Paul Lewis, New York Times (July 24, 1999)
Directions:
To most historians of this century, the Roman Republic was a corrupt oligarchy ruled by a rich and decadent aristocracy, despite its democratic constitution, popular assemblies, and regularly elected officials…compared with Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., which was revered as the birthplace of a purer [direct] democracy.
Yet over the last decade or so several scholars have been arguing that it was an imperfect but still recognizable democracy. Political office was less controlled by the aristocracy than was assumed. What’s more, they say in some ways, Rome had even more in common with modern notions of democracy than Athens did.
Republican Rome’s democratic credential weren’t always in doubt. After all, America’s founding fathers took the Roman Constitution, with its foundation of Senate and Assembly, as their model, not the single Athenian assembly. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, “Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian Assembly would still have been a mob…History informs of no long-lived republic which had not a senate.”
But in the 19th century, Greece began to replace Rome as the West’s political and cultural model. As the British pushed to expand democratic reforms, liberals pointed to the Athenian experience was evidence that democracy was achievable without a traumatic upheaval like the French Revolution. Rome left a much better record of its political life than did Athens, which didn’t help its image. Since historians knew so much more about Rome, they could better trace [its flaws].
[Some] historians are trying to reverse this perception. After all, it was Rome, not Athens, that invented that cornerstone of modern democracy, the secret ballot. And even though some of Rome’s popular assembles may have had weighted voting systems that favored the rich, they were still the only political bodies that could pass laws and appoint officials. The Senate, dominated by the aristocracy, had neither of those powers. Traditional interpretations are turned on their heads, using the corruption of democracy as evidence of its existence. That bribery was widespread demonstrates how essential [approval of measures by the elected assembles] was to the exercise of political power.
The Forum was the ultimate symbol of Rome’s open political system. This is where leaders went to make their case and win the support of the Roman population. Their power was so dependent on this popular support that rival groups vied for physical control of the places where citizens gathered…
The very scope and size of ancient Rome also makes it more relevant to many
of today’s democracies. At most, the Athenian city-state had an electorate of 40,000 men in the middle of the fifth century B.C. At the end of the Roman Republic, however, there, were more than one million Roman citizens, many of them freed slaves. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of its quickly expanding empire were regularly granted citizenship.
Of course, extending citizenship didn’t always mean extending power. Rome became more authoritarian as popular leaders sought ever greater powers to tackle the problems of an expanding empire. And to vote, Romans still had to show up personally in Rome. Romans may have invented the secret ballot, but the mail-in ballot remained something of the future.