Legislative Campaigns In The Late Roman Republic

In the title of this article "Late Roman Republic" refers to the period from 69 BC to 59 BC. In this period political activities of populares represented by Caesar is the most active. The so-called populares and optimates are not modern parties, but a kind of unstable political alliance. The difference between them lies in the different ways of seeking legitimacy. Optimates want to preserve the traditions of the Republic, while populares achieved its purpose by the voting assembly. In this period using legislation to carry on political struggle is a very important feature. This article has made a concrete discussion to this phenomenon. First, it discusses the role of the plebs in the legislative process and the operating procedure of voting assemblies. Second, it introduces politicians’methods in the legislative campaigns. Third, it analyzes the political motivation behind legislation by introducing the main realms of legislation. Finally, by the means of analyzing the campaign for legislation we will reveal it’s relationship with the decline of the Roman Republic.Roman legislation needs to be carried out by voting assemblies including the concilium plebis, the comitia tributa and the comitia centuriata. In addition, for the need of propaganda a kind of informal assembly which is called contio will be held. Their operation has different characteristics, and their status and role in the legislation is different. They all controlled by politicians, and the rights of plebs has many limitation.Because of the fact that plebs participated in the legislation are easy to be manipulated by politicians, so politicians can use different kinds of methods to impact on the legislative process. The most frequent ways are speech incitement, temptation of interests, veto of tribunes, religious means and violence.By these means, the main realms of campaign for legislation are election reform, appointment of officials, land distribution and judicial adjudication and so on. Behind the legislation, there are different political motivations. The proposal of populares, tries to suppress the Senate privileges, or to expand their interests in these areas. The proposal of optimates tries to maintain the traditional social order.The legislative campaign reflects social problems. We can feel intense factional struggle. We can also feel the peasants bankrupt tendency, citizenship problems and Roman moral degeneration. Because of these social problems populares seize the opportunity to expand their influence in the legislative campaign, paving the way for the establishment of dictatorship. Although the Senate try to maintain the existing order, but the Republic’s demise is inevitable.