Legitimation of violence in the civil wars between the Marians and Sullans

Abstract

Through the analysis of various research approaches, a method for reconstructing the Roman conception of violence was developed. This method was applied to answer the question of tolerance and disapproval expressed towards political murders in the Roman Republic: depending on the context, such murders were qualified as either violence or acts of justice. The markers used by ancient authors to show their disregard to violent actions caused by political reasons were singled out. The role of legitimation practices in this process was revealed. The interpretation of such events by ancient authors was analyzed. The characteristics of the main characters in their narratives were considered. It was found that the precedent of the first real civil war caused a crisis of the traditional system of values and promoted a search for new values to legitimate the previously unfamiliar phenomena. Based on the results obtained, several scenarios for violence justification in the Roman Republic during the civil wars of the 1st century B.C. were introduced: firstly, the relations between the citizens were built as between the “winners and losers” when an armed civil conflict escalated into the war; secondly, revenge became a common motive among the Romans for turning to violence; thirdly, the formal side of laws intended originally to protect the rights of the Roman citizens was often used during the time of conflicts to ligitime violence against them.

Keywords

• history of roman republic
• legitimation of violence
• plutarch
• civil wars in ancient rome
• civil wars of marius and sulla