Along with citizenship, the republican government was another important institution of Roman political life. In the early republic, social divisions determined the shape of politics. Political power was in the hands of a hereditary aristocracy — the patricians, whose privileged legal status was determined by their birth as members of certain families. The common people of Rome, the plebeians (plih-BEE-uhns), were free citizens with a voice in politics, but they had few of the patricians’ political and social advantages. While some plebeian merchants rivaled the patricians in wealth, most plebeians were poor artisans, small farmers, and landless urban dwellers.

The Romans created several assemblies through which men elected high officials and passed ordinances. The most important of these was the Senate. During the republic, the Senate advised the consuls and other officials about military and political matters and handled government finances. Because the Senate sat year after year with the same members, while the consuls changed annually, it provided stability, and its advice came to have the force of law. Another responsibility of the Senate was to handle relations between Rome and other powers.

The highest officials of the republic were the two consuls, positions initially open only to patrician men. The consuls commanded the army in battle, administered state business, and supervised financial affairs. When the consuls were away from Rome, praetors (PREE-tuhrz) could act in their place. After the age of overseas conquests (see below), the Romans divided their lands in the Mediterranean into provinces governed by ex-consuls and ex-praetors.

A lasting achievement of the Romans was their development of law. Roman civil law, the ius civile, consisted of statutes, customs, and forms of procedure that regulated the lives of citizens. As the Romans came into more frequent contact with foreigners, the praetors applied a broader ius gentium, the “law of the peoples,” to such matters as peace treaties, the treatment of prisoners of war, and the exchange of diplomats. In the ius gentium, all sides were to be treated the same regardless of their nationality. By the late republic, Roman jurists had widened this still further into the concept of ius naturale, “natural law” based in part on Stoic beliefs (see “Philosophy and Its Guidance for Life” in Chapter 5). Natural law, according to these thinkers, is made up of rules that govern human behavior that come from applying reason rather than customs or traditions, and so apply to all societies.