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Studies in the History of Greece and Rome
The Patrician Tribune: Publius Clodius Pulcher
Publius Clodius Pulcher was a prominent political figure during the last years of the Roman Republic. Born into an illustrious patrician family, his early career was sullied by military failures and especially by the scandal that resulted from his allegedly disguising himself as a woman in order to sneak into a forbidden religious ceremony in the hope of seducing Caesar's wife. Clodius survived this disgrace, however, and emerged as a major political force. He renounced his patrician status and was elected tribune of the people. As tribune, he pursued an ambitious legislative agenda, winning the loyalties of the common people of Rome to such a degree that he was soon able to summon forceful, even violent, demonstrations on his own behalf.
The first modern, comprehensive biography of Clodius, The Patrician Tribune traces his career from its earliest stages until its end in 52 B.C., when he was murdered by a political rival. Jeffrey Tatum explores Clodius's political successes, as well as the limitations of his popular strategies, within the broader context of Roman political practices. In the process, Tatum illuminates the relationship between the political contests of Rome's elite and the daily struggles of Rome's urban poor.
The first modern, comprehensive biography of Clodius, The Patrician Tribune traces his career from its earliest stages until its end in 52 B.C., when he was murdered by a political rival. Jeffrey Tatum explores Clodius's political successes, as well as the limitations of his popular strategies, within the broader context of Roman political practices. In the process, Tatum illuminates the relationship between the political contests of Rome's elite and the daily struggles of Rome's urban poor.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published July 20, 1999
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About the author
W. Jeffrey Tatum
8 books4 followersW. Jeffrey Tatum is professor of classics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 9, 2022
The only biography about one of the most infamous “popularis” politicians of the late Roman Republic. Archenemy of Cicero and many other politicians and a member of the triumvirate he is well known for his scandals, briberies, violent protest and having a gang he made life terrible for the inhabitants of Rome but made history interesting for future historians/history lovers.
This biography goes deep into his early career and his life as a politician/consul. This book is truly for people who have a good fundament of Roman history because the writer doesn’t explain certain people or events so you have to know what the writer is talking about.
All by all a good book and rich of new information I didn’t knew before.
7.8/10
This biography goes deep into his early career and his life as a politician/consul. This book is truly for people who have a good fundament of Roman history because the writer doesn’t explain certain people or events so you have to know what the writer is talking about.
All by all a good book and rich of new information I didn’t knew before.
7.8/10
June 27, 2020
The Patrician Tribune is an exemplary instance of that rare work of ancient history—in particular, late republican Roman history—composed in an academic idiom and reliant on sound historical methods while nevertheless accessible to a non-academic audience. Unlike the work of Anthony Everitt or Tom Holland, to cite two popular writers on Roman history, Tatum’s portraiture of Publius Clodius Pulcher materializes in full view of our scattered and unreliable sources for his life and before a rich backdrop of Roman life and culture. While the book is obviously focused on Clodius’s life and achievements, Tatum does not fall prey to “Great Man” historical methods and assumptions, nor does he abstract Clodius the man from the broader, less well-documented social world of the Roman plebs, without whom Clodius’s career would not have been possible in the form it ultimately assumed. This latter point is especially important: when one reads most popular histories of the late Republic, the Roman world apart from its senators, commanders, aristocrats, and the political drama in which they featured typically falls away—or, as with authors like Holland, is cursorily treated and sensationalized. Here, Tatum places that world front and center: the first chapter, titled “Politics and Popularity in the Late Roman Republic,” is an excellent primer on the composition of the Roman electorate, lower-class political participation, and how we should understand popularis politics in the late republican period. This chapter is the essential foundation from which Tatum launches his detailed chronicle of Clodius’s life, which he admirably composes without slavish adherence to Cicero’s construal of Clodius as an utterly depraved, unprecedented, and uncontrollable political actor bent on the republic’s destruction. Tatum persuasively explains why Clodius was no Catiline, even if the patrician tribune exhibited rather extreme, if not necessarily atypical, Claudian hubris. On Tatum’s narrative, Clodius in many respects pursued a traditional political career via common popularis methods; Tatum even proposes that the patrician’s adoption into a plebeian family, the book’s eponymous episode oft-cited to substantiate Clodius’s revolutionary character, had precedents in republican, even late republican history (if not in the form of adoption, but the rather more formal transition from patrician to plebeian status, a route denied Clodius). Clodius’s adoption may not have been a conventional move, but it need not have been the utterly radical, subversive measure that Cicero condemns with such vehemence.
What was unprecedented in Clodius’s life was that he enjoyed unmatched adulation from the urban plebs that, for a time, no one in Rome seemed able to counter. To be sure, Clodius utilized standard popularis tactics to acquire political power and status, but that he did so with such consistency over nearly a decade rendered him the people’s unequivocal champion. Whether Clodius actually cared for the hardships endured by Rome’s urban poor is, unfortunately, not possible for historians to establish, yet the four bills Clodius introduced on the first day of his tribunate and subsequently passed into law testify both to the former patrician’s political shrewdness and his impressive policy competence. Tatum helpfully explains the most likely content of these four laws, none of which seem especially radical. In fact, two of Clodius’s laws, the lex Clodia de obnuntiatione and the lex Clodia de censoria notione, are modest reform measures that, however beneficial to Clodius and his allies, were eminently reasonable solutions to topical procedural issues in the late republic. The other two major laws, one of which re-established previously banned citizen associations, the other of which aimed to ensure poor citizens could afford bread, undoubtedly helped make Clodius one of the most popular politicians in Rome, yet they also helped make life for the Roman poor just a little less wretched. In any case, both laws had precedents: whereas the one simply re-established what had previously been abolished, the other extended a pre-existent grain subsidy to make it free. In overview of the Clodian policy slate, Tatum writes: “Few among the boni (Rome’s most conservative, aristocratic class in the senate) will have been thrilled by Clodius’s popularis measures, obviously, but free grain was a proposal that could hardly be stopped and at least the remainder of Clodius’s legislative package made it clear that he was no revolutionary in any sense of the word. In fact, the entire slate suggested balance” (136). That very few opposed Clodius’s proposals testifies to Tatum’s characterization; “only Cicero offered resistance,” he observes, “and he was persuaded to give way, not only by the dynasts . . . but by the very princes of the senate” (136).
Still, Clodius was no ordinary politician; his ready use of violence to advance his political objectives contributed to an apocalyptic atmosphere in the city of Rome on and off for six years. Even if violence and popular riots “[were] normal element[s] of Roman politics” in the late republican period, and even if “violence [was not] a facet of life alien to the Romans’ existence,” as Tatum insists, “Clodius’s exploitation of popular protests and demonstrations was a vital factor in the escalation of urban violence that characterized the fifties” (146). This, I venture, is somewhat of an understatement; had it not been for Clodian violence, Pompey may never have resorted to Milo’s hired bands to quell the former patrician’s errant behavior (which, of course, only precipitated more violence), and the fact that even the anti-Pompeian aristocrats ultimately sanctioned Pompey’s sole consulship, which they hoped would provide some stability, indicates just how bad matters had become in Rome by 52, primarily thanks to Clodius’s violent suppression of political opposition. Tatum may be correct to insist that while Clodian violence was unprecedented in its consistency and breadth, it “was normally accompanied by justifications that appealed to traditional Roman rights—like provocatio (an appeal made to the Roman people against the action of a magistrate, meant to protect plebeians from wanton exploitation)—or by the exigencies of food crises” (146). Yet whatever the traditional justification for Clodius’s subversive actions, it is difficult to escape the notion that Clodius was not so much the champion of Rome’s underrepresented and oppressed poor, but a master manipulator keenly aware of the power of popularis tactics when utilized not in isolation, but consistently over time. If Clodius had not been a cynical demagogue but, rather, a sincere populist, one wonders why, for example, he pursued his vendetta with Cicero even when it cost him serious political points in the senate. It is certainly within the realm of possibility—and, while impossible to prove, all the more likely—that Clodian violence aimed more to advance Clodius’s political career than the interests of Rome’s urban plebs. While the two aims are obviously not mutually exclusive, Tatum did not exactly persuade me that Clodius cared much at all about plebeian libertas.
Nevertheless, The Patrician Tribune provides an essential counterbalance to the caricature of Clodius as a second Catiline and depraved villain. While we all know that Cicero’s descriptions of Clodius do not, insofar as they come from the patrician tribune’s arch-enemy, provide an objective portraiture of the man, his motives, or the validity of accomplishments, Tatum here offers a positive, constructive depiction of Clodius based on primary sources and sound inferences when those sources are silent or obviously biased. Perhaps more importantly, Tatum fleshes out our picture of lower-class civic participation in conjunction with popularis tactics in the late republican period. This is a major contribution that, while secondary to Tatum’s central project, materializes parallel to his learned account of Clodius’s life.
What was unprecedented in Clodius’s life was that he enjoyed unmatched adulation from the urban plebs that, for a time, no one in Rome seemed able to counter. To be sure, Clodius utilized standard popularis tactics to acquire political power and status, but that he did so with such consistency over nearly a decade rendered him the people’s unequivocal champion. Whether Clodius actually cared for the hardships endured by Rome’s urban poor is, unfortunately, not possible for historians to establish, yet the four bills Clodius introduced on the first day of his tribunate and subsequently passed into law testify both to the former patrician’s political shrewdness and his impressive policy competence. Tatum helpfully explains the most likely content of these four laws, none of which seem especially radical. In fact, two of Clodius’s laws, the lex Clodia de obnuntiatione and the lex Clodia de censoria notione, are modest reform measures that, however beneficial to Clodius and his allies, were eminently reasonable solutions to topical procedural issues in the late republic. The other two major laws, one of which re-established previously banned citizen associations, the other of which aimed to ensure poor citizens could afford bread, undoubtedly helped make Clodius one of the most popular politicians in Rome, yet they also helped make life for the Roman poor just a little less wretched. In any case, both laws had precedents: whereas the one simply re-established what had previously been abolished, the other extended a pre-existent grain subsidy to make it free. In overview of the Clodian policy slate, Tatum writes: “Few among the boni (Rome’s most conservative, aristocratic class in the senate) will have been thrilled by Clodius’s popularis measures, obviously, but free grain was a proposal that could hardly be stopped and at least the remainder of Clodius’s legislative package made it clear that he was no revolutionary in any sense of the word. In fact, the entire slate suggested balance” (136). That very few opposed Clodius’s proposals testifies to Tatum’s characterization; “only Cicero offered resistance,” he observes, “and he was persuaded to give way, not only by the dynasts . . . but by the very princes of the senate” (136).
Still, Clodius was no ordinary politician; his ready use of violence to advance his political objectives contributed to an apocalyptic atmosphere in the city of Rome on and off for six years. Even if violence and popular riots “[were] normal element[s] of Roman politics” in the late republican period, and even if “violence [was not] a facet of life alien to the Romans’ existence,” as Tatum insists, “Clodius’s exploitation of popular protests and demonstrations was a vital factor in the escalation of urban violence that characterized the fifties” (146). This, I venture, is somewhat of an understatement; had it not been for Clodian violence, Pompey may never have resorted to Milo’s hired bands to quell the former patrician’s errant behavior (which, of course, only precipitated more violence), and the fact that even the anti-Pompeian aristocrats ultimately sanctioned Pompey’s sole consulship, which they hoped would provide some stability, indicates just how bad matters had become in Rome by 52, primarily thanks to Clodius’s violent suppression of political opposition. Tatum may be correct to insist that while Clodian violence was unprecedented in its consistency and breadth, it “was normally accompanied by justifications that appealed to traditional Roman rights—like provocatio (an appeal made to the Roman people against the action of a magistrate, meant to protect plebeians from wanton exploitation)—or by the exigencies of food crises” (146). Yet whatever the traditional justification for Clodius’s subversive actions, it is difficult to escape the notion that Clodius was not so much the champion of Rome’s underrepresented and oppressed poor, but a master manipulator keenly aware of the power of popularis tactics when utilized not in isolation, but consistently over time. If Clodius had not been a cynical demagogue but, rather, a sincere populist, one wonders why, for example, he pursued his vendetta with Cicero even when it cost him serious political points in the senate. It is certainly within the realm of possibility—and, while impossible to prove, all the more likely—that Clodian violence aimed more to advance Clodius’s political career than the interests of Rome’s urban plebs. While the two aims are obviously not mutually exclusive, Tatum did not exactly persuade me that Clodius cared much at all about plebeian libertas.
Nevertheless, The Patrician Tribune provides an essential counterbalance to the caricature of Clodius as a second Catiline and depraved villain. While we all know that Cicero’s descriptions of Clodius do not, insofar as they come from the patrician tribune’s arch-enemy, provide an objective portraiture of the man, his motives, or the validity of accomplishments, Tatum here offers a positive, constructive depiction of Clodius based on primary sources and sound inferences when those sources are silent or obviously biased. Perhaps more importantly, Tatum fleshes out our picture of lower-class civic participation in conjunction with popularis tactics in the late republican period. This is a major contribution that, while secondary to Tatum’s central project, materializes parallel to his learned account of Clodius’s life.
February 15, 2022
Clodius has been featured in several Roman mystery books, particularly in by Steven Saylor, and in some of the SPQR books by . Of course he also turns up in 's series on Rome. This book is a treatment of his life and influence and gets beyond the sensationalism of the aforementioned fiction. It's pitched somewhere between a scholarly treatise and a popular biography. So it's readable but does require some concentration. I did learn several new words - always a treat.
October 11, 2019
This is a generally successful attempt to pull together all the information (hint- an awful lot comes from the inveterately hostile Cicero) known about Clodius and use it to evaluate his importance. Tatum writes well and convincingly; his thesis that Clodius was a pioneer in how he used crowds and violence seems proven.
He also argues that beyond these tactics Clodius was in many ways in line with his great family status and patrician mores. He always aligned with his family, even after becoming a plebeian to run for tribune. Tatum portrays him as never wanting to be radical enough to lose all support in the Senate, even when he fixated on Cicero. Thus Clodius could never be a Catiline.
Where Tatum is, probably unavoidably, incomplete is in deciphering how Clodius actually thought. He also, to my regret, refrains from going deeply into the role of Fulvia.
Overall, this is a good book for anyone fascinated by this extraordinary period and its vivid characters.
He also argues that beyond these tactics Clodius was in many ways in line with his great family status and patrician mores. He always aligned with his family, even after becoming a plebeian to run for tribune. Tatum portrays him as never wanting to be radical enough to lose all support in the Senate, even when he fixated on Cicero. Thus Clodius could never be a Catiline.
Where Tatum is, probably unavoidably, incomplete is in deciphering how Clodius actually thought. He also, to my regret, refrains from going deeply into the role of Fulvia.
Overall, this is a good book for anyone fascinated by this extraordinary period and its vivid characters.
March 18, 2023
A wealth of information and super detailed, but as someone who is non-academically interested in the history of Rome there’s a lot of untranslated Latin which made for reading the book a little tedious as I kept having to search terms up
June 11, 2024
Very good, a really fascinating insight into a major political figure of the 50s BC. My one criticism is there’s a lot of Latin phrases which aren’t translated, which is confusing for readers who don’t know the language
June 24, 2017
Good biography of Clodius, although I really did want the author to have more insight into his psychology, and I kind of disagree with some of his conclusion's about Clodius' character overall.
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December 1, 2024the conclusion gave me chills, actually. such an impressive and well-cited deep dive into clodius's political activity and occasionally his psyche! he mattered!! to me!!!
June 25, 2016
There are some scholarly works which are also great and entertaining reads - but sadly this isn't one of them. For anyone working on the politics of the late Republic, or the rather fascinating Clodian family then this is a book which we can't ignore. And it is detailed and comprehensive in tracing P.Clodius Pulcher's career: his exemplary family history, the scandalous Bona Dea episode, the change of name from the patrician Claudius to the plebeian Clodius before being elected Tribune of the Plebs, the relationships with Julius Caesar and Cicero, to Clodius' early death.
This is, though, a dusty and dry read - and a book which it's difficult to read straight through. Instead I found myself working from the index to the specifics of what I wanted. So this is clear, well-documented and referenced - but it does rather unaccountably manage to make a dull subject out of the wild and wayward Clodius.
This is, though, a dusty and dry read - and a book which it's difficult to read straight through. Instead I found myself working from the index to the specifics of what I wanted. So this is clear, well-documented and referenced - but it does rather unaccountably manage to make a dull subject out of the wild and wayward Clodius.
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