A Consideration on the Plebeian Assembly System in Mid-Republican Rome

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss the traditional view that the political role of the plebeians, the theoretical sovereignty in the plebeian assembly, was structurally hindered in Mid-Republican Rome. For this, I have reinvestigated into the frequency of assemblies, the assembly procedure, and the group voting, which are the theoretical basis of the traditional viewpoints. In conclusion, there is no evidence to verify that these institutional mechanisms were designed to limit the popular participation. Rather they may have encouraged and allowed the plebeians to participate into the assemblies. Therefore, the traditional views overemphasizing that the popular participation was structurally restricted by institutional mechanisms should be modified. However, my ultimate aim is not to determine whether plebeians’ participation into assembly was structurally limited or not. We need to seek for a new paradigm to address the Roman politics in the Mid-Roman Republic, so that future discussions about it can be a progressive one. It is high time, in other words, that we should rather focus on the network of political conversations between the political elite and the masses rather than focus on whose political powers were greater in the plebeian assemblies. In this sense, it is worth noting Nicolet’s statement “the Roman system implied a certain degree of communication, not all of it one-way, between the masses and the political class.”