How "democratict" was the Roman Republic ? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

There are a few different ways to approach this question, and all of them depend somewhat on which era you are talking about.

(1) In one sense, we could describe Rome as a city-state as highly "democratic," since all adult male citizens could make a legislative motion, and all adult male citizens could vote on it (here we should add all the usual caveats that this isn't democratic by modern standards at all, since women, slaves, etc had no political voice, but in comparison with other polities of the day this is quite democratic). Outside Rome itself, the Roman political structure was not very democratic at all, and most people within the empire (even prior to the end of the "Republic") were simply subjects of Roman rule, not significant participants in a political system.

(2) The constitutional structure of the Roman Republic is somewhat arcane to modern eyes, and even in the ancient world was a set of overlapping and often contradictory laws, values, and norms, often subsumed under the rubric of the mos maiorum (or the "ways of the ancestors"). The actual legislative bodies within Rome were the various Assemblies that were made up of different citizen bodies. Citizens were divided into "tribes" (historically, these might have been actual extended kin groups, but by the third century BCE are more akin to legislative districts in the sense we'd understand them now), and into "centuries" with a more military-centered division. Both were direct democratic bodies made up of all adult male citizens, but in each assembly, each "bloc" got one vote, rather than a "one man, one vote" structure. To further complicate the picture, at various times, a vote could be put to all citizens collectively, known as a plebiscite, which became legally binding as common citizens (ie "plebs") gained in political power. There was also a body called the Plebeian Council, led by the Tribunes, and open only to plebs, but this functioned very similarly to the Tribal Assembly otherwise.

(3) The Senate was not a true legislative body in the sense we understand today, nor was it democratic. It was an explicitly aristocratic body open only to men of a certain social rank (initially patricians only, but eventually opened to plebs who were enrolled by the censors), and acted as an advisory body that issued instructions to various magistrates elected by the aforementioned assemblies (quaestors, aediles, praetors, consuls, etc) and directed foreign policy. In traditional understanding, though, the Senate was the supreme authority in Rome because it was made up of the most senior politicians, and since consuls could veto legislation passed in the assemblies.

(4) We should also mention that though it would seem that the assemblies of common citizens could easily overwhelm the minority power of the Senate through the ability to elect magistrates and pass laws, in practice this usually did not happen. This may be partly due to cultural norms, but also to the significance of patron-client relationships that ran throughout Roman society. These were the hidden forces that directed much of Roman politics, since every Senator would have been able to call upon significant numbers of client citizens who depended on their patronage to pass legislation, etc; those clients, in turn, would have had clients of their own, down to poorer ranks of citizens who could be kept in line through these relationships. Since there was little in the way of formal banking institutions or police forces, and because the legal system was highly dependent on social standing, these patron-client relationships were essential for navigating the Roman political world.

(5) Legal and traditional norms broke down in a number of ways following Rome's successes in the Punic Wars, and other expansionist wars. Tensions between social classes exploded into violence following the attempted reforms of the Tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, who wanted to redistribute land to the growing ranks of the urban poor. The traditional citizen levies that had formed the backbone of Roman Republican armies were no longer adequate for an empire of such size, and not nearly enough citizens met the original property requirements to serve in the armies. Therefore, the legions gradually became professionalized. Though this had the effect of improving Rome's military clout and opening new opportunities for advancement to poorer citizens, it also made soldiers de facto clients of their generals, whom the soldiers depended on for plunder and land grants. Therefore, Roman armies themselves became politicized, leading to clashes between ambitious men of Senatorial rank like Gaius Marius (a populist) and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (an arch-conservative), and later Pompey Magnus and Julius Caesar.

(6) Therefore, by Cicero's time, many of the traditional checks on the Republic had started to break down, and political violence was not uncommon (Cicero himself had been a veteran of the civil wars between Marius and Sulla). Cicero, as consul, exposed an attempted coup by a rival aristocrat named Catiline and demanded a death sentence for his fellow conspirators (exactly how much of this plot was real and how much was an invention of Cicero to advance his political career is something of a matter of dispute). These executions were carried out without a trial, which was quite controversial at the time, especially since these were men of considerable social rank in Rome (Julius Caesar, a young politician at the time, argued for exile rather death, but he was overruled, at least according to Sallust). Cicero's enemies would always use this as a stain on his reputation, and once empowered used the incident to have Cicero exiled from Italy. He would only return years later as Caesar was about to cross the Rubicon.