This study describes the meaning of libertas as a political idea.

This study describes the meaning of libertas as a political idea at Rome during the two hundred years or so between the Gracchi and Trajan, a period in which the Republican constitution gradually gave way and was finally superceded by the Principate which, in its own turn, considerably changed during the first century AD. Libertas, while identified with the republican constitution during the Republican period, continued to be a popular slogan and a constitutional principle under the Principate, and C H Wirszubski questions whether the political content of Roman libertas changed as the Roman...