Since 2000, a number of useful monographs focusing on Roman Republican magistracies, including the praetorship, consulship, aedileship, and quaestorship, have been published.[1] And now the tribunate, one of the most influential and transformative offices of the Republic, has received an up-to-date overview—in two versions—by Thibaud Lanfranchi. ¿Defensores del pueblo Romano? (Zaragoza 2024), reviewed here, is both a translation and enhancement of In nome del popolo romano? (Roma 2022), a much briefer overview aimed at students. Both books constitute the first modern effort to provide a diachronic history of the tribunate since Giovanni Niccolini’s Il Tribunato della Plebe (Milano 1932). ¿Defensores covers the tribunate from its 5th c. BCE origins to its final fading in the 4th c. CE, with extended discussions of the imperial-era tribunate, beginning with Augustus and his assumption in 23 BCE of tribunicia potestas as one of his main inroads to civil government (Ch. VIII), and another (Epilogue) that surveys post-antique survivals along with modern receptions and (re-)interpretations of the tribunate up to the French Revolution. While Lanfranchi’s history of the tribunate does not depart much from Niccolini’s general chronology, it has the advantage of incorporating nine more decades of modern debate over key aspects of the tribunate’s development and functions (among which are several monographs covering the tribunate in different periods of the Republic[2]). Throughout, Lanfranchi gives greater consideration than Niccolini to problems inherent in using late republican / early imperial sources to reconstruct developments in the early Republic, including the point that the “traditional” timeline is a construct that Romans developed to understand (and reinterpret) their own history. While Niccolini delves more deeply into the nuts and bolts of tribunician powers and activities, Lanfranchi provides more of the dynamic social and economic contexts to which tribunes responded in their work and on which some (e.g., the Gracchi, Sulpicius, and Clodius) had considerable impact.
Lanfranchi states in his preface that the book may be too detailed for those approaching the tribunate for the first time and perhaps all too familiar to those who are well versed in Republican institutions and history. He is not wrong. Considerations of space mean that even his expanded version only covers highlights of modern debate over key developments or aspects of the tribunate. Thus, readers just learning about the tribunate may miss the full import of some arguments; but even those already familiar with this field of study will find his brief discussions of modern debates very useful as a guide to, or reminder about, scholarship that should be on one’s radar. More to the point for the present review is this: Lanfranchi’s historically contextualized study of the tribunate touches on such a wide variety of key developments in Roman republican history attributable to tribunician activity that it seems best, even crucial, to provide a fairly comprehensive look at the contents of ¿Defensores.
In Chapter I, “El origen del tribunado de la plebe y el nacimiento de la república,” Lanfranchi provides historical context for the tribunate’s creation while noting that the “enormous problems of historicity” based on the “scarce and unreliable” nature of the available literary evidence renders historians unable to do more than propose hypotheses (p. 18). The fall of Rome’s kings is situated in the context of late-6th c. BCE political and social turmoil in central Italy caused by declining Etruscan power and the concomitant rise (albeit temporary) of Sabine power. Concerning the “canonical tradition” surrounding Rome’s first magistrates, he discusses the existence in early sources of the praetor maximus, a chief magistrate who pre-existed the consulship to exemplify the reality of bricolaje institucional (“institutional tinkering”) in the Republic’s first two centuries (p. 26). He argues that modern scholarship on this problem (from Mommsen to Vervaet) has not yet reached conclusive agreement. More important is that the apparent duality and (imbalanced) collegiality of Rome’s early magistracies provided a model for the first tribunes of the plebs, who likely numbered only two at first.
It is worth highlighting section I.3, “El problema del dualismo patricio-plebeyo,” an historiographical overview of legal and historical theories for the separation of patricians from plebs as ordines (orders). Lanfranchi locates this separation between the regal period, when leaders of prominent gentes likely formed the king’s council or proto-senate, and the closure of the patriciate by the mid-5th c. BCE, when patricians ceased admitting new members to their ordo and the plebs acquired legal status. His survey of current debates over population estimates for early Rome, the tiny number of patricians, and the foreign origins of powerful families barred from the patriciate, is necessarily brief; it leaves little room for evidence and methodology, which may leave some readers in the dark.
Overall, Lanfranchi’s initial assessment is that the traditional chronology and account of the tribunate’s origins should be followed, while hypotheses that they derived from tribal chiefs or military officers of the Latin League, etc., should be set aside.
Chapter II, “Los tribunos de la plebe en el ‘conflicto de los órdenes’,” draws heavily from Lanfranchi’s Les tribuns de la plèbe et la formation de la République romaine, 494-287 avant J.-C. (Rome 2015), to which he directs readers for further details.[3] His main argument centers on the important and revolutionary role of tribunes who came from ambitious, wealthy, non-patrician families; these men drove key innovations of the 5th and 4th centuries that resulted in important institutions and practices of the classical Republic and the creation of the patricio-plebeian governing class (nobilitas). Major points include (II.1) the plebiscite of Publius Volero in 471, which most scholars agree raised the number of tribunes from two to four, established an electoral assembly organized by tribes (a concilium tributim plebis, as the comitia tributa appeared only in the 4th c. BCE), and provided some freedom from patrician influence over tribunician elections (p. 40-45, esp. 42). Lanfranchi also highlights (II.2) persistent tribunician pressure on the Senate in the 460s and 450s to regularize Rome’s legal practices and the consular imperium, which led to the Decemvirates of 451-449 and publication of the XII Tables in 449. The tribunate, suspended during the Decemviral period, was reconstituted immediately after, now with ten tribunes instead of five; they were elected under the presidency of the Pontifex Maximus, which represents for Lanfranchi an early stage of the tribunate’s integration into Rome’s governmental structure.
In II.3 Lanfranchi provides a cogent reinterpretation of the Canuleian plebiscite of 445, often believed to lift a prohibition against plebeian-patrician marriages. He argues that the plebiscite was actually meant to counter a law in the XII Tables prohibiting children of plebeian-patrician marriages from inheriting their patrician father’s privileged status. The existence of this prohibition demonstrates that mixed-ordo marriages already existed (Lanfranchi provides numerous examples of “mixed” marriages of the 4th c. BCE), were legal, and could be advantageous to patricians if marrying into a wealthy plebeian family. In this context the complex web of patricio-plebeian connections first emerged; but it crystallized in 367 when plebeians finally gained access to the consulship, a position long controlled by patricians, due to the tribunician Licinian-Sextian rogations (II.4). The last section (II.5) explains how tribunes influenced the administration of justice in Rome. Their role in this sphere originated in their powers to arrest, imprison, fine, even execute someone, all thanks to their personal inviolability (sacrosanctitas) conferred and upheld by the plebeian sacred oath (lex sacrata). Lanfranchi uses source data to build a positive case for the prosecution; that is, he demonstrates that tribunes favored imposing fines over capital punishment, thus preserving their role as protectors in cases of an appeal to the people (provocatio ad populum)—perhaps why rare capital cases brought by tribunes as iudicia populi receive so much attention in the sources. More important for Lanfranchi, these trials highlighted the people’s right (in centuriate assemblies) to sentence someone to death, while the tribunes renounced that power (Lanfranchi pp. 62-63 refers here to Humbert 1995:115). He concludes by reiterating the indispensable role of tribunes as protagonists pushing the development of key institutions and practices of the Republic, with a somewhat tangential add-on about the image and importance of two families with numerous prominent tribunes in their trees: the Icilii and the Licinii (II.6).
In Chapter III, “El tribunado de la plebe: poderes y posición en el sistema jurídico-político de Roma,” Lanfranchi focuses on the powers and presentation of the tribunate compared to other magistracies against which the tribunate often stood in opposition, all to demonstrate how the tribunate was revolutionary in character and exceptional in many ways. With respect to religion (III.1), tribunes could not exercise public auspicia (all examples in the literature involve private auspication) but eventually gained the right of obnuntiatio. Likewise, they lacked imperium, but the previously noted personal inviolability (sacrosanctitas) conferred on them by a “revolutionary oath” (lex sacrata), afforded them the powers discussed in chapter II (above), which Lanfranchi argues were formalized in the XII Tables in 449—albeit examples of tribunes exercising such powers, especially coercitio and prehensio, come mostly from the 2nd and 1st c. BCE (see III.2).
Lanfranchi next focuses on the tribunate’s evolving function as Rome’s chief legislative body (III.3) after explaining the difference between a lex, binding on the whole Roman populus, and a plebis scitum (“what the plebs want”), binding on the plebs only—until the Lex Hortensia of 287 normalized plebiscites as binding on all Romans. Lanfranchi argues that plebiscites represented the will of an actively participating citizenry who voted for what they wanted (encompassed in the rogatio format), as opposed to leges, which he believes (following Magdelain and Humbert) represented the will of magistrates and Senate as read out to a passively accepting crowd.
Other unique features of the tribunate and its self-presentation (III.4) include the tribunes’ requirement to be fully accessible at all times, in public or at home; their required presence when intervening on someone’s behalf, including having to physically touch that person; their authority and person restricted to within the pomerium (they could not be outside city limits overnight except on rare occasions); their plain clothing (no stripes or colors); their lack of regalia or apparitores (official attendants); their simple seating arrangements in public—benches for the collective rather than curule chairs / thrones for the individual—; and their need to appear as an “equal” through the above outward signs to those whom they represented and from whom they derived their real power.
Lanfranchi concludes (III.5) by contrasting Mommsen’s conception of the tribunate as a revolutionary institution domesticated into a regular magistracy with Herzog’s view (which Lanfranchi favors) of the tribunes as intercessors for the people against the abuses of magistrates and senate and as a permanent check on governmental overreach.
Chapter IV, “Problemas y reformas económicas en los siglos V y IV” continues Lanfranchi’s summary of material from his 2015 book. His main argument, that the Republic’s turbulent economic life shaped early tribunician policy, begins with data (in IV.1, with sufficient caveats) to contextualize Rome’s economic insecurity and agricultural instability throughout the 5th century: literary records (albeit dubious, as he admits) that reflect a struggling population via declining census counts; fourteen recorded famines between 505 and 383 (one every nine years on average); a near cessation of public building from 484 to 435; and constant low-scale warfare against neighbors bent on raiding and pillaging rather than territorial acquisition. These factors form the background against which Lanfranchi explains the focus of tribunes down to 367 on agrarian plebiscites to wrest control of ager publicus (public lands) from the patrician-led senate and ruling class, in order to provide plebeians the means to farm and pasture their animals without being under the thumb of the governing class. He examines land ownership in early Rome (patched together from later sources), arguing that evidence for private ownership early in the Republic’s history supports his theory that ager publicus already existed as a concept by the 5th c. BCE. He postulates that the agrarian problem existed because patricians excluded plebeians from ager publicus, either because plebeians were impoverished and unable to supply themselves with weapons for military service, or because they were away on military service and unable to cultivate lands in their possession (albeit many were likely under continuous pressure by more powerful patrician neighbors). He argues that Rome’s 5th c. colonies were hardly the solution some scholars believe they were, as recent archaeological exploration indicates that the new settlements in this period were largely dispersed communities with, perhaps, a temple or sanctuary as a focal point, not an entire urban center. For these reasons, Lanfranchi views the repeated, early agrarian plebiscites as actual historical attempts to regulate land access and ownership, culminating in the Licinian-Sextian reforms of 367.
Shortly after the victories of 367, tribunes focused on the conjoined problems of debt and nexum (debt bondage, covered in IV.2), problems that flowed from the agrarian solutions. In other words, the Senate’s viritane land distributions of newly conquered Veientine and Pomptine territories to those who likely lacked capital and labor resources to farm their land created a dependency on debt and enslaved labor via nexum to make up the difference. Here Lanfranchi follows Seth Bernard’s (2016: 334) hypothesis that “a thinned supply of labor changed the point of economic tension from land hunger and famine to the search for labor through debt-bondage and an increasing turn to slavery.” Given the near contemporary appearance of banking in Rome (and regular coinage by the end of the 4th c. BCE), it is difficult to doubt the historicity of tribunician efforts at debt relief and the elimination of nexum. The reforms themselves are well known. The Licinian-Sextian plebiscite of 367 directed that interest already paid be counted as capital payments, the remaining capital to be paid in three equal instalments. Plebiscites in 357 and 347 aimed at regulating interest rates while a consular law in 352 established quinqueviri mensarii with a state-sponsored mandate to assist in settling debts. Two more plebiscites in 342 and 311 regulated lending practices and prohibited usury, while in between these last two, the tribunician Lex Poetelia ended nexum in 326 just when enslaved prisoners of war could replace citizens in debt bondage. Although not technically binding on patricians, the above plebiscites were always binding on wealthy plebeians involved in financial affairs, and thus would have provided significant relief to many, if not all, of the indebted. Lanfranchi concludes (IV.3) with a brief discussion of how the elimination of debt slavery and associated issues signaled a strengthening of the role of public authority, largely due to tribunician activity.
In Chapter V, “Hacia la República Media,” Lanfranchi covers a “decisive” period in Republican history: 367–202 BCE, when Rome expanded from a moderately-sized, Central Italian territorial state to an empire encompassing Italy and Western Mediterranean provinces that also exerted hegemonic influence in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean. It is unfortunate, as Lanfranchi points out, that literary sources covering the tribunate between 292 and 220 BCE are so scanty (e.g., Livy’s Periochae for Books XI-XX), given the many tribunician activities and reforms in that period that remain unrecoverable to modern historians, especially since the Lex Hortensia of 287 made plebiscites binding on the whole Roman people.
In any case, Lanfranchi highlights (V.1) reforms that integrated elite plebeians into more prestige-conferring aspects of Roman life, e.g., the Lex Licinia-Sextia of 367 expanding the IIviri sacris faciundis to Xviri s.f., half of whom would be plebeian. The Lex Ogulnia of 300 opened the pontificate and augurate to plebeians, politically influential offices as well as a “countervailing power” (especially true of augurs who could vitiate elections, etc.). Likewise, a law passed between 241 and 212 to elect the Pontifex Maximus by vote of 17 tribes chosen by lot was probably tribunician (as later plebiscites of similar type suggest). Meanwhile, another series of plebiscites attempted to regulate political competition and office holding. For example, one in 358 prohibited ambitus; another in 342 limited consular iteration to ten-year intervals (observable in the fasti consulares with only rare exceptions attributable to military exigency).
Lanfranchi demonstrates (V.2) through case studies how four late-4th c. tribunes in the circle of reformer Ap. Claudius Caecus brought significant improvement to Rome’s legal, economic, and political life: C. Marcius Censorinus (tr. pl. 311) limited usury rates; Cn. Flavius (tr. pl. 307 or 305?) promulgated the legis actiones and published the fasti; the Ogulnii brothers (trr. pl. 300), opened priesthoods to plebeians; and a plebiscitum Ovinium of uncertain date placed the lectio senatus in the hands of the censors, contributing to the future power and stability of the senate as an institution (V.4). The aforementioned individuals parlayed their tribunician accomplishments into higher offices, greater political influence and long-lasting acclaim; they were not the first or last to do so, but their standout tribunates set the stage for Lanfranchi’s synopsis of the role of tribunes in this era (V.3).
He points out that while sources for this period indicate how tribunes were more embedded in senate affairs than previously, the big source gap for 290–220 BCE should caution us against speculative generalizing. On the one hand, many tribunes cooperated with the Senate through ratifying desired measures and special commands, assisting in colonization efforts, even going on extra-urban diplomatic missions at the senate’s behest. On the other hand, the “radical” example of C. Flaminius in the late 230s (V.5), along with noteworthy disputes over triumphs, over attempts to limit the extent to which senators could engage in maritime trade (Claudian plebiscite of 218: V.4), and over punishments for mutineers, all indicate that tensions between senate and independent-minded, ambitious tribunes could still reach disruptive proportions. He points out that it would be wrong to schematize phases in the tribunate’s history, as some have, into “revolutionary phase” (494-287), “collaborative phase” (287 to 133), and “revolutionary” again (133 and later). Nevertheless, the most important takeaway from Chapter V is that the tribunate had evolved into a permanent, constitutional office due to the tribunes’ increasing role in the city’s administration while also shaping its institutions and practices.
Chapter VI, “Conflictos y recomposición política,” is one of the book’s most consequential chapters. Lanfranchi rightly argues (VI.1) that the centrality of tribunes in the smooth, day-to-day functioning of the Republic in the second century BCE is often overlooked because the Gracchi brothers dominate the history of that century. Yet he notes—using the work of Rotondi (1962/1912), Flach (1994), and Elster (2003 and 2020)—that of the 345 plebiscites known to us in primary sources, 113 were passed between 200 and 101 BCE (35 are from the Gracchan-era). Many of these originated with, or were approved by, the Senate and thus mark out a period of tribunician cooperation with the Senate and a continuous effort to build consensus in decision making (as opposed to a movement toward greater democratization). He does balance the picture by highlighting some well-known pre-Gracchan tribunes who challenged the Senate with, e.g., the leges tabellaria to reduce undue influence on voters (including secret ballot laws), the leges Porciae to reinforce citizens’ rights (probably plebiscites), and the first permanent court established by the Lex Calpurnia de repetundis of 149 to curb pro-magisterial corruption (albeit the all-senator jury in its early days usually meant acquittal for the accused). Some pre-Gracchan tribunes also opposed the consuls more frequently over unfair levies, even imprisoning those who refused their requests for exemptions. The upshot is that, before the Gracchi, relations between tribunes and senate showed elements both of concord and discord; thus, one might say that “the Gracchi did not emerge out of nowhere” (p. 145, “los Gracos no surgieron de la nada”).
In VI.2 Lanfranchi introduces the Gracchi, starting with their illustrious family background and connections to powerful, learned nobiles who assisted in planning their legislative programs. In other words, the Gracchi were political and social “insiders” assisted by likeminded leaders. In 133 Tiberius proposed to renew old limits on individual ownership of ager publicus (500 iugera per citizen, 250 per son, 1,000 maximum per family), the excess to be confiscated and redistributed to poorer citizens. Opponents to this bill included the tribune M. Octavius, whose persistent vetoes against the manifest will of the plebs led Tiberius to remove him from office by plebiscite. Upon his law’s passage, Tiberius established a board of three men to recover, adjudicate, and redistribute excess ager publicus (IIIviri agris dandis adsignandis). The Senate refused to finance the commission sufficiently, so he passed another plebiscite to coopt revenues from the Kingdom of Pergamon, recently left in Rome’s care upon the death of Attalus III. When seeking reelection to an unprecedented second term (and continued protection through tribunician sacrosanctitas), Tiberius’ senatorial opponents cast aside all civic decorum and murdered him with three hundred of his supporters in the electoral assembly. Nine years later, Gaius Gracchus held the tribunate for two years in succession (123-122) during which he introduced a sweeping legislative program addressing agrarian (land), frumentarian (grain), and judiciary issues. He passed additional laws in support of his main program; none were without opposition from the Senate (not least being the one staffing quaestio juries with equites only). In 121 Gaius, no longer tribune, was assassinated in a tumult spurred on by consul L. Opimius’ “ultimate decree” (Senatus Consultum Ultimum), during which over 3,000 Gracchan supporters died.
The next two sections (VI.3-4) cover traditional and revisionist interpretations of the social and economic context of the Gracchan legislative programs. The traditional interpretation (mid- to late-20th c.) espoused by, e.g., Brunt, Hopkins, Gabba, and Toynbee, is that conquest-enriched aristocrats absorbed public lands into vast slave-worked estates; meanwhile, the small farmers pushed off those lands migrated to Rome where they could not generate enough wealth to qualify for military service. Thus, Roman expansion set off a cascade of economic and social changes that undermined the peasant-infantry class, resulting in manpower shortages for the army. The revisionist interpretation (21st c.) is not wholly different, but more nuanced, recognizing that while some of the above-noted changes were already in progress by the late-2nd c., they were not so dire for tota Italia just yet. Lanfranchi’s linked series of current hypotheses (unfortunately treated so briefly as to appear as no more than speculation in some cases) holds that latifundia had not yet supplanted small farming and that slaves were only part of the labor force on large estates, working alongside free and tenant laborers. At the same time, Italy’s population was increasing (albeit Roman census figures are notoriously tricky to work with), as was competition for land in the most desirable areas. Thus, the Gracchi were dealing with an emerging but not fully arrived crisis that varied by region but was perhaps more strongly observable in central Italy, the region most impacted by growing populations and concomitant land hunger. The upshot is that while the Gracchi may have used rhetorical exaggeration to portray problems looming on the horizon as though they had already arrived throughout all of Italy (as recounted in later sources), the Gracchi and their brain trust were clearly farsighted enough to try to prevent future instability, focusing especially on potential problems of military recruitment to highlight the most dangerous consequences to Rome of ignoring the then-emerging agrarian issues. Even more important than their apparent farsightedness is how the Gracchi set constitutional precedents (for good or ill) with respect to popular sovereignty, the unleashed powers of the tribunate (cf. the tribunates of Saturninus), and the relationships between the constituent parts of the SPQR.
In Chapter VII, “los tribunos de la plebe entre la crisis de la república y la dictadura de césar,” Lanfranchi highlights the centrality of the tribunate to the majority of political crises in the Republic’s last decades (91-44 BCE), from the failure of Drusus’ reforms in 91 to Sulla’s emasculations of the tribunate (in 88 and 81) to roll back the clock to a pre-revolutionary phase, to the restoration of its powers and deployment in factional politics, ending with its gradual incorporation into the bundle of powers held by Caesar, then by Augustus (and by every successor thereafter) and the institution’s eventual loss of independence.
He begins with M. Livius Drusus (VII.1) who, like C. Gracchus, was of prestigious ancestry and also promoted a sweeping program of reforms aimed at satisfying various constituencies—with, e.g., grain distributions, monetary reform, colonial foundations, land redistributions, cooptation of 300 equites to the Senate, and restoration of juries to the (proposed) enlarged body of senators—all to pave the way for extending citizenship to the Italian allies. His assassination on the eve of the latter reform triggered the Social War. Over the course of the war Rome reluctantly conceded citizenship to Italians, whose full integration into the state became an enduring challenge. In 88, Sulpicius Rufus passed a law to place all new citizens in the 35 existing tribes; but his radical activities, including his transfer by plebiscite of Sulla’s command against Mithridates VI of Pontus to Marius, triggered Sulla’s march on Rome, resulting in Sulpicius’ death, the temporary exile of Marius et alii, and Sulla’s hastily-passed consular laws rolling back the tribunate’s powers (Cinna, Sulla’s consular successor, canceled these laws). Over the next several years, tribunes embroiled themselves in both sides of the ensuing civil wars. Following his victorious and bloody return to Rome, Sulla was appointed dictator by a Lex Valeria to restore the state to a firm footing. His laws to reorganize the magistracies severely weakened the tribunate by restricting its power of intercession to providing auxilium only; by eliminating its career-boosting potential by banning tribunes from holding higher office; and by removing its legislative initiative, the extent of which is much debated (VII.2). Lanfranchi sees Sulla as a traditionalist who attempted in 88 to return tribunician legislation to the limitations in existence prior to the Lex Hortensia of 287, i.e., plebiscites would not be binding on the whole people without prior Senate approval. Sulla’s reform in 81 was more radical: eliminate tribunician legislation altogether (or so our sources indicate). Lanfranchi also views Sulla’s prohibition against tribunes holding further offices as returning tribunes to their pre-366 status of “outsider” to the regular government (pp. 178-180). But all of these restrictions were unsustainable for an office that had become crucial to the day-to-day operations of the Republic and that constituted its de facto legislative branch (VII.3, p. 180). Post-Sulla protests by tribunes in the early 70s paved the way for limited reforms in 75 (the reopening of subsequent career paths) and for full restoration of the tribunate’s powers in 70, thanks to consuls Crassus and Pompey with an assist from Julius Caesar. Pompey subsequently gained immense provinciae and near limitless imperium thanks to compliant tribunes hoping for a quid pro quo (i.e. the Lex Gabinia of 67 and Lex Manilia of 66: 181-182).
The most notorious tribune of the Late Republic, the former patrician turned plebeian P. Clodius Pulcher (tr. pl. 58), brought forth numerous populist laws providing free grain, limiting obnuntiatio, altering censorial activities, appropriating Cyprus from the Ptolemies, and restoring certain collegia banned in 64. Most famously, he passed a law making it a capital crime to execute Roman citizens without trial, forcing Cicero into a preemptive self-exile. Lanfranchi follows Baudry in seeing Clodius as a political innovator who reshaped the office while also embracing his (former) patrician identity; in retrospect, he can be seen as laying the groundwork for patrician emperors who would hold tribunician powers without holding the office. He also points out that while it appears that many tribunes were the lackeys of leaders like Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar, there were also many tribunes of more conservative leaning who opposed such colleagues, most of whom we know thanks to Cicero’s speeches and correspondence.
The chapter closes with Caesar’s defense of, reliance on, and generally friendly relations with tribunes throughout his career, including his game-changing assumption of some tribunician privileges for himself (VII.4). Tribunes were instrumental in conferring on Caesar special commands, powers, triumphs, and honors including tribunician sacrosanctitas and the ius subsellii (the right to sit among the tribunes on their benches); Lanfranchi argues rightly that Caesar did not receive the full tribunicia potestas—an innovation Augustus accomplished over two decades later (Ch. VIII)—but also that his tribunician privileges were a key aspect of his public persona as dictator. Caesar’s relations with tribunes were not always rosy, however: several opposed him throughout his career; in his last year of life, some publicly challenged his governmental overreach and apparent desire for a royal title. This opposition earned them public insults from Caesar, then expulsion from office. After Caesar’s death, various tribunes involved themselves in opposing factions during the next round of civil wars, their legislative powers deployed to confer commands and powers (e.g., the “Second” Triumvirate was officially sanctioned by a plebiscite, the Lex Titia of 43) (VII.5). Little did anyone suspect (except, perhaps, Augustus) that this period was to be the tribunate’s “swan song” after which its powers would be absorbed into the principate (190).
In Chapter VIII, “los tribunos de la plebe, Augusto y el imperio,” Lanfranchi first focuses on the coopting and deployment of tribunician powers by Augustus as princeps (VIII.1), then the concomitant decline of the tribunate as an independent office over the next centuries into a merely ceremonial step on one’s political career ladder (VIII.1-3).
Lanfranchi argues that Augustus had received, like Caesar, sacrosanctitas before 30 BCE; but the full tribunicia potestas (along with a promagisterial imperium maius) was conferred on him as part of the “Second Settlement” of 23 BCE when he gave up the annual consulships—and imperium domi—that he had held since 31 BCE. As one of the two foundational supports of his new bundle of powers, tribunicia potestas allowed Augustus to continue to convene the people, convene the senate, bring forward legislation, intercede in political affairs, and provide auxilium to citizens, all without holding the actual and symbolically fraught office of tribune of the plebs. Lanfranchi points out the additional, expanded privilege of ius relationis that allowed Augustus precedence over other sitting magistrates in convening and addressing the Senate. From this moment, if not before, the tribunes started to fade into the background as none would dare challenge Augustus; he also removed some of their duties, e.g., oversight of senatorial records (11 BCE), and gave them others: tribunes, aediles, and praetors were chosen by lot to oversee one each of the 14 regiones of the city. Over time, the tribunes’ duties became largely bureaucratic. What legislation they may have carried out under Augustus would have been in his service, e.g., conferral of honors, or at his request, such as investiture of his closest colleagues and helpers with five-year grants of tribunicia potestas, a newly-devised instrument of promotion in Augustus’ evolving succession schemes (e.g., Agrippa in 18 and 13 BCE; Tiberius in 6 BCE and 4 and 11 CE; a five-year grant of imperium maius was its cognate but not always simultaneous).[4] Lanfranchi also notes the investiture of Octavia and Livia with sacrosanctitas, which, although uncertain as to its extent, did define a new special status for members of the imperial family (and likely was accomplished by tribunician legislation).
Lanfranchi then covers (VIII.2) the devolution of the tribunate from an independent and powerful magistracy to an administrative position and, eventually, little more than an honorific title. While early imperial tribunes were elected (later, appointed) every year, and theoretically possessed the now mostly latent powers of the tribunate, little is known of their activities as they were no longer central to the development of law or policy in the state and thus appear only rarely in ancient sources on post-Augustan Rome, whether replacing a deceased tribune or threatening a veto (at least up until the Flavian period). Indeed, the majority of recorded tribunician actions were in support of the current emperor, not against. It is also clear that popular assemblies and legislation gradually diminished during the early principate, with the last known “independent” plebiscite recorded for 8 BCE. Thus, their scope for effective action with—even interaction with—the plebs was mostly removed. Even elections or appointments of tribunes became the purview of the Senate and emperor, who might also simply confer tribunicius rank on a senator. Lanfranchi also provides a few key examples of tribunes in the Augustan and Flavian eras convening the Senate to discuss important matters, providing auxilium to individuals, and attempting intercessio (sometimes successfully), all to indicate that they still had capacity for some action while in office. This effectively ended in 56 CE when their powers were redefined and curtailed by the Senate to prohibit tribunes from interfering with the actions of praetors, consuls (the very officials whom they were supposed to keep in check during the Republic), and the emperor himself (pp. 206-209). Nevertheless, Lanfranchi points out that Epictetus considered a tribunate to be a mark of favor for one embarking on a political career. Likewise, Pliny the Younger, himself a former tribune, reminded a newly elected tribune that the dignity of his new office compelled him to be “… a tribune for all, rather than a lawyer for the few” (Plin. Ep. 1.23). These tantalizingly rare glimpses into the post-Republic tribunate do not, sadly, allow us to understand their daily activities beyond the known shifts in responsibilities.
In contrast to the few literary sources is an abundance of funerary inscriptions that allow us to know the names of many imperial-era tribunes until the early-3rd c CE. The rarity of tribunes known by name after 218 CE is, according to Lanfranchi, an indicator of the tribunate’s increasing irrelevance and replacement by imperial bureaucrats under different headings. The tribunate likely would have disappeared altogether after it was removed from the cursus by edict no later than the mid-3rd c. (it disappears from inscriptions as well), but in mid-4th c. Constantinople, the tribunate was revived as a mostly honorary office as a man’s first step on his political career path (replacing the quaestorship of the Sullan constitution). The latest mentions of the tribunate occur in 5th-century legal sources, but with no evidence for holders of the office or their functions in that era.
In his epilogo, “de ‘tribuno de la plebe’ a ‘tribuno del pueblo’: lecturas modernas del tribunado de la plebe,” Lanfranchi states that “…the political legacy of the tribunate is as important as its own history, since it is one of the fundamental inheritances from Rome that has contributed to shaping the political structures of Western Europe. [Therefore,] I would like to conclude this overview with the history of the tribunate’s reinvention after its disappearance.”[5] The main thread of this chapter covers how the historical tribunate with its complicated history evolved in later political thought into an embodiment of important democratic principles, including defense of citizens and liberty against governmental overreach. Following is a dense discussion of appearances of “tribunes” and the “tribunate” in diverse Late Antique and Medieval sources, up to the 14th c. when Cola di Rienzo declared himself “tribune of Rome” (and sole ruler), the first but not only attempt at reviving the office up to the 16th c. (Ep. 1). It was in this revivalist context that competing interpretations of the tribunate developed: Machiavelli, for whom tribunes provided the foundations of Roman liberty, was opposed by Francesco Guicciardini, who saw tribunes as having impeded Roman military virtus and aristocratic government while simultaneously failing to restrain the plebs. For Lanfranchi, Machiavelli and Guicciardini established the favorable/unfavorable spectrum for pretty much all future interpretations of the tribunate’s role in Roman history (Ep. 2).
Lanfranchi next surveys John Calvin and subsequent Protestant thinkers who came to view tribunes and/or their ancient cognates, Spartan ephors and Athenian demarchs, as examples of how intermediate magistrates could legitimately check tyrannical government, and who believed that sovereignty flowed from ruled to ruler, ideas that became foundational for developing political doctrines. Montesquieu had a balanced view, seeing the Roman tribunate as a general good when protecting the ruled against ruling class abuses, but a potential danger when overusing obstructive powers to obstruct legislation and administration; he therefore advised against relying on one institution to maintain balance, advocating instead for a careful separation of powers (Ep. 3). The Machiavelli-Guicciardini dichotomy reappeared with 18th c. French historians Louis de Beaufort, who followed Machiavelli’s positive view of the tribunate, and Abbé Séran de la Tour who, like Guicciardini, blamed tribunes for the decline of Roman strength and aristocratic rule. (Ep. 4)
The penultimate section (Ep. 5) begins with Rousseau’s “Social Contract,” which includes a modern version of the tribunate wielding the negative, protective powers of the early Roman tribunate: they would prevent unlawful action and moderate between powers, but not govern directly or gain legislative initiative, as this could lead to the tribunate itself becoming tyrannical—as exemplified by tribunes of the Late Republic and Roman emperors in possession of tribunician powers. Lanfranchi includes the political theorizing of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who believed that an ideal representative government should possess a branch with “absolut negativ macht” modeled on the ephors of Sparta and chosen by the people to restrain those possessing “absolut positiv macht” from tyrannical behavior. The section ends with some of the big questions of the French Revolution: Should France create its own version of the tribunate to resist oppression and guard the new constitution? Should resistance itself be institutionalized? Such questions divided France’s political factions. Lanfranchi discusses Robespierre’s rejection of the Roman model, reasoning that the people should not depend on special magistrates to defend their liberty; rather, they should themselves defend their right to rebel against tyranny without hindrance by “weak or corruptible” representatives who could sell their votes or speeches to those who would oppress the people (he had clearly read his Livy). Lanfranchi includes other interesting proposals modeled on the Spartan ephorate or the Athenian process of dokimasia, all of which aimed at establishing a long-lasting democratic government “in which the people retain the right to oversight and resistance.”[6]
From the late-19th to early-21st century, the tribunate has been subjected to a variety of in-depth, systematic studies that have provided a better understanding of the office’s functions and importance to the development of the government of Republican Rome (by, e.g., Mommsen, Willems, Pais, Niccolini, Bleicken, Thommen, Hurlet, and Lanfranchi, among others). But this scholarly work has had little impact on the popular and still resonant concept of the “tribune of the people” in western political thought in Western Europe of the 19th and 20th centuries; even the young U.S.A. has had its proponents, such as John C. Calhoun, the South Carolinian statesman who valued the negative powers of the tribune as a crucial element of properly constitutional government. But, Lanfranchi points out, the enduring concept of the “tribune of the people” as protector of citizens and defender of civil liberties obscures the actual functions of the tribunes of the plebs who actively proposed and legislated many crucial changes to Rome’s government. Indeed, their impact in that venue justifies later thinkers like Machiavelli, Babeuf, and now Lanfranchi himself, in viewing the tribunes of the plebs as “the perfectors of the Republic.”
While not a complete replacement of Niccolini’s work, Lanfranchi’s book constitutes an update of approach that reflects current discussions that will appeal to a wider audience (the students and “cultured general public” mentioned in his preface); it will also appeal, despite his statement to the contrary, to “readers already well versed in Roman history,” as many Romanists probably know much less than is on offer here about the tribunate’s history and significance over the course of the Republic beyond its bare chronology and main functions. Indeed, Lanfranchi’s social-historical contextualization of the tribunate’s activity, his clear step-by-step review of all that the tribunate contributed to the Republic’s development, and his frequent coverage of current debates among modern scholars of the Roman republic, when taken altogether constitute an extremely valuable roadmap for anyone interested in “doing” Republican history. One can only hope that Lanfranchi and the editors of the excellent Libera Res Publica series will consider an English edition, as this book will long serve as an essential introduction to this important office and its history in particular, and Republican history in general, and should therefore be accessible to as many readers as possible.
Notes
[1] Key works include, in chronological order of appearance: T. Corey Brennan, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic I–II, Oxford 2000; Francisco Pina Polo, The Consul at Rome. The Civil Functions of the Consuls in the Roman Republic, Cambridge 2011; Hans Beck, Antonio Duplá, Martin Jehne, Francisco Pina Polo (eds.), Consuls and Res Publica. Holding High Office in the Roman Republic, Cambridge 2011; Maximilian Becker, “Suntoque aediles curatores urbis …” Die Entwicklung der stadtrömischen Aedilität in republikanischer Zeit. Frankfurter Historische Abhandlungen, Band 50, Stuttgart 2017; and Francisco Pina Polo and Alejandro Díaz Fernández, The Quaestorship in the Roman Republic, Berlin/Boston 2019.
[2] Jochen Bleicken, Das Volkstribunat der klassischen Republik. Studien zu seiner Entwicklung zwischen 287 und 133 v. Chr., Munich 19682; Lucas Thommen, Das Volkstribunat der späten römischen Republik (133-43 B.C.E.), Stuttgart 1989. Thibaud Lanfranchi, Les tribuns de la plèbe et la formation de la République romaine, 494-287 avant J.-C. Roma 2015.
[3] For my review of this book see BMCR 2018.12.46.
[4] The order in which these were granted seems not to have been set until the Flavian era; for instance, Tiberius had Germanicus invested with imperium maius but not tribunicia potestas, but did the opposite for Drusus the Younger.
[5] Lanfranchi (2024) 215: “…el legado politico del tribunado es tan importante como su propia historia, ya que es una de las herencias fundamentales de Roma que han contribuido a configurar las estructuras politicas de Europa occidental. Me gustaria concluir este recorrido con esta historia de la reinvencion del tribunado tras su desaparicion.”
[6] Lanfranchi (2024) 241: He actually poses the question, “como establecer una constitution democratica duradera en la que el pueblo conserve el derecho de control y de resistentia?”