LEGISLATIVE BODIES OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

(And Major Offices Elected By Those Bodies)

By Charles King

Note: This collection of interrelated handouts originated in a version I wrote for a graduate
seminar that I was teaching at the University of Nebraska at Omaha called “Ancient Rome: The
Urban Experience,” (Fall, 2013). The 20-page version here is an expansion of the original that I
prepared as a reading for an undergraduate/graduate lecture course, “Topics: The Roman
Republic,” at UNO in the Spring of 2014, with a few later revisions (December, 2014).

Contents: Handout 1: The Senate

Handout 2: The Two Forms of the Tribal Assembly
Form 1: The Concilium Plebis
Form 2: The Comitia Tributa
Handout 3: The Comitia Centuriata [Centuriate Assembly]
Handout 4: The Comitia Curiata and Comitia Calata
Handout 5: Elective Offices of the Republican Government
Handout 6: Republican Government: A Short Summary

Bibliography:

Mary Beard, “Priesthood in the Roman Republic,” in Mary Beard and John North, eds., Pagan
Priests (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990): 17-48.
P. A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988).
T. J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (London: Routledge, 1995).
Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal: Sociological Studies in Roman History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press,1983).
Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999).
Fergus Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 1998).
Claude Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome, trans. by P. S. Falla (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980)
O. F. Robinson, Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration (London: Routledge, 1992).
Nathan Rosenstein, Rome and the Mediterranean 290-146: The Imperial Republic (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
Catherine Steel, The End of the Roman Republic, 146 to 44 BC: Conquest and Crisis
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).
Lily Ross Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966).
Handout # 1

THE SENATE

Membership: The Senate originally had approximately 300 members (the number could
fluctuate), which was true through much of the Republic. In the 1st century BC, the
dictator Sulla raised the number by packing the Senate with 300 of his supporters. The
resulting size depends upon the (uncertain) question of whether he also filled existing
vacancies prior to adding the 300, so modern estimates range from 600 Senators to a
more conservative number of perhaps 450. Briefly, the number went up by another 300
when Julius Caesar added his own group of supporters to the body, but the Emperor
Augustus expelled enough members to cut the number back to 600, which remained the
standard size in the Imperial period.

Technically, a meeting of the Senate had to be convened at the request of an elected

magistrate such as a Consul or Praetor. By the 2nd century BC, magistrates with the
authority to summon the Senate included even the Tribunes.

Gaining Office: It is possible that the Senate originated as a council of elders to advise the king
during the Regal period. In the earliest Republic, it seems to have functioned as an
advisory body to the two elected Consuls for the year. The Consuls could also control
the Senate’s membership, effectively subordinating the Senate to the Consuls, but
reforms in the late 4th century BC (the Lex Ovinia) freed the Senate from Consular
oversight and made membership for life.

After the reform, Senators were technically enrolled in the Senate by the two Censors, but
the normal procedure was that those who won election to one of Rome’s top elective
offices would be enrolled in the Senate as a routine matter, that is, the Consuls, Praetors
and Quaestors, with the eligible group eventually including Aediles as well, with
Tribunes added after the Lex Atinia (probably 149 BC). In other words, one had only to
win election to a single one-year elective office to gain membership in the Senate for life.
Note too that people who ran for the highest offices were normally already in the Senate,
so that it was really the Quaestorship or Aedileship (and thus election by a tribal
assembly) that was the main path to Senatorial office. Apparently, if there were no
eligible former elected officials to fill a vacancy, the Censors for the year could enroll
almost anyone at their discretion and might, for example, do so on the basis of men
having held prominent priesthoods or other distinctions. Still, the number of former
office holders would have been large enough that it is unlikely the Censors had to turn to
other people very often. Technically, a Censor could remove Senators for moral offenses
or similarly block eligible candidates as unworthy, but it did not happen frequently.

Powers (after the 4th century BC):

A) The Senate had sole control over the budget, so that spending bills did not have to be
ratified by one of the voting assemblies and the Senate alone could handle them.
 B) Technically, the Senate had only an advisory role in legislation and an assembly
(normally the Tribal Assembly in its Concilium Plebis form) had to vote the measure into
law. In practice, though, it became customary to allow the Senate to vote on measures
first, and between 232 and 133 BC, no law was introduced for a vote in the assembly
before the Senate approved it first. In practice, this created a kind of two-house
legislature in the middle Republic. Although there was never a law that said that the
Senate had to approve legislation first, it became so entrenched as a practice that the
Tribune Tiberius Gracchus created a crisis when he tried to pass laws through an
assembly alone in 133.

C) The Senate had miscellaneous diplomatic functions. Ambassadors were presented to

the Senate when they arrived, and the Senate ratified treaties.

D) The Senate settled disputes and controversies that arose between members of Rome’s
colleges of priests, and thus the Senate normally had the last word on religious disputes.
One could therefore see the priestly colleges as committees that reported to the Senate.
Senatorial rulings (Senatus consulta) were not, however, the same as laws, so it was
theoretically possible (if rare) for the legislative assemblies to assert jurisdiction over a
religious matter as well.

The Senate’s Increase in Power

The reasons why the power of the Senate expanded in the middle Republic can be found in the
self-interest of elected officials. Only elected magistrates could put legislation before an
assembly for vote, but the magistrates knew that they would be enrolled in the Senate when they
left office (or at least--in the case of the Tribunes originally--that they would be in good position
to run later for an office that would grant Senatorial membership). Increasing the Senate’s
powers was thus a way for future lifetime members of the Senate to increase their own future
powers. The lifetime membership of Senators also allowed them to defend the idea that they
were the best people to mold long-term policy. It took a Tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, who saw
the Tribal Assembly as a viable power base for his own career, to begin to reverse the trend.

Rather than seeing the Senate as the regular government of Republican Rome, it might be better
to see the history of the Republic as the story of the gradual rise and gradual fall of Senatorial
power vis-à-vis the Consuls, assemblies, army, and other power blocs. On that point, see also
handout six below.
 Handout #2: THE TWO FORMS OF THE TRIBAL ASSEMBLY

The Tribal Assembly has two forms, the Concilium Plebis, where only Plebeians can vote and
officals called Tribunes are in charge, and the Comitia Tributa, where both Plebeians and
Patricians can vote and a Praetor is the supervising official.

Form #1: The Concilium Plebis (“Council of the Plebeians”) is also called the Comitia
Tribunicia (“Tribunician Assembly”), the Comitia Plebis Tributa (“Tribal Assembly of the
Plebs”) or loosely as the Comitia Tributa (“Tribal Assembly”), though the latter term can also
refer to the assembly’s other form. When Roman authors use the word Comitia (“Assembly”) or
Concilium (“council”) without modification, they also normally mean the Concilium Plebis,
which is the main form of the Tribal Assembly for lawmaking purposes.

A) Presiding Magistrates: Tribunes (originally 2 in number, but 10 by 449 BC)

B) Membership: Open to all male citizens who are Plebeians (and thus excluding
Patricians), though by the late Republic Plebeians would have been the overwhelming
majority of the citizen body. Voters would need to be registered as members of one of
Rome’s 35 Tribes.

C) Voting Location: Rome, in the Forum in the Comitium or nearby spaces. Citizens
who lived outside the city would have to come into Rome to participate.

D) Voting Procedure: Voters file past the magistrates and declare their votes. There is a
secret ballot after the late 2nd century BC. Votes are tallied for each of the 35 tribes. A
representative of each tribe then casts a final vote based on the total of how his tribe has
voted, so that the final decision is based on the 35 votes representing each tribe. If a
majority of 18 votes is reached, voting stops. As the “tribes” were geographic areas,
there was no intrinsic advantage to the wealthy in voting, but the urban area of Rome was
only 4 of the 35 tribes, which meant that there was a theoretical possibility of rural voters
regularly outvoting the urban ones. The reality seems to have been more complex, as
tribal membership was hereditary and some city dwellers were registered in rural tribes,
so that many (and possibly most) “rural” voters were actually urban residents.

F) Functions/Elections:

1) By the middle Republic, the Tribal Assembly in its Concilium Plebis form was
the main body that ratified laws. Although technically both the other form of the
tribal assembly and the Comitia Centuriata could pass laws, it was rare for them
to do so. Presumably, the ability of the assembly’s presiding magistrates, the
Tribunes to veto actions in other assemblies had a lot to do with the Concilium
Plebis becoming dominant in legislation. They could just stop other assemblies
from voting on anything.

2) Elected the Tribunes (10 each year) and the Plebeian Aediles (2 each year).
Form #2: The Comitia Tributa (“Tribal Assembly”), also called Comitia Populi Tributa (“Tribal
Assembly of the People”). There is some ambiguity about when the Comitia Tributa began, but
it seems to be after the Plebeian form began and prior to 447. In practice, the Tribal Assembly
met in its Comitia Tributa form mainly to elect officials to offices for which Patricians were
eligible to run, and thus, for offices where the Plebeian-only Concilium Plebis would have been
an inappropriate electoral venue.

A) Presiding Magistrate: Praetor (and possibly a Consul prior to the 4th century BC
creation of the office of Praetor)

B) Membership: Open to all male citizens, including both Plebeians and Patricians.
Voters would need to be registered as members of one of Rome’s 35 Tribes.

C) Voting Location and Voting Procedure are the same as listed above for the Concilium
Plebis except of course for the participation of Patrician voters and the different presiding
magistrate.

F) Elections: The Assembly meets primarily once a year to elect various officials in
offices to which Patricians were eligible candidates. These included:

1) Quaestors, who performed a variety of administrative tasks and whose number

grew over time. There were originally 2 (447 BC), then 4 (421), then 8 (267). By
the early 1st century BC, the number had grown to 19, and Sulla added a 20th.

2) Curile Aediles. These were roughly equivalent to the two Plebeian Aediles
elected by the Concilium Plebis, but candidates were Patricians.

3) Vigintisexviri (“The Twenty-Six Men”). This was the collective name of

several small groups of minor offices that seem to be held by young men early in
their careers. All or most of them date to the 3rd century BC. They are the
Decemviri Stlitibius Iudicandis, the Praefecti Capuam Cumas, the Tresviri
Compitales, Tresviri Monetales, the Quattuorviri Viis in Urbe Purgandis, and the
Duoviri Viis Extra Urbem Purgandis. For details, see below on handout #5.

4) Elected priesthoods. The colleges of Augurs and Pontiffs and two other
colleges were elective offices after 104 BC. They were elected by a modified
form of the Comitia Tributa in which only 17 tribes (selected by lot from the 35)
voted to fill vacancies in the priestly colleges. See handout #5 for further details.

G) Lawmaking: Technically, the Comitia Tributa had the power to pass laws, but in
practice that function was normally done by the Concilium Plebis form of the Tribal
Assembly.
Handout #3

THE COMITIA CENTURIATA

(The Centuriate Assembly)

Location: in the Saepta, a rectangular area in the Campus Martius (“Field of Mars”), just
outside the city walls of Rome.

Membership: Open to all male citizens, but voting was staggered according to income
levels. Those levels were determined by a census held by the Censors every five years.

Functions:

A) By the middle Republic, the main function was to elect Rome’s highest
categories of magistrates: the Consuls (2 each year) and the Praetors (originally 1
each year [from 367], then 2 [244], then 4 [228 BC] then 6 [198 BC], then 8 [81
BC]) and the Censors (2 elected to 18 month terms once every five years, so that
there was not always a Censor in office).

B) The Comitia Centuriata was probably the main legislative assembly of the
very early (5th century BC) Republic, and it always technically had the power to
ratify laws, but in practice it rarely did so after the Struggle of the Orders because
its legislative functions were taken over by the Tribal Assembly in its Concilium
Plebis form, whose presiding officials, the Tribunes, could block votes in the
Comitia Centuriata and thus divert lawmaking functions to the Concilium Plebis.

C) The Comitia Centuriata did vote on formal declarations of war

D) Citizens accused of capital crimes technically had the right to appeal a death
sentence to the Comitia Centuriata, which would in effect serve as the jury. In
light of the unwieldy size and complexity of the assembly, though, one suspects
that only the most prominent and well-connected of defendants could have
actually had the clout to have gained this right of appeal.

Procedure: The electorate was divided into 193 voting blocs called “centuries.” The name
“century’ does not mean that there were 100 people in each, and numbers varied. The
centuries were then distributed among the income levels determined by the census. In
voting, the assembled members of each income level would vote among themselves how
to assign to candidates the number of centuries that their income level possessed. A
representative of each century would then vote in the final vote in the manner that the
voters for that century had indicated. Voting was in order of wealth, from richest to
poorest, and voting stopped when a majority was reached, meaning that lower income
levels might not always get to vote.
Note too that voting was also divided by age, so that half the centuries at each income
level were reserved for voters over the age of 46, thus making older voters
overrepresented in their political strength. So, the assembly favored older wealthier
voters.

Livy and Dionysius give more or less similar descriptions of how the distribution into
centuries was supposed to have worked in the early Republic:

Equestrians: 18 Centuries
First Class: 80
Second Class: 20
Third Class: 20
Fourth Class: 20
Fifth Class: 30
Carpenters: 2
Hornblowers: 2
Proletarii: 1

In addition to the five main property classes, both Livy and Dionysius agree that at the
bottom of the scale were the Proletarii, the people without significant property, who had
only a single century regardless of numbers. They were also exempt from both paying
taxes and serving in the army.

At the top were the Equestrians (in Latin Equites, sometimes translated dubiously into
English as “knights”), who were a kind of an honorary group within the wealthy. They
probably were the richest Romans, but Equestrian membership was not just a matter of
reaching a minimum qualifying income and new members had to be invited by existing
members of the order. It was thus a kind of honorary status within larger pool of the
wealthy and membership qualified members to wear special clothing in public. They
were also given a “public horse” upon joining.

The four remaining centuries are a bit of mystery. Both Livy and Dionysius say that
there were 2 centuries assigned to “carpenters” and 2 centuries assigned to
“hornblowers.” Perhaps these were honorary groups where people were allowed to vote
above their regular income level. The two authors do not agree on the details. Livy says
the carpenters voted with the first class and the hornblowers with the fifth. Dionysius
says that carpenters voted with the second class and the hornblowers with the third. In
any event, the amount of votes at stake was not very large.

In theory, the combination of the Equestrians and the first class would be a majority, but
that would have been more likely to occur in a vote on legislation (in the assembly’s early
period) than in its main role later as an electoral assembly. As candidates were all
wealthy and would split the vote of the rich, the middle and even lower income groups
probably did regularly get to vote, though the single vote of the Proletarii at the bottom
was probably rarely cast.
 Despite the assertions of Livy and Dionysius that the scheme of dividing the citizens into
census classes originally corresponded to divisions in the military by the type of
equipment with which they fought, the details that they give are anachronistic, and there
is no visible connection between class membership and military equipment categories in
any period for which there is evidence. The citizens ranked by the census were, except
for the proletarii at the bottom, eligible for military service. Special war-levies of taxes
were assessed at a level that corresponded to one’s census ranking, and that may be the
source of the tradition that there was originally a more direct connection between the
ranking and the duties of soldiers in combat.

The Comitia Centuria: Later Changes:

Unfortunately, the chart on the previous page may be meaningless, since both Livy and
Dionysius imply that the voting arrangements changed by the middle Republic. They are
unfortunately quite vague about how exactly the system changed except that Dionysius
says it was “more democratic.” Some additional information about the Late Republican
form can be found in Cicero’s writings, but unfortunately he is only mentioning details in
passing and does not describe the whole system. One can say that the order of the first
groups to vote changed into a system of voting in this order:

1) 10 centuries to a group of voters selected by lot from the tribes, but economically in
the first class.
2) 6 centuries to an honorary group of select Equestrians
3) 82 centuries to a group that consists of the remainder of the 1st class (70 centuries)
and the remainder of the equestrians (12 centuries)

Unfortunately, it is not clear how the rest of the voting changed below the first class.
Cicero implies that voting in order of wealth was retained, but Dionysius says (vaguely)
that order of voting was no longer done “strictly” and that the changes made it “more
democratic.” One modern (and reasonably plausible) theory is that some of the lower
income levels may have been lumped together into a single pool of voters, thus reducing
the economic stagger of the order of voting among the lower income groups, while
retaining the privileged position of the wealthier voters at the top of the chart, who were
just arranged in a slightly different configuration as given above.
 Handout #4: THE COMITIA CURIATA AND COMITIA CALATA
(Curiate Assemblies)

The Comitia Curiata is probably a holdover from the Regal Period before the Republic. In the
Republic, it has only minor functions.

A Curia is a division of the city of Rome into one of thirty parts. Membership appears to have
been originally about membership in particular families, but seems to have transferred to the
main areas associated with those families, so that the 30 curiae are districts of Rome. Each
Curia has a representative called a Curio, and there is also a head Curio known as the Curio
Maximus. The Curios served for life and may have been elected by the same procedure as priests
(See handout #5), though the details are unclear. The Curios were all Patricians until 209, when
the office opened to Plebeians.

Whatever the exact function of the Comitia Curiata in the Regal period and very early Republic,
it appears to have largely been rendered superfluous by the early Republican rise of the Tribal
Assembly and the system of Tribes that it represented. The Comitia Curiata does continue to
meet, but apparently does only minor symbolic and legal functions in Republican centuries:

A) The Comitia Curiata ratified the results of elections by the other assemblies, but this appears
to be only a ceremonial rubber-stamp process, rather than a procedure where the result was in
doubt or particularly significant. One interpretation is that this function of the assembly is a
symbolic holdover from the Regal Period, when the assembly would have ratified the selection
of a new king. This interpretation would be consistent with the account in Livy, wherein the
succession of a new king had to be confirmed by a popular vote, but the role of the Comitia
Curiata in Regal era processes is only conjecture.

B) The Comitia Curiata also had a more practical function as a court that handled cases of
adrogatio, a kind of adoption of an adult as a legal heir in which the adoptee had to legally agree
to go under the patria potestas [“paternal authority”] of his new adoptive father (which in
practice made him a legal dependent with no property rights).

C) The Comitia Curiata also functioned in an alternate form as the Comitia Calata, which was
the same assembly except that the presiding official was Rome’s highest ranking priest, the
Pontifex Maximus, rather than the Curio Maximus. As the Comitia Calata, the assembly ratified
the appointment of new priests to fill vacancies in the priestly colleges, though it does not elect
those priests, merely again acting to confirm a selection process that had already taken place
either in the Comitia Tributa or within the priestly colleges themselves. At a more practical
level, the Comita Calata also served as a court to ratify wills.

One suspects that it was the practical functions of the assembly to confirm adoptions (Curiata) or
wills (Calata) that kept the assembly in existence, since its functions of confirming elective
offices and priesthoods were basically redundant.
Handout #5

ELECTIVE OFFICES OF THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT

Note: In theory, there was a standard order of offices, the cursus honorum (“Path of Offices”),
but there were frequent exceptions, even after parts of the order were mandated by law in the late
Republic. Certainly, it would have been odd to hold high offices like Consul or Censor without
having held several of the lower ones, but the lower offices were less rigid in order. The
standard order would have been Quaestor>Praetor>Consul>Censor, but one could insert the
Aedileship (usually after the Quaestor and before the Praetor) or include being Tribune (order
variable, but normally before Praetor). It is not clear how essential the even lower ranking
offices like the Vigintisexviri were to a politician’s career. At the least, some kind of military
service prior to holding office was normal.

The major offices were:

1) Consuls. There are two Consuls of equal rank, elected annually by the Comitia Centuriata.
Consuls are elected heads of state, originally intended to replace the kings at the beginning of the
Republic. They are the most powerful of the annual magistrates, and the Roman calendar dates
years by the names of that year’s Consuls. They have the power of Imperium, which is the
power to command an army, and they had the absolute power over life and death for Roman
citizens outside the city limits of Rome. In practice, Consuls were the field commanders of the
army, and would alternate military commands with each other in a given year. They also had
legal authority and could serve as judges in Rome’s courts. They were also the head of the city
administration of Rome, with various lower ranking offices serving below them. Thus, the job
combined commander-in-chief of the army, Supreme Court justice, and mayor. In the first
century of the Republic (the 5th century BC), they also had control over membership of the
Senate, though they lose that power in reforms of the 4th century BC. After 367, one of the
Consuls was required to be a Plebeian each year.

2) Dictator. The Dictator was an irregular office used only in emergencies. A Dictator had sole
authority over all other branches of the government, but could hold the position only for six
months and only once in a lifetime. One of the year’s Consuls had to nominate a Dictator, whose
position a vote of the Senate would confirm. The office of Dictator was used only as a reaction to
a short-term crisis, and only a handful of people held the office in the whole period of the
Republic. So, normally there would not be a Dictator in power. The word “Dictator” gained the
negative connotation that passes over into English when, in the first century BC, two generals,
first Sulla and then Julius Caesar, attempted to declare themselves Dictator Perpetuus, “Dictator
for Life,” which of course was not a proper use of the title.

3) Censors. There were two Censors elected at a time by the Comitia Centuriata, and they
served for an 18 month term, but elections for Censors were held only every five years, so that
there would be a 3 ½ year period without a Censor in office in every five year period between the
elections. The office was often viewed as the pinnacle of a political career, and Censors were
normally people who had previously held the Consulship. The main task of the Censors was to
conduct the census every five years, which ranked people in their voting class in the Comitia
Centuriata [See handout #3 above] and was also important for determining rates of taxation and
eligibility for military service. Significantly, the Censors also formally enrolled people as
members of the Senate, and they had the authority (though it was rarely used) to expel Senators
for moral offenses. The Censors also arranged contracts for public works projects. As there
were no Censors for 3 ½ years out of every five, the latter function required advance planning of
projects, in effect the first “five year plans,” long before the Soviet Union.

4) Praetors. The office of Praetor was created in 367 BC, and there was originally only one per
year. Basically functioning as junior Consuls, the Praetors were subordinate to the Consuls in
rank, but otherwise had similar imperium. They also could command armies and frequently had
legal functions as judges in the courts. The number increased to two in 244, then to four in 228
after the First Punic War when the Romans decided to use Praetors as governors in their new
territory outside of Italy. The number later went up to six [198 BC], and Sulla finally raised it to
eight [81 BC]. Although a few of the Praetors served as provincial governors, the office mainly
continued its status as being an extension of the powers of the Consul, and the growing number
of Praetors just reflects the increased administrative needs of the state.

5) Proconsuls and Propraetors. These are not technically “elective offices.” The prefix “pro”
here means “instead of.” So, Proconsuls and Propraetors would be men with the imperium of a
consul or praetor, who were not actually holding the elective office at the time. Normally,
though, the Pro-magistrates were people who had previously held the elective office of Consul
and/or Praetor and whose imperium was being extended (or revived) so as to give the Republic
an additional military commander. This process, known as prorogation, not only produced
additional generals beyond the currently elected magistrates, but also could be used to extend the
command of a general who was winning a war after his year in office ran out. One could, for
example, start a war as a Consul, but continue in charge of the same army after one’s year in
office ended through prorogation to a Proconsular command. Proconsular commands were
originally assigned by vote of the Senate, but in the late Republic the Tribal Assembly
(Concilium Plebis) increasingly took over the authority to assign commands. There was also a
reform in the late 2nd century BC that meant that all Consulships and Praetorships would be
assigned a proconsular military command prior even to the year’s election. What that meant in
practice is that, since Consuls and Praetors were guaranteed a command after their main year in
office, they increasingly stayed in Rome during their actual one-year elective term. Proconsular
generals (rather than the elected Consuls for the year) thus became the Republic’s main military
commanders in the field during the Republic’s last century.

6) Quaestors. There were originally 2 (447 BC), then 4 (421), then 8 (267). By the early 1st
century BC, the number had grown to 19, and Sulla added a 20th. Quaestors were elected to one
year terms by the Comitia Tributa. Some of them worked in Rome with the Senate to run the
treasury. Others were assigned to provinces (but apparently not all provinces) to assist governors
there. At various times, they had additional duties, such as oversight of Rome’s water supply,
and the number of them seems to increase as a need for them to perform additional functions
arose.
7) Tribunes. These are the “Tribunes of the Plebs” associated with the Tribal Assembly, not to
be confused with the military rank “Tribune,” which uses the same name in a very different
context. Supposedly created in the first secessio of 494 BC, there were originally only two, but
the number quickly expanded to 10 by 449. Tribunes were elected to one year terms by the
Concilium Plebis form of the Tribal Assembly. Tribunes had to be Plebeians, though
occasionally a Patrician would have himself adopted into a Plebeian family to bypass the
restriction. Tribunes supervised voting in the Concilium Plebis and could introduce legislation to
the assembly for a vote, a power that becomes particularly important in the 1st century BC.
From 449 BC, the Tribunes had the power of sacrosanctity, which meant that harming them was
a religious crime. In practice, that meant that they could stand between a Plebeian who requested
their aid and another government official (even a Consul) who was attempting to arrest, harass,
enlist in the army, or otherwise disturb the Plebeian. This power of protection worked because
no one could physically oppose the action of a sacrosanct Tribune. The same power also
allowed Tribunes to stop votes in the other assemblies or even the Senate just by blocking the
voting procedure. Eventually this became an oral procedure, in which the Tribune merely had to
say “I forbid it,” which in Latin is “veto.” As Tribunes could also veto each other’s actions, the
power of the Tribunes was sometimes undercut by disagreements between the ten Tribunes
currently in office. By the 2nd century BC, Tribunes had gained the power to call meetings of the
Senate (like a Consul or Praetor) and likewise became added to the list of offices that would
qualify holders for Senatorial membership.

8) Aediles. There were two categories of Aediles, and two elected each year in each category.
Originally, there were two Plebeian Aediles, who were assistants to the Tribunes, elected by the
Concilium Plebis, who handled religious ceremonies specific to the Plebeians. Later were added
the Curile Aediles, also two in number, who were Patricians that the Comitia Tributa elected. In
practice, both types of Aediles became essentially equivalent and they took over a variety of
urban administrative duties. They supervised street and sewer maintenance, regulated shops and
taverns, policed the honesty of weights and measures, and performed other routine duties to help
the city function.

9) Vigintisexviri (“The Twenty-Six Men”). This term was the collective term for six groups of
minor magistrates that were elected by the Comitia Tributa, presumably for the standard one-
year term of most offices. The offices date to the 3rd century BC, and the Praefecti Capuam
Cumas in particular seems to be a reaction to the end of the 2nd Punic War, when the Romans
wanted to reassert stronger control in Southern Italy after Hannibal’s occupation. The
Vigintisexviri appear to be offices held by young men at the beginnings of their careers, but the
offices are not well documented and it is unclear whether such service was thought to be required
as a prerequisite for higher offices. The six groups of officials are:

A) Decemviri Stlitibus Iudicandis (“The Ten Men for Judging Lawsuits”). This was
apparently a kind of standing court for some category of lawsuits. The only
explicit reference has to do with cases concerning “freedom,” perhaps the status
of ex-slaves. The curious spelling “stlitibus” is an alternate spelling (in the dative
plural case) of the common Latin word, lis, litis, “lawsuit.”
 B) Praefecti Capuam Cumas (“Prefects to Capua and Cumae”). Four in number. The
prefects administered Roman law in Capua, Cumae and other towns in Southern
Italy. It is not clear what this meant exactly, but they may have been advisors to
local courts on Roman law.
C) Tresviri Compitales (“The Three Men of the Crossroads”). One of the better
documented groups of the Vigintisexviri, the Tresviri commanded a force of
public slaves in Rome and were in charge of firefighting in the Republic. They
also seem to have some police duties and there are references to them escorting
people to and from prison.
D) Tresviri Monetales (“The Three Men of the Mint”). These officials were in charge of
minting money. As often the name of only one of the three appears on any given
coin, some scholars have suggested that they divided the year between them and
did not all serve at the same time, though that is unprovable.
E) Quattuorviri Viis in Urbe Purgandis (“The Four Men for Cleaning the Streets in the
City”). As the name implies, they were responsible for the condition of the
streets. Probably they worked under the higher ranking Aediles, who seem to
have had overall jurisdiction over the condition of Rome’s streets.
F) Duoviri Viis Extra Urbem Purgandis (“The Two Men for Cleaning the Streets Outside
the City”). Again, they cleaned (or more likely, supervised the cleaning of)
streets. Their area of jurisdiction seems to have been part of Rome’s suburbs
outside the walls.

10) Elected Priesthoods. Rome had a variety of types of priests, some of them grouped into
“colleges” (collegia). Priests normally served for life, though the duties of many of the
priesthoods were in effect part-time positions that could be (and sometimes were) combined with
more conventionally political offices in the same person’s career. Originally most priests were
selected by cooption, that is, people were invited to fill vacancies by the invitation of those
already holding priesthoods. Some priesthoods, however, became elective offices, where the
election was held in a modified version of the Comitia Tributa, in which only seventeen of the
tribes (selected by lot from the full complement) actually voted. This was true first of the office
of Pontifex Maximus (“the greatest Pontiff”), who was head of the college of Pontiffs and
arguably Rome’s most influential priest. The Pontifex Maximus was elected beginning at some
point in the third century BC. Otherwise, the elective priesthoods were the following four
colleges, all of which became elective offices only in 104 BC and used cooption prior to that. In
81, Sulla ended the use of elections for priesthoods, but in 63 the elections were restored.

A) Pontiffs. Although the Pontifex Maximus was already an elective office, the rest of
the college did not become so until 104 BC. Pontiffs were the overseers of ritual
procedure and kept track of the proper rites to perform for each deity in various contexts.
In practice, this made them religious advisors to the Senate, to political leaders like
Consuls (whose duties included various religious rites), but also to the Roman public at
large. There were nine pontiffs in the college by 300 BC. In the late Republic, the
number was raised to 15 by Sulla and to 16 by Caesar.

B) Augurs. As with the Pontiffs, there were nine Augurs in the college by 300 BC. In
the late Republic, the number was raised to 15 by Sulla and to 16 by Caesar. Augurs
 were responsible for interpreting messages from the gods that came through the flight of
birds, lightning bolts and other types of omens. It was possible to stop the vote of an
assembly or any other government action by declaring that a negative omen had occurred.

C) Quindecemviri Sacris Faciundis (“The Fifteen Men for Doing Sacred Things”).
These priests were in charge of Sibylline Books, which supposedly contained prophesies
of Rome’s future. They also had jurisdiction over cults of foreign origin in Rome.

D) Septemviri Epulones (“The Seven Men in Charge of Sacred Feasts”). These Priests
were in charge of public feasts held in honor of gods. The college was created in 196 to
take over duties that had previously been handled by Pontiffs. Julius Caesar raised the
number of members to 10.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

The above descriptions pertain only to the Republic. Many of the above-listed offices and
institutions continue to exist in some form under the emperors, but the nature and function of the
offices and assemblies often changed significantly, and one should not assume that continuity in
the use of the name constitutes continuity in the function of the office.
Handout #6

REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT: A SHORT SUMMARY

In the earliest period of the Republic, in the 5th century BC, the dominant branch of the
government was the two elected Consuls. They had strong powers—military, judicial, and
administrative--and legislation would have been passed through the wealth-based Comitia
Centuriata after the Consuls themselves introduced the law in question to the assembly for a
vote, giving the Consuls a lot of influence over the legislative agenda. In contrast to later
periods, the Senate was simply an advisory group. Senators probably served as consultants on
legislation, but the Consuls for any given year controlled the membership of the Senate, and thus
the Senate would not have been able to block their actions.

The 5th century BC also saw the opening acts of the ongoing “Struggle of the Orders”
between the majority Plebeians and the smaller hereditary Patrician order. Although terms like
“Plebs” and “Plebeian Romans” could later be used loosely just to mean “the common people,”
the Struggle of the Orders was originally a conflict based on birth. One needed to be born into a
Patrician family to be a Patrician, and the Patricians held a monopoly on certain priesthoods,
while holding a disproportionate number of high political offices like the Consulship. Whatever
the exact origin of this inequality, there are reasons to think the Patricians were attempting to
increase their domination over the Plebs in the early decades of the Republic. If the Fasti (the
surviving list of the names of the Consuls) can be trusted, then the number of Plebeian office
holders was dropping in favor of Patricians prior to 450. There was also a law prohibiting
intermarriage between Patrician and Plebeian Romans in 450. Although it was quickly repealed
in 445, the law suggests an attempt to increase the separation and stratification between the
groups. In practice, these strictly birth-based issues also became intertwined with various
economic issues, particularly relating to Rome’s debt laws. This intertwining of issues would
help facilitate an alliance between Rome’s mostly Plebeian poor and wealthy Plebeians, who
might have normally sided against the poor, but found them useful allies against the (also
predominantly wealthy) Patricians. The resulting “Struggle of the Orders” would bring about a
variety of political changes—directly or indirectly—that would reshape the political landscape in
Rome.

Perhaps as early as 494, the Plebeians gained in a concession the right to have their own
assembly, the Concilium Plebis, which initially passed laws that were binding only on the Plebs.
Soon, though, the Valerio-Horatian laws of 449 made the decisions (plebiscita) of the Concilium
Plebis into laws that were also binding on Patricians. The historical accuracy of this
development has sometimes been doubted because of contradictory sources that credit the same
development to a Lex Publilia of 339 and again to a Lex Hortensia of 287. There are too many
known laws passed through the Concilium Plebis in the period 449-287 for such doubts to be
compelling. Cornell (1995: 277) notes 35 examples, a significant percentage of the known laws
of any sort for that period, and the list includes several major pieces of legislation whose
existence it is difficult to doubt. The later laws of 339 and 287, if they existed, are likely just
clarifications of some minor points of procedure that later sources confused with the original
reform of 449.

Another reason to accept the authenticity of the introduction of binding plebiscita in 449
is another (historically less controversial) reform of those same Valerio-Horatian laws. The laws
gave the officials in charge of the Assembly, the Tribunes, the power of sacrosanctity, which
meant that they could block actions by the Consuls or votes of the Senate or Comitia Centuriata
because it was a religious crime to stop them physically from any action. In practice, these
changes would have greatly aided the Tribal Assembly in its Concilium Plebis form to become
the main assembly for passing legislation, since its officials could block voting anywhere else
with a Tribunician veto. Thus, the shift to the Tribal Assembly as the main body for ratifying
laws is fully plausible in the context of the Tribunes’ power to prevent alternative forms of
lawmaking.

The Valerio-Horatian laws of 449 brought about major shifts in the political process and
the relative strength of some of the major players. The power of the Comitia Centuriata to pass
legislation, and thereby the power of the Consuls to introduce legislation, was reduced. The new
Concilium Plebis and its presiding Tribunes grew in strength. Indeed, there is no reason to doubt
Tribunes could have introduced laws directly to the newly empowered Tribal Assembly. That
ability would diminish later on as a result of the rising power of the Senate, but the Senate’s rise
would have still been a future development in the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC. It is
extremely implausible that this early Concilium Plebis would deferred to the wishes of the
Senate on matters of legislation, since the Senate would have been heavily Patrician at the time,
and it would have defeated the purpose of the Concilium Plebis to allow a Patrician body to set
the assembly’s agenda. One should thus be cautious of reconstructions of the early Republic that
suggest that the Tribal Assembly deferred to the Senate from its inception. The later growing
strength of the Senate is more likely to be a reaction against the early strength of the Tribal
Assembly.

Reforms of the 4th century BC would bring about further shifts in the balance of power
between the various elements of Roman government, and do so in particular in ways that would
strengthen the Senate. A reform of the Senate through a law called the Lex Ovinia (date
uncertain-between 339 and 318) liberated the Senate’s membership from control of the Consuls.
Senators would now serve for life. The Censors who ran the census now enrolled Senators, and
could in theory remove them for moral offenses, but they rarely actually used the power to
remove Senators. If it had not already been true, it became normal for those elected to Rome’s
top annual offices to be enrolled in the Senate to fill vacancies. One election to one of the top
annual offices would put a politician in the Senate for life.

Even before the Lex Ovinia, the Licinio-Sextian laws of 367 mandated that one of the two
Consuls for the year be Plebeian. This ended political discrimination against Plebeians, and
would have led to an increase in the number of Plebeian members in the Senate. Indeed, the
most prominent Plebs in politics, who thus would have had the best chance of winning an
election for Consul, would have been the former Tribunes. So, even the “Plebeian office
holders” were essentially coopted into the existing system, particularly after the Lex Ovinia made
being a Senator a more attractive lifetime position.
 In practice, the changes of the 4th century meant that the holders of annual offices
transferred more and more powers to the Senate. Doing so was in their own self-interest, since
former office holders then joined the Senate for life. Why not increase the powers of one’s own
future position? The Senate gained sole power over the budget and, increasingly, the right to
vote first on legislation. The latter was possible because any law had to be introduced for a vote
to an assembly by an elected official. Ever increasingly, the officials chose not to introduce
legislation to assemblies before the Senate had first deliberated on the law and approved it. This
included the Tribunes, for even though the Tribunate did not yet itself bring enrollment in the
Senate, it now essentially was a stepping stone on the way to offices that did. So, even Tribunes
had a political motive to allow the Senate to vote on each law first, and thereby increase their
own potential future powers as Senators. The result was the effective creation of an unofficial
two-house legislature in which from 232 to 133 no law went to an assembly until the Senate had
approved it. Although there was never a law that required this procedure, a century is a long
time in politics, and the “tradition” of letting the Senate vote first became deeply entrenched and,
as noted, tied to the self-interest of those deferring to the Senate. The long wars against Carthage
(264-242, 218-202) likely also required a continuity of leadership that made the increased
Senatorial powers easier to defend, since only the Senators remained in office during the whole
period of the wars.

The assemblies also did not deliberate before voting. The presiding magistrate (normally
now a Tribune) introduced the law for a vote, and the assembly voted yes or no. This was not as
abrupt as it sounds. Prior to votes, there was a separate assembly called a Contio (plural:
Contiones) in which speakers gave speeches about the proposed legislation from the rostra, a
public podium in the forum. The Contiones were not open to any speaker. One had to be a
magistrate, but it is clear that there were often multiple competing Contiones in which speakers
argued on both sides of controversial measures. Even when there was no rebuttal, it does not
follow that listeners would automatically agree with a speaker simply because he was the only
speaker, and some speakers may have faced a hostile crowd. Likewise, in a culture where oral
transmission of information must have been the main source of “news” for most Romans, news
of what was said at Contiones would have spread well beyond the immediate listening audience.
The Contiones are thus important because they are evidence that voters at the Tribal Assembly
probably did have some knowledge of the issues that they were voting on. Still, the fact that the
elective office holders both introduced laws for a vote and scheduled Contiones made it easier
for them to do neither until the Senate had spoken. The Senate’s power gradually increased, as
the holders of the annual elective audiences deferred increasingly to the Senate’s deliberations.

Some modern historians also talk of Rome having an “aristocracy,” by which they mean
not only the Senate that served for life but also the fact that a relatively small number of families
held a disproportionately large number of Rome’s top offices. These families were now both
Plebeian and Patrician and of course all very wealthy. Hopkins and Burton (in Hopkins 1983:
31-119) calculated that, in the period from 249-50 BC, 68% of the holders of the office of
Consul were men who had a previous family member hold the office. Doubtless, there was a
vast voting advantage in having the name recognition value of past relatives with the same name
and notable accomplishments. Even in America, one can note the recurring politicians named
Roosevelt, Kennedy, Bush, and so forth. Still, if the nobiles (men with Consular ancestors) had a
big advantage, office holding was never automatic or hereditary, and one did actually have to
win elections. It is also not clear that the same ratio of success for the families of the nobiles was
true of the lower and less well documented offices, where the total number of office holders was
greater and included many men who did not go on to be Consul. What data is available in
Hopkins and Burton’s study suggests that the percentage of Senators with non-Consular
ancestors would have been higher for those who only advanced to the Senate on the basis of an
Aedileship or Quaestorship and never achieved higher elective office. Reaching the office of the
Consulship may have been more of an electoral challenge for those without the built-in name
recognition advantages of an illustrious pedigree, but even the highest offices were not a
hereditary closed club, and elections could still reward talent and ambition. It is notable, for
example, that some of Rome’s most famous politicians (Cato the Elder, Marius, Cicero) were
from non-Consular families.

The political role of this Consular “aristocracy” is therefore complex. It is true, on the
one hand, that the disproportionate success of a small number of prominent families could have
contributed to the conservatism of a system now made up of a Senate in which those very
families were now entrenched as ex-elected magistrates who served in the Senate for life. On the
other hand, it is also true that the “aristocrats” had to be elected by the people in the Tribal
Assembly to gain power, as even those who ran for Consul (to which the Comitia Centuriata
elected them) would have earlier held lower offices like Aedile or Quaestor and thus faced the
Tribal Assembly’s electorate. Likewise, the Assembly could still vote down any legislation that
“aristocrats” put before them. Indeed, the whole idea that this “aristocracy” would have had a
legislative agenda is full of difficulties. One cannot equate the Consular “aristocracy” with the
dominant Senate of the Middle-Republic on a one-to-one basis, as scholars too often do. Not all
Senators were among these nobiles, nor is it clear that those who were not nobiles normally
deferred in their voting patterns to those who were. There is also no reason to assume that the
“aristocracy” constituted any sort of unified voting block within the Senate merely because they
all shared a general heritage of having politically important family connections, for those
connections were in separate politically important families, between which there is no evidence
of a broad alliance (and much anecdotal evidence to the contrary). One should therefore treat the
political role of the “aristocracy” with some caution, rather than making a broad statement like,
“An aristocracy governed the Republic from its foundation until Julius Caesar overthrew it”
(Nathan Rosenstein 2012: 5), which is both an exaggeration and a misleading denial of change
over time. It is better to see the members of Rome’s prominent families as being in an ongoing
negotiation for power and influence. That negotiation for power took place both between the
nobiles themselves, who were far from united, and between any of them and other potential
sources of authority within the Roman state, including Senators who were not nobiles, the voters
of the Tribal Assembly, the army, the voters of the Comitia Centuriata, and alliances of any of
the above with politicians outside of their range of influence.

If the exact role of the Consular “aristocracy” within its voting patterns is difficult to
determine, it is clear that the Senate as a whole had achieved political dominance in the 3rd and
early 2nd centuries. The weakening of that dominance, though, began in the late second century
BC. After being frustrated in his efforts to introduce a land-reform bill through the Senate, the
Tribune Tiberius Gracchus took the proposed law to the Tribal Assembly (Concilium Plebis),
and the assembly voted it into law without Senatorial approval in 133. The Senate responded by
killing Gracchus and did the same to his brother Gaius Gracchus a decade later when he tried
similar strategies. The violence was a bad precedent, but the Senate ultimately conceded the
legislative point, and thereafter it was possible for a Tribune to introduce laws directly to the
Tribal Assembly without Senatorial pre-approval, which was at least in part a restoration of
powers the Tribunes and Assembly had possessed two centuries earlier. Around the same time, a
series of four laws established the use of a secret ballot for voting on laws and in elections. This
further complicated attempts by the traditional elite to influence voters.

Another change, in the early 1st century BC, was the “Social War” between Rome and its
allies (90-87), which resulted in Rome granting full voting citizenship to most people on the
Italian Peninsula. In theory, this vastly increased the number of eligible voters, but the results
were ambiguous, as large numbers of those voters were too far away to be able to come to Rome
to vote. It did, however, sometimes lead politicians—Cicero is a known example--to lobby in
distant locations for voters to come to Rome, making the results of elections and assembly votes
even harder to predict.

Even putting aside the short-lived attempt of the dictator Sulla (81-80) to remove again
the power of Tribunes to introduce legislation (an attempt that was repealed in 70), there were
various other changes in the first century. Sulla packed the Senate with 300 of his followers,
meaning that a majority of the Senate had never been elected to anything, which undercut the
body’s credibility. The continued trend of the top elite families to win elections regularly might,
under these circumstances, be read as a protest against the Sullan Senate, rather than just
business as usual.

Changes in the rules for Proconsular commands in 123 meant that the Senate assigned
each Consul and Praetor a military command prior to the election in which those Consuls and
Praetors would gain office. That meant that they were guaranteed a military command in the
year after their elective year in office. In practice, by the first century, they tended to stay in
Rome during the year of their elective office, so Proconsuls became the main field generals of
the Republic. The problem with that is that Proconsuls were not regular office-holders and held
commands under whatever conditions the vote that gave them power specified. Increasingly too,
the Proconsular commands became an item of dispute between the Senate and the Tribal
Assembly. The Assembly frequently poached the authority to assign commands from the
Senate, and often did so in ways that gave generals long multi-year commands with few practical
restraints. Julius Caesar gained a command to conquer Gaul that left him in charge of the same
army for ten years, and his main rival Pompey (Pompeius) likewise went through a series of long
irregular commands to which the Senate sometimes objected, but could not stop. This led to
Caesar, Pompey, and a few others gaining unprecedented levels of power, wealth, military glory,
and popularity at the same time they were basically creating armies loyal primarily to them.
Such men did not fit comfortably within the framework of standard Republican politics, which
they were basically leaving behind.

Eventually, a military solution to his political problems became irresistible to Julius

Caesar, who marched on Rome, kicking off a long series of violent conflicts. The resulting civil
wars between the top commanders ultimately led to the marginalization of the Senate and
Assembly both. Decades of civil war would lead finally to the rise of Octavian, who eliminated
his major competitors and established himself as sole ruler of the empire. Under the name
Augustus, he became the first emperor, and the effective creator of a new monarchy.

In conclusion, and to return to a point raised on handout #1, one way to view Republican
history is as the story of the Senate’s rise and fall. The Senate probably began as a council of
elders to advise the king back in the Regal Period (before 509), and it remained weak in the first
century of the Republic. Beginning in the 4th century BC, though, the Senate proved resourceful
at absorbing new powers at the expense of the Consuls, Tribal Assembly and Tribunes. The
Senate rose to a peak of dominance in the 3rd and early 2nd century, but late 2nd century
challenges from the Gracchi brothers led to a period in the 1st century when the Senate had to
struggle, and not always successfully, to resist the ambitions of Tribunes and the Concilium
Plebis to take away some of the Senate’s authority. The Senate also proved ineffective at
preventing the rise of enormously powerful Proconsular warlords like Caesar and Pompey. The
latter failing would be a critical one, for when the venue for power struggles shifted from the
political structures of the city to the battlefield, the Senate found it difficult to compete. Under
the emperors later, the Senate would survive as an advisory committee working for the emperors.
One could note ironically that this reduced the Senate to a status similar to where the institution
had begun—as advisors to kings in the Regal Period and to Consuls in the early Republic.

--Dr. Charles King

University of Nebraska at Omaha
cwking@unomaha.edu