Political Power in Mid-Republican Rome hisclaim(‘‘TheValueoftheLiteraryTraditionconcerningArchaicRome,’’
Raaflaubetal.,ff.)thatthisisone‘‘structuralelement’’whichhassurvived
throughthelegendaryaccretionsoflatertradition.Itisalsoworthstressing
thatthisisoneareawheretherearenofundamentalcontradictions,andno
rivalstory.WehavenoseriousalternativestothestorythatinRoman
tribal territory was occupied by four urban tribes and by seventeen rural
ones,territorialgroupings,spreadinaradiusroundthecity.Theterritory
coveredsuggestsapopulationofperhapssome,(Cornell,,follow-
ingAmpolo).Thennosourceevenclaimsanyexpansionforroughlyacen-
tury; but, after that, expansion began again in with the incorporation
oftheterritoryofVeiiandthecreationofthetribusStellatina,Tromentina,
Sabatina, and Arnensis (Livy , , ; Taylor,Voting Districts, ). After that
the broad lines of the successive creation of new tribes, in pairs, down to
, are not the subject of any majorconflicts in our sources. Along with
the parallel process of the ‘‘export’’ of Roman citizens into Latin colonies,
theyrepresentthemajorknownelementinthesocialandconstitutionalhis-
toryofRomeinthisperiod.Ifwewanttoconcentrateonwhatcanactually
be known of Roman history in the fourth and earlier third centuries, and
alsoonwhatwastobeimportantinsubsequenthistory,wewouldbebetter
employedstudyingthefirstvolumeofToynbee’sHannibal’s Legacythanthe
topicswhichformthemainfocusofthesetwobooks.
There is, however, also another reason for beginning at the bottom,with
themassofthecitizenry,andthatistheimportanceofpopularsovereignty,
andofthecomplexstructureswithinwhichthecitizencouldvote.C.Nico-
let’sfundamentalworkLe métier de citoyen(),translatedasThe World of
the Citizen in Republican Rome(),seemstohavehadsurprisinglylittlein-
fluence on theway that the authors represented here approach republican
politics.Thelong-establishednotionofasystemwhollymanipulablefrom
above, and marked by the domination of the richest groups, is of course
colouredinlargepartbytherepresentationsinlatersourcesofthe‘‘Servian’’
centuriate assembly,with its eighteen centuries ofequitesvoting first, fol-
lowedbytheeightycenturiesofthe(prima)classis(‘‘firstcensusclass,’’Livy,
;Dionysius,–).But,whiletheprincipleofvotingpriorityaccord-
ingtowealthalwaysremained,itiseasytominimizethesignificanceofthe
relativetransformationofthissystemwhichhadtakenplacebytheoutbreak
oftheSecondPunicWar.Bythen,asiswellknown,votingbeganwiththe
nowseventycenturies(twofromeachofthethirty-fivetribes)whichcon-
stitutedthefirstclass(Livy,,,on..;cf.,,–,,,).
Twoquitenewprincipleswereinvolved:theremovalofthevotingpriority