Roman Republic founded
The Romans expelled their last king, Tarquinius Superbus, in 509 BC and swore never to allow a monarchy again. They replaced him with two annually-elected consuls who could veto each other, a Senate of former magistrates, and popular assemblies. Unlike Athens, Rome's system was explicitly mixed — part aristocratic, part democratic, part executive. It lasted in functional form for about 450 years before collapsing into civil war, and its specific innovation was checks and balances: no single office could act without another office's consent.
Roman law distinguished between imperium (executive authority), potestas (official powers), and auctoritas (moral authority) — three separable things that later constitutional theorists spent centuries trying to recombine. The U.S. founders read Polybius's account of the Roman constitution more carefully than any Greek one.
03 · The Civic Experiment
For a thousand years across the Mediterranean, a radical experiment ran: the citizens themselves decided, by vote, in person, in public. Athens invented demokratia in 508 BC. Rome ran a republic from 509 BC with elected consuls and a formal senate. Both collapsed — Athens to Macedon, Rome to its own emperors — and the experiment was shelved. Europe then spent the next 1,300 years pretending it had never happened.
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