The Roman Republic and the Roman Empire

 Was the Roman Republic a democracy, an oligarchy, or what?

How was the government of the Roman Republic different than the ancient Greek democracy?

First, when people say "ancient Greek Democracy," they should say "Athenian democracy." Athens began as a city-state, and it conquered some of the surrounding land, but there were a bunch of Greek city-states, and they were always at war with each other, except for a few years when then were all at war together against the Persian Empire. Some Greek city-states were more democratic than others. Athens called itself a democracy, and was an oligarchy which occasionally had efforts within toward greater democracy. The IDEA of democracy as we know it, and terminology we use in democracies, was formulated in Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

I tell you all this because Rome copied Athens to a very great extent. The ancient Romans themselves, from about 300 BC onwards, believed that the city of Rome was founded in 753 BC, and that a monarchy was overthtrown by a democracy in 509 BC. In truth, most dates having to do with Rome before 300 BC or so, and some after, a bit hazy. Anyway, at some point before 300 BC or so, Rome established a republic which imitated Athens in many ways.

The Roman Republic existed down to 30 BC. It was an oligarchy, mainly ruled by the Senate, which was chosen from a small group of aristocratic men. Then there were the tribunes, elected by the plebians, which was, basically, all of the men who were Roman citizens, but not aristocrats. All the men in Rome between the aristocrats and the slaves.

Legally, women, and the children of fathers who were still alive -- even if they were very old and their fathers were very, very old -- had no rights whatsoever. Legally, they were actually worse off than slaves. In practical reality, women and the children of living fathers very often had considerable power, but they had to exercise it behind the scenes.

In 30 BC, Augustus (born Octavian) established what we today call the Roman Empire. The ancient Romans themselves continued to call their state a republic, and they continued to have tribunes and so forth, and to give a huge amount of lip service to democracy. In reality, the Empire was a very strict monarchy. Everybody from the Senators on down had the right to do exactly what the Emperor wanted, or to be in a lot of trouble. Of course, individual Emperors might choose to share more power than others, but it always their choice. It was delegation, not division of power.

One more thing, very important: in the early 4th century, in AD 313, the Emperor Constantine divided the Empire into two parts. The western part continued to be rules from the city of Rome, and the eastern part was now ruled from a city originally called Byzantium, then called Constantinople after Constantine, and now called Istanbul in present-day Turkey.

From AD 313 to 453, sometimes there was one emperor, and sometimes there were two, one based in the city of Rome and the other based in Constantinople.

The western part of the Empire crumbled and disappeared in the 5th century AD, with the western Emperor Romulus Augustulus surrendering to the Germanic leader Odoacer in AD 476, while other Germanic leaders took over other parts of the west.

In the east, the Empire, ruled from Constantinople, lasted until AD 1453, and continued to call itself the Roman Empire, as well it should have. Western historians have often called it Byzantium or the Byzantine Empire. The Romans, based in Constantinople, were rightly quite annoyed when German leaders, beginning with Charlemagne in AD 800, called themselves Roman Emperors. This western Roman empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire, lasted until it was overthrown by Napoleon in 1806.

By now you're probably much more confused than when you started reading this, but I'd be glad to answer further questions.

Here's Some REAL Info About Ancient Historians

Michael Paulkovich will no doubt have many objections to the following. Besides it being obvious that I am a part of The Plot, I am referring to a book of history which is several decades out date; even Cambridge agreed that it was, and so published a completely overhauled edition



between 1970 and 2005. The first edition was published between 1924 and 1939, and I'm referring to vol X of that edition, first published in 1934: The Augustan Empire, 44BC -- AD70, pages 866 through 876, the section entitled Appendix: The Literary Authorities For Roman History. My copy is from the 4th corrected printing, from 1966. The thing is, although this volume is out of date, all 126 of Paulkovich's authors were well-known to historians in 1934, and the texts by those authors recovered since the 1930's might add up altogether to a page or so of fine print. Maybe. (A page of fine print suspiciously lacking any mention of Jesus.)

A more detailed list of sources, both ancient and modern, including things like inscriptions and coins, is provided on pages 893 through 993. What we've got on pages 866-876 is a discussion of the ancient Latin and Greek writers who could reasonably be called historians, plus a few others who help to round out our picture, who wrote about the Roman Empire between 44BC, when Julius Caesar was killed, to AD70, when the Jewish Rebellion was crushed and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

This Appendix, unlike Paulkovich's attempt to cover some similar ground, is very helpfully divided into non-existent sources and existing sources. Whoever wrote the Appendix, S A Cook, F E Adcock, M P Charlesworth or some combination of the three (they edited vol X), gives an account of how much influence each non-existent source -- each source which we know was written, but which has disappeared sometime during the past 2000 years so that we can't read it today -- may be expected to have had upon the existing sources, the stuff we can read (cause it exists).

For example, it is noted that the now-vanished History of Asinius Polllio was a major source for Appian's work.

For example, books 116-142 of Livy's history, which cover the period 44-9BC, are gone, but there are several condensed versions of those books made by others which are available to us. Condensed to around 1/100 of the length of the original, for example, in the case of the



periochae. Note also, that Livy is of course an existing source in that a great deal of his work survives, but a non-existent source for the period 44BC -- 70AD.

For example, the author or authors of the Appendix give the opinion that we cannot know much more for certain about the historians Aufidius Bassius and M Servilius Nonianus than their names and that they wrote histories covering parts of the period.

So: the non-existent historians writing in Latin listed here for the history of the Roman Empire from 44BC -- 70AD, mentioned because of their possible, likely or certain influence on the existing sources, are, in Latin, Asinius Polllio, Livy, Aufidius Bassius, M Servilius Nonianus, A Cremutius Cordus, Cluvius Rufus, Fabius Rusticus, Pliny the Elder, Bruttedius Niger, Cn Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus, Seneca the Elder, Julius Secundus, Pompeius Planta and Tib Claudius Balbillus. Then there are listed some non-historians who may have contributed to the works of historians existent or non-. Then come three historians writing about the period in Greek whose work is missing, Nicolaus, Timagenes and Phlegon.

On to those who wrote about the period whose work we can read: in Latin, Cicero, Augustus, Velleius Paterculus, Valerius Maximus, Tacitus, Suetonius; then some who condensed the work of others centuries later: Florus, Eutropius, Aurelius Victor and Orosius. Then technical works by Vitruvius (a delightful writer)



on architecture, by Frontinus on aequaducts and military strategy and by Vegetius (4th century) on military matters in general.

There remains in the Appendix a discussion of 5 illustrious Greek authors whose work has to do with the Empire from 44BC -- AD 70, Strabo, Philo, Josephus, Plutarch and Dio Cassius, plus a few more who lived and wrote between the 6th and 11th centuries.

No doubt some of you have been snorting contemptuously for some time now and saying, "You think yr so damn smart?! All you did was summarize a dozen pages from a dang book!"

Yr darn tootin that's all I did! And the reason why that's all I did was to give you an idea of how easy it is, if you know where to look, to get a general idea of the written sources available to us -- before we get to things like the New Testament and the Dead Sea Scrolls and Oxyrhynchus and Fayim and Nag Hammadi and inscriptions (words carved into stone) and coins and so forth -- which cover the history of the Roman Empire from 44BC -- AD70. That's the entire Empire over the course of 114 years, an era which is covered much more minutely by surviving sources than many another ancient epoch before and after. 114 years for an area reaching from England to the Red Sea, not just 33 years in an area about 1/10th the size of Wyoming, an area which interested most of the writers mentioned above about as much as Wyoming interests most of the writers on the east and west coasts today.