Representative Government in Greek and Roman History

Representative Government in Greek and Roman History by J. A. O. Larsen offers a sweeping examination of how ancient political systems experimented with and resisted representative structures. Drawing on over thirty years of research, Larsen challenges the conventional view that Greek and Roman governance was wholly bound to direct democracy or oligarchic rule. Beginning with the Athenian boule and moving through federal leagues, Hellenistic states, and Roman provincial assemblies, he traces how institutions grappled with the tension between direct assemblies and the practical need for representative bodies. By situating these experiments within broader political theories and inscriptions, Larsen demonstrates that representation was not foreign to antiquity but an evolving response to scale, complexity, and empire.

As a volume in the prestigious Sather Classical Lectures, the book reframes familiar episodes—from the Athenian reforms of Cleisthenes to the councils of Boeotia and the Roman provincial synods—through the lens of institutional innovation. Larsen shows that while Greek democratic theory often resisted delegation, oligarchies and federal states pioneered representative practices that shaped civic and imperial administration. His conclusion—that representative government emerged before, alongside, and after democratic theory—invites a reassessment of ancient political legacies and their relevance for understanding the genealogy of representative institutions in the modern world.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1955.