Observing that the history of the Roman Republic has been one of turbulence, conflict, and dynamic change throughout, Martin Jehne investigates the integrative and indeed moderating force of standardized forms of interaction between the upper and the lower classes. He sees the corresponding modes grounded in what Jehne labelled a Jovialitätsgebot, that is, a communicative and behavioural code of benevolence that structured and lent meaning to the mutual relations between unequals. Under this unspoken code, members of the governing classes were expected to encounter ordinary citizens deliberately and pointedly as if they were on terms of equality with one another, even though all parties understood that they were not. In its Roman context, Jovialität allowed both the nobility and the people to cultivate an institutionalized conversation that supplemented the realm of prevailing power structures and social asymmetries. To flesh out the argument, Jehne discusses a prominent incident from 414 BCE, the battle of words between M. Postumius Regillensis and M. Sextius.

The Roman Capitol was a place of memory. Several conceptual traits of a Roman lieu de mémoire are identified: an ever-present signposting to other stories, notions of humble origins, portents of a prosperous future, and great men who tie it all together. The concrete places related to these stories are not only visible but, in fact, vital to the story they tell; without them, the symbiotic interlinking between narrative and numinous place evaporates. Discussion of the Roman triumph demonstrates how space is created by ritual. From this emerged an implicit hierarchy of space that lent additional quality to place. The Republic’s greatest imperatores wished to see their fame immortalized on the Capitol. But the Capitol was also somewhat removed from everyday politics, for instance, in the Comitium or in the Forum. Here, aristocrats had to confront the people, directly and in person. In turn, the encounter was critical to the way in which the people awarded public offices in the voting assemblies on the Campus Martius. Between these various locations there developed a distinctive hierarchy of place that was defined by proximity to the present of politics, prestige, and war.

The contio was vital to the political conversation between the senate and people, creating a shared political space. Its success was not so much rooted in the institutional framework but in the contiones’ ability to connect with the audience’s lived experience. In particular, the nobility’s leadership was found acceptable because it was portrayed as beneficial to all; aristocrats were able to substantiate their claims for social eminence with real assets. The capacity to create consensus by means of a set decision-making process faded over time. The second half of the article traces the growing involvement of the contio with domestic issues since the time of the Gracchi, if not earlier. While promises of spoils and profit remained a recurring theme in public speech, they appeared less and less believable. The political crisis of the late Republic was thus also a crisis in the communication between mass and elite. The consensus evaporated because its inherent benefits had fallen flat: the contio became an outlet of discontent and communications counterintuitive to the preservation of the libera res publica.

Through the complex processes of generating mutual expectations and demands, senatorial consensus resulted in a wider consensus held by all. Only on four occasions did the popular assemblies ever vote in a way that went against the senate’s expectations, in 209, 200, 167, and 149 BCE. Discussion of each of these instances demonstrates that the people were not accustomed to, or interested in, following their own preferences: when rogationes were brought before the popular assemblies, they were certain to be agreed. What united the very few cases of rejection was that the people’s response was highly personalized, that is, the initial rogatio pertained to a specific individual; the response aimed at inconveniencing that person; and the senatorial elite was itself divided on the person. Egon Flaig performs a threefold analysis: he measures the strength of preferences in the peoples’ assemblies; he explores the limitations to what is labelled the institutional automatism behind the acceptance of motions; and he teases out the tactical and ritualized manoeuvres of withdrawing precarious proposals. The results are merged into a checklist that gauges the semantic and situational variety of action before the contio.

The Roman senatorial elite laid claim to all roles of prominence in society. The very notion of nobilitas made prominence an all-inclusive virtue, in office-holding as much as in other public arenas. Indeed, scrutinizing an inherent tension between annual roles as embodied by the honores and more durable, sometimes life long, roles of prominence, Hans Beck argues that the aristocracy’s integrated claim to leadership wielded significant stabilizing impact upon Roman society. L. Quinctius Flamininus was expelled from the senate in 184 BCE but maintained his other social rules, his public standing, and his overall notability. In the century and a half that followed, Beck detects a gradual erosion of inclusive ideals of prominence. The crisis of the Republic is thus understood as a disintegration of social roles. In the era of the great extraordinary commands, the performance of prestige duties of the collective became less and less important. Augustus’ ostentatious unification of these under his watchful guard as princeps propelled a change in role behaviour that could easily be portrayed as a restitution of the Republican outlook.

Martin Jehne looks at the Roman comitia through the lens of their rich symbolism. Set in a demarcated space and sanctioned by the auspices of the gods, the popular assemblies were, in general, integrative: they symbolized the belonging of the citizens to the community as a whole. But the assemblies (comitia centuriata, comitia tributa, and comitia curiata) were far from uniform. Each one, argues Jehne, wielded a different type of integrative force upon its participants. The centuriate assembly emphasized hierarchy and vertical integration; the tribal assemblies had an essentially egalitarian structure. In light of a rapidly expanding body of citizens, the integrating capacities of the popular assemblies ought to have shrunk. Creating a climate of consensus and communality, those capacities were preserved in the assemblies’ roles as referential quantities that embodied ideas of hierarchy and equality vital to the libera res publica.

In a new essay, Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp reflects on almost a century’s worth of research on the Roman Republic in Germany and its reception in the Anglosphere. The history of scholarship on the Republic is traced, from Gelzer and Münzer to Syme to Brunt to Millar, with special attention given to the influence of Christian Meier. Key themes of more recent work include political culture, the contio, memory studies, the early Republic, and imperialism.

Chapter 1 explores how the elites’ economic republican project, based on the modern science of political economy, was closely linked to ordinary people’s desire to consume foreign goods. It explores how for those in power as well as for those seeking recognition as political subjects, ideas and practices of citizenship were inevitably tied to participation as consumers in the marketplace – understood not as a mere container of economic transactions but as a node of complex social processes and a creator of cultural and political activity. By so doing, the chapter reveals that in nineteenth-century Colombia, politics was everywhere, and the marketplace was no exception.

The diametrically opposed outcomes of the Reformation in England and France have led historians to presume that there were significant differences in their religious situations before the Reformation that help account for that ultimate divergence. This chapter argues that any such presumption is wide of the mark. Not only were the supposed ‘preconditions’ for the success of the Reformation in England (such as Renaissance humanism, anticlericalism and church-state tension) more evident in France, but the early diffusion of Reformation teachings was swifter and more widespread there as well. Although in the second quarter of the sixteenth century the Reformation received increasing royal support in England but not in France, that early progress was insecure and was briefly reversed. Decisive divergence between the two realms in this regard began only around 1560, and in each of them the outcome might still have been different under other circumstances. The ultimate outcomes reflected the interplay of political contingency with pre-existing differences not in religious experience but in political structures and political culture, which put the English monarchy in a position to impose its will upon the English nation, but left the French monarchy less able not only to impose change but also to suppress it.