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The Roman Republic (Latin: Res publica Romana, meaning "the public affair of Rome") was the period of ancient Roman civilization that lasted from approximately 509 BC to 27 BC — nearly five centuries. It began when the Romans overthrew their last king, Tarquinius Superbus, and ended when Octavian became the first Roman emperor under the name Augustus.

During the Republic, Rome grew from a single city-state in central Italy into the dominant power of the entire Mediterranean world. It conquered the Italian Peninsula, destroyed its great rival Carthage, absorbed the Greek kingdoms of the east, and built an empire that stretched from Spain to the Middle East.

The Republic was not a democracy in the modern sense. It was an oligarchy — a system in which a relatively small group of wealthy and powerful families held most of the political power. But it had important democratic features, including elected officials, term limits, checks and balances, and the right of citizens to vote in assemblies. These ideas would later inspire the founders of modern republics, including the United States.

The Republic's history is usually divided into three broad phases: the Early Republic (509–264 BC), during which Rome conquered Italy and developed its political system; the Middle Republic (264–133 BC), during which Rome fought the Punic Wars and became a Mediterranean superpower; and the Late Republic (133–27 BC), during which internal conflict, civil wars, and powerful generals gradually destroyed the republican system.

Roman Republic Res publica Romana c. 509 – 27 BC
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Roman territory, 44 BC
[ Show / Hide ] Capital Rome Language Latin Religion Roman polytheism Demonym Roman Government Consular republic Legislature Roman Senate Assemblies Consuls First (509 BC) L. Junius Brutus L. Tarquinius Collatinus Last (27 BC) Octavian Marcus Agrippa Key events c. 509 BC — Overthrow of the monarchy 338 BC — Dissolution of the Latin League 264–146 BC — Punic Wars 82 BC — Sulla named dictator 49–45 BC — Caesar's civil war Feb 44 BC — Julius Caesar named dictator for life 15 Mar 44 BC — Assassination of Julius Caesar 2 Sep 31 BC — Battle of Actium 16 Jan 27 BC — Octavian proclaimed Augustus Area 326 BC 10,000 km² 50 BC 1,950,000 km² Transitions Preceded by Roman Kingdom Succeeded by Roman Empire

As described in the article on the Roman Kingdom, Rome's last king, Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), was overthrown around 509 BC. The traditional story holds that the revolution was triggered when the king's son, Sextus Tarquinius, raped a noblewoman named Lucretia. Her kinsman Lucius Junius Brutus led the uprising that expelled the royal family.

The king's powers were then split between two elected officials called consuls, who served terms of just one year. Each consul could veto (block) the other's decisions — a safeguard designed to prevent any single person from gaining too much power. The Romans' bitter experience with Tarquin's tyranny gave them a deep distrust of one-man rule that shaped their entire political system.

Modern historians are divided on what actually happened. Some believe the story of Lucretia is largely legendary, and that the "revolution" may have been more of an aristocratic power struggle within the ruling class, or even a consequence of the withdrawal of Etruscan influence from Rome. Either way, the result was the same: Rome became a republic, and the word "king" (rex) became a term of insult in Roman politics for the next five centuries.

The Roman Republic had a complex system of government with three main elements: the magistrates (elected officials), the Senate, and the popular assemblies. These three branches balanced each other's power — an idea that would later influence the separation of powers in modern democracies.

The Republic's elected officials were called magistrates. They served fixed terms (usually one year) and most positions came in pairs, so that colleagues could check each other's power. The main offices, listed from highest to lowest, were:

Office	Number	Duties
Consuls	2	The highest regular magistrates. They commanded the army and presided over the Senate. Each could veto the other.
Praetors	2–8	Senior judges who administered the legal system. Could also command armies.
Censors	2	Conducted the census (population count), managed public morality, and controlled the membership of the Senate. Elected every five years.
Aediles	4	Managed the city: public buildings, markets, festivals, and the grain supply.
Quaestors	2–40	Financial officers who managed the treasury and military pay.
Tribunes of the Plebs	10	Represented the common people (plebeians). Could veto any law or action by any other magistrate. Their persons were considered sacred and untouchable.
Dictator	1	Emergency office only. Appointed by the consuls in times of crisis for a maximum of six months. Held absolute power but was expected to resign once the crisis passed.

The Romans followed a strict cursus honorum ("course of honors") — a required sequence of offices that ambitious politicians had to climb through in order. A man would typically serve as quaestor first, then aedile, then praetor, and finally consul. This system prevented young, inexperienced men from jumping straight to the top.

The Roman Senate was the most powerful institution in the Republic, even though technically it was only an advisory body. It consisted of around 300 members (later expanded to 600), mostly former magistrates who served for life.

The Senate controlled Rome's finances, directed foreign policy, assigned provinces to governors, and advised the consuls on all important matters. Although the Senate's decisions (called senatus consulta) were technically not laws, they carried enormous weight, and magistrates almost always followed the Senate's recommendations.

Senators were drawn from the wealthiest families in Rome. During the early Republic, only patricians could serve, but over time, wealthy plebeians gained admission. The most prestigious title a senator could hold was princeps senatus ("first man of the Senate"), who had the right to speak first in any debate.

Roman citizens could vote in several popular assemblies, which passed laws, elected magistrates, and declared war:

The Centuriate Assembly (Comitia Centuriata) was organized by wealth class and was the most important assembly. It elected consuls and praetors and had the power to declare war. Wealthier citizens' votes counted for more, so the rich effectively controlled its decisions.

The Tribal Assembly (Comitia Tributa) was organized by geographic district. It elected lower magistrates like aediles and quaestors.

The Plebeian Council (Concilium Plebis) was open only to plebeians and elected the tribunes of the plebs. After 287 BC, its decisions (called plebiscita) became binding on all citizens, including patricians.

One of the defining struggles of the early Republic was the Conflict of the Orders — a long political battle between the patricians (the hereditary aristocratic class) and the plebeians (everyone else).

When the Republic began, patricians held a monopoly on political power. Only they could serve as consuls, senators, or priests. The plebeians, who made up the vast majority of Roman citizens, had almost no political voice.

The plebeians' most effective weapon was the secessio plebis ("secession of the plebs") — essentially a mass strike. On several occasions, the plebeians literally walked out of Rome and refused to work or serve in the army until their demands were met. The first such secession occurred in 494 BC, when plebeians protesting the abuse of debtors withdrew to a hill outside the city.

Over roughly two centuries (494–287 BC), the plebeians gradually won major concessions:

494 BC — The office of tribune of the plebs was created, giving the common people elected representatives with the power to veto any government action.

449 BC — The Law of the Twelve Tables was published, Rome's first written legal code. Before this, laws were unwritten and interpreted only by patrician priests, which allowed for abuse.

367 BC — The Licinian-Sextian laws opened the consulship to plebeians for the first time. Lucius Sextius Lateranus became the first plebeian consul in 366 BC.

300 BC — The Ogulnian law opened the major priesthoods to plebeians.

287 BC — The Hortensian law made decisions of the Plebeian Council binding on all citizens, effectively ending the patricians' legal superiority. This is generally considered the end of the Conflict of the Orders.

The result was the emergence of a new ruling class called the nobiles — a mixed elite of about a dozen old patrician families and twenty wealthy plebeian families who dominated Roman politics together.

During the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the young Republic fought a long series of wars against its neighbors on the Italian Peninsula. Rome's enemies included the Etruscans to the north, the Sabines and other hill peoples in the mountains, the rival Latin cities, and the Samnites in the south.

The Republic suffered a traumatic setback around 390 BC (some sources say 387 BC), when a large army of Gauls invaded from the north. The Romans were badly defeated at the Battle of the Allia, and the Gauls then sacked Rome itself. According to tradition, only the fortified Capitoline Hill held out.

This humiliation spurred Rome to strengthen its defenses and military. The Romans rebuilt their city, constructed new walls (the Servian Wall), and reformed their army.

Rome's toughest opponents in Italy were the Samnites, a confederation of tough mountain warriors in south-central Italy. Rome fought three brutal wars against them:

The First Samnite War (343–341 BC) was inconclusive. The Second Samnite War (326–304 BC) was longer and harder, but ended in Roman victory. The Third Samnite War (298–290 BC) saw the Samnites build a coalition with the Gauls, Etruscans, and others against Rome, but Rome defeated them all at the decisive Battle of Sentinum in 295 BC.

Rome's conquest of southern Italy brought it into conflict with the Greek cities there. In 282 BC, the wealthy Greek city of Tarentum (modern Taranto) called on Pyrrhus, a powerful Greek king and cousin of Alexander the Great, to help fight Rome.

Pyrrhus landed in Italy with 25,500 soldiers and 20 war elephants — animals the Romans had never faced before. He won two battles against Rome, but at terrible cost to his own forces. After the Battle of Asculum in 279 BC, Pyrrhus reportedly said something along the lines of: "One more victory like this and I will be utterly ruined." This is the origin of the term Pyrrhic victory — a victory that costs so much it is practically a defeat.

Pyrrhus eventually left Italy in 275 BC, and by 272 BC, Rome controlled virtually the entire Italian Peninsula south of the Po River.

Rome's rise to Mediterranean dominance was defined by its three wars against Carthage, a wealthy and powerful trading city in North Africa (in modern-day Tunisia). These conflicts are called the Punic Wars (from Punicus, the Latin word for Phoenician, since Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony).

The First Punic War began over control of Sicily, the large island between Italy and North Africa. It was Rome's first major overseas war, and the Republic had to build an entire navy from scratch to fight Carthage, which was the greatest naval power in the western Mediterranean.

According to tradition, the Romans built their first fleet of 100 warships in just 60 days, reportedly using a captured Carthaginian ship as a model. They also invented a device called a corvus — a rotating boarding bridge with a heavy spike that could be dropped onto an enemy ship, locking the two vessels together and allowing Roman soldiers to fight hand-to-hand on the enemy's deck. This clever device turned sea battles into something more like land battles, which favored Roman soldiers.

The war lasted 23 years and was devastating for both sides. Rome suffered catastrophic losses — including entire fleets destroyed by storms — but its willingness to absorb enormous casualties and keep fighting eventually wore Carthage down. In 241 BC, Carthage sued for peace. It gave up Sicily and paid a massive fine.

The Second Punic War was the most dramatic and dangerous conflict in Rome's history. It was dominated by one of the greatest military commanders who ever lived: the Carthaginian general Hannibal.

In 218 BC, Hannibal did what the Romans thought was impossible. He marched an army of roughly 50,000 soldiers, 9,000 cavalry, and 37 war elephants from Spain, through southern France, and across the Alps into Italy. The alpine crossing was brutal — Hannibal lost nearly half his men to cold, starvation, and hostile mountain tribes — but the surprise was total.

Once in Italy, Hannibal won three stunning victories in rapid succession:

Battle of the Trebia (December 218 BC) — Hannibal lured a Roman army into a trap, destroying more than half of it.

Battle of Lake Trasimene (217 BC) — In one of the largest ambushes in military history, Hannibal destroyed an entire Roman army of 30,000 men and killed the consul Flaminius.

Battle of Cannae (216 BC) — Hannibal's masterpiece. Despite being outnumbered nearly two to one (the Romans had about 80,000 soldiers), Hannibal used a brilliant double-envelopment tactic to surround and virtually annihilate the Roman army. Roughly 50,000 to 70,000 Romans were killed, including 80 senators. Cannae remains one of the deadliest single-day battles in all of human history, and military strategists still study Hannibal's tactics today.

After Cannae, many of Rome's allies in southern Italy switched sides to Hannibal. The situation looked desperate.

But Rome refused to surrender. Instead, it adopted a new strategy: avoid pitched battles with Hannibal and instead slowly recapture the cities that had defected. Meanwhile, Rome struck at Carthage's holdings elsewhere. Publius Cornelius Scipio (later called Scipio Africanus), a brilliant young Roman general, conquered Carthage's territories in Spain and then invaded North Africa itself.

Carthage recalled Hannibal from Italy to defend the homeland. In 202 BC, Scipio defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama in North Africa — the only major battle Hannibal ever lost. Carthage surrendered, gave up its fleet, paid an enormous fine, and was reduced to a minor power.

Half a century later, despite being no real threat, Carthage had recovered enough economically to make some Romans nervous. The senator Cato the Elder famously ended every speech — no matter the topic — with the phrase "Carthago delenda est" ("Carthage must be destroyed").

In 149 BC, Rome found a pretext for war. The Third Punic War was less a war than a siege. After three years, Roman forces under Scipio Aemilianus breached the walls of Carthage in 146 BC. The city was systematically destroyed, its surviving population enslaved, and its territory became the Roman province of Africa.

While fighting Carthage in the west, Rome also expanded into the eastern Mediterranean, where the successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great's empire had been fighting among themselves for over a century.

Through a series of wars known as the Macedonian Wars, Rome defeated Philip V and Perseus of Macedonia. After the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC, Macedonia became a Roman province.

Rome also defeated the Seleucid Empire (based in modern-day Syria and the Middle East), conquered Greece, and gradually absorbed the remaining Hellenistic kingdoms. By about 130 BC, Rome was the undisputed master of the Mediterranean — a fact reflected in the Romans' nickname for the sea: Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea").

Rome's astonishing military success abroad created severe problems at home. The Republic's political system, designed for a city-state, was increasingly unable to manage a vast empire. The last century of the Republic (133–27 BC) was marked by escalating violence, political breakdown, and civil war.

The crisis began with the brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, tribunes of the plebs who tried to address the growing gap between rich and poor.

While Rome had been conquering the Mediterranean, wealthy senators had been buying up enormous estates (called latifundia) worked by slaves captured in the wars. Meanwhile, ordinary Roman soldiers — mostly small farmers — returned from years of military service to find their farms in ruin and themselves unable to compete with slave labor. Many drifted to the city of Rome, where they joined a growing mass of landless urban poor.

Tiberius Gracchus (tribune in 133 BC) proposed a law to redistribute public land to poor citizens. The Senate, whose members were the biggest landowners, fiercely opposed him. When Tiberius tried to run for a second consecutive term as tribune (which was against custom), a group of senators and their supporters attacked and beat him to death — along with about 300 of his followers. This was the first time in centuries that political violence on this scale had occurred in Rome.

Gaius Gracchus (tribune in 123–122 BC) pursued even more ambitious reforms, including subsidized grain for the urban poor and extending Roman citizenship to Rome's Italian allies. He too was killed — forced into suicide or murdered by political opponents.

The Gracchi themselves were killed, but the problems they had tried to address only got worse. Their deaths established a dangerous precedent: that political disputes in Rome could be settled by violence.

The next generation saw the rise of two powerful generals who turned their armies against the Roman state itself.

Gaius Marius was a brilliant military commander from a non-aristocratic background who won fame by defeating the Numidian king Jugurtha in Africa and stopping a massive Germanic invasion that threatened Italy. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times.

Marius made a fateful change to the Roman army. Previously, only citizens who owned property could serve as soldiers. Marius opened the army to the landless poor, providing them with weapons and equipment at state expense. This created a professional army, but with a dangerous side effect: soldiers became personally loyal to their general rather than to the state, since it was the general who promised them land and rewards after their service.

Sulla was an aristocratic general who became Marius's bitter rival. In 88 BC, when the Senate gave Sulla command of a war in the east but Marius's supporters tried to transfer the command to Marius, Sulla did the unthinkable: he marched his army on Rome itself. This was the first time in Roman history that a Roman general had used his legions against his own city.

After Sulla left for the east, Marius and his supporters seized Rome in a bloody purge. When Sulla returned in 83 BC, he fought a full-scale civil war against the Marian faction, captured Rome, and made himself dictator. He published proscription lists — lists of enemies who could be killed on sight and whose property was confiscated. Thousands died.

Sulla enacted conservative reforms to strengthen the Senate's power, then shocked everyone by voluntarily resigning his dictatorship and retiring in 79 BC. He died the following year. But his example had shown ambitious men that the Republic's institutions could be overthrown by military force.

The generation after Sulla saw the rise of three powerful men who would dominate the Republic's final decades.

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) was a brilliant general who conquered the eastern Mediterranean, cleared the sea of pirates, and reorganized the Roman provinces in the east.

Marcus Licinius Crassus was the richest man in Rome, who had gained fame (and fortune) by defeating the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 73–71 BC.

Julius Caesar was an ambitious politician and military genius from an old but not particularly wealthy patrician family.

In 60 BC, these three men formed an informal political alliance known as the First Triumvirate — not an official government body, but a private deal to help each other achieve their goals. Caesar was elected consul for 59 BC with their support, and afterwards received command of Gaul (modern France).

From 58 to 50 BC, Caesar waged the Gallic Wars, conquering all of Gaul and briefly invading Britain and Germany. His military brilliance and the wealth from his conquests made him enormously popular with his soldiers and the Roman people — and enormously threatening to his rivals in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Crassus had died in battle in the east (53 BC), and Pompey had drifted toward alliance with the conservative Senate faction that opposed Caesar. The Senate demanded that Caesar disband his army and return to Rome as a private citizen, which would have left him vulnerable to prosecution by his enemies.

On 10 January 49 BC, Caesar made the fateful decision to cross the Rubicon river — the boundary between his province of Gaul and Italy proper — with his army. By Roman law, bringing an army across the Rubicon was an act of treason. Caesar reportedly said "Alea iacta est" — "The die is cast."

The resulting civil war was swift. Pompey and much of the Senate fled to Greece. Caesar pursued them and defeated Pompey at the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC. Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was murdered by agents of the Egyptian king. Caesar followed, became involved with Queen Cleopatra, and spent the next few years defeating the remaining Pompeian forces across the Mediterranean.

By 44 BC, Caesar had been declared dictator for life — a title that horrified many senators who saw it as the end of the Republic. He also carried out ambitious reforms: he expanded the Senate, granted citizenship to many provincial peoples, reformed the calendar (creating the Julian calendar, the basis of the calendar we use today), and launched massive building projects.

On 15 March 44 BC — a date known as the Ides of March — a group of about 60 senators, led by Brutus and Cassius, stabbed Caesar to death in the Senate house. They believed they were saving the Republic.

Instead, they plunged Rome into yet another round of civil wars.

After Caesar's assassination, three men emerged as the leading powers in Rome:

Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius), Caesar's right-hand man and consul.

Octavian (Gaius Octavius), Caesar's 18-year-old adopted son and heir, who would later take the name Augustus.

Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, another of Caesar's senior supporters.

In 43 BC, these three formed the Second Triumvirate — this time an official, legally established three-man dictatorship. They launched their own proscriptions, killing thousands of political enemies, including the great orator Cicero.

Together, they defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. But the alliance between the triumvirs soon fell apart. Lepidus was sidelined, and the Roman world split into two camps: Octavian in the west and Mark Antony in the east.

Antony formed an alliance (and a romantic relationship) with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, which Octavian used as propaganda to portray Antony as having betrayed Rome for a foreign queen.

The final showdown came at the Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BC, a naval battle off the coast of Greece. Octavian's forces, commanded by his general Agrippa, won decisively. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt, where they both committed suicide the following year.

In 27 BC, the Senate granted Octavian the title Augustus ("the revered one"). This is traditionally considered the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years and left an enormous legacy.

In government, the Republic's ideas about elected representatives, term limits, separation of powers, checks and balances, and the rule of law directly inspired the creators of modern democratic republics. The United States Constitution was consciously modeled in part on Roman republican ideas — the very word "Senate" comes from Rome, as does the concept of the "veto."

In law, the Republic produced the Law of the Twelve Tables and developed the legal traditions that would eventually become Roman law — the foundation of legal systems across Europe and Latin America.

In military organization, the Roman legion — the Republic's primary military unit — became the most effective fighting force in the ancient world. Roman military tactics, engineering, and discipline set standards that lasted for centuries.

In infrastructure, the Republic built the first great Roman roads (beginning with the Via Appia in 312 BC) and aqueducts (beginning with the Aqua Appia the same year) that became hallmarks of Roman civilization.

The Republic's ultimate failure also left a warning. Its collapse showed how quickly republican institutions can be destroyed when political polarization, economic inequality, and military power combine to override the rule of law — a lesson that later generations would have reason to remember.

• Ancient Rome
• Roman Kingdom
• Roman Empire
• Punic Wars
• Julius Caesar
• Augustus
• Roman Senate
• Roman consul
• Conflict of the Orders