The Egyptian people want power in the face of government intransigence. So what happens next? Ancient Rome went through this phase, and very destructive it was.
For 50 years, Romans from aristocrats to plebs had broadly agreed that the final say on all major political matters should be the Senate’s (senex, ‘old man’), an oligarchy consisting of current and retired executive officials (consuls, praetors etc.). But after the defeat of Hannibal in 202 bc and the expansion of Roman power into North Africa, Spain, Greece and Asia Minor (western Turkey), the gap between rich and poor widened radically, and the soldiers who had done the fighting did not feel they had been satisfactorily rewarded for their efforts.
In 133 bc, the disillusioned aristocrat Tiberius Gracchus saw this as a chance to win power. For hundreds of years, those appointed as ‘tribunes of the plebs’ had acted as the voice of the people in the Senate.
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