Il patto triumvirale tra Cesare, Pompeo e Crasso (60-53 A.C.) : dalla sua genesi politica ai suoi effetti sulla costituzione romana tardo- repubblicana

Abstract

Was the so–called first Triumvirate, of 60 BC, between Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, really just a private pact between the three most powerful men of the time? With a new reconstructive approach, this work aims to highlight the constitutional relevance of the triumviral pact compared to the traditional approach that confines it to a merely political dimension. The pact, in fact, based on a solemn lex privata (see Suet. Iul. 19.2), strengthened by an oath (Cass. Dio, 37.57.1), was aimed at mutual support between the three most powerful men of the time and generated between them a societas potentiae, a powerful coalition of political, military and financial forces, of which the three triumvirs were the maximum expression, which put the opposition of the optimates in “check” and thus governed, more or less occultly, the republic with an unchanged constitution (Plut. Caes. 13.4), that is, without changing, with explicit reforms, the central constitutional structures. Thus, around 60 BC, Caesar, taking advantage of the ongoing rivalry between Pompey and Crassus, the two most powerful men of the time, managed to reconcile them in a single alliance, “balancing” their forces and their rivalry to his advantage and becoming “the needle in that balance”. This avoided a possible new civil war between Pompey and Crassus, also ensuring a certain stability to the political–constitutional system, now however based on the concordia triumvirum, that is, on the delicate personal balances between the triumvirs, in particular those between Pompey and Crassus, which Caesar had to actually recompose again in Lucca in 56 BC. Numerous laws were thus passed in implementation of the triumviral agreements of 60 BC (leges Iuliae agrariae, lex Iulia de publicanis, lex Iulia de actis Gn. Pompei confirmandis, plebiscitum Vatinium de imperio C. Caesaris) and those of Lucca of 56 BC (lex Trebonia de provinciis consularibus, lex Pompeia Licinia de provincia C. Iulii Caesaris). The death of Crassus at Carrhae, in 53 BC, definitively dissolved the First Triumvirate, revealing its strictly personal nature, as an elite collegium. The iniustum bellum Parthicum was, therefore, fatal both for Crassus and for the survival of the First Triumvirate, however, some ideas of that experience of government probably survived, leaving traces in Caesar’s future political–constitutional reform action.