The economic world of the populus Romanus

Russell, A

doi:10.1163/15718050-12340134

The economic world of the populus Romanus

Russell, A

Authors

A Russell

Abstract

Rome’s transformation from city-state to territorial empire involved a massive increase in wealth; it also both created and responded to fundamental political changes, in a moment often positioned as the creation myth of republicanism. James Tan has modelled the Republican economy as a three-way relationship between aristocrats, the state, and the people. Aristocrats competed with the state for access to the riches of conquest; simultaneously the state’s dependence on citizen taxation declined. This paper examines the relationship between state and people as both practical and ideological. The People were sovereign, yet it was the People who increasingly lost their status as economic and political stakeholders even as their empire grew. The complex relationship between the people and the populus (‘the People’ as an institution) had economic as well as political elements, and is central to how we should apply notions of economic sovereignty to Republican Rome.

Citation

Russell, A. (2020). The economic world of the populus Romanus. Revue d'histoire du droit international, 22(4), 536-564. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340134

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Oct 24, 2019
Online Publication Date	Feb 26, 2020
Publication Date	Jan 1, 2020
Deposit Date	Oct 29, 2019
Publicly Available Date	Feb 26, 2021
Journal	Revue d'histoire du droit international
Print ISSN	1388-199X
Electronic ISSN	1571-8050
Publisher	Brill Academic Publishers
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	22
Issue	4
Pages	536-564
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340134