The foundation of the Roman republican government is a familiar story to anyone who has read even a little about the ancient Romans: after more than two centuries of monarchic rule, the Roman people rose up against their last king, exiled him from the city, and established a republican government in which two annual magistrates called consuls were elected to govern the city and lead Rome’s armies in war. These consuls were thought to have inherited the royal authority (imperium) of the exiled monarch and so the government of the early Republic was based in the annual transfer of supreme authority from one set of chief magistrates to the next. There were other entities that contributed to the governance of the city—the Senate, the assemblies, the minor magistrates, and the priests—but in Roman tradition, it is the chief magistrates who always appear as the real leaders of the state. These chief magistrates were normally consuls, although between 444 and 367 BC the Romans frequently elected a variable number of consular tribunes as chief magistrates instead of consuls. This fluctuation came to an end with the Licinio-Sextian rogations of 367 BC, when the Romans decided to discontinue the use of consular tribunes, and henceforth use only two annual consuls as their normal chief magistrates. So the Romans firmly believed that the two annual consuls had always been the normal heads of their state, and that this ‘ancestral government’ had remained fundamentally unchanged since the birth of the Republic in 509 BC. Although the primary evidence for these early events was scanty and of questionable quality, ancient writers accepted and perpetuated these traditions, and even in modern times it remains widely accepted that the governance of early Rome transferred smoothly from the monarchy to the consuls.

Despite the neatness and popularity of this view, many scholars have challenged this received tradition, and argued instead that the republican government developed only gradually. Alfred Heuss argued that the concept of imperium developed only in the republican era, disrupting the belief in the continuity of authority, from monarch to consuls, and undermining the notion that consuls were the original chief magistrates of the early Republic.Footnote ¹ Julius Beloch suggested that Rome’s monarchy may have been replaced with a dictatorship similar to the attested Latin dictators, and Francesco de Martino argued that the early Republic was governed by a series of different types of magistrates: an original dictator that gave way to a decemvirate, which was replaced by unequal praetors or a variable number of consular tribunes, which only then produced a dual consulship in 367 BC.Footnote ² Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg similarly argued that it was the removal of the decemviri in 449 BC that truly gave birth to the republican government, and Gianpaolo Urso pointed out that Cassius Dio’s Roman History indicates that the Republic was originally controlled by a college of unequal praetors, but that in 449 BC the college of two equal consuls was created.Footnote ³ Several other scholars have argued that the Licinio-Sextian rogations of 367 BC created a college of three praetors, two of which gradually evolved into consuls, while the third remained a praetor.Footnote ⁴ These scholars have demonstrated that there was no smooth transition from kings to consuls as Roman tradition insists, that there was a transitional period that lasted from the expulsion of the monarchy to as late as 367 BC, and that the development of a chief magistracy is a murky and difficult topic.

This research by modern scholars emphasises the difficulty in identifying the nature, and even the existence, of chief magistrates in the early Republic. I have recently argued that the inconsistencies and irregularities in the surviving descriptions of early magistrates reveal a simple truth: that the early Republic did not have chief magistrates who wielded supreme military and civilian authority, because the exercise of military command was separate and distinct from civilian governance until after 367 BC.Footnote ⁵ Instead of looking for a new chief magistracy that was created to replace the exiled king, I argued that there was a lengthy period of disruption following the overthrow of the monarchy, during which time Rome’s aristocratic clans (gentes) controlled the countryside and used private war bands to protect their estates and to raid hostile neighbours.Footnote ⁶ Military authority was not yet a state monopoly, so the leaders of these gentes exercised de facto command over their own military resources, although they could band together to fight major enemies, at which times they often used augury to select an overall leader. For example, a passage by L. Cincius (pr. 209 BC) preserved by Festus explains that, when the Romans needed to send a general to take command of the full Latin army (Rome and its allies), candidates would gather on the Capitol to consult the auspices, and the one who received a favourable response was hailed as commander or ‘praetor’.Footnote ⁷ This preserved practice demonstrates that early Rome did not have supreme commanders, such as consuls or praetors, who were pre-selected and available to receive major military assignments. Instead, the early Romans appointed a supreme military commander only if and when one was needed, in order to face major threats, but otherwise the exercise of military command was generally unregulated and left to the prerogative of the gentes, which no doubt wanted (and even needed) the freedom to engage in private military operations. As a result, no permanent, state-elected, supreme military commander was needed or wanted in those early days, since that would have limited the freedom of the major gentes to wield their de facto power as they wished. Over time, however, these aristocratic warlords gradually merged with the developing civilian government, until a major reform in 367 BC established that three men would be chosen as commanders each year to lead Rome’s armies, two of which eventually came to be known as consuls. Even then, these praetors/consuls were exclusively military commanders, and only gradually came to exercise some duties of civilian governance in the city. My previous work, therefore, argued that military commanders were not responsible for civilian governance in the early Republic. This current inquiry turns to the exercise of civilian authority during this period, and asks how the early republican government operated without chief magistrates such as consuls or praetors.

There is a temptation to assume that Rome must have had some kind of chief magistrate—such as a consul, praetor, or dictator—to administer the city in the early Republic, but this is a false assumption. Even in the middle Republic, there is little indication that consuls and praetors were needed for civilian governance inside the city, and there is little evidence that they actually fulfilled any important civilian duties until after the Second Punic War (218-202 BC). Consuls convened and presided over the Senate, but the Senate was an advisory body that did not pass laws or possess any true legal authority (although its influence was vast).Footnote ⁸ Consuls presided over curule elections held by the centuriate assembly, but this was originally a military body, and it only met outside the city. Lictors and fasces were daunting symbols of authority that consuls could use to influence and coerce citizens, but plebeian tribunes or even mobs of citizens could easily block such coercion and thwart the consul’s will. Consuls might harangue the people at a public assembly, but any citizen could do this too if he received the permission of the presiding magistrate. And while consuls held great power over the soldiers in their armies, their military authority (imperium) could normally only be used outside the pomerium—the sacred boundary that encircled the city—and therefore it had no bearing on civilian life.Footnote ⁹ Later in the Republic, the consuls were normally responsible for conducting the Latin Games, but these took place on the Alban Mount far from Rome. Of course, consuls could summon the tribal assembly and propose laws, but careful study of the sources demonstrates that this was rare, and that plebeian tribunes promulgated the vast majority of laws in the Republic.Footnote ¹⁰ As Kaj Sandberg noted: ‘the prevailing notion that consuls and other curule magistrates were important law-makers in the Middle Republic has… no foundation in the sources for the period.’Footnote ¹¹

Furthermore, there is little evidence that consuls and praetors were responsible for the exercise of jurisdiction in the early Republic. Francisco Pina Polo has investigated the consular exercise of jurisdiction and concludes that, while consuls could undertake investigations, such activity was exceedingly rare, and such investigations ‘were not part of the habitual duties of the consuls every year.’Footnote ¹² And while praetors did come to exercise important judicial responsibilities in the city, this does not seem to have happened until after the First Punic War, and it may even have happened much later.Footnote ¹³ T. Corey Brennan surveyed known judicial activity by praetors and found it remarkably sparse until well after the Second Punic War.Footnote ¹⁴ While this may be a consequence of the limitations of the sources, it is nevertheless the case that praetors are not found engaging in the normal exercise of jurisdiction until the second century. Richard E. Mitchell argued the same: ‘only in the second century BC, after the demands of war had subsided, did Rome map out spheres of legal influence for the praetors.’Footnote ¹⁵ Mitchell also noted: ‘try as they may, historians cannot establish an influential position for consuls within the city or justify their urban authority by means of specific examples.’Footnote ¹⁶ Simply put, consuls seem to have done very little in the way of civilian governance, and very little in the city itself. The city government operated just as well when the consuls (and praetors) were away on military campaign—one need only consider the tradition that the plebeian tribunes Sextius and Licinius blocked curule elections for five years (375-371 BC), preventing any consuls or other chief magistrates from being elected during that period.Footnote ¹⁷ This story may well be a myth, but it illustrates that even later Romans knew that the city government could easily operate without consuls or praetors (although the military would be paralysed without their generals). In short, there is no reason to believe that the city of Rome must have had chief civilian magistrates like consuls or praetors in the early Republic, and there are good grounds to believe that no such magistrates existed until after 367 BC.

When the Romans drove out their last king, therefore, it is highly unlikely that they sat down and devised a dual consulship and an entirely new type of government as tradition suggests.Footnote ¹⁸ Instead, there seems to have been a long period of transition and adjustment as the new Republic slowly developed, and when military command outside the city seems to have been entirely separate from civilian governance in Rome. Although an extraordinary supreme commander (whether a dictator or a praetor) could be appointed if and when necessary to lead Rome’s full levy in sizeable wars, military activity was more usually left to the wealthy elite (the patricians),Footnote ¹⁹ who dominated the countryside with war bands of clients and retainers, and who had the resources (and the need) to raise quickly and lead private armies against hostile neighbours.Footnote ²⁰ This relegation of military command to the powerful gentes was not a deliberate decision of the state—it was simply a consequence of the de facto power the gentes possessed. The same patrician elites wielded authority over civilian affairs in Rome, but not as military commanders, since ancient taboos forbade military activity inside the pomerium (see below). Instead, the authority of jurisdiction seems to have fallen initially to the priests following the removal of the monarchy, while the leaders of the city curiae (the curiones) and other minor officials probably assumed other responsibilities, as did the assembly of the curiae (the comitia curiata).

In the first place, the religious authority and responsibilities of the priests were considerable, because their specialised knowledge of the law and of the formulae necessary to bring lawsuits made them principal judicial figures in the early Republic.Footnote ²¹ One priest, the rex sacrorum, may have been created to assume certain duties of the expelled monarch, but the college of pontiffs seems to have long monopolised the exercise of jurisdiction, which it may have retained until as late as 200 BC.Footnote ²² The Romans were well aware of this, and they believed that legal formulae and procedures—including perhaps the calendar, which determined when certain actions could legally be taken—only became public knowledge at the end of the fourth century BC, when a freedman named Cn. Flavius stole written copies of the secret information from the pontiffs, and published it for all Romans to see.Footnote ²³ So the priests seem to have exercised executive judicial and legal authority in the early Republic, and for a long time patricians maintained their monopoly on the priesthoods by claiming that only they (and not plebeians) possessed the religious authority (auspicium) necessary to perform official ceremonies.Footnote ²⁴ Legislative authority seems have belonged to the popular assemblies from the beginning and lesser affairs of government may have been performed by minor officials. For example, each of Rome’s neighbourhoods (curiae) seems to have had a leader, the curio maximus, who was an important official and undertook certain duties of governance.Footnote ²⁵ Furthermore, the comitia curiata represented Rome’s oldest assembly and they certainly possessed some elective and legislative authority in the early Republic.Footnote ²⁶ It is also possible that a more significant magistracy such as the quaestorship had existed under the monarchy and continued to exist in the Republic.Footnote ²⁷ If the quaestorship was carried over from the monarchy, it may have performed a range of supervisory and police functions.Footnote ²⁸ When the last Roman king was driven out of the city, therefore, the Romans did not form some kind of constitutional convention to devise a new republican government, but instead, they simply made do with what they had, which initially resulted in the patricians obtaining vast authority in the countryside (through their control of land and resources) and over the city (through their control of the priesthoods).

Rome might well have become (or remained) a traditional oligarchy, but the abuse of patrician power ultimately led to the creation of the plebeian tribunate as a counterforce to the major gentes. According to Roman tradition, these plebeian tribunes were originally created to defend the plebeians from abuse, but they would eventually gain such authority that they might fairly be called the most important magistrates of the early Republic. There is some doubt as to when and how the plebeian tribunes came into being, but according to Livy, a debt crisis, high food prices, and overly aggressive impressment of plebeians into military service led to the first secession of the plebeians in 494 BC, when the plebeians en masse withdrew from Rome, encamped on the Sacred Mount in military units, and threatened to abandon the patrician-dominated state altogether.Footnote ²⁹ This mobilisation of the plebeians was particularly effective because it started in the city, where large numbers of plebeians often gathered for many purposes (markets, law courts, assemblies, religious ceremonies, and festivals), and so it was a communal space that the patricians were less able to control. As a result of this coordinated effort, the plebeians elected new magistrates who would act as popular leaders to help the people oppose the power of the patrician aristocracy.Footnote ³⁰ They are said to have originally elected two or five plebeian tribunes, but as the new office normalised, the number was increased to ten by 457 BC.Footnote ³¹ The practice of using leaders called tribunes was already well established: Roman society had long been organised according to tribes, and the original leaders of each tribe were called tribunes.Footnote ³² Men called military tribunes served as officers (probably over tribal units) in Rome’s early army, and these military tribunes probably provided the model for the new plebeian tribunes.Footnote ³³ As will be discussed below, the Romans conceptually distinguished between civilian and military zones (domi atque militiae), so it is very likely that the plebeian tribunes were intended to be civilian counterparts to the military tribunes. Whether or not the two tribunates were based on the same conceptual model, the responsibilities of civilian administration were very different from military command, so the plebeian tribunes developed into something very different from the military tribunes.

These differences between the new plebeian tribunes and the other officers reveal the development of civilian government in the city.Footnote ³⁴ In the first place, their title suggests a connection to (or derivation from) one of Rome’s tribal systems, but the nature of this connection is unclear. Whereas military tribunes were probably tribal leaders, or leaders of tribal units in the army, the relationship of the plebeian tribunes to the tribes is less clear, since the number of plebeian tribunes did not correspond to the number of citizen tribes.Footnote ³⁵ Furthermore, whereas most of the citizen tribes were located outside of the city (the domain of the major gentes), the activity of the plebeian tribunes was exclusively limited to the city: they could not spend the night away from the city or even go further than one mile from the city, and they had to be readily available (usually in the Forum) during the day, while at night they were expected to leave the doors to their houses open so citizens might have easy access to them.Footnote ³⁶ This specific focus on protecting citizens in the city may suggest that the plebeian tribunes were chosen from an older version of Rome’s tribal structure: ancient sources state that the plebeian tribunes were originally elected by the Curiate Assembly until 471 BC (when the elections were transferred to the concilium plebis),Footnote ³⁷ and Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch both believed that the thirty curiae of the Curiate Assembly had been created as subdivisions of Romulus’ original three citizen tribes,Footnote ³⁸ so the tribunes may have been selected based on these Romulean tribes that were located in the city. Whatever the origin of their structure and selection, the identification of the plebeian tribunes with the city demonstrates that it was the main area of resistance against the domination of the major gentes; it was the front line where tribunes opposed patricians. This may even be reflected in the names of the tribes. The rural tribes tended to be dominated by the landholding aristocracy, and many tribes were probably named after their dominant family, such as the Aemilia, Claudia, Cornelia, Fabia, Horatia, Menenia, Papiria, Pollia, Romilia, and Sergia. The four urban tribes, on the other hand, were named after residential areas in the city (Palatina, Collina, Esquilina, and Suburana), suggesting that the influence of the gentes was weaker in the city. Still, the tribunes do not seem to have had much of a connection to any tribal structure in practice—they presided over meetings of plebeians (the concilium plebis), in which the people were organised by tribe, but this does not signify a deep operational relationship with Rome’s tribes. In all likelihood, therefore, the title tribuni plebis does not mean that these magistrates were originally tribal representatives, but rather, that their office was modelled after the military tribunes, who were originally officers commanding tribal units in Rome’s army. So the plebeian tribunes were probably seen in a vague way as officers of the plebeians.

The plebeian tribunate was different from other offices in the nature of its magisterial authority. Whereas quaestors (for example) were given specific responsibilities, and the official authority or empowerment (potestas) necessary to perform those (and only those) duties, the authority of the tribunes seems to have arisen from a public oath (a lex sacrata) taken by the plebeians to kill any person who harmed a tribune and to confiscate the dead man’s property (thus ruining his family).Footnote ³⁹ Therefore, the body of a plebeian tribune was sacrosanct and could not be touched—much less harmed or killed—without incurring the fatal wrath of the plebeians. So while quaestors were particularly authorised to perform specific public actions on behalf of the state, plebeian tribunes were made sacrosanct and inviolable, which was a special status but not a particular authorisation. This sacrosanctity enabled tribunes to intervene in any action in order to protect plebeians from harm, and in this respect the power of the tribune was essentially a negative or cancelling power.Footnote ⁴⁰ These represent two different types of thinking about magistrates: whereas the quaestors were authorised to perform particular public duties for all citizens (such as jurisdiction), the tribunes were empowered to protect one group of citizens (plebeians) from another (patricians). This probably explains why the number of annual tribunes rapidly expanded to a large college of ten members: if the plebeian tribunate had been created simply to protect plebeians against two consuls, then two tribunes would have been enough—one to accompany and obstruct each consul. But because early Rome had no consuls (or similar chief magistrates), and because the oppression by the patrician aristocracy was broadly diffused and not focused in the actions of a set number of chief magistrates, the plebeians needed a large number of tribunes to protect the citizenry all over the city, and those tribunes had to be easily accessible. If this is correct, then a college of ten tribunes (once reached) was felt to be sufficient and the number was fixed by conventional practice. Thus it is the general threat posed by the patricians and not the specific threat by a small number of chief magistrates, that probably explains the large number of plebeian tribunes.

In the narrative accounts that have come down to us, the majority of patricians are portrayed as grudgingly accepting these new officials, or they may have simply been unable to prevent their appointment, since plebeians alone participated in the election. At the same time, the government of the new Republic was in flux and there may have been little agreement (or even understanding) of what constituted a legal magistrate. In this case, the patricians may not have accepted or acknowledged that the tribunes held legitimate authority, but they could not deny the de facto power the tribunes wielded as popular leaders, just as the plebeians could not resist the de facto power of the major gentes outside of the city (and to a lesser degree, inside the city). Livy suggests this interpretation in his (probably fictional) description of a conflict between patricians and plebeians in 471 BC, when he records the hard line patrician consul Ap. Claudius declaring: ‘the tribune had no authority over anybody but a plebeian, seeing that he was not a magistrate of the people, but of the plebs;… the consul sent his lictor to the tribune, crying out that [the plebeian tribune] Laetorius was a private citizen, without power, and no magistrate…’.Footnote ⁴¹ Despite Ap. Claudius’ show of force, however, the overwhelming number of plebeians who were determined to support their tribunes put the patricians in fear of their lives, and they forcibly removed the consul from the conflict, allowing the tribunes to have their victory. How much reliance one can place in such stories is questionable, but Livy does seem to preserve the memory of a dispute over what exactly constituted a magistrate in the early Republic; it points to a period of uncertainty after the removal of the monarchy, when the Roman population struggled over how the state would be run. This is reflected again in the long-standing patrician argument that plebeians were ineligible for ‘true’ magistracies, such as the consulship, because they lacked auspicium, an argument that was eventually proved to be groundless—or at least irrelevant—when the plebeians did indeed gain access to high offices and even priesthoods.Footnote ⁴² Whether or not these stories of early Rome are accurate, they seem to preserve a real struggle over what constituted or defined a magistrate in the early years of the Republic, and who was eligible to hold those magistracies. In the early decades of the Republic, therefore, the plebeian majority was less interested in the legal definition of a magistrate than in the purpose the official served, which underscores the fact that the government was in a period of change and development, and there was no clear chief magistrate or magistracy that imposed a clear structure on the city government.

At the founding of the Republic, therefore, Rome’s government seems to have been a rather hodgepodge affair, which was somewhat messy and disorganised, but seems to have sufficed for a time. Outside the city, aristocratic clans dominated and took personal control over much of the military activity, but inside the city, priests (and perhaps minor officials) performed basic governmental services, while tribunes did their best to protect plebeians from exploitation and abuse by the aristocracy. This was an eclectic mix of officials and types of authority, and it reveals how the Roman government evolved somewhat haphazardly at first, and did not have a single, fixed idea about what a magistrate was. Indeed, it was this inherent flexibility that enabled the republican government to grow and evolve over time. It was clearly an aristocratic government, but one checked by the tribunes, who were backed by the plebeians. As the city grew, however, the tribunes seem to have become increasingly powerful as they acquired greater and more important prerogatives. In legend, the increasing tribunician activity is ascribed to the so-called Conflict of the Orders, when tribunes led social revolutions in the face of consular opposition.Footnote ⁴³ The reality was probably less dramatic: as the city grew and its plebeian population increased, and as the enlargement of Roman territory led to an increased demand for soldiers to serve in patrician-led armies, the tribunes gained more clout and influence as popular leaders in the city. Kurt Raaflaub described this well, saying the Conflict of the Orders was ‘largely identical with a conflict between a group of powerful and wealthy clans with their dependents and followers on the one hand and a large part of the unattached economic middle and lower classes on the other.’Footnote ⁴⁴ As the lower and middle classes grew, and as the need for soldiers increased, the tribunes were increasingly able to stymie the aristocrats by organising the plebeians. Indeed, the greatest successes of early tribunes often came from their ability to organise plebeian boycotts of military service, which usually forced the aristocrats to make concessions or risk leaving their lands undefended against hostile neighbours.Footnote ⁴⁵ The patricians are said to have done their best to suppress the growing influence of the tribunes, but the unique sacrosanctity of the tribunes and the plebeians’ oath to avenge mercilessly any harm done to a tribune seem to have made opposition to the tribunes very difficult. Indeed, while demagogues who were not tribunes could be eradicated easily, aristocrats seem to have had little choice but to endure the opposition of tribunes: Spurius Maelius was simply killed in 439 BC for suspicion of trying to seize power in the city, but the best efforts of generations of aristocratic senators were unable to subdue the growing power of the tribunes.Footnote ⁴⁶ So although the government of the early Republic was fairly unsystematic—or more accurately, because it was so unsystematic—the tribunes gained increasing influence as the city’s population grew.

This was possible because the vague and unusual nature of the tribunes’ power gave them great latitude for action and a broader scope of political activity than later ‘true magistracies’. In later times, the respective authority and responsibilities of the quaestors, aediles, praetors, and consuls seem to have been fairly well defined by the concrete positive actions they were created to perform, and therefore these offices did not have much opportunity to assume new prerogatives. In contrast, the abilities of the tribunes seem to have derived largely from their office’s capacity to take steps without interference, protected by their sacrosanctity.Footnote ⁴⁷ This meant that ambitious or determined tribunes could attempt to use their sacrosanctity in new and different ways, expanding their role in the governance of the city and making them increasingly powerful and important magistrates. The unreliability of the surviving accounts of early Rome makes it impossible to reconstruct the chronology of this development, but there can be little doubt that clashes between tribunes and patricians drove each side to seek advantages and that tribunes found new ways to use their sacrosanctity to bring pressure to bear on the patricians. Although its original purpose was defensive, tribunes eventually found offensive uses for their inviolability, such as enabling them to arrest citizens, even sitting magistrates, and haul them to prison. Later in the Republic, tribunes are found hauling consuls from their chariots, pulling praetors off the Rostra, and even arresting sitting consuls and dragging them to prison.Footnote ⁴⁸ Such expansive power of arrest must have been possible because of their inviolability: since any physical resistance to a tribune could be interpreted as a violation of their sacrosanctity, individuals could not resist when a tribune took hold of them.Footnote ⁴⁹ A similar expansion of the tribunes’ sacrosanctity was their broad power of veto—the oral declaration made by a tribune that was able to block almost any action from taking place. Members of other magisterial colleges could only obstruct the actions of their colleagues, but the tribunician veto could be applied much more broadly because it was backed by the implicit threat that the vetoing tribune could and would use his sacrosanctity to block the offending action physically.Footnote ⁵⁰ For this reason, the tribunes’ veto probably arose as an extension of their sacrosanctity, but in time the verbal veto acquired legal substance on its own, even without physical intervention.Footnote ⁵¹ As a result, tribunes are later found preventing consuls from convening the Senate and from proposing laws and holding elections in the assembly, and they could block the actions of the Senate and of other senior magistrates.Footnote ⁵² These powers of obstruction and arrest made the tribunate a very potent magistracy. In the late Republic, even consuls were subject to the veto of the tribune, and they were helpless to defend themselves from arrest and imprisonment by tribunes, so in the early Republic—when there were no consuls or praetors—the tribunes must have been dominant forces in the city government.

The tribunes also acquired more concrete powers and prerogatives from their leadership of the plebeians, especially the concentration of plebeians that could form in the city for important public events. Since they were leaders of plebeians only, tribunes could not preside over Rome’s assemblies (all of which included patricians), so they instead summoned meetings of only plebeians, in a body that was later referred to as the Council of the Plebeians (concilium plebis).Footnote ⁵³ This body probably started as a mass meeting of the plebeians (similar to a Greek assembly), but Livy records that Publilius Volero, a tribune in 471 BC, pushed through legislation establishing that tribunes would henceforth be elected by the concilium plebis, which was organised by residential districts or tribes.Footnote ⁵⁴ Leading this body, tribunes could organise support for legislation that would go before one of the citizen assemblies, they could hold contiones to discuss any matter, and they could accuse and prosecute citizens for crimes (especially political crimes) before the concilium.Footnote ⁵⁵ As an extension of this activity, tribunes are later found imposing fines on citizens and seizing even senior magistrates, having them imprisoned or executed.Footnote ⁵⁶ Leadership of the concilium plebis gave the tribunes an increasing level of control over the city, because they were able to organise the mass of plebeians and focus it into a potent political weapon. This was an effective means of countering the immense influence that patricians held over the citizenry—just as patricians could use their power to influence the votes of their clients and dependents, the tribunes could exert a counter-influence by using the concilium to build up consensus among the plebeians.

In other cities, the patrician aristocracy might have used its control of military forces to crush the tribunes and any other plebeian leaders, but those military forces were forbidden from crossing Rome’s sacred boundary (the pomerium) and entering the city by ancient, powerful religious taboos.Footnote ⁵⁷ This religious prohibition on the use of military force inside the city (at least the area encircled by the pomerium) surely supported the popular oath to defend the tribunes from harm, and together they explain why the tribunes were able to expand their prerogatives and political activity so successfully: patrician elites could not bring military units into the city to overwhelm the tribunes without risking the wrath of the people.Footnote ⁵⁸ As a consequence, Romans tended to view their world as divided into two spheres: domi (at home) and militiae (at war). This distinction has been well studied, and it emphasises how the Romans fundamentally distinguished between areas of civilian interaction with officials (in which the people could exercise great power), and areas of bloody military activity, in which commanders could execute citizens for any breech of military discipline.Footnote ⁵⁹ This separation provides a clear view into the government of the early Republic, which was not organised under any chief magistrate(s), but was divided: inside the city, civilian affairs were managed by a combination of tribunes, priests, minors officials, and assemblies, while outside the city, the leaders of powerful clans organised armies to fight battles for themselves and for the state.

Over time, the tribunes and the plebeians gained an increasing degree of control over affairs inside the city. This was in part the result of tribunician leadership, but it was also a consequence of the growing power of the ‘state’ government in Rome, which was certainly based on the curiae—the voting blocks in the city that together formed Rome’s oldest assembly, the comitia curiata. This assembly originally exercised authority over a range of public matters in the early Republic, especially over the civilian governance of the city (the military assembly—the comitia centuriata—was not even allowed to meet inside the pomerium).Footnote ⁶⁰ By some point (I have suggested around 449 BC), the comitia curiata had acquired enough influence to claim the sole prerogative of conferring legitimate military authority upon a commander through the passage of a lex curiata, and by 367 BC the comitia centuriata established its sole authority to select the three men who would be chosen as commanders (praetores) each year, although these three praetores eventually differentiated into two consuls and a praetor.Footnote ⁶¹ In this way, the Romans in their assemblies gradually asserted their authority over the exercise of military power. At first, these consuls and praetors were military commanders only, and they did not acquire any concrete responsibilities for civilian governance until praetors began exercising jurisdiction after the Second Punic War.Footnote ⁶² This means the tribunes, priests, and the assemblies probably retained primary responsibility for civilian governance inside the city even after 367 BC and the tribunes were probably the most important administrative magistrates given their expanding powers.Footnote ⁶³ The consulship and praetorship remained military offices and so their official responsibilities were outside the city, but the importance and prestige of military command conferred the highest status and desirability on these magistracies. So while tribunes wielded more real power inside the city, consuls and praetors enjoyed the most prestige and respect, and rapidly became the highest magistracies in terms of status. This explains the strange fact that—even in the late Republic—the consulship was considered the highest office (the top of the cursus honorum) despite having almost no responsibility for civilian governance in the city, while the tribunes (who were considered lower officials) had extensive civilian authority and prerogatives.

The patricians worked hard to keep the consulship and praetorship for themselves, wanting to keep their monopoly on the responsibility, glory, and benefits of military command, but the tribunes gradually chipped away at this. By 342 BC, a lex Genucia required that one of the annual consulships be reserved for a plebeian, and by 336 BC a plebeian is found holding the praetorship.Footnote ⁶⁴ The plebeians also worked to gain access to Rome’s priesthoods: in 367 BC they were made eligible to hold positions among the decemviri sacris faciundis, and in 300 BC the lex Ogulnia enabled plebeians to hold half of the priesthoods in the colleges of pontifices and augures.Footnote ⁶⁵ The plebeians also acquired legislative authority in the third century BC: in 287 BC, the lex Hortensia gave the concilium plebis the ability to make laws that would be binding on all citizens, patricians as well as plebeians, and sometime between 291 and 219 BC a lex Maenia required that the Senate give its assent (auctoritas patrum) to any bill approved by the concilium plebis.Footnote ⁶⁶ By these familiar stages, the elite plebeian families gained access to magistracies and priesthoods that had previously been dominated by the patricians, and in doing so they forged the patricio-plebeian aristocracy that would control Rome’s government in the middle and late Republic, forming the classical republican constitution.

The gulf between patricians and plebeians began closing as the classical government took shape and the plebeian tribunate slowly (but incompletely) merged with the patrician magistracies. One step in this direction was the formation of the Senate as a permanent, standing body of the government. The origins of the Senate lay in the councils of early military commanders, who appointed their own aristocratic advisors to their concilium each year. This changed sometime in the late fourth century BC (perhaps around 339 BC), when the lex Ovinia—a tribunician law—established that henceforth the censors would appoint men to the Senate with lifelong membership.Footnote ⁶⁷ As a consequence, the Senate became a permanent body and must have expanded in size considerably, which increased the influence of the aristocracy on civilian governance and foreign affairs. Patricians had always exercised a strong influence in the city government, but this institutionalisation of the Senate formalised their influence and gave the aristocracy an official voice in the governance of the state. The Senate’s main purpose was to advise consuls and praetors, but fairly soon, tribunes gained the right to be present at these meetings. At first, they were permitted only to sit outside the door of the Senate and shout out vetoes as necessary, but as elite plebeians who held high office merged with the ruling aristocracy, the tribunes were incorporated into the Senate as full members of the body by the end of the second century BC.Footnote ⁶⁸ More important, by the second half of the second century BC, the tribunes gained the right to summon the Senate, a prerogative that only consuls and praetors had previously possessed.Footnote ⁶⁹ Such was the merging of the patricians and elite plebeians into a single aristocracy, that patricians (as well as plebeians) were soon found appealing to tribunes for protection,Footnote ⁷⁰ and the Senate began working with the tribunes, and even using tribunes to control unruly members of the senatorial order.Footnote ⁷¹ As a result, any question of the legitimacy of the plebeian tribunate as a magistracy seems to have vanished, and Romans would come to recognise a range of duties and powers that could collectively be referred to as tribunician potestas.Footnote ⁷² Despite this recognition, however, the tribunate retained its old independence and separation from the ‘regular’ magistracies; patricians never gained access to the office, tribunes did not acquire the special trappings of office that adorned curule magistrates, and the Senate could not give instructions to tribunes as it did to other magistrates, so persuasion was occasionally needed to bring about compromise.Footnote ⁷³ For this reason, Theodor Mommsen referred to the authority of the tribunes as a ‘state within a state’ and Ernst Badian compared the tribunes to a ‘friendly foreign power’ with which the Senate negotiated.Footnote ⁷⁴ In general practice, however, the tribunes merged (albeit incompletely) with the Senate and other magistracies into one governing elite, so that holding the tribunate entitled one to membership of the Senate by the end of the second century BC.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the late Republic, therefore, tribunes were often closely allied with the senatorial aristocracy, but the office retained enough of its early origins to enable ambitious men once again to mobilise the masses to oppose Rome’s ruling elite (or political opponents). Those occasions displayed the tremendous potential of the tribunate, and the expansive power that had made it the most important city magistracy in the early Republic.

In closing, recent scholarship has shown that the early republican government was not how Livy and other later writers imagined it centuries later. Although scholars differ on the details, it is likely that the expulsion of the monarchy was not followed by the spontaneous generation of a new republican government under two consuls, but rather by a period of unmethodical adjustment, when the aristocracy held de facto control in the countryside, while in the city the Romans relied on priests, assemblies, and perhaps some minor officials. Rather than an organised government structured around the unifying authority of a chief magistracy, the elements of Rome’s early government operated independently of one another: priests wielded the influence of their religious authority and used their specialised knowledge to exercise jurisdiction for the citizens, minor officials (curiones and perhaps quaestors) exercised various administrative tasks, the curiae held legislative authority, and powerful patrician clans dominated their tribes in the countryside, where they led private armies to defend their lands and raid the property of hostile neighbours. This somewhat disorganised government probably suited the patricians, since it gave them wide latitude to use their wealth and influence to control public affairs, and the absence of a chief magistrate made it harder for rivals to seize sole power. Rome might have become a simple aristocracy, but the plebeian majority—oppressed by abuse, debt, and forced recruitment into the army—created plebeian tribunes to defend the people. The unusual nature of the tribunes’ power (their sacrosanctity), the growing numbers of plebeians that could concentrate in the city, and the religious taboos that prevented anyone from using military force within the pomerium, all made it very difficult for patricians to suppress these tribunes, who found new and increasingly powerful ways to use their sacrosanctity. Given the decentralised nature of Rome’s government at the time and the absence of any chief magistrates such as consuls, the tribunes soon became the most powerful—and probably the most important—officials in the city. This is very different from traditional account of the early Republic, in which the entire state revolved around the regal authority of the consuls, but this reconstruction of a slowly developing and somewhat fragmented government fits what we know of the early Republic quite well. Over the course of the fifth and early fourth centuries, the various officials and peoples of the early Republic would gradually merge, such that the beginnings of the classical ‘constitution’ became visible after 367 BC, but the disjointed beginning helps explain later idiosyncrasies, such as the fact that the highest magistrates (consuls) had very few responsibilities for civilian governance, while mid-rank magistrates like tribunes seemed to hold the widest and greatest powers in the city. By the late Republic, it was easy for a Roman to believe that consuls had always been at the top of the cursus honorum—the race for honours that marked men’s political careers—and this mistaken assumption obscured the fact that tribunes had been (and in many ways, continued to be) the most important civilian administrators in the early Republic.