Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

In the first place, citizenship had not its private-law connotation. Freedmen may not have been de jure excluded from office;[806] but the lists of magistrates show that not only were the sons of freedmen ineligible, but that the magistracy was practically reserved to those who could boast a free grandfather.[807]

In the second place, certain careers were considered as a necessary preliminary to, others as a necessary disqualification from, the magistracy. In a military city like Rome one is not surprised to find that a certain amount of military service was demanded of one who might have to lead the armies of the state, and that during the greater part of the Republic the capite censi were wholly excluded from the magistracy. The length of service required from the infantry soldier is unknown; from the eques equo publico it was ten years’ service “in the camp or the province,”[808] as late as the time of C. Gracchus (124 B.C.).[809] This military qualification gives us a minimum age of twenty-eight as being necessary for the holding of the quaestorship. In the Ciceronian period, on the other hand, the age was thirty,[810] and the military qualification, although it still partially survived in municipal law,[811] seems to have been abolished for Rome. Conversely, the exercise of any trade or profession for which payment was received was a disqualification for office, as long as the trade or profession was exercised.[812] This was, to some extent, an outcome of the prejudice against βαναυσία found amongst all military peoples;[813] but, as offices at Rome were unpaid, it was also a necessary provision for securing due attention to the discharge of the duties of the magistracy.

Thirdly, access to the magistracy might be hindered by the past moral delinquencies of an individual or his criminal condemnation. It is a mistake to suppose that there was a definite class of infames excluded from office at Rome. Certain criminal laws made temporary or permanent exclusion from the magistracy one of their sanctions. Exclusion on kindred grounds—notorious moral lapses of the candidate, his previous condemnation in a disgraceful civil suit, the fact that a prosecution for a crime was at that moment hanging over his head—was entirely the work of the magistrate who presided over the elections. He acted entirely on his own discretion, although naturally on the advice of a consilium of experienced men, in declining to receive the name of such a candidate.[814] This remarkable power was the outcome of the still surviving theory that the magistrate nominated his successor, and that the election by the people was only a complementary act.

Other limitations to the attainment of magistracy were determined by the previous holding of office. The magistrate who presided over the filling up of a vacancy in the regular magistracies might not return himself as elected;[815] and two laws further provided that, if a new office was established by statute, neither the rogator of the measure nor his colleagues or relatives should be eligible to the post.[816]

The continuation and accumulation of magistracies were also forbidden by plebiscita of the year 342 B.C., which enacted that at least ten years must elapse between the tenures of the same magistracy, and that two magistracies should not be held together in the same year.[817] Such legislation was the starting-point for a series of measures known as leges annales, which specified the order in which the various magistracies must be held (certus ordo magistratuum),[818] the age which qualified for each, the interval which must elapse between the holding of any two, and that which must intervene between the holding of the same, magistracies. In the year 180 B.C. the lex Villia, a plebiscitum of a comprehensive character, was passed, which specified the age at which each magistracy might be held;[819] it appears also to have fixed the interval which must elapse between the holding of two patrician magistracies, since from about this period we find the beginning of the rule, which held good in Cicero’s day, that a biennial interval must be observed between the patrician offices in the gradus honorum.[820] Finally, Sulla in 81 B.C. re-enacted the rules about the certus ordo and the interval between the same magistracies by declaring that the quaestorship must be held before the praetorship, and the praetorship before the consulate, and that ten years must elapse before the resumption of the same magistracy.[821]

The validity of election was dependent on the observance of certain forms, the first of which was concerned with the presiding magistrate. While the tribune alone could be the president at the election of plebeian magistrates, the consuls and praetors created the magistratus populi, but, as we have already shown in connexion with the interregnum, none but a consul could preside at the consular and praetorian elections.

The first act of the candidate was to send in his name (profiteri) to the magistrate destined to preside. This professio had to be made three weeks (trinum nundinum, intra legitimos dies)[822] before the date of election. A list of the candidates was then prepared for the people[823] after the magistrate had examined their names and satisfied himself of the qualifications of the competitors. Up to the middle of the last century B.C. the candidates need not be in Rome; but after the year 63 B.C. some unknown law enacted that they should make the professio in person,[824] and a similar clause was again inserted in Pompeius’ law de jure magistratuum of 52 B.C.[825] During the interval between the professio and the election, canvassing, which had commenced long before the open profession of candidature, became brisker. Legitimate ambitio almost rose to the dignity of a formal act. The aspirant, in a dazzlingly whitened robe (candidatus), surrounded by a cortège and accompanied by a slave with a good memory for names (nomenclator), affably saluted all the citizens whom he met, and shook hands warmly with the rustic voter. Rome’s habit of extending her franchise made the country vote always of some importance; but after the social war the canvassing that followed the professio was as nothing compared with that which had preceded it. The municipal voters, who could not come up for ordinary legislative business, flocked to Rome for the elections in the summer; and to secure success all Italy had to be sounded from the Padus to the Lacinian promontory. Canvassing on this gigantic scale required time and an elaborate organisation. We find Cicero beginning to canvass on 17th July 65 B.C. for the consular elections in 64; and men better circumstanced in birth, wealth, and rank commenced operations by setting in motion a vast machine, which had as its head some noble coterie at Rome (sodalitas), and as its instruments the election agents (divisores), each of whom took charge of a portion of a tribe. The means used were not necessarily illegitimate, although the names of the divisores became associated with bribery,[826] and a series of laws—not longer, however, than the chain of enactments which Rome usually devoted to some special theme—strove by ever-increasing penalties to stamp out an evil which disappeared only with the popular assemblies themselves.

After the people had chosen the new magistrate by their suffrage, a final duty had to be performed by the president in the shape of the renuntiatio, or formal announcement of the result of the election. That this was not a purely formal act is shown by the president’s power to refuse to return a legally, or even morally, unqualified candidate who had slipped through the previous stages of election.[827]

If we believe that the king during his lifetime nominated his successor,[828] there must from the first have been an interval between appointment to and entrance on office. This interval existed throughout the Republic for most of the annual magistracies; only the dictator, the censors, the magistrates created as the result of an interregnum (ex interregno), or those elected to fill up a place that had become vacant (suffecti), entered office immediately on their election. For the ordinary magistrates there was a more or less considerable interval between election and entrance on office; for the patrician magistracies it had originally been short, for the elections were one of the last acts of the consul’s annual reign, and the new consuls and praetors entered office from the close of the third century on 15th March,[829] from 153 B.C. on 1st January.[830] But in the closing years of the Republic—perhaps in consequence of a change introduced by Sulla—the elections were universally held in the month of July; and this gave a six-months’ interval between election and entrance on office for the consuls and praetors, and one of more than four months for the quaestors and tribunes, who assumed their functions on 5th and 10th December respectively.[831]