The article analyzes the widespread scientific concept according to which the ancient Roman Republican ‘constitution’ was unwritten, based mainly on customs, and not on laws adopted by the people. However, the analysis of the main authors of the late III — early I centuries BC (Cato the Elder, Polybius and Cicero) suggests that the Roman state structure, the so-called ‘mixed constitution’, was formed in Rome precisely on the basis of laws, as the main means of the Roman people in the struggle against the Patrician Senate for their freedom in the Vth — III centuries BC. Starting with the ancient ‘constitutions’ of the Roman kings Romulus and Numa Pompilius, through the first republican laws and especially through the Legislation of the XII tables, and then through subsequent laws, the balance of three branches of government was laid: magistrates, senate and people, which allowed Rome to ensure its power throughout all the Mediterranean for a long time. The tradition of understanding the state (civitas) and ‘law’ (lex) as a direct ‘establishment of the people’ (constitutio populi) existed even in the era of the Empire and the early Middle Ages, when popular assemblies no longer non were in real life.
Leonid Kofanov (Thu,) studied this question.
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