The magistracy of the consulship approximated to the role of a prime minister or a president today, although, unlike that modern parallel, there were of course two consuls. The simple fact that two men were elected to the consulship meant that one could act as a restraint on the other. They were elected by a vote in a public assembly, and held power for a year. When presiding over official business, they, like certain other office holders, wore a light woollen toga distinguished by a purple border. Once their term of office was over, the consuls were called to account by their peers in the aristocracy. The basis of their authority, the power of imperium, was as strong and personal as it had been under the kings. For example, reflecting their aristocratic clan background, the consuls were accompanied by a group of twelve attendants wherever they went. Just as they had done under the Etruscan kings, these attendants, like a band of bodyguards, heralds and policemen rolled into one, carried with them the consuls’ rods and axe of office, and cleared the path for the consuls to pass through. Now, however, that power of imperium was circumscribed by the limitations of the office.
For all their attempts to move decisively away from the kings, the aristocratic Roman nobles who founded the republic were careful not to abandon entirely the rule of one man. For times of emergency, they created the office of dictator, to which the consuls could appoint someone to restore control over affairs of state. Once the republic had been safely returned to order, the elected consuls would resume office. Indeed, as the responsibilities of the two consulships increased throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the leading men of state sought to share out the burden of the consuls’ duties by developing subordinate magistracies with more specific tasks. The origins of these other offices are obscure but later in the republic they come to form a clearly defined hierarchy.
One such office was that of praetor. This post was perhaps created to ease the responsibility of consuls in hearing private legal cases – at first within Rome, but later in trials brought by Romans elsewhere in Italy and abroad. The fact that praetors were also accompanied by attendants (though only six), also carried the power of imperium, and had the privilege of consulting the gods shows that they were like junior consuls. When Rome’s empire developed, the post of praetor would be held by military commanders and governors of Rome’s provinces abroad.
Several other posts were important to the smooth running of the republic. The office of quaestor originally carried with it the responsibility of assisting the consul in hearing and judging legal trials. (This is suggested by the meaning of quaestor: literally ‘investigator’.) Later it too took on a different character: it came to be associated with managing financial affairs, and, as a result, the post of quaestor became an office akin to that of a minister of the treasury in a modern state. An aedile, on the other hand, was the magistrate who supervised the markets in the city. Perhaps the modern equivalent would be a minister in the Department of Trade and Industry.
Finally, the responsibility of the censor was to compile a census of Roman citizens every five years. This office, loosely an ancient version of the General Register Office, was much more important than perhaps its task implies, particularly in a military context. The Roman army at this period was not a professional body; it was comprised of simply citizens of the republic. However, because soldiers had to provide their own armour, the process of registering Roman citizens and their respective wealth and property had the consequence of dictating their military obligations to the state. The wealthier had a greater influence within the Roman republic because they brought more wealth and prestige to its army.
Out of all the holders of these offices a key body of the republic was formed: the Roman Senate. The Senate was a debating chamber and the collective voice of the political élite, and was presided over by the year’s consuls. However, the Senate was not at all like a present-day parliament, such as the US Senate. It was not made up of representatives of Roman citizens; instead it comprised simply ex-office holders. Indeed, senators did not pass laws and had no legal powers. As we shall see, sovereignty belonged not to the Senate but to the adult male citizens who voted in the assemblies of the people for elections and the passing of bills.
Rather, senators were an advisory body whose decisions were formulated and passed on as guidance to the current office holders. This, however, should not belittle the importance and authority of the Senate. Future and past office holders relied on the approval and support of their colleagues in the aristocratic ruling class for political influence and success in elections. Considering that the office holders would most often come from the Senate, and return to it once their term of office was over, magistrates in the Roman republic ignored the wishes of their fellow senators at the peril of their future political careers.
This, then, was the basic formation of the Roman republic. The Greek historian Polybius provided an astute analysis of this political system, which he based on knowledge gained while he was held hostage in Rome during the mid-second century BC. It had, he said, using Greek concepts, elements of democracy (elections and the passing of bills in the popular assemblies), oligarchy (the Senate) and monarchy (the consuls). The harmony between these three parts was the source of the republic’s great virtue, its unequalled strength and dynamism. When the three elements worked together, there was nothing that Rome could not achieve, no emergency it could not overcome. Two critically important questions remained, though. Who was eligible for these offices – the aristocratic heads of the leading Roman clans or ordinary Roman citizens? And how did the Romans vote for them? Answering these questions would be the cause of the next great revolution in the development of the Roman republic.
CONFLICT: PATRICIANS AND THE PLEBS
In the earliest period of the republic the aristocrats of the old Roman clans held all offices. These men called themselves ‘patricians’, and one argument was typical of the way they justified their complete monopoly on power. Since the time of the Etruscan kings, they explained, they had held all the ancient priesthoods. Their unique knowledge of the gods made them best placed for the decisions of political office; only with that knowledge could the gods’ favour on Rome in the future be guaranteed. The success of the state was considered to be dependent on the gods’ goodwill, making Roman religion of critical importance, both then and throughout Roman history. In the early republic, however, said the patricians, they alone were the gatekeepers to the gods and they alone should hold power.
The rich leading plebeians (namely, the non-patricians from the rest of the Roman people, known as the plebs) vehemently disagreed with this claim. In the mid-fifth century BC they organized and agitated for reform. Although they campaigned on a platform of alleviating the economic problems of the poorest plebs, the reality was different: they too wanted their hands firmly on the levers of power. By 366 BC they had notched up their crucial victory: one of the consulships was opened up to candidates from the plebs, and in 172 BC for the first time plebeians held both the consulships. However, this was not quite the radical, meritocratic reform it might appear.
Wealth was the key to office holding. To secure election to a magistracy, to build up political alliances and support among the plebs and the aristocracy, prospective candidates needed lots of money. As a result, only the richest two per cent of adult male Romans ever reached the consulship. This situation seemed to get worse with the enfranchisement of the rich plebeians because they quickly closed ranks with the patricians and formed a new nobility, admission to which was carefully policed. That, at least, is what noble Romans liked to think. More recently, scholars have shown that the new élite was actually more open than even the Romans thought; the reform of rules relating to eligibility for the consulship helped achieve this. Another consequence of allowing plebeians to become consuls and office holders was not immediately recognized by the Romans, but lay some way off in the future. Later in the history of the republic, when Rome built its empire in Italy and throughout the Mediterranean world, candidates from Roman élites in Italy and the provinces of the empire would be eligible to run for the top offices of the republic. Later still, those provincial élites would even furnish Rome with its emperors.