This is the first monograph on the institutions of the Roman Republic to appear in French since 1927. It is divided into two main sections, the first giving an overview of the most important institutions, and the second a discussion of the historical periods in which they developed, from the beginning of the Republic to the death of Augustus. Throughout, G. draws on the ancient sources to present the Roman institutions and relegates a discussion of the modern scholarship to an appendix at the end; this contains a useful overview of the modern scholarship in two matching sections (pp. 179–217). Although not everyone will find this separation agreeable (it gives G. the liberty to present a controversial issue first as a given, only to acknowledge the controversies at the end), the advantage of the approach is that it allows one to access the basic information about an institution (with sources copiously cited in the footnotes) unencumbered by the difficulties of a long discussion, which would be distracting, especially in a book that could be read as an introduction to the subject.

In a short ‘avant-propos’ (the book lacks an introduction and a conclusion) G. proposes to reconsider ancient institutions focusing on the primary sources; hence the book's relative brevity (217 pages excluding bibliography and indexes) and the selective discussion of modern scholarship. G. provides a summary of the main arguments and controversies, so that it serves as a good starting point for further reading. However, specialists in a particular area will frequently want more bibliography on individual subjects than the few G. gives. For example, G. (to his credit) gives much attention to priestly colleges, especially the role of the augurs (mostly ignored in works on the constitution), but the bibliography here misses a reference to the indispensable M. Beard and J.A. North (edd.), Pagan Priests (1990). Sometimes such omissions affect the argument: when it comes to comitia curiata, the old notion that this assembly consisted only of patrician gentes (pp. 43, 107) will simply not do in the light of C.J. Smith's detailed examination of both concepts (The Roman Clan, 2006). There are other curious omissions of Anglophone scholarship: neither the Blackwell (2010) nor Cambridge (2004) Companion to the Roman Republic are mentioned.

The first part of the book consists of two chapters. The first chapter (on social and political organisation) discusses the duties and rights of a citizen, the role of patricians and plebeians, the equestrian order and the voting tribes. Much attention is given to the concept of maiestas and the right of provocatio ad populum, as G. extensively (here and in the appendix) challenges the dominant view that the leges Valeriae of 509 and 449 b.c. are retrograde projections of the annalistic tradition. The second chapter concerns the Republican system of government, including the duties and powers of all the magistracies, comitia, the senate and the priestly colleges. It gives very good coverage of the institutions, with copious source citations and novel insight. This is accessible writing of a scope similar to A.W. Lintott's Roman Constitution (1999) (which it seeks to challenge on several points), and much more concise than the detailed works on the subject, for example W. Kunkel and R. Wittmann's Staatsordnung und Staatspraxis der römischen Republik (1995) (which is frequently referred to and occasionally comes out with the misprint ‘Willman’). The cogent discussion reveals this is a mature product of a whole life's work on the subject and always well grounded in the primary sources.

One of G.’s main theses is to challenge Theodor Mommsen's influential idea (based on Polybius) on the primacy of monarchic power in regal Rome, which passed on to the magistrates of the Republic. G. contends that the populus was in fact sovereign and gave the fixed-term magistrates their potestas. This is well argued through a number of historical instances that show the people going against the senate, not least when used by individuals such as Tiberius Gracchus and Caesar for their own political purposes. However, we are not told that Mommsen has long been challenged on the issue. An influential champion of a ‘democratic element’ in the constitution and popular power is F. Millar (e.g. The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic [1998]), whose theses have been persuasively questioned by others in turn: for example J.A. North (‘Politics and Aristocracy in the Roman Republic’, CPh 85.4 [1990], 277–87) and H. Mouritsen (Plebs and Politics in Late Republican Rome [2001]).

The second part of the book gives an overview of the historical periods under discussion, divided into three chapters, with the lex Hortensia of 287 b.c. and the death of Caesar as points of separation. G. admits that accounts of early Rome have ‘plus de la légende que de l'histoire’ and gives dates based on the historical tradition. However, more space could have been given to archaeological evidence for this period, and G.’s discussion of the sources (with references to Peter's HRR, pp. 62, 101) can now be supplanted by the recent Fragments of the Roman Historians (2013), which will carry a lot of weight for many of the topics (presumably FRHist were not yet in print when final proofs were submitted).

The following chapters delineate the constitutional issues that arose with the Second Punic War, the tribunates of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, and the actions of Marius, Sulla, Pompey and Caesar. G. carefully distinguishes between legal terms: for example, he gives much weight to the difference between a civil and a military dictatorship, which seems very important in several cases, but is usually ignored in modern scholarship. The book repeatedly draws attention to changes between the periods of the mid and late Republic, and stresses the nature of constitutional crises that ensued towards the end. However, one wants to know what G. would make of H.I. Flower's (instantly influential) Roman Republics (2010), where the argument is taken much further (she distinguishes between four different ‘Republics’), with a more nuanced analysis of the political situation and consideration of more political figures (e.g. Cicero).

In the final part of this section, G. focuses on the transition to the principate to explain how Republican institutions did not simply vanish, but continued to operate in their respective areas of authority while giving Augustus the powers of tribune and consul (among others). More could be said about the subtle ways this affected the Republican order: G. may be right in saying that the senate formally continued to act in the area of its jurisdiction, but the princeps’ real power limited their scope of action to a considerable degree.

This book has much to offer, since it comes as a product of a whole life's work on many of the subjects. It presents Roman institutions and the periods in which they developed with relative brevity and relying primarily on the ancient literary sources. It makes several interesting contributions to the scholarship on Roman constitution. However, the reader wanting to be more informed of the debates in modern scholarship will find the selected bibliography at times insufficient, although a good starting point for further reading. There are three very useful indexes, of sources, people and subjects.