Senatus Consultum Ultimum : Political Murder in the Late Roman Republic

Abstract

Senatus consultum ultimum, the Senate's "ultimate decree", is generally thought to be a declaration of a state of emergency in Republican Rome. In this paper, by examining the process by which the "ultimate decree" was first passed, the author attempts to clarify the real intention of the Senate (= the oligarchy) in its passage. J.B.Ungern-Sternberg's detailed study, though different in its conclusions, has proven most helpful to the discussion which follows. The oligarchy, who had lost control over Ti. Gracchus by traditional means, e.g. legal prosecution, murdered him in 133 B.C. The ringleader was P.Scipio Nasica, a private citizen. The oligarchy tried to justify the murder by first admiring Nasica for what he had done, and secondly by prosecuting Ti. Gracchus' surviving followers for treason. It is more important for the purpose of this paper that the oligarchy were simultaneously prepared to find a new institutional formula to destroy their opponents instead of using private citizens to murder them as in 133 B.C. In 121 B.C., a consul, the highest magistracy of the Roman Republic, massacred C.Gracchus and his followers under the "ultimate decree", and the massacre was supported by the people in 120 B.C. The author concludes that the oligarchy, who had lost the ability to rule by any traditional means, invented the senatus consultum ultimum to destroy their political opponents under the pretext of saving the res publica from crisis. The "ultimate decree", however, encouraged political violence, and came to cause Sulla's march on Rome in 88 B.C., which ironically dealt a fatal blow to the res publica.