Marcus Baebius Tamphilus
In carrying out the deportation of the Apuani of Liguria for the purpose of occupying their territory, Baebius is also a significant figure in tracing the history of Roman expansionism.
[4] In that same year, he served on a three-man commission (triumviri coloniae deducendae) with an otherwise unknown Decimus Junius Brutus and the Marcus Helvius who was praetor in 197, for the purpose of establishing a Roman colony at Sipontum in southern Italy.
Although the sequence of events and thus reconstructions of causation differ among scholars,[7] the senate decided to override the lots, a constitutional procedure that during this period required a senatorial decree and a vote in the people's assembly.
[8] The senate is sometimes thought to have reacted to news at Rome that Antiochus III of Syria had invaded Greece by crossing to Demetrias, but this report was likely not delivered until mid-year.
At any rate, the senate awarded Atilius the dual provinciae of Macedonia and the Roman fleet, with orders to build 30 quinqueremes and to man them with sailors from the allies, and sent him in the spring of 192 to the Peloponnese.
[11] From 192 to 190, praetors were regularly dispatched to southern Italy to guard the coastline against rumored attack and to ensure the continued loyalty of Roman allies.
[17] Although Antiochus's invasion had failed, the need to respond to it had shown the Roman senate the vulnerability of the settlement arrived at in Greece in 194, which diplomatic missions had hoped to address.
Other Ligures sent peace envoys to Rome, and while their overtures were rejected by the distrustful senate,[25] Cornelius and Baebius faced no military challenges in their province.
The senate's instructions were that they should await their successors and then dismiss their troops and return to Rome,[27] but when the plague claimed the life of one of the consuls for 180,[28] public business was suspended, and the two proconsuls decided to march against the Ligurian Apuani, presumably without authorization.
The proconsuls forced thousands of families to leave their homes in the mountains and resettled them in territory which formerly belonged to the Samnites[30] and which was now ager publicus, land held in common ostensibly for the benefit of the Roman people.
It was claimed that this action reduced the Apuanian threat to the security of the Republic,[31] and the senate voted Cornelius and Baebius a triumph without controversy, though others had been denied under similar circumstances for insufficient hostages or booty for the treasury.
"[32] The policy of deportation continued to be carried out by consuls assigned to Liguria for several years, and substantial populations from among the Ligures were moved to central Italy.
[36] The annexation of territories had led to a shortage of personnel qualified to hold imperium and meet administrative and military demands in the new provinces, and commands were frequently extended (prorogatio) beyond the annual magistracy.
196 BC began to require that candidates for the consulship must first have served as praetors, and fiercer competition for the praetorship stimulated campaign corruption and bribery (ambitus).
A law proposed in 151 BC and also supported by Cato forbade reelection to the consulship after M. Claudius Marcellus held his third term; the early 20th-century historian G.W.
Botsford observed that while Cato may have intended to help "new men" (novi homines) advance, in practice "the measure contributed to the further subordination of the individual to the plutocratic machine."
Botsford held that the Baebian bribery law was put forward "in the same partisan spirit rather than in the interest of political morality," and that it failed to achieve its aim.
