What we can learn from the ancient history of populism: Nicholas Lorimer

Key topics:

• Populism exploits crises, bypasses norms, and mobilizes “true people” vs elites.

• Gracchi brothers’ reforms triggered violence, political revenge, and weakened Rome.

• Norm-breaking and unchecked power cycles foreshadow the fall of republics.

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By Nicholas Lorimer*

Populism! A term that’s all the rage these days in political discourse.

Though it is often ill-defined, for the purposes of this article I will take populism to mean a political philosophy which seeks to represent the “true people” of a society against the “elite”. It values immediate outcomes over tradition or procedure. It demands action now and details later. It rejects “experts” and learning in favour of the “authentic”.

Populism is not a new phenomenon. While Steven Boykey Sidley was correct in his recent Daily Friend article that populism has broken up the post-Cold War consensus, populism is in fact an old bedfellow of republicanism and democracy, not a new arrival, with roots going all the way back to the ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans.

With that in mind, I beg your indulgence as I travel back to the distant past, to draw lessons for today about populism, the responses it generates and how it provides a warning across the centuries for our modern predicaments.

The 130s BC was a time of change in Ancient Rome. The Roman Republic had in the 140s defeated Carthage for the third and final time, securing itself as the dominant power in the Mediterranean. Rome ruled Italy, the southern two-thirds of Spain, modern day Tunisia in North Africa, Greece, Macedonia and the entire coastline of the Adriatic Sea.

Reading about this period, I was struck by how many commonalities our current political climate across the democratic world has with the issues faced in the Roman Republic. I am sure readers will notice these as well.

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While the Republic was still basking in the victory of the wars with Carthage, recent military expeditions in Spain had gone badly. A war with the Celtiberians of Numantia in Spain had initially gone very badly, and while Rome eventually won the war, the military setbacks were worrying. Romans wondered aloud, why aren’t we winning anymore?

At the same time, trade and victories in the wars in Greece and Carthage had provided a huge surplus of foreign slaves, whom the wealthiest Romans bought and put to work on ever-growing estates up and down Italy, which would come to be known as Latifundia.

Ultra-rich

The profitability of these estates encouraged the ultra-rich (the 1%, one might say) to buy up as much land as possible, and also to rent public land. This public land was available for any citizen to rent, but the state had imposed restrictions on how much any one family could take. Many ultra-rich landlords got around this by using proxies or dispensing bribes in order to build estates which often included public land, and which were truly enormous:  well past the legal limit in size.

The problem with this is that at that time, the Romans were only beginning to use a full-time professional army. The way Roman armies were supposed to work was that men of sufficient means, essentially the middle class and the rich, would buy their own equipment and be drafted temporarily into armies.

The first war against Carthage lasted 23 years, and the second, 17 years. As the empire expanded and wars dragged on for long periods of time, men found themselves called up for longer and longer periods, and were thus unable to support their family farms.

This drove these middle-class farmers to either keep going back into the army well into middle age, or sell to the ultra-rich. Other less lucky people ended up on the streets of Rome: new urban poor forced to rely on the favour of the ultra-rich for work and food.

Without the middle-class farmer, who would form the backbone of the army? Without the tough farmer stock of Rome, who would there be to serve in its victorious legions? Perhaps this is why Rome was losing wars, now that the original founding population of Rome had been diminished?

With a modern eye, a Roman might have said that the elites had replaced “us true Romans” with foreign third-world slave labour and were destroying “our” sacred military culture.

Monopolised

In the 130s, Roman politics was starting to get much more competitive, with the top positions in the government largely monopolised by a smaller group of powerful families. The traumatic wars with Carthage, whose forces were led by the genius general Hannibal, had decimated the Roman elite. Something like a third of the Senate, the highest class of Romans, were killed fighting the Carthaginians.

Space had been opened for new families and men to enter the political arena and this reduced competition for the top spots in government, which in turn had led to relative harmony. This however was now coming to an end, and politicians needed to go to ever-greater heights and greater extremes of performance and policy to stand out from the crowd.

Tiberius Gracchus, the son of a famous Roman general and senator who had twice served as Consul, the highest position in Rome, now came on stage. Tiberius was of the most esteemed stock, the son of the best of the elite. He entered Roman politics and instead of following the normal senatorial path, he decided to stand for the position of Tribune of the Plebs.

Roman government had two main bodies of deliberation: the Senate, the most important and representative of the elites, and the popular assemblies. The popular assemblies proposed legislation and most importantly the two leaders of this assembly, the Tribunes of the Plebs, could veto any legislation or action, even in the Senate, and were there to protect non-senators from the Senate, checking the Senate’s power.

Tiberius ran on a platform of land reform, proposing that the popular assembly pass legislation which would confiscate any family’s land holdings on public land which had surpassed the size-limits imposed by previous laws.

This of course generated a lot of opposition from those who stood to lose. But it was actually quite popular even within the elite because of fears of manpower shortages. The problem was that because of how competitive politics had become, many opposed the legislation simply because they wanted to be the one to get the credit for solving the problem.

Strong support

Tiberius was elected as Tribune of the Plebs in 133 BC, with strong support from the middle-class farmers who travelled to Rome to cast their votes. He then passed his land reform legislation in the assembly.

However, just as it was about to pass, the other tribune vetoed the legislation.

This was unprecedented.

A tribune could veto anything legally, but never before had one tribune vetoed another tribune. Respecting your fellow tribune was considered an unwritten rule, or as we might call it today, a norm.

This set off a crisis. The Senate was forced to weigh in on the issue but became deadlocked over what to do.

Tiberius decided to respond by breaking the law. He had the popular assembly vote to remove the other tribune, which was passed. This was even more unprecedented and undermined the fundamental principle of equality of the tribunes. This undermined the whole assembly system.

Soon after, Tiberius, now unchecked, interfered in foreign policy. This was another breaking of a norm, with the Senate traditionally being the only body which decided on foreign policy.

People began to whisper that Tiberius wanted to become a king and tyrant and that he would use his popular support to do so.

Things would come to a head at the next year’s election when Tiberius looked set to run for a second year as Tribune. This was illegal, as all Roman political offices had a one-year term limit that blocked you from office for ten years after having first been elected.

Sacrosanct

Tiberius likely wanted to be re-elected because the person of a tribune was considered sacrosanct. To prosecute or harm a tribune was considered not just a civil law violation but religious sacrilege. With so many powerful enemies, Tiberius likely feared prosecution when he stepped down.

This time however, the middle-class farmers didn’t show up to vote, and Tiberius lost the election for Tribune.

He immediately called a meeting of his supporters and allegedly during this meeting was declared a king by some of his supporters.

When a group of senators, including his cousin, heard this rumour, they rushed to the Senate to have Tiberius declared an enemy of Rome, as they believed Tiberius was about to launch an attempt to overthrow the government. 

The Senate once against refused to take action. A group of senators stormed out, armed themselves and marched to confront Tiberius and his supporters.

It’s not clear what happened next, but a fight broke out, and during the fight Tiberius was clubbed to death with a wooden chair. 

A few months later, some of his most loyal supporters were put on trial. Most of the Roman elite decided in retrospect that he was probably about to try to overthrow the government.

Interestingly, however, his land reform policy was never repealed.

Things returned to a kind of normalcy until Tiberius’s younger brother Gaius Gracchus entered politics a few years after his older brother’s murder. Gaius took up his brother’s platform and expanded it to be far more comprehensive. He proposed new colonies, free grain rations for the urban poor, electoral reform, reforms to the provinces, citizenship for all Italians, and reforms to the judiciary.

Gaius was popular and was elected Tribune of the Plebs in 123 B.C. He began enacting his policies. After his brother had broken the term-limit rule, Gaius without much fuss ran for a second term as Tribune in 122 BC, when he also won.

Norms and rules

This shows us that norms and rules, once shattered, are difficult to reimpose.

As it came time for his third run as tribune, Gaius began to see a drop in his popularity. His policies were mostly enacted and he had made many enemies. His supporters were also violent and intimidated anyone who opposed him.

When in 121 BC he was jeered by someone during a religious sacrifice, his supporters stabbed the person to death.

This broke the dam of opposition to Gaius.

The Senate met and this time, unlike the case with his brother, declared him an enemy of the People and Senate of Rome. What followed was a brief but violent civil war in Rome. Both sides had expected this and so were armed and organised. The Senate however had the help of some mercenary Cretan archers and more troops and so, after a battle in Rome, Gracchus was killed.

Purges followed and many of Gaius’s supporters were also killed. 

The Romans tried after this to forget, to move on from what had happened during the time of the Gracci brothers. But there was no going back.

Roman politics had for centuries been largely free from violence, but now violence was a growing part of the political culture. Political factions came to resemble armed gangs, and as the army transitioned from a militia to a permanent professional force, it began to become more involved in internal politics.

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Populism was also shown to be a path to power. You just had to make sure to get rid of your enemies once in power. All political factions became terrified of losing power, lest their opponents took revenge on them for the oppression they had carried out.

Populist rage

The next populist to come along was not from the elite but rather the rural gentry, a man named Gaius Marius. His populist rage in his perhaps mythical election speech still echoes across the centuries.

“Now compare me, fellow citizens, a new man with those arrogant nobles. What they know only from hearsay or reading, I have seen with my own eyes or done with my own hands. What they have learned from books I have actually done during my military service. They hold my humble origins in contempt. I scorn their worthlessness; I am reproached for the chance of birth; they for their infamous conduct. Personally, I believe that all men have one nature, and that the bravest are the best born.”

The violence and chaos unleashed by the populists and their opponents, referred to as the Optimates and Populares, would bring Rome to the edge of collapse. “Order” of a sort was restored by the great rival of Marius, a man named Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

After Marius had tricked Sulla out of a military command he desired, Sulla did something unprecedented: he marched his army on Rome itself in 88 BC. He became dictator and eventually would attempt to enact a number of reforms to “save the republic” and through brutality restore the stability of the pre-Gracci world. As part of laying the groundwork for this, Sulla enacted the most bloody purges on his political rivals ever before seen in Roman history.

Sulla’s proscription killed and drove into exile many Roman nobles, including a soon-to-be-famous Julius Ceasar.

Sulla’s reforms of Roman government were on paper quite sensible, he weakened the position of Tribune of the Plebs, expanded the Senate, strengthened the judiciary and attempted to establish a more formal constitution that would endure.

However, all the norms underpinning Roman government had been destroyed. All the younger political leaders learned from Sulla was that might made right, and he who had an army could make the law as he saw fit.

Limp on

The Roman Republic would limp on for decades more. However, the young men who followed Sulla – Pompey, Caesar and others – would ultimately destroy the last remnants of the Republic.

The last true ideological champion of the Republic was arguably the famous Cicero, who was eventually murdered by agents of Mark Antony.

Caesar’s nephew Octavian would complete the death of the Republic by establishing himself as Emperor, while still maintaining the fiction of republican governance.

While Rome’s empire still had many centuries left in its existence, its government’s stability would never truly return. For the rest of Roman history, it would be threatened by endless civil wars and internal conflicts. Succession disputes were not solved through law, or tradition or election, but rather through violence and intimidation. Ultimately this would collapse the Roman Empire, as civil wars destroyed and undermined the state.

The collapse of the Roman Empire would throw much of the Mediterranean world into chaos, and helped create a period of economic and cultural decline known popularly as the Dark Ages.

While reading about this period, I was struck by how many common features our current political climate across the democratic world has with the issues faced in the Roman Republic. I am sure readers have noticed these as well.

The real lesson for me is that escalating cycles of political revenge, norm destruction and taking actions which are “legal” but unprecedented are the road to dysfunction and ruin.

To safeguard our modern republics, we must learn these lessons well, else we may find ourselves in our own dark age.

*Nicholas Lorimer, a politician-turned-think tank thinker, is the IRR's Geopolitics Researcher and is host of the Daily Friend Show. His interests include geopolitics, and history (particularly medieval and ancient history). He is an unashamed Americaphile, whether it be food, culture or film. His other pursuits include video games and armchair critique of action films from the 1980s.

This article was first published by Daily Friend and is republished with permission