Publius Clodius Pulcher

Gang violence in Rome reached its climax during the fifties, and the principal figure in this development was Publius Clodius Pulcher, tribune of the plebs in 58 bce. Clodius' ambitious legislative programme included two measures that were instrumental in animating popular enthusiasm in often violent support of the tribune's further political designs.

He carried a law that supplied every head of a Roman household with a modest quantity of free grain each month, the most generous public entitlement in the history of the republic: this measure alone secured him unexcelled gratitude from the urban masses. But Clodius also brought in a law restoring the status and stability of neighbourhood collegia. Some of these associations had, during the sixties, become implicated in instances of public violence and were deemed, by the senatorial authorities, to be subversive. As a consequence, a senatorial decree of 64 bce abolished many collegia and limited the activities of the rest. This, however, was a source of significant public unhappiness: for ordinary Romans, collegia offered precious opportunities for local display, for local honour and for local prestige. They also helped to articulate the fundamental virtue of neighbourliness, and played an important role in providing a modest degree of social security, for instance, by aiding humble Romans with the cost of burials. The Senate's decree, exhibiting as it did that body's suspicious and condescending attitude towards the common people and their susceptibilities, was deeply offensive at the popular level. Consequently, Clodius' law rehabilitating collegia was received with profound appreciation. Furthermore, Clodius put the collegia to work in the execution of his new grain distributions, a policy that enhanced the local prestige of the officers in every collegia and reinforced in popular sensibilities the benefits of both of Clodius’ measures.^{^[830]}

Clodius, by satisfying the public’s hunger for bread and dignity, won their constant and unwavering loyalty.

How, from the point of view of the masses, could such a politician ever be anything other than a champion of the people? All Roman politicians cultivated contacts with collegia (Cicero, Comment. pet. 29-30), and it is apparent from the 64 bce decree that a least a few figures had managed to utilise the collegia for political ends. But no Roman senator before Clodius, it appears, had fully grasped the importance for ordinary Romans of local prestige: Clodius’ law regulating collegia touched the people profoundly, as their exertions on his behalf soon showed. The vehemence of Clodius’ popular backing was revealed at the trial of Publius Vatinius, early in 58 bce. Clodius had announced that he would appear at this trial and would, on the basis of his tribunician authority, intervene on Vatinius’ behalf. Gaius Memmius, the praetor supervising the trial, indicated that he would resist Clodius’ interference. And so the tribune appealed to the public. On the day of the trial a forceful crowd descended on the tribunal, scattering the benches and overturning the equipment of the court.³⁰

Thereafter, whenever Clodius sought popular support for his policies or even for his personal political purposes, throngs of violent supporters turned out. Clodius employed violence to drive his enemy Cicero into exile, destroy his house on the Palatine Hill, attack the properties of his brother and allies, and to intimidate Pompey the Great, who withdrew from public life for much of the year. Clodius boasted that, at a word from him, the city’s artisans and shopkeepers would abandon their work and join him in demonstrating the public’s will, for Clodius always suffused his political designs with the rhetoric of popular rights and popular liberty. He went so far as to confiscate Cicero’s house in Rome and build on its premises a shrine to the goddess Libertas. During the year of his tribunate he was very nearly master of the streets of Rome. This was gang violence on an unprecedented scale.³¹

Even after he left office, Clodius preserved the loyalty of the commons.

But he soon faced competition for control of the streets. Two tribunes of 57 bce, Titus Annius Milo and Publius Sestius, also recruited bands of men, who confronted Clodius’ supporters. Neither man enjoyed Clodius’ popularity. Instead, each resorted to paying for his followers, who included gladiators. Milo and Sestius combined with Pompey in striving to restore Cicero to Rome, matching violence with violence and by way of attempting to

Gang Violence in the Late Roman Republic prosecute Clodius in the courts. Clodius could not stop Cicero's recall from exile, nor could his gangs, ordinary citizens motivated by loyalty to Clodius and by Clodius' appeals to popular rights, match the brute force of the hirelings of Sestius and Milo, who were better equipped and more proficient at brawling. Clodius' enemies, naturally enough, praised Milo and Sestius as defenders of the republic.

Nevertheless, Clodius' gangs did not go away. The year 57 bce was a bloody one in Rome, as Clodius' gangs continued to menace his enemies and their property. Soon Clodius, too, was obliged to make payments to his men, for whom loss of employment as well as potential injuries became very real impediments to their participation in political violence. Clodius' tactics remained a constant in domestic politics, even after 56 bce when he changed his political allegiance in order to become an ally of Pompey. He met his death in 52 bce, when he was murdered outside the city during a clash between himself and Milo. In reaction, the urban masses rioted, cremating Clodius' corpse in the forum by using the Senate house as his pyre. This emergency persisted until Pompey, appointed sole consul of Rome, introduced legions into the city to restore order.^{^[831]}

It is frequently asserted, on the basis of Cicero's descriptions of Clodius' gangs, that these were paramilitary units, disciplined and armed. And that is certainly the impression given by Cicero's terminology. But Clodius' followers were shopkeepers, craftsmen and unskilled labourers.

Few if any would have had any training in fighting or seen active military service. It is true that collegia were organised into centuries and divisions (centuriae and decuriae), but collegia were not martial associations. Their members were untrained and unarmed, which is why they were often at a disadvantage when confronted by the ruffians hired by Sestius and Milo. Cicero's rhetoric - his deployment of military imagery in his depiction of Clodius' supporters - was devised to conjure fear of an army of have-nots waging war against the respectable classes: it was not an objective analysis, and, owing to its hostile purpose, remains misleading. In any case, the traditional organisation of collegia was quite enough for Clodius' purposes: they facilitated his communications with the urban population, supplied an internal organisation that was sufficient for encouraging members' participation in Clodian politics, and provided an environment in which Clodius' popular ideology resonated. That was a degree of organisation which surpassed any previous mobilisation of popular force.³³ Hence its lasting efficacy.

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Source: Fagan Garrett G., Fibiger Linda, Hudson Mark, Trundle Matthew (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 1: The Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 756 p.. 2020

Publius Clodius Pulcher

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