Die Rol van die ‘Rewolusionêr’ in die Romeinse Republiek

Abstract

The period 133-31 B.C. in the history of Rome is one of revolutionary violence, political unrest and internecine struggles – unique in their nefarious, fratricidal ferocity. The revolution was directed against a ruling aristocracy which based its privileged position on ownership of agricultural land and knowledge of the existing law. In order to maintain their supremacy the aristocracy deliberately cultivated a weak central authority in the state. The state functioned by means of annually elected officers – members of the nobility and also accountable to their peers. Foreseeably the revolution was conducted in the economic and political spheres but soon developed a military character when revolutionary impatience could no longer be checked. In the economic field the attempts of the Gracchi, starting in 133 B.C., to curb land tenure by the nobility met with limited success, but the brutal and high handed reaction senatorial aristocracy of the unleashed forces which materially contributed to the conflagration which engulfed Rome in the next century. In the legal political field, where law was an esoteric science closely guarded by the nobility, Servius Sulpicius, a teacher of law per excellence, sought to wrest this monopoly of legal learning from the nobility inter alia by introducing Greek philosophical ideas. His efforts ensured the systematization and eventually the codification and immortality of Roman Law, but as for the present yielded insufficient tangible results. Eventually then the initiative was seized by military leaders whose zeal in the cutting down of the lives of men can only be matched by that of a Ghengis Kahn, a Robespierre and a Trotsky. The aristocracy was annihilated and replaced by a single ruler, unrestricted in his powers, euphemistically called princeps.