Cicero, who is our main source for the leges tabellariae (De legibus 3.3339), which were gradually introduced into all comitial voting between 139107 BCE, claims that the written ballot, by allowing the voters to hide their choice, decreased the power of the ruling elite, but provides meager information as to their background or implications. Modern scholars have long debated about the significance of these laws. Many believe that the laws, which have supposedly introduced the secret ballot, increased the power of the people during the late Republic. Others stress the fact that the laws did not bring about any evident change in the patterns of politics or office-holding, and therefore doubt whether they have indeed strengthened the ,democratic' element in Roman politics. Viewed from this angle, it is impossible to determine unequivocally whether the laws were ‘democratic’ or ‘conservative’. This paper offers a different reading of Cicero′s text. Arguing that ‘written ballot’ is not necessarily equivalent to ‘secret ballot’, it takes its cue from the fact that Cicero, although relating to all comitial laws, speaks in fact only of judicial matters, which were, in his days, handled by the permanent law-courts. Since the law-courts seem to have been abolished in favor of the old iudicia populi in the De legibus, this paper attempts to investigate whether it is possible that Cicero was in fact attacking, by transference, the voting procedures in the law-courts, the only voting body in Rome where secrecy was strictly enforced.
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