The Laws of the Roman People: Public Law in the Expansion and Decline of the Roman Republic (review)

In this extraordinary book, Williamson takes on a daunting and demanding subject—the character and consequences of Roman expansion in Italy over a period of 300 years, the incorporation of Italic peoples into the Roman system, and the resultant tensions and pressures that culminated in the fall of the Republic. No brief review can begin to do justice to the richness and complexity of this work. Topics tumble upon one another impressively but, at times, confusingly. The treatment is complex and convoluted, often turning back upon itself, falling into repetition, and occasionally reversing its own conclusions. Logic and consistency are not its strongest points. But the ambitious investigation merits praise. A principal theme knits together its disparate discussions—the engagement of Romans from all social classes, ethnic backgrounds, and political associations in the process of promulgating legislation. That process could promote consensus, balance, and concord. But it could also provide a forum for dissent, conflict, and fragmentation.

Williamson's choice of topic is inspired. The generation of laws by the Roman people constitutes a persistent and repeated (though not steady) feature of Republican history. Williamson's thorough collection of the laws, gathered in an invaluable series of tables and organized by subject, period, sponsors, issues, and institutions (among other things), demonstrates the remarkable variety and compelling significance of legislative activity over three centuries. Williamson does not dwell on minutiae but endeavors to draw larger conclusions about Roman politics and society in the building, and then dissolution, of consensus among the leadership and between the elite and the populace. One of this study's refreshing features is that it concentrates more on what held the Republic together than on what tore it asunder.

The book is replete with acute observations. For instance, Williamson shows that the introduction of the secret ballot did not represent demagogic activity on behalf of the populace but a means whereby the elite protected its own ascendancy. She rightly lifts key legislation of the late Republic (for example, in 67, 63, 59, and 58 b.c.e.) from the realm of mere politics to the broader issues of leadership, public welfare, and the assimilation of wider elements of society into the governing process. She pointedly suggests that the dramatic increase in legislative activity during the last generation of the Republic indicates that the process and the system had gone awry.

Yet the elaborate and imposing structure of this work does not quite hold together. Long discussions of Rome's efforts to integrate Italians into its institutional system, of the mobility of the Italians and the fluidity of their means of livelihood, of the effects of military service, of the variety of Roman voting assemblies, and of shifting patterns of leadership, all have only a loose connection with law-making activity. Williamson's fertile intellect is everywhere present, but her writing could use more discipline. Her admirable efforts to present the contexts of legislation tend to engulf the legislation itself.

Williamson deserves credit for placing public law onto center stage. Her instinct that it bears an important relationship to a host of key developments in the history of the Republic (especially the absorption of Italy, the extension of citizenship, and the interplay between Roman leadership and the plebs) is surely right. But the book more frequently asserts that relationship than explores or establishes it.

The work does not qualify as interdisciplinary in the usual sense. Political and institutional history stands at its core. But its new approach (via scrutiny of legislative process and products) to the old questions of what integrated and what undermined the Roman Republic, even if it does not successfully answer those questions, should stimulate fresh...