Roman Legion Assembly

The Centuriate Assembly was the Roman assembly organized by centuries, the wealth-based divisions attributed to Servius. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s account, its structure joined military classification to political voting: it included the whole people and possessed the full majesty of the Roman people, yet its weighted centuries gave the rich a decisive advantage. A preliminary vote by lot and a repeated election softened that advantage, while preserving a political form Rousseau characterizes as more favorable to aristocracy than to popular government.

Foundation and Organization

After Rome’s foundation, the people were divided through several overlapping arrangements. The earliest, attributed to Romulus, grouped the population into tribes and curiae; the centuries established by Servius formed a distinct division. Servius’s system classified people not by neighborhood or descent, but by wealth, arranging them in six classes and subdividing those classes into 193 centuries.

The distribution of centuries did not mirror the distribution of people. The first class, made up of the rich, contained 98 centuries—more than half the total—while the last class, which included more than half the inhabitants of Rome, had only one. The smallest class by population thus held the greatest voting weight, and the most populous class the least. This numerical architecture was the basis of the assembly’s formal inequality.

Servius gave the arrangement a military appearance. The second class included two centuries of armourers, and the fourth two of makers of instruments of war. In every class except the last, he distinguished younger citizens obliged to bear arms from older citizens exempted by age. He ordered the assembly to meet in the Campus Martius, where those of serving age were to attend armed. The last class, composed of the populace, had no right to bear arms for the country and was not divided by age in the same way.

Assembly and Public Authority

The Centuriate Assembly was one of three kinds of lawful Roman assembly, alongside the Curiate and Tribal assemblies. These assemblies were called comitia and met in Rome’s public square or in the Campus Martius. The Centuriate form was founded by Servius; the Curiate form was attributed to Romulus, and the Tribal form to the tribunes of the people.

No law received sanction and no magistrate was elected except in an assembly. Because each citizen was enrolled in a curia, century, or tribe, Rousseau concludes that no citizen was excluded from voting and that the Roman people was sovereign both in law and in practice. This broad inclusion did not mean that every assembly represented the people in the same way: the Centuriate Assembly alone included all, whereas the Curiate Assembly excluded the rural tribes and the Tribal Assembly excluded the senate and patricians.

The character of the assembly depended on the rules by which its centuries voted. Since voting proceeded by centuries, the first class’s 98 centuries could constitute a majority by themselves. If they agreed, the remaining votes were not even taken. Rousseau therefore argues that decisions could reflect the depth of purses more than the number of people: the preference of a small wealthy group could stand for the decision of the multitude.

Elections and the Lottery

The aristocratic advantage was checked in two ways. One was that tribunes and many plebeians belonged to the wealthy class, counterbalancing the patricians’ influence within the first class. The other was a procedure that interrupted the automatic precedence of the richest centuries.

Rather than always beginning with the first century, the Romans selected one century by lot to vote alone in the initial election. On another day, all the centuries were summoned in order of rank, and the election was repeated, generally confirming the first result. The lottery transferred the authority of example away from rank and toward chance, giving the process a democratic element without eliminating the wealth-weighted structure.

The interval between the two votes also served a practical purpose. Citizens from the countryside had time to learn about the candidate provisionally chosen, instead of being required to vote without knowing the case. Rousseau notes that this safeguard was later abolished under the pretext of speeding proceedings: both elections came to be held on the same day. The change removed the interval that had allowed country citizens to become informed before the confirming vote.

Political Character and Significance

Rousseau distinguishes the assemblies by the political interests their procedures favored. The Tribal Assembly was most favorable to popular government; the Centuriate Assembly favored aristocracy. The Curiate Assembly, where Rome’s urban populace formed the majority but rural tribes were excluded, was suited, in his judgment, to tyranny and harmful designs and consequently fell into disrepute.

The Centuriate Assembly therefore held a double position in his analysis. It was the assembly that included the whole people and the fullest institutional expression of Roman public authority, but its unequal distribution of centuries made its voting profoundly unlike a simple count of citizens. The lottery modified the force of rank, and the participation of wealthy plebeians complicated patrician control; neither erased the underlying advantage conferred by wealth. Its importance lies in this tension between comprehensive civic inclusion and aristocratic weighting: the Roman people could be sovereign through an assembly whose internal rules did not give each person an equal share of influence.