The constitution of the Roman Republic was a set of uncodified norms and customs which,[1] together with various written laws,[2] guided the procedural governance of the Roman Republic. The constitution emerged from that of the Roman kingdom, evolved substantively and significantly—almost to the point of unrecognisability[3]—over the almost five hundred years of the republic. The collapse of republican government and norms beginning in 133 BC would lead to the rise of Augustus and his principate.[4]
A complex set of checks and balances developed amongst these three branches. For example, the assemblies theoretically held all power, but were called and governed by the magistrates, who, controlling discussion, exercised dominating influence over them.[9] Other magistrates could also veto proceedings before the assemblies, though until the late republic, this was rare.[10] Similarly, to check the power of the magistrates, each magistrate could veto one of their colleagues and the plebeians elected tribunes who could intercede and veto the actions of a magistrate.[11]
The republic's constitution, while malleable and evolving, still had substantive entrenched norms. Institutions such as the consuls, the senate, and tribunes evolved significantly in the early republic but remained relatively stable from the fourth century BC. Starting from a period of patrician domination, the Conflict of the Orders eventually granted plebeian citizens equal political rights, while also creating the tribunate to check patrician power and empowering the plebeian assembly, an assembly composed of the plebeians of Rome, with full legislative authority.[12]
The late republic saw an increase in the centralisation of power into the hands of provincial governors,[13] the use of military power to enforce political changes (e.g. the Sullan dictatorship),[14] and the use of violence, combined with exploitation of the suitably bribed or intimidated "sovereign" assemblies, to grant supreme authority to victorious commanders.[15] The increasing legitimisation of violence and centralisation of authority into fewer and fewer men would, with the collapse of trust in the Republic's institutions,[15] put it on a path to civil war and its transformation by Augustus into an autocratic regime cloaked with republican imagery and legitimacy.[16][17]
The early republican constitution was dominated by the patricians, who monopolised all control of the magistracies, the senate, and the voting blocs of the assemblies. Generally, it slowly developed with a tendency towards greater popular representation at the expense of the patrician class.[18]
The main literary sources for the origins of the Roman political system, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, relied heavily on the Roman annalists, who supplemented what little written history existed with oral history. This lack of evidence poses problems for the reliability of the traditional account of the republic's origins.[19] Many modern scholars now view, however, the Livian and annalistic accounts to be a "literary creation of the late republic"[20] and that they broadly "cannot retain much value for... reconstructing early Roman history".[21]