Download Government

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For two thousand years, Roman
government had more or less the same
system. Of course there were some
changes over that time too.
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In 500 B.C the people in charge were
two men called consuls. Women were
not allowed to be consuls. They
controlled the army, and they decided
whether to start a war and how much
taxes to collect and what the laws were.
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They who were supposed to speak for
the poorer people in the Senate.
Tribunes were elected by the Assembly,
and they could veto anything the
Senate voted for that affected the poor.
Which ended up being just about
everything.
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“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. Which to me is
unfair.
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“50 BC, the time of Julius Caesar,
generals had begun to take over the
government and not pay any attention
to the consuls or the Senate anymore,
and just do as they pleased.” They could
do that, because they had the army
with them.
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“In 31 BC, was one of these generals. But
he realized that people didn’t like this
pushing people around, and so he set
up a different system.” He made the
Senate vote to give him the powers of a
tribune for the rest of his life. That way, he
could veto anything the senate voted
on he didn’t like.

At the creation of the republic, supreme
power probably resided with a popular
assembly, but early on the Senate
became very influential, and the
traditional formula, which survived for
centuries, was “S.P.Q.R. - Senatus
Populusque Romanus - the Roman
Senate and People acting together.”
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They didn’t want one person to have all
the power. they decided to balance the
power of the government between
three branches, there was first the
executive branch, then the legislative
branch, and finally the judicial branch.

The Roman government was a strange
mix of a democracy and a republic. An
interesting fact that the people of Rome
took many of their ideas of government
from the Ancient Greeks.
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/roma
ns/government/index.htm
 http://www.unrv.com/government.php
 Pictures are from Google.
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