History of The Roman Constitution - Under The Republic

Under The Republic

After the monarchy had been overthrown, and the Roman Republic had been founded, the people of Rome began electing two Consuls each year. In the year 494 BC, the Plebeians (commoners) seceded to the Aventine hill, and demanded of the Patricians (the aristocrats) the right to elect their own officials. The Patricians duly capitulated, and the Plebeians ended their secession. The Plebeians called these new officials Plebeian Tribunes, and gave these Tribunes two assistants, called Plebeian Aediles.

In 449 BC, the Senate promulgated the Twelve Tables as the centerpiece of the Roman Constitution. In 443 BC, the office of Censor was created, and in 367 BC, Plebeians were allowed to stand for the Consulship. The opening of the Consulship to the Plebeian class implicitly opened both the Censorship as well as the Dictatorship to Plebeians. In 366 BC, in an effort by the Patricians to reassert their influence over the magisterial offices, two new offices were created. While these two offices, the Praetorship and the Curule Aedileship, were at first open only to Patricians, within a generation, they were open to Plebeians as well.

Beginning around the year 350 BC, the senators and the Plebeian Tribunes began to grow closer. The Senate began giving Tribunes more power, and, unsurprisingly, the Tribunes began to feel indebted to the senate. As the Tribunes and the senators grew closer, Plebeian senators began to routinely secure the office of Tribune for members of their own families. Also around the year 350 BC, the Plebeian Council (popular assembly) enacted a significant law (the "Ovinian Law") which transferred, from the Consuls to the Censors, the power to appoint new senators. This law also required the Censors to appoint any newly-elected magistrate to the Senate, which probably resulted in a significant increase in the number of Plebeian senators. This, along with the closeness between the Plebeian Tribunes and the Senate, helped to facilitate the creation of a new Plebeian aristocracy. This new Plebeian aristocracy soon merged with the old Patrician aristocracy, creating a combined "Patricio-Plebeian" aristocracy. The old aristocracy existed through the force of law, because only Patricians had been allowed to stand for high office. Now, however, the new aristocracy existed due to the organization of society, and as such, this order could only be overthrown through a revolution.

In 287 BC, the Plebeians seceded to the Janiculum hill. To end the secession, a law (the "Hortensian Law") was passed, which ended the requirement that the Patrician senators consent before a bill could be brought before the Plebeian Council for a vote. The ultimate significance of this law was in the fact that it robbed the Patricians of their final weapon over the Plebeians. The result was that the ultimate control over the state fell, not onto the shoulders of democracy, but onto the shoulders of the new Patricio-Plebeian aristocracy. By the middle of the second century BC, the economic situation for the average Plebeian had declined significantly. Farmers became bankrupted, and soon masses of unemployed Plebeians began flooding into Rome, and thus into the ranks of the legislative assemblies, where their economic status usually led them to vote for the candidate who offered them the most. A new culture of dependency was emerging, which would look to any populist leader for relief.

In 88 BC, an aristocratic senator named Lucius Cornelius Sulla was elected Consul, and soon left for a war in the east. When a Tribune revoked Sulla's command of the war, Sulla brought his army back to Italy, marched on Rome, secured the city, and left for the east again. In 83 BC he returned to Rome, and captured the city a second time. In 82 BC, he made himself Dictator, and then used his status as Dictator to pass a series of constitutional reforms that were intended to strengthen the senate. In 80 BC he resigned his Dictatorship, and by 78 BC he was dead. While he thought that he had firmly established aristocratic rule, his own career had illustrated the fatal weakness in the constitution: that it was the army, and not the senate, which dictated the fortunes of the state. In 70 BC, the generals Pompey Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus were both elected Consul, and quickly dismantled Sulla's constitution. In 62 BC Pompey returned to Rome from battle in the east, and soon entered into an agreement with Julius Caesar. Caesar and Pompey, along with Crassus, established a private agreement, known as the First Triumvirate. Under the agreement, Pompey's arrangements were to be ratified, Crassus was to be promised a future Consulship, and Caesar was to be promised the Consulship in 59 BC, and then the governorship of Gaul (modern France) immediately afterwards. In 54 BC, violence began sweeping the city, and in 53 BC Crassus was killed. In January 49 BC, the senate passed a resolution which declared that if Caesar did not lay down his arms by July of that year, he would be considered an enemy of the republic. In response, Caesar quickly crossed the Rubicon with his veteran army, and marched towards Rome. Caesar's rapid advance forced Pompey, the Consuls and the senate to abandon Rome for Greece, and allowed Caesar to enter the city unopposed.

By 48 BC, after having defeated the last of his major enemies, Julius Caesar wanted to ensure that his control over the government was undisputed. He assumed these powers by increasing his own authority, and by decreasing the authority of Rome's other political institutions. Caesar held the office of Roman Dictator, and alternated between the Consulship (the chief-magistracy) and the Proconsulship (in effect, a military governorship). In 48 BC, Caesar was given the powers of a Plebeian Tribune, which made his person sacrosanct, gave him the power to veto the Senate, and allowed him to dominate the legislative process. After Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC, Mark Antony formed an alliance with Caesar's adopted son and great-nephew, Gaius Octavian. Along with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, they formed an alliance known as the Second Triumvirate, and held powers that were nearly identical to the powers that Caesar had held under his constitution. While the conspirators who had assassinated Caesar were defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC, the peace that resulted was only temporary. Antony and Octavian fought against each other in one last battle in 31 BC. Antony was defeated, and in 30 BC he committed suicide. In 29 BC, Octavian returned to Rome as the unchallenged master of the state. The reign of Octavian, whom history remembers as Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, marked the dividing line between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. By the time this process was complete, Rome had completed its transition from a city-state with a network of dependencies, to the capital of an empire.