KlioPub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1515/klio-2023-0021
Robert Morstein‐Marx
{"title":"Paradox of Voting: Extra-Urban Voters in the Late Roman Republic","authors":"Robert Morstein‐Marx","doi":"10.1515/klio-2023-0021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/klio-2023-0021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It is almost universally supposed on general principles that Roman citizens who did not live near the city of Rome were effectively disenfranchised by the logistical difficulty of traveling to the capital to vote, and thus that citizen participation in state decision-making was derisively small; this poses a difficulty for the ‘popular’ model of the functioning of the Roman Republic that has won considerable adherence in recent years. However, a systematic review of evidence for voting by citizens who lived around the peninsula and even for non-citizens’ travel to Rome before 90 BC to apply direct pressure on major votes, shows that distance did not present an insurmountable obstacle to meaningful participation in Roman political life by Italians and extra-urban citizens. It also demonstrates the great importance citizens attached to the vote (suffragium) – a guarantee of their freedom, and the key mechanism by which they influenced their political leaders. This in turn helps to clarify why many Italians, including those of modest means, would have desired Roman citizenship in the run-up to the ‘Social War.’","PeriodicalId":17832,"journal":{"name":"Klio","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140969609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
KlioPub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.1515/klio-2024-2014
Oliver Stoll
{"title":"Dominic M. Machado,\u0000 Voluntas Militum. Community, Collective Action, and Popular Power in the Armies of the Middle Republic (300–100 BCE), Sevilla (Editorial Universidad de Sevilla) 2023, 346 S., ISBN 978-84-472-2496-8 (brosch.), € 28,–","authors":"Oliver Stoll","doi":"10.1515/klio-2024-2014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/klio-2024-2014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17832,"journal":{"name":"Klio","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140969094","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}