Birth of the Roman Republic

The story

The day Rome said “never again a king”

For its first two and a half centuries or so, according to the tradition, Rome was ruled by kings. We remember seven, from Romulus to Tarquin the Proud. The Romans' story says that in 509 BC the last of them was driven out of the city and that the people decided never to have another. From that moment Rome became a republic. The reason for the revolt, in the story told by the ancients, is a shocking crime.

The king's son, Sextus Tarquinius, is said to have gravely wronged a noblewoman named Lucretia, the wife of a relative called Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. Lucretia, out of shame, took her own life. Her husband, her father and a friend, Lucius Junius Brutus, who was related to the Tarquins, led the revolt. The king and his family were forced to flee to Etruria, the land of the Etruscans, to the north of Rome.

How to govern without a king

The Romans did not want anyone to rule alone again. So the king's power was divided between two consuls, chosen every year. The first two, according to the tradition, were Collatinus and Brutus themselves. The consul had many powers, but there were rules to limit them. Historians sum them up in three words: annuality, meaning that the office lasted one year; collegiality, meaning that every magistrate had a colleague who could block him with a veto, a Latin word meaning “I forbid”; and unpaid service, meaning that magistrates received no salary. To hold public office you had to be rich, because you earned nothing.

Besides the consuls there were other magistrates with specific duties, such as the quaestors, who looked after public money, the aediles, who took care of the city, and the censors, who counted the citizens and assessed their property. The dictator, according to the tradition, appeared for the first time in 501 BC. He was a magistrate with exceptional powers, who ruled alone but only for a short time, in moments of serious danger.

The task of advising the magistrates belonged to the Senate, an assembly of about three hundred members. At first it was made up of the heads of the most important families, the patricians, and later of former magistrates. Its opinions were not binding on paper, but in practice no magistrate could ignore them. Then there were the assemblies of the people, called comitia, which voted on laws and chose the magistrates. The most important, the centuriate assembly, gave more weight to the votes of the rich, who therefore counted for more than the poor.

Patricians and plebeians: a long struggle

The problem was that power lay mostly in the hands of the patricians, the richest and oldest families. The rest of the people, the plebeians, wanted a say. The plebeians were farmers, craftsmen and traders, and they also served as soldiers. Without them Rome could not defend itself.

In 494 BC, the tradition says, after some wars against neighbouring peoples, the plebeians staged a “secession”: they left the city and withdrew to the Sacred Mount, refusing to fight or to work until they were listened to. They obtained a representative of their own, the tribune of the plebs, who could stop magistrates' abuses on behalf of ordinary citizens. It was the beginning of a long struggle, the “conflict of the orders”, which lasted about two centuries. In 443 BC the censorship was established. Around 421–420 BC plebeians were allowed to become quaestors (the first were elected in 409), and little by little they gained access to the other offices.

History and legend

How much of this story is true? Modern historians think that the fall of the kings was not as sudden as in the story, and that 509 is a traditional date, calculated later. One clue: in those years the Etruscan power too, which had influenced Rome, was losing strength in central and southern Italy; an Etruscan defeat at Cumae in 524 BC is remembered as a sign of this decline. Perhaps the expulsion of the Tarquins was an occasion when the patrician families, tired of the power of the kings, took charge of the city.

We do know, however, that the king tried to return. Famous stories have come down to us from the tradition: the deposed king asked the Etruscans for help, in particular Porsenna, king of Clusium, and Rome was besieged. We remember Horatius Cocles, who defended a bridge alone, Mucius Scaevola, who burned his hand to prove his courage, and Cloelia, a girl who escaped from the enemy camp. These episodes are more legendary than historical, but they tell us that the Romans saw themselves as a people of brave citizens defending their freedom.

A republic that lasted almost five centuries

The republican system lasted from 509 to 27 BC. It did not end with a law: after long civil wars, Octavian, who took the name Augustus, kept the old offices but gathered power into his own hands. For a long time the republican facade stayed standing, even though in reality the emperor was in command.