User:Ifly6/Plebeian tribune

This fanciful 1799 print shows Gaius Gracchus, tribune of 123–22 BC, giving an oration.

This depiction of the forum shows the middle republican senate house, the curia Hostilia, and the surrounding area. The rostra was where orators would speak; the tribune's benches would have sat directly outside the curia.

A tribune of the plebs (also plebeian tribune; Latin: tribunus plebis) was a magistrate in the Roman Republic. According to the Roman annalistic tradition, the tribunes were created initially to protect the plebeians from abuse and advocate for plebeian interests with the patrician magistrates. By the late republic, they were one of the most powerful civil magistrates in the city and an integral part of the republican constitution, with power to veto laws and senatorial decrees, intercede against prosecutions, and summon the concilium plebis to vote on legislation binding all Romans.

The plebeian tribunate was, through its whole history, open only to plebeians: patricians could not be elected unless they became plebeian first. Ten served every year during the classical republic with the full extent of their powers exercisable within the sacred boundary of the city (pomerium).

Powers

History

Origins

The annalistic tradition dates the formation of the tribunate to c. 495 BC after a first secession of the plebs. There were initially two or five men elected; it places the establishment of the classical ten tribunes to the office's restoration in the aftermath of the Second Decemvirate (traditionally dated to 457 BC).

Sulla's reforms

See also: Constitutional reforms of Sulla

During Sulla's dictatorship, he moved legislation to restrict the power of the tribunes whom he saw as troublemakers upsetting senatorial control of the state. To that end, he transformed the tribunate into a political dead-end by prohibiting former tribunes from again holding office. He also removed their right to bring legislation, reducing their powers only to intercession against magisterial action.

Resigning from the dictatorship in 80 BC, Sulla's tribunician reforms did not last long. By 75 BC the prohibition on former tribunes again holding office was abolished by consular legislation. The remaining restrictions on their powers were abolished in the consulship of Pompey and Crassus, both Sullan lieutenants, in 70 BC amid a strong push from across political divisions to do away with Sulla's reforms.

Decline

The assumption of tribunicia potestas by Augustus in ## BC usurped the traditional tribunician right to intercede against unjust judicial decisions. While the tribunes were not abolished, appeals to the tribunes were largely replaced by appeals to the emperor since imperial decisions were in all cases more final.

See also

• List of tribunes of the plebs

Bibliography

Modern sources

• Brennan, T Corey (26 October 2017). "tribunicia potestas". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.8196. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
• Cornell, Tim (1995). The beginnings of Rome. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01596-0. OCLC 31515793.
• Derow, Peter Sidney (31 August 2016). "tribuni plebis". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Classics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6554. ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
• Drogula, Fred K (2017). "Plebeian tribunes and the government of early Rome". Antichthon. 51: 101–123. doi:10.1017/ann.2017.8. ISSN 0066-4774.
• Forsythe, Gary (2005). A critical history of early Rome. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-94029-1. OCLC 70728478.
• Gruen, Erich (1995). The last generation of the Roman republic. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02238-6.
• Kondratieff, E J (2018). "Tribuni plebis". Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Wiley. pp. 1–5. doi:10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah20131.pub2. ISBN 978-1-4051-7935-5 – via ResearchGate.
• Lintott, Andrew (1999). Constitution of the Roman republic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-926108-6. Reprinted 2009.
• Lomas, Kathryn (2018). The rise of Rome. History of the Ancient World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. doi:10.4159/9780674919938. ISBN 978-0-674-65965-0. S2CID 239349186.
• Steel, Catherine (2014). "The Roman senate and the post-Sullan "res publica"". Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. 63 (3): 323–339. doi:10.25162/historia-2014-0018. ISSN 0018-2311. JSTOR 24432812. S2CID 151289863.
• Smith, Christopher (2012). "The origins of the tribunate of the plebs". Antichthon. 46: 101–125. doi:10.1017/S0066477400000162. ISSN 0066-4774.

Ancient sources

• Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1937–50) [1st century BC]. Roman Antiquities. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by Cary, Ernest. Harvard University Press – via LacusCurtius.
• Livy (1905) [1st century BC]. From the Founding of the City . Translated by Roberts, Canon – via Wikisource.

External links

• Devereaux, Bret (25 August 2023). "How to Roman Republic 101, Part IIIc: Ten Tribunes, Two Censors and Twenty-Six Guys". A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry.
• Media related to Ifly6/Plebeian tribune at Wikimedia Commons