Scandals and Sanctions: Holding Roman Officials Accountable (202-49 B.C.)

Abstract

This dissertation examines Roman responses to imperialism and provincial administration during the middle and late Republic, the period of Rome’s greatest expansion (202-49 B.C.), through the lens of public accountability. It analyzes the reactions of the senate and people to the achievements and misdeeds of magistrates sent abroad and explores how differing and evolving concepts of accountability arose from political debates, trials, and cultural practices. The project studies significant problems arising from Roman imperialism and imperial administration, including provincial extortion, cruelty towards allies, the theft of cultural and religious artifacts, and the large-scale embezzlement of public property. In addition, it demonstrates the effect of these offenses and ensuing scandals on Roman political and cultural norms of behavior. A major goal of the dissertation is to trace how Roman practices evolved and how they intersected or clashed with legislation as restrictions on magistrates became more extensive and sophisticated over the course of the Republic.

Part I considers the reactions of the Roman senate and people to the misconduct of magistrates abroad after the Second Punic War. Part II analyzes the Roman decision to address one of many problems relating to accountability in the middle of the second century through the creation of a permanent court that allowed for the restoration of property to foreigners. It investigates the ways in which the display and accounting of plundered cultural artifacts became tools for former officials to avoid controversy upon returning to Rome. Part III examines the broadening of concepts of accountability at the end of the second and beginning of the first centuries B.C., as Roman senators and other elite and non-elite actors sought new ways of regulating their officials and as civil violence engulfed the Roman world. Part IV studies the effect of the Sullan court system and late Republican political culture on methods for holding former magistrates accountable, focusing on the inconsistencies between legal solutions and political practices.