While Athens is generally considered the benchmark for the study of ancient democracy, Virginie Hollard has shown that the common vision of an oligarchic Rome and a depoliticized Roman people is over-simplifying, even when the focus is on the transition period between the Republic and the Principate. For this specialist in Roman history, the act of voting in Rome was decisive for civic activity, particularly in its ritual dimension.
Viriginie Hollard began by highlighting the characteristics of the Roman vote: the precision of the protocol, which would explain the longevity of this vote despite the many political upheavals; group voting (tribe or censal class) instead of individual voting; the dominant role of the magistrate who presides over the assembly; the limited representativeness of the vote due to absenteeism and the weak democratic character of the tribes and censal classes. The originality of the Antiquarian historian's approach lies above all in the shift in her questioning of the meaning of the vote. For her, it's not so much a question of whether the vote is effective or democratic; the central issue is its symbolic character: whatever the modalities of the vote, and despite political upheavals, it remains the best manifestation of the sacredness of the people, a veritable force of legitimization. V. Hollard reminded us of the essential ambiguity of the principate in this respect: even as real power passed into the hands of imperatores, the people remained the ultimate instance of legitimacy. During the transition from the Republic to the Principate, which sought to maintain at all costs the fiction of keeping power in the hands of the people, the vote would paradoxically have evolved more and more towards its deeper meaning: an instrument capable of granting political legitimacy to the power in place, even if it remained a mere formality. The discussion raised the question of the validity of a definition of democracy as a model of legitimization, at the risk of losing sight of its substance and historicity.
