For roughly 500 years, from about 509 BC to 27 BC, the Roman Republic ran as an elective oligarchy designed to prevent another king. Its traditional story begins when the son of Tarquin the Proud assaulted the noblewoman Lucretia and Lucius Junius Brutus led the overthrow of the monarchy. Two consuls served one-year terms, each able to veto the other, and an unwritten constitution of precedent kept power with the patricians. The Centuriate Assembly let the wealthiest blocs vote first and stopped once a majority was reached, while debt bondage, called nexum, let creditors enslave plebeian soldiers whose farms failed while they fought. In 494 BC the plebeians marched out to the Sacred Mount, and the Senate created the sacrosanct tribunes of the plebs, armed with the veto.
After the Gauls sacked Rome around 390 BC, the tribunes Stolo and Lateranus blocked all top elections for five years until a plebeian consul was allowed. Allied troops from conquered Italians drove expansion, and after losing upward of 50,000 men at Cannae in 216 BC Rome banned public mourning, drafted teenagers and fought on to Zama in 202 BC. Overseas wars ruined citizen farmers, whose land was absorbed into slave-worked latifundia. In 133 BC senators led by the Pontifex Maximus beat Tiberius Gracchus to death with bench legs over a land reform bill. Marius tied soldiers’ loyalty to their generals, Sulla marched on Rome in 88 BC, and in 27 BC the Senate named Octavian Augustus.
- A secessio plebis left patricians without bakers, carpenters or foot soldiers.
- Anyone who struck a tribune could be killed on the spot with no legal consequence.
- The Cannae losses equaled roughly 20 percent of Rome’s adult male population, and enslaved people were promised freedom if they volunteered.
- Displaced citizens crowded into insulae, while elite atria displayed wax ancestor masks called imagines.
- Cato walked the forum barefoot in a plain dark toga with no tunic to protest Greek luxury.
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