Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

The creation of a dictator did not abolish the other magistracies of the people; it merely suspended their independent activity. The dictator was a collega major given to the consuls, who still continued under his direction to command armies,[863] and even those troops which were levied by the dictator took the oath of obedience to the consuls as well.[864] The praetors still sat in the courts, and lesser officials continued to perform the subordinate functions of government. But it was felt that under a dictator all magistrates existed on sufferance, with the exception of those of the Plebs.[865] It is certain that the presence of a dictator brought no legal diminution to the powers of the tribune; it is equally certain that constitutional custom dictated that the auxilium of these city magistrates should not be effective when the state was under martial law.[866] Collision was necessarily rare since the duties of the dictator took him far afield.

This extraordinary power had yet some normal limitations. The dictator never meddled with civil jurisdiction; and he had not the power, possessed by the consuls while in Rome, of taking money from the aerarium without a decree of the Senate.[867] The government was naturally unwilling that a magistrate to all intents and purposes a king should wage war out of Italy; and there is but one example of a dictator commanding in the extra-Italian world.[868]

A further limitation to his original powers, and one of the greatest consequence, was subsequently introduced. The dictator was made subject to the provocatio within the city,[869] probably by the lex Valeria of 300 B.C.[870]—a change which, while not hampering the power of this magistracy in the field, prevented its being used for ruthlessly crushing a so-called sedition in Rome. Although we here see the commencement of the infringement of its civil power, the military authority of the office persisted for a century longer. It was not until the Hannibalic war that the two weakening elements of popular election and colleagueship were introduced into this magistracy. In the year 217 B.C., when, after the disaster at the Trasimene lake, it was difficult to communicate with the sole surviving consul, Q. Fabius Maximus was elected dictator,[871] presumably at the comitia centuriata under the guidance of a praetor. In the same year the distrust and misplaced confidence of the people raised M. Minucius, the master of the horse, to an equality of command with Fabius.[872] Both acts were signs that the office was felt to be an anachronism, and the next year (216) marks the last instance of the military dictatorship.[873] The last dictator (comitiorum habendorum causa) was appointed in 202;[874] for the application of the name to Sulla and Caesar was the transference of the title of a constitutional office, in the first instance to a constituent authority, in the second to a monarchy, and in neither case was even the ancient mode of nomination preserved.[875]

The Magister Equitum

Every dictator, no matter for what purpose appointed,[876] nominated as his delegate a master of the horse,[877] who, unlike other delegates, possessed the imperium, six fasces,[878] and a rank equal to the praetor.[879] These distinctions justify the assertion that he was a magistrate,[880] and apparently one of curule rank, even though his tenure of power was strictly dependent on that of his nominator.[881] Like a magistrate he asked for a lex curiata for the ratification of his imperium,[882] and he seems to have had power to question the people and to transact business with the Senate.[883] In these three respects the office differed from that of the tribuni celerum of the monarchy. As the dictator was a lesser king, the magister equitum was a greater lieutenant; but, in spite of the theoretical independence of his position, his services were entirely at the disposal of the dictator, who could enforce obedience to his commands, if necessary, by capital punishment.[884] Although originally employed, as the name signifies, for the sole leadership of the equites under the higher imperium of the dictator, and always to some extent preserving his character of a cavalry general, he could be entrusted by his absent superior with full command either in the camp or in Rome.[885] The office was a useful one, as it gave two generals of tried military capacity to Rome in time of danger, and obviated the disadvantages that might follow from the dictator’s having to use incompetent consuls or praetors as his subordinates. This consideration also explains why, in order to secure experienced men for the post, the custom became fixed of choosing ex-consuls or ex-praetors.[886]

The Consuls

The consuls, after their election at the comitia centuriata, could at least in later times assume the insignia of their rank, and transact all the ordinary official business within the state without waiting for the consent of the curiae. Their first act was the taking of the auspices; these were always favourable, for the haruspex who stood by[887] announced, as a matter of form, that lightning had been seen upon the left. Armed with this consent they assumed the praetexta, and, preceded by their lictors, performed the first significant act of authority. This act was the summons of the Senate,[888] and was one which showed that they were the magistrates who stood highest in the Roman executive. For, indeed, throughout Republican history, the consulship—though in power it often yielded to the tribunate or dictatorship, and in the reverence it inspired to the censorship—was the highest titular office in the state.[889] The rank of the consuls is sufficiently exhibited by the fact that it was chiefly by their names that the years were dated,[890] and by the ceremonial respect which was paid to them by the other magistrates.[891]

In considering the functions of the consuls we must distinguish between two periods of the history of the Republic. The first extends from their institution to the year 81 B.C.; the second from this year, when the reforms of Sulla introduced a change in their position which was felt as long as consuls continued to exist. This change caused no alteration in their powers, but only in the scope of their activity. During the first period they are the heads of the whole state, and are found ruling wherever Roman energy extends; during the second they are practically the chief magistrates only of the city of Rome and of Italy.

The theory of colleagueship—that each individual member of a college was vested with the fullest power of action subject to the veto of his assessor—did not necessitate a united activity of the consuls in every department of state. They divided their functions, sometimes before their entry on office,[892] and in early times there are traces of the fundamental division of competence expressed by the terms domi and militiae, one consul occasionally taking the field at the head of an army, while the other remained at home to transact the business of civil administration.[893] This arrangement, which divested colleagueship of its meaning as a safeguard against the rule of a single man, was, however, very unusual, and, as a rule, the consuls were present together in Rome or undertook a joint command abroad. But joint activity in the city—even after the duties of registration had been given to the censor and those of civil justice to the praetor—was in some departments almost impossible. It was obviated by a principle of rotation, which gave the administration and the fasces for a single month to each consul in turn,[894] the elder of the two being given the symbol of power first, and the one who possessed it at the moment being described as consul major.[895] This distinction never wholly vanished; for Caesar, we are told, revived in his consulship (59 B.C.) an old custom by which the lictors walked behind the consul who had not the fasces.[896] But long before Caesar’s time positive co-operation between the consuls in the city was common. They summoned the Senate together, and many consular laws bear the names of two rogators. There remained, however, several important acts which, while they, morally if not legally, demanded the assent of both consuls, could yet be performed only by one. Such were the election of magistrates and the nomination of a dictator. In these cases the question as to which consul should act was often decided by agreement (comparatio) or by lot (sortitio).

In all domestic matters, with the exception of civil jurisdiction and finance, the consuls were the heads of the administration,[897] and this, in the developed Republic, meant that they were the chief servants of the Senate. It was the consuls who regularly consulted this body, who expressed its decrees, as well as commands which they had a constitutional right to issue on their own authority, in the form of edicts, and who brought legislative measures, which had received senatorial approval, before the comitia of the centuries and of the tribes. It was they, too, who represented the state to foreign kings and nations and introduced their envoys into the Senate.