Servian constitution

Politics of ancient Rome
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Senatus consultum ultimum
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The Servian constitution was one of the earliest forms of military and political organization used during The Roman Republic. Most of the reforms extended voting rights to certain groups, in particular to Rome's citizen-commoners (collectively, the plebeians) who were minor landholders or otherwise landless citizens hitherto disqualified from voting by ancestry, status or ethnicity, as distinguished from the hereditary patricians. The reforms thus redefined the fiscal and military obligations of all Roman citizens. The constitution introduced two elements into the Roman system of government: a census of every male citizen, in order to establish his wealth, tax liabilities, military obligation, and the weight of his vote; and the comitia centuriata, an assembly with electoral, legislative and judicial powers. Both institutions were foundational for Roman republicanism.[1]

The Servian constitution is traditionally attributed to the sixth king of Rome, Servius Tullius (578–534 BC),[2] though scholars now believe that the wholesale attribution of these measures to Servius "cannot be taken at face value".[3] The constitution likely represents a long-drawn, complex and piecemeal process extending from Servius' predecessors, former kings Ancus Marcius and Tarquinius Priscus, to his successor Tarquinius Superbus, into the Middle and Late Republic.

Rome's military and territorial expansion and the consequent changes in its population made franchise regulation and reform an ongoing necessity. By entrusting the military defense of the state to all citizens, the Servian reform created interdependency among the social classes. In its organization of voting tribes, it inextricably allied political and military life and opened up a "political space" for republican participation.[4] To the Augustan historian Livy, the military service rendered by plebeians was thus a form of public service on a par with patrician duty in the Senate.[5] Even so, census rank depended on property value, and under the Servian constitution no citizen assessed at a worth of less than 11,000 asses (or 12,500, depending on the source) was admitted to the regular army.[6]

  1. ^ Forsythe, "The Army and Centuriate Organization," p. 26.
  2. ^ Gary Forsythe, "The Army and Centuriate Organization in Early Rome," in A Companion to the Roman Army (Blackwell, 2011), p. 24.
  3. ^ Tim Cornell, The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000 – 264 BC), Routledge, 1995, pp. 144 - 147, 173 -175, 183 for military character of reforms, especially in census.
  4. ^ Michael S. Drake, Problematics of Military Power: Government, Discipline and the Subject of Violence (Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 22–23.
  5. ^ Drake, Problematics of Military Power, p. 39.
  6. ^ Léon Homo, Roman Political Institutions From City to State (Routledge, 2005, originally published 1929), p. 18.