Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

During this interval the magistrate elect was designatus, and, though his imperium or potestas was necessarily dormant, he had a distinct position in the state and could exercise certain official functions preparatory to the magistracy, such as issuing edicts, which would be binding after his entrance on office.[832] Even before the renuntiatio he had taken an oath of fealty to the state[833]—one, however, that could only have been exacted when the candidate was present at the election.

The entrance on office was signalised by another promise on oath to respect the laws (in leges)—a custom which probably grew out of the power of the people to bind either present or future magistrates by an execratio to respect a certain lex.[834] Refusal to take it within the period of five days was followed by loss of office;[835] only the Flamen Dialis, who might not swear, could claim exemption, and with the people’s consent take the oath by deputy.[836] During the later Republic we also find evidences of an oath which closed the tenure of office; the magistrates, on the expiry of their functions, addressed the people and swore that, during their period of rule, they had wilfully done nothing against the interest of the state but striven their utmost to promote its welfare.[837]

The assumption of the magistracy carried with it the right—and indeed the duty—to exhibit certain external marks of dignity which distinguished the masters of the community from their subjects. The lictors and the fasces were a survival from the monarchy, and were employed as a token of dignity and for the enforcement of the coercitio by the magistrates with imperium, on a scale, as will be seen when we describe the different magistracies, proportioned to the strength of the imperium. The other magistrates possessed only the servants—scribae, praecones, accensi, viatores, servi publici—necessary for the carrying out of their behests.

Like the lictors, the purple robe—the almost universal symbol of royalty in the ancient world—and the curule chair were inherited by the Republican magistrate; but the royal robe could be used only in the triumphal procession, where the other regal insignia were revived,[838] or for the celebration of festivals.[839] In the garb of peace of the curule magistrates the purple had become a narrow hem (praetexta) round the toga. The quaestors, who were not included in this list, seem to have worn no special dress; while the tribunes and plebeian aediles showed, by their complete lack of magisterial insignia, that they were never regarded as magistrates of the community.

In the dress of war the regal colour also reappears. Once outside the pomerium the magistrate may don the scarlet military cloak (paludamentum) worn over his armour. The dagger (pugio)[840] worn round his neck or on his waist, and the axes, which can now be enclosed in the fasces, were added signs of the untrammeled imperium.

The insignia were not mere empty signs that bolstered up a power which won no true respect. If the Senate appeared to the envoy of Pyrrhus to be an assembly of kings, he was looking at a body the members of which had for some period of their lives received the homage due to kings. The reverence for office as a holy trust, which is such a characteristic feature of Republican forms of government, was heightened in the Roman mind by its genius for abstraction, which saw in the individual holder of power not the magistrate but the magistracy, and by its almost superstitious veneration for the forms of law. It was an obvious thing to Romans that they must spring from their horse when they met a magistrate riding,[841] that they must make room for him on the path, that they must rise from their seat as he passed by, and that they must stand bareheaded before him in the contio or the comitia. The occasional Roman, to whom these things were not obvious, was soon reminded of his duties by the coercitio of the magistrate, who had the fullest means of protecting his own dignity; his life had been made by the law as sacred as the life of the state itself, for an attempt on the safety of a Roman magistrate was treason (perduellio).

§ 2. The Individual Magistracies

After this general review of the magistracy, we may glance at the precise place in the state administration assigned to the separate magistrates, so far as the record of their duties has not been already anticipated.

The Dictator

The only true mode of creating a dictator (dicere dictatorem) was through nomination by one of the consuls,[842] who, as we have seen, to avoid unfavourable omens, pronounced his selection between midnight and morning.[843] The question, which consul was to exercise this power, was decided either by the possession of the fasces, which belonged only to the acting consul, or by one of the two favourite modes of settling questions of collegiate action, agreement (comparatio) or the use of the lot (sortitio).[844] But this purely consular function came in time, like all extraordinary acts of administration, to be usurped by the Senate. At what period this result was attained we cannot say; for the annalists have transferred the constitutional observances of the third century B.C. to the earliest times.[845] Finally, the point was reached at which the Senate not only suggested the advisability of nomination but the name of the nominee;[846] opposition to these instructions was constitutionally possible,[847] but was borne down by the de facto power of the Senate with the tribunate as its instrument. By the close of the fourth century B.C. custom had further fixed the rule that the person created should be a past holder of the consulship.[848] The ancient provision that the dictator could be nominated only on Roman soil was found impossible of observance, since the consul, when he received the Senate’s message, was often far distant from the city, and ager Romanus was, in true Roman fashion, liberally interpreted to include the whole of Italy.[849] After the nomination of the new magistrate his imperium was confirmed by a lex curiata.[850] The insignia of the dictator were in one respect greater even than those of the king. As the consul had inherited the twelve regal lictors, the dictator, in order that his higher imperium might be more clearly shown, was preceded by twenty-four;[851] and the axes were seen with the fasces even within the walls.[852] The dictator appointed to meet an emergency either of war or revolution[853] bore no special designation which had reference to this emergency, but was aptly described as created for carrying on the business of the state (rei gerundae causa).[854] But minor needs of peace might lead to the nomination of a dictator for a special purpose; we find a dictator appointed for holding elections (comitiorum habendorum causa),[855] on one occasion for making out the list of the Senate (legendo senatui),[856] and others for purely ceremonial or religious purposes—for the celebration of games (ludorum faciendorum causa)[857] and the ordering of festivals (feriarum constituendarum causa),[858] and for driving the nail (clavus annalis) into the temple of Jupiter (clavi figendi causa),[859] an act of natural magic which was supposed to be a specific against pestilence. These dictators imminuto jure, appointed for a special purpose, were expected to retire as soon as the function was completed.[860] The six months’ tenure of the dictator rei gerundae causa[861] was never legally exceeded, but it might be shortened, for it seems to have been necessary for the dictator to resign when the consul who had nominated him retired from office.[862]