Summary: Development Of Citizenship In The Early Roman Republic

This history study will define the exclusive rights of governmental representation through the development of citizenship in the early Roman Republic. In the early Roman Republic, the fall of the monarchy provided a new way to interpret citizenship that provided a broader range of legal rights to the ruling classes. The “patricians” define an early example of the development of citizenship to grant specific governmental rights of representation, which dominated Roman society as a type oligarchic system of system. Citizenship provided a range of legal rights, such as being a public official, a landowner, and a merchant, but did not include citizen rights for the remaining population. The devolvement of the old monarchy meant that more people would gaining access to the legal rights and a vested interest in government as a way to participate in Roman society, politics, and commerce. More so, the rise of the plebeians/plebs was excluded from these governmental and legal …show more content…
This type of class division only provided citizenship for Patrician, but not for the remaining groups of merchants, middle classes laborers, and other participants in the Roman economy. This group of people was called the plebeians, which constituted a new political faction that would oppose the dominance of the Patricians in the Senate. During this time, the Plebeians would form their own political council in order to countermand the citizenship of the Patricians. The Concilium Plebis was soon formed as a result of the “conflict of orders” that would challenge the rights of citizenship for Roman workers and lower level merchant classes. This type of political activity defined a new era of Plebeian involvement in governmental representation, which evolved from a broader social and political movement throughout the 4th and 3rd centuries