How They DId It - Elections in Ancient Rome

welcome to how they did it a show where we take a look at the daily lives of our ancestors today we'll be turning our attention to ancient elections and see what it was like for Romans heading to the polls elections are the formal and organized process of selecting candidates by vote our discussion will be broken down into sections on each of the following the offices the voters and the process please note that the nature of each of these topics evolved over the course of Roman history in this particular video we'll be looking at the voting process of the mid Roman Republic let's begin by quickly mapping out the main offices which were to be filled each year as we do so again keep in mind that the number of requirements and authority of each office did change over time but that said let's get started the highest office was that of consul these controlled the army and managed affairs of government often at the direction of the Senate though they had much power in the form of Imperium this was checked by their limited term and the fact that there were two consuls each with the power to veto the other next came the praetor their role evolved over time but largely came to deal with law and justice they were the supreme civil judges who issued edicts dealt with important cases and administered Roman law as the republic expanded more offices were created a deal with Rome's growing Authority the second parade door had been added in 241 BC and by the end of the 1st century BC their numbers had increased to 16 a dials held administrative responsibilities in Rome they supervised public works archives and markets additionally they played an important role in organizing public games and festivals there were two plebeian and to patrician a tiles cry stores were financial and administrative officials who maintained public records and administered the Treasury they might be posted at Rome sent a second-in-command to a governor in the provinces or even serve as a pay master for a legion as with many other positions their numbers grew over time and eventually reached 30 by the first century be see plebeian Tribune's are another important position to mention as they were established to provide protection against the patricians these individuals had the power to convene the plebeian assembly and proposed legislation before it they also had the important power to veto any laws decrees in actions within Rome so long as they were physically present to object the only one able to supersede their veto would be a dictator by the first century BC there were ten of these Tribune's who will skip over some of the other minor offices to touch on a particularly important one that of censor this office stands out because it was voted on once every five years rather than annually and was the only office which held power for 18 months censors were primarily tasked with controlling the social order of Roman citizens they ran the census placed citizens into tribes and voting classes and regulated membership of the Senate as a result it was an incredibly powerful and coveted position once again however no one man can be trusted with such an office and there were always two sensors now that we have detailed what sorts of offices were to be voted on let's talk about the voters themselves as we might expect in the past this group was a rather thin slice of the overall society only male Roman citizens could vote beyond that things got even more restrictive as theirs was not a system based on the idea of one person one vote rather the Roman system was based on voting units I'll explain basically what happened is that any particular election would have the Romans voting according to one of two organizations the tribal assembly and the Centurion assembly both assemblies were conceived of as representing the entire populace Romanus but in different capacities the tribal assembly was the Romans in their civil capacity while the Centurion assembly was Romans acting in their military capacity the tribal assembly and will include the plebeian assembly for now elected a doll's Quay stores Tribune's and other lower officials the Centurion Assembly elected consuls pray tours and sensors the tribal assembly was based on as name implies ones tribal Association there had originally been just three tribes but as Rome grew more were added and the total eventually reached 35 as we mentioned it would be the censors who oversaw the process of associating individuals with each tribe this was generally done on a geographical basis with four urban tribes reserved for the inhabitants of Rome and 31 rural tribes allocated to the surrounding regions I'll note that things weren't always so clear-cut as tribal association was inherited and things could get muddled with internal migration but anyways each tribe regardless of size had one vote this meant that voting power of individuals are vary greatly the densely populated urban areas had their votes diluted while the rural areas had their votes amplified this imbalance was made worse by the fact that voting took place in Rome itself of those in the rural tribes it was typically only the rich landowners who could afford to make the trip to Rome therefore the tribal assembly had an inbuilt bias favoring the wealthy rural landowners over the urban poor cramming individuals into limited tribal groups was an effective means of voter suppression the numerous freed slaves for instance were all crammed into the four large urban tribes while the Latin allies had to fight against being restricted to just ten tribes during the social war as we stated the censured assembly had a different organization that was based on the Romans in their military capacity as a result rather than being organized geographically citizens were now organized by property class this reflected the fact that back in the day Roman citizens were expected to bring their own gear to war and were thus organized accordingly the richer citizens who could afford a full panoply were placed in a higher class to serve as heavy infantry while the poorer citizens were placed in the lower classes where they served as light infantry the Centurion assembly was meant to reflect the idea that since the rich contributed more to war they should have the most say in military matters this is why this ensured assembly was responsible for electing consuls and pray tours because these magistrates held Imperium and could therefore command armies to explain how the wealth classes worked who will use a description recorded by Livy he states that the Romans were separated into six classes plus additional special groups based on an individual's wealth assessment each of these groups was then further broken down into centuries each which had one vote there are a total of 193 centuries and therefore 193 votes in the Centurion assembly as you can see many of the votes are stacked at the upper classes while the lowest class shares a single vote the system was reformed over time and there are many competing theories about how it may have evolved but regardless of the exact form the system would take it would always favor the fewer but richer voters now that we have discussed both the offices and the voting groups we can now move on to describing how the elections took place when voting occurred Romans would gather on the campus martius the presiding magistrate either a council pray tour or Tribune would then announce the candidates there were typically multiple positions to be filled with several candidates running for each position as an example for the two counselor positions there might be seven candidates once the candidates were all announced the voters would enter a temporary structure which had been erected to help organize the process it basically just included voting platforms at one end and a means to divide the voters leading up to it Julius Caesar had planned the construction of a permanent structure called the safe to Giulia which was eventually completed by Agrippa under the reign of Augustus the structure is still around today and has served as the basis for modern reconstructions of the voting process the tribal assembly would enter the voting structure and be divided into 35 files one for each of the 35 tribes all tribes would then begin voting at the same time this would consist of individuals advancing to the front of their line and announcing their vote or early this was then recorded by officers called purgatory with additional election officials called custody's overseeing the process to prevent fraud later in the 130s bc the voice vote would be switched to a ballot for greater privacy in the reformed system individuals would walk up to a platform and receive a blank slate they would then marked their ballot with the initials of the preferred candidates and deposited in a box in either case the tally of votes would be collected and counted this might take a while as some have estimated that up to 70,000 citizens might be voting in a tribal assembly once all the tribes had finished their votes would be announced in an order chosen by lot just as it's bad news in a u.s. presidential election if a candidate doesn't win their home state it was bad news if a candidate in a Roman election didn't win their own tribe by the way as the votes ended up it only took 51% or 18 of the 35 tribal votes to elect a candidate once a candidate received 18 votes they were elected and the position was considered closed however this could lead to some funky situations where someone was declared the winner despite later tribal vote announcements showing someone else had actually gotten more votes overall this is a little bit confusing to stand out loud so I'll explain with a scenario let's say that the 35 tribes have been called to elect 10 tributes each tribe votes for their preferred 10 candidates for our purposes let's assume that the first 18 tribes follow a similar voting pattern by the 18th tribal vote candidate a has been declared a winner while candidates B through J are shy of winning by a single vote due to candidate K getting votes here and there now the next tribe finishes up voting we can up their vote and we announce that candidates B through J all have gotten the extra vote they need and so now all the positions that we were looking to fill have gotten their 18 votes and now voting is closed the election is over however it might actually be the case that later voters preferred candidate k over a such that K actually got 26 votes compared to a is 18 but due simply to the order of the announcement the later voters were ignored rare as this might be it apparently seems to have occurred at least in one instance we know of that's pretty crazy now let's move on to the other voting group the censured assembly gathered and voted in a slightly different manner as we mentioned they were split in two centuries each located within wealth class tiers upon entering the voting structure they would gather within fenced pens allocated for their centuries unlike the tribal assembly the Centurion assembly actually voted sequentially rather than all at once according to Livy the 18th centuries of the Knights were summoned first followed by the 80 centuries of the first class each century would have its constituent members voiced their vote or in later times cast a ballot these would then be counted and the overall vote for that century announced due to the sequential nature of the process and the frequent break to make announcements the voting of the century assembly actually took much much longer than the tribal assembly it could often stretch for several days and even provided time for further campaigning by candidates along the way another side effect of the sequential voting was that the upper classes always went first early on the first two groups controlled 98 of the 193 possible votes this meant that if they voted together in lockstep they already had over 50% of the vote and candidates can be chosen without any of the other classes casting a vote later on the voting structure would be reformed to shift some of the centuries to the lower classes and realign things based on tribal Association if you're interested in learning more about this model check out this video by history of syphilis which does a good job of fleshing this later system out but either way the process would largely remain dominated by the elites if all the upper classes voted the same way then they could automatically determine a winner however if things were more contested as was typically the case the outcome would require input from the other classes yet only rarely did the vote trickle down to the very last of the lower classes though this system may seem archaic and convoluted we should be careful in casting stones considering the Glass Houses some of us vote in in any case I hope you've enjoyed this introduction to ancient voting in Rome stay tuned for more episodes on topics such as Roman political parties and campaigning also be sure to vote in your own elections coming up I like to thank our supporters on patreon who have made this video possible James Conrad for his help with research and our artist unders blood loaf for his fantastic illustrations please consider contributing to fund future content if you found this topic interesting check out these related videos about our fascinating past be sure to LIKE and subscribe for more history and check out our description for wasteth support the channel thanks for watching

Channel: Invicta

Views: 238,285

Rating: 4.9131317 out of 5

Keywords: how they did it, elections in ancient rome, roman government, roman elections, voting in ancient rome, how they did it elections in ancient rome, us elections, the roman senate, roman government documentary, elections in the roman republic, government of the roman republic, consul, roman consul, invicts history, centuriate assembly, tribal assembly, ancient elections, elections 2018, roman republic, historia civilis, ancient rome, ancient history, election 2018

Id: m08xGa2RHKk

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018

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