Rome’s transformation from city-state to territorial empire involved a massive increase in wealth; it also both created and responded to fundamental political changes, in a moment often positioned as the creation myth of republicanism. James Tan has modelled the Republican economy as a three-way relationship between aristocrats, the state, and the people. Aristocrats competed with the state for access to the riches of conquest; simultaneously the state’s dependence on citizen taxation declined. This article examines the relationship between state and people as both practical and ideological. The People were sovereign, yet it was the People who increasingly lost their status as economic and political stakeholders even as their empire grew. The complex relationship between the people and the populus (‘the People’ as an institution) had economic as well as political elements, and is central to how we should apply notions of economic sovereignty to Republican Rome.

罗马从城邦向领土帝国的转变带来了财富的大量增加。它也创造并回应了根本的政治变化，在此刻通常被定位为共和主义的创造神话。詹姆士·谭（James Tan）将共和党经济建模为贵族，国家和人民之间的三元关系。贵族与国家竞争获取征服的财富。同时，国家对公民税收的依赖性下降了。本文从实践和意识形态两方面考察了国家与人民之间的关系。人民是主权国家，但人民日益丧失了其作为经济和政治利益相关者的地位，即使他们的帝国在不断壮大。人民与胡杨之间的复杂关系 （“人民”作为一个机构）具有经济和政治因素，对于我们如何将经济主权的概念应用于共和党罗马至关重要。