Did Romans vote?

– The kinship between contemporary Western political systems and the Roman Republic is well known, and is sometimes claimed by political actors as a legacy. The question of a vote in Rome, although still insufficiently detailed, is the subject of a broad historiographical consensus. Two factors prompt us to revisit the issue. The absence of any reference to Roman elections in revolutionary France, and the lack of a Latin term that can be easily translated as “vote”, mean that we should try to rethink the issue using a lexicometric analysis. In the 35 surviving books of Titus Livius, the lexicometric analysis consists of listing all the terms used to evoke the inauguration of a magistrate. As the verb creare has the highest number of occurrences, the aim is to identify, over a long period of time, how this verb was translated into French, focusing on the revolutionary period. The diachronic study shows how the translation of creare by “to elect” was not self-evident until the twentieth century, but also how this translation is now widespread. This result prompts us to return to the study of the construction of a supposed political field in the Roman Republic.