ANOTHER CONCEPTION OF THE RES PUBLICA?

Alongside this model of the res publica, which was extendible and unconnected to the realities of the city, there exist other references, which continued to inform ac­tions and speech in the third and fourth centuries, to the point of sometimes guiding change.

After the disturbances of the years 235-238, the Senate indeed put in place a commission of twenty senators, former consuls, the vigintiviri ex senatus consulto consulares rei publicae curandae, charged (as the titulature states) with taking re­sponsibility for the res publica, and from among this group were chosen two equal “first men,” Maximian Pupienus and Balbinus.^[194] These two emperors, backed by a good number of provinces, put an end to the reign of Maximinus before themselves being massacred in the spring of 238. The language used during this brief period, the monetary themes of the two princes (Concordia and Fides, between princes and Senate), and their style of governance thus mark a return to the “constitutional ques­tion,” whose thematics in these years and those leading up to them Cassius Dio and Herodian show particularly well.

One example will suffice here: the speech that Herodian puts in the mouth of Pupienus, delivered to the soldiers of Maximinus and gathering all the themes of the time (8.7.4-6; trans. Whittaker):

“You now know from experience the value of changing your minds and falling into line with Roman policy... For the future you must always enjoy these benefits by keeping your pledges to the Romans and the Senate and to us your emperors. The Senate and the Roman people decided to choose us because of our noble birth and many achievements in a long series of offices, which he held like graded promotions before reaching this final position.

The text takes up traditional themes (the sovereignty of the Senate and of the Ro­man People; the notion of administratio (διοικεiν)^[195]; the centrality of the city of Rome); it urges the refusal of the monopolizing of power, and defends the idea that power is based on merit and the glorious actions of the men who are invested with it. Herodian’s vocabulary is very critical of the Severans and echoes the ideology of public mission,^[196] of the munus publicum, which associates political action with the defense of the commoda, the utility and goods, of all.^[197]

The reference has a symbolic dimension here: the ancient ideas of mandata, the insistence on the role of each citizen, as well as notions of civic space and public good are all invoked. It is a common language that they make heard, for it is the bearer of hope, but also of a positive imaginary: the image of the grandeur of the sovereign people. However, the language is adapted to a new reality. The phrases used are not completely those of the past: it is a question of the affairs of power (τα της aρχης) and not those of the people (τa δημοσiα), as we would expect; of the people of the city of Rome, not of the Populus Romanus; finally the role of the army is strongly emphasized.

This “anachronism from the past” expresses at the same time all the potentiali­ties of the past to act in the present, and the necessary reinterpretation of the past in a present that has changed. We cannot in any case see in it a “republican utopia,” as Xavier Loriot has maintained.^[198] The discourse of the past expresses a resistance not to the principate but to the monarchic and autocratic practice of the Severans, which is heavily criticized by Herodian.

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