Democracy In The Late Republic

The roman government, set up after the seventh and final king was assassinated, was structured as a democratic republic that gave elites large amounts of power. This “imperium”, power to command and bestowed by the people was given to the two consuls and praetors after winning an election, was not supreme and the people could take it away. This system on paper looks ideal by giving the people a voice in rome 's politics, but in practice the system was manipulated to favor the patricians and then those with wealth. This brings scholars to question how democratic the rome actually was in the late republic. The late roman republic was predominately non-democratic due to the fact that the tribal and centuriate votes were tilted in the elites favor …show more content…
The tribal assemblies were compromised of thirty-five tribes that all had one vote. One of the two assemblies was the tribal assembly, where every eligible voting citizen could note. The other was the plebeian assembly, which excluded the patricians. The assembly was set up this way so that the decision was the true voice of the people. Although this sounds like a good system, the elites influence was there even if they were not. For example, clients of patrons had to vote for whom their patron told them to and also the elite was such a small group of people, not having their votes didn’t really have a big impact on the decision. The centuriate assembly in contrast to the tribal assembly was based off of economic standing. The voting was also counted differently than in the tribal assembly. The first class had a total of seventy votes and the lowest had one. The voting would also go in order of class and a candidate only had to reach ninety-seven votes for the voting to stop. This means that a good amount of the people voting in the election did not get the opportunity to vote because they were a lower class and not called in before the majority was won. This means that the elite not only influenced the vote, but in most cases were the only vote and by that they silenced the …show more content…
There has been the argument in scholars writing that after Sulla’s changes to the number of officials who could be voted into office so that it lead the elite to be more divided. This lead elections to run down until the lowers levels got a chance to vote. Although the lower classes had less votes they became the decisive votes, so more candidates would find ways to reach the people and gain public favor. Alexander Yakobson suggests in his article Popular Power in the Roman Republic that since the people gained more powers in elections the elite worked harder than before to gain their favor because they no longer had the almost supreme power