Roman Government
From 500 BC to nearly 1500
AD, for two thousand years, Roman government
had more or less the same system. Of course there were some changes
over that time too!
When the Roman Republic was
first set up, in 500 BC, the people in charge were two men called consuls.
Women were not allowed to be consuls. The consuls controlled the army,
and they decided whether to start a war and how much taxes to collect
and what the laws were. They both had to agree in order to change anything;
if one of them said “veto”, Latin
for “I forbid it”, then nothing would be done.
The consuls got advice from the Senate, which was made up of men from
wealthy families in Rome. Women were not allowed in the Senate, either.
Once you got into the Senate, you stayed in for the rest of your life.
Most consuls eventually joined the Senate, and most senators were from
families where their fathers and grandfathers had been in the Senate.
Most of the time, the consuls did what the Senate advised.
There were also prefects in Rome, whose job it was to run the city –
some heard court cases, some ran the vegetable markets or the meat markets
or the port.
There were tribunes, who were supposed to speak for the poorer people
in the Senate. Tribunes were elected by the Assembly, and they could
veto (forbid) anything the Senate voted for that affected the poor (which
ended up being pretty much anything the Senate voted on). These, too,
were all men.
Finally, there was also an Assembly of all the men (not women) who were
grownup and free and had Roman citizenship. They voted on some big issues,
if the consuls asked them to – things like whether to go to war.
And they elected the consuls and prefects and the Senators. But the
Assembly was set up so that richer people got more votes than poorer
people.
Once the Romans began conquering
other places, far away from the city of Rome, they also had a system
of provincial governors – men who took charge of a province of
the Empire, and who heard court cases there. They were also in charge
of the army while it was conquering places.
By about 50 BC, the time of Julius
Caesar, these generals had begun to take over the government and
not pay any attention to the consuls or the Senate anymore, and just
do as they pleased. They could do that, because they had the army with
them.
Augustus, in 31 BC, was
one of these generals. But he realized that people didn’t like
this pushing people around, and so he set up a different system (but
still one where he had all the power). Augustus kept the Senate and
the consuls, and he said they were in charge, but he made the Senate
vote to give him the powers of a tribune for the rest of his life. That
way, he could veto (forbid) anything the Senate tried to do that Augustus
didn’t like. And, he kept control of most of the army as well.
So he could kill anyone who got in his way.
This system – where there was still a Senate and consuls, but
the Emperors had all the real power – kept on going for the next
1500 years, more or less.
To find out more about Roman government, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Eyewitness: Ancient Rome, by Simon James (2004). For kids.
The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome, by Claude Nicolet (1980).
Empire of Honour: The Art of Government in the Roman World, by J. E. Lendon (1997).
The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC - AD 337), by Fergus Millar (1977).
