Judging from contemporary public discourse, the nobles of the late republic were routinely denigrated and associated with incompetence, entitlement and other aristocratic vices. Now, resentment towards unpopular rulers is of course nothing new and historically quite unremarkable, but what makes the resentment expressed towards the nobles so paradoxical is the crucial part played by the wider elite in maintaining them in their position. The power of the nobles rested on annual elections in which the combined votes of equites and boni often decided the outcome; certainly, without strong support from these groups no political career would ever get off the ground. To explain the curious disjuncture between the views and the actions of the boni, we may consider the position of the nobiles more broadly. Who were the nobles? How many were there – if they can be counted at all? What kind of power did they wield? And finally, how did they retain their position in the face of such apparent dissatisfaction with their rule? The answers may help us understand better not just the politics of the boni but also the nature of the ‘noble republic’ and the culture that sustained it.

The Romans, or at least those of the elite, tended to associate the ownership of property with personal virtue. As we saw, the connection between wealth and morality was so entrenched that material resources could be invested with intrinsic moral worth, while, conversely, poverty acquired a close affinity to depravity and corruption. Behind this nexus we find the supposition that people of substance – at least in principle – were self-reliant and hence enjoyed a degree of personal autonomy denied those of lesser means. But since the soundness, even the existence, of the boni could be questioned, it follows that wealth alone did not qualify a person for this status. In Rome, as in any other society, the relationship between wealth and morality remained subject to ongoing negotiation which explored its internal contradictions and paradoxes. So, while the association of wealth with virtue may have been commonplace, the issue was nevertheless riddled with ambiguities. On the one hand, wealth was accepted as a fundamental benefit that enabled a person to lead a decent and upstanding life, while, on the other hand, the Romans also realised that not all the rich were good and not all the poor were necessarily bad.

The moral framework constructed around financial conduct mirrored that prescribed for political activities, all operating within a simple binary framework of boni and improbi/egentes/cupidi. The terms may have been used in a wide variety of contexts, but they expressed a single normative code which encompassed the public as well as the private sphere. In economic affairs it stressed financial probity, the preservation of the patrimony and, above all, the avoidance of debt. Although credit has always been an essential part of economic systems throughout history, the Romans never distinguished between economically rational debt for the purpose of investment and debt incurred purely for personal spending.1 And signs are that, irrespective of the moral condemnation it incurred, debt became a growing problem in the late republic. Cicero could, for example, claim that during his consulship the issue of debt had never been more pressing.2 While he may exaggerate its magnitude in order to emphasise his own principled stand against debt reform, the statement is still surprising on a number of levels. Not only was debt condemned as dangerous and immoral, but Rome had on the whole never been more prosperous or secure than it was during this period. The question is therefore who were affected by debt and why they found themselves in such financial difficulty at a time when we would least expect it.

In March of 49, Cicero wrote to his friend Atticus with an update on the situation in Rome after Caesar had taken control of the capital. He described how life was getting back to normal and people settled in under the new regime. Personally, Cicero considered his options and asked, ‘What shall I do? Rush madly for Brundisium, appeal to the loyalty of the municipalities?’. The main obstacle he faced was, as he said, that the boni would not follow and neither would anyone else.1 His reference to a group of people called boni, who were apparently reluctant to come to the rescue of the old political order, is intriguing: who were they, and what lay behind their stance at this critical juncture in the life of the republic?

The Latin dictionaries all identify a distinct socio-economic aspect to the term ‘bonus’. According to Lewis & Short, one usage was ‘the better (i.e. higher) classes of society’, although the editors also implied that this meaning was uncommon. Similarly, in TLL at the very end of section I we find under paragraph 12, ‘i. q. fere q. locuples, dives’, again with an indication of rarity, and the Oxford Latin Dictionary s.v. bonus 6 offers this definition: ‘men of substance and social standing’, with ancient references ranging from Plautus to Tacitus.1 The editors of the OLD suggest this was a secondary derivation and provide only six examples. However, a comprehensive survey of all attestations of ‘bonus/boni’ shows that the usage was considerably more common and in fact may have been integral to its use in public and private discourse; arguably, it was implicit in all references to ‘boni’ outside texts of a strictly philosophical or moralising nature.

Cicero’s death and the formation of the triumvirate ushered in a period of unprecedented violence and instability. The new regime delivered a direct onslaught on the most vital interests of the boni. It happened on a scale and with a severity never seen before, involving proscription of individuals, confiscation of property for veteran settlements and crippling taxation to cover the cost of mass mobilisation and prolonged warfare; at Perusia it even led to armed resistance. As Osgood has reminded us, the trauma of this period stayed long after peace and prosperity had returned, shaping the relationship between the boni and the new Augustan government that would gradually take shape after Actium.1

The regularity with which members of a few families succeeded each other into the highest offices may, as argued, not necessarily be a sign of stability or general consensus. Tensions within the elite appear to have been growing and the power of the nobles came to rest on increasingly tenuous claims to managerial competence and concern for the common weal. This chapter looks at the role of the boni in the process that would eventually bring an end of the traditional form of collective government. As such, it attempts to weave together the various strands of this study into a historical narrative. At key moments during the period between the Gracchi and Augustus the relationship between the constituent parts of the Roman elite seems to have undergone significant shifts. We will therefore focus primarily on the key moments in 50/49 and 44/43, when the position of the boni became most crucial. First, however, a brief sketch of the background to these events.

In some contexts, the equites were subsumed into the wider category of boni, while in others the two groups were clearly distinguished. The question is how they were separated – what were the criteria? And were there implications for the place of the boni in public life, especially in relation to the judicial process? To clarify these questions, we will first have to define Rome’s second order, the ordo equester. Currently the debate evolves around two basic positions, which adopt what we might call the ‘minimalist’ and the ‘maximalist’ approach. The former focuses on the archaic institution of the equus publicus – ‘the public horse’ – as the sole qualifying attribute of an eques, while the latter applies a much broader definition that comprises all those who fulfilled the equestrian census requirement, probably set at HS 400,000 during the late republic.

Otium was more than a general sense of comfort; it carried an almost existential quality of ‘security’ that brought it semantically close to salus. The two concepts were, as we saw, often paired, hinting at the profound nature of the underlying concerns. Indeed, Roman public life could, as Cicero did in the Pro Milone, be conceptualised as a perpetual fight ‘for the salus of the boni against the madness of desperate men’.1 And an official senatorial decree calling for Cicero’s restoration had apparently stated that any obstruction would be ‘contrary to the res publica, to the salus of the boni and to the concord of the citizens’.2 Salus represented personal security in the broadest sense of life, possessions and social standing, and while the boni may have taken little interest in day-to-day politics, they did of course care very much about their personal welfare and prosperity. Attempts at engaging them therefore focused on these concerns, repeatedly warning of threats to their ‘salus et otium’. The key passage of Cicero’s second agrarian speech, quoted above, listed the most important benefits of otium, and as its final crowning reward he placed the protection of the family fortune, which rested on pax, ‘res familaris in pace’; for that reason, Cicero stressed that: ‘you ought to preserve otium by all means’.3

It is not least Cicero’s final struggle in 44–3 that invites a revaluation of his place in the history of the late republic. During those crucial months he was the effective leader of the res publica, the treasured ideal which he had always claimed to personify, and which arguably vanished together with its last dedicated defender. As already noted, Cicero occupies a unique place in the history of this period, being our primary source as well as one of its leading protagonists. His dual role as actor and reporter – along with the sheer amount of evidence surviving from his hand – has paradoxical consequences, as it affects our ability to evaluate his historical significance objectively. One way of overcoming this problem it to reconsider the wider social landscape in which he operated, which in practice means looking beyond the narrow confines of the political class. This study has tried to draw attention to a hitherto unrecognised element of Rome’s social structure, the boni, who comprised the broader class of property owners that formed the backbone of the res publica. The simple fact that they far outnumbered the small circle of families who monopolised the highest offices automatically changes our understanding also of Cicero’s position in Roman politics.

The concerns about private property explored in the previous chapters may help us understand better what we might call the ‘politics’ of the boni as well as their relationship with the small inner circle of families that filled the highest offices. Their misgivings about the conduct of the political class appear to have focused on one particular section within it, the so-called nobiles, who occupied a distinct place in the power structure of the republic.1 Overall, the Roman elite was strikingly homogeneous, defined as it was almost exclusively by property and economic resources. No Roman could ever be considered ‘elite’ without substantial assets to his name that guaranteed a life free of work and material concerns. The sources of their wealth were relatively similar across the board, despite some variation in the extent to which different sections engaged in commerce, trade and state contracts.2 The scale of their wealth did, of course, also vary considerably, but that did not affect the fundamentally plutocratic character of the Roman elite. Their shared material interests may have been a contributing factor behind the broad uniformity of values and outlook that seems to have characterised the elite. The most important structural differentiation evolved around public honores, which split the propertied classes into those who took active part in government and state affairs and the majority that did not. Although the former category never formally constituted themselves as a ‘ruling class’, always remaining dynamic, fluid and in principle open to outsiders, over time the position of some families became so entrenched that they set themselves apart while claiming the honorific epithet of ‘nobilis’.

The boni emerge from the ancient record as a central constituency of the Roman republic, whose importance was reflected in public discourse as well as in private communications between members of the elite. Almost all our sources mention the boni while many texts address them directly. The overall impression is that the boni – in the wider or narrower sense – in many respects constituted a ‘public’, whose views mattered to all who were involved in politics. If, as argued above, they represented a substantial, socially and economically important section of Roman society, they would naturally have maintained a presence at the centre of power. Most likely they dominated the spaces where public affairs took place, above all in and around the Forum, which many would have visited on a daily basis along with senators and equites. While in the Forum they would often have joined the crowds that listened to contiones and formed the coronae which surrounded public court proceedings. They probably also provided most of the participants in the legislative comitia that were held in the Forum; as property owners many of them would have been inscribed in rural tribes and hence able to provide an even spread of tribules that could meet the quorum requirements.