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chapter nine The Demise of Public Law, 69–44 h before the start of an ill-fated assembly in 47, during the turbulent civil war years at the end of the Roman Republic, the “master of the horse” (magister equitum), M. Antonius, ordered his soldiers into the Forum to tear down the notice boards advertising a proposal to remit all debts and rents promulgated three weeks earlier by the tribune P. Cornelius Dolabella.1 The removal of the boards precipitated a bloody confrontation between the soldiers and the Roman voters in support of Dolabella’s measure, who had barricaded themselves in the Forum overnight to await the scheduled voting assembly. The determined fury displayed by these voters in 47 is a barometer of the extent to which the Roman people now accepted more immediate political uses of public lawmaking assemblies. But the implications for Roman public lawmaking activity of the Senate-sanctioned violence are far more significant. Three years earlier, in 50, the Roman world had erupted in the final civil war that would eventually usher in a new Roman order under the rule of emperors . Crossing into Italy at the head of a Roman army in 50 Julius Caesar carried to its penultimate stage the final solution to uncontrolled competition among the leadership, challenging the cohesion of Roman society by attempting to set himself up as the single, all-powerful leader in Rome within the 367 parameters of traditional Roman offices. Some measure of the initial acquiescence in his role by other Romans came on the heels of M. Antonius’s slaughter of Roman citizens in the Roman Forum in 47: the Senate decreed no new laws in Rome until the return of Julius Caesar. Public lawmaking as the uncoerced expression of the people’s will was for all practical purposes over. In this chapter we continue to explore some of the developments leading to this point. Roman leaders worked hard to ensure the continued functioning of the traditional public lawmaking system. These efforts, however, were futile in face of an explosion in the citizen population, the vast changes in the pool that had traditionally provided leadership, and the growing politicization of lawmaking that culminated in the portentous lawmaking activity of the civil war years, 49 to 44. After 44, this most remarkable burst of lawmaking activity in Roman history is followed by dramatic changes in the format and focus of lawmaking assemblies. The failure of public lawmaking assemblies to reduce the level of disruption was followed by the emergence, with the ascendancy of Octavian in 31, of the first Roman emperor. Lawmaking assemblies, although not yet moribund, never again assumed the form, frequency, or function that they had held for over half a millennium. public lawmaking, 69–50 The consequences of the revisions consummated in 70 were far-reaching. As measured by the density of public laws and proposals down to 50, it is clear that Romans in the more numerous groups now constituting the Roman voting population still viewed the lawmaking process as a regular means of establishing consensus in a diverse society. Unfortunately, the emphasis of the ancient narratives on the political alliances and personal ambitions of a small number of Romans—senators, nobiles, and political newcomers competing for office—as laid bare in the lawmaking arena, masks the degree to which public lawmaking activity as well as the concerns of law sponsors reflect a communitywide interest in changing or restoring the Roman state through the traditional avenue, public law. But it was this communitywide engagement (and only this) that made possible the emergence of a new political dimension in public lawmaking activity. In particular, a more varied and irregular leadership, brought about by the diverse society Rome had become, began to use the process to advance special interests—or interests undoubtedly appearing special to other Romans for the reason that the ruptures among groups were becoming irreparable. Although the details of the politicization of public lawmaking are visible in many of the events of the next twenty years, in 368 the laws of the roman people the following analysis I propose to focus on events in 67, 59, and 58 that prompted unusually high levels of lawmaking activity. The various issues addressed by law sponsors in the ten or more public law proposals mooted in each of these years confirm that 70 was the climacteric of Roman public law. Henceforth, the uses of lawmaking were changed forever. the lawmaking of 67 In 68, the proconsul...

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