The Workings of & Life in the Republic

The Government

Like people everywhere, the Romans never wrote out their purpose and goals as a people, as a nation. Like people everywhere, they simply kept what worked, what felt good and made them safe (even if only psychologically) and gave to them the authority of traditions. What frightened them, threatened their immediate interests, they called innovation and did their best to hold them at bay, even if—as proven by all human histories—never successfully. Like civilizations everywhere "[t]he Republic was both a building site and a junk yard. Rome's future was constructed amid the jumble of her past" (Tom Holland).

Having rid of Tarquin, they began to put together the structure of a republic: no more kings! To prevent any future abuse of power, the Republic, they decided, would henceforth be ruled by elected magistrates, a system if government that eventually came to be called Senatus Populusque Romanus, or SPQR.8 Magistrates would hold office for one year. They may be re-elected but not for consecutive years. Starting at the bottom of the pile, we have the Quaestors, with powers (called potesta) and responsibility for enforcing the law and other financial and administrative duties. At about the same level of prestige are the "Tribune of the Plebs," who represent the interests of the plebeians (or plebs). Tribunes have the power to veto bills they disagreed with, put forward resolutions (plebiscita (from which we get the English word, plebiscite) and to summon the Assembly of the Plebs. Next up the ladder, and far fewer in number now (twelve in Augustus's time), were the praetors, whose power (called imperium) belonged to a whole new level of things. Praetors could command an army, issue orders and expect them to be obeyed, to interpret and to enforce the law, including ordering corporal and capital punishments (except for a Roman citizen, which required a trial and a guilty verdict before such punishments could be applied).9 At the top of the pile were the two consuls. Their powers were only limited to what the other consul would allow or check. (Retired consuls have nowhere to go but become proconsuls, retire to a provincial governorship, and enjoy the "good life" of wealth and opportunities such positions opened to them.)

In addition to this ladder of political powers, there was the Senate—made up of about 300 elite men who had held high office and reputation—that served as the republic's conscience and moral guide. Though its deliberations and resolutions are not binding on the magistrates, it would have been foolish for any of them to ignore them.

This system sounded rather sound, and it served the Romans well for several centuries. Polybius, the Greek historian who gave us one of the earliest reliable histories of Rome in its early days, had no doubt that it was this republican structure of accountability of check and balance that provide the Romans with the stability that his native Greece never enjoyed. Not governmental system, however, is foolproof. By the 1st Cent BC, the system could no longer hold out against strongmen with voracious appetite for power and the Republic would come crashing down with disastrous consequences.

Life in the Republic

The Republic was a res republica populi Romanii, "the public possession of the Roman people." It belonged equally to everyone who was a citizen. But, like the pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm, some are more equal than others.