The Conflict
Between Cato and Scipio
by Richard L. Trumbo,
St. Catherine's School
On the death of Africanus the spirits
of his adversaries rose, the first (princeps) of them being Marcius
Porcius Cato, who even during his life had been accustomed to
snarl at his greatness.1
It is very difficult to enter imaginatively
into the political thinking of the ancient Romans. Paradoxically,
many of the elements of Roman politics have been characteristic
of human political activity throughout history. Personal likes
and dislikes and group affiliations have always been an important
part of politics, whether in the Roman Senate or in an American
senatorial confirmation hearing. Deep-seated beliefs about justice
and ethics have always been powerful shapers of political behavior.
Motivations of vanity, desire for personal power, and pursuit
of glory have also been evident throughout recorded history.
While the basic building-blocks of politics
have changed little, if at all, the relative importance or influence
of each motivating factor has fluctuated over time. One can identify
eras in which political ideology is a dominating feature, and
other epochs in which ideology seems to be at most a background
to dramatic personal confrontations. The shifting weight of motivating
factors makes Roman politics particularly opaque to the modern
student; indeed, conflicting interpretations of Roman politics
are offered by contemporary scholars. Prosopographers lean most
upon family connections and factional affiliations to explain
political behavior during the Republic. Other commentators interpret
Republican politics primarily in terms of class struggle and
economic power relationships.
A durable and popular theory of Republican
politics emphasizes the growth of Rome into an empire, with some
sort of impersonal inevitability drawing Rome into revolution
and autocracy at the end of the Republic. Polybius predicted
such an inevitable process in his famous chapter on the Roman
constitution, and since his time a perennial analysis of the
latter half of the Republican era moves from Roman territorial
expansion to the inadequacy of the "small town, simple government"
of Republican Rome, typically culminating in reflections that
the collapse of Rome's republican institutions was inevitable,
and that territorial expansion somehow made monarchic government
necessary. Despite the ubiquity and popularity of this interpretation,
one might question whether it is very helpful in understanding
Roman politics. "Inevitable processes" of history frequently
function as a substitute for close critical observation of phenomena
in history as well as in other fields. One might, in passing,
wonder whether monarchy is in fact the inevitable political form
for extended territories, despite the venerable tradition (extending
from antiquity at least to Rousseau's Social Contract,
with his intriguing political geometry) behind this claim. The
experience of countries such as the United States and Canada
might offer some interesting parallels to the expansion of Rome
during the Republican era, without necessarily leading one to
dire predictions of autocracy looming before these modern republics.
