Effects of Conquest on Domestic Politics

Constitutional Developments

• Second praetorship created in 242
  • Peregrine praetor
  • Deals with legal cases involving foreigners
• Four more created to provide governors
  • Sicily, Sardinia (237)
  • Two Spains (198)
  • Now many more praetors than consuls
• Tribes added as Roman territory extended in Italy
  • 31 rural, 4 urban
  • Final reorganization of centuriate assembly
    • Dominance of first census class slightly reduced
    • Very complicated correlation of tribes and centuries instituted
  • Electoral system in Rome becomes fossilized
    • Nobility knows how to run system for own benefit
    • No motive for change
• Career patterns finalized in 200s
  • New ethos of stable oligarchy
    • Everyone in nobility should get a shot at "15 mins. of fame" as consul
    • Top offices not to be hogged by most prominent members of oligarchy
  • No more dictatorship
  • Restriction on repeated consulship
    • First ten-year interval between repeated consulship
    • After 153, repetition prohibited
  • Fixed order of offices
    • Quaestor, then praetor, then consul
  • Minimumum age requirements
    • Age of 42 for consulship

Troubles Caused by Conquest

• Military service detrimental to class of rural small holders
  • Soldiery mainly members of fifth (lowest) census class
  • Eagerness to serve in short, profitable wars in East or against Carthage (146)
  • Increasing reluctance to serve in Spain
    • Long service
    • Little reward
    • Good chance of getting killed
  • Long absence/death abroad of head of household undermines viability of small holdings
• Huge influx of wealth
  • Commanders keep large percentage of plunder
  • Offices also make large sums
  • Wealthy non-senators (equites) make money from providing services to state
• Land main long-term investment
  • No paper investments like stocks, bonds
  • Trade a risky investment
• Wealthy buy out small holders
  • Sometimes voluntary
  • sometimes not
• Wealthy occupy empty stretches of publicly owned land (ager publicus) in excess of legal limits
• Large migration of small holders to Rome
• Large farms worked with slave labor
  • Weakened class of small holders perceived as threat to military system
  • Large numbers of agricultural slaves considered dangerous