ABSTRACT
If the actions and aims of the supreme plebeian leaders were of a political nature, their office – associated with the sacred – differed from the patrician magistracies in the formal source of authority and in its peculiar traits. While republican consuls were granted imperium and auspicia, the tribunes’ power was rooted in the so-called sacrosanctitas of their persona. According to Rousseau (which implicitly recalls Cicero’s notion of civitas and res publica), there can only be one founding contract, which is the contract of ‘partnership’ (societas). In compliance with Roman conceptions, this partnership transforms a ‘multitude’ into an actual and coherent unit: ‘the people. In the light of such circumstances, Rousseau goes beyond Rome and proposes a reconstruction that, at once, revives and renews the ancient tribunate. Real liberty is achievable through democratic efforts to diminish, or rather obstruct, any one body from holding excessive power, more so than by means of substantive equality.
