Draws on archaeological evidence to reconstruct voting procedures in the assemblies

An indispensable tool for serious work on the Roman Republic

Rome was the largest city in the ancient world. As the capital of the Roman Empire, it was clearly an exceptional city in terms of size, diversity and complexity. While the Colosseum, imperial palaces and Pantheon are among its most famous features, this volume explores Rome primarily as a city in which many thousands of men and women were born, lived and died. The thirty-one chapters by leading historians, classicists and archaeologists discuss issues ranging from the monuments and the games to the food and water supply, from policing and riots to domestic housing, from death and disease to pagan cults and the impact of Christianity. Richly illustrated, the volume introduces groundbreaking new research against the background of current debates and is designed as a readable survey accessible in particular to undergraduates and non-specialists.

Next to the Bible, Shakespeare, the French revolution and Napoleon, ancient Rome is one of the most plowed-through fields of historical experience. One of the truly great periods of history, Rome, over the centuries, deservedly has attracted the passionate attention of historians, philologists and, more recently, archeologists. Since Roman law constituted the source of the legal life of most of Western Europe, the legal profession had a legitimate interest. Veritable libraries have been built around the history of Rome. In the past confmed mostly to Italian, German, and French scholars the fascination with things Roman by now has spread to other civilized nations in cluding the Anglo-Saxon. Among the contributors to our knowledge of ancient Rome are some of the great minds in history and law. Our bibliography - selective, as neces sarily it has to be - records outstanding generalists as well as some of the numerous specialists that were helpful for our undertaking. Why, then, another study of the Roman political civilization and one that, at least measured by volume and effort, is not altogether insubstantial? And why, has to be added, one presented by an author who, whatever his reputation in other fields, ostensibly is an outsider of the classical discipline? These are legitimate questions that should be honestly answered. By training and avocation the author is a constitutional lawyer or, rather, a political scientist primarily interested in the operation of governmental institutions.

There is no other published book in English studying the constitution of the Roman Republic as a whole. Yet the Greek historian Polybius believed that the constitution was a fundamental cause of the exponential growth of Rome's empire. He regarded the Republic as unusual in two respects: first, because it functioned so well despite being a mix of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy; secondly, because the constitution was the product of natural evolution rather than the ideals of a lawgiver. Even if historians now seek more widely for the causes of Rome's rise to power, the importance and influence of her political institutions remains. The reasons for Rome's power are both complex, on account of the mix of elements, and flexible, inasmuch as they were not founded on written statutes but on unwritten traditions reinterpreted by successive generations. Knowledge of Rome's political institutions is essential both for ancient historians and for those who study the contribution of Rome to the republican tradition of political thought from the Middle Ages to the revolutions inspired by the Enlightenment.

Roman senators and equestrians were always vulnerable to prosecution for their official conduct, especially since politically motivated accusations were common. When charged with a crime in Republican Rome, such men had a choice concerning their fate. They could either remain in Rome and face possible conviction and punishment, or go into voluntary exile and avoid legal sentence. For the majority of the Republican period, exile was not a formal legal penalty contained in statutes, although it was the practical outcome of most capital convictions. Despite its importance in the political arena, Roman exile has been a neglected topic in modern scholarship. This 2006 study examines all facets of exile in the Roman Republic: its historical development, technical legal issues, the possibility of restoration, as well as the effects of exile on the lives and families of banished men.

The politics of the Roman Republic has in recent decades been the subject of intense debate, covering issues such as the degree of democracy and popular influence, 'parties' and ideology, politics as public ritual, and the character of Rome's political culture. This engaging book examines all these issues afresh, and presents an original synthesis of Rome's political institutions and practices. It begins by explaining the development of the Roman constitution over time before turning to the practical functioning of the Republic, focusing particularly on the role of the populus Romanus and the way its powers were expressed in the popular assemblies. Henrik Mouritsen concludes by exploring continuity and change in Roman politics as well as the process by which the republican system was eventually replaced by monarchy. This original and readable book will be important for all students and scholars of Roman history and of politics in general.

In the first volume in this new series on Roman society and law, Saskia T. Roselaar traces the social and economic history of the ager publicus, or public land, identifying the developments in Roman economy and demography which led to a gradual process of privatization.