Introduction

This chapter examines the military and political organization of the Roman state during the period c. 550-250 as embodied in one of Rome’s three voting assemblies, the comitia centuriata or centuriate assembly. According to the later ancient Roman tradition, during its earliest period of history, the regal period (traditionally dated 753-509), Rome was ruled by a series of seven kings, and the sixth king, Servius Tullius (traditionally dated 578-534) created this institution. Hence, this military and political system is often termed the Servian constitution. When the monarchy was abolished and replaced by the consulship in 509, the period of the Roman Republic commenced, and the comitia centuriata emerged as one of the most important political institutions in the Roman state. This body, which comprised all adult male Roman citizens with the right to vote, remained in existence for over five centuries and finally disappeared with the collapse of the republic and its replacement by a new sort of monarchy, the principate established by Augustus.

The surviving ancient sources provide us with ample evidence concerning the nature and functioning of the centuriate assembly for the periods of the middle republic (264-133) and the late republic (133-31), but the origin and evolution of this institution during the early republic (509-264) is largely shrouded in mystery, because the Romans did not begin to write historical accounts until the Hannibalic War (218-201), by which time the comitia centuriata had completed its complex history of development, and ancient Roman historians no longer possessed much reliable information about how this institution had changed over time. Any attempt to explain the origin and early development of the comitia centuriata must do so by placing the institution in the context of the growth of the Roman state during the regal period and early republic, including the military and political institutions that preceded it and shaped the environment in which it arose.