About

Robert Morstein-Marx is a Professor of Classics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds a B.A. from the University of Colorado, where he studied Classics, History, and Philosophy, and an Honors B.A. from the University of Oxford in Literae Humaniores. He earned his PhD in 1987 from UC Berkeley, specializing in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology. His main research interests lie in Roman history from the middle Republic to the early Empire, with a focus on political culture in the Late Roman Republic, including political values, concepts, and their institutional realization during a period of crisis. His scholarly work also encompasses topics such as Cicero, Roman rhetoric, Roman imperialism, and classical historiography in both Greek and Latin. Morstein-Marx is the author of several books, including 'Hegemony to Empire,' which examines Roman imperialism; 'Mass Oratory and Political Power,' analyzing public speech and meetings in Rome; and his 2021 publication on Julius Caesar and the Roman People, which aims to shed new light on the crisis of the Late Roman Republic by exploring its popular character. He has also co-edited the 'Blackwell Companion to the Roman Republic.' Morstein-Marx is open to supervising graduate students interested in these areas of Roman history and political culture.

Selected publications

• Paradox of Voting: Extra-Urban Voters in the Late Roman Republic

  Klio · 2024-05-16 · 4 citations

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  Summary It is almost universally supposed on general principles that Roman citizens who did not live near the city of Rome were effectively disenfranchised by the logistical difficulty of traveling to the capital to vote, and thus that citizen participation in state decision-making was derisively small; this poses a difficulty for the ‘popular’ model of the functioning of the Roman Republic that has won considerable adherence in recent years. However, a systematic review of evidence for voting by citizens who lived around the peninsula and even for non-citizens’ travel to Rome before 90 BC to apply direct pressure on major votes, shows that distance did not present an insurmountable obstacle to meaningful participation in Roman political life by Italians and extra-urban citizens. It also demonstrates the great importance citizens attached to the vote (suffragium) – a guarantee of their freedom, and the key mechanism by which they influenced their political leaders. This in turn helps to clarify why many Italians, including those of modest means, would have desired Roman citizenship in the run-up to the ‘Social War.’

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• Roman Republican Political Culture

  2022-01-31 · 4 citations

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• Caesar’s Leniency

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-08-05

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  Caesar’s famous leniency in dealing with his former enemies has frequently in modern times been interpreted as an assertion of lordly mastery, establishing a quasi-monarchic supremacy over the recipients of his pardon that trampled aristocratic, "republican" sensibilities. But as Konstan showed some time ago, "clemency was a virtue," and an unimpeachably republican one at that. The first systematic collection of actual instances of Caesar’s Civil War leniency shows that his enemies rushed to avail themselves of it in great numbers, and never refused it (Cato notwithstanding) when it was actually offered. Nor were its recipients tightly bound to Caesar in chains of reciprocity once they had availed themselves of his pardon: the record of "recidivists" who simply returned to the fight after being pardoned shows that any gratitude they felt lay very lightly on their shoulders. Caesar’s letter to his advisers after Corfinium shows that it was no thinl -veiled blueprint for regnumbut a plausible attempt to prevent the catastrophe of civil war if possible and to minimize bloodshed if not, and in any case, to further restoration of a deeply divided community.

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• Select Index of Passages Cited

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-08-05

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• Some Important Dates in the Crisis Year 50 BC

  2021-08-05

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• No Return

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-08-05

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  Caesar is usually supposed to have sought to exploit his legal immunity as proconsul to escape judgment for his "crimes," and when he was prevented from doing so, to have plunged Rome into the first of the civil wars that would destroy the Republic. This is based on the ill-founded hypothesis that he was bound to face prosecution on his return to Rome with a predetermined verdict engineered by his enemies. In fact, what Caesar demanded was an honorific return from his victory in Gaul that was consistent with republican norms and traditions, while his inveterate enemies, now joined in increasing anxiety by Pompey, rejected his demands, fearing that if they did not do so he would escape the reckoning that they hoped for. To quash Caesar’s plans his enemies were "forced" to jettison various core principles of the Roman republican tradition, but most Roman citizens likely saw Caesar not as a rebel against "the Republic" but as its defender against a faction bent on vengeance. Neither Caesar nor Pompey appears to have sought this war; ultimately Cato and his faction forced this confrontation.

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• En Route to the Parthian War

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-08-05

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  The story of the final months of Caesar’s life has been dominated by the question whether he wanted to be "king." That is to focus the question in a way that privileges the perspective of his assassins. Caesar himself was preoccupied at this time with massive preparations for a war of vengeance against the Parthians on a truly extraordinary scale. The knock-on effects of the mobilization effort were themselves extremely disruptive, causing an explosive intensification of the political game at a time when the Dictator was about to absent himself from the capital for several years. He had gravely alienated the urban plebs, encouraging the conspirators’ expectations (falsified in the event) that they would have popular support. The Caesarian coalition was coming apart, as shown by the remarkable clash between Mark Antony and Dolabella on the eve of Caesar’s scheduled departure. Caesar made little to no effort to create a new political system out of the ruins of civil war during the short period that he spent in Rome before his intended departure on an expedition that would keep him abroad for several years, much less to oversee a transition to a whole new kind of politics.

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• General Index

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-08-05

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• “Caesar’s Passion to Be King’: Relative and Absolute Chronology

  2021-08-05

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• The Civil War Crisis as a Prisoner’s Dilemma

  2021-08-05

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