The First Republic: An Introduction to the Roman Res Publica

This is the third installment in our series exploring the history and practice of democracy throughout time and across places, peoples and cultures.

Having looked at two very different ancient Greek models of self rule in our previous installments, we now turn westward to the Italian peninsula and Rome, which in 509 BCE was embarking on a radical new experiment in self-rule.

Founded after the ouster of its last king, the Roman Republic introduced an innovative political system rooted in law, civic virtue, and checks on individual power. It was not democracy in the Athenian sense; most Romans had little direct say in day-to-day government. But it was a republic—a res publica, or "public thing"—with elected magistrates, popular assemblies, and a Senate that claimed to act on behalf of the commonwealth. It balanced monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in a mixed constitution that has been admired by generations of thinkers, including our own Founding Fathers.

In this article, we explore the early development of the Roman Republic: how it emerged from monarchy, the institutions it established, and the values it upheld — especially its fierce opposition to kingship. Along the way, we’ll consider how the legacy of Rome’s first republic shaped the republican ideals still invoked in civic life today.

From Kingly Tyranny to Popular Sovereignty

According to tradition, Rome in its earliest days was ruled by kings. While little of what has been transmitted to us by ancient historians about this period can be corroborated empirically, what matters is that the Roman people believed it.

Romulus, the city’s eponymous founder and first king, was credited with establishing Rome’s basic social and military structures, but much of what would become the foundations of Roman culture would be attributed to the semi-legendary kings who followed him. When Romulus died with neither a natural heir, nor a designated successor, the question of who would inherit his throne fell to the Senate, an assembly of elders (senes) drawn from elite families. Unable (or, perhaps, unwilling) to agree on a suitable candidate from among themselves, the Senate would look beyond Rome itself for a king, inaugurating a succession of foreign kings ruling the Roman people. Historical or not, the stories about these kings reflect real influences that shaped Rome’s early development and defined Roman cultural identity as it saw its political institutions evolve from a simple tribal kingship into a sophisticated—and in many ways modern—state.

By the late 6th century BCE, Rome had grown from a small settlement of huts into a modest city-state. Massive public works were attributed to the last kings, an indication that Rome’s monarchs wielded substantial power. However, this great kingly power proved to be a double-edged sword for Rome’s monarchs. Indeed, it would be an abuse of said power that, according to tradition, would bring the monarchy to an end. 

The breaking point came with the commission of a private crime during the reign of Tarquin the Proud, the seventh and last King of Rome. Tarquin’s son, Sextus, assaulted a noblewoman, Lucretia, who then took her own life in anguish. Outraged over Lucretia’s fate, the Roman nobility were galvanized to action. Led by her kinsman Lucius Junius Brutus, a group of aristocrats incited the people to rise up. 

Tarquin and his family were expelled from the city, and in 509 BCE the Roman monarchy was abolished, replaced by a new form of government. For his actions in leading the uprising, Brutus would be revered as the Republic’s founder by subsequent generations of Romans.

Birth of the Republic

In place of kingship, the Romans established the Res Publica, “the public thing” or commonwealth, an innovative system that would see governmental power shared and constrained by law. This new republican model of government was unlike anything the world had ever seen.

Under the new system, the king’s executive authority was transferred to two magistrates, called consuls, who would be elected annually and govern jointly. This dual magistracy ensured that no one man could hold unchecked power. Each consul could veto the other’s actions, and their one-year term forced regular accountability. Having cast off the yoke of tyranny, the Romans refused to ever again put their fate in the hands of a monarch. As an added safeguard, the Romans separated the traditional religious functions of kingship in an effort to ensure that the charismatic aura of kingship would not easily find its way back into Roman politics.

In the earliest days of the Republic, the city’s leadership was firmly in the hands of the aristocracy. The Senate, which had existed under the kings as an advisory council, became even more influential, serving as the steady hand guiding the state. By tradition, the first Senate had been created by Romulus from the heads of the leading clans at the foundation of the city. These old noble families became known as the patricians (Latin patres, “fathers”). They alone held the most prestigious priesthoods and, initially, the high offices of the new Republic. 

Rome in 509 BCE was thus an oligarchy in all but name. Power was no longer vested in a single king, but it was jealously guarded by a closed circle of noble lineages. The consuls themselves were chosen from among these patricians, and the Senate remained a close-knit club of aristocrats. In other words, the upper class monopolized practically all political authority. Ordinary Romans, known as the plebeians or “commoner” class, had little direct say in governance during this early period, despite comprising the vast majority of the population (and the army). 

The fledgling Republic was tested almost immediately. The ousted Tarquins did not accept exile quietly. Rome had to fend off several attempts by the former king to reclaim his throne, including an intervention by the Etruscan ruler Lars Porsenna of Clusium. Roman legend paints this period as a gallery of patriotic heroes. Whether mythical or true, these tales served to illustrate Roman resolve in defense of their newfound freedom. 

A Republic of Laws

While the Republic in its first days was a republic for the few, it would not remain so. The seeds of a distinctive political culture had been planted, one that would grow to differentiate Rome from all other states of antiquity. Central to Rome’s new value system was the concept of libertas, the fundamental liberty of the citizen to not be subject to the whims of any monarch or tyrant. Romans of all classes celebrated the expulsion of the Tarquins as the restoration of their freedom. 

The memory of kingly tyranny remained a potent cautionary tale for centuries. For the politicians of the Roman Republic, aspiring to kingship was the one unforgivable ambition. Indeed, the Latin word for “king”, rex, even became a bitter epithet in Roman politics. The early Republic’s leaders, and especially Brutus, were cast as exemplars of stern virtue and rigid anti-monarchism. According to legend, Brutus even executed his own sons when they were caught conspiring with the deposed royal family to restore the monarchy. Later generations of Romans extolled this ruthless act of patriotism as an example of the ultimate commitment to the republic over family. Such stories underscored the new Republican ethos, one that countless politicians would seek to embody.

At its core, the Republic was a community of laws and shared power. It was an ideal to be defended at any cost against anyone who would make himself a king. This animating spirit of anti-monarchism would endure for centuries, shaping Roman values and giving the Republic a powerful sense of identity.

Having shed blood together to preserve their liberty, Romans of all classes gained a shared pride in their res publica. The republican institutions that took root in the years that followed—annual elected magistrates, a senate of elders, and citizen assemblies—proved remarkably effective, both in mobilizing the city for war, and for governing a growing country. But these institutions also created new arenas for internal social tensions that had simmered unaddressed under the monarchy. 

With the king gone and the Republic firmly established, a new question loomed: How would the power of the state be distributed among the Romans themselves?

Foundations of a Constitutional Order

Around 449 BCE, Rome promulgated its first written law code.  According to tradition, plebeian pressure forced the Senate to appoint a special board of ten lawmakers (the Decemviri) to write down the laws of Rome, which until then had been held in the “black box” of oral tradition—often manipulated by patrician judges to their advantage. The result was the Twelve Tables, a law code engraved on bronze and posted in the Forum for all to see. 

The Twelve Tables covered everything from legal procedure and property rights to family law and debt. Importantly, they established the principle that justice should be based on transparent rules, not the whims of magistrates. This written constitution did not necessarily favor the common people (plebeians), but the very act of publishing the law was a great leveler: Now every citizen knew his rights and duties.

The significance of the Twelve Tables in Roman memory cannot be overstated. They were considered by generations of Romans to be the foundation of Roman law, and were cited for centuries as a source of legal precedent in much the same way modern democracies look back to their founding charters or constitutions for legal justification.

A New Kind of Representative Government

By around 287 BCE, Rome had developed into a representative and consultative government more complex and nuanced than any seen before in the history of the Mediterranean. It was not a democracy as we understand the term, as real power still rested with a wealthy elite. However, it was a free society with democratic characteristics. Governance was a public affair, with multiple institutions balancing and checking one another—magistrates, Senate, and assemblies of the people, each with recognized constitutional roles, powers and limitations. 

Magistrates representing the common people had the ability to convene the Senate or citizens’ assemblies and propose laws. In fact, many far-reaching reforms (and later, radical proposals) would come from tribunes. The Senate, while still mostly an aristocratic club, now included wealthy and accomplished plebeians alongside the blue-blooded patricians. Its decrees, though not formal law, were generally heeded as the voice of experience and authority. The Roman people meanwhile had acquired, through their assemblies, not just the right to approve or reject laws, but also a sense of participation in the grandeur of the state.

The Roman Republic thus evolved into a system of mixed government—part monarchy (the consuls and magistrates wielding executive power), part aristocracy (the Senate’s guiding influence), and part democracy (the assemblies of citizens). The Greek historian Polybius, writing in the mid-2nd century BCE, was impressed by this blend, noting that if one looked at the consuls alone, one might think Rome a monarchy; if at the Senate, an aristocracy; and if at the assemblies, a democracy. It was the combination, and the interplay among these elements, that he believed gave the Republic its remarkable stability and strength.

Then and Now: Roman Res Publica vs. American Republicanism

Rome’s republic was founded as an explicit repudiation of kingly tyranny. The echoes of this sentiment have carried down through the ages. Indeed they rang in the ears of the Founding Fathers of the United States, whose distrust of monarchy led them to found their own republic in conscious imitation of Rome. The founders of our republic shared the same ideals of liberty and fear of concentrated power that animated the Roman Republic. For a time, America’s rejection of kingship became a civic religion in its own right, much as it had in Rome two millennia prior.

Roman politics during the Republic’s height was vibrant, competitive, and often turbulent. It was a system without political parties or a written constitution in the modern sense, yet it operated with a set of understood norms (the mos maiorum, or “way of the ancestors”) and legal statutes that maintained a rough equilibrium. To the Romans of the 2nd century BCE, their Republic was the source of their greatness; Polybius, observing as an outsider, marveled that this mixed constitution was key to Rome’s rise. Americans in later centuries would likewise marvel at how a republic—ostensibly a government by the people—could govern such a vast domain. Rome proved it was possible.

From the American perspective, one sees clear thematic parallels: just as the Roman Republic evolved mechanisms to incorporate the voices of the many into a system originally designed for the few, so too did the United States gradually expand suffrage and civil rights beyond the propertied elite of the 18th century. In both cases, the idea was not to overturn the social order overnight, but to channel discontent into reforms that strengthened the republic in the long run.