History glossary
consuls
the two annually elected chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, each able to check the other's power.
- Category
- Political office
- Region
- Rome
- Date range
- Roman Republic
What it means
Consuls were the two chief magistrates elected each year in the Roman Republic. They led public business and could command armies, but each consul could check the other so that executive power did not rest in one person's hands.
Stories using this term
The Roman Republic
From the expulsion of Rome’s kings to the rise of Augustus, the Roman Republic built a powerful mixed constitution, expanded across the Mediterranean, and ultimately collapsed into civil war and one-man rule.
The French Revolution
From royal debt and social inequality to republic, terror, and Napoleon, the French Revolution dismantled the old order and produced the political ideas of citizenship, rights, and nationalism that defined the modern world.
Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleon turned revolutionary opportunity into continental empire, then lost it in total war that still transformed European politics, states, and nationalism.
