Roman social and political structures | World History | Khan Academy

Talk a little bit about the social and political structures of ancient Rome. It's important to keep in mind that ancient Rome wasn't just a static thing that never changed; it existed for over a thousand years from its founding as a kingdom, if you believe the founding myth founded by Romulus in 753 BCE. Most historians don't accept that founding myth.

Then, they overthrew their last king in 509 BCE, Tarquin the Proud, and established the Roman Republic, which was eventually turned into an Empire by Julius Caesar and Augustus. Whenever you have something this long-lasting, you can imagine the social and political structures evolved over time.

But let's begin with the period when it was a kingdom. Even then, there were some noteworthy social and political structures that continued on into the Republic period and even when it was an Empire. One interesting thing is that when we typically think of kings, we think of it as being dynastic. If I am king, then my oldest son, or maybe in certain cultures my oldest daughter, might become king or queen. But it turns out that many of the especially early kings of the Roman Kingdom were actually elected. They had a lot of power; all the power resided in them. They were the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. They even had religious power.

It's interesting to think of the idea of elected kings. Now, all of them weren't elected; several of them were dynastic. But it is an interesting idea. Another concept that emerged during the Roman Kingdom is this idea of citizenship. Now, it's important to realize that today in a lot of countries, we think of everyone who is a formal resident of that country as a citizen. Most people view citizens as those born in a country, but that was not the case in Rome.

When we go into this Roman Kingdom, I do this in many videos; we're not thinking about this sprawling Roman Empire that we'll see several hundred years later. At that time, Rome was really just in control of Rome. Over time, especially during the Republic period, it starts to expand and eventually have hegemony or dominant power over the Mediterranean and parts of the Middle East, and Southern Europe.

But let's go back to the Kingdom Period. What I'm about to draw actually stays true through most of Roman civilization. If this white circle represents the people who lived under Roman rule, only a subset were citizens. These were the citizens: male landowners, right over here. Within the citizens, they were further divided between patricians and plebeians. You could think of the patricians as the nobility.

These were people who became patrician based on the family they were born into, and the word literally comes from this idea that you are descended from the founding fathers of Rome. Then all of the other citizens were the plebeians—so all of the other ones were the plebeians, right over here. As we'll see, the patricians held most of the power and most of the wealth for a significant amount of time. However, as we go through the Republic period, the plebeians start to gain more and more power. Many plebeians also start to acquire wealth, and some patrician families do end up poor.

For the most part, the patricians were the nobility associated with the aristocracy. But the plebeians—their numbers included some wealthy and powerful individuals as well. Now, you're probably saying, what about all of these other people? Well, you can imagine non-landholding males, women, and slaves. Even though we idealize Rome, and there were many very interesting things about it, one of the legacies that historians reflect a bit more negatively on is that Roman society was built on the idea of slaves. Most of the slaves were people that they subjugated—people they conquered in other lands. They might have been people who, at least in the authorities' view, committed a crime of some kind.

Thus, the society was built on slavery so that you had a large segment of the population that had no rights—that was considered slaves. Later on, they started to gain some very basic rudimentary rights, but you can imagine, as a slave, you had close to no rights whatsoever.

Another institution that developed during the time of the Roman Kingdom was the Senate—the Roman Senate. Under the king, the king had most of the power. But once the Roman Republic got established, it was the Senate where most of the power resided. This depiction came much later of the Roman Senate, and it's important to realize that the Senate was not the only institution or position within the Roman Republic.

The consuls were there, and you could view the consuls as the executives. If you think of a system like the United States, the executive power resides in the president. So, it's analogous to the president; they are running the government and are also commanders-in-chief of the military.

Now, even though it was considered a very high title, the power of the consuls was very limited. There were two of them at any given time, so I just drew the two consuls. They could veto each other at any time to keep any one consul from getting too powerful, and they only had a one-year term. During that one year, they would alternate on a monthly basis on who was the more senior consul.

You can imagine the consuls were limited in many ways. Even though the Senate was officially supposed to advise the consuls, in practice, the Senate often told the consuls what to do, and the consuls actually did it.

Another question is, well, who gets to be a consul and who gets to be in the Senate? In the early days, the Senate was mainly patrician. Over time, as plebeians started to exert more influence, especially as we go into the mid and later Roman Republic, you start to have wealthier plebeians in the Senate. But in general, the Senate was composed of the aristocracy—wealthy and influential men of Rome.

How are they selected for the Senate? Well, in the early days, it was actually the consuls who selected the senators. Later on, or shortly thereafter, and for most of the Republic period, it was a position called the censor that decided who got to actually serve in the Senate.

Now, another question you might ask is, who's deciding who gets to be a consul? Who gets to be a censor? There are many other executive positions generally called magistrates that came from one of the assemblies of the Roman Republic—in particular, the Centuriate Assembly.

The Centuriate Assembly elected consuls—the senior executives, the senior magistrates. It’s one way you could think about it; they elected them. Who was in the Centuriate Assembly, and why did they call it the Centuriate Assembly? Well, it started off as citizen soldiers being grouped into groups of a hundred.

On a particular issue, including who should be elected consul, this group of 100 would vote, and whatever the majority was, their representative to the assembly would vote that way. So they wouldn't just elect a representative, and that representative could do anything they wanted—they would tell that representative how to vote.

That’s why it was called the Centuriate Assembly, because you had these groups of 100, and a lot of their power was in electing these consuls and other senior magistrates. But that wasn't the only assembly.

You also had the Tribal Assembly. This broke up the Roman citizenry by tribe, and this assembly contained both plebeians and patricians. You had the Plebeian Council—this was only for plebeians.

Even though all of these assemblies evolved over time, the general idea during the Roman Republic is that the Senate is where important debates on foreign policy happen—the important debates on what Rome should become as a society, as a republic, and eventually as an empire.