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GEA212

Marxist Analysis of the fall of the Roman Republic

In 27 B.C.E., after a brief civil war, Octavian was made Caesar Augustus, first

emperor of Rome, and the Roman Republic, which had lasted for five centuries, was

destroyed. It is a story that has been told many times by many historians, and most

everyone is familiar with Julius Caesar’s rise and his death at the hands of Brutus in an

attempt to save the Republic. Brutus and an army of Republicans then went to war

against Octavian, Caesar’s heir, and through a series of unlucky events and

miscommunications, Brutus and his allies were defeated at the Battle of Philippi. In this

paper, I intend to take a different look at this event. Through an analysis of the changes in

Rome’s economy, it becomes clear that the fall of the Roman Republic and the

subsequent rise of the Roman Empire had nothing to do with the character of Caesar or

the vicissitudes of fate. Far from it, the fall of the Roman Republic was actually the

inevitable result of the change in the underlying economic conditions over which Roman

society was based. The agrarian, individual Farmer-Soldier, which had formed the basis

of the Roman Republic for over half a millennium, had been replaced in the whirlwind of

Roman expansion in the preceding two centuries. Lacking its economic foundation, the

subsequent collapse of the political structure of the Roman Republic was inescapable.

To begin with, it is necessary to look at the economic conditions that existed

during the majority of the Roman Republic and which brought the Republic about in the

first place. While the Greeks, Phoenicians, and other Mediterranean cultures in the sixth

and fifth centuries B.C. were developing commercial trade-based economies, Rome and

the Italian peninsula as a whole remained relatively undeveloped economically. Rome,

like the rest of North and Central Italy, was overwhelming an agrarian economy. The city

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itself functioned as a small administrative and religious center in which the aristocracy

resided, and it was supported largely by the lower class of plebian farmers, who worked

the fertile farmland in Latium and Etruscia, in the Tiber River Valley.1 Roman society at

this time had slaves, but they were relatively few in number and functioned largely as a

servant class. The majority of the economy was in agriculture: single family farms in

small villages, which produced a surplus, which in turn fueled the lifestyles of the

Patricians in the city.

This surplus, however, was very slight, and the Roman plebeians were barely

more than subsistence farmers. In the manner of the times, the farming was supplemented

by yearly raids of neighboring states for plunder. Even with these small raids, the surplus

wealth was barely large enough to sustain a small priesthood and aristocracy; it certainly

was unable to support an entire standing army. As such, the basis of the Roman military

was the plebian farmer. Citizens would plant in the spring, go to war and raid enemy

states during the summer, and then return in time to harvest crops in the fall.

It is within this economic context that the Roman Republic was born. In 509 B.C.

the city-state of Rome expelled the last of its seven kings.2 In its place emerged a

Republican government, where every Roman citizen participated in a vote to elect

representative officials to run the country. While originally these officials were only of

the aristocracy, this was not to last. The Patricians at this time were dependent upon the

plebeians economically and, consequently, militarily. Thus, during the 490s when the

plebeians asserted their right to equal representation among republican officials, the

Patricians were powerless to deny them, and by 494 B.C. the formerly patrician-

1
Morey, Outlines of Roman History, 2.
2
Ibid, 6.

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controlled republic passed laws recognizing economic and political equality for all

Roman citizens.3 For the rest of its history, the Roman Republic was truly an egalitarian

institution, with both the plebian and patrician classes voting and holding important

political offices.

Under the new Republican government, Rome grew from a backwater city state

into an imperial power spanning the whole of the Mediterranean basin. In yearly raids

and small wars, the Roman Republic slowly expanded, assimilating major cities and

conquering opposing tribes. By 400 B.C. Rome had united Latium through a series of

wars in the fifth century. By 300 B.C., Rome had conquered all of Central and Northern

Italy. By 272, Rome had even managed to fight back the Greek Colonies in Southern

Italy, using its strong cohesion and economic stability as a land power to outlast the

“unbeatable” Greek Armies of Pyrrhus of Epirus.4

With the conquest of all Italy, Rome quickly emerged as a strong regional power,

putting it at odds with the empire of Carthage which had previously been the undisputed

power in the western Mediterranean. Rome’s expansionist policy of yearly raids quickly

brought it into conflict with Carthage in Sicily, sparking the first of the Punic wars,

lasting from 264 – 241 B.C.. Rome emerged victorious, gaining control of the island of

Sicily, and in 218 – 201, Rome defeated Carthage once more, after a long, destructive

campaign in the Italian countryside, over the course of which Rome gained control of the

Iberian Peninsula, or modern Spain, and crippled the Empire of Carthage, eventually

destroying it altogether.5 Soon afterwards, Rome went on to fight Greece itself, going to

3
Ibid, 9.
4
Payne, Ancient Rome, 76.
5
Cantor, Antiquity, 24.

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war against Phillip of Macedonia in 214.6 In a series of wars lasting down into the year

167, Rome defeated the most powerful states in the Mediterranean world. Greece and

Macedonia, the heart of the Hellenistic world, became Roman provinces in 148 B.C.7

With the fall of Greece, Rome had become the most powerful empire in the

Mediterranean world.

The Roman Republic then, was successful in a level unprecedented in history.

When it began, Rome was nothing but a backwater city state. Under the republic, it

defeated its neighboring cities, going on to take Italy, its rival regional powers, and

eventually conquer the whole of the Hellenistic world. By 100 B.C., the Greek world had

become a Roman province, and the Roman Empire stretched from Greece and Asia

Minor in the east to North Africa in the south, all the way to the Iberian Peninsula in the

west. The Roman Republic did the impossible, creating perhaps the strongest state the

world had ever seen. The Roman Republic had not only created a land empire to rival that

of Alexander or Napoleon, it had done what no conqueror before or since was able to do:

not just conquer, but keep its newly won lands. And yet, this miraculous republic, at the

zenith of its power, a Republic which had survived and thrived for half a millennium,

would be gone by the time Jesus was born 100 years later.

The story of the fall of Rome is well known: Julius Caesar, the most successful

general in Roman history, defeated Pompeii and was elected dictator for life in 44 B.C.

He was then assassinated by Brutus and a group of Republican conspirators, a group

which was eventually foiled by the machinations of Anthony and Augustus in the Second

6
Morey, Outlines, 16
7
Cantor, 24.

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Triumvirate, a Triumvirate which eventually led to the disestablishment of the Republic

and the emergence of Octavian as the first of the Roman Emperors in 27 B.C.

And yet, despite all stories of the great deeds of Caesar and Augustus, despite the

famous rhetoric of Brutus and Anthony, a strong argument can be made that the fall of the

Republic had nothing to do with these monumental figures or the beliefs that they

inspired in others. Rather, the fall of the Roman Republic was an inevitable result of a

shift in the foundation of Roman economic life, a shift that, ironically, was the direct

consequence of the Republic’s spectacular successes in the fourth and third centuries.

From 250 B.C. down to 100 B.C., the Roman Republic had grown exponentially

through a series of wars in which it was spectacularly successful. With a citizen army, the

republic had defeated the largest and the richest empires of the world. With these

victories, the Romans experienced an enormous influx of goods. Slaves from conquered

peoples, gold and spoils from the treasure halls of the Greeks. At the same time, the

Italian countryside had been devastated by Rome’s wars with Carthage. While Rome was

ultimately successful in these wars, it had lost almost a quarter of its population in doing

so. 8 As a result, there were no longer enough farmers, and by 100 B.C. the Roman

countryside was chronically under-worked and there were huge tracts of land that locals

were no longer able to support. At the same time, Rome had gained hundreds of

thousands of new slaves during its conquests. These slaves flooded the markets, such that

“any Roman who could afford to feed them could have as many as he pleased.”9 With the

ordinary peasantry either dead or reeling from the series of wars, a few ultra-wealthy

8
Payne, Rome, 80.
9
Ibid, 83.

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aristocrats who had the funds to feed slaves were able to buy up large tracts of land and

start building massive estates, called Latifundia.

As the number of Latifundia grew, the independent farmers that had not been

forced off their land in the wars were displaced by the plantations, with rich landowners

taking over and consolidating most of the land into their growing estates.10 These

displaced peasants were forced to move to the city, joining an ever growing mob of

landless Roman plebeians who were unable to support themselves and lived off the

welfare provided by the loot from the eastern wars.

Thus, in a few short years, the farmer-citizen class which had made up the

economic foundation of the Republic had been knocked out from under it as a result of its

very success. The farmers’ agricultural economic contributions had been replaced by

slave-driven Latifundia and wealth from conquest. As such, they no longer had the

money to support themselves in their military role. The citizen-armies which had been the

basis of the Roman legions had lost their soldiers. This occurred at a time when Rome

had made large territorial gains, and was thus in need of more, better-trained soldiers than

ever before. Worse, since these soldiers would be for keeping the peace in conquering

territories, and not for raids, they would have to work year round. Farmers, who had been

summer soldiers but never professional soldiers, which were perfect for expansionist

raids, were utterly incapable of fulfilling this new role.

There were, however, mobs of the unemployed, and there was enough wealth

coming in from Rome’s conquests, and food from the new slave-economy, that Rome

could afford to support a new professional class of soldiers. Indeed, it could not afford to

do anything else, since the old citizen-soldiers that had made up the old Roman army
10
Morey, Outline, 19.

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during the height of the republic no longer existed. And so in 104 B.C. the military

makeup of Roman society morphed to accommodate the change in Rome’s economy. The

citizen-soldier army which was no longer economically sustainable ceased to exist. In its

place arose an army of professional legions, made up landless poor, who were

consequently dependent upon the success of their individual generals, since they had no

farm to go back to after the fighting was done. At the same time the growing presence of

latifundia was leading to an increase disparity between ultra-rich land owners and new

recently impoverished plebeians. More, those in the right positions were able to get a

disproportionately large share of the loot from the eastern wars, leading to a few

astronomically wealthy individuals.

These changes in society, brought about by the fundamental shift in the Roman

economy, provided the set of circumstances in which the republic could not possibly

continue. With the new professional soldiers, an army’s loyalty lay not with the Republic,

but with individual charismatic generals. These generals had gotten incredibly wealthy

from the eastern conquests, and were able to provide well for their soldiers and any

supporters. This occurred at a time when most of the commoners had just lost their farms,

their way of making a living, and were growing increasingly resentful of the elected

representatives who were getting rich off of the latifundia. They were in a uniquely well-

suited position to be susceptible to the promises that a populist general could offer.

Now that the republic lacked a national army, there was no real military obstacle

preventing a general, if he so chose, from simply taking Rome. The soldiers were more

loyal to the individual than to the republic, and there was still a underclass of unemployed

plebeians in the capitol who were dissatisfied with the current government, which was

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becoming increasingly influenced by the wealthy landowners. These disenfranchised

plebians were perfectly willing to throw in their lot with a general, were he to offer a

chance of some sort of political change or land reform. It was only a matter of time

before the new “material productive forces of society,” namely, the latifundia owners and

generals of the professional armies, would “come into conflict with the existing relations

of production,” or the political structure of the Roman Republic, beginning “an epoch of

social revolution.”11 The economic conditions were ripe for one of the new ultra powerful

generals to enter Rome and take it from the now obsolete Republic.

This is exactly what Marius, the general who had helped create the professional

armies of Rome, decided to do. Marius had come back to Rome from a stunning military

victory in the Jurgunthine War, a minor incursion in Africa around 111 B.C. (a war that

had its origins in corruption in republican officials). Instead of disbanding his army

afterwards, Marius used it to take Rome, becoming a dictator in all but name. Sulla,

another successful general, deposed Marius and set himself up as dictator in 88 B.C.12

Cinna, a disciple of Marius, then deposed Sulla, but Sulla returned in 82 B.C. and

deposed the Marians, establishing himself as dictator from 82 to 79.13 The same thing was

attempted with less success by other populists, most famously by Cataline while Cicero

was leading the republic in 62 B.C. Julius Caesar himself, who most people consider the

first dictator of Rome, and who rose to power, like Marius and Sulla, as a populist

general, came to fame putting down a previous celebrity-general, Pompey the Great.

When Julius and Augustus established the Julio-Claudian Dynasty then, it was no

accident. They were the last of a long line of general-dictators who were churned out by
11
Marx, “On the History of His Opinions” in The Marx-Engles Reader, 4-5.
12
Ibid, 20.
13
Ibid, 20.

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the conflict between the current Roman Latifundia-Plunder Economy, which favored an

ultra-wealthy autocracy, and the residual Roman political system, which was still based

on the egalitarian, agrarian economy of the sixth Century. The Roman Republic did not

fall because of anything special in the character of Augustus of Caesar, and it could not

have been prevented were Brutus or Cassius more daring. One of these dictators was

bound to succeed eventually; it just so happened that Augustus was the one to do it. Had

he failed, the conflict between the old political superstructure and the new economic

foundations would have kept creating dictators until one was finally successful.

Thus, a Marxist analysis of the fall of the Roman Republic seems to indicate that

the Republic collapsed because the agrarian farmer-soldier that had been the economic

basis for the Republic’s birth had been replaced with an economic system more amenable

to Empire. Inevitably, I feel, there are problems with a purely Marxist analysis. In this, as

in all cases, a Marxist analysis cannot help but oversimplify and gloss over other non-

economic causes. In looking at everything through an economic lens, one misses the

undeniable impact that individuals and ideas make on history. The Mongols would have

conquered Europe 1242 if the Kahn had not suddenly died, an individual fluke that had

nothing to do with the economies of Europe or Asia. The Crusades crossed and destroyed

economic boundaries because of deeply-held religious beliefs. It seems clear that there

are numerous events in history that defy economic explanation. There are even more

where the best explanation involves a mixture of influences, some economic, some not.

That being said, I believe that in this particular case, a Marxist analysis may be

uniquely suited for explaining and understanding that events that took place. The collapse

of the Roman Republic clearly had nothing to do with the ideas of the time, all of which

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supported republicanism. In fact, political philosophy would support republicanism for

almost 100 years after the fall of the republic. A case might be made that if a monumental

person like Caesar had not been around, the republic would never have fallen, but this is

belied by the fact that there were a half dozen dictators before Caesar, all of whom were

nearly successful in toppling the republic themselves. It seems, perhaps, that in this case,

the Marxist view is indeed the correct one, and that the dominant cause of the collapse of

the Roman Republic really was the collapse of its economic foundation a few decades

earlier as a result of the Republic’s success in the East.

Cassius, in one of the most famous lines in Shakespeare’s Caesar, said “The fault,

dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.” A Marxist analysis of the situation

however, shows that this was not the case. There was nothing that Brutus or Cicero could

have done to save their beloved republic. The Republic’s economic foundation was gone,

and the political superstructure of the republic would inevitably follow. It might as well

have been written in the stars. This Marxist analysis explains the fall of the Republic as a

result of economics, and in so doing, avoids the problems that arise when trying to

explain it through the doings of the great men of the times, or through following the

history of political ideas.

Works Cited

Cantor, Norman, Antiquity, Harper Collins: New York, 2003.

Payne, Robert, Ancient Rome, Horizon inc.: New York, 1966.

Marx, Karl, “On the History of his Opinions” (From The Marx Engles Reader, Norton &
Co.: New York 1978).

10
Morey, William C, Outlines of Roman History, American Book Company: New York,
1901.

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