James Alexander Macksoud (Stanford University)
While the historicity of the first secession of the plebs (c. 493 BCE) is somewhat debatable, it remains canonically the first major development in the ‘conflict of the orders,’ a nearly two-century struggle between mass and elite that gradually produced, via constitutional reforms, the socio-political foundations of the mid and late Roman republican state (Cornell; Lintott; Raaflaub; Mignone; Forsythe).
Fascinatingly, the only two substantial extant accounts of the first secession, those of Livy (Ab Urbe Condita 2.23-2.33) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Roman Antiquities 6.22-6.90), were produced in close geographic and temporal proximity: in the city of Rome during the early Augustan period. These accounts differ little in their basic narrative structure, as both report that issues surrounding debt bondage (nexum) and military service eventually led members of the lower orders to withdraw from the city after failing to receive satisfactory relief from magistrates and the senate. Both Livy and Dionysius further relate that a reconciliation between the senate and the plebs was eventually reached which resulted in the formation of the plebeian tribunate.
The account of Dionysius has traditionally received somewhat less attention and has also suffered from accusations of embellishment by including, for example, many speeches which appear to have little narrative function (Hunter & de Jonge). However, by applying a non-traditional interpretative lens to Dionysius’s text, specifically one informed by contemporary rational choice theory, it is possible to assign an explanatory and interpretative function to many of the seemingly superfluous elements of his account. While applying contemporary rational choice theory to readings of classical texts is certainly an atypical approach, recent and forthcoming work (Charron; Ober) has made compelling arguments for the value of these readings.
Despite the general narrative agreement, Livy and Dionysius can be shown to have had radically different techniques and interests at play in their communication and explanation of the secessio plebis to their audiences. Specifically, Dionysius presents the first secessio plebis in terms recognizable as a bargaining problem and shows great concern in explicating what he sees as the decision-making processes of the historical actors. The speeches present in his account seem to describe typical problems to be expected in instances of negotiation and collective decision making, including problems which in contemporary parlance might be identified as the free-rider problem, judgement bias, and prospect theory (Kahneman). This paper argues that Dionysius does this so that the secessio plebis can be fit more readily within Greek historiographic paradigms, thus allowing him to better achieve his aim of integrating Roman history into a Greek tradition (Hogg; Trundle).
On the other hand, Livy, likely not ignorant of the Greek historiographical discourse of explicating the decision-making processes of historical actors, may therefore be imagined to have self-consciously framed Rome as exceptional and not assimilable to a standard bargaining story (Champion; Mineo). This paper therefore highlights how the language and theory of rational choice could be recognized as, among other things, a potential historiographic discourse, which ancient authors could self-consciously employ (or not) to their own strategic ends.