How Did the Romans Reform Their Government? (PART I)

Imagine you’re unhappy with your government. What can you do to change it? You could post on social media. That vents some frustration but doesn’t change anyone’s mind. You could take to the streets, like the upwards of 7.2 million people who participated in the recent No Kings protest. That brings awareness but probably no policy change. Maybe you just need a charismatic leader! Perhaps, but you could lose precious time waiting for Godot.

How did the Roman populace change their government? Could they, even? Yes, and in lasting and meaningful ways. Their successes came during a distinct period in Rome’s history: the Republic.

Random photo I took of half-missing inscription that we’ll pretend has relevance to this blog post.

The Roman Republic was an era of quasi-democratic government spanning the period between the overthrow of the last king in 509 BC up until Julius Caesar’s one-man rule began in 49 BC. All male citizens could vote, but some votes counted more than others. To oversimplify it, the poorer you were, the less your vote counted. Plebeians (or ‘the masses’) comprised over 90% of the electorate, but the aristocrats held the levers of power and clung to them white-knuckled.

If the plebes wanted change, they had to make it happen. You might expect their efforts, as with much of Roman history, to be soaked in blood. Far from it, actually. The story of the plebes reforms isn’t romantic; there are no revolutionary heroes rising up and delivering fiery speeches. Instead, it’s a practical tale about leverage. Less exciting to be sure, but much more instructional and effective. The plebes made several pushes, but I’ll focus on the 3 most important ones. Welcome to the Secessions.

The First Secession (494 BC)

By the early 5th c BC, years of Roman warfare left many plebeians in debt. These were soldiers, largely, who borrowed heavily to support their farms while they fought in military campaigns. But defaults were widespread, making the debtors legally vulnerable to enslavement by creditors. The courts and magistracies were monopolized by patricians, so appeals went nowhere. When negotiation failed, the plebes did something radical but restrained: they up and left.

Specifically, they withdrew en masse to a nearby hill. They refused military service and civic participation. And of course no one went to work. Rome ground to a halt. Without soldiers, the military couldn’t fight, and without workers, the city could not function. Faced with paralysis, the patrician elite blinked, and debt enslavement became a thing of the past.

To reduce the risk of another walkout, the patricians created the Tribunate, an assembly of plebs, for plebs (it was actually several smaller, task-specific assemblies, but for simplicity I’m calling it the Tribunate). This was big. It gave the plebes a forum to air grievances and allowed them to elect magistrates called Tribunes from among their number. While the body as a whole couldn’t legislate, each Tribune had a superpower: acrosanctity.

Basically, you couldn’t touch a Tribune. Like, at all, whether you intended harm or a handshake. Their bodies were inviolable. So shielded, a Tribune would literally put himself between a plebe and a patrician who meant him imminent harm. The patrician would back down because sacrosanctity had religious roots. Violating it wasn’t just illegal, it was sacrilege.

Rome learned early on that they could ignore the people’s anger but not their absence. Through the nonviolent and simple act of walking away, the plebs staked their first claim to Roman governance. The concessions they earned endured for centuries and anticipated better ones to come.

The Second Secession (449 BCE)

Half a century later, more change was brewing. In 462 BC, a Tribune launched an inquiry to define and codify all of Roman law, much of which was ambiguous in its definitions or penalties, if documented at all.

The Senate appointed a committee of 10 men - the decemvir - to handle this task. These men held vast power, necessary as it was for them to resolve disputes in the course of their work while also running the state. The result of their efforts was the Ten Tables, something like a Roman Constitution. However, the group thought 2 more tables were necessary to capture the whole of Roman law. The first decemvir stepped down as scheduled, and a set of mostly new members was sworn in as the second decemvir. This is where the trouble started.

One of the members attempted to have a free plebeian girl reported as a missing slave so he could buy her and have sex with her. Outraged, her father killed her, thus preserving her honor before she could be deflowered. While this played out, absolute power overtook the men of the decemvir. They suspended normal magistracies like consul and praetor; they abolished appeals, and their arbitrary rule became indistinguishable from tyranny. Worst of all, they refused to step down when their terms expired.

The aristocracy was powerless, or at least feckless, in remedying the situation. Once again, the plebes stepped up to change things, and once again, their response was withdrawal, not insurrection. Soldiers and civilians withdrew cooperation. The army refused to obey orders. The bulk of the citizenry left the city. Governance simply froze in place. The gambit worked. The decemvirs were booted and appeals were reinstated. Importantly, the Tribunate got some extra powers. Their resolutions were now recognized as binding, pending Senatorial approval. This was a modest but important enhancement to the plebs’ power. After the First Secession, the Tribunate became a shield. After the Second, it now became a lever, able to exert real influence on governance. And again, this happened without violence or spectacle.

The Final Secession (287 BCE)

The last and most consequential secession came nearly two centuries after the first. Disputes over land brought plebeian frustration to a breaking point. The Senate delayed. Negotiations failed. But the plebs’ response was familiar: they withdrew, this time to the Janiculum Hill. There was no riot, no violence, no dramatic confrontation. Just absence. It was the power of a negative that made a positive change.

While this secession played out much like the first two, the concession was eye-popping. The Lex Hortensia made decrees - or plebiscites - of the Tribunate binding on all Romans. Critically, these decrees did not require Senate approval. The Tribunate became a full and independent legislative body and at a stroke, Rome abolished all laws based on class. Reality would take a while to catch up to the law, but this was a huge leap forward for ‘the masses.’

The Cumulative Effect

The Final Secession didn’t solve all problems, of course, but it did institutionalize the masses and their rights of redress, giving all the tensions and pressures a place to play out. The plebes got a seat at the table and got their reforms in writing, as it were. The plebes’ would have future grievances, but due to the leverage now embedded in the Roman system, they didn’t need to walk out anymore.

I’m struck by the consistency in the 3 Secessions:

• Secessions were rare and targeted; there wasn’t constant unrest

• They followed prolonged frustration, not impulsive rage

• They relied on non-cooperation, not violence

• They produced durable institutional change

Each time, the patricians conceded just enough to restore function, and over time, that “just enough” became transformative. The legacy of these efforts was the Tribunate and the great powers it bestowed on the plebes. And it didn’t come about thanks to rainbows and happy idealism. Rather, it was built by fear of paralysis. And that’s pretty badass if you ask me.

These changes endured for centuries, but once the Republican era ended, it was a different story. Next time, we’ll explore how ‘bread and circuses’ hindered reform and, most importantly, whether a plebeian-type secession could effect change today.