The Political System

The fundamental study of the Roman republican constitution remains Mommsen’s monumental Das Römische Staatsrecht, which still provides an inexhaustible source of information and interpretations, now to be read in conjunction with the papers in Nippel and Seidensticker eds., 2005. A useful overview of the political institutions in English can be found in Lintott 1999, while a short summary can be found in Mouritsen 2015a. A number of important studies have appeared dedicated to individual institutions and offices. For the assemblies, Taylor 1966 and Staveley 1972 are still essential; for levels of participation in assemblies, see Mouritsen 2001. The consulship was recently discussed by Pina Polo 2011, who is also responsible for an important study of the contio, 1996. Brennan published an exhaustive study of the praetorship in Rome, while the workings of the senate have been the subject of detailed investigations by Bonnefond-Coudry 1989 and Ryan 1998. For the evolution of Rome’s constitution the standard accounts are Cornell 1995 and the papers collected in Raaflaub 2005 (1986). Linke 1995 offers an original interpretation of Rome’s early state formation drawing on anthropological approaches. On public law in republican Rome Bleicken 1975b is fundamental, as is the edition of statutes in Crawford 1996.

Leaders and Masses

Gelzer’s classic work on republican politics and society from 1912 (and Seager’s 1969 English edition) is still worth consulting on these issues. Nicolet 1980 represented an innovative way at looking at politics from the perspective of the citizen rather than the politicians. The volume edited by Wallace-Hadrill 1989 is still important on clientela in Rome. Through a series of articles culminating in the monograph The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic Millar sparked a lively debate on the extent of popular influence on Roman politics. Critical responses include Jehne ed. 1995c and Hölkeskamp 2010 (2004). The interaction between politicians and the ‘people’, its scale and implications, have been the object of intense discussion in recent years, mostly focused on the contiones. Among the contributions have been Pina Polo 1996, Mouritsen 2001, Morstein-Marx 2004, Flaig 2003, and the collection of papers recently published by Steel and Van der Blom 2013.

While much Anglo-Saxon scholarship since Millar’s intervention has evolved around the existence (or absence) of a Roman ‘democracy’, German scholarship has over the last two decades moved in a different direction, developing its own distinctive voice and approach to the Roman republic and particularly its ‘political culture’. The result has been some stimulating and original new contributions to our understanding of the republic. For example, Hölkeskamp 2011 (1987) traced the formation of the nobilitas and its distinct value system, Flaig 2003 applied sociological models in the study on political performance and rituals, while Jehne in a series of articles has explored a wide variety of aspects of political practice and ideology in republican Rome. In a major study Walter 2004 considered the relationship between public memory, ideology and politics. The identity of the elite is also the subject of Flower’s interesting discussion of ancestor masks, 1996. The mos maiorum is the subject of an important volume edited by Linke and Stemmler 2000.

The Practice of Politics

In a ground-breaking chapter Hopkins and Burton 1983 investigated the composition of the Roman elite and its degree of continuity and fluidity. Their results were refined in a study by Badian 1990c which concentrated on the consuls, reaching somewhat different but nevertheless compatible results. Most recently Beck 2005 revisited the issue in a major study.

Traditionally, an important strand of scholarship interpreted political practice according to the so-called factio theory, which assumed that family groups, reconstructed on the basis of marriages, adoptions and office holding, formed the basic building stones of Rome’s political structure. The leading proponents of this approach were historians like Münzer and Scullard, but after the critiques of e.g. Meier 1980 (1966) and Brunt 1988 the approach has been largely abandoned. In its place the ‘two-party-model’ has emerged as the dominant framework used to interpret Roman politics, especially during the later republic. While central already to Mommsen’s Römische Geschichte, it was most fully developed in Taylor’s 1949 classic exploration of Roman ‘party politics’. Despite fundamental criticism by e.g. Strasburger 1939, Meier 1965, and Gruen 1974, the binary model has now become part and parcel of the discussion, often closely associated with Millar’s ‘Roman democracy’ paradigm, cf. e.g. Wiseman 2009. Most recently Robb’s 2010 examination of political terminology has placed the issue on a new footing, and there may be signs that the ‘ideological’ trend may have peaked, cf. Russell 2013.

The end of the Roman republic has been much debated, and the classic contributions remain those of Syme 1939, Meier 1980 (1966), Gruen 1974, and Brunt 1988, who still define the main positions. Jehne’s (2009b) exploration of Caesar’s options represents an original addition to this discussion. Most recently Blösel 2011 has added another aspect to the debate, focusing on the ‘demilitarisation’ of the Roman ruling class which was to have far-reaching consequences for its survival.