institutions
entries
the only untouchable women
the vestal virgins were rome's great legal exception. emancipated women, with the power to pardon a condemned man simply by crossing his path, yet subject to an atrocious punishment if they broke their vows: death without the shedding of blood.
the invention of the consulship
how to govern after outlawing the kings. the roman senate invents the divided magistracy of the two consuls and the power of the veto to prevent new tyrannies in the year 509 bce.
the untouchable politician of rome
the tribune of the plebs and the power of the veto. the sacrosanctitas, the magical legal shield that protected popular leaders and gave them the power to paralyse the senate and the whole republic.
the law that legalised love
the patricians prohibited by law any marriage with plebeians to shield their purity of blood. the pressure of the plebs forces through the lex canuleia in 445 bce and opens the first crack in the wall of power.
the revenge of the excluded
the conflict of the orders was no revolt of the starving but a war over the high offices, led by a wealthy plebeian elite. in 367 bce the licinio-sextian laws opened the consulship to the plebs and, without meaning to, gave birth to a new aristocracy.
the queen of roads
in 312 bce the censor appius claudius orders the via appia traced from rome to capua. rome discovers that a war is won with roads that do not sink into the mud, and its first logistical infrastructure is born.
the fifth secession and the law that levelled
in 287 bce the plebs abandons rome for the last time and encamps on the janiculum. to bring it back, the dictator quintus hortensius enacts the lex hortensia, which turns plebiscites into binding law for everyone and closes two centuries of the conflict of the orders.