Episode 5. The Struggle of the Orders, Part One: City Divided

Works CitedPrimary SourcesAppian. Civil Wars. Book I. Later perspective; useful background on debt and agrarian crisis as a recurring structural problem.Cicero. De Re Publica, Book II.56–63; De Legibus, Book III. Discusses the tribunate and its constitutional role.Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities. Books VI–VII. Gives a more detailed account of the negotiations than Livy; attributes a larger role to Sicinius.Livy. Ab Urbe Condita. Book II, Chapters 23–33. The core narrative of the First Secession, including the Menenius Agrippa episode.Plutarch. “Life of Coriolanus.” Plutarch’s Lives. Overlapping events; the most vivid literary treatment of patrician-plebeian tensions in the immediate post-Secession years.Secondary SourcesCornell, T. J. The Beginnings of Rome. Routledge, 1995. Chapters 10–11. Essential treatment of the Secession and the creation of the tribunate.Forsythe, Gary. A Critical History of Early Rome. University of California Press, 2005. Chapters 6–7.Lintott, Andrew. The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford University Press, 1999. Chapters 7–8. The fullest modern treatment of the tribunate and its powers.Nicolet, Claude. The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome. University of California Press, 1980. On the social context of the early Republic.Raaflaub, Kurt, ed. Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders. Blackwell, 2005. Key collection; essays by Raaflaub, Cornell, and Richard Mitchell debate the origins of the plebs and the historicity of the Secession.On the TribunateBauman, Robert A. Lawyers in Roman Republican Politics. Beck, 1983. On the legal dimensions of tribunician intercessio.Stockton, David. The Gracchi. Oxford University Press, 1979. Chapter 1. Superb background on tribunician power and its evolution across the Republic.On the Menenius Agrippa FableLloyd, G. E. R. Methods and Problems in Greek Science. Cambridge University Press, 1991. Chapter 11. On the body politic metaphor in ancient thought.Ogilvie, Robert. A Commentary on Livy, Books 1–5. Oxford University Press, 1965. Pp. 311–316. Discusses the Greek parallels and the fable’s literary origins.On Debt and NexumCornell, T. J. The Beginnings of Rome. Pp. 280–283, 333–336.Finley, Moses. The Ancient Economy. University of California Press, 1973. Foundational.Garnsey, Peter. Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World. Cambridge University Press, 1988.On Women in the Early RepublicGardner, Jane. Women in Roman Law and Society. Indiana University Press, 1986.Treggiari, Susan. Roman Marriage. Oxford University Press, 1991.