Roman Republic

Rome had been ruled by monarchs since its foundation. These monarchs were elected, for life, by the men of the Roman Senate. The last Roman monarch was called Tarquin the Proud, who in traditional histories was expelled from Rome in 509 BC because his son, Sextus Tarquinius, raped a noblewoman, Lucretia. The tradition asserted that the monarchy was abolished in a revolution led by the semi-mythical Lucius Junius Brutus and the king's powers were then transferred to two separate consuls elected to office for a term of one year; each was capable of checking his colleague by veto. Most modern scholarship describes these accounts as the quasi-mythological detailing of an aristocratic coup within Tarquin's own family or a consequence of an Etruscan occupation of Rome rather than a popular revolution.

According to Rome's traditional histories, Tarquin made several attempts to retake the throne, including the Tarquinian conspiracy, which involved Brutus's own sons, the war with Veii and Tarquinii, and finally the war between Rome and Clusium. The attempts to restore the monarchy did not succeed.

The first Roman republican wars were wars of expansion. One by one, Rome defeated both the persistent Sabines and the local cities. Rome defeated its rival Latin cities in the Battle of Lake Regillus in 496 BC, the Battle of Ariccia in 495 BC, the Battle of Mount Algidus in 458 BC, and the Battle of Corbio in 446 BC. But it suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of the Cremera in 477 BC, wherein it fought against the most important Etruscan city, Veii; this defeat was later avenged at the Battle of Veii in 396 BC, wherein Rome destroyed the city. By the end of this period, Rome had effectively completed the conquest of its immediate Etruscan and Latin neighbours and secured its position against the immediate threat posed by the nearby Apennine hill tribes.

Beginning with their revolt against Tarquin, and continuing through the early years of the Republic, Rome's patrician aristocrats were the dominant force in politics and society. They initially formed a closed group of about 50 large families, called gentes, who monopolised Rome's magistracies, state priesthoods, and senior military posts. The most prominent of these families were the Cornelii, Aemilii, Claudii, Fabii, and Valerii. The leading families' power, privilege and influence derived from their wealth, in particular from their landholdings, their position as patrons, and their numerous clients.

The vast majority of Roman citizens were commoners of various social degrees. They formed the backbone of Rome's economy, as smallholding farmers, managers, artisans, traders, and tenants. In wartime, they could be summoned for military service. Most had little direct political influence. During the early Republic, the plebs (or plebeians) emerged as a self-organised, culturally distinct group of commoners, with its own internal hierarchy, laws, customs, and interests. Plebeians had no access to high religious and civil office. For the poorest, one of the few effective political tools was their withdrawal of labour and services, in a secessio plebis; the first such secession occurred in 494 BC, in protest at the abusive treatment of plebeian debtors by the wealthy during a famine. The patrician Senate was compelled to give them direct access to the written civil and religious laws and to the electoral and political process. To represent their interests, the plebs elected tribunes, who were personally sacrosanct, immune to arbitrary arrest by any magistrate, and had veto power over legislation.

By 390 BC, several Gallic tribes were invading Italy from the north. The Romans met the Gauls in pitched battle at the Battle of Allia River around 390–387 BC. The battle was fought at the confluence of the Tiber and Allia rivers, 11 Roman miles (10 mi or 16 km) north of Rome. The Romans were routed and subsequently Rome was sacked by the Senones. There is no destruction layer at Rome around this time, indicating that if a sack occurred, it was largely superficial.

From 343 to 341 BC, Rome won two battles against its Samnite neighbours, but was unable to consolidate its gains, due to the outbreak of war with former Latin allies. In the Latin War (340–338 BC), Rome defeated a coalition of Latins at the battles of Vesuvius and the Trifanum. The Latins submitted to Roman rule.

A Second Samnite War began in 327 BC. The war ended with Samnite defeat at the Battle of Bovianum in 305 BC. By 304 BC, Rome had annexed most Samnite territory and begun to establish colonies there, but in 298 BC the Samnites rebelled, and defeated a Roman army, in a Third Samnite War. After this success, it built a coalition of several previous enemies of Rome. The war ended with Roman victory in 290 BC.

At the Battle of Populonia, in 282 BC, Rome finished off the last vestiges of Etruscan power in the region.

In the 4th century, plebeians gradually obtained political equality with patricians. The first plebeian consular tribunes were elected in 400. The reason behind this sudden gain is unknown, but it was limited as patrician tribunes retained preeminence over their plebeian colleagues. In 385 BC, the former consul and saviour of the besieged capital, Marcus Manlius Capitolinus, is said to have sided with the plebeians, ruined by the sack and largely indebted to patricians. According to Livy, Capitolinus sold his estate to repay the debt of many of them, and even went over to the plebs, the first patrician to do so. Nevertheless, the growing unrest he had caused led to his trial for seeking kingly power; he was sentenced to death and thrown from the Tarpeian Rock.

Between 376 and 367 BC, the tribunes of the plebs Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus continued the plebeian agitation and pushed for an ambitious legislation, known as the leges Liciniae Sextiae. The most important bill opened the consulship to plebeians. Other tribunes controlled by the patricians vetoed the bills, but Stolo and Lateranus retaliated by vetoing the elections for five years while being continuously reelected by the plebs, resulting in a stalemate. In 367 BC, they carried a bill creating the decemviri sacris faciundis, a college of ten priests, of whom five had to be plebeians, thereby breaking patricians' monopoly on priesthoods. The resolution of the crisis came from the dictator Camillus, who made a compromise with the tribunes: he agreed to their bills, and they in return consented to the creation of the offices of praetor and curule aediles, both reserved to patricians. Lateranus became the first plebeian consul in 366 BC; Stolo followed in 361 BC.

Soon after, plebeians were able to hold both the dictatorship and the censorship. The four-time consul Gaius Marcius Rutilus became the first plebeian dictator in 356 BC and censor in 351 BC. In 342 BC, the tribune of the plebs Lucius Genucius passed his leges Genuciae, which abolished interest on loans, in a renewed effort to tackle indebtedness; required the election of at least one plebeian consul each year; and prohibited magistrates from holding the same magistracy for the next ten years or two magistracies in the same year. In 339 BC, the plebeian consul and dictator Quintus Publilius Philo passed three laws extending the plebeians' powers. His first law followed the lex Genucia by reserving one censorship to plebeians, the second made plebiscites binding on all citizens (including patricians), and the third required the Senate to give its prior approval to plebiscites before they became binding on all citizens.

During the early Republic, consuls chose senators from among their supporters. Shortly before 312 BC, the lex Ovinia transferred this power to the censors, who could only remove senators for misconduct, thus appointing them for life. This law strongly increased the power of the Senate, which was by now protected from the influence of the consuls and became the central organ of government. In 312 BC, following this law, the patrician censor Appius Claudius Caecus appointed many more senators to fill the new limit of 300, including descendants of freedmen, which was deemed scandalous. Caecus also launched a vast construction programmee, building the first aqueduct, the aqua Appia, and the first Roman road, the via Appia.

In 300 BC, the two tribunes of the plebs Gnaeus and Quintus Ogulnius passed the lex Ogulnia, which created four plebeian pontiffs, equalling the number of patrician pontiffs, and five plebeian augurs, outnumbering the four patricians in the college. The Conflict of the Orders ended with the last secession of the plebs around 287. The dictator Quintus Hortensius passed the lex Hortensia, which reenacted the law of 339 BC, making plebiscites binding on all citizens, while also removing the requirement for prior Senate approval. These events were a political victory of the wealthy plebeian elite, who exploited the economic difficulties of the plebs for their own gain: Stolo, Lateranus, and Genucius bound their bills attacking patricians' political supremacy with debt-relief measures. As a result of the end of the patrician monopoly on senior magistracies, many small patrician gentes faded into history during the 4th and 3rd centuries BC due to the lack of available positions. About a dozen remaining patrician gentes and twenty plebeian ones thus formed a new elite, called the nobiles.

By the early 3rd century BC, Rome had established itself as the major power in Italy, but had not yet come into conflict with the dominant military powers of the Mediterranean: Carthage and the Greek kingdoms. In 282, several Roman warships entered the harbour of Tarentum, triggering a violent reaction from the Tarentine democrats, who sank some. The Roman embassy sent to investigate the affair was insulted and war was promptly declared. Facing a hopeless situation, the Tarentines (together with the Lucanians and Samnites) appealed to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, for military aid. A cousin of Alexander the Great, he was eager to build an empire for himself in the western Mediterranean and saw Tarentum's plea as a perfect opportunity.

Pyrrhus and his army of 25,500 men (with 20 war elephants) landed in the Italian peninsula in 280 BC. The Romans were defeated at Heraclea, as their cavalry were afraid of Pyrrhus's elephants. Pyrrhus then marched on Rome, but the Romans concluded a peace in the north and moved south with reinforcements, placing Pyrrhus in danger of being flanked by two consular armies; Pyrrhus withdrew to Tarentum. In 279 BC, Pyrrhus met the consuls Publius Decius Mus and Publius Sulpicius Saverrio at the Battle of Asculum, which remained undecided for two days. Finally, Pyrrhus personally charged into the melee and won his since-eponymous Pyrrhic victory, at the cost of an important part of his troops. He allegedly said, "if we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined."

He escaped the Italian deadlock by answering a call for help from Syracuse, where tyrant Thoenon was desperately fighting an invasion from Carthage. Pyrrhus could not let them take the whole island, as it would have compromised his ambitions in the western Mediterranean, and so declared war. The Carthaginians lifted the siege of Syracuse before his arrival, but he could not entirely oust them from the island as he failed to take their fortress of Lilybaeum. His harsh rule soon led to widespread antipathy among the Sicilians; some cities even defected to Carthage. In 275 BC, Pyrrhus left the island before he had to face a full-scale rebellion. He returned to Italy, where his Samnite allies were on the verge of losing the war. Pyrrhus again met the Romans at the Battle of Beneventum. This time, the consul Manius Dentatus was victorious and even captured eight elephants.

The constitutional history of the Roman Republic began with the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 509 BC and ended with constitutional reforms that transformed the Republic into what would effectively be the Roman Empire, in 27 BC. The Roman Republic's constitution was a constantly evolving, unwritten set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent, by which the government and its politics operated.

The senate's authority derived from the senators' esteem and prestige. This esteem and prestige were based on both precedent and custom, as well as the senators' calibre and reputation. The senate passed decrees called senatus consulta. These were officially "advice" from the senate to a magistrate, but in practice, the magistrates usually followed them. Through the course of the middle republic and Rome's expansion, the senate became more dominant in the state: the only institution with the expertise to administer the empire effectively, it controlled state finances, assignment of magistrates, external affairs, and deployment of military forces. Also, a powerful religious body, it received reports of omens and directed Roman responses thereto.

When its prerogatives started to be challenged in the 2nd century, the senate lost its customary preapproval for legislation. Moreover, after the precedent set in 121 BC with the killing of Gaius Gracchus, the senate claimed to assume the power to issue a senatus consultum ultimum: such decrees directed magistrates to take whatever actions were necessary to safeguard the state, irrespective of legality, and signalled the senate's willingness to support that magistrate if such actions were later challenged in the courts.

Its members were usually appointed by censors, who ordinarily selected newly elected magistrates for membership in the senate, making the senate a partially elected body. Status was not hereditary and there were always some new men, though sons of former magistrates found it easier to be elected to the qualifying magistracies. During emergencies, a dictator could be appointed for the purpose of appointing senators (as was done after the Battle of Cannae). However, by the end of the republic men such as Caesar and the members of the Second Triumvirate usurped these powers for themselves.

The legal status of Roman citizenship was limited and a vital prerequisite to possessing many important legal rights, such as the right to trial and appeal, marry, vote, hold office, enter binding contracts, and to special tax exemptions. An adult male citizen with the full complement of legal and political rights was called optimo iure (lit. 'having the greatest rights'). Citizens optimo iure could participate in assemblies that elected magistrates, enacted legislation, presided over trials in capital cases, declared war and peace, and forged or dissolved treaties. Assemblies were called comitia, in which all citizens optimo jure could vote, and concilia (sing. concilium), 'councils', for specific groups of citizens optimo jure, e.g., the plebeians.

Citizens optimo jure were organised on the basis of and divided into centuries and tribes. Each century or tribe cast a collective vote. The centuriate assembly (comitia centuriata) was said to be traced from the Roman centuries of soldiers, and was usually presided over by a consul. The centuries voted, one at a time, until a measure received support from a majority. The centuriate assembly elected magistrates who had imperium (consuls and praetors). It also elected censors. Only the centuriate assembly could declare war and ratify the results of a census. It served as the highest court of appeal in certain judicial cases.

The tribal assembly (comitia tributa) was presided over by a consul, and composed of 35 tribes. Once a measure received support from a majority of the tribes, voting ended. While it did not pass many laws, the tribal assembly did elect quaestors, curule aediles, and military tribunes. The plebeian council (concilium plebis) was identical to the tribal assembly, but excluded the patricians. They elected their own officers, plebeian tribunes and plebeian aediles. Usually, a plebeian tribune would preside over the assembly. This assembly passed most laws and could act as a court of appeal.

Each republican magistrate held certain constitutional powers. Each was assigned a provincia by the Senate. This was the scope of that particular office holder's authority. It could apply to a geographic area or to a particular responsibility or task. The powers of a magistrate came from the people of Rome (both plebeians and patricians). Imperium was held by both consuls and praetors. Strictly speaking, it was the authority to command a military force, but in reality, it carried broad authority in other public spheres, such as diplomacy and the justice system. In extreme cases, those with the imperium power could sentence Roman Citizens to death. All magistrates also had the power of coercitio (coercion). Magistrates used this to maintain public order by imposing punishment for crimes. Magistrates also had both the power and the duty to look for omens. This power could also be used to obstruct political opponents.

One check on a magistrate's power was collega (collegiality). Each magisterial office was held concurrently by at least two people. Another such check was provocatio. While in Rome, all citizens were protected from coercion, by provocatio, an early form of due process. It was a precursor to habeas corpus. If any magistrate tried to use the powers of the state against a citizen, that citizen could appeal the magistrate's decision to a tribune. In addition, once a magistrate's one-year term of office expired, he would have to wait ten years before serving in that office again. This created problems for some consuls and praetors, and these magistrates occasionally had their imperium extended. In effect, they retained the powers of the office (as a promagistrate) without officially holding that office.

In times of military emergency, a dictator was appointed for a term of six months. Constitutional government was dissolved, and the dictator was the absolute master of the state. When the dictator's term ended, constitutional government was restored.

The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances. The power of the censor was absolute: no magistrate could oppose his decisions, and only another censor who succeeded him could cancel those decisions. The censor's regulation of public morality is the origin of the modern meaning of the words censor and censorship. During the census, they could enroll citizens in the senate or purge them from the senate.

The consuls of the Roman Republic were the highest-ranking ordinary magistrates. Each served for one year. Consular powers included the kings' former imperium and appointment of new senators. Consuls had supreme power in both civil and military matters. While in the city of Rome, the consuls were the head of the Roman government. They presided over the senate and the assemblies. While abroad, each consul commanded an army. His authority abroad was nearly absolute.

Since the tribunes were considered the embodiment of the plebeians, they were sacrosanct. Their sacrosanctity was enforced by a pledge the plebeians took to kill anyone who harmed or interfered with a tribune during his term of office. It was a capital offence to harm a tribune, disregard his veto, or otherwise interfere with him.

Praetors administered civil law and commanded provincial armies. Aediles were officers elected to conduct domestic affairs in Rome, such as managing public games and shows. The quaestors usually assisted the consuls in Rome, and the governors in the provinces. Their duties were often financial.

Rome's military secured Rome's territory and borders and helped to impose tribute on conquered peoples. Rome's armies had a formidable reputation; but Rome also "produced [its] share of incompetents" and catastrophic defeats. Nevertheless, it was generally the fate of Rome's greatest enemies, such as Pyrrhus and Hannibal, to win early battles but lose the war.

During this period, Roman soldiers seem to have been modelled after those of the Etruscans to the north, who themselves are believed to have copied their style of warfare from the Greeks. Traditionally, the introduction of the phalanx formation into the Roman army is ascribed to the city's penultimate king, Servius Tullius (ruled 578–534). The phalanx was effective in large, open spaces, but not on the hilly terrain of the central Italian peninsula. In the 4th century, the Romans replaced it with the more flexible manipular formation. This change is sometimes attributed to Marcus Furius Camillus and placed shortly after the Gallic invasion of 390; more likely, it was copied from Rome's Samnite enemies to the south.

During this period, an army formation of around 5,000 men (of both heavy and light infantry) was known as a legion. Maniples were units of 120 men each drawn from a single infantry class. They were typically deployed into three discrete lines based on the three heavy infantry types:

The first line maniple was the hastati, infantry soldiers who wore a bronze breastplate and a bronze helmet and carried an iron-clad wooden shield. They were armed with a sword and two throwing spears.

The second line were the principes. They were armed and armoured in the same manner as the hastati, but wore a lighter coat of mail.

The triarii formed the third line. They were the last remnant of the hoplite-style troops in the Roman army. They were armed and armoured like the principes, but carried a lighter spear.

The three infantry classes may have retained some slight parallel to social divisions within Roman society, but at least officially the three lines were based upon age and experience rather than social class. Young, unproven men served in the first line, older men with some military experience in the second, and veteran troops of advanced age and experience in the third.

The heavy infantry of the maniples was supported by a number of light infantry and cavalry troops, typically 300 horsemen per manipular legion. The cavalry was drawn primarily from the richest class of equestrians. There was an additional class of troops that followed the army without specific martial roles and was deployed to the rear of the third line. Its role in accompanying the army was primarily to supply any vacancies that might occur in the maniples. The light infantry consisted of 1,200 unarmoured skirmishing troops drawn from the youngest and lower social classes. They were armed with a sword, a small shield, and several light javelins.

Rome's military confederation with the other peoples of the Italian peninsula meant that half of its army was provided by the Socii. According to Polybius, Rome could draw on 770,000 men at the beginning of the Second Punic War, of which 700,000 were infantry and 70,000 met the requirements for cavalry.

A small navy had operated at a fairly low level after about 300, but it was massively upgraded about 40 years later, during the First Punic War. After a period of frenetic construction, the navy mushroomed to more than 400 ships on the Carthaginian ("Punic") pattern. Once completed, it could accommodate up to 100,000 sailors and embarked troops for battle. The navy thereafter declined in size.

In 217, near the beginning of the Second Punic War, Rome was forced to effectively ignore its long-standing principle that its soldiers must be both citizens and property owners. Severe social stresses, population decline, and the greater collapse of the middle classes meant that the Roman state was forced to arm its soldiers at the expense of the state, which it had not had to do before. The distinction between the heavy infantry types began to blur, perhaps because the state was now assuming the responsibility of providing standard-issue equipment. In addition, the shortage of available manpower led to a greater burden upon Rome's allies for the provision of allied troops. Eventually, the Romans were forced to begin hiring mercenaries to fight alongside the legions.

The organisation of the legions evolved throughout the Republican period. In 107, all citizens, regardless of their wealth or social class, were made eligible for entry into the Roman army. The distinction among the three heavy infantry classes, which had already blurred, had collapsed into a single class of heavy legionary infantry. The heavy infantry legionaries were drawn from citizen stock, while non-citizens came to dominate the ranks of the light infantry. The army's higher-level officers and commanders were still drawn exclusively from the Roman aristocracy. Unlike earlier in the Republic, legionaries were no longer fighting on a seasonal basis to protect their land. Instead, they received standard pay and were employed by the state on a fixed-term basis. As a consequence, military duty began to appeal most to the poorest sections of society, to whom a salaried pay was attractive.

The legions of the late Republic were almost entirely heavy infantry. The main legionary sub-unit was a cohort of approximately 480 infantrymen, further divided into six centuries of 80 men each. Each century comprised 10 "tent groups" of eight men. Cavalry were used as scouts and dispatch riders rather than as battlefield forces. Legions also contained a dedicated group of artillery crew of perhaps 60 men. Each legion was normally partnered with an approximately equal number of allied (non-Roman) troops.

The army's most obvious deficiency lay in its shortage of cavalry, especially heavy cavalry. Particularly in the East, Rome's slow-moving infantry legions were often confronted by fast-moving cavalry troops and found themselves at a tactical disadvantage.

After Rome's subjugation of the Mediterranean, its navy declined in size, although it underwent short-term upgrading and revitalisation in the late Republic to meet several new demands. Julius Caesar assembled a fleet to cross the English Channel and invade Britannia. Pompey raised a fleet to deal with the Cilician pirates who threatened Rome's Mediterranean trading routes. During the civil war that followed, as many as 1,000 ships were either constructed or pressed into service from Greek cities.

Citizen families were headed by the family's oldest male, the pater familias, who was lawfully entitled to exercise complete authority (patria potestas) over family property and all family members. Citizenship offered legal protection and rights, but citizens who offended Rome's traditional moral code could be declared infamous and lose certain legal and social privileges. Citizenship was also taxable, and undischarged debt was potentially a capital offence. A form of limited, theoretically voluntary slavery (debt bondage, or nexum) allowed wealthy creditors to negotiate payment of debt through bonded service. Poor, landless citizens of the lowest class (proletarii) might contract their sons to a creditor, patron or third party employer to obtain an income or pay off family debts. Nexum was abolished only when slave labour became more readily available, most notably during the Punic wars.

Slaves could be bought, sold, acquired through warfare, or born and raised in slavery. There were no legal limits on the slave-owner's power over them. A few slaves were freed by their owners, becoming freedmen and in some circumstances citizens too. This degree of social mobility was unusual in the ancient world but itself limited; for example, freedmen were seen as permanently tainted, and their children could not become magistrates. Freedmen could play notable roles in various crafts and trades, particularly those who had been manumitted by the upper classes. Freed slaves and the master who freed them retained certain legal and moral mutual obligations.

At the other extreme were the senatorial families of the landowning nobility, both patrician and plebeian, bound by shifting allegiances and mutual competition. A plebiscite of 218 forbade senators and their sons to engage in substantial trade or money-lending. A wealthy equestrian class emerged, not subject to the same trading constraints as senators.

One of Rome's fundamental social and economic institutions was the client-patron relationship; its obligations were largely moral and social rather than legal, but permeated society, including in politics.

Citizen men and citizen women were expected to marry, produce as many children as possible, and improve—or at worst, conserve—their family's wealth, fortune, and public profile. Marriage offered opportunities for political alliance and social advancement. Patricians usually married in a form known as confarreatio, which transferred the bride from her father's legal control (manus) to that of her husband. Patrician status could be inherited only through birth; an early law, introduced by the reactionary Decemviri but rescinded in 445, sought to prevent marriages between patricians and plebeians. Among ordinary plebeians, different marriage forms offered married women considerable more freedom than their patrician counterparts, until manus marriage was replaced by free marriage, in which the wife remained under her absent father's legal authority, not her husband's. Infant mortality was high. Towards the end of the Republic, the birthrate began to fall among the elite. Some wealthy, childless citizens resorted to adoption to provide male heirs for their estates and to forge political alliances. Adoption was subject to the senate's approval.

The Roman Republic's economy was predominantly agrarian, but also highly complex. As the Romans continued to conquer the Mediterranean basin, it became fully integrated with the wider Mediterranean economy, a process which completed during the first century BC. The population of the republic expanded considerably during the centuries of its existence; indeed, the vastness of the Roman citizen population was part of how it was able to mobilise such expansive military power.

Agricultural production during the republic was highly regional. Literary evidence from ancient elite writers was highly simplifying and is not entirely consistent with the regional differences revealed by modern archaeology. Such differences were driven not only by soil productivity but also market access, mainly mediated by distance from large urban centres such as Rome, and changes in tenancy.

Evidence for the republic's population largely comes from thirty-nine republican and early imperial censuses. The reported population increased substantially from the first, reporting 130,000 Romans in 509 BC, to the last, reporting 4,937,000 in AD 14. It is generally believed that the censuses prior to those of Augustus starting in 28 BC reported only free adult males. It is also not clear to what extent these census figures include (or not) the expansion of citizenship through the Roman conquest of Italy and the late republican extension of citizenship to Transpadane Gaul from 49 BC, the manumission of slaves (slaves received citizenship when manumitted), losses from war, and losses to non-citizen towns.

There was fierce debate over the population of Italy from the third century onwards. Estimates of the Italian population c. 225 BC place it around 4.5 million. This debate is based both on censuses and also on arguments from grain accounting and survey archaeology. The two main approaches were the "low" and "high" counts. The former posited that at the end of the republic there was an Italian population of around four million which was sightly lower than that of the estimated 4.5 million in 225. The high count, on the other hand, suggested that the population of the peninsula had increased to between seven and twelve million.

More recent approaches have suggested a "middle" count which views the census in terms of a device for counting military-age males which under the empire transformed into one to further imperial expansionist ideology. This reconstruction argues that imperial censuses inflated numbers, relative to their republican counterparts, by inclusion of women and children who were legally independent. This middle count instead suggests an Italian population between 4.6 and 5.9 million. All three modern accounts, however, are generally agreed to suggest an increase in the population of Italy which precludes ancient narratives of rural depopulation.

The population of all Roman possessions at the death of Augustus was in excess of 54 million, with considerable population flows across the Mediterranean basin. The population of Rome itself in the early imperial period was around one million, which it may have reached during the late republic by 57 BC, with other large cities such as Alexandria or Pergamum having between 100,000 and 300,000 inhabitants.

The agricultural production of republican-era Italy was concentrated in cereals (barley, wheat, and millet), vines, and olives. Grasses and legumes would have required irrigation; localised decay of such infrastructure may in part explain depopulation. Animal pasture was possible on the Appennines and low-lying plains during the winter seasons. Much of the peninsula was not yet cleared for farmland; the old-growth forests provided pasture for pigs, served as a habitat for other wild game, and were a source of timber. Areas of Italy were specialised in terms of their agricultural exports: Campania was notable for its wine and olives; other areas, like the Po Valley, Samnium, and the Appennine highlands generally, were noted for sheep and pig raising. The emergence of large urban elites in the late republic also catalysed the creation of villas close to cities to raise and grow luxury items for local consumption.

Faced with increasing competition from provincial and allied grain suppliers, many Roman farmers turned to more profitable crops, especially grapes for wine production. By the late Republican era, Roman wine had been transformed from an indifferent local product for local consumption to a major domestic and export commodity, with some renowned, costly and collectable vintages.

Agricultural tooling was continuous with earlier Iron Age tools: wheel-less and mouldboard-less ploughs with sickles. Powered by man (free or slave) and animal, most farms were relatively small. Even large farms were dependent on hired slave or free labour. Labour was necessary to take in the harvest and operate farm machinery, such as olive and grape presses. Evidence of olive and grape vines' ubiquitousness suggests polyculture was commonly employed to diversify a farm's agricultural output. Such practices also extended to simple crop rotations with fallow fields and legumes such as peas, chickpeas, and lentils.

Non-agricultural gathering was also common in rural areas. Subsistence farming and gathering of this sort was the norm and commercial agriculture was concentrated only in areas on the coast and close to Rome, where there was urban demand large-scale commercial agricultural operations.

Farming was not the only form of agriculture. Cattle were also bred to provide traction, along with meat and hides as a by-product, with horses, mules, and donkeys also bred for tractive purposes. Other animals, such as sheep and pigs, were also raised for their wool and meat respectively. Pigs especially bred prolifically and could be raised at little cost by any small farmer with rights to pannage. In many parts of Roman Italy, transhumance was also predominant, with shepherds leading flocks from the lowlands in winter to highlands in summer for grazing.

The mining and processing of metals was a core part of Roman industry. During the early republic Italy itself was generally considered to be rich in copper and iron, but by the late republic these deposits had been largely exhausted. Mining by the second century BC had moved to Elba and Cisalpine Gaul. But the taking of Spain from Carthage during the Second Punic War opened huge and profitable mines in Iberia. Techniques for mining were sophisticated, with complex mechanisms to pump and move water for industrial purposes.

Textile manufacture was in part domestic, with notable production at Rome and in Sicily. Production was likely organised via subcontracting networks which split up work between large numbers of small workshops.

Trade at Rome was well underway by the second century BC, with the development of a large port district (eventually stretching two kilometres) on the banks of the Tiber in central Rome. Large warehouses also were erected in the area. The republican period also saw, after the institution of Roman hegemony over the peninsula, the emergence of Brundisium and Puteoli as major ports in place of Tarentum and Naples. With the ports came partnerships to dispatch, send, and profit off maritime trade. Such partnerships, called societates, also allowed under formal laws the grouping of the partners' capital to productive ends such as running mines and production.

The largest partnerships were the societates publicanorum. These partnerships, which expanded with the empire, took government contracts for matters such as tax farming (where a partnership paid the state a fee for the right to collect taxes on its behalf), operation of large mines or quarries, and provision of supplies to soldiers or building projects. Due to their importance to the state, they also came to have a fully corporate existence, outliving their partners – most partnerships otherwise dissolved if one of the partners died – with inheritable shares (partes), directors (magistri), shareholder meetings for corporate governance.

Roman coinage emerged during the republic. The denarius, a silver coin, was introduced c. 211 BC worth at the time 10 bronze asses. Currency remained bimetallic (silver and bronze) through the whole period, though bronze decreased in value over time and the standard unit of account remained the bronze sestertius worth a quarter denarius. These coins were minted under the supervision of the tresviri monetales, junior magistrates who supervised the mint. Other magistrates, such as the aediles and praetors, also had powers to regulate markets and judge commercial disputes.

Large transactions were conducted with gold bars or through banking intermediaries, especially by exchange of large debts owed by and between aristocrats. Banks emerged by the second century BC in two types (deposit-taking banking firms called argentariae and aristocratic financiers) and are poorly attested in the literary evidence of the late republic. It would not have been possible to conduct large business transactions (including the making of loans) without them. Deposit and lending activities by the first century were so ubiquitous to be little worth mentioning in the Ciceronean corpus, though the effects of conquest on financiers in the late republic is well attested.

Republican Rome's religious practices harked back to Rome's quasi-mythical history. Romulus, a son of Mars, founded Rome after Jupiter granted him favourable bird-signs regarding the site. Numa Pompilius, Rome's second king, had established its basic religious and political institutions after direct instructions from the gods, given through augury, dreams and oracle. Each king thereafter was credited with some form of divinely approved innovation, adaptation or reform. An Imperial-era source claims that the Republic's first consul, Brutus, effectively abolished human sacrifice to the goddess Mania, instituted by the last king, Tarquinius.

Romans acknowledged the existence of innumerable deities who controlled the natural world and human affairs. The Roman state's well-being depended on its state deities, whose opinions and will could be discerned by priests and magistrates, trained in augury, haruspicy, oracles and the interpretation of omens. The gods were thought to communicate their wrath (ira deorum) through prodigies (unnatural or aberrant phenomena).

Individuals, occupations and locations had their own protective tutelary deity, or several. Each was associated with a particular, highly prescriptive form of prayer and sacrifice. Piety (pietas) was the correct, dutiful and timely performance of such actions. The well-being of each Roman household was thought to depend on daily cult to its Lares and Penates (guardian deities, or spirits), ancestors, and the divine generative essence embodied within its pater familias. A family which neglected its religious responsibilities could not expect to prosper.

Roman religious authorities were unconcerned with personal beliefs or privately funded cults unless they offended natural or divine laws or undermined the mos maiorum (roughly, "the way of the ancestors"); the relationship between gods and mortals should be sober, contractual, and of mutual benefit. Undignified grovelling, excessive enthusiasm (superstitio) and secretive practices were "weak-minded" and morally suspect. Magical practices were officially banned, as attempts to subvert the will of the gods for personal gain but were probably common among all classes. Private cult organisations that seemed to threaten Rome's political and priestly hierarchy were investigated by the Senate, with advice from the priestly colleges. The Republic's most notable religious suppression was that of the Bacchanalia, a widespread, unofficial, enthusiastic cult to the Greek wine-god Bacchus. The cult organisation was ferociously suppressed, and its deity was absorbed within the official cult to Rome's own wine god, Liber. The official recognition, adoption and supervision of foreign deities and practices had been an important unitary feature in Rome's territorial expansion and dominance since the days of the kings.

With the abolition of monarchy, some of its sacral duties were shared by the consuls, while others passed to a Republican rex sacrorum ("king of the sacred rites"), a patrician "king", elected for life, with great prestige but no executive or kingly powers. Rome had no specifically priestly class or caste. As every family's pater familias was responsible for his family's cult activities, he was effectively the senior priest of his own household. In the early Republic, the patricians, as "fathers" to the Roman people, claimed the right of seniority to lead and control the state's relationship with the divine. Patrician families, in particular the Cornelii, Postumii and Valerii, monopolised the leading state priesthoods. The patrician Flamen Dialis employed the "greater auspices" (auspicia maiora) to consult with Jupiter on significant matters of state.

Twelve "lesser flaminates" (Flamines minores) were open to plebeians or reserved to them. They included a Flamen Cerealis in service of Ceres, goddess of grain and growth, and protector of plebeian laws and tribunes. The priesthoods of local urban and rustic Compitalia street festivals, dedicated to the lares of local communities, were open to freedmen and slaves..

The Lex Ogulnia (300) gave patricians and plebeians more-or-less equal representation in the augural and pontifical colleges; other important priesthoods, such as the Quindecimviri ("The Fifteen"), and the epulones were opened to any member of the senatorial class. To restrain the accumulation and potential abuse of priestly powers, each gens was permitted one priesthood at a time, and the censors monitored the senators' religious activities. Magistrates who held an augurate could claim divine authority for their position and policies. In the late Republic, augury came under the control of the pontifices, whose powers were increasingly woven into the civil and military cursus honorum. Eventually, the office of pontifex maximus became a de facto consular prerogative.

Some cults may have been exclusively female; for example, the rites of the Good Goddess (Bona Dea). Towards the end of the second Punic War, Rome rewarded priestesses of Demeter from Graeca Magna with Roman citizenship for training respectable, leading matrons as sacerdotes of "Greek rites" to Ceres. Every matron of a family (the wife of its pater familias) had a religious duty to maintain the household fire, which was considered an extension of Vesta's sacred fire, tended in perpetuity by the chaste Vestal Virgins. The Vestals also made the sacrificial mola salsa employed in many State rituals, and represent an essential link between domestic and state religion. Rome's survival was thought to depend on their sacred status and ritual purity.

Rome's major public temples were within the city's sacred, augural boundary (pomerium), which had supposedly been marked out by Romulus, with Jupiter's approval. The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus ("Jupiter, Best and Greatest") stood on the Capitoline Hill. Among the settled areas outside the pomerium was the nearby Aventine Hill. It was traditionally associated with Romulus's unfortunate twin, Remus, and in later history with the Latins, and the Roman plebs. The Aventine seems to have functioned as a place for the introduction of "foreign" deities. In 392, Camillus established a temple there to Juno Regina, Etruscan Veii's protective goddess. Later introductions include Summanus, c. 278, Vortumnus c. 264, and at some time before the end of the 3rd century, Minerva. While Ceres's Aventine temple was most likely built at patrician expense, to mollify the plebs, the patricians brought the Magna Mater ("Great mother of the Gods") to Rome as their own "Trojan" ancestral goddess, and installed her on the Palatine.

Romulus was said to have pitched his augural tent atop the Palatine. Beneath its southern slopes ran the sacred way, next to the former palace of the kings (Regia), the House of the Vestals and Temple of Vesta. Close by were the Lupercal shrine and the cave where Romulus and Remus were said to have been suckled by the she-wolf. On the flat area between the Aventine and Palatine was the Circus Maximus, which hosted chariot races and religious games. Its several shrines and temples included those to Rome's indigenous sun god, Sol, the moon-goddess Luna, the grain-storage god, Consus, and the obscure goddess Murcia.

Whereas Romans marked the passage of years with the names of their ruling consuls, their calendars marked the anniversaries of religious foundations to particular deities, the days when official business was permitted (fas), and those when it was not (nefas). The Romans observed an eight-day week; law courts were closed and markets were held on the ninth day. Each month was presided over by a particular, usually major deity. The oldest calendars were lunar.

Before any campaign or battle, Roman commanders took auspices, or haruspices, to seek the gods' opinion regarding the likely outcome. Military success was achieved through a combination of personal and collective virtus (roughly, "manly virtue") and divine will. Triumphal generals dressed as Jupiter Capitolinus and laid their victor's laurels at his feet. Religious negligence, or lack of virtus, provoked divine wrath and led to military disaster. Military oaths dedicated the oath-takers life to Rome's gods and people; defeated soldiers were expected to take their own lives, rather than survive as captives. Examples of devotio, as performed by the Decii Mures, in which soldiers offered and gave their lives to the Di inferi (gods of the underworld) in exchange for Roman victory were celebrated as the highest good.