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Book Review
| Caroline Williamson, The Laws of the Roman People, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Pp. 534. $75 (ISBN 0-472-11053-5).
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| Caroline Williamson has written a monumental work, monumental in scope and in learning. Her goal, to examine the interrelationship between public lawmaking during the Roman Republic and the Republic's expansion and eventual decline, is ambitious but one she achieves. By closely examining the more than five hundred Republican public laws in the context of Roman Republican literature and history, Williamson manages to convey both the details and the significance of lawmaking in this crucial period. |
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Perhaps the most valuable part of Williamson's work is her ability to explain the social function of the various laws within the greater context of Roman political and economic networks. She understands the importance, for instance, of Roman legions to their commanders not simply in terms of brute force, but, also, as a pool of loyal voters who, in the later Republic, could easily outnumber the civilian voters. She understands and explains the importance, in particular, of Roman public laws on the distribution of land. Through a careful analysis of Cicero's De Lege Agraria along with the numerous public laws on the subject of land ownership and use, Williamson can demonstrate the ways in which the Roman state was able to incorporate its Italian neighbors as well as placate its own growing citizenship during periods of territorial expansion. Another example of the Roman genius for state-building through expansion, discussed by Williamson, concerns legislation designed to create an infrastructure of roads and other civic building throughout areas of territorial expansion, thereby demonstrating in a very practical way the advantages of being Roman. |
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Much of the book is very properly concerned with the Roman use of the extension of citizenship as a means of expansion and state-building. Here, as Williamson brilliantly discusses, is the great irony of the Roman Republican expansion. In the early years of the Republic, the extension of citizenship to allies and others was a crucial aid to the successful incorporation of new territories and peoples. But, in the first century, when Rome decided to grant citizenship to virtually all Italian peoples in order to put an end to a devastating peninsular war, the great increase in the numbers of citizens and the concomitant decline in community consensus that followed led ultimately to the period of unrest and civil war. This, in turn, made possible the rise of demagogues and tyrants, which led, ultimately, to the downfall of the Republic and the beginning of the empire. The citizenship figures cited by Williamson speak for themselves. In 204, the census listed 214,000 men. In 115, the census figure had grown to 394,336. By 70 the figure was an astonishing 910,000. This vast increase in voting citizens, many from remote areas with little knowledge of Rome or Roman political mores and many whose loyalties lay with their military commanders, smoothed the way for men such as Sulla, Pompey, and Julius Caesar. |
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Not to be ignored is Williamson's epilogue, which draws comparisons between the experience of Roman imperial expansion and that of British imperial expansion and, thereby, provides a series of fascinating leads for other scholars to follow. All those interested in modern imperial history should read this epilogue. |
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Williamson has written a very good book, one that every scholar of Roman law, Roman history, and imperial history must read. |
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| M. H. Hoeflich
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| University of Kansas |
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