Download Roman goverment

Roman goverment
From 500 BC to nearly 1500 AD, for two thousand years, Roman government had more
or less the same system. Of course there were some changes over that time too!
When the Roman Republic was first set up, in 500 BC, the people in charge were two
men called consuls. Women were not allowed to be consuls. The consuls controlled the
army, and they decided whether to start a war and how much taxes to collect and what
the laws were. They both had to agree in order to change anything; if one of them said
“veto”, Latin for “I forbid it”, then nothing would be done.
The consuls got advice from the Senate, which was made up of men from wealthy
families in Rome. Women were not allowed in the Senate, either. Once you got into the
Senate, you stayed in for the rest of your life. Most consuls eventually joined the
Senate, and most senators were from families where their fathers and grandfathers had
been in the Senate. Most of the time, the consuls did what the Senate advised.
There were also prefects in Rome, whose job it was to run the city – some heard court
cases, some ran the vegetable markets or the meat markets or the port.
There were tribunes, who were supposed to speak for the poorer people in the Senate.
Tribunes were elected by the Assembly, and they could veto (forbid) anything the
Senate voted for that affected the poor (which ended up being pretty much anything the
Senate voted on). These, too, were all men.
Finally, there was also an Assembly of all the men (not women) who were grownup
and free and had Roman citizenship. They voted on some big issues, if the consuls
asked them to – things like whether to go to war. And they elected the consuls and
prefects and the Senators. But the Assembly was set up so that richer people got more
votes than poorer people.