The quantity and broad scope of political matters decided by the People in the form of legislation are indeed impressive, and give some substance to the argument that the Roman Republic was a form of democracy. But more revealing than any argument over definitions and labels would be an examination of how, in late-Republican Rome, the Popular Will came to be expressed – ultimately in the form of a vote, but as we have seen in the last chapter, originally in mass meetings whose strategic function was, as far as possible, to determine that vote in advance. There I began to work out a model of popular decision-making with, at its center, the conception of the contio as an instrument whereby the Popular Will was artificially (if not necessarily falsely) fashioned by political leaders and then given the symbolic weight and apparent legitimacy needed for it to be used in political controversy. The methods of audience creation and rhetorical “ventriloquism” that we have studied raise serious questions about the extent to which even members of the political élite who wished to capitalize on the power of the populus were constrained to “listen” to the autonomous opinions of the (urban) citizenry. What we have seen so far certainly favors a “top-down” model of public deliberation.

But this cannot be the whole story.