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Aemilianus was oblivious to the shift in mood back in Rome, however, and continued to believe that thanks to his latest conquest his star burned brighter than ever. When he returned home in the summer of 132, he was shocked by the reception he received. Rather than adoring throngs he found people in Rome glowering and standoffish. A distressed Aemilianus hardly recognized the people that had unanimously elected him consul just two years earlier.⁸

Things might have gone differently for Aemilianus had he been able to lavishly spread the wealth from his conquest in Numantia, but unfortunately there was no wealth to spread. Compared to his triumph after the sack of Carthage, Aemilianus’s Numantine triumph was a pathetic affair. Few riches. Few slaves. Nothing exotic or beautiful or wondrous to behold. For all the lives that had been ruined in the Spanish wars, it must have been infuriating to discover that all Rome had to show for it was a few trinkets and some gaunt Spaniards.⁹

Shortly after Aemilianus’s meager triumph, a rising Gracchan partisan named Gaius Papirius Carbo was elected tribune for 131. A passionate young reformer, Carbo introduced a bill that would extend the secret ballot to all legislative assemblies. If passed, it would complete the transformation of Roman voting from public voice to secret ballot—as all electoral, judicial, and legislative Assemblies would now be secret. Carbo also introduced a bill to retroactively confirm the legitimacy of Tiberius’s reelection bid to undercut the conservative argument that Tiberius’s murder was justified because he broke the law.¹⁰

Believing that things were moving too far in a popular direction, Aemilianus spoke in the Forum against Carbo’s bill. He said the traditional prohibition on recurring office holding was in keeping with republican virtue—which must have struck the crowd as hypocritical since Aemilianus had secured an exemption from those very same prohibitions. During one of Aemilianus’s public appearances, Carbo himself stepped forward to demand what Aemilianus really thought about the murder of Tiberius. Aemilianus said, “If he intended to seize the state he was killed justly.” When the audience turned hostile Aemilianus returned the compliment. As he looked out at the angry mob Aemilianus did not see true Romans, but instead a gaggle of foreign interlopers: immigrants, freedmen, and slaves who did not know what Roman virtue and dignity meant. “How can I,” he bellowed, “who have so many times heard the battle shout of the enemy without feeling fear, be disturbed by the shouts of men like you, to whom Italy is only a stepmother?” Not surprisingly, this only led to further heckling and Aemilianus’s bitter withdrawal from the Forum. The measure confirming the right of reelection did not pass, but the fight had done irreparable damage to Aemilianus’s reputation.¹¹

IN SOME WAYS, Aemilianus was right about the crowd he faced in the Forum that day. In the early days of Rome, there was no difference between the plebs urbana—the residents of the city—and the populus Romanus—the citizens of Rome. The residents of the city were citizens of Rome, and the citizens of Rome were the residents of the city. But by the end of the second century, Rome was by far the largest city in the Mediterranean. Where other cities of the day boasted tens of thousands of citizens, Rome boasted hundreds of thousands. As the largest and most powerful city in the Mediterranean, Rome became a center of migratory gravity. Noncitizen Italians frequently moved to the growing metropolis, and were followed by Greek philosophers, and Spanish artisans, and North African merchants, and Syrian ambassadors, and Gallic mercenaries. By the 130s, Rome had transformed into a polyglot mix of every language and etÚicity in the known world.¹²

As it was with the rural peasants, the mass influx of slaves also played a dramatic role in the transformation of the urban population. Wealthy Romans purchased skilled artisans from across the Mediterranean and put them to work in the city manufacturing goods for sale. But unlike their less-skilled brethren, skilled slaves often only stayed slaves for a limited amount of time. Owners allowed a man to buy his way out of slavery and go into private business under the auspices of his former owner. These freedmen clients allowed senators to engage in the kind of commercial enterprises they were supposedly forbidden from participating in. Senators used their freedmen as legal fronts to operate apartment complexes and retail shopping stalls and engage in overseas trade. Freedmen also expedited the transformation of senatorial estates into commercial ventures, while allowing the senator’s hands to remain clean of the grubby business of business.¹³