Power is Other People

Last year I (belatedly) read Robert Harris’s acclaimed Cicero trilogy. For added spice I interwove them through my (even more belated) reading of Bernard Cornwall’s Arthurian Warlord trilogy.

I don’t claim any great expertise in late-republican Rome but the books were generally regarded as historically accurate.

They don’t lionise Cicero. He can be venal, greedy and — above all — he makes mistakes. This brief note is about one mistake that Cicero makes consistently throughout the trilogy.

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Cicero is a “new man”. His family is a what we would term in modern Britain “middle class”, modest both in wealth and ancestry. This matters in the late Roman republic, where political ascent depends heavily on both. Money, because aspiring politicians have to put on shows and feasts, and build networks of clients. Ancestry because, well, that’s just built into the mass psychology of Rome — old families display death masks of previous members of their line to hold the rank of Consul.

Cicero begins with two assets; his skill as an orator and debater, and some wealth from his wife. The wealth is enough to buy him the right to stand for the senate, and as a senator he is able to develop clients by representing them in the courts

His ambition is constant throughout. Part way through the second novel, when his fortunes seem at a low ebb, Cicero laments “I thought I could be the next Alexander [the Great]”. He means this not through military conquest, but through the power of words.

At this point Cicero is simultaneously at his peak and his nadir.

His peak because he has finally achieved his lifelong goal from a formalistic point of view. He has become Consul, the highest political rank the republic can offer, and what’s more he’s done it quickly, moving rapidly from senator to Praetor (via Tribune) and finally Consul . He has also done it without being beholden to any major patron or political group, something he values.

His nadir because, despite achieving the formal authority of the consulship, he has not wrought any meaningful change for the better on Rome. The only major legislation passed under his consulship is a bill with which he personally mildly disagrees, but which for political reasons he didn’t deem worth opposing.

His goal all through the novels has been to become, as he puts it, the new Alexander, and he has always assumed that the path to doing so was to become a consul, as quickly and as independently as possible. Yet this means (the Consulship) has not led to the end that he expected (being a new, albeit non-military) Alexander.

At this simultaneous peak and nadir, Cicero is under pressure from his political enemies, considered a laughing stock for claiming before the senate that a plot exists against his life despite presenting them with no proof, and about the see the election of his enemies to a whole raft of powerful political posts just as his year in the consulship is to end.

So, what are the strategic considerations in this situation?

Cicero’s commitment to his planned means (achieving the consulship early and independently) eclipsed his focus on his goal (becoming the New Alexander by creating lasting change for the better for the Roman Republic.)

(A quick side-note here. Very little is brought up from beneath the surface in these novels. In many ways this is a literary rather than political comment, but I think it merits consideration. The novels are, to be blunt, extremely superficial. They describe what is happening; they sometimes elaborate on the significance of those happenings; and occasionally, in the form of Tiro, Cicero’s private secretary who serves as the narrator of the novels, they reflect on what is happening. But by far the bulk of the novel is taken up by describing, with a little elaborating and minimal reflecting. This makes it hard for me to be certain whether Harris intends what I am about to describe to be the case, or if he just inadvertently described this useful strategic lesson in what is otherwise a fairly straightforward (albeit epic in scope) political history novel.)

Early his career Cicero comes across two potential patrons, the rival generals Crassus and Pompey. Either one, impressed by his early triumphs as an orator and advocate, would be willing to serve as his patron, providing their resources to help him achieve political success in return for him supporting their interests. Cicero eventually rejects both of them (though he spends some time half-allies to Pompey), believing that he can achieve the same success without them.

Initially his beliefs on social justice (he is broadly depicted as what we would consider a progressive) put him on the side of the populists, and it is with their support (and the support of the “mob”, the mass of plebians who vote on legislation and elect some of the crucial officers of state) that he achieves his first electoral offices.

By the end of the first book, as Cicero is running for Consul, he realises that the populist movement has gradually gone over to leaders far more radical than he can stomach, and with far darker designs. To stop them (and not coincidentally to salvage his chances of winning the consulship) he reaches out to the people he has spent his career to date attacking, mocking and opposing at every move: the patricians . Despite this mutual antipathy a key part of the patrician faction agrees to support Cicero; his election to the conulship is secured and the populist plot is foiled.

This, though, launches Cicero on the consulship with no clear allies. He doesn’t want the support of the current populist leaders (many of whom are wealthy aristocrats and senators for whom “populism” is just a banner for their personal advancement) and he probably wouldn’t get it anyway. On the other hand he struggles to make common cause with the patricians, who he dislikes and many of whose issues he opposes.

Finally consulship, unlike his previous two roles, as a tribune and then a praetor, has no real direct power; it merely makes him president of the senate. In order to actually achieve anything he needs either a majority in the senate, or one among the plebeians (depending on the particular measure he wants to pass).

That’s not to say that either is impossible, but rather that he has to fight every step of the way, and eventually gets worn-down by the effort and dispirited by his high proportion of failures.

Politics is Other People

Consensus building in politics is never easy, but it helps when you have some constant party or faction at your back. Yes, you are in some way beholden to them, but they are also beholden to you. There’s a balance to be struck here: you don’t want to just be a spokesman for your party (where’s the independence or personal achievement in that?) but nor do they want to be treated merely as lobby-fodder, and or to fund someone who might spend their money on something they disagree with?

So having a party or faction is a trade-off, but its often a necessary one. Cicero achieves nothing because the “power” of the consulship is actually just a catalyst. If he had alliances, patrons, or more powerful clients then he would have the materials at hand to catalyse into consensus and thus action. Yes he would lose something, but he would gain something as well. And what he would gain would have been made his consulship far more productive in any number of ways — he would have had material to catalyse.

Think of a typical legislature, one like the Roman senate which works without fixed party systems of the kind you tend to find in modern democracies. Now imagine that you start your consulship with the support of 30% of the legislators. Some of them might indeed be content with being “lobby-fodder” happy to take the title of legislator, the salary, the lifestyle, without caring too much about the issues, trusting to your values through long association that if you want them to vote a particular way that’s probably okay.

By building your faction in advance you will have time to know which people these are, and can deploy resources accordingly. Others will be people with whom you’ve come to a shared platform of policies— it won’t be entirely yours, or entirely theirs, but it will be acceptable to both of you. You will also have a shared understanding of one another’s boundaries, so you won’t be alarmed by public statements on their part with which you disagree, nor will you have to spend much time reassuring them that you have no hidden meaning to your public statements, because they already know you well.

And above all, these people will have worked with you for long enough to have a basic relationship of trust. It’s often said that when we empathise with people we judge them on their intent (or what we perceive to have been their intent) but when don’t emapthise with them we judge them on the consequences of their actions. The former produces far more consistently positive readings of people than the latter. So the better people know you, and the more you have built a positive relationship with then, the more they will forgive your lapses.

Once you have (for example) 30% reliably at your back, you get the following benefits.

1. Popularity is contagious. As Prof. Robert Cialdini explains in his seminal book, Influence: The Science of Persuasion, social proof is one of the six key tools of influence. Being seen to have already convinced a large group of people makes it easier for you to convince more. It also gives you the opportunity to demonstrate authority, another of the six.

2. It reduces calls on your time. There is a well acknowledged tendency among successful politicians to have great energy, a strong memory for people and faces, and an ability to switch focus between radically different topics as they move from one meeting to the next in a matter of minutes. For all that, allies need constant reassurance, waverers need constant courting, rivals need constant watching. The more people who are already in your faction, the fewer you have to spend time on. Ignore them completely at your peril, but in general they will take much less of your bandwidth.

3. Everyone has their own contacts and their own networks. A faction is not (generally speaking) a hermetic institution. The people in your faction on the right flank are close to the people on the opposing faction’s left. There will be social connections, family links, network of patronage and clientship, shared values and single-issue agreements. Or just fun nights out together on the lash. The use of those contacts to you will generally decline with distance — you’re friend’s friend’s friend is probably geometrically less to you than the initial friend. But they’re not nothing, and human relationships aren’t precise mathematics. The sheer weight of them is valuable, and there’s always a chance of a big win .

Cicero is determined to be independent and get to the top fast, so he arrives at the catalytic position of the consulship with no-one to catalyse.

Every coalition he builds has to be policy by policy; every coalition has to be built from scratch.

Lessons

So what should Cicero have done? Should he have compromised his independence by taking on Crassus as a patron, or staying with Pompey for longer?

On balance, I don’t think so. Compromise matters in politics, one way or another. The novel though makes a good case that with Crassus or Pompey as his patron he would have every chance of ending up simply as a mouthpiece.

So what should he have done? In my view, he should have waited longer before seeking the consulship. Or perhaps it’s better to say he should have taken a longer path. Built up other resources, sought more independent financial means, sponsored a cohort of young politicians to find their own places in the power structure.

In other words, in a system where one of the dominant modalities is the patron-client relationship, being unable to find a patron he liked, he would have been better served to become a patron. To build himself into one, so that when he became consul it wouldn’t be by the skin of his teeth; it wouldn’t be a giant leap to a promotion that would somehow make everything right simply by achieving it; it would simply be one more small step to the very peak of a pyramid he already largely dominates.

And now the counter-point

There is a counter argument of course; in fact there’s a few.

One is that refusing to wait wasn’t just ego on Cicero’s part, or a miscalculation. It was inevitable. This argument goes that the momentum generated by Cicero’s early successes was neither lasting nor, without moving up in the political structure, sufficent. If he didn’t capitalise on it and convert it to political office at once then it would have wasted away. I don’t necessarily agree with this, and in any event I think it leaves Cicero without any strong strategy to pursue at the start of his political career.

Another counter-argument is that Cicero actually pursues what is one of my favourite strategies: “if no better option presents itself, go to the highest place and wait.”

From a politician’s point of view, perhaps the Consulship is the highest place. So Cicero goes there, and he waits.

Unfortunately, he can only wait there for a year, and he can never go back, which makes it a rather fragile piece of positioning.

In fact, as the novel (and history, but I’m writing this as if I only know the novels) shows us, soon after this nadir, chance provides a threat to the republic that Cicero is ideally placed to repulse. From this he achieves public acclaim and, for a while, the influence to craft the future of the republic.

Still, there’s no evidence that this is a conscious strategy on his part. His despair clearly indicates that he was using his consulship to actively try to achieve things, not just waiting for a chance. And when the chance comes, frankly, he’s not especially prepared for it, in the way you would expect someone pursuing a strategy of waiting would be.

I also think that if Cicero was using the “go to the highest place around, and wait” strategy, he miscalculated what constituted the “highest place” in that context. Rather than seeking formal political power, he should have sought wealth, and the power of patronage. Those things would me more enduring “high places” from which to watch for his chance.

Coincidentally, that is a strategy that requires more-or-less the same means as the strategy I actually recommended: pursuing power, wealth, and the ability to be a patron not merely a favoured client.

What that says to me is that the lodestones of power in the Roman republic are pretty consistent: wealth and the power of patronage. Formal political power is merely a function of those lodestones.