> It was definitely democratic. Every office except senator was decided by majority vote with universal male suffrage. That's very, very wrong. First of all, t

> It was definitely democratic. Every office except senator was decided by majority vote with universal male suffrage. That's very, very wrong. First of all, the Roman Republic was an oligarchy. Political power was monopolized in the hands of very few families who formed the nobility. When somebody outside this incredibly tiny elite, a homo novus, completed the cursus honorum, it was a seen as sensation. Furthermore, the most important offices of the cursus honorum were not selected by something we would recognize as a democratic election. If you did not belong to the equites or the first class, your vote in the comitia centuriata which elected the consuls, the praetors and the censors had basically no effect.