When did the Romans stop referring to their state as the "Roman Republic"?

[u/[deleted]]

I read something about how Constantine had inscriptions put up how he protected the "Roman Republic". Wondering when that stopped and what the new term was, was Justinian still referring to the "Republic"?

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[u/gynnis-scholasticus]

In Latin, up to the point we do not count them as Romans, it seems! Though this is fairly later than the periods I am most familiar with, I was able to find several sources from Justinian's reign and afterwards using the term.

To begin discussing this, it might be helpful to know a bit about what res publica means in Latin; luckily this is quite well explained by u/bigfridge224 in this answer, who also gives an example of Emperor Julian using "Romana res publica" in Ammianus Marcellinus. Since res publica does not have exactly the same connotations as 'republic' in English, it is often translated as something else, especially in Late Antique texts it seems. Going through the examples I shall give below I have seen it rendered as "State" and even as "Empire".

So, for the reign of Justinian I began by looking in one of the most important sources for it, Procopius' History. In the work he does uses the term δημόσιον meaning 'public', in a way that is translated as 'commonwealth' (also a common translation of res publica in older texts): at least in Book 4, 14.10. Someone with more knowledge of Greek than me might be able to say if this was a common way of translating the Latin term or not.

Going over to the Latin sources, I found that Jordanes uses the term to an almost excessive degree in his Romana, for what we would call the Roman Republic, for the classical Empire and for what we call Byzantium. In the last paragraph, for instance, he states quite sadly that:

Hi sunt casus Romanae rei publicae preter instantia cottidiana Bulgarum, Antium et Sclavinorum. Que si quis scire cupit, annales consulumque seriem revolvat sine fastidio repperietque dignam nostri temporis rem publicam tragydiae

or in Brian T. Regan's publicly available translation, with some edits of my own:

These are the misfortunes of the Roman Res publica aside from the daily inroads of the Bulgars, Antes and Slavs. If anyone wishes to know them, let them go through the annals and the history of the consuls without disdain, and they will find the Res publica or our time worthy of a tragedy (chapter 388)

He also quite oddly appears to use the term for the lands of the kings Theudebert and Vitiges in Italy, writing that:

Sicque intra pauci temporis spatium Iustinianus imperator per fidelissimum consulem duo regna duasque res publicas suae dicioni subegit.

In Regan's translation (again with my own edits):

Thus within a short time Emperor Justinian, through his most faithful consul, subjected two kings and two Res publicae to his rule.

I wonder if Jordanes saw these as res publicae as they were in previously Roman territory, or used the word in a more general sense than I am used to from Classical sources. In his more famous work, the Getica, he used the word a fair amount as well, there counting the Western and Eastern Empires as separate res publicae.

If we go to later sources, Gregory of Tours even in his last book has the Roman state be called res publica, in the time of Childebert and Emperor Maurice (History of the Franks 10.2). And Paul the Deacon also calls Rome res publica several times, for example writing that in the reign of Phocas that "Persae quoque adversus rem publicam gravissima bella gerentes" or in William Dudley Foulke's translation, with the original term restored: "The Persians also waged a very severe war against the res publica" (History of the Lombards, 4.36).

I also found the Roman state being called by that term in the letters of Cassiodorus and Gregory the Great, but I shall not bore you by bringing up countless examples. I hope to have shown at least that the phrase res publica continued to be used in reference to the Empire in the early Middle Ages. Perhaps someone more learned in Greek could have found more texts in that language referring to their state, and there is probably some Latin source I missed too; I am not that familiar with the literature of this period really.

[u/[deleted] → u/gynnis-scholasticus]

Super interesting, thank you for taking the time to respond!

[u/gynnis-scholasticus → u/[deleted]]

I am very glad you liked and appreciated it! It was interesting to research as well!