Practice question · Multiple choice
The Republic let a single tribune veto almost any act of state. Why did a system built on such blocks work for four centuries and then fail quickly?
Hints
- Ask what a veto depends on in order to be obeyed.
- What changed about where a Roman politician’s power came from?
Show the answer
C. Because a veto holds only while both sides accept the outcome
Why
A blocking power is only as strong as the willingness to be blocked. Once a general could appeal past the institutions to his own soldiers, the veto stopped being the last word.
Practise The Roman Republic
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More questions on The Roman Republic
- 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.
- Sort each republican safeguard: written rule or unwritten norm?