Rome's wealthiest man who helped end the Republic bears echoes with Trump today, writes Peter Stothard
n ever more unequal society loses its links to democracy. Wealth is good. Excess wealth distorts. Those were the lessons of the last years of the Roman republic 2000 years ago. They are still lessons today.
In 2022 the Latin lesson continues. Early Rome prospered not because it was an egalitarian democracy but because it was generally more equal, open, and democratic than its rivals, For instance, freeing slaves when the Greeks thought that a step too far. But throughout the first century BCE Rome’s intermittent civil wars between its ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ left one man eventually as the wealthiest politician of his time, maybe of all time. His name was Marcus Licinius Crassus.
Even Caesar himself was Crassus’s puppet at the beginning of his career. Crassus financed Caesar’s election campaigns, making sure at a stupendous cost that Caesar became pontifex maximus, the chief priest, the only man with a house in the Roman Forum.
So, the man whose power rested on his reputation for wealth decided on a last campaign to keep himself up with Caesar and Pompey. He moved onto his rivals’ turf, trained personal legions as he had trained slaves for his building sites, and prepared to take on a neighbour in war. In 53 BCE, twenty years after the Spartacus rebellion, his fellow oligarchs allowed their colleague to plan an invasion of Parthia, a sprawling empire east of the Euphrates.
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