The Republic of Rome is a strategy board game, designed by Don Greenwood, Robert Haines, and Richard Berthold, and released by Avalon Hill in 1990.
Within this framework, the players use diplomacy, alliances, persuasions, prosecutions, graft, bribery, murder and even conspiracies to advance their cause.
The three scenarios are differentiated by the nature of the foreign threats to Rome (in the Early Republic the state faces existential crises from foes like Carthage, while in the Late Republic Rome's enemies are weak and wars become opportunities for personal advancement by ambitious generals), by the availability of various Law cards that can be played and which illustrate the erosion of Republican tradition (allowing, for example, senators to retain their own personal armies or govern multiple provinces by proxy), and by the presence of Statesman cards representing specific famous senators of the time who have special abilities within the game.
The makers have chosen to make a complex game that would resemble as much as possible the political intrigues in the Senate (the citizen assemblies were intentionally ignored).
[7] The 2009 Valley Games reprint of Republic of Rome has come under a heavy degree of criticism for the number of rulebook and component (board and card) errors, some of which have a direct impact on play.