The Social Contract · Chapter
IV: The Roman Comitia explained
Rousseau examines the Roman Comitia, detailing the evolution of tribal, centuriate, and curiate assemblies as mechanisms for popular sovereignty.
What happens
Rousseau examines the Roman Comitia, detailing the evolution of tribal, centuriate, and curiate assemblies as mechanisms for popular sovereignty. He describes how Servius Tullius reformed the tribal system to balance power, the aristocratic bias of the Comitia Centuriata, and the eventual corruption that led to secret ballots and the decline of the Republic.
Themes in this chapter
Sovereignty and Government
Rousseau analyzes how the Roman assemblies embodied different distributions of sovereign power, from popular to aristocratic.
Decline and Corruption of the State
The chapter traces the moral decay of Rome as voting became corrupt and secret ballots were introduced, leading to the Republic's ruin.
The Role of the Legislator
Servius Tullius is presented as a wise legislator who reformed institutions to preserve liberty and morality.
Characters to notice
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Author and narrator analyzing the Roman political system.
- Servius Tullius
Reformed the Roman tribal system, replacing racial divisions with territorial ones and creating urban and rural tribes.
- Romulus
Founder of Rome who established the curiae and the patron-client system to balance power.
- Cicero
Cited as opposing the secret ballot, which Rousseau disputes.
- Varro
Quoted on the virtue of rural life as the nursery of Rome's defenders.
- Pliny the Elder
Cited regarding the honor of rural tribes and the disgrace of transfer to urban tribes.
Key passages
“We are without well-certified records of the first period of Rome’s existence; it even appears very probable that most of the stories told about it are fables; indeed, generally speaking, the most instructive part of the history of peoples, that which deals with their foundation, is what we have least of.”
We lack reliable records of early Rome; most founding stories are likely myths, and the most instructive part of a people's history—its origins—is the least documented.
Rousseau acknowledges the legendary nature of Rome's early history.
“Servius remedied this dangerous fault by changing the principle of cleavage, and substituting for the racial division, which he abolished, a new one based on the quarter of the town inhabited by each tribe.”
Servius corrected the imbalance by replacing racial tribes with territorial ones based on where people lived in the city.
Servius Tullius' reform to prevent factionalism and stabilize the state.
“The taste of the early Romans for country life is well known. This taste they owed to their wise founder, who made rural and military labours go along with liberty, and, so to speak, relegated to the town arts, crafts, intrigue, fortune and slavery.”
Early Romans loved country life because their founder linked rural work and military service with freedom, leaving the city for corruption and servitude.
Rousseau praises the agrarian virtue that sustained Roman liberty.
“I know that Cicero attacks this change, and attributes partly to it the ruin of the Republic. But though I feel the weight Cicero’s authority must carry on such a point, I cannot agree with him; I hold, on the contrary, that, for want of enough such changes, the destruction of the State must be hastened.”
Cicero blamed the secret ballot for Rome's fall, but Rousseau argues that without such reforms, the state's ruin would come even faster.
Rousseau disagrees with Cicero on the necessity of secret voting in a corrupt state.
