A government built against kings

Around 509 BC, the story goes, the Romans threw out their last king, Tarquin the Proud. Most of the details are legend, but the grudge was real. For the next five centuries, the worst thing you could say about a Roman politician was that he wanted to be king.

So the Romans built a state around one obsession: nobody gets to be in charge for long. This course follows the hundred years, from 133 BC to 27 BC, when that design came apart through choices that each made sense to someone at the time. At the end, Rome still had its Senate and its elections. It also had an emperor.

The machine

Rome had no single written constitution. These were the main parts.

• Two consuls, elected every year. They commanded the armies and ran the government, and either could block the other. After a year they stepped down and could be put on trial.
• The Senate, a few hundred former officials who usually sat for life. On paper it only gave advice. In practice it controlled the treasury, foreign policy, and the provinces, and few officials dared defy it.
• The assemblies, where male citizens voted on laws and elected officials. Votes were counted by groups, and when consuls were chosen the richest groups voted first. Often the poorest were never even called.
• Ten tribunes of the plebs, elected to protect ordinary citizens from the powerful. A tribune could veto almost any act of government, and his person was sacrosanct. Laying a hand on him was a crime against the gods.
• A dictator, named only in a real emergency. He held full command for six months at most.

Tap each part of the government. Compare who could act with who could stop them.

The rules nobody had to write down

The offices mattered less than the habits around them. Romans called those habits the mos maiorum, the way of the ancestors. Some had been written into law at one time or another. What kept them alive was that everyone obeyed them, including the men strong enough not to.

• Political fights end in a vote, never in blood.
• No citizen is put to death without a trial.
• Armies belong to Rome, and a general gives up his command when the war is over.
• No army enters the city. A commander who crossed Rome's sacred boundary lost his command at that moment.
• Power is brief and shared. You wait ten years before you can be consul again.

Ambitious Romans competed hard, but the prizes only meant something while the game held together. For a long time, they played by the rules.

A century in eight moments

Tap a year below to see what happened and which of those rules broke. A rule turns red when it breaks and stays crossed out after that. Notice how often the same rule breaks twice.

Tap the dates in order, then revisit an earlier one. The crossed-out rules show which precedents had already been set.

Where the strain came from

By 146 BC Rome had destroyed Carthage and Corinth and dominated the Mediterranean. The plunder flowed mostly to the families who already ran the Senate, while the small farmers who filled the legions spent years away at war. That gap is where the next lesson begins.