Latest / The Story of Italy: Rome, Renaissance, and the Birth of Modern Europe — Fexingo History / The Roman Consular Tribunate: When Rome Shared Power with Itself
Transcript
- Lucas: So, we've talked a lot about the cursus honorum and the consulship in earlier episodes — the two consuls who held supreme command for a year, checking each other's power. But there was a fascinating period in the early Republic when Rome experimented with something quite different: instead of two consuls, they'd elect six military tribunes with consular power. The tribuni militum consulari potestate. Luna: Six? That sounds unwieldy. Lucas: It does, doesn't it? And it only happened intermittently — between 444 and 367 BCE, about fifty years where Rome would sometimes choose consuls, sometimes choose these tribunes. The pattern was erratic, and it tells us a lot about the political struggles of the time. Luna: What was the point of having six commanders instead of two? Lucas: Good question. The traditional explanation, given by Livy, is that it was a compromise in the Conflict of the Orders — the struggle between patricians and plebeians over access to power. The consulship was originally reserved for patricians. Plebeians wanted a share of the highest office. But patricians were reluctant to open the consulship directly. So they created this alternative: military tribunes with consular power, which could be filled by plebeians. It was a way to give plebeians a taste of supreme command without breaking the patrician monopoly on the consulship. Luna: So it was a political workaround. Lucas: Exactly. But there was also a practical side. Rome was fighting more wars on multiple fronts — against the Etruscans, the Volsci, the Aequi, and others. Having six commanders might have allowed for more flexible deployments. You could send two or three tribunes on one campaign, two on another, while keeping a reserve at home. The system wasn't rigid. Luna: But six people in command — didn't that cause chaos? Lucas: Livy suggests it could be messy. The tribunes held equal power, so they had to coordinate. And Roman military discipline relied on a clear chain of command. Our sources say that sometimes command was rotated daily among the tribunes — imagine that, a new general every day on campaign. That sounds like a recipe for disaster. But we also have stories of the tribunes operating effectively, especially when they divided their forces. Luna: Did any famous Romans serve as consular tribunes? Lucas: Yes, some very famous ones. Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus — the legendary farmer-dictator — served as a consular tribune in 425 BCE, decades after his famous dictatorship. And Marcus Furius Camillus, the man who captured the Etruscan city of Veii after a ten-year siege, was a consular tribune multiple times. In fact, Camillus held the office six times. He actually triumphed as a consular tribune after Veii, which was a big deal. Luna: So plebeians actually got into the office? Lucas: They did, but not easily. Livy records that in the first year of the tribunate, 444 BCE, all three elected tribunes were patricians. It took time. By the later fifth century, plebeians regularly held the office, but the patricians still controlled the consulship when it was revived. The tension never really went away. Luna: What finally ended the consular tribunate? Lucas: A pair of laws passed in 367 BCE, the leges Liciniae Sextiae, named after the tribunes Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus. These laws opened the consulship to plebeians directly — one of the two consuls each year had to be a plebeian. With that reform, the consular tribunate became unnecessary. It was abolished, and Rome went back to the two-consul system permanently. Interestingly, the first plebeian consul was Lucius Sextius Lateranus himself. Luna: A nice reward for his legislative work. Lucas: Exactly. But the consular tribunate had served its purpose: it allowed plebeians to gain military command experience and gradually eroded the patrician monopoly. Without that step, the later plebeian access to the consulship might have been much harder to achieve. Luna: A stepping stone, then. Lucas: Precisely. And it's a reminder that Roman political institutions were not static — they evolved through conflict and compromise. The Romans were pragmatic; they'd try different arrangements to solve problems, even if those arrangements seem strange to us. Six commanders sharing power? It sounds like a headache, but for a time, it worked. Luna: Speaking of things that work — I've been thinking about how we keep this show going without ads. Lucas: Yeah, we deliberately don't run ads on these conversations. If you want to support that choice, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a simple way to keep the show ad-free for everyone. Luna: It really helps, and we appreciate everyone who does. Lucas: So, back to the tribunes — one of the most dramatic episodes involving a consular tribune was the capture of Veii in 396 BCE by Camillus. That siege lasted ten years, and Camillus was a consular tribune that year. After the victory, he celebrated a triumph, driving a chariot drawn by white horses, which some found uncomfortably godlike. It foreshadowed the tensions between military glory and republican norms that would haunt Rome later. Luna: White horses — that's something you'd expect from a triumphator. Lucas: Right, but it was controversial. Anyway, the consular tribunate faded, but its legacy was a more inclusive ruling class. And the idea of shared, rotating command never fully disappeared — it even resurfaced during the Second Punic War, when Scipio Africanus had to deal with the Senate's tendency to send out pairs of commanders with equal authority. But that's a story for another episode.