Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each republican safeguard: written rule or unwritten norm?
Groups: Written rule · Unwritten norm
- Ex-magistrates defer to the mos maiorum
- Dictatorship expires after six months
- Political defeat does not mean death
- Consular term lasts one year
- Generals obey the Senate’s recall
- Tribune’s person is sacrosanct
Hints
- Some constraints were law and others merely custom.
- The written rules survived the Republic's death; the customs did not.
Show the answer
Written rule: Consular term lasts one year, Tribune’s person is sacrosanct, Dictatorship expires after six months
Unwritten norm: Political defeat does not mean death, Generals obey the Senate’s recall, Ex-magistrates defer to the mos maiorum
Why
The written rules all survived to the end, consuls were still elected under the emperors. It was the norms that died, and the Republic turned out to be made of them.
Practise The Roman Republic
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on The Roman Republic
- The Republic let a single tribune veto almost any act of state. Why did a system built on such blocks work…
- How did victory in the Punic Wars poison the Republic? Select the real mechanisms.
- Republican Rome had no written constitution and no police force. What actually held the system together for…
- Complete the account of the Marian reform.
- Order the Republic’s self-destruction.
- Assemble the cursus honorum, the ladder of republican offices, bottom to top.