Few Good Men

The readings this week were full of examples of power hungry men. During this time it was very apparent that Rome lacked men of strong moral values. I'm sure that they existed, but the political and military realms of government were wrought with terror and upended with continous battles for power in and out of the Senate and military. I was left wondering why the Senate didn't exert more power against these "leaders". It seemed that from the moment Tiberius used violence to get what he wanted, it opened the door to forcing individual ideals on the masses with violence in the political realm. That just rolled over into the way the consuls dealt with the Senate. The Senate, in theory was representing the "people", which could have given them more power, but they seemed to be confined to following the constitution and those that challenged them twisted it to benefit the current scheme. Even though Tiberius was working to make Rome more successful by ensuring the veterans were cared for, he resorted to violence which made his concern for those he was fighting for take a backseat. I wonder if he had not resorted to violence if another route would have been taken by Rome in the Civil Wars that followed. Probably not, as there were few good men that followed. They all seemed to be overcome by the greed for power, money, or empire. Augustus seemed to be the only one who was content, and knew how to rule people, without "ruling" them.

The Roman Kingdom

I was intrigued to read about the development of Rome and the evolution that the constitutional system underwent during the change of eras. A continuous theme I saw between the Republic and the Kingdom was the large amount of power given to their officials. The consuls of the republic had power similar to that of the Kings during the Roman Kingdom era.It seems that although they bestowed great power to these people, they perhaps had foresight into the need to have a system of checks and balances. By limiting the powers of the consuls and at the same time granting them imperium. I wondered if this was to keep one person or group from becoming all powerful. If so, then they were using a double edge sword because they were also trying to keep other "lower" classes like the Plebeians from gaining even a small amount of power over their own lives let alone any power over others.

Wikipedia Article Analysis

This article discusses the evolution of Roman constitutional system. The evolution of the Constitution is divided into four different time periods. The Constitution of the Roman Kingdom came first and was followed by the Constitution of the Roman Republic, the Constitution of the Roman Empire and then the Constitution of the late Roman Empire. Within each epoch the constitution changed, but the changes were gradual. The governing "agencies" within the various constitutions were the Senate, the Legislative Assemblies, and the Executive Magistrates. There are present day countries who have used various forms of these constitutions as a model for forming their own constitutions.

1. The word count of this article is 2,237
2. The search term I used was Early Roman Senate. The title is Roman Constitution.
3. There was not a disambiguation.
4. The discussion page has only one entry. It is from an "amateur history buff" informing the reader of a future series of more in depth information.
5. There have been forty changes to this page. The first 10/29/07 and the most recent was on 9/2/08.
6. There are no external links.
7. There are six references.
8. Further readings include twelve other books and articles.

This is a very short article. It gives a good overview of the workings of the Roman Constitutional system. I would recommend this to someone if they just wanted an overview of how it works, but to really understand the system and it's evolution this would only get you started.