Essay on Roman constitution
In the course of ancient history many nations rose and fell and many forms of government were tried. Some were successful, some were a terrible failure, and others were just sufficient. The Greek historian Polybius believed that the constitution and government of Rome at the time of the Hannibalic War was by far the best of any form of government ever set up by any other nation (Polybius pg. 311). The Hannibalic War took place from 218-201 B.C., Polybius (205-118 B.C.) was writing in the second century B.C. (http://www.quotationspage.com/author.php?author=Polybius). To Polybius the greatness of Rome's government was that it combined three forms of government; aristocracy, monarchy, and democracy and utilized the best aspects of each while each had some form of a check and balance on the others to help curb the vices of each (Polybius pg. 317). Polybius believed Rome had set up a balanced constitution that had advantages over any others, but he did not foresee the political and social pressures that led to the downfall of the Roman republic. Roman government consisted of two consuls, the Senate, and the people. Consuls were an elected office. The people were represented by an assembly and elected tribunes, of which there
They held total authority over all public affairs while they were in Rome, they were in charge of presenting foreign embassies to the Senate, and they were the ones who would bring urgent business before the Senate and were solely responsible for carrying out the Senates decisions (Polybius pg. The main problem that Rome faced was that its balanced constitution that Polybius thought was the best in the world was more designed for a smaller nation rather than an empire that stretched across much of the known world. The consuls also had a type of check and balance on the people. Instead the Senate members thought of themselves as to high and noble and did not want to give up their large plantation style farms that were keeping people landless and the army without adequate numbers. The third branch of the Roman government was the people. he was elected tribune and began an effort to fix the problem of landless men and the dwindling number of the army (Nagle pg. This was because to be a Roman soldier you had to be a landowner, and while many landowners were off dying in Rome's military campaigns, the rich of Rome were buying up or just taking over the land of these men and pushing the peasants off their land to use slaves from the military conquests to work the land. Rome is an example that all nations should heed, its republic is a classic example that no matter how many controls there are and how balanced a government seems, there is always the factor of human nature that can bring to ruin or greatness, or both, any nation. This left fewer eligible men for the army, and left many more landless.
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