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저장1:  rough draft for short assignment

The Roman Revolution is Ronald Syme’s analysis on the end of the Roman Republic and the nation’s change in its form of government. In this book, the word ‘Revolution’ defines the rise of Augustus Octavian and the establishment of the Principate. Syme elaborates on the assassination of Julius Caesar and Octavian’s pursuit of power, but all in a bit ofpessimistic sense. His analysis somewhat seems to say that the fall of the Republican Rome and the birth of the Imperial Rome was an inevitable one.

Syme in his book shows the inadequacy of the Roman Republican Constitution and the Senate in ruling Rome. His view was a controversial one, since the Enlightenment Era the end of the Republic was seen as a tragic fall of the rightful democracy. But Syme denies the notion of ‘one tyrant (Julius Caesar)bringing down the otherwise wonderful republic’, while concentrating on the deeds of Octavian, showing that the revolution was more of a socially and structurally required change. However, he does not portray Octavian in a positive light either. The portrait of Octavian Syme paints is more of a sinister,autocratic and power-hungry figure, than an image ‘savior’ which Octavian wanted to portray himself.

Rome,which has grown a vast empire in terms of territory and population, and which has changed a lot since its foundation, was in great need of a systematical reform of its political structure. But its leading inhabitants kept to the old ways, the traditional ways of ‘checks and balances’ where few patriciis battled each other in petty rivalry to gain auctoritas overothers. While these nobiles were trapped by their own values of tradition, the upper middle class people of equisteri were exploiting the newly formed empire, gathering both power and wealth. The conflict between the ‘equisterian’ and the ‘patrician’ was soon to follow, and that, along with the problems of disgruntled plebs, added chaos to the decaying republic.

The overall picture of the Roman Republic drawn by Syme is rather bleak and dismissive, and from his gradual analysis comes the notion of ‘already decaying’ republic. The anti-Caesarian people were far from the ‘noble and romantic patriotism’ and were only serving their own needs, and Caesarian party was all but different. And in such situation appeared Octavian. As one influential and greatly ambitious man, he used all the needs and power balances of the nobiles to gain his own auctoritas. Through family connections and personal relations,Octavian slowly eliminated his rivals one by one, until he became the nominal ruler of Rome. By becoming the solely powerful man in Rome, he destroyed the notion of senatorial rule and almost all the powers the patricians previously had.By doing so, he ended the civil war and social discontent, thus stabilizing the empire – and the Mediterranean World.

But were Octavian’s deeds just, even if they were justified? After the founding of the Principate, Octavian – Augustus drained the Roman world in propaganda of presenting himself as the rightful savior of the republic, justifying all his deeds including mischievous ones. He manipulated the society and cruelly destroyed all the oppositions, and Rome was no longer a free country. Octavian’s new state of Rome was now a protocratic one, supported by the ‘knights’ who filled in the void of social class which formerly patricians had. Rome under Octavian was devoid of civil war, but was the loss of liberty worth it? Syme shows that Octavian was not the ‘savior’ of the republic or freedom, but was an authoritative and self interested dictator who only eventually stabilized the society during the process of satisfying his own selfish deeds. In this sense, Syme does not really ‘justify’ the ‘Revolution’, since one cannot clearly argue which is better; a liberty without stability or a stability without liberty.

저장2:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/641218.pdf  - Review -  Greece & Rome, Vol. 9, No. 26 (Feb., 1940)

http://home.uchicago.edu/~edris/pdfs/gtl9.pdf  - Historical Narrative in Tacitus and Syme

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/638057.pdf  - THE ROMAN NOBILITY IN THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

저장3:

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2812/pg2812.html.utf8 - Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11080/11080-8.txt - The Fourteen Orations against M. Antonius, called Philippics

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24967/24967-h/24967-h.htm - First Oration of Cicero Against Catiline