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