Little Dictionary of Roman Institutions

This Little Roman Dictionary has two purposes: (I) Τo undergraduates taking Roman history courses or Latin reading courses, who need to know what a legatus is, a senatus consultum, a tribune, etc., it tries to give quick but sufficiently detailed information. What such readers need is not a five-word ‘definition’ such as they could get from a lexicon, but a more complete description that lets them sense what the thing really was. And (II) for more thoughtful readers, who wish to get a picture, rough but right in its main features, of the entire ‘machinery’ of the late Republic or the early Empire (for example, so that they can compare it with governments of the present day), it should contain food for thought. For them I inserted the many cross-references and Appendices, and made some entries in the Political Dictionary rather long and dense.

Most entries were written more for brief reference than for continuous reading; but you will find that they do give a rough initial impression of the Roman state as a whole, if you read them consecutively, in these groupings (I here include only the items that seem best for this purpose):

(ASSEMBLIES) Centuria, Comitium, Comitia (all 4), Senatus, Senatus Consultum Ultimum, Tribuni Plebis, Tribus.

(SOCIAL GROUPS) Equites, Factio, Nobilitas, Publicani, Patron & Client (with Appendix L, ‘Patronate’ & ‘Principate’), Senatus (again), Tribuni plebis. (Here the most important item by far is ‘Patron & Client’--it is the key to everything.)

(OFFICES) Aediles, Censores, Dictator, Edictum, Imperium, Praetores, Princeps Senatus, Prorogatio (with App. F), Quaestores (with Aerarium), Tresviri, Tribuni Plebis (again), Vigintiviri; and on all the offices, App. F (Cursus Honorum), and App. H (Ambitus).

Then, the other Appendixes.

Most entries describe institutions etc. mainly as they were in the last decades of the Republic or in the early Empire, because that is the background of most of the Latin authors read in colleges. But there was drastic change even in the brief space between those two periods (for summaries and analysis of the changes, see esp. App. M, N, O and S); and in order not to confuse the two periods or blur the focus, I usually marked descriptions of the Empire: F ... E.

For brevity’s sake I deliberately exclude purely topographical entries--with one exception, for the Comitium, since even a brief description of that place tells much about the very nature of the Republic.

S i g n s, A b b r e v i a t i o n s

F ... E = "this pertains all or mainly to the Principate",. little or not at all to the Republic (see App. M).

§ = section; e.g. "see App. A § A" = "see Appendix A, section A."

App. = Appendix.

c. (circa) = 'about', 'approximately'; e.g. "born c. 81 B.C." = "born about 81 B.C. (we don't know exactly)"

cf. (confer) = 'compare'

e.g. (exempli gratia, lit. "for the sake of an example") = "for example"

fin., ad. fin. (ad finem). Here fin. = "at the end", ad fin. = "towards the end" e.g. "see Imperium fin." = "see the entry for Imperium, at the very end"; "see Imperium ad fin." = "see the entry for Imperium near the end ".

ibid. (ibidem) = "in the same place (which I just cited)”

id. (idem (opus)) = "the same work (which I just cited)”

i.e. (id est) = "that is" or "that is to say"

init., ad init. (ad initium) = "at the beginning" or "towards the beginning" (used like "fin." & "ad fin.").

loc. cit. (locus citatus) = "the passage which I just cited"

op. cit. (opus citatum) = "the work which I just cited"

q.v. (quod videas, 'which see') = "see the entry for", e.g. "...Imperium (q.v.)" = "see under Imperium".

s.v. (sub voce), pl. svv. (sub vocibus) = "under the heading(s)", e.g. "see s.v. Imperium" or "Imperium (see s.v.)" = "see under Imperium". "App. P s.v. 49 BC" = "that part of App. P which is headed '49 BC'".

A b b r e v i a t e d R e f e r e n c e s

Brunt = P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in The Roman Republic (NY 1971).

Ca= Brian Campbell, The Roman Army, 31 BC-AD 337 (London 1994).

Carc. = Jérôme Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome, translated by E. O. Lorimer (Yale Univ. 1940).

EB = The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (London 1911). (The famous 11th edition., often far superior to any later edition., has long been out of print, but is now online at http://1911encyclopedia.org/index.htm.)

FC I & FC II: Filippo Coarelli, Il Foro Romano (Rome 1983, 1992)

Gruen = E. S. Gruen, The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley 1974).

J = A. H. M. Jones (ed.), A History of Rome Through the Fifth Century, Vol. 1: The Republic (NY 1968).

J2 = A. M. H. Jones, Augustus (N.Y./ London 1970).

J3 = A. M. H. Jones, The Decline of the Ancient World (NY/London 1966). (Its Appendix IV, p. 377-389, is a useful glossary, with page references, of technical terms of the late empire).

OCD = Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford 1970), ed. N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard.

R = Roman Civilization / Sourcebook II: The Empire (Harper 1966), ed. N. Lewis, M. Reinhold.

S = H. H. Scullard, From The Gracchi to Nero (Routledge: 1958-1982).

RR (see "Syme").

Sandys = J. E. Sandys, Latin Epigraphy (Cambridge 1927).

Smith = William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London 1975), online at:

http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA.html

Sta. = E. S. Stavely, Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (Cornell Univ. 1972)

Suolahti = Jaako Suolahti, The Junior Officers of the Roman army in the Republican Period (Helsinki 1955)

Syme = RR = Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford 1939).

T = L. R. Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (U. of Michigan: 1966).

T II = L. R. Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley 1949).

LATIN PROSE TEXTS are usually referred to by book number + chapter (or letter) number + sentence (or section) number. E.g. "Livy 8.15.9" = Livy, (Annals,) book VIII, chapter 15, sentence 9", or "Pliny Ep. III.2.1" = Pliny, Epistles, book III, letter 2, sentence 1". (The sentence numbers are sometimes skipped, and may differ from edition to edition.)

L I T T L E P O L I T I C A L D I C T I O N A R Y

If a common term seems likely to be looked up yet I did not wish to write separately about it, I sometimes make an entry containing only references (e.g. Decemviri); but note that some legal offices are only in Appendix A; some military, only in App. B; some religious, only in App. D; some provincial city offices, only in App. C § C.

AERARIUM (from aes, aeris: money): the treasury; i.e. (a) the physical treasury, located in the Temple of Saturn in the SW end of Forum (near the Capitol), containing the public coin and bullion, the standards of the legions, copies of the laws and senate decrees engraved on brass, etc.; and (b) the money alone (obtained by taxation, supporting public expenditure). The treasurers were 2 quaestores (q.v.) answerable to the Senate, which controlled the state money. F Under the emperors. From 28-23 BC the treasurers were 2 Praefecti aerarii, from 23 BC Praetores ad aerarium, later again quaestores. The AERARIUM MILITARE , overseen by 3 Praefecti aerarii militaris, was a separate fund for the military (esp. military pensions) established by Augustus in AD 6, funded by special taxes (on which see App. C § E). E

For more on the treasurers see Praefectus ( § 'Under the Emperors'), Praetors ( § 'Under Augustus'), and Quaestors, and see App. F (careers E and G).

AEDILES (from aedes, aedium: temple, perhaps because the first aediles had care of the Temple of Ceres where the plebeian archives were kept): 4 junior magistrates, elected yearly in comitia tributa for 1-year term. Endowed with power to fine offenders, they have (a) care of the city, i.e. >> oversee repair of temples, sewers, aqueducts; >> oversee paving and cleaning of streets; >> make and enforce traffic laws; >> enforce regulations for fires, and fight fires; >> superintend baths and taverns; (b) care of market and grain, that is, they >> enforce market regulations (e.g. investigate the quality of goods, and weights and measures); >> supervise wheat supply (cura annonae, e.g. buy and store cheap grain for times of scarcity); (c) care of games, i.e. they superintend public games, or games given by private persons (as e.g. at funerals); (d) juridical activity (in the Comitia populi tributa: see s.v.), e.g. they >> enforce sumptuary laws; >> punish gamblers and usurers; also >> punish those who have too much public land (ager publicus) or keep too many cattle on state pastures. And they have (e) "the care of public morals generally, including the prevention of foreign superstitions" (EB s.v. Aedile). (See also Cicero Legg. iii.3.7. For an exact descripton of aediles' duties under Caesar, see J # 98.)

Each year there were two pairs: 2 AEDILES PLEBEII (of unknown very early date, and till 367 the only two) elected annually by the concilium plebis (see Comitia). They were at first assistants to the the tribuni plebis, and like them had sacrosanctity (see Tribuni plebis). Later also 2 AEDILES CURULI (instituted 367, originally for patricians only, but later for plebeians in alternate years)--elected annually by the Com. populi tributa. Curuli ranked higher than plebeii, sat in curule chairs (see s.v. imperium), had sole responsiblity for certain games, and could issue edicts on market regulations (see Edictum); but in the late Republic there was little other difference between the duties of the two pairs. Finally, Caesar in 44 added 2 AEDILES CEREALES responsible for the grain supply.

Under the Republic, the aedileship was not required in the cursus honorum (App. F), yet was politically important in that aediles could hold games at their own expense and so win immense popularity (as did e.g. Caesar, who borrowed huge sums for this).

F Under the emperors the office, though now required in the cursus, slowly faded; the aediles lost their cura annonae in 22 BC, their overseeing of aqueducts in 11 BC, their management of the games in 2 BC, and the fire service in AD 6. Their care of games went to the Praetors (as did also their juridical functions), the other three jobs to Praefecti (q.v.). In the 3rd century AD the office disappeared. E

CENSORS (from censere, 'assess'), 2, always former consuls, elected in Comitia centuriata (q.v.) in March every 5 years to hold office for 18 months (with reelection forbidden). Est. c. 443 B.C. to make up & maintain the census. The census was held every 5 years (= lustrum, lit. a ritual "cleansing") in May, in the Campus Martius, where citizens enrolled; it was needed for determining property status, for the military levy, for taxation, for assigning citizens to tribes and centuries for voting.

Although they have no imperium (q.v.), censors have great real power. (a) They determine a person's tribe and century, hence his voting status, hence the actual power of his vote (see Tribus and Centuria). This also involves expelling unworthy persons for immorality (see "f" below) or failing to meet ancestral or property requirements. (b) They assess a person's estate and so determine his taxes, and his type of military and political service. (c) They select the Senate (lectio Senatus), which in practice means striking unworthy or impoverished persons from the list of senators (so e.g. in 70 B.C. they struck 64 names from the senate; in 60 BC added many). (d) They review the knights, i.e. expel unworthy knights (see Equites). (e) They issue state contracts for building repair and for tax collection (see Publicani; also Senate s.v. Functions). (f) They oversee public morals. On entering office, they issue edicta (q.v.) stating what moral offenses they will punish; e.g. offenses against the family; giving false information; illegality such as serving in office out of order; breaches of political duty. "Certain professions, such as that of an actor or gladiator, also incurred their stigma" (EB s.v.). Punishment is enforced by magistrates with imperium, but might be reversed by subsequent censors; it is called infamia and includes expulsion from the Senate; (for a knight) being deprived of one's public horse; expulsion from tribe or century. (By the 2nd c. AD, expulsion from tribe usually meant relegation to an urban tribe--see Tribus.)

For more about Censors see especially J # 37 ( = Livy 24.18). See below Princeps Senatus, also Equites (3rd par.), and Senatus s.v. "under the emperors"; also App. S s.v. 28 BC and 19 BC.

CENTUMVIRI: see Appendix A, § A fin.

CENTURIA (lit. 'division of 100'): M i l i t a r y: smallest military unit (each legion of 6,000 men had 60; see App. B). C i v i l i a n: A voting unit in the comitia centuriata (q.v.). Both things--the military unit, the assembly--were traditionally ascribed to king Servius Tullius, but may date from 450 or later. In assembly the centuries were ranked according to property qualifications determined by the census (see Censor). I here list the original, "Servian" centuries (which lasted till 241 -- see below) in their voting order, which was roughly from the wealthiest to the poorest. Here iuniores are citizens 17-46 years old, seniores 46-60 years old. Note that here "cavalry" and "foot-soldiery" no longer mean real soldiers, and "century" no longer means 100 men; e.g. according to Cicero the "1 century" of proletarii had more men than in all the "centuries" of Class I together (Sta. 126. The table is based on M. Cary & H. Scullard, A History of Rome, 1975, p. 80; cf. T 84):

Equites equo publico (cavalry) = 18 centuries (18 votes) (wealthiest; has senators)

(Property Classes i, ii, iii = heavy-armed foot soldiery, 'pedites':)

Classis i = 40 cent. seniorum + 40 iuniorum = 80 centuries (80 votes) (estate of 100,000 asses)

Classis ii = 10 cent. seniorum + 10 iuniorum = 20 centuries (20 votes) (of 75,000 asses)

Classis iii = 10 cent. seniorum + 10 iuniorum = 20 centuries (20 votes) (of 50,000 asses)

(Classes iv, v = light-armed foot-soldiery:)

Classis iv = 10 cent. seniorum + 10 iuniorum = 20 centuries (20 votes) (of 25,000 asses)

Classis v = 15 cent. seniorum + 15 iuniorum = 30 centuries (30 votes) (of 11,000 or 12,500)

(Unarmed, noncombatant:)

1 cent. proletarii + 4 craftsmen (fabri, etc.) = 5 cent. (5 votes) ('infra ratem', not worth assessing)

So, 193 centuries = 193 votes. Note that all this is very "undemocratic" in at least six ways: (1) Seniores have half the centuries but form less than a third of the population. (2) The wealthy (see Equites) have disproportionately many centuries. (3) The wealthy centuries are smaller; thus, since each century = 1 vote, a wealthy man's vote is worth more. (4) The wealthy vote first; and since a simple majority is needed (i.e. 97 votes), an assembly can be dissolved after equites and classis I have voted! (5) The "centuries" have no reference to place of domicile; in the late Republic, when many country people had to come great distances, this favors wealthy urban voters (Sta. 138). (6) Votes were published continuously during the voting, and the earliest heavily influenced the later.

The wealthy knew very well how "plutocratic" and oligarchic this system was and liked it. According to Cicero, "Servius so disposed the centuries in the classes that the votes were under control of the rich and not of the masses. He accepted the principle, to which we must forever adhere in the Republic, that the majority should not have the strongest voice... He who had most to gain from the well-being of the state could use his vote to greatest effect" (Cicero Rep. 39-40, translation of Sta. 128).

At some time not long after 241 when the last two tribes were added (see Tribus), there was a "democratic" reform (a) The centuries were correlated in some way to the 35 tribes (see s.v. Tribus), so that all members of a century belonged to the same tribe, and conversely each tribe had centuries of all property classes, and (b) procedure was emended so that voting was in this order (table based on T 84):

1) Centuria praerogativa (chosen by lot from iuniores) = 1 vote (century)

2) Classis 1 = 35 seniorum + 34 iuniorum + 12 equitum + 1 of artisans = 82 votes

3) "Sex suffragia" = 6 cent.(Titienses Ramnes Luceres priores posteriores) = 6 votes

4) Classes 2-5 (+ ? 20 cent. apiece?) + 4 unarmed centuries (?40 apiece?) = 104 votes (so 193 in all)

(a) Making centuries tribal must have helped country landowners (i.e. this partly repairs flaw # 5 above); for, since each century had but one vote, "a mere handful of visitors from a distant corner of Italy who happened to be present when an assembly was held and who belonged to the same tribe would have been in as strong a position to influence the outcome... as several thousands of city dwellers" (Sta. 138). And (b) the procedural change means, among other things, that the first class + equites no longer = a majority: the voting must go farther down (thus partly repairing flaws # 2 and 3). But the gain to "democracy" is minimal. The loss to the first class of 10 centuries is more than outweighed by the centuria praerogativa (lit. 'the century asked before'), since its vote heavily influenced all the others (T 87).

F Under Augustus the comitia centuriata became a mere rubber stamp, because of a preliminary process called "destinatio". In AD 5 he added 10 new centuries of senators and knights, called the "centuries of Gaius and Lucius Caesar"; in 19 AD were added 5 more, the "centuries of Germanicus". (For a Latin document describing the arrangements, see the "Tabula Habana" in T. 159 ff., translated in Sta. 233 ff.) These 10 or 15 centuries "voted first, and 'destined' 12 praetors and two consuls. Then followed the voting of the centuriate assembly" (J2 p. 88). This preliminary vote, silently influenced by the emperor, was probably much more "influential" even than the centuria praerogativa had been. Not long afterwards, all assemblies simply disappeared--see Comitia fin. E

F COHORTES URBANAE: Police force instituted by Augustus, commanded by the Praefectus Urbi (q.v.) consisting of 3 cohorts containing 500 to 1,500 men each (the numbers are uncertain and disputed. More certain is that by Flavian times there were 4 cohorts having 1,000 men each). The men were paid half as much as Praetorian Guardsmen, and were often "promoted" into the Guards. "Additional cohorts were stationed at Puteoli, Ostia, and Carthage (all important for the shipment of corn to Rome), and at Lugdunum where there was a mint" (Ca. p. 38.). They were used e.g. for "maintenance of the public peace and of order at the spectacles... (The Prefect) should also have soldiers stationed at various points for the purpose of maintaining the public peace and to report to him whatever occurs anywhere" (Justinian's Digest, quoted in R pp. 26-7). For other bodies used as police, see under Vici and Vigiles. E

For COHORTES PRAETORIAE see Praetorian Guard.

COMITIA (from plural of Comitium, q.v.), 4 main ones: assemblies of the Roman people, having functions elective, legislative and judicial (though most judicial activity gradually passed to the public courts--see App. A, § B, D.) They resolved by majority vote on measures framed and proposed by the magistrates, who convened them. "Majority vote" means (a) that the measure iself is passed if a majority of tribes, or centuries, vote for it, and (b) that the single vote of each tribe, or century, is determined by a majority vote within it. (So in a huge urban tribe, an individual vote is worth little.)

Voting at first was oral; written ballot was introduced in 139 B.C. for centurial & tribal elections; in 137 for tribal trials; in 107 for centurial trials.

Debate occurs, but not in the Assembly itself, but in prior meetings, contiones, at which the magistrate presents his bill by edict (see Edictum) and asks for opinions. An assembly does not propose a measure or frame it, and cannot emend it. The presiding magistrate does all that; the assembly merely votes. (For descriptions of how a magistrate could control things, see T p. 83, Sta. 206 ff.) Also, any new law proposed in assembly "1", "2" and probably "4" below (I use these numbers just for ease of reference) must be ratified by the Patres in the Senate, before the assembly votes on it (see Patricii, Senatus).

A law said to be passed "by the People" can refer to any of these assemblies (in the late Republic esp. "4"), but not properly to "3". That has only Plebs, and "by the People" includes the Patricians (q.v.). Roman historians do not distinguish between "3" and "4"; but we know that "4" existed, from the fact that some tribal bills were introduced by magistrates (not tribunes) and passed by the whole people.

(1) COMITIA CURIATA: oldest assembly, based on the original organization of the people by curiae ("parishes", 10 per each of the three original tribes--see Curia and Tribus). It gradually lost its powers to the comitia centuriata; in the late Republic it consisted merely of 30 lictors representing the 30 curiae; but though a mere form it did still: >> pass lex curiata which perhaps confirmed the appointment, or ratified the imperium (q.v.), of dictator, consul, praetor (or perhaps, instead, it merely confirmed their right to take the auspices--Sta. 123); >> (under Pontifex) confirm priests, adoptions (adrogatio, often involving a change from plebeian status to patrician or vice versa), making of wills.

>>> Meeting place: Comitium (or Capitol). >>> Presiding officer: consul, praetor, or pontifex

(2) COMITIA CENTURIATA (from c. 450): based on organization of the people by centuriae (q.v.). Votes of the old and wealthy had more weight. For elections the most important assembly; in other things, because its procedure was so cumbersome and so undemocratic (see Centuria), it came to be rarely used. From 70 B.C. to 50 the only law it is known to have passed was that recalling Cicero from exile in 57 (see T. II, 60 ff.). >> Elections of magistrates cum imperio (see Imperium) and censors (q.v.). >> Legislation: after 218 does very little except declare war and peace, and confirm censors. >> Trials in capital cases, in which it could inflict death penalty; esp. for perduellio (older form of treason, later replaced by maiestas, which came to have its own special court--see App. A, § B).

>>> Meeting place: outside Pomerium, us. Campus Martius. >>> Presiding officer: for legislation and elections, consul (if at election time there is no consul, an interrex, q.v.); for trials, praetor.

(3) COMITIA PLEBIS TRIBUTA (so called after 287; at first 'concilium plebis'; often also 'comitia tributa'): plebeian assembly (patricians excluded), organized by tribes (q.v.). >> Elections of tribuni plebis & plebeian aediles (qq.v.). >> Legislation of any type; esp. plebiscita (see below). >> Trials of crimes against the state if non-capital (i.e. if punishable only by fine; see App. A); also, could pronounce sentence of outlawry (aquae et ignis interdictio) on anyone already exiled.

>>> Meeting place: for elections: Campus Martius; for legislation and trials: after 145 BC usually the Forum. >>> Presiding officer: tribunus plebis or plebeian aedile.

Plebiscita are any measures proposed by tribuni plebis. From perhaps 449 B.C. they were recognized as valid laws if they had prior sanction of patrician senators (see patrum auctoritas s.v. Senatus); in 287 the lex Hortensia made them unconditionaly valid. After Gracchan reforms they became a challenge to senatorial authority, so in 88 and 81 Sulla reimposed the condition of patrician sanction; in 70 that was again abolished (see App. G, App. P s.v. 70 BC. On plebiscita see also s.v. Tribuni plebis.)

(4) COMITIA POPULI TRIBUTA (& 'comitia tributa') organized by tribes (q.v.), founded at unknown date (perhaps c. 450) apparently in imitation of com. plebis tributa, but admitting patricians. >> Elections of quaestores (q.v.), aediles curules (q.v.), tribuni militum (q.v.). >> Legislation of any type. >> Trials of crimes against the state if non-capital (i.e. if the only penalties are fines).

>>> Meeting place: (for elections) Campus Martius or (for legislation and trials) the Forum. >>> Presiding officer: consul, praetor or (for trials) curule aedile.

Voting procedure in 4 and 3: in elections, tribes vote simultaneously (results announced by tribes in order determined by lot); in legislation, tribes vote consecutively, in an order determined by lot. If a tribe is represented by fewer than 5 voters, the presiding magistrate appoints men from another tribe to vote in it.

F Under the emperors. Under Augustus the Comitia centuriata still elected consuls and praetors; but the result was somewhat predetermined both by the ten centuries voting first (see Centuria fin.) and because Augustus, exploiting his right as consul to nominate successors, "endorsed" his own favorite candidates. A few elections in his reign were hotly contested; but e.g. in AD 7 and 14 he seems to have nominated only as many candidates as there were magistracies (Sta. 223). "The election of such candidates seems by the end of the reign to have become automatic--their names were perhaps put to the vote separately before the rest, in which case they could hardly fail" (J2 p. 89).

The assemblies' last known law is an agrarian law of AD 98; as for election of magistrates, in AD 14 Tiberius transferred those to the Senate (Tac. Annals 1.15; see Senatus). Perhaps some vestiges, of which we have no record, did survive; then "as in the comitia curiata of the later Republic, the centuries and tribes are likely to have been represented by lictors who attended merely to witness the renuntiatio of the presiding magistrate; and it is noteworthy that already in the principate of Tiberius the magnificent marble saepta which had been constructed under Caesar and Augustus to house the voters on the Campus Martius were being used for such purposes as the display of wild animals" (Sta. 220).

Authentic provincial elections lasted till iii AD (see Decuriones; App. C § C). E

COMITIUM ('meeting place', from cum + eo, a coming together): a space at the NW end of the Forum where, in the early Republic, the two Comitia met (see “Comitia” I & II).

From c. 590 BC it was a templum, a sanctified square space, oriented N-S. In c. 580 the first Curia Hostilia was built by Hostilius the third king of Rome. In c. 500 BC (shortly after the Republic was founded) a speaker's platform was added on the south side (from c. 380 called the 'Rostra', on which see below). In c. 350-250, under influence of Greek cities in S. Italy, it was made circular.

From c. 350 BC till 80, perhaps in imitation of Greek comitia in S. Italy, it was circular, hollow and tiered (FC I 158-9; 152). Its dimensions can be guessed pretty exactly. On its NW rim was the Urban Praetor’s wooden tribunal; on its North-central rim, the southern doors of the old Senate House (i.e. the Curia Hostilia which, unlike the present Curia, was oriented exactly North-South, and was where the present church of SS. Martina e Luca is); on its NE rim, perhaps the Peregrine Praetor’s tribunal (i.e. from 242 BC on: id. 158). Thus the two praetors’ tribunals formed the “cornua comitii”. Edging its SW rim (i.e. directly south of the Urban Praetor’s tribunal) was curved low platform, the Graecostasis, from which foreign ambassadors could watch the Comitia. Round its S-central rim were the Rostra, another curved, low platform decorated with beaks of captured beaks (and with columnae rostratae made from some of them) from which a speaker could speak either northward into the Comitium, towards the Senate House, or southward into the Forum. (The act of a magistrate turning south to address the Forum is said to have been a revolutionary event, that happened first in 145 BC: id. 158; Plutarch C. Gracch. 5).

Thus, till the first century BC, the Comitium was the very heart of the city. How crowded, the space around it! In it the two oldest assemblies met; round its rim were Senate House, Praetors’ tribunals, the ambassadors’ lodgings, the Rostra and Forum. Adjacent to the Curia’s west wall was the Basilica Porcia, just west of that was the little prison (carcer), and somewhere near that was the tribunal of the tresviri capitales (see FC II 52, and see here Vigintiviri). Lastly, somewhere between Curia and prison were the benches of the Tribuni plebis (id. 56).

By the mid 1st century BC it had lost important functions. The assemblies had long since moved to the Forum and the Campus. About 74 BC, after Sulla instituted the Quaestiones perpetuae (on which see App. A), the Praetors’ tribunals too were moved, to the eastern side of the Forum (to near the SE corner of the Basilica Aemilia, where the puteal Libonis was: id. 166-180; 193 ff.). Finally, in c. 42 BC the Rostra were transferred by Caesar to the extreme west of the Forum (the foot of the Capitoline) where, enlarged by Augustus, they remained during the Principate.

In the late Republic it was sometimes covered with awnings. But before c. 263 BC when a sundial taken from Catania was put in the Forum, the Comitium itself, with the monuments surrounding it, formed a giant sundial; so that by watching the shadows, etc., the Consul’s herald or Urban Praetor’s could announce 9 a.m., noon, 3 p.m. and sunset (FC I 138 ff. ) For example, it was noon when the herald saw the sun “inter rostra et Graecostasin”; sunset when a shadow fell “a columna Maenia ad carcerem”.

(For map & discussion see FC passim, esp. I 138-42, II 23 ff. See map here p. 84)

CONCILIUM: (A) Under the Republic, any assembly (and sometimes also = consilium, q.v.), but especially the Comitia plebis tributa (q.v.) = Concilium plebis.

F (B) Under the Emperors, used especially of an annual provincial assembly, of delegates from all the cities and tribes of some one Roman province, or some group of provinces (such as that of the three Gauls at Lugdunum). In the eastern provinces concilia were authorized in 29 BC (where at first they had an ethnic basis -- e..g. that of Asia, τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Ἑλλήνων τῆς Ἀσίας); in the west, in 12 BC. A concilium convened at a central place in the province. Its president was usually its chief priest (its flamen or sacerdos--see App. D). "The principal business was the maintenance of the imperial cult [hence each meeting had religious ceremonies, games, etc.], review of the administration of the governor and procurators, and appeals to the emperor on behalf of the entire province" (R p. 64).

"From the time of Tiberius (the concilia) were authorized to approach the Princeps or Senate direct without the intervention of the governor, and to complain about, and even initiate, the prosecution of, governors guilty of maladministration" (S 262). They also became a means whereby upper-class provincials obtained Roman citizenship, for themselves and their descendents. E

CONSILIUM: The advisory body of any magistrate; e.g. the Senate is technically the consilium of the consuls, or the provincial curia is the consilium of the duoviri (see s.v. decuriones) etc.; but the word is used especially when the magistrate (or later, the emperor) is acting as a judge; so it often means "jury".

CONSULES ("partners", from consalio; or "deliberators" from consulo), 2, elected annually (for dates, see table below) in the comitia centuriata (q.v.), from candidates proposed by the senate; chief executives, in collaboration with the Senate. In time of peace the two consuls normally took turns, presiding over the senate in alternate months; but either could veto any act by the other. "CONSUL SUFFECTUS", temporary consul, appointed in case of a consul's death, illness or resignation. A "CONSULAR" is a former consul.

H i s t o r y: By tradition the office dates from the founding of the Republic in 509. But perhaps at first the two chief magistrates were called "praetors" (q.v.), not called "consuls" till 366 BC when the third, "urban" praetorship was created (see Praetor). In 5th and early 4th centuries, consuls had many powers (especially juridical) which they later lost to praetors and quaestors. At that time patricians dominated the consulship; after the Licinian plebiscite in 367, at least one consul had to be Plebeian. (Oddly this law seems largely ignored till 342.) No record survives of a law requiring one cos. to be patrician; but the Fasti show that for 200 years after 342, at least one cos. was always in fact patrician.

It is important to remember that the consulship--a prize at which many aimed but very few got--was coveted not only for itself but also because: (a) it led next year to the wealth, military power and clientela given by prorogatio (q.v.); (b) consulars dominated the senate (see "Senatus, Procedure"); and (c) in effect the office 'ennobled' a family forever (see s.vv. Senatus, fin.; Nobilitas; Patricii).

P o w e r s [except for the headings, all here is quoted from Smith s.v. Consul]

IN ROME: So long as they were in the city of Rome, they were at the head of the government and the administration, and all the other magistrates, with the exception of the tribunes of the people, were subordinate to them. S e n a t e: They convened the senate, and as presidents conducted the business; they had to carry into effect the decrees of the senate, and sometimes on urgent emergencies they might even act on their own authority and responsibility. They were the medium through which foreign affairs were brought before the senate; all despatches and reports were placed in their hands, before they were laid before the senate; by them foreign ambassadors were introduced into the senate, and they alone carried on the negotiations between the senate and foreign states. A s s e m b l y: They also convened the assembly of the people and presided in it; and thus conducted the elections, put legislative measures to the vote, and had to carry the decrees of the people into effect (Polyb. vi.12). The whole of the internal machinery of the republic was, in fact, under their superintendence, and in order to give weight to their executive power, they had the right of summoning and arresting the obstreperous (vocatio and prensio, Cic. in Vat. 9, p. Dom. 41), which was limited only by the right of appeal from their judgment (provocatio); and their right of inflicting punishment might be exercised even against inferior magistrates."

ABROAD: "But the powers of the consuls were far more extensive in their capacity of supreme commanders of the armies, when they were without the precincts of the city, and were invested with the full imperium. When the levying of an army was decreed by the senate, the consuls conducted the levy, and, at first, had the appointment of all the subordinate officers — a right which subsequently they shared with the people; and the soldiers had to take their oath of allegiance to the consuls. They also determined the contingent to be furnished by the allies; and in the province assigned to them they had the unlimited administration, not only of all military affairs, but of every thing else, even over life and death, excepting only the conclusion of peace and treaties (Polyb. vi.12)."

MONEY: "The treasury was...under control of the senate; but in regard to expenses for war the consuls do not appear to have been bound down to the sums granted by that body, but to have availed themselves of the public money as circumstances required; the quaestors, however, kept a strict account of the expenditure (Polyb. vi. 12, 13, 15; Liv. xliv.16). But when in times of need money was to be taken from the aerarium sanctius, of which the keys seem to have been in the exclusive possession of the consuls, they had to be authorised by a senatus consultum (Liv. xxvii.10)."

P o w e r s l i m i t e d in 3 main ways [1-2 quoted from Smith s.v.]: (1) "by each of the consuls being dependent on his colleague who was invested with equal rights; for, if we except the provinces abroad where each was permitted to act with unlimited power, the two consuls could do nothing unless both were unanimous (Dionys. x.17; App. ii.11), and against the sentence of one consul an appeal might be brought before his colleague; nay, one consul might of his own accord put his veto on the proceedings of the other (Liv. ii. 18, 27, iii.34; Dionys. v.9; Cic. leg. iii.4). But in order to avoid every unnecessary dispute or rivalry, arrangements had been made from the first, that the real functions of the office should be performed only by one of them every alternate month (Dionys. ix.43); and the one who was in the actual exercise of the consular power for the month, was preceded by twelve lictors, whence he is commonly described by the words "penes quem fasces erant" (Liv. viii.12, ix.8)." (2) By "the certainty that after the expiration of their office they might be called to account... Many cases are on record, in which after their abdication they were accused and condemned not only for illegal or unconstitutional acts, but also for misfortunes in war, which were ascribed either to their carelessness or want of ability (Liv. ii.41, 52, 54, 61, iii.31, xxii.40, 49, xxvi.2-3, xxvii.34; Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii.3; Val. Max. viii.1 §4). The ever increasing arrogance and power of the tribunes did not stop here, and we not unfrequently find that consuls, even during the time of their office, were not only threatened with punishment and imprisonment, but were actually subjected to them (Liv. iv.26, v.9, xlii.21, Epit. 48, 55; Cic. de leg. iii.9, in Vat. 9; Val. Max. ix.5 §2; Dion Cass. xxxvii.50, xxxviii.6, xxxix.39). Sometimes the people themselves opposed the consuls in the exercise of their power (Liv. ii.55, 59)." Lastly (3) by the senate, which controls funds, can criticize a consul's conduct, may or may not decree a triumph, and defines and controls his appointment as proconsul (this last is very important--see s.v. Prorogatio). Also, the senate often heavily modifies the bill which a consul wishes to proprose (either in senate or assembly). For though, formally, senators are the consul's concilium, he needs their support, and most often pays close attention to their wishes.

F Under the emperors. After AD 14 consuls were 'elected' by the Senate (in reality appointed by the emperor: see Comitia fin., Senate fin.). There was great pressure for the office, so after c. 5 B.C. the two consules ordinarii, who entered office on 1 January and gave their names to the year, held office only for 6 months and were replaced by consules suffecti (so, four consuls per year); later still, each pair held office for 2-4 months only. "They had very little to do but preside in the Senate, but the office retained its glamour, and was the gateway to the rich proconsulships of Africa and Asia" (J2 86). Their official functions were these [all this is quoted from Smith s.v.]: "(1) They presided in the senate, though, of course, never without the sanction of the emperor. (2) They administered justice, partly extra ordinem (Tac. Ann. iv.19, xiii.4; Gell. xiii.24), and partly in ordinary cases, such as manumissions or the appointment of guardians (Ammian. Marcell. xxii.7; Cassiod. vi.1; Suet. Claud. 23; Plin. H.N. ix.13). (3) They let out the public revenues, a duty which had formerly been performed by the censors (Ov. ex Pont. iv.5, 19); (4) They conducted the games in the Circus and of public solemnities in honour of the emperors, for which they had to defray the expenses out of their own means (Suet. Nero 4; xi.193, &c.; Cassiod., l.c., and iii.39, v.42, vi.10). E

SCHEMATIZATION of consul's powers: Legislative: A cos. >> convenes the senate (i.e. "consults" it--see Senatus, s.v. 'Procedure'); >> convenes assemblies, i.e. frames and propose legislation (most often, bills that had already been approved by the Senate); >> "nominates" his successor, who must then be ratified by a vote of the people. In the late Republic this merely meant announcing the new candidates for consul, setting the election date, and conducting the voting. But sometimes a consul would refuse to "nominate" someone, or when counting the vote, would refuse to recognize the votes for someone, and he could set an election date which was inconvenient for someone; so nominatio was a slight but real power. See Sta. 143 ff. Judicial: Till the quaestiones (q.v. in App. A § B) were set up in the mid 2nd century, a cos. could >> set in motion, via the quaestors, criminal proceedings for non-political crimes. Also often >> has jurisdiction as a commissioner, entrusted by Senate or Assembly with a special problem (see e.g. Tresviri). Executive: >> executes laws and decrees of assemblies or senate; in so doing >> coerces those who interfere. So also he can >> spend public money paid to him by his quaestor. Finally (as part of his executive power) Martial: >> Commander-in-chief in war. Note that though a consul's 1-year term begins on 1 Jan., his 1-year military command begins on 1 March; thus in effect he exercises imperium for 14 months.

DATES OF CONSULAR ELECTIONS (Smith):

From B.C. 509 to 493	on the Ides of September.
From B.C. 493 to 479	on the Kalends of September.
From B.C. 479 to 451	on the Kalends of Sextilis.
From B.C. 451 to 449	on the Ides of May.
From B.C. 449 to 443 or 400	Ides of December.
From B.C. 400 to probably till 397	Kalends of October.
From B.C. 397 to 329 (perhaps 327)	Kalends of Quintilis.
From B.C. 327 to 223	unknown.
From B.C. 223 to 153	Ides of March.
From B.C. 153 till the end,	the Kalends of January.

"The day on which the consuls entered on their office determined the day of the election, though there was no fixed rule, and in the earliest times the elections probably took place very shortly before the close of the official year, and the same was occasionally the case during the latter period of the republic (Liv. xxxviii.42, xlii.28, lxiii.11). But when the first of January was fixed upon as the day for entering upon the office, the consular comitia were usually held in July or even earlier, at least before the Kalends of Sextilis."

CONSULAR TRIBUNES (Livy 4.6 ff) = "tribuni militum" with consular power, variable in number but usually 6 per year, to be elected instead of consuls, in whatever year the current chief magistrates should decide to have them for the next year. Despite protests of patricians, who preferred the consulship, which they could more easily dominate, there were cons. tribunes, many plebeian, in 58 of the 70 years between 444 and 366 when they were abolished (viz. in 444, 438, 433-2, 426-4, 422, 420-414, 409-393, 391-367).

CONTIONES, public meetings preceding an assembly vote: see Comitia; App. A § D.

F CURATOR: Under the Emperors, a civil servant--normally a senator--appointed for some years to the cura (overseeing) of some special task like aqueducts, grain, roads, the Tiber, which in the Republic had been overseen by elected magistrates (especially quaestors and aediles). (Sandys 224:)

Curatorship normally held by ex-quaestors: Curator actorum senatus (senate record keeper); by ex-praetors or ex-consuls: Curator viarum (care of roads), Curator rei publicae (financial overseer of a provincial--esp. eastern--city; see App. F, career G, n. 1; similar to a corrector, on which see App. F, career-type III); by ex-consuls: Curator alvei Tiberis et riparum et cloacarum urbis (care of the Tiber river-bed; sewers), Curator aquarum et Miniciae, Curator Miniciae. (See App. F, career-type II, career E--the quotation from Pliny, in which he expresses joy at being promoted to a curatorship.) E

CURIA, & CURIALIS (cogn. with Quiris -itis, from the Sabine town of Cures, which united with Rome): On curialis see Decuriones. Curia means: (I) parish: originally Romulus divided the Romans into 30 parts or curiae, 10 for each tribe (see Tribus; each tribe contained 30 gentes). Hence (II) a voting unit (a) in the old Comitia curiata (q.v.), and (b) in the assemblies of provincial towns. (III) The senate itself, both (a) in Rome and (b) in provincial towns. Note that provincial governments (described s.v. Decuriones and in App. C § C) used the word for two different things; on the one hand, their senates were curiae, on the other, their assemblies voted by curiae in the other sense. (IV) The senate house in Rome (on which see Comitium).

CURSUS HONORUM, i.e. stages of a political career: see Appendix F.

DECEMVIRI: see Vigintiviri; App. D ad fin.; App. P s.v. 59 BC.

DECURIAE (see J2 124; T. II, 53 and 201), Engl. decuries: ‘pools’ of men from which could be drawn jurors (called iudices or selecti) for public courts and, probably, judges for the civil courts (on these courts and on trials, see App. A § B). The first decuries were wholly senatorial. Since senators tended to let accused senators off too lightly--and perhaps also so that knights could play a larger role in the state--C. Gracchus in 123 BC made them wholly equestrian. But they too favored their own kind (especially in cases of provincial extortion--see Publicani), so in 81 BC, Sulla made the jurors again senators. His scheme was overthrown in 70 BC (q.v. in App. P) by the Lex Aurelia, as a result of which there were three decuriae, of 300 men each from Senators, Knights, and tribuni aerarii (q.v.), distributed among the tribes. Later Caesar abolished the panel of tribuni aerarii.

F Under the emperors. Augustus again changed the scheme; he established 3 decuriae of 1,000 men each. They were largely equestrian; they formed a kind of inner core of the much wider class of all equites, i.e. free citizens posessing over 600,000 sesterces. "Senators certainly still served, but apparently in the three decuries of equites, where they would have been a very small minority" (J2 124).

"Furthermore, in AD 4 (Augustus) created a fourth decury, with a smaller property qualification (200,000 sesterces), to try minor cases. These clearly were judges in private suits, and their creation implies that the selection of judges was confined to the decuries" (J2 129).

Appointed by the Emperor, since he had usurped censorial power (or more rarely by the consuls, who were given temporary censorial power for the purpose), any judge or juror could be dismissed for misconduct. The decuriate was burdensome, and at first Augustus "had some difficulty getting men to serve" and "had to lower the qualifying age from 35 to 30" (J2 124). But later, there was some "pressure for places--since after a regulation of 23 A.D. membership seems to have conferred the gold ring and the right to sit in the 14 rows" (OCD s.v. Equites--q.v.), and so Caligula added a 5th decuria. E

DECURIONES: (I) Cavalry officers--see App. B. (II) The presidents of decuriae (the 300 subdivisions of the curiae = parishes--see Curia). (III) Members of the Curia--i.e. senate, council--of a district or city other than Rome. (See J3 282 ff, R 480 ff., EB s.v.) Under the Republic and the emperors alike, the decuriones (also called curiales, also often in Engl. "city councillors") were normally appointed for life at the 5-year census--under the Republic, by the chief magistrate; under the emperors, by census officials called quinquennales (q.v.). A town might have from 100 to 300 decurions, 100 being normal (but there were fewer in the late empire, from causes given below). Normally, they were all ex-magistrates, and their qualifications of wealth, age, status, reputation were the same as those required for the magistracies (on these magistracies see Appendix C, § C). Like the Senate at Rome, they formed the consilium of the local magistrates, who in some towns were bound by law to follow their proposals. In the late Republic they had certain special privileges, e.g. the right to appeal to Rome in criminal cases.

F Under the emperors, decurions "in practice controlled the public life of the community. Local administration and finance, the sending of deputations and petitions to Rome or to the provincial governors, the voting of honorary decrees and statues, fell to them, since the popular elections played little part except at the magisterial elections" (OCD s.v.). In the early 3rd century AD their Curia began to nominate the candidates for magistracies, thus in effect controlling its own membership (J3 241); and by the early 4th century the popular assemblies had disappeared altogether (id. 242).

Decurions also collected the local taxes for Rome, and were personally liable for any deficiencies. Because of this the decurionate began to be shunned (R 446 ff.), and the emperors had to make it compulsory. It " became a hereditary, inescapable munus of the wealthy, who degenerated from a ruling class to a tax-collecting caste, known as curiales" (OCD s.v.) Only a few kinds of person were normally exempt; e.g. Roman senators, equestrian officials, tax-farmers, doctors, professors, priests, soldiers.

Thus, by some emperors, decurions were forbidden to join the priesthood (R 481) or army (R 480, J3 36), but could sometimes escape into a magistracy, or into an imperial post that made one an eques or a comes (J3 245), or into the Senate (though this too was forbidden by some emperors). "The richest and most influential decurions desired promotion, and had powerful patrons to support them. Their colleagues on the council did not wish to offend the leading men of the city, who could be dangerous enemies if crossed and useful patrons if they succeeded in their ambition, and were in any case not reluctant to see them go and thus succeed to their influence in the council" (J3 p. 152-3; cf. p. 244-5).

Most decurions were landowners, but not all were wealthy. If a town was poor, so were some of its decurions (especially in the late empire, when the wealthiest had managed to "escape" as described above); a good example is St. Augustine's father, a decurion of Tagaste in Numidia, who had to borrow money for his son's education as a rhetor (Confessions II.iii.5). E

DICTATOR, a temporary supreme executive, to rule for six months in a military or civil emergency. He is nominated by a consul (on advice of the senate) and confirmed by a lex curiata. He at once appoints a magister equitum to whom he delegates imperium of praetorian rank. A dictator has imperium maius (q.v.); is not subject to veto (see Tribuni Plebis) or appeal; his other power is equal to (and overrides) that of both consuls (so he has 24 lictors to a consul's 12). His most important power, one that prefigures that of the emperors, is that he can legislate "without the people's cooperation or approval" and is "exempt from the restrictions and qualifications of ordinary legislation" (OCD s.v. Lex).

The office was potentially dangerous, and found to be inefficacious in war on account of its 6-month time-limit. Gradually it was abandoned save for minor purposes. e.g. celebrating festivals, holding elections. It is last attested in 202 B.C.; its place was taken by the Senatus Consultum Ultimum (q.v.).

The later "dictatorships" of Sulla (see App. G, and Q s.v. 81 BC) & Caesar were illegal (e.g. each lasted more than 6 months), and so deeply hated and mischievous that in 43 Antony as consul got the name and office formally abolished forever (thus e.g. the "2nd Triumvirate" avoided it--see Tresviri).

DUOVIRI: see App. D ad fin.; App. C § C.

EDICTUM (edico, announce, proclaim): "The higher Roman magistrates (praetores, aediles, quaestores, censores; in the provinces the governors) had the right to proclaim by edicts (ius edicendi) the steps which they intended to take in the discharge of their office. Such edicts were put up in the forum on an album [i.e. a whitened billboard]. Legally they ceased to be binding when the magistrate left his post (normally after a year) but customarily they were confirmed by his successors" (OCD s.v.).

Praetors' edicts were "not didactic or dogmatic formulations of law, but rather announcements of what... (the praetor) would grant in such and such circumstances, or direct orders to do, or prohibitions against doing, certain things" (EB s.v. Roman Law, III, ii. See below, 'Under the emperors', for an example). Praetors' edicta had over leges the great advantage that "they could be dropped, resumed or amended by a new praetor" (ibid.). As the body of edicts built up, most praetors would only slightly modify those of their predacessors. Probably "the edict attained considerable proportions in the time of Cicero; for he mentions that, whereas in his youth the XII Tables had been taught to the boys in school, in his later years these were neglected, and young men directed instead to the praetors' edicts for their first lessons in law" (ibid.).

Consuls' edicts e.g. gave the full texts of proposed laws, and the day for voting, or listed some or all of the candidates for election, and the day for voting. Judicial edicts (whether by consul or praetor) "gave details of the identity of the accused, the nature of his crime, the penalty prescribed" (Sta. 143). Provincial governors' edicts "must have varied according to circumstances, being in all cases composites of provisions... borrowed from the edicts of praetors", which were modified to suit the new circumstances. Curule aediles' edicts were "very limited: their most important provisions having reference to open sales of slaves, horses and cattle, and containing regulations about the duties of vendors... They also had cognizance of certain delicts comitted in the streets and markets. As the aediles had no imperium their restricted jus edicendi may have been conferred on them by custom or statute" (EB loc. cit.).

F Under the emperors all officials and especially the praetors soon ceased to innovate in their edicts. "There was a greater imperium than theirs..., before which they hesitated to lay hands on the law with the boldness of their predacessors." They increasingly made only minor "amendments rendered necessary by the provisions of some senatusconsult that affected the jus honorarium" (EB loc. cit., IV, i).

An example is in Pliny, Epistles, V.9. A praetor had issued a "brief edict, in which he warned all plaintiffs and defendents that he would strictly enforce the following senatus consultum: 'All persons who have any business (in court) are commanded, before they proceed, to swear that they have not given, promised, or given surety for, any (money) to any (advocate) for his advocacy'." On hearing of this, a different praetor, presiding over a session of the centumviral court (see App. A), "unexpectedly called a recess, in order to deliberate whether he should follow the example." The whole city, Pliny says, was criticizing the edict ("Who is this creature trying to reform the city's morals?" etc.) or praising it ("At last, a praetor who actually reads the senatus consulta" etc.); no one knew which view would prevail. E

On edicts see also s.vv. Praetors; Aediles; App. C § D; App. P s.v. 65 BC, 67 BC.

EQUITES ('horsemen', 'cavalry'; 'knights'). M i l i t a r y. In the early Republic the army had 18 cavalry "centuries" = divisions of 100 men (with subdivisions of turmae, squadrons of 30 men each). Since cavalry service was expensive, these centuries (which were also voting units in the Comitia centuriata--q.v., and see Centuria) were generally the wealthiest citizens. Despite that, the state provided each eques with money for 2 horses (one for himself, one for his groom); so they were called equites publico equo.

The 6 oldest centuries were probably all patrician (see Patriciae), the 12 others plebeian. Those original 6 were called in later times sex suffragia, "the six votes", 2 from each original tribe: Titienses Ramnes Luceres priores posteriores. Beginning in 392 (at the siege of Veii, acc. to Livy) there were also equites privato equo, i.e. equites who provided their own horses, and voted in class I (see Centuria).

Equites were chosen first by the consuls; after 443 BC, by the censors, who reviewed them every 5 years at a ceremony in the Forum, and expelled any who were unfit, immoral, etc. (see Censors).

But Rome increasingly depended for its cavalry on the allies (see App. B s.v. auxilia), and in the late Republic the equites were no longer a military but only a social and, sometimes, legal entity.

C i v i l. For voting purposes (see Centuria), equites were merely the first property class; that is, in the late Republic, an eques was any person whose estate was worth over 400,000 sesterces. (Compare with that an average soldier's pay which, after Caesar doubled it, was 900 sesterces per year. The two figures are in the same ratio as a modern salary of $20,000 and a fortune of $8,888,889!) In that respect, the equites included senators, but there were differences (on which see below). As a class, they had certain symbolic privileges such as the angustus clavus (tunic with narrow purple stripe), a gold ring, the right to the first 14 rows in theaters, and some more real privileges (on which see below).

Equites versus senatores. If an eques became a senator, he remained one for life, but the rest of his family remained merely equites, nor did senatorial status pass to his descendents. (This changed under Augustus--see below, "Under the emperors".) But though equites and senatores thus overlapped, various factors contributed to make them seem two distinct groups: (A) the patrician origin of the senate, as a result of which it retained a certain patrician character; (B) the fact that certain noble families had senators in every generation, so that they were in effect "senatorial" families with "senatorial" attitudes; (C) various laws such as the lex Claudia of 218 BC which , to prevent "conflicts of interest", forbade senators to own large ships, to engage in trade or in usury, or to make bids for public contracts (e.g. the building and tax contracts, on which so many equites got rich; see Censor); (D) a lex Sempronia of 123 BC, by which C. Gracchus excluded senators from his equestrian juries (App. A § B, D). Senators were largely a landlord class, and were "public" officials, whereas equites were "private" capitalists; and the two groups often came in sharp conflict. Here is what two modern authors say about the difference:

Thus, at the time of the Gracchi, these equites-publicani formed a close financial corporation of about 30,000 members, holding an intermediary position between the nobility and the lower classes, keenly alive to their own interests, and ready to stand by one another when attacked. Although to some extent looked down upon by the senate as following a dishonourable occupation, they had as a rule sided with the latter, as being at least less hostile to them than the democratic party. To obtain the support of these capitalists, Gaius Gracchus conceived the plan of creating friction between them and the senate, which he carried out by handing over to them the control (a) of the jury-courts, and (b) the revenues of Asia. (J. H. Freese in EB s.v. Equites)

The image of equites as tawdry businessmen should long since have been exploded. They included influential men of affairs, landowners, bankers, and tax farmers, many of them representatives of the municipal aristocracy throughout Italy. In wealth and even in influence, individual equites might often surpass their senatorial counterparts... The difference rested in dignitas and access to honores. The equester ordo constituted essentially that part of the Roman upper classes which had not served in the halls of the senate.... Sulla's expansion of the senate opened up positions that enabled numerous individuals to abandon equestrian origins and take on senatorial status.... But the gates swung wide open only at a certain level. The bulk of the new men spent their senatorial careers among the pedarii. (Gruen 208. On "pedarii" see Senatus, Procedure)

On the equites' role as jurors--an activity over which they did, indeed, clash with senators--see App. A § B, also App. G; on their tax farming--also a cause of tension--see Publicani, and App. C § E.

F Under the emperors. Under Augustus the two orders became at last distinct. Senatorial status, now semi-hereditary, required a fortune of 1,000,000 sesterces, equestrian 600,000. He divided all equites into six squadrons called turmae, headed by six seviri equitum Romanorum (usually young men of senatorial birth who had not yet been Quaestor). Also, he organized some of them into four panels of jurors = Decuriae (q.v.). Beyond this, there was a change of status. An equestrian career, though still not as prestigious as a senatorial, often far excelled it in actual political power. Equestrian Procuratores (q.v.) governed provinces, and the highest Praefecti (q.v.) were among the most powerful officials in the empire. For the equestrian career under the emperors see App. F, § III, illustrated by career F. E

FACTIO ("faction"), the commonest Roman word for "political party"; significantly, almost always a mere term of abuse. The main reason is that Rome in fact had no "parties" in the positive modern sense; that is, no permanent alliances of all persons who share a political program, based on an ideology; rather, there were transient alliances between individual nobles (or families), based on no ideology. That is why politicians in the late Republic (those about whom we know the most, e.g. Pompey, Lepidus, Caesar, Crassus, Clodius, Antony, Octavian) kept strangely "switching sides" in a way that would bring ridicule on a modern politician. Stavely puts it this way (Sta. 191-2, my emphasis):

The Roman candidate did not represent the interests of a large group embracing much of the population, he was not pledged to the support of specific policies, and normally he did not even attempt to associate himself in the eyes of the electorate with a particular creed.... Indeed, if we are to trust the advice supposedly given by Quintus Cicero to his brother... the taking of any political stand during the campaign was to be studiously avoided for fear of making enemies.... The Roman had but one principal object in his canvass--to ensure that those committed to his personal following attended the comitia in sufficient numbers to assure him victory.

Stavely thinks (ibid.) that this oddity of Roman politics had two main causes: (1) the physical distances that separated candidates and voters, in the later Republic. On the one hand, it was impossible to contact the majority of voters; on the other, for coming to Rome to vote they normally needed some reason stronger that a mere political program. And (2) "Roman campaigning practice was moulded as early as the fifth century BC, in days when any direct personal appeal by a member of the governing class would certainly have been regarded [i.e. by his fellow patricians] as a form of treachery" (Sta 193).

So each candidate needed not a program but simply (a) large numbers of clients and (b) strategic alliances with other nobles, who also had large numbers of clients. One's own alliance was called an amicitia, or something nobler like boni viri or concordia ordinum or "the patriots"; that of one's enemies was branded a factio, and charged with sedition, treason, oligarchy, etc. Thus e.g. Sallust Jug. 31.15 (on the "senatorial oligarchs") "They stick together. This among good men is friendship; among evil men it is a faction" ("haec inter bonos amicitia, inter malos factio est"), and Cicero Rep. 3.14, "a factio is when certain people hold the government on account of riches, or family, or power".

The reason for the nastiness of this word for "the other party" is that--as those quotations show--throughout the Republican period, politicians feared that Rome might become a too narrow oligarchy. Their fear intensified in the late Republic, when certain amicitiae did in fact use violence. The word "faction" was needed for amicitiae like those of the 'Gracchans', the 'Marians', the 'Sullans', the first and second 'triumvirates'. And since those deadliest "factions" always made appeals to the populace (were popularis), they themselves applied the word to their opponents, the whole "senatorial faction" itself!

On a rather strange use of factio, in ch. 1 of Augustus' Res Gestae, see App. R fin.

FASTI: "The old calendar of dies fasti and dies nefasti for legal and public business [i.e. days on which business could and could not be conducted], which received definite publication by Cn. Flavius in 304 B.C. (Livy 9.46.5), came to cover also lists of eponymous magistrates (fasti consulares), records of triumphs (fasti triumphales), and priestly lists (fasti sacerdotales)" (OCD s.v.). Parts of these lists are still extant, or can be certainly reconstructed; for Republican magistrates see above all T. R. S. Broughton, Magistrates of the Roman Republic. (For other bibliography see OCD s.v. In App. Y below is a list of consuls from BC 150 to 26; RR 525 ff. lists them from 80 BC to AD 14.)

IMPERIUM ("command"; cf. imperator): "supreme administrative power, involving command in war and the interpretation and execution of law (including the infliction of the death penalty) which belonged at Rome to the kings and, after their expulsion, to consuls, military tribunes with consular power (from 445 to 367 B.C.), praetors, dictators, and masters of the horse" (OCD s.v.; my emphasis). Add also promagistrates (see Prorogatio); also some holders of special commissions (e.g. tresviri, q.v.); perhaps also curule aediles (on the doubt about them see Edictum). Imperium also gives the right to convoke the senate; to sit in a curule chair (sella curulis); to be attended by lictores (q.v.) bearing fasces that symbolize coercitio, the power to punish.

"Imperium maius": a dictator's imperium overrides a consul's, a consul's a praetor's--etc.; greater imperium is symbolized by a greater number of lictors (dictator has 24, consul 12, praetor 6, etc. -- see under Lictores), and by how the lictors of a lesser magistrate lower their rods to salute a greater. F "Imperium maius proconsulare" was given to Augustus by a special law (App. S s.v. 23 BC). It seems to have meant two things: (a) in a senatorial province, the Emperor's imperium overrode that of any Proconsul (see e.g. J2. 53); (b) in an imperial province, the Emperor was formally the Proconsul; that is why his governors, even when they were in fact ex-consuls, were called mere Legati (q.v. and see Prorogatio). Imperium maius proconsulare was also given to Pompey (App. P s.v. 67 BC); also to Agrippa (BC 18; see App. U fin.), Germanicus (in East, AD 17), Tiberius (AD 13). E

By a lex Valeria of 300 B.C., imperium domi ('at home') was limited by the right of appeal to the people (see App. A, § C). Imperium militiae could be exercised only outside Rome, and was gradually restricted to a promagistrate's own province (but see below on imperium maius proconsulare. On promagistrates see Prorogatio). It was often prolonged for years; e.g. Caesar's in Gaul (for ten years) or those of Pompey (App. P passim). On these so-called "imperia extra ordinem" see Gruen 534-543.

According to Pierre Grimal (7-9) imperium is not merely violence or constraint. "(The word) designates a transcendent force, at once creative and ordering; able to act on reality, to make it obedient to a will. For example a farmer who, on the earth he owns, forces crops to grow, or prunes from the vine its superfluous sprays, keeping only the shoots on which grapes will form, exercises his imperium [cf. Vergil, G. I, 99]. Any constraint in it is creative, not something that exists for its own sake. Imperium is never a gratuitous tyranny." Thus the source of all imperium is Rome's protector and fosterer, Juppiter Optimus, who confers it on his representatives: on the king (or later the Emperor) and on magistrates of the Roman people. (For like the king, the magistrates seek Juppiter's will in their rites, and so have a direct relation with him.)

"Joined to the imperium were the laws. They were two springs of power, parallel and complementary. A law voted by the people is a rule accepted once for ever. It refers to specified circumstances and imposes solutions. In contrast, imperium operates in the face of the unforeseen. It is something living, modifiable, and complementary to the law. But it cannot substitute for law; the authority of that rests on the maiestas of the people."

INTERREX ("king for the time being"): Originally (perhaps even prior to the Etruscan kings) he was a patrician "appointed by the senators on the death of a king to exercise provisional authority. Later, in the event of the death or resignation of both consuls before the conclusion of their year of office, interreges were successively appointed from each of the senatorial decuriae for five days until the auspices were taken and the new consuls elected... The interrex had to be a patrician and a senator. He exercised all the functions of the consulship and was escorted by 12 lictors." (OCD; see also J 156). Normally, he offered only two candidates for the consulship; the voters were merely requested to confirm them.

LEGATUS (lit. 'chosen', from lego). Late Republic generally: (I) Ambassador chosen by the senate. Also, (II) a person of senatorial rank chosen by a provincial governor to assist him; a provincial legate could have powers pro praetore (see Prorogatio; also App. C, § A), conferred either by a governor or by the senate, and so could assume military command. Under Caesar in particular: Commander of legion or detachment, or used like praefecti for special tasks.

F Under the Emperors, a legateship was normally a senatorial (not an equestrian) post; e.g. (A) (praetorian or consular rank) Legatus Augusti censibus accipiendis (= Censitor = census and tax assessor). (B) (praetorian rank) legatus legionis = commander of a legion. (C) legatus (Augusti) pro praetore = governor of any imperial province that has at least one legion in it. (D) legatus (Augusti) pro praetore = any special imperial commissioner.

Note that B and C are identical--i.e. the legatus legionis is also the legatus Augusti pro praetore--in any province that has just one legion. (The sole exception is Africa. After Caligula, command of its one legion--the iii Augusta--was kept distinct from the governorship.) If the province has more than one legion, then A is subordinate to B. For more about B, see Prorogatio ad fin. E

LICTORES (perhaps from ligo, to bind a criminal, or from licere, to summon): the attendents--each on his left shoulder bearing a bundle of fasces (rods) with an axe in the middle--who accompanied magistrates with imperium (q.v.)--a custom borrowed from the Etruscans. The fasces symbolized a magistrate’s power to punish; the axe, his power to inflict death.

Lictors were of humble birth (often freedmen of the magistrate they served), grouped in guilds called decuriae. “In Rome they wore the toga, perhaps girded up; on a campaign and at the celebration of a triumph, the red military cloak (sagulum); at funerals, black... They were the constant attendants, both in and out of the house, of the magistrate to whom they were attached. They walked before him in Indian file, cleared a passage for him (summovere) through the crowd, and saw that he was received with the marks of respect due to his rank [see e.g. Suet. Caes. 80.3]. They stood by him when he took his seat on the tribunal; mounted guard before his house, against the wall of which they stood the fasces; summoned offenders before him, seized, bound and scourged them, and (in earlier times) carried out the death sentence” (EB s.v.). Suetonius (Caes. 44.2) says that Caesar when dictator used his lictors as police to enforce his sumptuary laws; they used to enter and search people's houses and confiscate forbidden goods.

A Dictator was preceded by 24 lictors bearing both rods and axes; the Consul presiding in Rome for the month, by 12 bearing only axes (the other cos. had only a Herald, until his month came round); a Praetor, when in Rome, by 2 (bearing only axes), but when abroad by 6 (bearing rods & axes); a quaestor, by none at home, but when abroad, if serving pro praetore, by 6. Any promagistrate had normally 6.

There were also 30 Lictores Curiati, who summoned the curiae to the comitia curiata; and when these meetings became purely formal, their votes were represented by the 30 lictors (Smith). “Lictors were also assigned to private individuals at the celebration of funeral games, and to the aediles at the games provided by them and the theatrical representation under their supervision” (EB).

MAGISTER EQUITUM: see s.v. Dictator.

NOBILITAS (from nobilis, lit. "known person"). For modern historians (e.g. Syme) and often in ancient usage, nobiles are members of families who have produced consuls; the nobilitas, the aggregate of such families. So the nobilitas included patricians (q.v.) and plebeians equally. "Their control of the office [of the consulship] during the Republic's last generation amounted to a near exclusivist monopoly: fifty-four of sixty-one consular posts... Nearly half of all known praetors in the Ciceronian age were nobiles, and almost 80 % possessed precursors in the senate.... Nobiles account for more than 40% of the recorded number [of aediles], men of senatorial blood for more than 70%... Approximately 30% of the tribunes derived from consular houses", even though that office was plebeian. "The Roman voter performed in habitual ways. A practiced aristocracy, relying on patronage and heritage, remained secure" (Gruen 209-210). Other statistics (T. p. 105): From 218 B.C. to 49 only 12 consuls had nonconsular ancestry, and in the last 40 years of the Republic, only Cicero.

PATRES and PATRUM AUCTORITAS: see s.v. Senatus, and Comitia, # 3

PATRON & CLIENT [[all quoted from E.B. s.v.:]] (Lat. patronus, from pater, father; clientes or cluentes, from cluere, to obey), in Roman law. Clientage appears to have been an institution of most of the Graeco-Italian peoples in early stages of their history; but it is in Rome that we can most easily trace its origin, progress and decay. Until the reforms of Servius Tullius, the only citizens proper were the members of the patrician and gentile houses; they alone could participate in the solemnities of the national religion, take part in the government and defence of the state, contract quiritarian marriage, hold property, and enjoy the protection of the laws. But alongside of them was a gradually increasing non-citizen population composed partly of slaves, partly of freemen, who were nevertheless not admitted to burgess rights. To the latter class belonged the clients, individuals who had attached themselves in a position of dependence to the heads of patrician houses as their patrons, in order thereby to secure attachment to a gens, which would involve a de facto freedom. Mommsen held that the plebs consisted originally of clients only; but the earliest records of Rome reveal the possibility of a man becoming a plebeian member of the Roman state without assuming the dependent position of clientship; and long before the time of Servius Tullius the clients must be regarded as a section only of the plebeian order, which also contained members unattached to any patronus.

[Patron's duties] The relationship of patron and client was ordinarily created by what, from the client’s point of view, was called adplicatio ad patronum, from that of the patron, susceptio clientis—the client being either a person who had come to Rome as an exile, who had passed through the asylum, or who had belonged to a state which Rome had overthrown. According to Dionysius and Plutarch, it was one of the early cares of Romulus to regulate the relationship, which, by their account of it, was esteemed a very intimate one, imposing upon the patron duties only less sacred than those he owed to his children and his ward, more urgent than any he could be called upon to perform towards his kinsmen, and whose neglect entailed the penalty of death (Tellumoni sacer esto). He was bound to provide his client with the necessaries of life; and it was a common practice to make him a grant during pleasure of a small plot of land to cultivate on his own account. Further, he had to advise him in all his affairs; to represent him in any transactions with third parties in which, as a non-citizen, he could not act with effect; and, above all things, to stand by him, or rather be his substitute, in any litigation in which he might become involved.

[Client's duties] The client in return had not only generally to render his patron the respect and obedience due by a dependant, but, when he was in a position to do so and the circumstances of the patron required it, to render him pecuniary assistance. As time advanced and clients amassed wealth, we find this duty insisted upon in a great variety of forms, as in contributions towards the dowries of a patron’s daughters, towards the ransom of a patron or any of his family who had been taken captive, towards the payment of penalties or fines imposed upon a patron, even towards his maintenance when he had become reduced to poverty. Neither might give evidence against the other—a rule we find still in observance well on in the 1st century B.C., when C. Herennius declined to be a witness against C. Marius on the ground that the family of the latter had for generations been clients of the Herennii (Plut. Mar. 5). The client was regarded as a minor member (gentilicius) of his patron’s gens; he was entitled to assist in its religious services, and bound to contribute to the cost of them; he had to follow his patron to battle on the order of the gens; he was subject to its jurisdiction and discipline, and was entitled to burial in. its common sepulchre.

And this was the condition, not only of the client who personally had attached himself to a patron, but that also of his descendants; the patronage and the clientage were alike hereditary. The same relationship was held to exist between. a freedman and his former owner; for originally a slave did not on enfranchisement, become a citizen; it was a de facto freedom merely that he enjoyed; his old owner was always called his patron, while he and his descendants were substantially in the position of clients, and often so designated.

[Early History] In the two hundred years that elapsed before the Servian constitutional reforms, the numerical strength of the clients, whether in that condition by adplicatio, enfranchisement or descent, must have become considerable; and it was from time to time augmented by the retainers of distinguished immigrants admitted into the ranks of the patriciate. There seems also to have been during this period a gradual growth of virtual independence on the part of the clients, and it is probable that their precarious tenure of the soil had in many cases come to be practically regarded as ownership, when a patron had not asserted his right for generations. The exact nature of the privileges conferred on the clients by Servius Tullius is not known. Probably this king guaranteed to the whole plebeian order, including the clients, the legal right of private ownership of Roman land. At the same time he imposed upon the whole order the duty of serving in the army, which was now organized on a basis of wealth. The client had previously been liable to military service at the command of the gens. Now he was called upon to take his part in it as a member of the state. As a natural corollary to this, all the plebeians seem to have been enrolled in the tribes, and after the institution of the plebeian assembly (concilium plebis) the clients, who formed a large part of the order, secured a political influence which steadily increased. It is not certain how soon they acquired the right to litigate in person on their own behalf, but their possession of this right seems to be implied in the XIL Tables, and may have been granted them at an earlier date.

At any rate after 449 B.C. there were no disabilities in private law involved in their status. The relation of patron and client, it is true, still remained; the patron could still exact from his client respect, obedience and service, and he and his gens had still an eventual right of succession to a deceased client’s estate. But the fiduciary duties of the patron were greatly relaxed, and practically little more was expected of him than that lie should continue to give his client his advice, and prevent him faIling into a condition of indigence; sacer esto ceased to be the penalty of protection denied or withheld, its application being limited to fraus facta, which in the language of the Tables meant positive injury inflicted or damage done.

[Late Republic] So matters remained during the 4th, 3rd and 2nd centuries. In the 2nd and 1st a variety of events contributed still further to modify the relationship. The rapacity of patrons was checked by the lex Cincia (passed by M. Cincius Alimentus, tribune in 204 BC.), which prohibited their taking gifts of money from their clients; marriages between patron and client gradually ceased to be regarded as unlawful, or as ineffectual to secure to the issue the status of the patron father. At the same time the remaining political disabilities of the clients were removed by their enrolment in all the tribes instead of only the four city tribes, and their admission to the magistracy and the senate. Hereditary clientage ceased when a client attained to a curule dignity; and in the case of the descendants of freedmen enfranchised in solemn forms it came to be limited to the first generation.

Gradually but steadily one feature after another of the old institution disappeared, till by the end of the 1st century it had resolved itself into [a] the limited relationship between patron and freedman..., and [b] the unlimited honorary relationship between the patron who gave gratuitous advice on questions of law and those who came to consult him.... To have a large following of clients of this class was a matter of ambition to every man of mark in the end of the republic; it increased his importance, and ensured him a band of zealous agents in his political schemes.

F [The Empire] But amid the rivalries of parties and the venality of the lower orders,.... clients had to be ‘purchased’ with something more substantial than mere advice. And so arose that wretched and degrading clientage of the early empire, of which Martial, who was not ashamed to confess himself a first-rate specimen of the breed, has given us such graphic descriptions; gatherings of idlers, sycophants and spendthrifts, at the levees and public appearances of those whom, in their fawning servility, they addressed as lords and masters, but whom they abused behind their backs as close-fisted upstarts—and all for the sake of the sportula, the daily dole of a dinner, or of a few pence wherewith to procure one.

With the middle empire this disappeared; and when a reference to patron and client occurs in later times it is in the sense of counsel and client, the words patron and advocate being used almost synonymously. It was not so in the days of the great forensic orators. The word advocate, it is said, occurs only once in the singular in the pages of Cicero. But at a later period, when the bar had become a profession, and the qualifications, admission, numbers and fees of counsel had become a matter of state regulation, advocati was the word usually employed to designate the pleaders as a class of professional men, each individual advocate, however, being still spoken of as patron in reference to the litigant with whose interest he was entrusted. It is in this limited connexion that patron and client come under our notice in the latest monuments of Roman law. E

PATRICII, Patricians: the origin of this caste is conjectural (e.g. perhaps an elite class under the Etruscan kings; or perhaps even a pre-Etruscan, Latin aristocracy); in any case it was legally defined (or redefined) in the early 5th century, to exclude "PLEBEIAN" families from many offices (a movement generally called la serrata, "the closing"). In the early Republic patricians held most higher magistracies and (till the lex Ogulnia, 300) all important religious offices. Even in later times, only patricians could appoint the Interrex (q.v.), be Rex sacrorum or (probably) Princeps senatus (q.v.), and give or withhold patrum auctoritas (see Senatus) to decisions of the centuriate and curiate assemblies.

In 450 they were prohibited by law from marrying Plebeians (repealed in 445; but intermarriage remained rare). You could not become, but only be born, a patrician; it depended on your gens. (I.e. until Augustus; by a lex Saenia of 30 BC--see App. S--he and later emperors had the right to create new patricians.) The Patrician caste was mainly a religious, social and legal-political, not an economic, entity. Often in the 5th- and 4th-century "struggle of the orders", prominent plebeians did manipulate popular economic discontent, to alarm the patriciate, and break their monopoly of power. But even in early times, some plebeian families were immensely rich (e.g. the regal Marcii; or in later times e.g. Pompey). The all-powerful patriciate was gradually replaced by a senatorial aristocracy of Patrician-Plebeian nobiles (see Nobilitas). This happened in part by mere decline in numbers (due e.g. to wars): in the fifth century there were 50 patrician gentes; in c. 367, 22; at the end of the Republic, 14.

PLEBISCITUM: see s.v. Comitia, # 3 and s.v. Tribuni Plebis

POMOERIUM: "Ritual boundary of the city of Rome, following the line of the ancient Servian walls, which divided the civilian area within (domi) from the military area without (militiae). A proconsul, whose imperium was only valid militiae, lost it on crossing the pomoerium" (J2 p. 185)

PONTIFEX: see Appendix D

PRAEFECTUS. (I) C i v i l. (a) Praefectus urbi at Rome: "The temporary deputy in Rome of the absent king or consuls, not often needed after the institution of praetors, except once a year when all regular magistrates attended the Latin festival on the Mons Albanus" (OCD). At first held by men of consular rank, later by much younger men. (b) Praefecti = judges delegated by the Urban Praetor to the municipia (see App. C, section B), to help local officials to administer justice; as e.g. those sent in 318 B.C. to Capua and Cumae. Those sent annually to Campania after the revolt of 215-211 BC took sole charge of local jurisdiction. Such praefecti were abolished some time between 89 (see below) and 44 BC.

(II) M i l i t a r y (cf. App. B). Young equestrian officers. Until the Social War of 91-87 BC, there were used mainly as commanders of allied cavalry. Each ala socium had 6 praefecti of whom 3 were Roman (see App. B, auxilia). But generals often used them for other purposes, e.g. to command town garrisons, or fortresses, or infantry auxilia, or fleets, or for special missions. They were comparable in rank and status to tribuni militum, but on the one hand, less esteemed because never elected (see Tribuni militum) but only appointed, yet on the other hand, often more flexible and experienced, because of the variegated tasks they were given. Before 218 (when 2nd Punic War began) there were probably no more than 20 praefecti per year; between then and 90 BC, there were perhaps 100 per year; after 89 (when praefecti socium ceased to exist) there were probably fewer than 50 (figures from Suolahti). During the civil wars, 48-30 BC, their numbers and importance hugely increased in each army, because of a huge increase in mercenary auxilia. It was partly this that led to their importance in the Principate.

F Under the emperors. As Augustus reorganized the army and provincial administration, trying to create permanent structures, he found praefecti especially useful in that unlike tribuni militum, they had never been elected magistrates, and few were senators. They had always tended to be knights appointed to special tasks by the commander-in-chief--and he was now the Emperor.

Of the many new prefectures only five were s e n a t o r i a l (Sandys 225): (1) (for senators of praetorian rank) Praefectus aerarii militaris (overseer of funds for the military), (2) (praetorian rank) Praefecti aerarii (Saturni) (2, under Agustus, till 23 BC, prefects of the state Treasury, which was located in the Temple of Saturn), (3) (praetorian) Praefectus alimentorum (in charge of special fund for poor children); (4) (praetorian or aedilician) Praefectus frumenti dandus ex senatus consulto (grain distribution); (5) (consular) Praefectus Urbi ("police chief" and later judge: see below).

The five highest of the many e q u e s t r i a n prefectures were more important than any of the senatorial, except the Praefectus urbi, and were the highest posts of any kind that a knight could attain: (a) Praefecti Classis (2, commanders of the imperial fleets, at Ravenna and Misenum); (b) Praefectus Vigilum (chief of fire brigade--see Vigiles); (c) Praefectus Annonae (grain commissioner--since grain was no longer controlled by the aediles); (d) Praefectus Aegypti (governor of Egypt--see below); (e) Praefecti Praetorii (usually 2, sometimes 1 or 3, prefects of the Praetorian Guard, q.v.--and see below).

The Praefectus urbi first became formidable during Tiberius' long absence from the city in AD 26-37. He had imperium and commanded a huge police force (several thousand men--see Cohortes urbanae). He had legal jurisdiction, which extended to 100 miles outside Rome. This began as a court for petty crime, and for slaves and rioters; but under Nero it began to overshadow the public courts (see App. A); and by the 3rd cent. AD it had practically superseded those. (For description of the prefect's jurisdiction and of his extremely powerful court see Justinian's Digest in R p. 26-7; also J2 126 ff.)

The Praefectus Aegypti had proconsular imperium; his 3 legions, each also led by an equestrian praefectus, were until 197 AD the only legions commanded by equestrians (see Prorogatio, fin.).

The Praefecti praetorii were members of the emperor's council and could affect imperial policy (or even the change of emperor--see Praetorian Guards). During the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD they acquired vast judicial power, including appellate jurisdiction for provinces both imperial and senatorial, to within 100 miles of Rome (i.e. it began where the Urban Prefect's jurisdiction stopped). E

F PRAESES, "guardian": (under the Emperors) synonymous with the other terms for "governor" (for which see Prorogatio ad fin.), but in the later empire it began to replace those. Thus, for example, in the Vulgate Bible, made by Jerome in the late fourth century, this is the normal word for governor. E

PRAETORS, elected annually in comitia centuriata, second executive power after Consuls; had 6 lictors to a consul's 12. Perhaps originally the consuls themselves were praetors (from prae-ire, "precede"), and military in character. But the earliest named in ancient sources is the Praetor Urbanus created in 366; he assumed consuls' power in the city when those were absent, and like them could summon Senate and comitia or supervise the defense of Rome. But chiefly he supervised civil jurisdiction in the city (see App. A § A). In c. 242 B.C. was added Praetor Peregrinus who supervised lawsuits in which foreigners were involved. In 227 the number was increased to 4, to provide for gov't of Sicily and Sardinia; in 197 to 6, to include gov't of Spain. In those provinces their power, military as well as civil, approached that of consuls. There remained 6 till 81 BC when Sullan reform stipulated 8 praetors, all to be in their first year judges at Rome, in their second, governors of provinces. At all periods, any residing at Rome could summon and preside over assemblies.

On the law praetors see App. A, §§ A & B. They were often powerful, in a way not unlike our Supreme Court, since each on entering office published an edict outlining the principles of his jurisdiction (see Edictum). They consulted experts in jurisprudence (private iurisprudentes, iurisconsulti--see App. A § A) but had latitude in interpreting the laws, and power "to assist, supplement or correct them" (J p. 187).

The Urban and Peregrine praetors’ tribunals were at first on the north rim of the Comitium, flanking the Curia; but after about 75 B.C. they were moved--together with some of the Quaestiones perpetuae--into the east end of the Forum (FC II 190-8). Each “tribunal” was probably a wooden platform, surrounded by wooden tiers (gradus) for spectators. On special occasions, or in bad weather, or if some mischief happened to the scaffolding (as when the mob burned it on the deaths of Clodius and Caesar) poceedings could be moved indoors into one of the basilicas.

F Under Augustus the praetors increased to 12. They retained their legal duties, and from 22 BC they managed the games (instead of the aediles), and from 2 BC two of them managed the treasury (aerarium--instead of the quaestors). For these reasons and because it led to many propraetorian posts, the office was still coveted. But under ensuing emperors it withered, overshadowed by imperial offices (for praetors' edicts under the emperors see Edictum), and by the courts of Praetorian Prefects and Praefectus Urbi (for both, see Praefectus, last paragraph). E

PRAETORIAN GUARD (COHORS PRAETORIA) (Ca. p. 38 ff.): I n R e p u b l i c: simply the guard stationed at a general's headquarters--the praetorium, so called because a general was usually a governor with powers pro praetore. I n c i v i l w a r s the term began to be used of any general's bodyguard. "Augustus transformed this practice by establishing in 27 BC an elite unite with superior emoluments, shorter service and more elaborate uniform than the legionaries, to act as his permanent bodyguard" (Ca. p. 38). F U n d e r e m p e r o r s. Augustus had 9 "Praetorian cohorts" specially loyal to him, each of 1,000-1,500 men (or 500--the number is much disputed), 3 stationed in Rome (in civilian dress, so as not to alarm the senators, who were not used to troops in the city), 6 in nearby towns. In AD 23 the infamous prefect Sejanus persuaded Tiberius to station them all in fortified barracks on the eastern edge of Rome, and it was probably then (Ca. p. 38) that they were increased to 12 cohorts. Domitian reduced them to 10 cohorts of 1,000 men apiece, each commanded by a prefect. Their importance lies in the fact that, apart from the cohortes urbanae (q.v.), they were normally the only regular troops stationed in Italy. One consequence is that they could sometimes make or unmake an emperor; so in AD 44 (the accession of Claudius), in 68-69, and in the late 2nd century.E

PRINCEPS SENATUS, chosen, or renewed, every five years by the censors. A patrician of unimpeachable record and morals, usually an ex-censor, he had precedence in the senate. The word PRINCEPS (in the singular) was also used (not formally) of the most prominent man in the state; thus at different times of Pompey; of Caesar; of Cicero. Hence later an unofficial title of the emperors.

F PROCURATOR (an "agent for" someone). Under the Republic, merely the steward of a great family. Under the emperors, procuratores were connected mainly with finances; but their duties were very various, and there were 6 main kinds (OCD s.v.): (1) Proc. of minor imperial province (= governor; see Prorogatio and App. C § A). (2) Proc. of an imperial province governed by a legatus (q.v., and see Prorogatio): equivalent to a quaestor in a senatorial province: he collects revenues, pays troops etc. (3) Proc. in senatorial province: administrator of the Emperor's own revenues (i.e. of the imperial fiscus, which was always distinct from the aerarium) and property in that province. (4) Proc. of imperial estates in Africa. (5) Proc. for special tasks which in the Republic had belonged to elected officials (esp. Aediles, Quaestors): e.g. aqueducts, roads, annona (grain), the mint, the post, the census, libraries, the imperial games. (6) Proc. for collecting indirect taxes (on which see App. C § E).

Procurators 2, 3, 6, in charge of vast sums, were somewhat independent of the governor. He was formally their superior, but often powerless to control their rapacity.

The procuratorships, usually held by knights, more rarely by freedmen, rapidly multiplied until by the late 2nd century AD there was even a sort of cursus honorum (see Appendix F, career-type III). There were 4 groups differentiated by salary-level: sexagenarii (had salary of 60,000 sesterces), centenarii (100,000), ducenarii (200,000), (more rarely) trecenarii (300,000). They were sometimes assistants to the higher Curatores or Praefecti; for example, procurators helped the Praefectus alimentorum (see Praefectus). For a detailed list of their tasks see Sandys 224, 226-9. E

PROROGATIO (from prorogo: 'prolong') = imperium pro magistratu, i.e. the offices of PROCONSUL (pro consule , lit. "in place of a consul", i.e. "functioning as if a consul"), PROPRAETOR (pro praetore) and PROQUAESTOR (pro quaestore) (J # 123). Prorogatio was originally invented for, and used only in, a emergency, when a consul's term of office had expired in the midst of a campaign (etc.); so that the people voted to extend his term by this device. He retained his imperium (q.v.) even though a new consul had been elected. The first recorded instance is 326 B.C., when Senate and Comitia tributa extended the term of the dictator Publilius Philo, as he conducted the siege of Naples. But as the provinces multiplied, since there were not enough praetors for them, this became a routine device for providing governors of provinces; and it was also used for any special commission (e.g. Pompey's against the pirates) that might last more than a year. (On such special commissions, see Imperium fin.).

At first, a "proconsul" was always an ex-consul, a "propraetor" always an ex-praetor. But after Sulla, all governors--even if they were only ex-praetors--were ranked "Proconsul" (so they had 12 lictors instead of the 6 that a Propraetor would have); and under the emperors (see below) there were other modifications. Also, sometimes--e.g. during the Punic wars, whenever there were too few commanders--even a legate or civilian could be made Propraetor.

Some unmilitary ex-consuls disliked serving abroad (see list in Gruen 22 n. 43). Hence, Sullan reform tried to make it mandatory. But in the late republic, an ex-consul could thus accumulate immense wealth, clientele and hence political, and military, power (e.g. Caesar in Gaul, Pompey in Spain, Africa and Asia). It became almost the main "reward" of the consulship or the praetorship. To mitigate the danger, in 52 Pompey as consul got passed a law requiring a 5-year gap between magistracy and promagistracy. Under the Principate that law was reenacted; ex-consuls probably had to wait ten years.

F Under the emperors, provinces were either "senatorial" or "imperial" (see App. C, § A) and this affected the promagistrate's title. A s e n a t o r i a l governor was called Proconsul whether he was actually an ex-consul or not (see App. F, careers B, D, G. Consulars got the two richest provinces, Asia and Africa; ex-praetors, the others). As in the Republic, the normal term of office was a year, since there always were a great many ex-consuls and ex-praetors waiting for provinces. An i m p e r i a l governor was a Legatus Augusti pro praetore, if the province had legions in it; if it had no legions, he was a Praefectus or a Procurator. (In any imperial province, the "proconsul" is formally the Emperor himself; so the governors are his legati, etc.) Appointed directly by the emperor, most held office for 3 years; but a few remained in office for decades under several emperors.

If the imperial province had at least two legions, its Legatus was an ex-consul. If it had 1 legion, its Legatus was an ex-praetor. If it had no troops at all or only auxilia (on which see App. B) its governor (its legatus) could be an equestrian Praefectus or Procurator. (So at times in the Mauretanias, Judaea, Cappadocia, Thracia, Noricum, Raetia. Judaea at the time of Christ was adjunct to the greater province of Syria; "²gemÅn"at Matt. 27 is ambiguous but an inscription calls Pontius Pilate "Praefectus Judaeae".)

In two places, equestrian Praefecti did command legions: the Praefectus Aegypti had 3 legions (each led by its own praefectus), and after AD 198 (when it became a province) Mesopotamia had 3 newly created "Parthian" legions under a praefectus. E

PROVINCIA (etym. unsure; a false popular etym. was pro + vincere). (A) Any major magistrate's sphere of authority, within which he exercises his right of imperium. Each year, before the elections, the Senate determined what each magistrate's exact tasks were going to be (e.g. what tasks the various quaestors would have); once elected, the new magistrates (e.g. all the new quaestors) drew lots for the jobs thus defined. Later (B) the word meant especially a sphere of authority outside Rome, a "province" in the modern sense, a foreign territory governed by Rome (usually by means of prorogatio, q.v.): see App. C.

PROVOCATIO (provocatio ad populum, legal right of "appeal to the people"): see App. A, § C.

PUBLICANI: Equestrian tax-farmers, called publicani because they paid what they collected in publicum, into the public treasury (see aerarium. Note that in the New Testament, Luke 3.13, 19.2, 19.8, Matt, 22.15, etc., the hated "publicans" are not these tax-farmers themselves but their hirelings, portitores, collectors of provincial portaria, on which see App. C, § E). Every 5th year the censor (q.v.) "placed all the sources of public revenue in the hands of certain individuals or companies, who on payment of a fixed sum into the treasury, or on giving adequate security for such payment, received the right to make what profit they could out of the revenues during the five years that should elapse before the next censorship. The assignment was made to the highest bidder at a public auction held by the censor. The same system was applied to the public works, the publicanus (or company)... being paid a certain sum, in return for which he took entire charge of a certain department in the public works" (EB s.v.).

In the provinces, where they were much hated, they normally collected much more tax than was due and pocketed the difference. They could be almost incredibly rapacious, and often went their rounds accompanied by soldiers. Many Romans themselves at all periods felt uneasy about them. Some governors colluded with them; others tried to check them but feared to alienate them, since equites dominated the lawcourts at Rome (and between 123 and 81 BC even controlled them--see Equites: 'Equites vs. Senatores'). "Cicero, though always a friend to the equites, admitted in 70 that avaricious governors had to toady to the publicans and that many had suffered for acting against the interests and wishes of the order (Against Verres II, 3, 74)" (Brunt 87-8). As Livy put it (quoted in S 261), "Where the publicani are, there is no respect for public law and no freedom for the allies." See Appendix C, § E.

QUAESTIO (i.e. quaestio perpetua): a standing public court; see. App. A § B

QUAESTORES ("investigators"), 20 per year in the late Republic, usually young men, elected annually in comitia populi tributa (q.v.), mainly to be concerned with public funds. "They were allocated by lot [see Provincia], two to the treasury at Rome..., one to each consul, four to the fleet, later to minor administrative posts, and one to each provincial governor. They drew from the treasury their chief's allowance, and spent it on his orders, returning the balance to the treasury" (J # 99).

History: At first 2, one appointed by either consul to be his assistant; after 447, both were elected in assembly. In 421 (when Plebeians were admitted) 2 "quaestores urbani" were added for the Treasury (see aerarium); in 267, 4 "quaestores classici" were added, and stationed in 4 port cities, probably for the fleets. More were added for the provinces (one per province). A provincial quaestor had charge of all money from Rome, and was often the army paymaster, but sometimes commanded a legion in battle (see e.g. Caesar BG I.52). Normally second-in-command to the governor, he governed the province in the governor's absence. Finally, in 81 Sulla added one for the water supply, and fixed the total at 20.

Political status: "By the late 2nd century B.C., ex-quaestors were regularly enrolled in the Senate by the next censors. Sulla made the office compulsory in the cursus honorum, fixed 30 as the minimum age and made entry to the Senate automatic" (OCD).

(The quaestores parricidi, "inquisitors of murder", mentioned in the 12 Tables may have been ordinary quaestors, endowed with juridical powers later lost, or may have held a distinct magistracy.)

F Under the emperors the two Urban Quaestors were removed from the Aerarium (that duty given to the older, more experienced Praetors; later, to imperial civil servants); but there were added 2 quaestores Caesaris (= q. Augusti = q. Imperatoris) attached to the emperor (see e.g. App. F, career E), 2 for each consul, and 1 for each senatorial province; the latter still had financial duties. E

QUATTUORVIRI: = IV-viri: see Vigintiviri; also App. F career F, App. C § B.

F QUINQUENNALES: Imperial provincial census officials; see s.vv. Decuriones, Appendix C, par. C. E

SENATUS (lit. 'council of elders'; cf. Gk. γερουσία). C o m p o s i t i o n: originally 300 (Sulla made them 600; Caesar 900; the triumvirs over 1,000; Augustus in 18 B.C. 600), either patricians (q.v.) or plebeians (conscripti = adscripti). Members were chosen--at first by the consuls, later (after c. 310 B.C.?) by the Censors (q.v.)--from ex-magistrates; after the Gracchi, also from ex-tribuni plebis. Thus conflict between senate and magistrates was fairly rare, as they had the same interests and connections; for election to magistracy needed wealth and good family (see Tribuni plebis, § 'Who they were'); also, few magistrates wanted wholly to antagonize a body in which they themselves would soon sit for the rest of their lives. The senate's immense prestige was due mainly to two facts: (a) it contained most of the men who had been elected to public office, and (b) it was a permanent body, more enduring than the annual magistracies and the constantly changing assemblies. "In experience and prestige its individual members were often superior to the consuls of the year" (EB s.v.).

Formally, in the Comitia centuriata, senators belonged to the ordo equester (see Centuriae, the first line in the first table). But between senators and knights there were in fact sharp differences, on which see the entry for Equites. Eventually Augustus decreed for them a higher property qualification (1,000,000 sesterces) than the equites (600,000). They provided nearly all candidates for public office and, except during the four decades between the Gracchi and Sulla, both most civil judges and most judges and jurors in the public courts (see Decuriae and see App. A § B, C). They wore a tunic with a broad stripe (the latus clavus, distinct from the knights' angustus clavus), and special shoes.

The senate is itself dominated by the wealth, auctoritas and strategic alliances of nobiles, i.e. members of consular families (see Patriciae). Though strictly not a legislative body, it dominates the Roman state and gives it, as Syme says, a strikingly "feudal" character even in the late Republic.

(On the changes by Sulla see App. G. Some think that he weakened the senate's authority, by killing many of its more experienced members, by creating too many new and ignorant senators, and by giving membership to all ex-quaestors. There was in fact a change--see Gruen 201, on names in the post-Sullan senate that survive and are identifiable. Though 101 of them can be identified with senatorial families, including 45 of consular, 17 of praetorian, 99 seem to be "new men", novi homines. But as Gruen says, this did not necessarily eviscerate the senate; the newcomers mostly remained pedarii [see below] and the nobiles dominated just as before).

P r o c e d u r e: The senate was convened by consuls, praetors, and (later) tribuni plebis, in that order of precedence. The convening magistrate would address the house, then ask for opinions (or he might ask for opinions first without himself giving a speech). He normally called on speakers in strict order of rank: ex-censors, -consuls, -praetors, -aediles, -tribunes; lastly pedarii who had not held a magistracy higher than the quaestorship; and within each rank the patricians first. (The lower ranks were called on only if it seemed expedient, and if time allowed). A person called on would either support the motion or propose motions of his own. Until Augustus there was no time limit, and once called upon, a senator could (as e.g. sometimes Cato notoriously did) "filibuster" or talk interminably about anything he liked. Whenever, as often, there was more than one motion, the consul would call for separate votes on each--putting them in his own way and order. The resolution finally arrived at--a decretum, senatus consultum, or senatus auctoritas, or patrum auctoritas--was valid if not vetoed by tribuni plebis (q.v.).

Pedarii were so called because normally, not called on, they never got to use their voices--only their feet, in order to vote. The house voted by dividing, all those in favor of the bill going to one side of the room. Often, to show which side they favored, they did this even during the debate (Sta. 227).

Senatus auctoritas is in effect a decree rejected by a tribune or the people; senatus consultum is one not thus interfered with; on patrum auctoritas see below.

F u n c t i o n s. Originally the Senate was merely the consuls' consilium. They appointed its members and could dismiss it at will. It had no formal legislative, juridical or executive power, and in the late Republic this lack of formal power proved its ruin (see App. K, § Tribuni Plebis). Still, by Cicero's time it had immense "de facto" power, by mere custom and force of authority. Its chief functions:

(Quasi-formal executive power) >> "Advised" the convening magistrate, whether in domestic or in foreign matters; but this "advice" took the form of senatus consulta, which, although they were not laws, were normally regarded as binding on everyone including the magistrates. >> Defined in advance magistrates' duties for the coming year (see Provincia), and established what equipment they would get.

(Quasi-legal power in state emergencies) >> Recommended that a Dictator (q.v.) be nominated. >> Passed the senatus consultum ultimum (q.v.). >> Appointed the interrex (q.v.) when needed.

(Control of public funds and lands) >> Controlled the aerarium (q.v.), i.e. through the quaestors dispersed public money to magistrates, funds for triumphs, funds for public works to censors (see below on "Judicial" functions). >> Granted or withheld rights to occupy public land.

(Provinces) >> Defined provinces for, and assigned them to, promagistrates (see Prorogatio).

(Foreign relations) >> Sent and received foreign embassies. >> Framed alliances, treaties, etc., which then the assemblies merely ratified. >> Controlled the external relations of the "free" cities (see App. C.B.1). >> Determined the rate of tributum (q.v. in App. C, E).

(Powers in war) >> Chose or extended military commissions; fixed the number of levies; criticized the conduct of the war; negotiated with the enemy.

(Approval of legislation) >> Invalidated laws by showing flaws in procedure. >> Ratified laws of Comitia curiata or centuriata (in earlier times, of the tribal assemblies also), by a decree of the patrician senators only, called patrum auctoritas. But after perhaps 339 this approval was given to measures before they were voted on; and because of that, and because the senate became increasingly plebeian, it seems to have become a mere form, till Sulla in 89 tried to revive it (see App. G).

(Judicial power) >> Investigated (but till Augustus, did not try) crimes of treason, conspiracy, murder. >> Received, and ajudicated on, appeals against bad contracts granted by censors. >> Normally (i.e. except between the Gracchi and Sulla) provided jurors for the public courts (App. A § B).

F U n d e r t h e e m p e r o r s, senators were chosen not by the censors but by the Emperor exercising censorial powers (see App. S s.v. 28 BC and 19 BC), and senatorial status became for the first time hereditary (see s.v. Equites). The senate was now entrusted with needed but mostly dull, routine business of senatorial provinces; the ordinary affairs of Rome and Italy. In Augustus' reign, bills were "recommended" to it by a "drafting committee" consisting of the Emperor plus the consuls plus "one from each college of magistrates, and fifteen other senators chosen by lot, changing every six months.... This preparatory committee was fully representative of the Senate and no doubt expedited business, but it must have tended to reduce the full Senate to a rubber stamp" (J2 p. 93). Senate attendence, therefore, became sparse and the emperors had to introduce fines for absenteeism.

The imperial senate did have several new functions: >> After c. 20 BC, as a court convoked by the consuls, it tried political crimes (e.g. treason) and any crimes committed by persons of senatorial rank (e.g. extortion by a provincial governor--see App. A, § E, and J2 96, 124 ff. Vivid concrete descriptions of such trials are in Pliny Ep. II.2, II.11, III.4, III.9). >> After AD 14 it elected consuls and praetors. (But the "elected" magistrates knew very well that they had been, in effect, appointed by the emperor and even gave speeches of thanks to him; see e.g. Pliny Ep. II.1, III.13, VI.27.) >> "From the time of Tiberius onwards it was the senate that did the work of legislation, for the simple reason that the comitia were no longer fit for it. And very active it seems to have been. This may have been due to some extent that so many professional jurists, aware from their practice of the points in which the law required amendment, possessed seats in the imperial council, where the drafts of the senatusconsults were prepared" (EB s.v. Roman Law, IV, i). In other words, replacing the leges once passed in the assemblies, senatus consulta began to have the status of laws of the Roman people. E

SENATUS CONSULTUM ULTIMUM = decretum ultimum = sen. consult. de re publica defendenda: a declaration by the senate of a state of public emergency, purporting to authorize specified magistrates, who were not to be subject to veto or appeal, to suppress all public enemies: "senatus decrevit darent operam consules ne quid respublica detrimenti caperet", "the senate has decreed that the consuls should see to it that the state suffers no harm" (Sallust Cat. 29). It amounted to a declaration of martial law. The magistrate was usually the consul; the "enemies" were usually not specified.

In the late decades of the Republic, this emergency device more or less replaced the Dictatorship, which had fallen into disuse. Unfortunately, the S.C.U. was only dubiously constitutional, and some of the "authorized" magistrates were later fiercely prosecuted by tribunes (as Opimius by Decius, Rabirius by Labienus, Cicero by Clodius--see below) for executing Roman citizens without trial or appeal to the people (see Provocatio in App. A). Their excuse, of course, was always that their victims were not "citizens" at all but plain traitors. But the S.C.U. set a dangerous precedent: it seems to influence the terrible powers later granted to Sulla (App. G), Caesar, and the "2nd Triumvirate" (see Tresviri).

Most scholars now doubt that it was used in 331 BC (poisoning epidemic: Livy 8.18) and 186 BC (against the Bacchanalia: Livy 39.18). Probably it was first used by Opimius against C. Gracchus in 123 (after killing Gracchus himself Opimius put to death 3,000 of his followers; in 120 he was prosecuted for this but acquitted); then against Saturninus in 100 B.C. (see R 59 f.) (in 63 Rabirius was prosecuted, and "acquitted" only by dissolution of the assembly), against Lepidus in 77, against Catiline in 63 (in 58 Cicero was prosecuted), against Q. Metellus Nepos in 62, after the murder of Clodius in 52, against Caesar in 50, against Antony and Dolabella in 43. (See Appendix P s.v. the years 77, 63, 62, 52 and 50, and Appendix Q s.v. Jan. 43.)

SEVIRI = sexviri or VI-viri: see Equites fin.

TRESVIRI (less correctly TRIUMVIRI), a board of three; either (A) one of various permanent minor boards (see Vigintiviri, items a and c) or (B) a board appointed by the People to deal with an important special problem--e.g. (often) IIIviri. agris dandis adsignandis or IIIviri coloniae deducendae = land commissioners; (once, for debt problems, 216 B.C.) IIIviri. mensarii; (A.D. 4) IIIviri legendi senatus.

The famous "tresviri rei publicae constituendae" or "Second Triumvirate" of Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, formed 27 Nov. 43 by a lex Titia (for 5 years, & then renewed), more resembled Sulla's or Caesar's dictatorship than it did a normal triumvirate. They had imperium maius (see Imperium), had inappellable criminal jurisdiction, and could pass laws "without the people's approval or cooperation". (See Dictator--the remarks there about a Dictator's legislation apply also to these tresviri, who might well have been Dictators, if Antony had not abolished that office. See also App. S s.v. 43 BC.)

The so-called "First Triumvirate" of Caesar, Pompey, Crassus was not a triumvirate at all, but only a secret (at first) political agreement. Though not strictly illegal, that little factio scandalized many Romans, because they had no political parties (see Factio) and no tradition of secret "deals".

TRIBUNI AERARII: Originally, probably, army paymasters; in the late Republic, men whose census class was 300,000 sesterces (whereas knights were 400,000); on their role as jurors, see s.v. Decuriae.

TRIBUNI MILITUM, at first 24 young men, 'senior' officers of the 4 legions (i.e. 6 per legion), ranked as magistrates and elected in the comitia populi tributa. Attached to the legion itself, not to its subdivisions, they "never functioned as mere tactical sub-commanders" (OCD). In that respect they differed from the less specialized praefecti (q.v.). In 218 BC when the 2nd Punic War began, the number of legions and hence of tribuni militum began to increase (perhaps from 24 to about 120 yearly); but the new tribuni were nominated by the commander-in-chief; only those of the four "legiones urbanae" were still elected by the people (tribuni militum a populo). By Caesar's time, tribuni militum were mainly of equestrian but non-senatorial origin. They declined in importance with the rise of the legati (q.v.).

F Under the emperors 5 of each legion's 6 tribunes were equestrian, appointed not elected, and the post was part of the equestrian cursus. "By the late first century AD it had been established that [equestrian military] posts were held in a certain order--prefect of a cohort, military tribune..., prefect of an ala--and although equites were not obliged to hold all three posts (tres militiae), some spent many years in various military assignments" (Ca. 56; for an inscription showing this see App. F, career F. For a curious "snapshot" of a tribune at work see Acts, 22.24 -23.30, Lysias Claudius rescuing St. Paul). E

Note that these tribuni militum of either type--elected or nominated--should not be confused with the earlier "consular tribunes" (q.v.), even though those, too, are sometimes termed tribuni militum.

TRIBUNI PLEBIS (or PLEBI), 1st created 500-450 B.C., ten by 449. Elected for 1 year (i.e. Dec. 10th -Dec. 9th) by the concilium plebis (see below & see s.v. Comitia plebis tributa) and charged with defence of the lives and property of the plebeians. They had no imperium; the office originally derived from no statute, but only from an oath taken by fellow plebeians to uphold them.

Their powers were immense; e.g.: >> sacrosanctitas, i.e. no magistrate could arres them; no one could injure them without becoming an outlaw; in courtesy, people rose in their presence. >> auxilium, the power to protect any plebeian from magisterial coercion. >> intercessio, the power to veto any act performed by any magistrate, including laws, senatus consulta, elections. (They could even veto other tribuni plebis--see next paragraph. Only a Dictator was above their veto.) >> Power to summon the plebs to assemblies (see Comitia plebis tributa). >> Power to elicit, from those assemblies, laws binding on everyone, called plebiscita (see Comitia plebis tributa. Probably, plebiscita were at first petitions, via the consuls, to the comitia centuriata; but after 287 they had the force of law). >> coercitio, the power--which could go as far as inflicting death--to enforce both the plebiscita and their own rights. Finally, after c. 216 BC, >> the power to convoke the Senate and elicit senatus consulta (q.v.)..

Their history & nature. Their power was revolutionary (the office is associated with the First Secession of the plebs in 494); its full acknowledgement "coincided with the recognition of plebiscita as laws with binding force (c. 287 B.C.). The tribunes were first admitted to listen to the debates of the senate; in the second century [viz. by the lex Atinia of c. 149 B.C] the tribunate became a sufficient qualification for entrance into the senate." The senate gradually ceased to fear the tribunate; for it could persuade a tribune to veto another tribune's veto, and it could use the tribunician veto as a tool in controlling magistrates (see below: "Who they were"). The magistrates themselves could use the same weapon. In the late Republic many nobiles used it (Julius Caesar, for example, often bribed tribunes to introduce or veto legislation); it became so important that Augustus relied on tribunicia potestas as one of the two pillars of his principate (the other being his proconsular imperium).

"From the time of [C.] Gracchus the tribunician veto was curtailed by special clauses of laws and senatus consulta. Sulla excluded the tribunes from the magistracies of the Roman People and abolished or curtailed their power of moving legislation and their judicial powers. In 75 B.C. they were readmitted to the magistracies, and in 70 the tribunician power was restored to its full extent" (OCD).

"Who" they were. (Gruen 181-9) This office was "plebeian"; still, in the last 20 years of the Republic, of 113 known tribunes, only a third are not from senatorial families. 13 are from praetorian families, and 33 even from consular families (some, to be sure, second-rate or newly consular). Those from non-senatorial familes tend to be protégés of prominent men (Pompey, Caesar, etc.). All ex-tribunes became senators, and "almost all settled down to perfectly conventional careers" (Gruen 189).

For more about this office see App. K ad fin.

F Under the Principate, till iii AD it was still part of the Plebeian cursus honorum (see App. F), and tribunes retained sacrosanctitas, and did still give legal aid to people in distress, but they could not veto, or introduce legislation. The emperors had usurped tribunician power for themselves (and even used it for dating, so that e.g. "in the 3rd year of my tribunician power" = "in the 3rd year of my reign"). See Pliny Ep. 1.23 where he advises a friend who has just been elected tribune that a tribune can regard his prestigious office either as a responsible post or as a mere empty honor. E

TRIBUS, tribes, originally 3 (Tities, Ramnes, Luceres) and ethnic; but new tribes were added as Rome, conquering its neighbors in wars, annexed more territory, and by 241 B.C. they were 35 in number and territorial. 4 were urban, 31 rural; some socially more prestigious than others

"Territorial" means that you own property in your tribe's area. But N.B. three quirks: (1) "Once determined, (a tribe) appears to have been hereditary until the censors noticed, or were told, that it was no longer appropriate" (Appian, The Civil Wars, tr. John Carter, p. 404); thus e.g. a country person who moves to Rome may keep his rural tribe, until some alert or hostile censor reassigns him; (2) in the late Republic--esp. after the enfranchisement of the Itali in the 80's--tribes were no longer single geographical units. E.g. Cicero's tribe had at least five sections: one near Rome, one round Arpinum, one in Umbria, one in Samnite territory, one in the toe of Italy; and (3) enfranchized foreigners were at first confined to the large urban tribes (later, to ten tribes), in order to restrict their voting power. (Also, perhaps, in order to restrict the electoral advantage they would give certain nobles at Rome, who were their patrons.) The Italians resented this, and it was a chronic tension.

You had to belong to a tribe, and from Cicero's time it was included in your full legal name. Tribes were the units for census, taxation and the military levy; after 89, also for juries (see App. A § B).

Two assemblies were organized by tribes, the Comitia plebis tributa and the comitia populi tributa (see Comitia), and after 241 even the Comitia centuriata had a tribal element (see Centuria). In the two tribal assemblies, since each tribe cast but one vote (determined by a majority vote of the tribe), if your tribe was small, your vote was worth more. Thus the tribal assemblies--though ostensibly "democratic" --favored not the city plebs but the small country landowners, who were fewer. Hence "popularis" tribunes normally avoided rural votes, by holding no legislative assemblies just before or after the electoral assemblies (Sta. 148, 200); for country people normally came to Rome only for the elections.

Like the Itali mentioned above, freedmen were confined to the urban tribes (till 188 B.C.: T. 65). But people could often get transferred from urban to rural tribes (T. II 53 ff.); sometimes by lawsuits--for if you got someone convicted of a crime, you could transfer to his tribe (T. II 112 f.)

In 312 a notorious patrician Censor, Appius Claudius Pulcher, proposed that landless people should be allowed to register in tribes of their choice. Naturally, this was fiercely resisted, esp. by small landowners. For them it was hard to come to Rome to vote; they did not wish that their tribes should be dominated by landless people residing in Rome who could vote (& influence other voters) more easily. Appius' measure was repealed in 304 by the censors Fabius Rullianus and Decius Mus.

Note, lastly, that voting by tribes, which dominated legislation in the late Republic, required from politicians a certain geographical alertness. In assembly a candidate, or a legislator, must control his own tribe and at least 17 others (since there were 35). This means at least three things: (a) he must must form alliances with nobles from other tribes; (b) he must have good relations with political "bosses" at the various tribal headquarters in Rome; (c) he must travel! For example, Cicero's six villas, scattered throughout Italy, were not only for pleasure (though he did enjoy and use them); they were also, very probably, an attempt to extend his influence to other tribes.

VICI and VICOMAGISTRI: R e p u b l i c. Both Rome itself and many towns were divided into wards or precincts (vici) each run by annually elected presidents (vicomagistri), chiefly for the cult of the Lares of the crossroads (Lares compitales) and the organizing of the festivals for that (ludi compitales). But in the late Republic they became in effect political clubs, and in the disturbances of 60 BC were suppressed by a senatus consultum; in 58 they were revived by Clodius (see App. P s.v. 58 BC).

F E m p e r o r s. "For everyday police duties Augustus in 8 B.C. divided Rome into 265 vici or wards, in each of which four vicomagistri were annually appointed from among the inhabitants" (J2 140). The vicomagistri were lower-class people; in the later empire, they were all freedmen. They also managed the cults of the Lares Augusti and the genius of the Emperor; and until 6 AD, when Augustus organized the Vigiles (q.v.), they were also responsible for fighting fires. E

VIGINTIVIRI (or before Augustus VIGINTISEXVIRI): 20 (before Augustus 26) magistratus minores, took over some duties of the too busy Praetor Urbanus (see Praetor; see also S 457 n. 24; J # 93 fin.). They included these 4 groups (acc. to Scullard the first two were more important politically at least in later times): (a) tresviri monetales (mint-officials, supervised issuing of money); (b) quat(t)uorviri viarum curandarum (care of roads); (c) tresviri capitales alias tresviri nocturni (superintendents of capital sentences; police, prison, executions; their tribunal was on the edge of the Comitium, between the prison and the Praetor’s tribunal); (d) decemviri stlitibus iudicandis (had jurisdiction over disputes about a citizen's freedom).

F VIGILES (lit. "watchmen", those who keep vigil, the Night Patrol), a fire brigade formed by Augustus in AD 6, "possibly 3,920 strong, rising to 7,840 by AD 205, recruited from freedmen who served for six years, organized in seven cohorts commanded by tribunes, under the general direction of the praefectus Vigilum" (Ca. 38-9). They not only detected fires but also arrested burglars (J2 140) and were thus a supplementary police.

The praefectus vigilum "tries incendiaries, housebreakers, thieves, robbers, and harborers of criminals, unless the individual is so vicious and notorious that he is turned over to the Praefectus urbi. And since fires are generally caused by the negligence of occupants, he either punishes with beating those who have been unduly careless in the use of fire, or he suspends the sentence of beating and issues a severe reprimand.... He has also been assigned jurisdiction of those who take care of clothing in baths for a fee" (Justinian's Digest as quoted in R 27; this of course pertains largely but to the later empire. Most of these duties, including care of the baths, had previously belonged to the aediles, q.v.). E

F VIR CLARISSIMUS (or clarissimus vir, abbr. V.C. or C.V.), a formal courtesy title for a member of the senatorial order. Of the many similar epithets used under the Republic, all were used loosely except that one; the others came to have exact meanings only only in the later empire. E.g. from the 2nd half of the 2nd c. AD, there were three grades of knights: VIR EMINENTISSIMUS = the Praetorian Prefect; VIR PERFECTISSIMUS = any of the other highest prefects, or the highest procurators; VIR EGREGIUS = a lesser equestrian official, or the son or wife (puer egregius, femina egregia) of one of the higher officials. In the 3rd and 4th centuries there was an inflation which I skip here as too tedious and trivial. (E.g. egregius disappears, replaced by perfectissimus, which became ubiquitous. "In 384 there were three classes of perfectissimus; and the title was given even to clerks of the treasury; meanwhile the praesides [governors] and duces [military commanders on the frontier] were promoted to the title of clarissimi" -- Sandys 194. How inane, the honors of an imperial bureaucracy! "Vir perfectissimus"!) E

Appendix A: T h e L a w c o u r t s

See OCD s.vv. iudex, advocatus, quaestio, iurisprudens, etc.; EB s.v. Roman Law; J2 124-130.

In Rome evolved roughly two kinds of court, the Civil (civile) for offenses against private citizens (cives), and “Public” or Criminal, for offenses against the state or the gods. They overlapped; for if an offense against a citizen seemed sufficiently evil and dangerous (e.g. murder; still worse, parricide), it seemed a public crime. But the more obviously “civil” law--protecting citizens in their status, property, etc.--came to be confined to the Praetors’ courts (A below); the criminal, to the Public courts (B snd C below ).

(A) C i v i l c o u r t s for legal disputes between citizens. A civil trial had two stages: (1) In iure, before a magistrate: the two parties come formally before the Urban Praetor (or if foreigners, Peregrine Praetor; or if the trial is in the provinces, before the governor) and with him (a) define and formulate the issue (this formulation is called the formula) and (b) agree to the iudex (judge) chosen by the Praetor (or governor). This agreement is called litis contestatio. Then the parties go with it

(2) apud iudicem, before the judge (or “in iudicium”). The iudex (also called iudex privatus, also arbiter, and very like an arbiter in the modern sense) is not a specialist in law, but any private person empowered by the magistrate to give judgement. The judge was often, though not always, taken from the decuriae, q.v. He must accept the duty; can refuse only on grounds of sickness, old age, etc. Using the already formulated definition of the case, he hears the pleadings of the parties and their advocates and gives verdict, from which there is no appeal (no provocatio--see section D below).

This second stage, unlike the first, is "informal", follows no set forms and is in no set place.

Like the iudex, the advocate (advocatus) is not a specialist in law (though he ought to know some law and usually does) but a patron and/or orator. Even the presiding magistrate (praetor) need not be a legal specialist; both he and the iudex consult legal experts (iurisprudentes, alias iurisconsulti, iurisperiti).

Alternative to the iudex were the centumviri, a court of 105 jurors (3 from each of the 35 tribes; but under the emperors, 180 jurors) often divided into panels, convened by praetors; it met in the Basilica Iulia and seems to have dealt with civil cases pertaining to ownership, kinship, inheritance. (See Pliny Ep. II.14 for a description of this court--the callow young advocates, the claqueurs, etc.)

(B) P u b l i c c o u r t s, iudicia publica, for trying crimes against the state or the public good. In the early Republic, public trials, held only for the gravest crimes (treason, desertion, parricide, etc.), were in the assemblies (C below). But in the last two centuries B.C. (esp. after Sulla, who practically abolished assembly trials) special permanent courts, quaestiones perpetuae, were set up, each headed by a praetor, each to deal with a particular offence: de sicarii et venefici (murder; carrying weapons in public), falsi (forgery), maiestas (treason), repetundae (extortion, i.e. by a provincial governor; this was Cicero's court when he was praetor), ambitus (electoral corruption), peculatus (embezzlement of public money).

Though in effect Public courts, these were still technically “civil” courts, ruled by praetors, not by a magistrate in assembly. But instead of appointing a iudex, the praetor tried the case himself, and he had a jury, representing the public. A court was assigned 75 jurors (judices) for graver crimes, 51 for lighter. The juries were drawn by lot from standing pools--decuriae (q.v.)--of several hundred potential jurors, and both parties had some say in the selection (i.e. could challenge this or that juror, as today).

There was no public prosecutor. A citizen indicting another went first to the magistrate (praetor or, sometimes, non-praetorian iudex quaestionis) to get permission to prosecute before his court. (If two people wished to prosecute the same person, that had to be resolved first--see e.g. Cicero's 1st Verrine oration, Divinatio in Caecilium.) The verdict was decided by majority vote of the jury, the sentence was passed by the magistrate, and there was no appeal.

According to Taylor (T II, 112 ff.) a successful prosecutor got (a) the condemned man's citizenship (i.e. if the prosecutor was not a citizen), (b) enrolment in the condemned man's tribe (if it was better than his own--see Tribus), and (c) (if a senator) the condemned man's seniority rights in the senate.

(C) A s s e m b l y T r i a l s. "(The comitia) never during the Republican period lost the right of criminal jurisdiction, in spite of the fact that so many spheres of this jurisdiction had been assigned in perpetuity to standing commissions (quaestiones perpetuae). This power of judging exercised by the assemblies had in the main developed from the use of the right of appeal (provocatio) against the judgements of the magistrates. But it is probable that, in the developed procedure, where it was known that the judgement pronounced might legally give rise to the appeal, the magistrate pronounced no sentence, but brought the case at once before the people. The case was then heard in four separate contiones. After these hearings the comitia gave its verdict" (EB--A.H.J. Greenidge--s.v. Comitia).

(D) Re P r o v o c a t i o. Under the Republic (for the Emperors see E below), there was appeal only "to the People" (provocatio ad populum). Thus there was no appeal from decisions of the public courts, or from decisions of assembly trials, because, after all, those already were appeals to the people. Appeal was possible only from civil courts, and only in the first stage (A.1 above). Jones puts it this way (J2 128-9):

There was under the Republic only a very rudimentary form of appeal. A litigant who thought the formula [see above, A.1.a] unfair or the iudex prejudiced could appeal from the praetor to a tribune of the plebs, or to an equal or greater power, i.e. another praetor or consul. A tribune, having no power of jurisdiction, could in response only veto the case until the praetor altered his formula or chose another iudex. A consul, and probably also a praetor, could not only veto the proceedings, but try the case himself. In the provinces, where the governor had no colleagues, it was only possible for an aggrieved litigant to ask for revocatio Romae, and there was nothing to make the governor send his case to Rome. Both in Italy and in the provinces, it would seem, appeals lay only from the magistrate--the praetor or the governor--and no appeal was possible from the judge: at any rate none are recorded in our sources.

F (E) U n d e r t h e e m p e r o r s arose four powerful new courts, which at first were alternatives to the quaestiones but which gradually replaced those: (a) the "c o n s u l a r" court = the Senate convened by the consuls; (b) the i m p e r i a l court = the Emperor sitting with his council (consilium, q.v.); (c) the two p r a e f e c t s' courts. On (c) see Praefectus, last paragraph (on the Praefectus Urbi and the Praefecti Praetorii). Courts (a) and (b) were "courts of voluntary jurisdiction. It was for the accuser to request the consuls or the emperor to take the case, and they might refuse" (J2 125).

Court (a) tried political crimes (e.g. treason) and crimes committed by persons of senatorial rank (e.g. provincial extortion; also, restitution of provincial damages--but for simple restitution there was a simplified procedure: see J2 96; Pliny Ep. II.11 init., 12). It was probably instituted early in the reign of Augustus, perhaps to avoid having the senatorial order wash its dirty linen in puiblic. Most often, especially under really evil emperors like Domitian, the senators well knew in advance what verdict they were expected to produce, so that the entire proceedings were mere tedium, shame, fear, humiliation.

Court (b) seems to have tried anything that specially interested the Emperor. It was "probably based on the consular imperium which (Augustus) enjoyed from 19 BC and was thus strictly parallel with the court of the consuls and the Senate" (J2 126).

Right of appeal under Augustus. (J2 129-30:) "By far the most important change... was the vast extension of appeal. Appeals now ran not only from the magistrates but from iudices privati, both from Italy and from the provinces. They could go to the Senate, or more strictly the consuls, who had a maius imperium over the praetors and provincial governors, but the vast majority went to Augustus, presumably in virtue of his maius imperium over other proconsuls, his superior imperium over his own legati pro praetore, and the consular imperium which he acquired in 19 B.C. The volume of appeals became so great that he had to delegate them, those from Italy to the urban praetor, those from the provinces to a consular appointed for each. The facility of appeal must have remedied many injustices and reversed many erroneous decisions." But it was also a great nuisance for the emperor, "who was as much a victim of overwork as the ordinary judges... Though Trajan would call and hear only one case a day, it nevertheless wasted the greater part of his time" (Carc. 189, 190; Pliny, Ep. VI.31). E

(F) The lawcourts in general. A passage by Carcopino, about the Romans' addiction to lawsuits, concerns the late 1st century AD, but is true also of the late Republic; it seems worth quoting here for its vividness:

In the Rome of the opening second century the sound of lawsuits echoed throughout the Forum, round the tribunal of the praetor urbanus by the Puteal Libonis, and round the tribunal of the praetor peregrinus between the Puteal of Curtius and the enclosure of Marsyas; in the Basilica Iulia where the centumviri assembled; and justice thundered simultaneously from the Forum of Augustus, where the praefectus urbi exercised his jurisdiction, from the barracks of the Castra Praetoria where the praefectus praetorio issued his decrees, from the Curia [Julia] where the senators indicted those of their peers who had aroused distrust or displeasure, and from the Palatine, where the emperor himself received the appeals of the universe in the semicircle of his private basilica, which the centuries have spared. (Carc. 187; on the praefecti see Praefectus)

Appendix B: R o m a n A r m y (Under Caesar)

The topic of course is vast; the present page, nothing but approximate definition of key terms.

U n i t s:

CENTURY = 100 men at full strength: 60 centuries per legion.

MANIPLE = 2 centuries = 200 men (really 120-200): 30 maniples per legion. Commanded by centurion of right-hand century. Usu. drawn up for battle in three lines. Gradually replaced by cohors.

COHORT = 3 maniples (6 centuries; but 1st Cohort has only 5) = 600 men at most (but 1st Cohort double in size): 10 cohorts per legion. The ten cohorts were all ranked. Standard (signum) carried by signifer. Replaced maniple as tactical unit probably during Marian reforms.

LEGION = 10 cohorts = 6000 men (real avg. 4000) with a bronze or gold eagle

O f f i c e r s (see also Dictionary s.vv. Legatus, Praefectus, Tribuni militum):

CENTURIO: Commander of century: 60 of them per legion. Centurion--usually promoted from the ranks, but sometimes a knight--fought in the ranks beside his men, and usually could be promoted only to a higher grade of Centurion. The six in each cohort but the first were called: pilus prior, pilus posterior, princeps prior, princeps posterior, hastatus prior, hastatus posterior. The highest ranking centurion, the primopilus, the first centurion of the first century of the first cohort, carried the eagle. Centuriones primorum ordinum, i.e. the six of the First Cohort, were often summoned to council of war along with legates and tribunes. Centurions often amassed money enough to become knights (Gruen 383). Under the emperors they sometimes rose to the procuratorship and equestrian governorships.

LEGATUS: Special assistant chosen by provincial governor. Caesar, when they were competent for this, used them as legion-commanders in battle (appointed not permanently, but just before battle), or appointed them to command detachments from the main army.

PRAEFECTUS FABRUM: the title means "chief of the [2 centuries of] armourers", but by Caesar's time the fabri had ceased to exist; the Praef. fabrum was merely A.D.C. to the commander-in-chief. He was often in charge of the booty taken in war. There were also PRAEFECTI EQUITUM: cavalry commanders (see Dictionary s.v. Praefectus) and PRAEFECTI CLASSIS.

QUAESTOR (q.v.): Paymaster & quartermaster; if competent, led legion in battle.

TRIBUNUS, 6 per legion, took turns commanding it, except in battle (in Caesar's army, usually a legate or a quaestor was given comand of the legion just before battle. See Tribuni militum).

"N.C.O."s (under the emperors): "During the period between Hadrian and the Severan dynasty, a clear distinction emerged between immunes and principates, who received either pay and a half or double pay for the special duties they carried out in the century, as tesserarius (password officer), optio (orderly), and signifer (standard-bearer), or on the staff at headquarters, as aquilifer (bearer of the eagle standard), imaginifer (bearer of the emperor's portrait), commentariensis (clerk attached to an officer with judicial responsibilities)" (Ca. p. 28). Some of these perhaps were close to promotion to Centurion.

Re the A U X I L I A = "auxiliary troops". When fighting foreign powers like Carthage, Macedon, Parthia, Romans discovered that they themselves were weak in cavalry and in light-armed troops. They began to recruit these (or draft them by force, or accept them instead of tribute) from foreign countries. So e.g. Caesar obtained cavalry from Gaul and Germany (the German, he found, were much better), archers from Crete, slingers from the Balearic Islands. In early imperial times, the two main sources of supply were the Gauls (Belgica, Lugdunensis) and Spain (Baetica), later also Pannonia.

"By the end of Augustus' reign auxiliaries may have been as numerous as legionaries, being organized in cavalry alae containing about 500 men (subdivided into turmae), part-mounted cohorts containing about 120 cavalry and 490 infantry, and infantry cohorts containing about 500 men (subdivided into centuries) A development perhaps dating from the reign of Vespasian saw the creation of some larger units containing between 800 and 1,000 men" (Ca. p. 34).

Auxilia were usually commanded by young equestrian Praefecti or (more rarely) Tribuni (the proportion is illustrated in App. V, career F); the commander of a turma was a Decurio. An auxiliary was paid less than a Roman legionary (from one-third to two-thirds as much); but after 25 years service (sometimes earlier) he was awarded Roman citizenship, for himself and his descendents. By this means, huge numbers of foreigners became citizens. In the late empire, the alae and cohortes became assimilated to the regular army.

Appendix C: T h e P r o v i n c e s

Provincial matters are described in the Dictionary s.vv. Concilium (regional assemblies), Decuriones (on local provincial government and social classes); Prorogatio (on titles and powers of governors); Provincia (definition of the word itself). For provincial courts, see Appendix A, s.v. Provocatio and Right of appeal under Emperors.

(A) P r o v i n c e s & l e g i o n s (l a t e 2 n d c. A.D.) In the following list--given simply to give some rough immediate picture of the Empire at its fullest--I make use of a late 2nd-century inscription, which lists the then locations of 33 legions.* Beginning with Belgica in the north, I list provinces in a roughly counterclockwise circle round the map (this scheme works perfectly except in Asia Minor and Greece), except that I put the four Mediterranean islands separately at the end. Some provinces were Senatorial, the others Imperial (on that important distinction see Prorogatio, and see e.g. R #8 = Dio 53.12-15). I underline the senatorial provinces; in boldface I print the imperial provinces containing legions. A number = the number of legions that were in that province at the time of the inscription. A number like "Moesiae 2+3" means "Upper Moesia had 2 legions, Lower Moesia 3 legions":

Belgica, Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Aquitania, Gallia Narbonensis, Tarraconensis 1 (= N. Spain), Lusitania, Baetica (= S. Spain), Mauretaniae, Africa, Numidia 1, Cyrenaica (includes Crete), Egypt (incl. Libya) 1, Arabia Nabataea 1, Syria Palestina (= Judaea) 2, Syria 3, Mesopotamia 2, Cappadocia 2, Cilicia, Bithynia et Pontus (imperial after M. Aurelius), Galatia (incl. Pisidia), Asia, Thracia, Achaia (incl. Epirus), Macedonia, Dalmatia, Moesiae 2+3, Dacia 1, Pannoniae 3+1, Noricum 1, Raetia 1, Germaniae 2+2, Britannia 3; (islands) Sardinia, Corsica, Sicilia, Cyprus.

("Numidia" was sometimes part of Africa. "Cilicia" part of Syria & Cappadocia till 72 AD. Arabia, Mesopotamia, Dacia were provinces created by Trajan. Cappadocia includes Armenia Minor, which until Vespasian had been a province. For statuses--inperial, senatorial--and boundaries of provinces under Augustus, see especially J2 100-109.)

Italy has one legion (at Albanum near Rome, as we know from other sources). Otherwise all legions are in imperial provinces, and all but two of them fall into two long lines, along the empire's far-eastern and dangerous northern boundaries. (For maps showing this for AD 14 and AD 200, see Ca. p. 86-87.) Senatorial provinces, of course, were normally the securest and needed no legions.

* The inscription, given in Ca. p. 84, is a bare list (made for unknown reasons) of the legions in geographical order from west to east, starting with those in Britain. As Campbell says, most of it seems to reflect the early reign of Marcus Aurelius, who reigned AD 161-180; but someone later added five legions which come at the end, out of order--viz. those in Mesopotamia (wh. had no legions til 197), Noricum, Raetia, and Italy (where "II Parthica" was not stationed till 202). Since I thus depend on a hybrid list, my figures (and the map in Ca. p.87) may have a few anomalies. But legions did not often change position, and the overall picture must be roughly accurate. For the locations and brief histories of all the legions, see the fascinating entry in the OCD s.v. Legion.

(B) P o l i t i c a l S t a t u s e s o f C i t i e s and C i t i z e n s h i p. Every Eastern province, the more civilized sections of Western provinces, and Italy itself outside Rome, were organized largely in the form of cities. None were ever completely subject to the governors and imperial officials, but they were very various, and some were much less autonomous than others. I list the main types at the time of Augustus (see S 263-4):

(1) Civitates foederatae (comprising especially Greek cities, both in Greece and in Italy), "free" allied cities; under the Republic, the most privileged kind of ally. They kept not only their ancestral institutions but even, sometimes, their own coinage, and originally were, like the colonies of (2) below, immune from tribute. After rebellions some were made stipendarii, and the privileges of all were steadily eroded; but e.g even in 111 AD a Roman Governor, who wished to examine the accounts of the city of Apamea, could still be told that no Roman had ever yet looked at them (Pliny Ep. X.47).

(2) Colonies (in AD 20 perhaps 80 in all), the most privileged cities, normally possessing citizenship and the ius Italicum, which means immunity from land and poll taxes (see § E below) to which all other cities (except at first the foederati) were subject. "Augustus only gave (the ius Italicum) to genuine citizen colonies, mostly his eastern foundations" for veterans (OCD s.v.). Later it was given to some few other cities--but sparingly, since of course this kind of immunity reduced the imperial income.

(3) Municipia (at first only in Italy, later in a few other places), towns which possessed Roman citizenship, at first in part (civitas sine suffragio), later in full (in Italy, this happened mainly in 89 and 90 BC, after the Social War). Except in foreign affairs, they were self-governing, but subject to occasional or annual visits by Roman magistrates (Praefecti, q v. init.). At first they were governed by aediles, praetors, dictators or octoviri, later mainly by quattuorviri (who evolved into the 2 duoviri and 2 aediles described in § C below). Under the emperors municipia became common in the western provinces (where of course they constantly sought to obtain the status of colonies); they were rare in the east till much later.

(4) Latin Cities (at first only in Italy; later in Gaul, Spain, Africa), cities posessing the ius Latii. That entailed a ius provocatio (right of appeal: see App. A § C) but no citizenship; but individuals could attain that by holding local magistracies (ius civitatis per honorem adipiscendae), and after Hadrian, even by holding the decurionate (see § C below). All such cities naturally sought to become municipia.

(5) Stipendarii, the majority of cities in any province, not Roman citizens, subject to full taxation of every kind and possessing none of the special privileges of the others.

Thus, cities of type 2 alone paid no tribute. Types 2, 3, 4, comprising maybe 20% of all cities, were probably "not subject to orders of the governor. He must have had jurisdiction, but presumably the city was free from interference in its internal affairs" (J2 98).

Full Roman citizenship was possessed only by cities of types 2 and 3 above; but it could be obtained in other cities by individuals. Upper-class persons obtained it, for themselves and their descendents, by serving on provincial concilia (q.v.), or by holding local magistracies, or by direct grants individually; under the Emperors, lower-class provincials obtain citizenship largely by serving 20 years (or later, a smaller time) in the army auxilia (see App. B, auxilia). By such means the franchise spread rapidly, and "within a century after Augustus, the equestrian service and the Senate were freely open to provincials from almost any province" (OCD s.v. Provincia). Finally, in AD 212 "the constitutio Antoniniana conferred citizenship upon all free inhabitants of the empire, without, however, affecting the status of their communities" (OCD s.v. Citizenship, Roman).

Mistreated provincials could find a patronus at Rome to help them sue the governor (after his return to Rome) for extortion (repetundae) in a public court (see App. A § B); in the Principate, they could complain directly to the Emperor (see Concilium and see App. A fin.), or find a patronus (consul, praetor, tribune, etc.) to institute a Senate trial. (See App. A fin. s.v. Consular courts; J2 p. 96-7; also section D below.) But these things were time-consuming, and the sending of witnesses to Rome was so costly that it could impoverish a town. The best protection was getting Roman citizenship.

(C) P r o v i n c i a l c i t y m a g i s t r a t e s under the emperors (see J3 240-2, S 264) came to have a certain uniformity throughout the empire (except often in the east, where the cities tended to be older and more idiosyncratic). Local government consisted of (a) the local magistrates elected annually on 1 March, (b) a local assembly which elected those magistrates (voting usually by "wards" or curiae), and (c) a local senate or council (which often was also called a curia--the two usages should not be confused). The senate consisted of 100 to 300 ex-magistrates called decuriones (q.v.), alias curiales, who were chosen from among ex-magistrates at the five-year census by the census officials (quinquennales -- this office was often performed by the duoviri, on which see below).

L o c a l magistrates normally included 2 duoviri iure dicendo = chief executives, who usually also had judicial and censorial powers, 2 aediles for market, streets, drains etc.; 2 quaestores = treasurers. As was said above, in some cities the holding of a magistracy brought Roman citizenship for the holder and his descendents. (See e.g. the decree in R 321. For amusing specimens of local magistrates' election slogans, painted on walls at Pompeii, see R 326 f.). But magistrates often had to pay for public works out of their own pockets; so in the later empire, these offices began to be shunned (very much in the way that the decurionate was, for the same reasons--see Decuriones).

I m p e r i a l officials (formally appointed by, and serving, the Emperor, even if elected locally) supplemented the local magistrates; they included e.g. curatores civitatis = imperial financial officers; an exactor civitatis to organize collection of imperial taxes; sometimes an ideologus to collect money from sources other than taxes, "such as fines and confiscated or unclaimed property" (R 379); a praepositus pagorum in charge of the rural districts attached to a city; a defensor civitatis providing inexpensive justice for the poor; a corrector to rearrange the affairs of this or that troubled "free" city (B.1 above).

(D) G o v e r n o r s. For their titles and sources of authority, see Dictionary s.v. Prorogatio. Under the Republic, each new province was first defined by a lex provinciae, i.e. the decree of a Roman general, in consultation with a special commission of 10 senators sent out from Rome. This was later ratified by the assembly at Rome and amounted to the province's constitution. Within its framework each subsequent governor, on entering office, issued an edict outlining the principles of his own policy. (On edicts see Edictum. There are governors' edicts among the documents in R ch. V, e.g. p. 374, 375 ff., 386.) No governor, and later not even the emperor, lightly changed preceding arrangements. For example, the edicts of Pompey, made in 63 BC, were still respected (changed only slightly and cautiously) 170 years later by the governor Pliny, and by the emperor Trajan whom he constantly consulted (see Pliny, Epist., book X passim; e.g. X.114, 115; on Pompey see App. P s.v. 59 BC).

As was said in § C above, the government of a province was partly local, partly in the hands of imperial officials not subject to the governor; but imperial tax-collection (§ E below) belonged either to him and his officials or to the rapacious publicani (§ E below) with whom he could collude; and major criminal jurisdiction belonged to the governor sitting with his council (consilium: see J2 127 ff., and see also App. A fin., and see the note below on the New Testament); often he made a circuit of the province, meeting litigants at appointed places called conventus. He was helped by a Quaestor (q.v.) who had charge of official money from Rome, but was, in all periods, normally his close friend and accomplice; by one to three Legati (q.v.) to whom he could delegate authority, by a staff of civil servants, by his personal retinue (his cohors), and by Romans living in the province (who enjoyed special rights denied to natives).

A Republican governor's authority was absolute, his freedom huge, the temptation to rape the province, by extortion or collusion in cruel taxation, often irresistible. If his province contained legions, he was even tempted to make new conquests (as e.g. Caesar in Gaul); this was later forbidden by law.

Under the early emperors, taxation was less arbitrary (§ E below), and governors were both more closely watched and more often held accountable; but as Jones says (J2 99), "how far the standards of conduct improved... it is impossible to say. There was, it is true, a higher probability of conviction if (the governors) were brought to trial, which may have deterred some, but there is no reason to believe that the character of the Roman nobility changed suddenly for the better after 27 B.C. They were still grossly extravagant and looked to the provinces to pay their debts and re-establish their fortunes. The civil war had not made them any less brutal. Seneca (On Anger II, 5, 5) tells a grim anecdote of the blueblooded Valerius Messalla Volesus, proconsul of Asia about A.D. 12, who, having executed 300 persons in one day, exclaimed (in Greek), as he walked proudly among the corpses: 'What a royal deed!' Volesus was in fact condemned by the Senate. Under Tiberius eight provincial governors were prosecuted, and nearly all condemned. Of these five <two> were proconsuls and three legates of Augustus; which does not suggest that the standard of conduct was markedly higher in the imperial provinces". This remained true under later emperors--for accounts of trials (all resulting in conviction) see e.g. Pliny, Ep. II.11, III.4, esp. III.9.

"Snapshots" of imperial governors' courts are given, of course, in the New Testament, e.g. at Matt. 27 (trial of Jesus) and Acts 22.24 - 26.32 (trial of St. Paul). "The headquarters of the procurator [i.e. the governor, the Praefectus of Judaea] were at Caesarea, Acts 23:23, where he had a judgement seat, Acts 25:6, in the audience chamber, Acts 25.23, and was assisted by a council, Acts 25:12, whom he consulted in cases of difficulty. He was attended by a cohort as a bodyguard, Matt 27:27, and apparently went up to Jersualem at the time of the high festivals, and there resided at the palace of Herod, in which was the praetorium or 'judgment hall.' Matt. 27:27; Mark 15:16; comp. Acts 23:25" (William Smith and F.N. and M.A. Peloubet, A Dictionary of the Bible, Philadelphia, 1884, s.v. "Procurator").

(E) I m p e r i a l t a x e s. (S 261, J2 118 f.; I quote from the latter:) "Under the late Republic provinces fell in two classes, those which like Spain and Gaul paid stipendium, and those like Sicily and Asia which paid tithe and pasture dues. Stipendium was a fixed money contribution, imposed on each community. It was more or less arbitrarily assessed, for no provincial census is ever mentioned under the Republic, and must often have been very inequitable, some cities being under-assessed and others too heavily burdened. The stipendia were probably directly collected by the governor or his quaestor from the city governments. The tithe was ideally fairer, since it ought to have varied according to the actual crop harvested each year by each landowner, but it was necessarily, since the yield varied from year to year and was unpredictable, farmed to contractors (publicani), who took advantage of their political influence to extract vastly greater sums than were really due. For the publicani were leading members of the equestrian order, which the Senate normally wished to placate and which moreover dominated the court of provincial extortion" (see Dictionary, Publicani).

Under the Emperors, tithe and stipendium disappeared, replaced by taxes of two basic kinds:

(1) D i r e c t taxes -- based on assessments made by quinquennales (local census officials) at the five-year provincial censuses which Augustus instituted -- consisted of the tributum soli, a land tax, "which probably also took in other capital assets, such as houses and ships" (J2 119) and the tributum capitis, poll tax, "paid in some provinces by all adults and in others only by adult males" (ibid.). "As the amount was known in advance it was collected not by contractors but by the city authorities" (J2 119. On these authorities, see § C above and Dictionary s.v. Decuriones). In the imperial provinces, tributa were overseen by an equestrian Procurator, "who was largely independent of the governor: there might often be friction or enmity between the two men" (S261).

(2) I n d i r e c t taxes = vectigalia (OCD s.v.; S 261) included (a) portaria, customs dues levied at harbors, piers, city gates (25% at the frontiers, 2.5% at provincial boundaries); (b) the quinta et vicesima venalium mancipiorum, a 4% tax on slave sales (this paid for the vigiles, q.v.); (c) the vicesima hereditatum (5% inheritance tax, paid only by Roman citizens; this was one reason for increasing the number of citizens); (d) misc. things such as grain for the governor and his staff; food and housing for travelling dignitaries and soldiers (who often extorted these illegally--in Egypt there have been found many papyrus letters complaining of this).

Most indirect taxes were still at first farmed out to publicani, but they were often more carefully supervised than before--in senatorial provinces, by the quaestors; in imperial provinces, by imperial officials (e.g. by equestrian procuratores, q.v.)

In the later empire, to facilitate collection of direct taxes, property owners were permanently tied to their land and decurions (q.v.) to the decurionate, and very many peasants and middle-class people, unable to pay their taxes (which often were very inequitably assessed), literally fled, abandoning land, house, possessions, so that the emperors repeatedly passed futile laws forbidding this.

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TWO ANECDOTES ABOUT THE 'MILKING' OF THE PROVINCES (quoted from E. Badian, Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic, Blackwell 1968: Cornell Univ. Press 1971, p. 84-5; cf. Cicero Ad Atticum VI, 1, 5 ff.) -- they can be taken as perfectly typical for the late Republic:

"We all know about the noble Brutus: Cicero [in 50 BC when governor of Cilicia] was as shocked as each student still is when it first dawned on him. Brutus' loan to Cyprian Salamis had been made when he was on the island as a private man, and a young man at that (not yet quaestorian), under his uncle M. Cato in 58/6. And since such laws were illegal under the lex Gabinia, he charged 48% interest instead of the legal 12% and used two procuratores as men of straw. When the Salaminians fell into arrears, one of these men, Scaptius, went to Cicero's predacessor Ap. Claudius, got himself appointed prefect, was given a force of cavalry and proceeded to Cyprus to squeeze money out of the boulê of Salamis--to such effect that (we are told) five of them starved to death while he held them besieged in the council chamber. But that failed to get him any money, and as a result, Cicero had to take cognizance of the affair. He refused to reappoint Scaptius prefect (we hear incidentally that this gave great offence, since such appointments were regarded as normal and were expected by the great men in Rome interested in such business), but ordered the Salaminians to pay--which they were willing to do, at the legal rate of interest. At this point Scaptius produced a senatus consultum that Brutus had procured and that (a) gave legal exemption from the lex Gabinia to this whole transaction; and (b) gave similar exemption from the maximum interest rate and ordered the contract to stand as signed (i.e. at 48%, instead of 12%)".

Even Atticus begged Cicero to give Scaptius a troop of horse for the purpose! Not wishing to be part of this (it was contrary to his own edict as governor), but not venturing to offend Atticus and Brutus, he managed to put the matter off, for his successor to deal with. Badian remarks, "It is to Cicero's credit that he acted even as he did; and it is clear that few others would have done so". In 50 B.C. the amount to be recovered was 200 talents; so Brutus might originally lent only 12 talents.

"The same Brutus had also lent Ariobarzanes money; no doubt... the King needed it to pay Pompey. But Ariobarzanes really could not pay this additonal debt: he was bakrupt and in fear of his life! Even so, Brutus was so persistent that Cicero--who, no doubt, did not want to appear quite unreasonable to his Roman friends and enemies--managed to squeeze no less tha 100 talents out of him over six months: proportionately more (he tells us) than Pompey had got (200 talents in six months)" (id. p. 86)

Appendix D: C h i e f R e l i g i o u s O f f i c e s

In Rome church and state were not separate, and there was no separate priestly caste; rather, "a magistrate was usually a priest as part of his official functions" (OCD s.v. "Priests"), and many non-magistrates were part-time priests. Originally, most priesthoods were patrician; in later times plebeians had a share in all, but some belonged more to the senatorial order, others more to the equestrian:

Senatorial (Sandys 111): augur, flamen, frater arvalis, lupercus, pontifex, quindecimvir sacris faciundis, salius, septemvir epulonum, sodalis Augustalis; virgines Vestales.

Equestrian (Sandys 227): haruspex, lupercus, (sacerdos) Laurens Lavinas, tubicen sacrorum populi Romani Quiritium.

These offices are of basically two kinds: the minor ones organized as Sodales, the major organized as Collegia. Sodales included the Fetiales, "who had charge of the ius fetiale and made treaties and declared war; the Salii, priests of Mars, active in March and October, at the opening and closing of the campaigning season; the Luperci, executants of the ritual of the ritual of the Lupercalia in February; and the Fratres Arvales, celebrants of agricultural rites, associated later with the cult of the imperial house" (quoted from OCD s.v. Sodales). More important were the colleges:

(1) Pontifices, a college of priests--orignally 3, but by Caesar's time 16--who advised magistrates in religious matters. Pontiffs were coopted (i.e. chosen by other pontiffs) till 104 BC, later elected by the people; under the emperors, again coopted. Originally all patrician, but by lex Ogulnia of 300 BC half plebeian. Each pontiff (except the Pontifex Maximus) was a flamen dedicated to a different God; there were 3 major flamines for Jupiter, Mars, Quirinus, and 12 minor, dedicated to Volturna, Pales, Furrina, Flora, Falacer, Pomona, Volcanus, Ceres, Carmentis, Fortunus (the other two are unknown).

In charge was the Pontifex Maximus, official head of the state religion, who was elected in the Comitia populi tributa (q.v.) by 17 of the 35 tribes (hence, unlike regular magistrates, never by a majority of the people), the 17 tribes being chosen by lot. The Pontifex did business in the Regia (a small old temple in the Forum). When consulted by a magistrate, he consulted his colleagues; the college issued decreta (pronouncements) which had authority but not the force of law, and which were enforced not by the pontiffs themselves but by the magistrates.

In early Rome the college had another function: the pontiffs alone knew legal procedure, until 304 BC when it was published.

(2) Augures, a college of diviners--originally 3, eventually 16. "Their business was not to foretell the future, but to discover by observation of signs (auguria), either casually met with (oblativa) or watched for (impetrativa), whether the gods did or did not approve a particular action" (OCD s.v.). Signs came from birds, from sacred chickens (ex tripudiis--when they ate so greedily that the food dropped from their mouths--a good omen), from animals (e.g. when opened in sacrifice), or from events in the weather.

P o l i t i c a l i m p o r t a n c e. "An augur was regularly present in the assemblies to advice the presiding officer, either by directing attention to an omen he had chanced to see himself or by urging the magistrate to take account of an omen reported by someone present" (T II p. 83). He also could declare a proceeding invalid, by finding some fault in the taking of the auspicia. Those are the signs which had to be consulted by a consul or praetor before an election, an assembly, a military movement, etc. The auspicia, and with them the augurs, were often a mere political tool. By appealing to bad omens a magistrate could postpone or declare invalid any assembly, election, or piece of legislation which he disliked. "Thus when Pompey, consul and augur, was conducting the praetorian elections in 55, he declared, after [his enemy] Cato had been chosen for office by the centuria praerogativa, that he had heard thunder" (T II p. 81; she there gives many other examples).

(3) Quindecemviri sacris faciundis (after 51 BC; before that duoviri till 367 BC, then decemviri, then 16 under Caesar); at first patrician, after 367 half plebeian. Originally custodians of the Sibylline books, later supervisors "of all foreign cults recognized or tolerated in Rome on the authority of those books" (OCD s.v.).

(4) Minor Colleges: collegia compitalicia concerned with worship of the Lares at the crossroads (compita); collegium Capitolinorum responsible for the Capitoline games; collegium Mercatorum in charge of worship at the temple of Mercury.

Appendix E: M a i n R e p u b l i c a n F e s t i v a l s & L u d i

Ludi solemnes (or ludi publici) were originally religious festivals, feriae, each lasting only a day and including e.g. a religious rite, a banquet, a religious mimic dance (origin of the later plays) and horse races. They began to expand, and increase in number, especially toward the end of the third century; till by the last decades of the Republic there were eight major festivals, each of which had become a week or ten days long and mainly took place (though it still had a religious element) in the circus and amphitheater. A festival included:

(I) ludi scaenici, i.e. plays, both Greek (in translation) and Roman, staged at first in flimsy wooden structures, later in stone theaters. They are said to have begun in 364 BC, when Etruscans were brought in to perform a mimic religious dance with flute music, to appease the gods' anger during a plague.

(II) ludi circenses, shows and contests in circus, amphitheater and stadium. They included mainly (a) chariot races in the circus of bigae, trigae, quadrigae (i.e. chariots drawn by 2, 3 & 4 horses); (b) gladiators (who were normally prisoners of war or criminals) in Circus, Forum or Saepta; and (c) venationes = hunts of, or fights with or of, wild beasts such as elephants, tigers, lions, boars, bulls, etc. Less important were (e) Greek-style athletic and musical contests, common only in the last decades of the Republic; and (f) naval spectacles, Naumachia, first staged by Julius Caesar in 46 BC (probably in the Campus Martius), and common only in the Empire.

"The ludi in the Circus began with a procession from the Capitoline Hill into the Forum, along the Via Sacra, into the Vicus Tuscus and entering the Forum Boarium through the Velabrum. On reaching the Circus, the procession passed round the spina, stopping to sacrifice and to salute the Emperor. At the head of the procession was the consul or other presiding magistrate, carried in a biga (or quadriga), dressed in the toga picta and the pallium. This is clearly a survival of the time when the ludi circenses formed part of a triumph. After the parade round the arena, the president took his seat in his box (pulvinar) and gave the signal for the start with his mappa." (Sandys, CLS 794)

Under the Republic the annual ludi publici were produced by Roman magistrates, with funds from the treasury -- to which they often added from their own pockets (despite frequent state attempts to stop that). They are distinct from the ludi privati (e.g. ludi funebres), also called "munera", which any private person might get permission to give wholly with his own money; the private munera were mostly scaenica (e.g. Terence's Hecyra was performed at one) but could also include gladiators, etc. Grimal (240) says that these are "an ancient Italic tradition, very alive among the Etruscans, by which dancing and mime were used to evoke a whole mystic world and at the same time to provoke happiness, a joy in living".

In the Republic's last decade, the ludi publici alone (i.e. ignoring private and extraordinary ludi, and any prolongations, on which see below) consumed 76 days of the calendar (55 of those given to plays -- no doubt because the circus was much more expensive); by A.D. 354 (according to the Calendar of Philcalus) it came to fully 175 days! Moreover, "the duration of the games was often prolonged beyond the normal limits. The religious character of the celebration was never forgotten. If there was the smallest omission, the slightest deviation or mishap, the proceedings had to be recommenced from the beginning" (Sandys, CLS 787). The main state festivals at the end of the Republic were these:

Many dates are only approximate and some descriptions suspect (a) because of the vagaries & uncertainties of the Roman calendar and (b) because of ambiguity, confusion, or silence in ancient sources.

JANUARY: 1 ● New Year's Day after Caesar's reform of the calendar. New consuls (elected in Dec.) were sworn in on this day. To thank Juppiter for his protection and guard in the past year, bulls were given as sacrifices to him. Day sacred to Juppiter, Juno, and Janus. ● Sacrifice day for Fortuna. 3 ● Festival of Pax (peace) from the time of Augustus on. 6 ● Festival for Proserpina. 8 ● Sacred day for Justicia. 9 ● Agonalia for Janus (also 9th May). Janus, for whom January is named, is the 2-faced (or sometimes 4-faced) god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings. The Romans associated Janus with the Etruscan deity Ani. 11 ● Sacred day for Juturna, wife of Janus (also sister of Turnus), goddess of springs and wells; she had a found in the Forum near the Temple of Vesta. 11 & 15 ● Carmentalia for Carmenta goddess of childbirth, mother of Evander, inventor of the alphabet (her name from carmen = song, and she is one of the Camenae); the Vestal Virgins drew water from her spring at the Porta Carmentalis. Carmenta was invoked as Postvorta and Antevorta, epithets which had reference to her power of looking back into the past and forward into the future. The festival was chiefly observed by women. 12 ● Compitalia, also called Ludi Compitalicii, a festival celebrated once a year in honour of the lares compitales, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. This festival is said by some writers to have been instituted by Tarquinius Priscus... Dionysius ascribes its origin to Servius Tullius, and says... that the sacrifices consisted of honey-cakes (πέλανοι) presented by the inhabitants of each house, and that the persons, who assisted as ministering servants at the festival, were not free-men, but slaves, because the lares took pleasure in the service of slaves, ... and that the slaves on this occasion had full liberty to do what they pleased. We further learn from Macrobius (Saturn. i.7) that the celebration of the compitalia was restored by Tarquinius Superbus, who sacrificed boys to Mania, the mother of the lares; but this practice was changed after the expulsion of the Tarquins, and garlic and poppies offered in their stead. 15 ● Feast of the Ass (Sacred to Vesta).. 16 ● Concordia honored today. 17 ● day sacred to Felicitas. 24-26 ●- Feriae Sementivae (from semen: seed) spring feast honoring Tellus (mother Earth) and (on Feb. 2) Ceres.

FEBRUARY: 2 ● Festival of Juno Februa (the purifier: see Dec. 15). 9 ● Feast of Apollo. 12 ● A day holy to Diana. 13-21 ● Festival of Parentalia, honoring the dead. It began at dawn on February 13th and ended with the Feralia on February 21st. All temples were closed during the Parentalia, marriages forbidden, public business suspended; Romans placed flowers milk and wine on their parents graves. 13-14 ● Orgiastic festival of Juno Februata = Februalis (februum originally a Sabine word for purification and expiation) 14 ● Day sacred to Juno-Lupa. 15 ● Lupercalia, an ancient festival antedating Rome, honoring Faunus ("the kindly", like Greek εὔανδρος = Evander), alias Lupercus, and also with his wife Luperca (identified with the she-wolf who suckled Romulus & Remus). The priests gathered at the Lupercal, a cave at the bottom of the Palatine Hill, sacrifice a goat, and annoint 2 young priests called Luperci on their foreheads with the blood. The blood was wiped away with milk by other priests, and the young men laughed at them. The Lupercii them skinned the sacrificed goat and ripped the hide into strips which they tied around their naked waists. They then got drunk, and ran around Rome striking everyone they met with goatskin thongs. Young women who were touched in this manner were thought to be specially blessed, especially in regards to fertility and procreation. This running about with thongs of goat-skin was also a symbolic purification of the land, and that of touching persons a purification of men, for the words by which this act is designated are februare and lustrare (Ovid. Fast. ii.31; Fest. s.v. Februarius). The goat-skin itself was called februum, the festive day dies februata, the month in which it occurred Februarius, and the god himself Februus. The act of purifying and fertilizing, which, as we have seen, was applied to women, was without doubt originally applied to the flocks, and to the people of the city on the Palatine (Varro, de Ling. Lat. v. p60, Bip.). The festival survived until A.D. 494, when it was changed by pope Gelasius into the feast of the Purification of the Virgin -- then on February 14, now on February 2. 17 ● Festival of Fornacalia, for Fornax, goddess of ovens; a baking festival. ● Quirinalia in honor of Quirinus (from co-viri "men together"); he embodied the military and economic strength of the Roman populus collectively. He also watched over the curia "senate house" and comitia curiata "tribal assembly" (those words are cognate with his name). 18 ● Rites of Tacita ( = Muta), goddess of Silence, kept by girls (see Dec. 21). 19 ● Birthday of Minerva. 21 ● Feralia, festival of the dead (of all souls) = the closing festival of the Parentalia. During the Feralia, families would picnic at the tombs of their deceased family members and give their dearly departed libations. 22 ● C(h)aristia (χαρίστεια, χαριστήρια) or C(h)ara Cognatio, an annual family feast during which all existing feuds were settled, and offerings given to the household deities. 23 ● Terminalia in honor of Terminus, god of boundaries. His statue was merely a stone or post stuck in the ground to distinguish between properties. On the festival the two owners of adjacent property crowned the statue with garlands and raised a rude altar, on which they offered up some wheat, honeycombs, and wine, and sacrificed a lamb or a sucking pig; then they sang the praises of the god. The public festival was celebrated at the sixth milestone on the road towards Laurentum, doubtless because this was originally the extent of the Roman territory in that direction. Offerings of grain and honey were given by the children, and the adults would offer wine. Everyone was dressed in white, and kept silent throughout the offerings. A picnic feast was held at the end of the ritual. 24 Regifugium or Fugalia, the king's flight, a festival in commemoration of the flight of king Tarquinius Superbus from Rome. The day is marked in the Fasti as nefastus. Several ancient as well as modern writers have denied that the day had anything to do with the flight of king Tarquinius and think that it derived their name from the symbolical flight of the Rex Sacrorum from the comitium; for this king-priest was generally not allowed to appear in the comitium, which was destined for the transaction of political matters in which he could not take part. But on certain days in the year, and certainly on the two days mentioned above, he had to go to the comitium for the purpose of offering certain sacrifices, and immediately after he had performed his functions there, he hastily fled from it; and this symbolical flight is said to have been called Regifugium. 27 ● First Equiria (the 2nd on March 14th), horse races in honor of Mars. Priests performed rites purifying of the army. Celebrants held horse races on the Campius Martius (field of Mars), and drove a scapegoat out of the city of Rome, expelling the old and bringing in the new.

MARCH: 1 ● Roman new year (before Caesar reformed the calendar). The sacred fire of Vesta was renewed by the Vestal Virgins. ● Feriae Martis in honor of Mars. ● Matronalia. Roman women would visit the temple of Juno Lucina (goodess of childbirth) on the Esquiline. At home, women received gifts from their husbands and daughters, and Roman husbands were expected to offer prayers for their wives. Women were also expected to prepare a meal for the household slaves (who were given the day off work), as Roman men did at the Saturnalia. In late Roman times, young women would also receive gifts from their admirers. During Matronalia the Vestal Virgins gave offerings of their hair to Juno in her sacred groves near Rome. Pregnant women would unbind their hair and clothing. 5 ● Navigum Isidis (Blessing of the Vessel of Isis). 6 ● Day honoring the gods of one's household. 7 ● Junonalia. 11 ● Day sacred to Hercules. 14 ● Second Equirria in honor of Mars (see Feb. 27). ● Festival of Veturius Mamurius. 15 ● Festival of Attis and Cybele. ● Day of Anna Parenna, goddess of the year, and the River Nymphs. ● Guild festival. Guilds who's members practiced the arts of Minerva had a festival on this day. This was mainly a plebean festival, and was celebrated at Minerva's temple in Rome. Weapons used for war were purified during this festival. 15-16 ● Bacchinalia, mystic festival of Bacchus (from c. 200 BC; in 186 BC the Senate tried to ban it), at first performed only by women. 17 ● Liberalia, a fertility festival celebrated in rural areas. Most towns created a large phallus and carted it through the countryside and into the town center where it stayed until the beginning of the next month. The phallus was decorated by a virtuous woman with flowers, which ensured a good crop at the next harvest. 19-23 ● Quinquatria (so-called because it lasted 5 days) honoring Minerva. On the first day, sacrifices and oblations were offered, though no blood was spilled, on the next three days were plays and gladiatorial displays, and on the fifth and final day a solemn procession was held through the streets of the city. The scholars and pedagogues were also given a holiday at this time, and it was customary for them to offer up sacrifices to Minerva, who was their patron goddess. The school-masters would also receive gifts from their pupils when they resumed lessons at the end of the holiday; all of these gifts would be accepted in the name of Minerval (sic). The festival was also associated with the opening of the campaign season; during this time the arms, horses and trumpets of the Army would be ceremoniously purified at Rome. 22 ● Procession of the Tree-Bearers. 23 ● Tubilustriurn, when the sacred trumpets of war were purified to Mars. It was to bring success in the coming battle season. 24 ● Day of Blood. 25 ● Hilaria (Festival of Joy). 28 ● Festival of the Sacrifice at the Tombs. 30 ● Festival of Janus and Concordia ● Festival of Salus Publica Populi Romani ("goddess of the public welfare of the Roman people"). There was a temple devoted to her on the Quirinal Hill, built in 302 BC. Salus was depicted with snakes and a bowl in many artistic representations of her. 31 ● Feast of Luna

APRIL: 1 ● Veneralia honoring Venus. Women removed jewelry from the statue of the goddess, washed her, and adorned her with flowers, and similarly bathed themselves in the public baths wearing wreaths of myrtle on their heads. It was generally a day for women to seek divine help in their relations with men. Also ● Fortuna Virilis, women's festival. 3 ● Proserpina's rise from the underworld. ● Day (sunset-sunset) sacred to Bona Dea. 4-10 ● LUDI MEGALENSES = Megalesia = Festival of Magna Mater (Cybele)organized by the curule aediles. It began with a ceremonial offering of herbs at the temple of Magna Mater. The ludi were mostly plays, with 1 Circus day. 5 ● Festival of Fortuna. 11 ● "Diana's Bread" baked today. 12-19 ● LUDI CEREALES = Cerealia, dedicated to Ceres, goddess of grain. Public ludi organized by the plebeian aediles had 4 days of plays, 1 day with a chariot race in the Circus Maximus that doubled as the closing of the Megalesia. During the festivities all participants were required to wear white (Ovid Fasti, 4.494). Private rituals usually included an offering of milk, honey, and wine to Ceres. 13 ● Festival of Libertas. 15 ● Fordicalia or Fordicia, a festival of Tellus Mater (mother earth). A pregnant cow was sacrificed to her and she was considered pregnant with seeds. The unborn calf was taken to the Grand Vesta in Rome, where the priestess of Vesta burned it in Vesta's sacred flame (considered to be the flame of the earth). The ashes of the burned fetus were kept safe for later use during the Parilia. 21 ● Paralia = Palilia: originally, festivals for Pales, goddess of herds and herdsmen, involving ritualistic cleansing of sheep/cattle pens and animals. The shepherd would sweep out the pens and smudge the animals and pens with burning sulfur. In the evening, the animals were sprinkled with water, and their pens were decorated with garlands. Fires were started, and in were thrown olives, horse blood, beanstalks without pods, and the ashes from the Fordicalia fires. Men and beasts jumped over the fire three times to purify themselves further, and to bring them protection from anything that might harm them (wolves, sickness, starvation, etc.). After the animals were put back into their pens the shepherds would offer non-blood sacrifices of grain, cake millet, and warm milk to Pales. The festival in April was for smaller livestock, while the one in July was for larger animals. (In the city of Rome the festival must, at least in later times, have been celebrated in a different manner; its character of a shepherd-festival was forgotten, and it was merely looked upon as the day on which Rome had been built, and was celebrated as such with great rejoicings). 22 ● Festival of Juppiter and Juno. 23 ● Vinalia, festival of the vine. The first wines of the year were tasted, and libations were made in honour of Juppiter. It was also a special day for prostitutes, who payed homage to Venus. 25 ● Robigalia intended to protect corn from blight. During Robigalia, in a special grove outside of the city walls, offerings were given to Robiga. Robiga (meaning green or life) along with her brother, Robigus, were the fertility gods of the Romans. 28 ● LUDI FLOREALES = Floralia, organized by the curule aediles, dedicated to Flora, goddess of flowers and vegetation, this day was considered by the prostitutes of Rome to be their own. While flowers decked the temples, Roman citizens wore colorful clothing instead of the usual white, and offerings were made of milk and honey to Flora. There were 4 days of plays (it was customary for the assembled people on this occasion to demand the female actors to appear naked on the stage, and to amuse the multitude with their indecent gestures and dances) and one of wild beast hunts in the Circus.

MAY: 1 ● Day sacred to Maia, to whom a pregnant cow was sacrificed. ● Feast for Lares Praestites, especially at their temple along the Via Sacra. 2 ● Day sacred to Elena. 3 ● Women's Festival of Bona Dea (= Fauna, daughter of Faunus), goddess of fertility, healing, virginity and women, who had a temple on the Aventine. No men were allowed to participate. The sick were tended to in the gardens outside her temples, where medicinal herbs were grown by priestesses. (All this pertains to the public festival; for the secret festival, see Dec. 4). 4 ● Megalesia (Festival of Cybele). 9 ● agonalia for Janus (see also Jan 9th). 9, 11, 13 ● Lemuria = Lemuralia. The lemures or larvae or were the spectres of the dead; they were the malignant version of the lares. They were said to wander about at night and to torment and frighten the living. On these days black beans were offered to the Larvae in the hopes of propitiating them; loud noises were also used to frighten them away. 15 ● Day of Maia and Vesta. ● Sacrifice day to the Tiber River. ● Mercuralia, in honor of Mercury. Merchants would sprinkle their heads, their ships and merchandise, and their businesses with water taken from the well at Porta Capena. 17 ● Festival of Dea Dia. 18 ● Day sacred to Apollo. 23 ● Rosalia (Festival of Flora). 27 ● Secular Centennial Games. 29 ● Festival of Ambarvalia. ● Feast of Mars

JUNE: 1 ● Festival of Carna. ● Day sacred to Tempestas. 3 ● Festival of Bellona. 7-15 ● Vestalia. 7th Day of Vesta Asperit. 8 ● Festival of Mens. 9 ● Festival of Vesta. 11 ● Day sacred to Fortuna. 13 ● Quinquatrus Minusculae of Minerva (see March 19-24). 16 ● Festival of Ludi Piscatari. 18 ● Festival of Anna. 19 ● Day of all Heras. 20 ● Day of Summanus, god of nocturnal thunder (as opposed to Jupiter, the god of diurnal thunder). His temple stood at the Circus Maximus, and every June 20th cakes were offered to him as propitiation. 23 ● day of bad omens: anniversary of the battle of Lake Trasimene, where a Roman army is destroyed by Hannibal. 24 ● Fors Fortuna, a great public holiday; the Romans rowed down the River Tiber to two shrines just outside Rome, where sacrifices were made for Fortuna. This was followed by picnicking and drinking for the rest of the day. 27 ● Festival of Initium Aestatis. 30 ● Day of Aestas

JULY: 2 ● Feast of Expectant Mothers. 4 ● Day of Pax. 5 ● Populifugia in honor of Juppiter. 6th-13th ● LUDI APOLLINARES for Apollo, instituted at Rome during the second Punic war, four years after the battle of Cannae (B.C. 212), at the command of an oracle contained in the books of the ancient seer Marcius... They were instituted partly to obtain the aid of Apollo in expelling the Carthaginians from Italy, and partly to preserve, through the favour of the god, the republic from all dangers. The oracle suggested that the games be held every year under the praetor urbanus, and that ten men should sacrifice according to Greek rites. The games were mostly plays, with 1 day in the Circus Maximus; the spectators were adorned with chaplets, and each citizen gave a contribution towards defraying the expenses. Matrons performed supplications, the people took their meals in the propatulum with open doors. 7 ● Feriae Ancillarum. ● Sacerdotes publicae to Consus (see 27 Aug.) ● Parilia Festivals for Pales, goddess of herds. (see under April 21). 8 ● Nonae Caprotinae = Caprotinia (Nones of the Wild Figs) ancient Roman feastsin honor of the female slaves. During this solemnity they ran about, beating themselves with their fists and with rods. None but women assisted in the sacrifices offered at this feast. 9 ● Populifugia, festival of the people's flight, was celebrated on the Nones of July, in commemoration of the flight of the people, when the inhabitants of Ficulea, Fidenae, and other places round about, appeared in arms against Rome shortly after the departure of the Gauls, and produced such a panic that the Romans suddenly fled before them. But Macrobius (Saturn. iii.2) says that the Populifugia was commemorated the flight of the people before the Tuscans, while Dionysius (ii.56) refers its origin to the flight of the people on the death of Romulus. 19 ● Sacred drama day for Aphrodite and Adonis. 19 & 21 ● Lucaria, "Feasts of Clearings", a feast, solemnized in the woods, where the Romans, defeated and pursued by the Gauls, retired and concealed themselves; it was heldin a wood between the Tyber and the road called Via Salaria. 23 ● Neptunalia an obscure archaic two-day festival in honour of Neptune as god of waters, celebrated at Rome in the heat and drought of summer. It was one of the dies comitiales, when committees of citizens could vote on civil or criminal matters. About the ceremonies nothing is known, except that the people used to build huts of branches and foliage (umbrae, according to Festus, under " Umbrae. 25 ● Furrinalia venerated all those who searched for underground water sources.

AUGUST: 8 ● Festival of Venus (sunset-sunset). 12th ● Businessmen and traders paid ten percent of their profits to Mercury's shrine on this day. Mercury was known for his cunning and sly practices. The money was used for a feast which took place in public on this day. 13 ● Festival of Hecate. 15 ● Festival of Vesta. 17 ● Festival of Diana ● Portunalia, in honor of Portunus = Portunes = Portumnes, a god of keys and doors and livestock. He protected the warehouses where grain was stored. Probably because of folk associations between porta "gate, door" and portus "harbor", the "gateway" to the sea, Portunus later became conflated with Palaemon and evolved into a god primarily of ports and harbors. In the Latin adjective importunus his name was applied to untimely waves and weather and contrary winds, and the Latin echoes in English opportune and its old-fashioned antonym importune, meaning "well-timed' and "badly-timed". Hence Portunus is behind both an opportunity and importunate or badly-timed solicitations. On August 17 keys were thrown into a fire for good luck in a very solemn and lugubrious manner. His attribute was a key. 19 ● Vinalia Rustica held to ask Juppiter not to send storms, hail, heavy rains, or floods before the grapes could ripen and be harvested. Instituted on occasion of the war of the Latins against Mezentius; in the course of which war, that people vowed a libation to Jupiter of all the wine in the succeeding vintage. On the same day likewise fell the dedication of a temple to Venus (whence some authors have fallen into a mistake, that these Vinalia were sacred to Venus). 21 ● Heraclia. ● Consualia feast of the granary god Consus, who was sometimes represented as a wheat seed. His altar was beneath the ground near the Circus Maximus in Rome and unearthed only during the Consualia. Mule or horse races were the main event. Horses and mules (both sacred to Consus) were crowned with chaplets of flowers, and forbidden to work. The festival was superintended by the Flamines of Quirinus (Mars), helped by the Vestals. The main priestess at the regia wore a white veil. (Consus was eventually identified with Neptunus Equester, the alias and counterpart of Poseidon Hippios. Poseidon/Neptune had been associated with the animal since archaic times.