor, and virtue. We need those who prioritize true national flourishing rather than mere profit or evil ideologies. Much as Rome had to be restored, America must be restored, from both directions.
So, consider reading this article to learn the history of the tribunes and how they relate to America, then consider subscribing.
The History of the Tribuni Plebis
The creation of the College of the Tribunes of the Plebes in 494 BC brought dramatic change to Roman society. Before its creation, the consuls and Senators, all patricians, could dictate to the plebes. After its creation, the tribunes were a potent force to counter the rapaciousness of the patricians and look out for the interests of the less fortunate. That, in turn, helped society hold. The tribunes could maintain some degree of social equilibrium by consulting with and, when necessary, blocking the initiatives of the consuls and the Senate. Because the yeomen farmers were protected and that class grew, the Roman economy and the number of potential legionnaires grew too. Because of those developments, the Republic prospered. The patricians and plebes could work together for Roman glory rather than suspiciously eye each other in the forum and get nothing done.
Injustices still occurred, of course. However, thanks to the tribunes, the Roman farmers were not slaves of some Oriental despotism. Rather, a Roman yeoman could farm his acres while raising his family, participate as part of his tribe in the elections every year, and know that he was part of the res publica. While far from being as wealthy as the patricians in their villas, a Roman yeoman could build his life and share somewhat in the riches and glory of the Republic.
Then came the Punic Wars. With those titanic conflicts came a breakdown in the social order. The yeomen were sent off to war as legionaries, as at that time only land-owning citizens could serve in the legions, and they perished in the tens of thousands. One hundred thousand perished at sea after the Battle of Cape Hermaeum during the First Punic War. During the Second Punic War, thirty thousand died at Trebia, fifteen thousand at Lake Trasimine, and over sixty-seven thousand at Cannae. Disaster followed disaster for them as Hannibal ravaged the Italian countryside. Though the Republic was victorious in the end, the fields of the fallen yeomen laid fallow. The small farmers that used to cultivate them were ruined.
Meanwhile, the patricians prospered. With the final defeat of Carthage in the Third Punic War and Rome’s simultaneous conquering of Macedonia, thousands of slaves flowed into Italy along with an immense amount of wealth to a degree that the previously unseen by the austere Romans. The result was that the oligarchs used their newfound wealth to buy the land of fallen legionnaires and their newly bought slaves to farm it, turning what was a system of small farms and responsible landowners into a collection of dispossessed urban poor and vast latifundia owned by the oligarchs.
As Mike Duncan put it in The Storm Before the Storm, "The final victory over Carthage in the Punic Wars led to rising economic inequality, dislocation of traditional ways of life, increasing political polarization, the breakdown of unspoken rules of political conduct, the privatization of the military, rampant corruption, endemic social and ethnic prejudice, battles over access to citizenship and voting rights, ongoing military quagmires, the introduction of violence as a political tool, and a set of elites so obsessed with their own privileges that they refused to reform the system in time to save it.”
That’s when Tiberius Gracchus rose to prominence. An aristocrat by birth, Tiberius served bravely as a military tribune in the legions during the Third Punic War. Plutarch wrote that he was one of the first to scale the walls of Carthage in the final assault. Then, returning to Rome, he was elected tribune of the plebes for 133 BC and set to work attempting to ameliorate the desperate situation of the former yeomanry.
He did so by taking the fight to the oligarchs with a land reform bill. That bill was the Lex Agraria. Passed to the horror and over the objections of the patricians, it would have, if given more time to be affected, redistributed the land from the oligarchs to the dispossessed yeomen. To do so, the law would have used the money that Attalus III of Pergamum left to Rome in his will to buy the land from the oligarchs and give it to the plebians, turning the urban poor back into yeoman farmers.
Plutarch recorded Tiberius’ famous speech on the bill and subject of the dispossessed farmers, one which echoes down through history. In the moving address, he said, “The wild beasts that roam over Italy... have every one of them a cave or lair to lurk in; but the men who fight and die for Italy enjoy the common air and light, indeed, but nothing else; houseless and homeless they wander about with their wives and children. And it is with lying lips that their [commanders] exhort the soldiers in their battles to defend sepulchres and shrines from the enemy; for not a man of them has an hereditary altar, not one of all these many Romans an ancestral tomb, but they fight and die to support others in wealth and luxury, and though they are styled masters of the world, they have not a single clod of earth that is their own.”
Naturally, the oligarchs were furious about that reasonable plan. So, when legal expedients proved insufficient to stop the bill, they murdered Tiberius and his supporters on Capitoline Hill in broad daylight. Though his law was not repealed, returning the land to the dispossessed yeomen was quickly stopped.
Further, the oligarchs were thenceforth determined to let no Tiberius rise again, and Tiberius’ death began a series of violent oligarchic quashings of populist energy. when Tiberius’ brother, Gaius Gracchus, attempted to ram through similarly populist laws, he too was killed. The tribunes of the plebes then lost most of their power under Sulla.
With the tribunes gone, the corrupt optimates were free to prey on the poor to slake their rapacious greed. Their greed then led to the acceptance of Caeser’s destruction of the Republic and frustration in Rome, rather than exaltation, when he was killed. Augustus then became both tribune and consul after defeating Marc Antony, symbolizing that Caesar would balance the interests of the patricians and plebians.
The American Context
America now needs her tribunes. Whereas America was once a land of gentry leaders working with yeomen farmers (and then their modern equivalent, small business owners) in pursuit of national honor and flourishing, our oligarchic elites destroyed that functional society and replaced it with one seemingly designed to destroy the middle-class family.
Financialization led to the consolidation of the economy, turning sectors once run by local small businesses into ones dominated by corporate behemoths. Chains replaced local grocers, hardware shops, and all manner of other businesses Americans rely on for their day-to-day lives. In the process, small-business owners who were tied into and committed to developing their communities were replaced by employees of corporate behemoths. They and their corporate bosses couldn’t care less about the local populace, so America’s small communities unraveled as the usual suspects got richer and richer. The stultifying tyranny of bureaucracy replaced the local cursus honorum,
Something critical to the American spirit has died with that. Our civilization has faded with mass immigration of the sort the corporate behemoths want, as Pat Buchanan predicted. Our foreign policy is generally conducted not in the interests of America or even our civilization, but to advance race communism abroad. Our cities are ugly and dysfunctional. Crime rages out of control. The world of Norman Rockwell and the spirit of George Washington has died and been replaced by the egalitarian bureaucratic tyranny behind the Civil Rights Act, and we’re all paying the price.
The oligarchic faction largely doesn’t care, as it can afford to avoid the worst consequences of most of that and indeed profits from some of it—namely mass immigration. The bureaucracy is ideologically attached to the present state of things, and profits from keeping things the way they are. If the back of this awful system is to be broken, and everything from public beauty to sane trade policy, freedom of association to national greatness is to be restored, it will be through the avenue of aristocratic populism, the use of virtue and greatness to advance national flourishing over the long term.
That, through various lenses, is what I write about. If it interests you, you should subscribe.
Excellent analysis!