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The people's role in the political system of the Roman Republic has been at the centre of scholarly debate since Millar's challenge to the traditional oligarchic interpretation of Republican politics.1 Today, few would dismiss the significance of the popular element in the system altogether. However, many scholars strongly insist that in the final analysis, the Republic, whatever popular or pseudo-popular features it possessed, was a government of the elite, by the elite and for the elite. This has increasingly come to be attributed to the cultural hegemony of the Roman ruling class. Rather than excluding the common people from the political process, the elite, it is now argued, was able to make sure that the part they played in politics would be broadly positive from its point of view. What follows is a critical examination of this thesis.
I. Cultural factors and the power of the elite
The debate on Roman "democracy" is inevitably influenced by one's understanding of this loaded term, which is often strongly informed by modern democratic theory and experience. That modern political systems usually regarded as democratic include a considerable element of elite control and manipulation is, of course, a truism.2 How far-reaching, and, indeed, "undemocratic" the influence of this elitist element is, and what room it leaves for genuine popular participation - these are debatable points, both analytically and ideologically. Hence there can be no full agreement as to what it is we are looking for when we inquire about "democratic" features in the Roman Republic.
Of course, some things about the Republican system were non-democratic in an uncontroversial sense, notably the wide powers of presiding magistrates in the assemblies, the absence of an equal and universal suffrage (among male citizens), and the practical impossibility for the great majority of citizens to attend the assemblies. Precisely in the Late Republic, when the assemblies were, as is widely acknowledged, more assertive and ready to defy the wishes of the senatorial elite (mainly in legislative votes), making, at least arguably, the system as a whole more "popular", they also became less representative of the citizen body as a whole, only a small fraction of which, both in Italy and in the huge city population, had any chance to attend and to...