Download The Roman Republic (510-44 BC) The Roman Republic (Latin: Res

The Roman Republic (510-44 BC)
The Roman Republic (Latin: Res Publica Romanorum) was a phase of the ancient Roman
civilization characterized by a republican form of government. A republic is a type of
government where the citizens choose their leaders of their country and the people (or at least a
part of its people) have an impact on its government. The word "republic" is derived from the
Latin phrase res publica, which can be translated as "a public affair".
The republican period began with the overthrow of the Monarchy in 510 BC and lasted until its
subversion (overthrowing or destroying a legally constituted government), through a series of
civil wars, into the Principate (personal; what the emperor chose to make it) form of government.
The precise date in which the Roman Republic changed into the Roman Empire is disputed, with
the dates of Julius Caesar’s appointment as perpetual dictator (44 BC), the Battle of Actium
(September 2, 31 BC), and the date which the Roman Senate granted Octavian the title
“Augustus” (meaning great, magnificent), all being advanced as candidates.
The Roman republican government was a complex system, which seems to have had several
redundancies within it, and was based on custom and tradition, as much as it was on law.
The Foundation of Power
The basis of the republican government, at least in theory, was the division of responsibilities
between various assemblies, whose members (or blocks of members) would vote on issues
placed before their assembly. These assemblies included the Curiate Assembly, the Centuriate
Assembly, the Tribal Assembly, the Plebeian Assembly, and the Roman Senate. Membership in
such assemblies was limited by such factors as class, order, family, and income.
The sum total of the Roman population was divided into two classes, the Senate and the Roman
People; the Roman People consisted of all Roman citizens who were not members of the Senate,
such as the plebeians (common people) and proletarians (workers who depend on the sale of
their labor).
Domestic power was vested in the Roman People, through the Centuriate Assembly (Comitia
Centuriata), the Tribal Assembly (Comitia Tributa), and the Plebeian Council (Concilium
Plebis).
Contrary to popular belief, the Senate was not a legislature; a senates consultum was only a
recommendation of legal practice, not a law in and of itself. Actual legislation was vested in the
aforementioned Roman assemblies and the Plebeian Council, which acted on the Senate’s
recommendations and also elected the city’s magistrates. The late republican period changed the
course of the Roman Culture.
Nevertheless, the Senate held considerable clout (auctoritas) in Roman politics. As the
embodiment of Rome, it was the official body that sent and received ambassadors on behalf of
the city, that appointed officials to manage the public lands – including provincial (an official in
charge of an ecclesiastical (church) province acting under the superior general of a religious
order) governors – that conducted wars, and appropriated public funds.
The Senate also bore the prerogative of authorizing the city’s chief magistrates, the consuls, to
nominate a dictator in a state of emergency, usually military. In the late Republic, the Senate
came to avoid the dictatorate by resorting to a senatus consultum de republica defendenda, the
so-called senatus consultum ultimum which declared martial law (temporary rule by military
authorities, imposed on a civilian population especially in time of war or when civil authority has
broken down) and empowered the consuls to “take care that the Republic should come to no
harm,” according to Cicero’s (a Roman writer, speaker and politician) first In Catilinam oration.