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FULL MARK Electoral System of the Roman Republic - Classical Studies Higher Essay 12m
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FULL MARK Electoral System of the Roman Republic - Classical Studies Higher Essay 12m
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Analyse the extent to which the Roman votingprovided fairness for all (12m)
Factors – voting bodies, who could vote & bribery.
When the last of Rome’s kings was overthrown in about 509 BC, a republican form of
government was put in place. The republican government was designed in order that
individuals were unable to achieve sole political control over the government. The
Romans rejected the idea of kings and tyrants and this was reflected in the structure of
the republican government. In that political system, some historians such as Mary
Beard argue that “There is little point in asking how ‘democratic’ the politics of
Republican Rome were: Romans fought for, and about, liberty, not democracy.”
However, there are factors of which do indeed challenge to what extent the Roman
voting system provided fairness for all, those are; who was able to vote, the division
of voting centuries and bribery.
The manner of which Romans voted in the late Republic was extremely complex, and
we have no accurate first hand account of how exactly Roman elections were
conducted. What is known is that all male citizens were eligible for registration in the
citizens list, and they were split into units called centuries in accordance with how
much property they owned and where they lived. This means that not all voting
groups were the same size. However, this meant the system was not for all to access
fairly, the voting system was restricted to citizens only. Women, slaves and non
Roman citizens were not seen as having a rightful right to vote or participate in the
republic’s politics, making the elections wholly unrepresentative of the Roman
population. In addition, not every citizen was eligible to vote in elections, foreigners
who had gained citizenship through the expansion of the empire in subsequent
provinces were not allowed to vote. However, this did shift over time, showing how
the Roman voting system evolved to be more representative as a whole. In addition,
political power was achieved through climbing the metaphorical ladder the cursus
honorum in which it held positions that increased in power and status, and in order to
react higher positions one needed to have inhabited the ones beneath them, although
there were exceptions in some wealthy candidates case such as Julius Caesar. In
conclusion ,it is clear that because the richer classes were seen to have some
hierarchy which allowed them to gain greater power in the system in terms of voting
in contrary to their poorer plebeian counterparts that were sabotaged into believing
that their votes counted, thus clearly showing that the Roman voting system did not
provide fairness to all,
The Roman voting system did not provide fairness for all because of the division of
voting units (centuries) and how the rich were better served. Plebs would be put into
centuries, these groups were set up so that the lower classed plebeians could vote and
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