Republican Roman Institutions unmarked (1)
The Incongruence of Power: The Roman Constitution in Theory and Practice
Introduction
Historical comparisons aim to distinguish unique aspects of a community.
Comparing Greek and Roman institutions faces challenges:
Contrasting a single city-state (Rome) with an entire city-state culture (Greece).
Uneven documentation of Greek poleis.
Diachronic aspect: the Roman Republic evolved over 500 years.
Risk of comparing a "distillation" of the Roman Republic with a generalized "Greek polis."
The evolving nature of the Roman Republic needs consideration.
Surviving evidence makes it hard to compare Roman institutions at different stages.
Greek comparanda may have influenced late, retrospective accounts of the Roman past.
Despite limitations, attempting a comparison is important because distinctive features of the Republic can be traced back to its earliest beginnings and perhaps even to the monarchy that preceded it.
From Monarchy to Res Publica
Traditional chronology: Rome was ruled by kings until 510 BCE, when an aristocratic revolt led to the creation of a republic.
The transition may have been more complex, and the date is suspicious (coinciding with the overthrow of the Peisistratid tyranny in Athens).
Sufficient evidence suggests a change did take place around this time.
New republican structures included assembly, magistrates, and council, comparable to Greek poleis.
Distribution of competencies: assembly passing legislation and appointing magistrates, who held executive power and were advised by a council of elders.
Articulation of these institutions differed from the Greek world.
Later tradition: two consuls were appointed immediately after the overthrow of the kings, but there are indications that during the earliest periods the Republic may have been led by a single chief magistrate.
The traditional version may be a retrojection of the system that emerged from the patricio-plebeian compromise, which accommodated the plebeian demand for an equal share of executive power by doubling the number of office-holders.
The authority of the chief magistrate was defined as imperium or "command" (derived from imperare) and was extensive.
Imperium conferred supreme power at home and in the field, the centrality of the latter being underscored by the consuls’ formal appointment in the military assembly.
The powers of the magistrate were almost monarchical, suggesting continuity between the res publica and the preceding system.
Consuls held powers for a short time (one year).
Brief tenure was the fundamental guarantee against excessive accumulation of power, collegiality being added only at a later stage.
Magistrates derived their mandate from the people, but the procedures surrounding this act, as well as the relationship between the magistrate and the populus, cast doubts on the original nature of the process.
People convened in assemblies, comitia, of which there existed a number of different versions defined by the types of unit into which the populus was subdivided.
Citizens were represented as members of a particular unit, which delivered a single verdict.
We may therefore be dealing with an act of acclamation rather than election.
The procedure did not allow for “mixed” messages, and revealingly the Latin word for vote, suffragium, only carries the positive meaning of support, which could be granted or withheld but not qualified.
It has also been suggested the word may etymologically derive from the sound made by the banging of weapons as a—primitive—sign of approval (Vaathera 1993).
On this interpretation the “election” of the consul(s?) would in effect have been the formal presentation of the new leader(s) before the assembled people, whose subdivisions each would come forward to express their loyalty and support.
This procedure might explain the origins of the uniquely Roman practice of block voting, which is without parallel in the ancient world.
The Roman magistrate was not merely the holder of a public office carrying certain responsibilities and remits; he was above the populus and exercised complete control over the assembly, which had no formal or practical existence without his leadership.
When the appointment procedure was transformed into a genuine election, the people’s role remained circumscribed.
The people were neither “sovereign” nor active in the elective assemblies (Badian 1990).
It was convened by a magistrate, who formally guided the comitia, and the technical language used for the appointment indicates that it happened through the joint action of the presiding magistrate and the populus
Without the guidance of a magistrate the populus could not appoint new leaders.
It is significant too that the appointment was formally made only when the leader announced it.
This feature gave the appointment of magistrates an element of internalized succession, with the appointee formally being “created” by the incumbent, rather than through the popular vote.
When the chain between them was broken an interrex had to be appointed to carry out the ritual handing over of power to the successor.
The procedure was one where the outgoing magistrate presented his successor to the assembly, asking it to give its approval, and it is generally assumed to have originated in the traditional acclamation of the new king by the comitia curiata.
Supposedly, the kings had received their imperium through a lex curiata de imperio, which in effect was an oath of allegiance sworn to the new ruler, expressing the people’s consent.
The Romans’ willingness to invest extensive powers in their leaders is illustrated also by the institution of the dictatorship, which enabled the Senate to grant supreme authority to a single individual, usually to deal with a military emergency.
It was of strictly limited duration with a maximum tenure of six months.
The dictator would appoint a magister equitum, who was not his colleague but second-in-command.
According to legend, Romulus first nominated 100 elders from the leading families to advise him in the governance of the state, perhaps indicating a fluctuating rather than permanent body.
It is not clear at what point it developed into the stable institution known in later periods when access was formalized and largely reserved for former office-holders who in principle were appointed for life.
considering the powers of the chief magistrates and the likelihood that they had been pre-selected through an internalized process it would seem plausible if the senate had established itself as an independent source of authority with a relatively well-defined membership already before the passing of the lex Ovinia, which formally constituted it as a council of former office-holders (Hölkeskamp 1987).
The senators became known as patres, fathers, closely associating them with the hereditary “caste” of patricians, whom the sources present as holding a monopoly on public office during the early Republic.
The ascendancy of the patricians sparked a prolonged conflict between them and the so-called plebeians who were excluded from office, a conflict that would reshape the political system in fundamental respects.
The “Struggle of the Orders”
Virtually no contemporary evidence survives for this conflict, and almost all aspects therefore remain open to dispute (Raaflaub 1986).
At the most basic level the identity of the two parties involved is subject to debate.
It is not even certain that the conflict is best understood as a single “struggle,” since we may be dealing with an extended series of loosely interrelated socio-economic and political issues which only in hindsight was conceptualized as the unified “Struggle of the Orders” we find in later sources.
Patricians are normally seen as a hereditary “caste,” which asserted an exclusive right to magistracies and possibly also membership of the Senate.
This monopoly on executive power appears to have been justified on religious grounds and associated with the patrician claim to the auspicia, the right to consult the gods on matters of state.
In Rome modern distinctions between “politics” and “religion” did not apply, and any action which had an impact on the public weal—legislation, elections, declarations of war and peace, military engagements—required divine consent
This in turn was ascertained through a complex system of divination, and it is therefore possible to argue that, in addition to the socio-economic resources that undoubtedly underpinned the patrician supremacy, their position rested on an exclusive entitlement to the auspicia, which precluded plebeian tenure of the highest office.
It logically followed that only patricians could hold the state priesthoods and sit in the Senate, which itself acted as the highest authority in matters of cult and divination.
The plebeians reacted to their exclusion from state offices by creating a set of alternative institutions as a means of furthering their interests.
An assembly was established, the concilium plebis or comitia plebis tributa, which issued its own resolutions, plebiscita, that were binding for the plebeian population.
It also appointed its own officials, tribuni plebis (initial number uncertain, but later rising to ten), who were charged with the protection of individual plebeians and in return enjoyed their collective protection, and two aediles plebis who were responsible for celebrating specifically plebeian religious festivals.
Eventually the patricians made a series of concessions to the plebeian elite, which was then admitted to all magistracies and priesthoods through a succession of legal measures.
The background for this retreat can only be conjectured, but key must have been the simple fact that the patricians constituted a small and shrinking minority, whose position became increasingly untenable as the plebeian elite harnessed wider social and economic grievances in support of their demand for political influence.
The main breakthrough came in 367 with the passing of the leges Liciniae-Sextiae, which entitled the plebeians to one of the two consulships, although it does not appear to have come into effect until 342, from which point onwards at least one consul was always plebeian.
These laws also admitted plebeians for the first time to one of the major state priesthoods, the decemviri sacris faciundis (later quindecimviri), although it was not until the lex Ogulnia, 300, that they gained access to the colleges of the pontifices and the augures.
In 356 the first plebeian dictator was appointed, and four years later a plebeian first held the censorship.
The lex Ovinia (late fourth century) appears to have been closely linked to this process.
As noted, it regulated the membership of the Senate and ensured former office-holders a seat irrespective of background, and it has been suggested that by formulating objective criteria for admission it may have created a more independent political body (Cornell 2000).
The old distinctions between the two categories gradually became obsolete, and an important consequence of these constitutional changes was the emergence of a new elite, known as the nobilitas , comprising both plebeians and patricians.
Ideologically this class embraced a meritocratic ethos of office-holding and public service, while at the same time maintaining an element of hereditary entitlement based on ancestral achievement.
Indeed the prestigious title nobilis came to refer to any descendant, however distant, of a holder of the consulship.
The most paradoxical outcome of the patricio-plebeian settlement was the continuation of the—formally redundant—plebeian institutions, which were given official recognition and incorporated into the Roman state.
Plebeian tribunes continued to be appointed and were endowed with extensive powers to veto and propose laws and to exercise intercessio, intervention on behalf of citizens against state coercion.
Moreover, the lex Hortensia, c.287, gave resolutions of the plebeian assembly the force of law and made them binding for the whole population—despite the fact that patricians could still not take part.
The long process of accommodation thus left behind a highly complex constitutional legacy, which not only contained a number of paradoxes and contradictions but also made it difficult to identify precisely where political power was located.
Institutions in the “Classic” Roman Republic
The period between the end of the “Struggle of the Orders” and the re-emergence of political violence in 133 has long been seen as the “classic” Roman Republic, when the empire expanded and the constitution functioned at its best.
This image may be somewhat idealized, conceived as it was under the influence of later events and the eventual collapse of the republican system.
Thus, closer scrutiny of the surviving evidence suggests that the degree of stability may have been overestimated and that the political system also during this period frequently was put under considerable stress (Bleckmann 2002).
Importantly however, it still managed to resolve political conflicts through negotiation and without the use of force.
Rome’s ability to deal with these challenges is therefore notable, and ever since Polybius first devoted a digression to Rome’s political system the secret behind the relative stability that characterized the middle Republic has been sought in her political institutions and not least in their mutual interaction.
These will therefore be considered in some detail.
The Magistrates
During the Republic, Rome saw a steady increase in the range of public offices and in the number of appointees, which reflected the growing scale and complexity of Roman society as well as the incorporation of the plebeian institutions into the state.
Every year the Romans filled a very considerable number of posts, reaching a total of forty-four magistracies in the late republic in addition to fifty lower officials.
Most important were the two consuls, who served as eponymous heads of state, and originally may have been known as praetores.
Their role was to a great extent defined in military terms, and their primary function was that of commander of the legions; hence their appointment in the military assembly, the comitia centuriata.
Their imperium gave them wide-ranging powers “domi militiae,” at home and in the field.
Although their powers of life and death, symbolized by the axes in the fasces, no longer applied in civilian contexts after the leges Porciae, they still had sufficient authority to coerce citizens.
Politically they had the right to propose legislation, convene the people, and preside over meetings of the Senate.
In 366 the first praetor was appointed to oversee the administration of justice and perform the consuls’ political functions while these were away on campaign (Brennan 2000).
He also held imperium and was therefore able to carry out military functions too.
While in some respects similar to the consuls, the praetor remained subordinate and complex theories have been developed to explain the precise nature of this office and its place in the constitutional development of Rome; these inevitably contain a strong element of conjecture (e.g. Bunse 1998).
The number of praetors increased gradually to cope with rising administrative demands, a second one being added around 242 to deal with disputes between Romans and foreigners, the praetor inter peregrinos, eventually reaching eight after Sulla’s reform.
The census was an essential Roman institution that formed the basis for civic organization, military conscription and taxation.
Already in the fifth century two censors had been appointed to oversee the quinquennial register of all citizens and revise the membership of the Senate.
To these posts were added two curule aediles (the term curulis derived from the insignia of senior state officials, the sella curulis) who performed various public functions, includ- ing the celebration of games and festivals, and had oversight of the grain supply to the city.
They functioned alongside the two plebeian aediles.
As noted, plebeian tribunes continued to be appointed after the plebeian–patrician settle- ment, and as a result ten officials, still in the early stages of their careers, were granted extensive powers to propose and veto legislation throughout the classical period.
Apparently they were also allowed to attend the Senate and from the third century they could convene meetings too.
The lex Atinia (date is disputed but perhaps 149) gave them automatic membership of the Senate.
A steadily increasing number of quaestores were appointed to assist the consuls and perform administrative duties related to finance and provisions for the city of Rome.
Below the magisterial level a substantial number of posts were filled by the assemblies, including tribuni militum, tresviri monetales, and tresviri capitales.
In 180 the lex Villia annalis for the first time created a formalized magisterial ladder, the cursus honorum, stipulating minimum age requirements for each office, regulating the order in which they should be held, and prescribing minimum intervals between offices as well as for the iteration of the consulship.
This attempt to regulate the public career path was a response to increased competition within the elite and coincided with a spate of other initiatives to tackle a wide range of electoral malpractices.
The existence of an official cursus stands in contrast to Greece and reflects the unique status of the Roman elite as an aristocracy defined by and articulated through the holding of public office.
As a rule, Roman office-holders had to meet a basic property requirement and qualify for membership of the highest census class.
Offices were defined as honores and were therefore unremunerated.
Indeed, they normally entailed considerable expenditure, the aedileship being particularly onerous.
In addition, magistrates had access to a very limited “civil service” and relied on private staff to carry out many public duties.
The Senate
When a young man had taken his first step on the magisterial ladder and completed his year as quaestor, he could normally expect to be admitted to the Senate, which meant joining the official “political class."
During the “classic” Republic the Senate counted around 300 members, although the five-year interval between censuses meant that the official figure often would have been lower. Sulla later doubled its membership as part of the judicial reform which granted the senators full control over the juries.
The internal structure of the Senate was strictly hierarchical, with members ranked according to offices held and seniority within each magisterial class (Bonnefond-Coudry 1989; Ryan 1998).
The senator heading the list carried the honorific title of princeps senatus, which conferred prestige and the right to open the debates.
The deliberations were highly formalized, with members being asked for their opinions, sententiae, in order of seniority, in practice leaving the majority of senators without any real opportunity to contribute—although there is no evidence that the lower ranks, sometimes described as pedarii, were not allowed to speak, as once assumed.
Votes were rarely taken since the aim was to present unanimity and consensus rather than expose divisions.
The Senate could issue resolutions, senatus consulta, which served as advice to the consuls but had no binding force of law.
In the late Republic the Senate introduced the so-called senatus consultum ultimum, a declaration of emergency instructing the consuls to take any action required to deal with the enemies of the Republic. The measure had no basis in law, and its validity therefore remained a source of dispute.
The Senate’s status as an advisory body and lack of formal powers may seem unusual from a Greek perspective but can be explained by two related factors: the formal equation of the state with the populus and the extensive powers of the magistrates who acted on their behalf.
Although internally consistent and logical, this construction of the Roman state did not leave room for a council with autonomous powers.
As a result we find a stark discrepancy between the Senate’s constitutional role and its de facto position as the center of power; its membership comprised everybody with active political and military experience as well as the accumulated social influence and economic resources of the leading families.
The Assemblies
In contrast to Greece, the “classic” Roman Republic had a variety of popular assemblies, the comitia curiata, centuriata, tributa, and the concilium plebis.
They were created at different moments in Rome’s history, and for different purposes.
They did, however, share the same formal structure and procedures.
While formally representing the Roman people, each assembly did so in a different configuration.
Unlike Greek assemblies the Roman ones were defined according to the kind of unit into which the populus was divided.
The oldest assembly appears to have been the comitia curiata, which organized citi- zens in curiae.
Little is known about its original functions, but in the classical period it was largely ceremonial, formally conferring imperium on holders of the highest offices.
As an assembly it became practically redundant and was convened without any popular involvement, each curia being represented by a lictor.
The comitia centuriata represented the Roman people as an army and, reflecting the traditional link between property and military service, it was also the most overtly tim- ocratic of the Roman assemblies.
It was divided into 193 centuriae, basic military units, which in turn were grouped together into classes, defined according to a sliding scale of property ownership.
Voting first were the eighteen equestrian centuries, which included the so-called sex suffragia, presumably senatorial centuries.
They were followed by the five classes and four unarmed centuries and a single century reserved for those without any property, the proletarii.
This arrangement was an elaboration of an older and simpler system that divided the citizens into those who served, classis , and those who did not, infra classem.
The system of block voting allowed the weight of each vote to be carefully cali- brated, reconciling the principle of equal citizenship with inequality of influence. Thus, the assembly was heavily tilted in favor of the propertied classes.
The assembly was the object of a little-known reform between 241 and 218, prior to which the first class held 80 centuries and the four remaining classes 20, 20, 20, and 30 respectively (Mouritsen 2011).
After the reform the number of first-class centuries was reduced to 70.
The background for this move is debated, but a primary objective appears to have been the coordination of the first class with the tribus, of which there were 35. This move reflects the increasing practical and ideological importance attached to the tribal units, which became so central to the identity of Roman citizens that they even entered into their nomenclature and became part of their name.
The origins of the tribus remain obscure.
According to tradition the Roman people was in its earliest stages composed of three tribes, Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, about which no reliable information survives.
These were in turn divided into the curiae, which originally formed the basic unit for the assembly and the army.
The tribus of the classical period appear to be different in nature, since they were regionally defined units that subdivided the citizen body according to domicile.
In principle, this made them more socially representative, although distortions soon emerged as the rapidly growing urban population remained confined to just four tribus, which also became the default tribus of freed slaves.
Political influence therefore came to lie with the rural tribus, to which landowners continued to belong irrespective of their place of residence.
The earliest assembly to be based on the tribus appears to have been the concilium plebis, also known as the comitia plebis tributa, which established an alternative source of authority among the plebeians.
Modeled on the plebeian assembly, a comitia tributa was created, open to all citizens and presided over by state magistrates.
As just noted, a tribal element was also added to the already complex structure of the comitia centuriata, as (at least) the first-class centuries were combined with the 35 tribus.
This reform strengthened the formal mandate delivered by the centuriate assembly since the centuries, following the introduction of the maniple as the operative military unit, were no longer essential subdivisions of the Roman people.
But another objective seems to be the launch of a striking new feature, the so-called centuria praerogativa, which was a single century chosen by lot from amongst the first-class units to cast the first vote and thereby provide a lead to the rest of the assembled citizens.
The sources suggest that the vote of the centuria praerogativa was considered an omen and routinely followed by the assembly.
The implication is that the electoral process was given a strong element of lottery while still maintaining the fundamental principle of “popular” choice.
Magistrates and Assemblies
All political gatherings require some degree of organization, but in Rome that role went far beyond the strictly practical.
The presiding official was in full control of every aspect of the proceedings.
The various assemblies and meetings could convene only when called by an authorized official.
Thus, unlike classical Athens, there were no statutory assembly days in Rome, allowing the people to come together on a regular basis and debate current issues.
An assembly came into being only through the initiative of an official, who could dismiss it again at any time, thereby preventing it from reaching a decision.
The fact that it was a magistrate who constituted the people politically also determined the workings of the comitia.
Again the contrast to Athens is remarkable (although less so when compared with Sparta), since there was no possibility of popular initiatives or proposals emerging from the meetings, which were not even allowed an open debate.
Discussions were formally separated from the decision-taking meetings (comitia), and relegated to so-called contiones.
These non-decision-taking meetings also had to be con- vened by an official and did not offer the opportunity for free or open debate either.
The proceedings were tightly regulated and remained under the direct control of the presid- ing official.
It was he who decided time and place as well as the issue(s) to be debated and, crucially, who was permitted to speak—usually arranged in advance.
The contio was therefore more an address to the people than a consultation of it.
There was no formal interaction between speaker and populus, merely a one-way communication.
It follows that the Roman people had no legitimate way of convening or expressing its views with- out formalized leadership (see Morstein-Marx, Chapter 17, for a discussion of rhetoric in the contiones; also O’Bryhim, Chapter 25, on the reluctance to create a permanent theater where people might assemble).
The essentially passive role of the populus is also reflected in the legislative procedure.
The presiding magistrate would present proposals to the assembly, whose response was limited to yes or no without any opportunity to modify what was put before it.
Given the lack of active input into policy-making, a legislative comitia may be best defined as an ad hoc meeting convened by a magistrate for the purpose of ratifying a specific proposal.
At elections we find a similar situation, for although the assemblies were offered a choice of candidates there is no evidence that the assembly was then free to vote for whomever it wanted.
The presiding magistrate was still formally and in actual fact in charge of proceedings, and he could refuse to accept a vote by the populus, as happened on at least thirteen recorded occasions (Badian 1990).
The relationship between magistrate and assembly in Rome therefore differed in fun- damental respects not just from that found in modern political systems, but also from that found in, for example, classical Athens.
Unlike Athenian officials, the magistrates were not simply officials in charge of specific public functions and accountable to the ekkl¯esia. They were superior to the populus, and the power of the people was expressed via—and only via—the actions of its elected officials.
Popular Participation
Despite the growth of the Roman state and its citizen body, the political system continued to operate along the lines of a traditional city-state.
The basic principle remained that of direct participation, and political influence could therefore be exercised only if citizens turned up in person at a given time and place.
Needless to say, this constitutional fiction, which ignored the logistic realities of numbers and distance, imposed very strict limits on the proportion of citizens able take part in the proceedings.
Any attempt at assessing the scale of participation possible at the various assemblies must by necessity remain conjectural.
However, the archaeological and literary evidence for political venues does allow some cautious estimates (Mouritsen 2001).
The old Comitium in the northwestern corner of the Forum Romanum was in his- torical times used for the tribally structured assemblies.
It was a relatively small space that would have been able to hold little more than c.3,800 voters, taking into account also the fact that they had to be separated physically into thirty-five groups.
When the legislative assemblies were transferred to the Forum in 145, the rationale seems to have been ideological rather than practical.
Still, the change of venue did allow considerably larger crowds to take part, but since voting procedures remained highly complex and time-consuming attendance levels are unlikely to have risen beyond 10,000 and realisti- cally would have remained well below that figure.
In the late second century the elective tribal assemblies were moved to the Saepta on the Campus Martius, historically the venue of the centuriate assembly which as the people under arms convened outside the religious boundary of Rome, the Pomerium. This site was substantially larger than the Comitium and the Forum, but the layout suggests that it could not have accommodated more than a small section of the citizen body. Structurally it was split in into two spaces, a forecourt for the opening procedures and a central area which was further subdivided into thirty-five enclosures, one for each of the tribus. The size of the forecourt would suggest that the maximum attendance envisaged was around 25,000 voters, a figure that should be considered in relation to a total citizen population that exceeded a million in the late Republic.
Political venues could remain small and the procedures cumbersome despite the growth of the state and its citizen body because no quorum was required for assemblies to be valid.
Only in one respect did the system contain inflexible requirements of representation, but they concerned the participation of voting units rather than voters.
Thus, for an assembly to be able to take legally binding decisions all units had to be represented, even if just by a handful of voters each (Cic. Sest. 109).
A similar formalism is reflected in the rule that all tribus had to cast their vote in the—successively voting—legislative assemblies, even if a majority had already been found and the bill effectively was passed.
This emphasis on formality and procedure, combined with the essentially passive role played by the populus, raises the question: what in fact were the function and rationale of the assemblies?
Given the magistrates’ control over all aspects of the proceedings and their ability even to disallow electoral results, they were clearly not intended as vehicles for the free expression of the “popular will.”
Their key function appears to have been the conferral of formal legitimacy on those who were to exercise state authority.
The populus was the only true source of legitimacy in the Roman state, a fundamental principle that was apparently never contested even by the elite.
The people and its best interests therefore remained the basis for all claims to political power and influence.
The Romans saw no clear distinction between the state and the people; indeed the former was not conceptualized as a separate entity.
Since the res publica in a very literal sense belonged to the populus, it followed that the people had to lend its approval to all public measures and office-holders.
Importantly, however, this was a formal requirement, and the populus that gave its consent was a highly formalized version of the citizen body.
Thus, it was the people as represented by its more or less abstract subdivisions that offered its approval, not the sum of its citizens.
Only the participation of these units counted, and for that reason the overall turnout mattered little from a constitutional point of view.
No effort was made to facilitate or encourage large-scale popular participation, for example through remuneration for attendance, and as the territory and population grew the opportunity for taking part was correspondingly reduced.
How much choice the political crowds actually exercised is an open question.
The procedures for passing laws seem to have been carefully designed to elicit a positive response, and rejections are hardly ever reported—not a single unambiguous instance is recorded in the first century.
Still, the appointment of new magistrates obviously did involve a choice, and the open procedures and the electoral contests that preceded them had the potential to expose political divisions, internally within the elite and more broadly in society as a whole.
In this context the introduction of the centuria praerogativa and the element of lottery it gave to the process may be seen as an attempt at streamlining the outcome and present an image of civic unity and consensus, the leaders of the Republic receiving strong and unanimous popular mandates (Mouritsen 2011).
The magistrates received their mandate from the populus. However, the magistrates (and pro-magistrates) were not formally accountable to the people, as a whole or to the specific assembly that had elected them. While their powers may have been restricted by the personal rights, which all citizens enjoyed, and by the tribunician veto and intercessio, they were answerable for their actions neither during nor after their tenure. In exceptional cases they might be prosecuted after the expiry of their term in office, but that required a specific initiative taken by the tribunes. This marks a sharp contrast to Greece, which may be explained by the particular Roman conceptualization of the people as “sovereign” (to use the modern anachronistic term) but also fundamentally responsive and passive, their interests being entirely entrusted to their appointed leaders.
Religion in the Roman Republic
The relationship between the res publica and its tutelary gods was the responsibility of a number of different priesthoods, which performed very specific roles as advisors on often highly technical matters of ritual.
The most important were the pontifices, the augures, and the quindecimviri sacris faciundis.
The augures played a particular role in public life since no collective action could be taken without the consultation of Jupiter, whose signs it was their task to interpret.
The major priesthoods were all filled by members of the elite who would normally pursue public careers alongside their religious duties.
The pontifices were originally appointed through co-option, but in 104 the lex Domitia transferred the election to the assembly (later rescinded by Sulla but restored in 63).
Supreme religious authority rested with the Senate, which had the final word in dis- putes, and would sanction new initiatives, such as the introduction of foreign deities or changes to cult practice.
The integration of politics and religion (itself an anachronistic concept) was complete in Rome and affected not just the holding of assemblies but any public action.
It therefore offered the elite another means of controlling public affairs, which became increasingly important during the political conflicts of the late Republic.
Justice and Law Courts
The pursuit of justice was in principle a private matter, and the state would only actively pursue cases of treason and other serious threats to the state, although the tresviri cap- itales, primarily responsible for organizing a fire brigade of public slaves, had some role to play in criminal cases.
The role of the state was to provide a framework for citizens seeking justice.
Criminal disputes were originally held in the centuriate assembly and, reflecting the importance and open nature of its decisions, this is the only context where we come across contemporary concerns about turnout and participation (Varro Ling. 6.90–93).
Later public courts were introduced with magistrates presiding but jurors delivering the verdict.
Gradually a more complex system was developed, with standing courts, quaestiones, that dealt with different types of crimes.
The proceedings involved speakers from both sides of the dispute pleading their case before a panel of jurors who were all drawn from the propertied classes.
Civil cases would be resolved by iudices, appointed by a magistrate.
During the last centuries of the Republic the courts came to occupy an increasingly central role in the political process, with prosecutions for electoral malpractice, ambitus, and provincial extortion, res repetundae, becoming standard means of challenging opponents.
Power and Authority in the Roman Republic
The precise location of power in Rome has been the subject of long-standing debate, beginning with Polybius’ attempt to explain her political system as the embodiment of the Greek ideal of the “mixed constitution,” and recently revived by scholars arguing for a strong “democratic” component to Roman politics.
However, the difficulties we face when trying to identify who really held the power in Rome may be best resolved by distinguishing between