THE MONARCHY

As we have seen, early Rome was a monarchy. The available evidence does not allow us to say with certainty what were the kings’ precise functions and powers, but the monarchy was certainly elective in nature, each of the supposedly six successors to Romulus being confirmed in office by a citizen assembly established by him and called the comitia curiata.

Information about individual kings is also limited. We do not even know how many there were. The traditional number, seven, comes to us from king lists written down at a later date, but some scepticism may be justified by the fact that the seven kings over the 243 years of the Republic would have had an average reign of almost thirty-five years, in an age when life expectancy would have been much lower than it is today.

Patricians and plebeians

During the reign of Romulus, an advisory council, called the Senate, was established. From this came the division of Roman society into two classes, or Orders. The descendants of the members of the Senate were called patricians, and the rest of the population (the great majority) were called plebeians and were subject to various legal and social restrictions.

The development of Rome

We have seen that early Rome was an agricultural community. However, during the Monarchy it began to develop. Particularly during the reigns of the later kings, there were extensive public works, transforming Rome into a city with paved streets, walls and drainage.

Externally, too, Rome was developing. It was gradually acquiring territory and influence. By the end of the Monarchy, through a combina­tion of diplomacy and armed force, Rome controlled perhaps between 300 and 400 square miles. This, of course, is trifling compared with the extent of the Roman Empire at its height. Indeed, it is less than the urban area of the modern city of Rome. However, it was enough at this time to make Rome the dominant city in Latium.

THE REPUBLIC

In 509 bc, the monarchy was abolished and Rome became a Republic. The last king, Tarquinius Superbus, was said to have been a tyrant. However, according to tradition, the immediate cause of his overthrow was the rape of Lucretia, the wife of a Roman noble, by his son, and Lucretia’s subsequent suicide. The fact, though, that this led to an overthrow of the monarchy itself rather than just the overthrow of an individual monarch perhaps suggests disenchantment with monarchical government.

Certainly, throughout the Republic there seemed to be a fear of having ultimate power concentrated in the hands of one man. There was no head of state as such, nor was there any body that could collectively be called a government in the modern sense. Instead, a system developed in which formal power was distributed among a number of public officials, called magistrates. The magistrates were separately elected, normally for a term of one year, and each had his own sphere of responsibility. This is very different from our own more hierarchical model of government, where government ministers act subject to the overriding authority of the prime minister, and all ministers have collective responsibilities. In the Roman Republican con­stitution, the extent to which different magistrates could effectively work together would depend to a great extent on the personalities involved. There was nothing to stop sworn enemies being elected at the same time to a magistracy.

The first stage in the development of this system was the transfer of the powers of the kings, not to a single ruler, but to joint rulers. At the head of the Republican constitution stood two annually elected magistrates known as consuls, each of whom had a veto over the other. In emergencies, a single ruler, called a dictator, could be appointed, but with a restricted term of office of six months.

The Republican constitution

The Roman fear of tyranny permeated the Republican constitution. Even where the consuls were able to work together (which could by no means be guaranteed), their power was restricted by the existence of other magistrates exercising their own jurisdiction.

Of the other magistrates, the most important from the lawyers’ point of view were the praetors. These magistrates were first appointed from 367 bc with responsibility over the civil law. The urban praetor had jurisdiction over disputes involving Roman citizens, and another praetor, known as the peregrine praetor, had jurisdiction over disputes involving foreigners (peregrini). We shall see more about the praetors’ functions in Chapters 2 and 10.

Of the remaining magistrates, the aediles had various duties relating to the care of the city and its inhabitants, such as the maintenance of supplies of food and water and of public roads and buildings.

The quaestors were magistrates with responsibility in financial matters, and they also had a role in the consuls’ criminal jurisdiction.

From 494 bc, plebeian magistrates called tribunes were elected to represent plebeian interests. The tribunes had the right to veto any act by another magistrate, and presided over concilium plebis, an assembly made up of plebeian citizens, which became during the Republic the main legislative organ.

Responsibility for the compilation of the census was given from 443 bc to the censors. The censors were appointed for up to eighteen months, and classified citizens for military, political and taxation purposes. The office of censor involved supervision of the morals of the people, with the right to place a mark of disgrace against a person’s name, with various social and legal consequences. The censors also acquired responsibility for the appointment of senators, though in practice this was restricted to the power to exclude a man from the Senate.

In addition to these magistracies, there were also citizen assemblies, which alone had the power to legislate. However, the assemblies had no legislative initiative, in that they could meet only when summoned by the appropriate magistrate.

The Struggle of the Orders

We have seen that Roman citizenry was divided into two parts, patricians and plebeians. Unsurprisingly, there was plebeian discontent at a status which was in many ways inferior. The magistracies were restricted to patri­cians, for example, and the plebeian assembly had an inferior status. This discontent led to pressure for reform, on occasion involving threats by the plebeians to secede and found a new city. This is known as the Struggle of the Orders. As a result of this, gradual concessions were made. One of these, the establishment of the office of tribune, as a magistrate representing the plebeians, we have already seen. From 367 bc, too, one of the two consuls was required to be a plebeian. In 287 bc, legislation of the plebeian assembly was made fully binding on the whole citizen body.

From the point of view of the study of Roman law, the most important development was the publication of the law in 451—450 bc in the Twelve Tables. The Twelve Tables are considered in Chapter 2.

Roman expansion

Throughout the period of the Republic, Rome was frequently involved in conflict. Within fifteen years of the establishment of the Republic, Rome had defeated the Etruscans in alliance with other Latin states, and then defeated the Latin states. By the early third century bc, Rome had secured its position as the dominant power in central Italy. This century then saw Rome become dominant over the whole of Italy, following defeats of the Gallic tribes of the north of the Italian peninsula and of the Greek city states of the south.

It should not be thought, however, that success was purely a result of military conquest.

As Rome expanded, however, it became less generous to its allies. Demands for Roman citizenship to be extended to Rome’s Italian allies led the allies to revolt against Rome in 91 bc. Although in purely military terms Rome won the Social War, as this war is known (from socii, meaning “allies”), to gain that victory it was compelled to concede Roman citizen­ship to those Italians who would lay down their arms.

Rome’s rise to prominence inevitably brought it into conflict with other powers. During this period, the dominant power in the western Mediter­ranean was Carthage. Rome fought three wars with Carthage: from 264 to 261 bc over control of Sicily; from 218 to 201 bc over control of Spain; and in 146 bc. In the first two of these wars, Rome was stretched to its limit, but won. The third war ended Carthaginian power, and indeed Carthage itself, for the city was destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery. This left Rome dominant in the western Mediterranean.

In the eastern Mediterranean, advantage was taken of the disintegration of Alexander the Great’s empire following his death in 323 bc. Through a combination of diplomacy and military force, by the first century bc Rome controlled much of the eastern Mediterranean.

Rome also expanded to the north, and in the second century bc created a new province in southern Gaul (modern France), in part to protect the land route to Spain. The conquest of Gaul was completed by Julius Caesar in 52 bc following a lengthy campaign.