Though the roman empire and the roman republic vary in their political structures they are quite common in the structures of their social hierarchy and reasoning for their downfalls. The Roman Republic and the Roman Empire highly differ in their political structures. The republic: created in 509 BCE. was a form of representative democracy. It consisted of 2 consuls of which were appointed by the senate and then voted on. These consuls were the head officers and the were appointed for one year. The senate was one of two legislative bodies comprised of 300 senators and 10 tribunes who were all patricians. The other body was knows as the tribal assembly and was made up of plebeians who met in a forum to vote on things such as consuls. When Julius Caesar was assassinated a civil war broke out in Rome. The senate was no longer trusted to rule Rome bringing the republic to an end and the empire to a beginning in 27 BCE. An empire is a form of government in which one person -the emperor- had all the real power. Emperors took power through force or inheritance and ruled for life, though many were assassinated. Some emperors embodied peaceful, prosperous, philosophical and basically just "great" praises. Where as others were vicious, mentally disturbed doctoral murders. The reason for the difference between the roman republic and empire is that in the republic the goal was to avoid having one person with too much power where as in the empire it was basically that due to the corruption with in the senate. The roman republic and the roman empire were similar in the structure of their social hierarchies. The social divisions of the roman republic were highly based on economics and consisted of two main groups, the patricians and the plebeians. Descending from the original senators the patrician class was the richer of the classes. The patricians made up the senate and were the only ones who could be consuls and other magistrates. Plebeians made up a larger part of
