The first secessions

In 509 BCE, if the Roman tradition is to be trusted a republic replaced Rome’s founding monarchy. This chapter focuses upon secessions which can be defined in geographical or territorial terms. And this is the concept of secession that prevails. The first secessions provide a model that tempts lateral thinking. The chapter emphasises what it was that was historically distinctive in the Roman secessions and then underscore the influence upon modern western political thought of the way in which those secessions were recalled. The Roman tradition also seems to agree on the idea that this formal institution of two ‘states’ simply recognised pre-existing sentiment. Cicero gives oxygen to an ambiguous view of the secessions. The first of the two passages immediately below survives as a fragment of a speech publicly delivered in defence of an active tribune in the 60s BCE.