Contents

3.1 Rome and the Origins of the Western State................................................................................ 37

3.1.1 The Flaw of the Polis Model.........................................................................................

3.1.2 The Roman Civitas: An Expanding Polis..................................................................... 38

3.2 The Indo-European Origins of Roman Society and the Structural Basis for the Roman

Civitas............................................................................................................................................ 40

3.2.1 Gentilitates, Curiae and Tribus............................................................................... 40

3.2.2 The Popular Assemblies as the Basis of the Roman Republic..................................... 41

3.3 An Aristocratic Polis................................................................................................................... 42

3.3.1 The Leadership of the Roman Aristocracy................................................................... 42

3.3.2 A Political Constitution Designed to Prevent Dictatorship.......................................... 45

3.4 From Republic to Empire............................................................................................................ 46

3.4.1 An Extraordinary Territorial Expansion........................................................................ 46

3.4.2 From Conquest to Stable Dominion............................................................................. 46

3.4.3 The Consequences of Rome’s Territorial Expansion: The Crisis

of the Republican System.............................................................................................................. 48

3.5 Augustus and the Singular Reestablishment of the Republican Regime.................................... 49

3.5.1 The First Citizen............................................................................................................ 49

3.5.2 From Diarchy to Monarchy: The Birth of the Roman Empire..................................... 51

3.6 The Era of the Dominate, or the Triumph of Imperial Absolutism............................................ 53

3.6.1 From Imperator to Dominus......................................................................................... 54

3.6.2 The Disappearance of the Republican System............................................................. 54

3.7 An Avant La Lettre State............................................................................................................. 56

3.8 Roman Citizenship: History’s First “Nationality”?.................................................................... 57

References............................................................................................................................................. 61

3.1