Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic

"The Romans harped endlessly on "morality," a cultural feature long ignored as a literary trope or misappreciated as a mere marker of elite status. This book shows how, instead, social norms of personal restraint was part of a habitus of foundational values that acted as meta-rules for the Roman aristocratic performative-competitive political system. The book investigates these norms and explicates their positive content in the republican framework and their resulting place in the Romans' habitual mental map. The book then examines how the social norms came into irreconcilable conflict, arguing that-far from Rome progressing from a pristine past moral state to a sad moral nadir-the same "morals" of personal self-control stabilized and destabilized the Republic at different points in time. The values eventually lost their prohibitory force to constrain action, but not because they were abandoned. Rather, disputes over the proper application and meaning of the norms in novel political and social circumstances grew into violent clashes as disputants presented themselves as last-ditch defenders of the essential values and, accordingly, imagined their opponents as bent on the Republic's destruction, while no normatively acceptable third-party judge could exist to resolve the conflicts. Thus, the aristocracy's consensus formed and then cracked along axes over what constituted normative restraint behavior, which both accounts for the ubiquity of this cultural feature, and which automatically undermined a central pillar of the performative-competitive structure itself"-- Provided by publisher ## Abstract The Romans endlessly harped on “morality,” a cultural feature long ignored as a literary trope or misunderstood as a marker of elite status. This book shows how, instead, social norms of personal restraint were part of a habitus of foundational values that acted as metarules for the Roman aristocratic performative-competitive political system. The book investigates these norms and explicates their positive content in the republican framework and their resulting place in the Romans’ habitual mental map. The book then examines how social norms came into irreconcilable conflict, arguing that—far from Rome progressing from a pristine past moral state to a sad moral nadir—the same “morals” of personal self-control stabilized and destabilized the Republic at different points in time. The values eventually lost their prohibitory force to constrain action, but not because they were abandoned. Rather, disputes over the proper application and meaning of the norms in novel political and social circumstances grew into violent clashes as disputants presented themselves as last-ditch defenders of the essential values and, accordingly, imagined their opponents as bent on the Republic’s destruction, while no normatively acceptable third-party judge could exist to resolve the conflicts. Thus, the aristocracy’s consensus formed and then cracked along axes over what constituted normative restraint behavior, which both accounts for the ubiquity of this cultural feature, and which automatically undermined a central pillar of the performative-competitive structure itself. Strongly-held values can stabilize a society. They can also splinter it. In Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic , Paul Belonick explores the moral paradoxes of Republican Rome. He describes how aristocrats engaged in "performative politics," aggressively seeking self-advancement with a competitiveness that fueled the expansion of an empire. But, paradoxically, Roman orators and authors also emphasized the need for self-control, moderation, and temperance. Scholars have long suggested that this moral obsession with self-control was merely a social marker of aristocratic status, but Belonick argues that the Roman focus on self-control solidified their peculiar, competitive, semi-formal government. Belonick then considers how values of restraint could both stabilize and de-stabilize Rome's political system. As conflicts arose over how to apply these values to novel circumstances, competitors saw each other as desecrating Republican principles and therefore as targets to be eradicated. Belonick illustrates both sides of the Roman paradox: how values of self-control legitimized the Romans' competition and supported their fluid social structure and political institutions―and then tore the Republic apart. Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic presents a fresh perspective on the collapse of one of the most prominent societies in history. Cover 1 Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction 12 PART I VALUES, TERMS, AND PATTERNS 24 1. Shame, Respect, and Deference 26 2. Moderatio, Modestia, and Temperantia 48 3. Setting Norms 62 PART II RESTRAINT, CONFLICT, AND COLLAPSE 92 4. Tiberius Gracchus 94 5. Uncertainty 113 6. Cataclysm 132 7. The Lost Generation of the Republic 148 8. Restraint as Accelerator 179 Epilogue 198 Bibliography 208 Index 232 'Restraint, Conflict, and the Fall of the Roman Republic' proposes a new explanation for the collapse of the Roman Republic, arguing that the collapse was due not to lost morals, but instead to disintegration of consensus around how to apply them