For nearly five centuries, Rome governed itself without a king.
Two consuls were elected each year — never just one, so power could never accumulate in one pair of hands.
The Senate debated.
The assemblies voted.
It was messy, factional, and corrupt, but it worked well enough to build the largest empire the western world had yet seen.
Stand in the Roman Forum and you are standing where it all happened.
This is where Cicero gave his speeches against Catiline and against Mark Antony.
Where the tribunes of the plebs fought for the rights of ordinary Romans.
Where the bodies of Rome's enemies were displayed after victories.
And where, in 44 BC, Julius Caesar's body was brought for cremation after his assassination on the Ides of March.
Caesar's death was meant to save the Republic.
It destroyed it.
The civil wars that followed — Caesar's veterans against his assassins, then Octavian against Mark Antony — consumed a generation.
When the dust settled, one man was left standing.
His name was Augustus, and he was very careful never to call himself a king.
Fun fact: the Roman Republic lasted 482 years — longer than the United States has existed.
Its institutions — the Senate, the veto, the separation of powers, the concept of the public good — directly shaped the constitutions of France and the United States.
