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Op-Ed Contributor
Pirates of the Mediterranean
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By ROBERT HARRIS
Published: September 30, 2006
Kintbury, England
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Anthony Russo
IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world's only military superpower was
dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on
its very heart. Rome's port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular
war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their
bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much
attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event
that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11
world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky
aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set
them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their
democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is
repeating itself.
Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault
were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared
to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected
of the earth: "The ruined men of all nations," in the words of the
great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, "a piratical
state with a peculiar esprit de corps."
Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to
spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had
believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: "The
Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel
bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer
secure of their property or their life for a single moment."
What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution
of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and
balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands
of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly
held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and
subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a
remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of "Civis Romanus sum" — "I am
a Roman citizen" — was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were
willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the
38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as
Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus
Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new
law.
"Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what
amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over
everyone," the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. "There were not many
places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits."
Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman
Treasury — 144 million sesterces — to pay for his "war on terror,"
which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of
120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was
unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the
bill was debated.
Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome,
Pompey's opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed
(illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to
sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the
entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey's genius as a military
strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be
defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous
threat in the first place.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in
the political book — the whipping up of a panic, in which any
dissenting voice could be dismissed as "soft" or even "traitorous" —
powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned.
Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet
regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest
man in the empire.
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the
similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the
individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of
9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of
habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to
challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about
torture, which forbids only the inducement of "serious" physical and
mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence
obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing
of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an
enemy combatant — all this represents an historic shift in the
balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the
thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the
destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an
intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the
same.
In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of
the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later,
Julius Caesar — the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in
favor of Pompey's special command during the Senate debate — was
awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously,
the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed
forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.
It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had
been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey,
with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely
wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction.
Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which
candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the
system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon — and the
rest, as they say, is ancient history.
It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the
disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably
hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military
adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more
than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome's
democracy — imperfect though it was — rose again.
The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended
consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to
protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not
have the same result.
Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of "Imperium: A Novel of
Ancient Rome."
