Controlling the uncontrollable: Cicero and the generals

Abstract IN this chapter I turn to the key imperial issue of the late Republic: the generals who rewrote the rules for holding commands, added huge tracts of land to the empire, and, on most accounts, precipitated the end of the Republic.1 The plight of provincial victims of misgovernment, or of aspirants to the citizenship whose claims were subject to challenge, simply did not have the same influence on events. It was not the provincials who brought about the transformation in the form of Roman government. And even though this assessment depends on the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that at the time commands of the sort granted to Pompeius and Caesar were felt to be a new phenomenon. While repetundae and citizenship cases continued to be dealt with through the standing courts, the allocation of provinces and the military commands which went with them became a matter for tribunician law, and heated, even violent, public debate, rather than, as before, one of the functions of the Senate.