It has often been thought that Roman politics was dominated by a
governing class, or even aristocracy, and it has sometimes been
presumed that the Senate was a legislative body. "The Crowd in Rome
in the Late Republic" takes a dramatically new tack, and explores
the consequences of a democracy in which public office could be
gained only by direct election by the people. And while the Senate
could indeed debate public matters, advise other office-holders,
and make some administrative decisions, it could not legislate. An
office-holder who wanted to pass a law had to step out of the
Senate-house and propose it to the people in the Forum--where there
were few guarantees.
In this important study, Fergus Millar explores the development of
the Roman Republic, which, as it drew to a close in the middle
decades of the first century B.C.E., had come to cover most of
Italy. There were nearly a million adult male voters in the time of
Cicero, but there were no constituencies, and no absentee ballots.
To exercise their rights, voters had to come in person to Rome and
to meet in the Forum. Millar takes the period from the dictatorship
of Sulla to Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon and shows how the
politics of the crowd was central to the great changes that took
place year after year, and altered the Republic forever.
The originality of Millar's highly accessible work lies first in
its serious treatment of the importance of open-air oratory in
Roman public life, and second, in its use of the narratives of
events that evidence provides. Third, it refuses to interpret these
narratives in the light of modern theories about the importance of
the client-patron system, or the domination of theSenate. This work
questions how we should understand the Roman Republic: as a network
of aristocratic families dominating the people, or an erratic and
volatile democracy in which power was exercised by the tiny
proportion of citizens who actually came to listen to speeches and
to vote.
This work speaks to those interested in ancient history and its
consequences in the modern world.
Fergus Millar is Camden Professor of Ancient History, Brasenose
College, Oxford University.
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