Coin Reveals Ancient Rome’s Fight Against Voter Intimidation

[Pelican Press 0]

Coin Reveals Ancient Rome’s ****** Against Voter Intimidation

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/The Conversation

This silver denarius, minted 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, is hardly the most attractive Roman coin. And yet, the coin is vital evidence for the early stages of a political struggle that culminated in Caesar’s ************** and the fall of the Roman Republic.

I first encountered this coin while 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 in graduate school. Its unusual design gave me pause – this one depicted figures walking across a narrow bridge and dropping something into a box. I moved on after learning it depicted voting, reasoning that 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 occasionally made idiosyncratic choices.

But as voting access evolves in the U.S., the political importance of this centuries-old coin seems more compelling. It turns out that efforts to regulate voting access go way back.

Roman Voting

Voting was a core feature of the Roman Republic and a 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, could vote in multiple elections and legislative assemblies each year. So why would P. Licinius Nerva, the official responsible for this coin, choose to depict such a banal activity?

The answer ***** in voting procedures that sometimes heavily favored elites.

The Roman Forum was a common site of political activities. (BeBo86/

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

In the 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, the assembly that elected Rome’s chief magistrates, each citizen was a member of a voting unit based on wealth. Unit members voted to decide which candidates they collectively supported, like U.S. presidential elections where it’s not the popular vote but the 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 that determines the winner.

The wealthiest Romans controlled more than half of the voting units in this assembly. The poorest citizens had just one voting unit; since they voted last, and only during uncertain outcomes, they might not vote at all.

Furthermore, citizens voted orally and openly. Elites could directly observe and potentially intimidate poorer voters.

Regulating Roman Electioneering

That all began to change in 139 BC when the Roman politician 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 mandating written ballots for elections. Two further laws, 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, extended the use of written ballots to legislative voting and most trial juries.

These written ballots made it more difficult for elites to influence voting but not impossible. Each unit formed its own line leading to a bridge where voters received ballots to mark and 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Elites could station themselves or their allies on the bridge to encourage people to vote the “right” way.

The reverse of Nerva’s coin depicts the reception and ******** of the ballot, the first and last moments of a voter’s time on the bridge. The absence of nonvoter figures on the coin, apart from a poll worker, is key to understanding its message.

Reverse of a Roman silver coin minted by P. Nerva, circa 113 BC. (

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

)

In 119 BC, a young politician named Gaius Marius 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 that 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, allowing voters to mark their ballots without elites looking over their shoulders. Nerva’s coin, minted six or seven years later, almost certainly 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. By showing only voters on the bridge, Nerva was celebrating an important voting rights victory and announcing his allegiance to Marius.

The aristocrats never managed to repeal the voting laws and were 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 even as the Republic collapsed.

The long Roman struggle over voting procedures provides a useful and perhaps even comforting reminder. 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 and 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 are nothing new. The ****** over voter access to the ballot is an inevitable side effect of democracy.

Top image: left obverse and right reverse of the silver denarius from Rome, dated 113-112 BC. Source: 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This article was originally published under the title ‘

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’ by 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 on 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

coin, rome, Caesar, Roman Republic, “Roman Politics, Government & Law”
#Coin #Reveals #Ancient #Romes #****** #Voter #Intimidation

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up