Book 4, Chapter 4 — The Roman Comitia

Rousseau begins with a historiographical caution: Rome's founding period is largely legendary, and the traditions that have the strongest authority and the most consistent proofs are the ones to follow. With that caveat, he reconstructs the three forms of Roman assembly: the comitia by curiæ (Romulus's original tribal division, military in origin), the comitia by centuries (Servius Tullius's reform, based on property and census, giving wealthy citizens disproportionate weight), and the comitia by tribes (the more democratic form, organized by territorial quarter, where the plebeians had greater influence).

The chapter traces the political history of these assemblies through Rome's development: how Servius's property-based census created new inequalities while solving the problem of the original racial divisions; how the tribal assembly gradually became the dominant form as the republic matured and the plebeians gained power; how the different assemblies handled different classes of business — legislation, elections, judicial decisions. Rousseau is interested in the institutional design: how each form of assembly suited the type of decision it was meant to make, and how the balance among them reflected the balance of social forces in Rome.

The chapter's political conclusion is that Rome succeeded in maintaining genuine popular sovereignty despite its size and complexity because its institutions were designed to keep the people actively assembled and engaged. The people voted; the people elected; the people judged. Representatives did not interpose themselves between the sovereign and the law. What made Rome extraordinary was not military conquest but its institutional achievement in giving the assembled people real legislative and judicial power over an enormous state — and Rousseau cites this as his answer to those who claim genuine popular sovereignty is impossible at scale.