Idea and Practice of Democracy in Republican Rome

Abstract

For decades there has been a historiographical debate about the definition of the Roman Republic: democracy or aristocracy? Undoubtedly, there were elements of a democratic system in republican Rome, but this did not necessarily make it a democracy. Now, what would a historiographical debate have seemed to a Roman citizen? Surely it would have been inappropriate and unnecessary, because the Romans never thought that their res publica was a democracy. In fact, the Romans never needed to transcribe into Latin the Greek word δημοκρατία or invent a word or expression of their own with universal value for that concept. Democracy was always a strange idea in Rome, more typical of Graeculi. Certainly, very late Greek authors, such as Appian and Cassius Dio, called the Roman Republic δημοκρατία, but they did not do so in absolute terms because it was really a democracy comparable to the Athenian of classical times, but in relative terms to refer to a system of government that was not a monarchy.