Legal Fiction and Political Reform at Rome in the Early Second Century B. C

IN THE PROCESS WHICH CREATED the developed Roman Republic of the third to the first centuries B.C., one of the most crucial developments was the opening of the important political magistracies and priesthoods, and especially the consulship, to the plebeian majority, instead of keeping them reserved for the patrician aristocracy as in the fifth and early fourth centuries. This development, according to the annalistic tradition as represented (in its most fully worked up form) by Livy, occurred in several stages during the fourth century, with key legislation concerning the consulship coming in 367 (the Leges Liciniae-Sextiae) and 342 (the Leges Genuciae). It has long been noticed, however, that the consular fasti-the list of annual consuls holding office at Rome-does not accord with the legislative stages recorded by Livy. This has led to two opposed lines of historical treatment of this problem: one, represented in recent times by J. Pinsent and M. Elster, for example, is sceptical of the annalistic/literary tradition and produces alternative accounts of the development of plebeian socio-political power; the other, represented notably in recent years by R. Develin, accepts the literary evidence as fundamentally reliable and seeks to reconcile it with the consular fasti by juggling with hypotheses of special exceptions and military emergencies leading to breaches of genuine and normally valid laws.' Both approaches to the problem, at least as thus far put into practice, seem to me methodologically flawed. One cannot, as Develin and others

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