A commonwealth is a constitution of the entire people.
Res publica res populi.
Cicero, De Re Publica 1.39.
The Romans were very proud of their democratic system of government which they called the Res Publica, a fact noted by the Greek historian Polybios. It is often translated as ‘republic’, but its literal meaning is closer to ‘commonwealth’, conveying the notion of ‘things belonging to the public’. Much is understood about the constituent parts of the system, but questions about details of its operation and process remain. It is believed that it was a popular counter response to the tyranny of the kings of the eighth through sixth centuries BCE who had abused their royal authority (regnum). By the time of Agrippa’s birth the Res Publica was already four-and-a-half centuries old. Its institutions were conceived to be transparent and to operate within the explicit bounds of constitutional law (ius), discussed and agreed upon by assemblies of the free Roman people. At issue was the balance struck between individual freedom (libertas) and power to rule (imperium) – who held it, for how long and the manner in which it was exercised. Imperium – derived from the Latin imperare, ‘to command’ – was a military term. An individual with imperium could only exercise absolute authority (auctoritas) within the defined scope of his specific responsibility. He could be overruled by a more senior magistrate and his decisions could be vetoed – from the Latin word veto, ‘I forbid’. Imperium afforded a man immunity while he held office, but he was fully accountable for his actions once his term ended and he could be prosecuted in court if charges were brought against him, as was spectacularly demonstrated in the prosecution of the former governor of Sicily, C. Verres, by M. Tullius Cicero in 70 BCE.
Active public participation in this ancient direct democracy was its hallmark. The extent to which a citizen could participate in the Res Publica was determined by his birth and class. A Roman male was born into a class or order (ordo) and for most men it was the class he also died in. The lowest order was the mass of common people, the plebs. Though many were poor, however, by the accumulation of wealth through hard work from running a small business, or receiving an inheritance or by the passing of a law, a plebeian could rise up the levels of social class. A man with assessable wealth in property of 400,000 sestertii could enter the next level, the ordo equester, or ‘order of knights’, the class which had traditionally provided cavalry for Rome’s citizen army. Owning and equipping a horse was expensive and for hundreds of years, its members gained respect from long years of military service supporting the infantry. By 88 BCE the cavalry had been largely outsourced to Rome’s allies and conquered peoples, and instead many equites built careers as officers in the legions or auxiliary cohorts. However, with the growth of the empire after the Punic Wars, many others of its membership found success in banking, trade and increasingly through the practice of law. Winning a case for a client in court in the Forum Romanum came to carry as much prestige as slaying an enemy on a remote battlefield once did, and money became the new measure of a man’s standing. Nominally above the knights, patricians (patricii) formed the upper class of aristocrats. Traditionally patricians held the priesthoods and were responsible for managing the important transactional relationship between gods and men, ensuring the security and prosperity of the Res Publica. A few patrician families – the Aemilii, Cornelii, Metelli, being among the most prominent in early Roman history – had accumulated vast fortunes, but by Agrippa’s time, several were impoverished and some plebeians now exceeded them in wealth, while reforms of civil rights had granted them access to the priesthoods, further eroding their élite status.
The Roman system of government divided its male citizen population – women, freedmen, slaves and foreigners could not participate – into two bodies. The division was encapsulated in the four iconic letters SPQR, which stood for Senatus Populusque Romanus, meaning simply ‘The Senate and Roman People’. There were nearly a million adult male voters when Agrippa was born and to exercise their rights, they had no choice but to come in person to Rome to meet their fellow citizens, hear political speeches (contiones) delivered from the Rostra in the Forum, and vote on the Campus Martius.
The membership of the Senate, referred to deferentially as Patres Conscripti, ‘Conscript Fathers’, comprised of serving and former magistrates whose number had swollen to almost 1,000 when Agrippa was a young man beginning his career. Some were called by the vulgar Orcivi (slaves set free by their master’s will), were wholly unworthy, and had been admitted after Caesar’s death by M. Antonius through favour or bribery. Current magistrates represented a small number of the members, and those who had served as junior magistrates were called senatores pedarii because they were not permitted to speak, but shuffled from one side of the Senate House (Curia) to the other to show their support of a speaker. About half of the pedarii were men like Agrippa himself, so-called homines novi, ‘new men’, who had no blood connection with an old family clan. Originally the advisory council of elders (from senex, ‘old man’) to the king, the Senate of the Republic was an advisory body to the magistrates through the passing of decrees (senatus consulta). These advisories did not have legal force, but more often than not they were followed: the senatus consultum had its authority based in precedent, not in law. The Senate could not pass laws – only the enfranchised People could do that. On a day-to-day basis, the Senate directed the magistrates, managed the public treasury and administrated the provinces through appointments drawn by lot of members who had served terms in public office. Meetings began at dawn and were held in public. A presiding magistrate opened the session with a speech, proposed a matter for discussion and then permitted members to speak on it in order of their seniority. A vote for a senatus consultum could be passed with a show of hands, though it could be immediately vetoed by a tribune. Senators were barred from engaging in commercial activities and were required to seek the permission of the Senate if they wished to leave Italy.
The People were Roman citizens who lived not just in Rome, but in the enfranchised cities of Italy and coloniae across the empire. Power was vested in the People through assemblies, which were protected and regulated by law. The main legislative body was the Comitia Centuriata or Centuriate Assembly. It met to vote on the Campus Martius in an area cordoned off for balloting called the saepta and voters lined up in what the Romans wittily called ‘sheep pens’ (ovile). A herald read out the motion and each voter cast a pebble into jars or baskets (cistae) marked for or against. The Comitia was divided into 193 voting blocs called centuriae or centuries divided according to property class and may have related to the military centuries which formed the legions of civilians at arms when called to war. Each centuria represented one vote, and as a simple majority determined the outcome of a vote, when the eighty centuries of patricians united with the eighteen centuries of knights they won the majority and could ratify legislation, election results or court verdicts in their favour. In passing statutory law (lex) the Comitia Centuriata could, for example, declare war on Rome’s enemies. If a senatus consultum conflicted with a lex which had been passed by an assembly, the law always overrode the advisory, although it could still serve to interpret a law. The Comitia elected men to the highest-ranking Roman magistracies (magistrati)– the two consuls (consules), the sixteen praetors (praetores) and the two censors (censores).
Consuls were elected for a period of one year and they were the titular heads of Rome during that time, lending their very names to denote the specific year in which they served. They had ultimate imperium and could personally command the legions in war, usually no more than two each. Each consul sat in a distinctive folding chair (sella curulis) before an assembly of the Comitia Centuriata or meeting of the Senate, wore a purple-bordered toga (toga praetexta) and was accompanied by an honour guard of twelve men (lictores). A lictor carried an axe in a bundle of rods tied tightly together with a crisscrossing strip of leather called the fasces. Former or ex-consuls (proconsuls) formed a group from which provincial governors were chosen, with assignments made by drawing lots.
Praetors could also command legions in the field, and were traditionally called upon to do so in times of emergency when the consuls were already at war and far from Rome. In peacetime, they oversaw the law courts. Courts dealt with a wide variety of cases, from those involving civil disputes between fellow citizens under the authority of the praetor urbanus to those between Romans and non-Romans (peregrini) under the praetor peregrinus. Other praetors appointed judges to preside at criminal cases. Praetors were granted six lictores each, could sit on a curule chair mounted on a tribunal and wear the toga praetexta. A praetor received his imperium by decree and was only outranked by a consul. At the time of Agrippa’s birth there were eight praetors, but Iulius Caesar increased the number to sixteen. Ex-praetors – or propraetors – formed a secondary pool of men from which provincial governors were chosen by lot.
Senators and praetors were members of the Senate for life, unless they committed crimes or indiscretions. Censors were responsible for ensuring Senators maintained the dignity of the august body and upheld respect for public morals (mores maiorum, the ‘ways of the elders’). They would conduct checks on members every five years (a period called a lustrum), expelling those guilty of corruption, abuse of capital punishment, bankruptcy or adultery. A censor could induct into the Senate a Roman who possessed the requisite financial and property qualifications. Censors also conducted the count of the Roman population (census)at the start of each new lustrum, following it with a formal purification ceremony (lustratio).
The Centuriate Assembly could pass a law – lex de imperio – granting consuls and praetors the proper constitutional command authority (imperium) to lead the legions to war, and the Lex de Potestate Censoria granting censorial powers to censors. The curule magistrates could propose new legislation to the Assembly, which then voted on it without debate. Further, the Centuriate Assembly served as the highest court of appeal in certain judicial cases – those cases involving capital crimes – and they also ratified the results of a census, typically held every five years. However by Agrippa’s time the Comitia Centuriata was losing influence to the other voting bodies.
The Comitia Tributa, or Tribal Assembly, organized citizens on the basis of thirty-five tribes, into which every Roman citizen was assigned. Citizens living inside the pomerium of the city of Rome were assigned to one of four tribes (the so-called ‘urban tribes’ of sucusana, esquilina, collina and palatina), while out-oftowners made up the other thirty-one tribes (the ‘rural tribes’). The Comitia Tributa met for legislative, electoral and judicial purposes, and, as with the Centuriate Assembly, each comitia had a single vote and a simple majority in any tribe decided the vote on the matter under consideration. After 287 BCE it became the most important law-making authority because the laws of the Tribal Assembly were binding on the entire state. Presiding over the Tribal Assembly was either a consul or a praetor. The assembly’s role was to elect junior magistrates: the twenty (forty under Iulius Caesar) quaestors (quaestores) and the two curule aediles (aediles curules).
Quaestors provided Roman society with a means to supervise and audit financial accounts of the institutions drawing upon the fund of public money (aerarium) held at the Temple of Saturn, such as the army. Some quaestors worked in Rome, supervising at the mint, which made the gold, silver and bronze coinage at the Temple of Iuno Moneta, while others oversaw the maintenance of roads inside and outside the city, served in urban communities across Italy or in the provinces on the staffs of proconsuls. For a young man eager to have a career in politics, life started as a quaestor. To be eligible for election, a pleb had to be minimum 32-years-old, while a patrician could stand at 30. Having served as quaestor, a man earned the right to sit in the Senate and stand for other magistracies in the ladder (cursus honorum), which made up a career in public service.
Curule aediles were magistrates responsible for maintaining public buildings, such as the market halls in the Forum Romanum, and regulating the public festivals and gladiatorial games. As they funded these projects from their own resources, the aedileship favoured wealthy individuals or those ambitious for advancement who were willing to borrow heavily to pay for them. The aedile also issued edicts (ius edicendi) regulating public markets. They sat on a curule chair and wore the toga praetexta and were assigned two lictors each. Aediles stood for election in July, taking office on the first day of the new year.
The last of the three popular assemblies was the Concilium Plebis, ‘Plebeian Council’. It was based on clan and family ties like the Comitia Tributa but comprised of plebeians only. It elected plebeian magistrates – the tribunes (tribuni plebis) and aediles (aediles plebis), the latter whose functions matched those of the curule aediles and acted as the tribunes’ assistants. By Agrippa’s time there were ten tribunes. As a representative of the plebs, the tribune’s body was considered sacrosanct and it was a capital offence to harm or violate it, even to interfere with his business or disregard his veto. He did not have the authority of a magistrate (maior potestas), as he was not technically one, and he could not inflict punishments, but his tribunician power (tribunicia potestas) derived from the use of the veto. Independent of all other magistrates, the tribune was not subject to a magistrate’s veto. His function was that of a public guardian of the interests of the plebs. The Concilium could only be convened by the tribuni plebis. The tribunes could propose new legislation to the Plebeian Council, which then voted on it without debate. At first the assembly could only pass laws (plebiscita) which affected the plebs, but after 287 BCE its laws were binding on all social classes. During Agrippa’s youth, the tribunes had become powerful – even tyrannical – figures in their own right, often in opposition to the Senate. Iulius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus each leveraged the tribunes to achieve their ends when the Senate refused to grant their requests.
The competitive nature of Roman society pitted individuals and families against each other for the prestige and privileges that holding public office brought. It could be an ugly process. When in office as curule aedile in 65 BCE jointly with M. Bibulus, Iulius Caesar decorated the Comitium and basilicas of the Forum Romanum and erected temporary colonnades to stage lavish entertainments of wild beast hunts, gladiatorial combats and theatre plays, all on borrowed money, and claimed the goodwill it generated entirely for himself. When he found himself surrounded by enemies, consul Cicero lamented on 9 November 63 BCE, O concidionem miseram non modo administrandae verum etiam conservandae rei publicae! – ‘the preservation of the Res Publica no less than governing it – what a thankless task it is!’ (In L. Catilinam Oratio Secunda Habita ad Populum, 14) The Romans revered tradition over innovation in politics, but the century before Agrippa’s birth had witnessed the corrosive effects of wealth and the gradual corruption of the checks and balances in the republican system of government. Unwilling to chance victory at election time, an ambitious – but impatient – aristocrat might borrow huge sums of cash to buy votes to ensure his success, with the promise to repay his debt to his lenders once in office. Such were consuls designated for 63 BCE P. Autronius Paetus and P. Cornelius Sulla who were barred from serving under the terms of the Lex Acilia Calpurnia enacted four years before, which permanently banned officials for corruption in elections (ambitus). Ambitus had become so endemic by then that the dozen-or-so agents who negotiated the bargain between the secret buyers and the heads of the voting syndicates (offering so many votes for a given sum) were called interpretes, while the men holding the cash for inspection were known as sequestres. Religion too could be cynically exploited to influence the outcome. The presiding magistrate, who was an augur, conducted a preliminary search for omens (auspiciae) the night before a meeting of the Centuriate Assembly. There are several recorded examples where the auguries were declared unfavorable as a means to suspend a session that was thought unlikely to produce the vote an individual wanted.
In times of extreme emergency, which meant war on Italian soil, the republic could temporarily suspend the democracy and surrender its powers to a single man called a dictator. Under the Lex de Dictatore Creando, the dictator was required to be someone who had served as consul and his power lasted just six months – long enough to launch a response to the threat to the state, but short enough to prevent it becoming a permanent autocracy. Except for Sulla and Iulius Caesar, there are no recorded instances in which a man held this office for a longer time, and most resigned the dictatorship before their time expired. Iulius Caesar held the position of dictator for just eleven days in 49 BCE, and again in the year 48–47, but in 46 was elected as dictator for a period of ten years. When appointed, the magistrates continued to perform their duties, but rather than looking to the Senate for direction, they answered to the dictator. The exceptions were the tribuni plebis whose roles and responsibilities were unchanged. During his term, the dictator neither had authority over the treasury – except the funds allocated him by the Senate – nor could he leave Italy, nor could he ride a horse in Rome. Unlike the consuls, a dictator was not liable to be called to account for any of his official acts after he had abdicated. Iulius Caesar was unique in being declared dictator perpetuo between January and February 44 BCE. The absolute power it brought him raised the odium of conservative faction (optimates) in the Senate which resulted in his assassination on the Ides of March 44 BCE – the date which effectively launched the careers of his heir and of his friend, M. Agrippa.
The dictator chose a deputy (magister equitum) from the pool of former praetors, who would assume his imperium whenever he was away from Rome. The name recalls the time when the magister commanded the cavalry while the dictator led the infantry in the field. After Caesar’s death the dictatorship was abolished forever by a lex proposed by his magister equitum, and then consul, M. Antonius.
The Res Publica thrived when political debate was open. That required its participants to be vigilant to attempts to pervert their libertas. Following Sulla’s package of reforms fewer contiones were heard in the Forum and the popular assemblies came together to ratify legislation already passed by the Senate rather than vote on legislation proposed by their own tribunes. Writing towards the end of the 50s BCE, Cicero perceived changes taking place in his own day,
After inheriting the Res Publica like a magnificent picture, though now fading with age, our own times not only neglected to restore its original colours but did not even see to it that we should keep at least its form and, so to speak, its basic outline.
Nostra vero aetas eum rem publicum sicut picturam accepisset egregiam sed iam evanescentem vetustate, non modo eam coloribus eisdem, quibus fuerat, renovare neglexit, sed ne id quidem curavit, ut formam saltem eius et extrema tamquam liniamenta servaret.
Cicero, De Re Publica 5.2.