The Roman Republic that replaced the monarchy in 509 BCE was structured along more participatory lines, but in practice it remained heavily oligarchic. Political power was concentrated among Rome’s wealthy and influential families, even as the institutions of government gradually expanded to include a broader section of the citizen population. The Republic traditionally lasted until 27 BCE, when Octavian received the constitutional settlement that marked the beginning of the Roman Empire. At its core was an unwritten constitution based on custom, precedent, laws, and the accumulated practices of previous generations.
As a political body the Senate was one of the most powerful and enduring institutions of the Republic. It was technically an advisory body rather than a legislative assembly, and its formal decrees, known as senatus consulta, were traditionally advisory. In practice, however, the Senate exercised enormous influence over foreign policy, finance, provincial administration, and religious affairs, and its recommendations were usually difficult for magistrates and assemblies to ignore.
Senators were appointed by the Senate itself. The composition of the Senate was traditionally controlled by the Censors, magistrates who conducted the census and maintained the official list of senators. The Censors also possessed important powers relating to public morality and could remove individuals from the Senate for serious misconduct. The office was prestigious, but its influence did not simply decline over time. Rather, its importance changed as the political system evolved and powerful individual politicians increasingly challenged the authority of traditional republican institutions.
Initially the Senate was dominated by the patrician aristocracy, but the long struggle between the Patricians and Plebeians gradually opened political institutions to wealthy and successful members of the Plebeian class. The Lex Canuleia and the Licinian-Sextian reforms, among other developments, helped break down the formal political barriers between the two orders. Eventually, membership in Rome’s governing elite became increasingly associated with wealth, political achievement, family connections, and the holding of public office rather than simply with patrician birth.
The Senate nevertheless never represented the Roman population as a whole. It remained an elite institution, and the Republic’s political system was best understood as a complex mixture of aristocratic, democratic, and monarchical elements. Elite families dominated many of the highest offices, while popular assemblies provided citizens with mechanisms for voting on legislation, electing magistrates, and making certain judicial decisions.
Legislative assemblies represented the citizen body and operated according to different voting systems. Citizens could be organized by tribes, centuries, or, in the case of the Plebeian Assembly, according to their tribes. These assemblies elected magistrates, passed legislation, and, depending on the assembly, exercised judicial or other constitutional functions. The Concilium Plebis, or Council of the Plebs, was initially a specifically Plebeian institution but became increasingly important as a legislative body. Following the Lex Hortensia of 287 BCE, resolutions of the Plebeian Council (plebiscita) became binding on the entire Roman citizen body without requiring Senate approval.
Assemblies provided an important popular element within the Roman political system, although this should not be confused with modern representative democracy. Citizens voted directly rather than through elected representatives, and voting structures were often weighted in ways that gave wealthier citizens greater political influence. The Roman system was therefore participatory but highly unequal.
The Republic also depended upon a complex hierarchy of elected magistrates. Among the most important were the Consuls, who served as the Republic’s senior executive magistrates and commanded armies; the Praetors, who had important judicial and military responsibilities; the Aediles, who were responsible for functions including public buildings, markets, and public games; and the Quaestors, who dealt with financial administration and the treasury.
Quaestors were elected magistrates during the Republic, not appointed officials who gradually became more appointed as the Empire approached. Their responsibilities included financial administration, managing public funds, and assisting higher magistrates and provincial governors. Under the Empire, the office continued to exist, although its functions and political significance changed as the imperial bureaucracy developed.
An additional feature of the Republic was the principle of cursus honorum, the conventional sequence of public offices through which ambitious Roman politicians advanced their careers. Successful politicians could progress from the quaestorship to the praetorship and eventually to the consulship, although the exact requirements and sequence evolved over time.
The later Republic also witnessed the rise of extraordinarily powerful individuals and temporary political alliances. The First Triumvirate, formed by Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus in 60 BCE, was not an official constitutional institution. It was a private political alliance designed to advance the interests of its three members. The Second Triumvirate, established in 43 BCE by Octavian, Mark Antony, and Lepidus, was different: it was a formally recognized constitutional commission created to reorganize the Roman state.
These powerful alliances demonstrated the growing strain placed upon the traditional republican system. As military commanders accumulated enormous wealth, personal armies, and political followings, the balance between Rome’s traditional institutions and individual power began to break down. The eventual victory of Octavian over his rivals and the constitutional settlement of 27 BCE brought the Republican era to an end and established the political framework of the Roman Empire.
One cannot pigeonhole the Roman Republic as a straightforward democracy or for that matter a simple aristocracy. It was an unusual hybrid in which popular assemblies, elected magistrates, aristocratic institutions, and powerful individuals competed and cooperated within a constitutional system governed as much by tradition and precedent as by written law.
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