Preface

Why Rome?What is the point of examining the constitution of the Roman Republic?First, one is free to examine in one's academic endeavours what one sees fit and beneficial to their discipline, society and humanity.Academia, a bit like Athens in the times of Pericles, is like a city thrown open to the world and our city is certainly one that obeys one master alone: the master of academic freedom.Second, Rome, her constitution, is a sort of a constant and eternal reminder of what can go right and what can go wrong in human nature, affairs and endeavours.Rome, never divine, always human, occasionally all too human, still represents human existence in its most fundamental but powerful essence: Rome and all that she symbolises has traditionally represented obscure and mysterious beginnings, greed, power, pragmatism, degeneration, decadence, lust, rise and fall.To study Rome is to study human existence, human character and human nature.To examine the Republic is to examine not only the constitutional psyche of the Romans but also the constitutional psyche of much of our modern world.To evaluate the constitution of the Roman Republic is to effectively understand the phobias, the anxieties, the dreams and the aspirations of the Romans.Even the utilitarian Romans dared to dream.Their dreams went close to the more basic essence of human existence and, yet somehow, the Romans created something great and beautiful despite their humble and rustic beginnings.Their culture, a hybrid culture by all means, stands for one of the three classic pillars of the Western world (the other two being Athens and Jerusalem).Third, perhaps the greatest benefit to one's examination of Rome's constitution is the fact that, through such examination, one can be offered practical shortcuts about political and legal issues in modern times.Rome offers us the magnificent shortcut as to how we can make our world's republics better and stronger.Every true democrat, every true aristocrat, every person in the disciplines of law and political science, every research scholar in the classical disciplines, every politician but also every citizen of the world can learn a great deal as to how the republican ideal and democracy flourished and died in Rome's mixed constitution, a constitution that seems to have been generated out of fear of great individual power for long.In their efforts to democratise their Republic, the Romans, at least their elites, did all they could to maintain the status quo, a status quo that would tend to be of oligarchic and monarchic nature.For the most part of the Republic, its constitution was controlled by powerful oligarchic elites, mainly comprising Patricians and plutocrats with the democratic elements of Rome being kept under significant control by the same elites.Rome's people would be powerful but it would be x