[2047] Seneca Cons. ad Polyb. vi. 4 and 5.
[2048] Vita Carini 16 “fastidium subscribendi tantum habuit ut inpurum quendam ... ad subscribendum poneret.” The Princeps himself may not have written more than his signature. See Vita Commodi 13 “ipse Commodus in subscribendo tardus et neglegens, ita ut libellis una forma multis subscriberet.”
[2049] Karlowa Rechtsgesch. i. p. 545.
[2050] Dio Cass. Ep. lxxviii. 13.
[2051] Karlowa l.c.
[2052] Vita Carini 8 “Julius Calpurnius, qui ad memoriam dictabat.” He attended the Princeps with the other secretaries; see Vita Alex. 31 “Postmeridianas horas subscriptioni et lectioni epistularum semper dedit, ita ut ab epistulis, a libellis et a memoria semper adsisterent.”
[2053] This consilium must not be confused with the committee of the Senate which had been employed by Augustus and Tiberius, but was subsequently discontinued. This board, composed of some of the magistrates and a number of senators chosen by lot, had given a preliminary consideration to the business to be submitted to the Senate (Suet. Aug. 35; Tib. 55; Dio Cass. liii. 21). Something like it was devised by Mamaea in the reign of Severus Alexander (Dio Cass. lxxx. 1; Herodian vi. 1).
[2054] Dio Cass. lv. 27; lvii. 7.
[2055] Tac. Ann. iii. 10 “paucis familiarium adhibitis” (in the trial of Piso, A.D. 20). In Nero’s trial of Octavia in A.D. 62 his body of advisers (“amicos quos velut consilio adhibuerat princeps” Tac. Ann. xiv. 62) may have been regarded as a consilium domesticum.
[2056] Vita Hadr. 18 “cum judicaret, in consilio habuit non amicos suos aut comites solum, sed juris consultos ... quos tamen senatus omnes probasset.”