Valentina Arena's book examines ‘the conceptualisations of the idea of libertas and the nature of their connection with the practice of politics in the late Roman Republic’ (1). Ch. 1 defines the Roman concept of libertas as ‘a status of non-subjection to the arbitrary will of another person or group of persons’ (6). Ch. 2, ‘The Citizen's Political Liberty’ deals with specific arrangements ensuring political liberty: suffragium, the tribunes' powers, provocatio, and the entire legal and judicial system. Ch. 3, ‘The Liberty of the Commonwealth’, examines two different concepts of political liberty — the ‘optimate’ and the ‘popular’ one: these shared a common ground in accepting the need to protect the citizens' liberty from domination and arbitrary power, but offered different ways of doing so. Ch. 4, ‘The Political Struggle in the First Century BC’, examines the way libertas was invoked by both sides on three specific issues: imperia extraordinaria, ‘the so-called senatus consultum ultimum’ and agrarian laws. Ch. 5, ‘The Political Response and the Need to Legitimacy’, elaborates on the way optimates justified their positions in terms of libertas — especially on the ‘emergency decree of the senate’. On this issue, the optimate rhetoric ended up undermining, according to A., the traditional notion of the rule of law as a bulwark of Republican liberty — in favour of a ‘higher legality’ of saving the commonwealth from grave danger. This, as she argues in the Epilogue, would eventually help pave the way for Octavian.

The book makes an important contribution to the elucidation of a concept central to Roman political culture; it, and its political rôle in the period in question, are analysed comprehensively, learnedly and with a good theoretical underpinning (ancient and modern). The essence of Republican libertas is defined aptly, which helps to analyse the way this notion functioned politically in the late Republic. Libertas, to which everyone had to appeal, was not, as the author rightly stresses and convincingly demonstrates, a mere empty slogan; it had a serious political content and imposed real constraints on participants in political debates. Populares and optimates are defined as two rival ‘discourses’, ‘intellectual traditions’, or ‘families of ideas’ (5, 7). A.'s treatment of this subject seems to strike the right balance, avoiding both the danger of presenting the Roman partes in a too-rigid, semi-formalized fashion, something that was more common in the past, and of minimizing the political significance of those terms or dismissing it altogether, as is sometimes done nowadays.

A. argues that in the optimate tradition, ensuring liberty required a ‘mixed constitution’ in which no political institution or social element would be fully dominant; in practice, the optimates upheld the authority of the senate while conceding the ultimate sovereignty of the people. For the populares, on the other hand, liberty required the preponderance of popular assemblies, with political equality between citizens and even, as A. argues, some element of economic equalization. This framing of the popular/optimate divide is interesting and attractive. While Cicero's adoption of Polybius' ‘mixed constitution’ in De republica should not necessarily be taken as representing the optimate point of view, it is important to stress, as A. does, that no optimate politician could afford to espouse, in public, a full-fledged ‘senatorial Republic’, denying the ultimate supremacy of the people. On the other hand, the popularis position, as portrayed by the author, seems at times too ‘democratic’. What populares espoused is perhaps also best defined as some sort of a ‘mixed constitution’ — naturally, a more ‘popular’ version of it.

Some matters relevant to the actual ‘practice of politics in the Late Republic’, and to the specific implications of broad political and moralistic statements, give rise to objections. Thus, A. regards the Pseudo-Sallustian Second Letter to Caesar (accepting it as an authentic mid-first-century text) as part of the opitmate tradition on the grounds that, despite some features that seem popularis ‘at first sight’, it is concerned with a ‘morally strong senate’ (with increased numbers) playing a leading rôle in public affairs (99 and 112). But this is contradicted by a string of clearly popularis proposals, including an equalizing reform of the comitia centuriata (an idea attributed to Gaius Gracchus), secret voting in the senate and handing over the juries to the entire first property-class (compared to popular courts in Rhodes), as well as what the letter's author says about Caesar's ‘spirit which from the very beginning dismayed the faction of the nobles [and] restored the Roman plebs to freedom after a grievous slavery’ (2.4). Nor is there a reason to assume that a typical popularis would not support, when it suited him, a morally strong senate playing a leading rôle in public affairs.

On the ‘SCU’ paving the way to Octavian, the argument fails to convince. The precedent might conceivably have been used to justify some sort of senatorial dictatorship unauthorized by statute. Otavian ‘saved the Republic’ in 44 b.c. as a privatus, relying rhetorically on a tradition much older than the SCU. After his ‘election’ as consul in 43 b.c., he never again lacked statutory authority (except, apparently, briefly in 32 b.c.) — least of all as triumvir; as Princeps, senate and people would vie with each other in conferring powers on him. Despite such objections, this study is an impressive accomplishment and will from now on be an important point of reference in all discussions on Roman libertas.