Methods
Doubtless, gangs were put to work in the violent punctuation of personal feuds more often than we can any longer detect. Our sources, however, focus primarily on political events, and so we most often spy the operations of gangs at public assemblies, including public orations (contiones), at public tribunals, and in the harassment of public figures or the intimidation of senatorial meetings.
The work of gangs then very often consisted in pushing a measure through an assembly or in sheer obstruction, the latter being an activity that could take place at electoral assemblies as well as legislative ones, or at trials. Breaking up an assembly was a fairly straightforward matter: eruptive force was applied until it could no longer function. Success often depended on bulk and sheer ferocity. A common tactic was to occupy the site of the assembly early in order to forestall any action whatsoever. By contrast, gangs who were summoned to back a bill faced a greater challenge: they must overawe any resistance but without creating such havoc that the assembly had to be dissolved. For this reason, they also endeavoured to seize early possession of the site of an assembly and, if possible, to erect a barricade against any opponents. As for intimidation, this was sometimes a matter of coordinated jeering, sometimes a matter of sustaining a posture of physical menace. In either case, a degree of discipline was demanded. Whatever the application of gangs, the danger of excessive, even lethal violence persisted: it was always possible for gangs to become mobs.[832]It is obvious that aristocratic figures like Tiberius Gracchus or Clodius Pulcher, however intimate their connections with large segments of the populace, could not, on their own, arrange and manage public demonstrations. They needed intermediaries, some of whom were perhaps members of their households, others connections from various quarters. Clodius' operatives, for instance, included men like Gnaeus Gellius, an equestrian, and Sextus Cloelius, a public scribe and therefore a man of some standing, but also men well down the social scale who were apparently leaders of their collegia.[833] Although his range of intermediaries may have been more extensive than his rivals', all members of the senatorial order, in their roles as patrons and candidates for office,
Gang Violence in the Late Roman Republic maintained contacts with the lower orders.[834] It was by way of such networks that political figures inclined to mustering demonstrations will have found the intermediaries whose services were so indispensable.[835]