ローマ共和制崩壊期の社會

Abstract

It is necessary and even inevitable for students of our day to restate, in the light of present research in social history, the process of disintegration of the Roman Republic which culminated in the establishment of the Empire. It is true that the stratification of the peasants was increasingly sharp, and that the rich and the poor were becoming two great social categories toward the end of the Republic, as the late professor Rostovtzeff suggested. Even more important, however, were the client connections (clientela as the social units without which the magnates (optimates) could hardly been able to maintain themselves. It was Dr. Premerstein who put emphasis on these connections and gave a new turn to the discussion. But what we have to stress is the character of the relationship between the patron (patronus) and his dependents (clientes); and on this point we are of the opinion that the dientela in the later Republic was different from that of the preceding period in its loose ethical connections and its material preoccupation among the clients. Moreover, the antipathies among the patrician families were fuel to the conflagration of the civil war. The classwar theory between the Roman bourgeoisie and the proletariat, as Rostovtzeff put it, is no longer tenable. We hope we may have illustrated some of the neglected aspects of the society of the later Roman Republic, although the part of the equites -- the nouveaux riches of the Republic - has eluded our brief study.