In 43 BCE, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate and posted proscriptions. Bronze tablets listed the condemned; property changed hands with the creak of auction benches. From Rome to Capua to Tarentum, the Republic’s arguments were replaced by administrative killing.
What Happened
After Caesar’s death, Mark Antony held a consulship and a power base; Octavian, Caesar’s adopted heir, held a name and growing support; Marcus Aemilius Lepidus controlled troops near Rome. In late 43 BCE, they struck a deal: a legally sanctioned three‑man commission—tresviri rei publicae constituendae—charged to “reconstitute the state” [8].
They began with lists. Proscriptions returned, systematized. Bronze tablets went up in the Forum Romanum; messengers carried copies along the Via Appia to Capua and Tarentum. Names—including Cicero’s—received the thin, terrible line through them that separated the living from the dead. The noise was administrative: scribes scratching, seals pressed, the hammering of notices onto wood [8].
The Triumvirs distributed provinces and legions: Antony to the East, Lepidus to parts of Africa, Octavian to the West and Italy. They promised land to veterans, funding it with confiscations. The Aerarium’s doors swung; warehouses opened; villas emptied. Purple‑edged togas strode into houses that had once debated principles with them.
Cities trembled. In Rome, the Curia’s benches meant little without consent of three men backed by 60,000 soldiers. In municipal fora across Italy, magistrates received orders stamped with seals, not arguments. The color of power changed from senatorial purple to the darker red of command standards.
With resources secured, the coalition turned outward. At Philippi in 42 BCE in Macedonia’s damp plains, Antony and Octavian defeated Brutus and Cassius. Trumpets blew over the marshes; the Republic’s last senatorial army collapsed. The lists had thinned Rome; the battles thinned its hopes [8].
The arrangement would not last. Triumvirs do not share evenly. But in 43 BCE, the form spoke plainly: a republic had delegated its refounding to three men with legions. The proscription boards kept score.
Why This Matters
The Second Triumvirate concentrated power in a formal alliance that fused law and military force. Proscriptions funded armies and eliminated opposition; legal titles masked coercion. The assemblies and senate persisted as theaters; their scripts came from elsewhere [8].
This moment is armies and political power institutionalized. What Sulla had done as an individual, three men now did as regime. The tool kit—lists, confiscations, veteran settlements—became state practice. Administrative violence replaced deliberation as the decisive method.
The Triumvirate paved the path to a single ruler by eliminating rivals and habituating Rome to concentrated, extra‑constitutional authority wielded with legal terminology. Octavian, learning from Antony’s strengths and weaknesses, would eventually claim the language of restoration to consolidate power permanently.
Historians see 43 BCE as the Republic’s admission that it could no longer mediate elite conflict within its old forms. The solution—rule by three—only delayed the resolution: the rise of one [8].
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