Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

On the other hand the acceptance of a reign took the twofold form of an oath to observe the acta of the dead Emperor[1696] and a vote to assign him a place amongst the deified Caesars. The prospect of this posthumous recognition of the merits of a reign must often have exercised a stimulating influence on the occupant of the throne,[1697] although it was somewhat spoilt by the consciousness that the decision of the Senate would, to a large extent, be guided by the wishes of his successor in office.

§ 4. The other Powers in the State—the Magistracy, the Comitia, and the Senate

(1) The Magistracy

As the Republican constitution continued in form unimpaired, so its most essential feature, the magistracy, although subjected to modification, was still an integral element in the administration of Rome and Italy during the Principate. Few radical differences were introduced into the magisterial qualifications or career; the innovations affected only the age for office, the starting point in the cursus honorum, and one of the steps in the certus ordo magistratuum. The minimum age for the quaestorship was now twenty-five years,[1698] for the praetorship thirty,[1699] and two new qualifications were necessary before the quaestorship could be held. One was membership of the vigintivirate, the aggregate of lower magistracies to which the sex-et-vigintiviratus of the Republic had now shrunk.[1700] The other, perhaps originally a practical rather than a legal qualification, was the tenure of the military tribunate,[1701] the latter being held generally after one of the magistracies in the vigintivirate had been administered. This change, though apparently formal, meant a fundamental alteration in the spirit of the new nobility. The possibilities of culture, to be acquired in the schools of Athens and Rhodes, were now almost extinct. From the age of eighteen the aspirant to the highest honours in the State might be serving with Caesar’s legions on the frontier. It was through the Emperor’s grace that he attained a military position which was at least a practically necessary qualification for the magistracy; at the age of twenty-five the young soldier entered on the race for higher honours; as an ex-praetor, even at times as an ex-quaestor, he might be made the general of a brigade (legatus legionis), and from thence proceed to the government of a military, or the administration of a civil, province. Nothing shows more clearly the true military character of the new monarchy than the fact that even its civil and Republican posts were administered by soldiers; nothing explains more adequately the subservience of the Senate than the fact that it was composed mainly of ex-officers, trained in the habits of rigid obedience and in unwavering respect to the sacramentum—of men to whom Caesar was not Princeps but Imperator.

With respect to the steps in office which followed the quaestorship, a further change was due to the unwillingness of candidates to burden themselves with the aedileship, now that its powers of bribery were of no avail, and with the now undistinguished tribunate of the Plebs. The rule was laid down that between the quaestorship and praetorship a Patrician must hold the curule aedileship, a Plebeian one of the two aedileships or the tribunate.[1702] An exemption from this lengthy course could, however, be given by an exercise of the imperial right of adlectio. This was the conferment of an artificial magisterial rank. In form it was a power exercised in the revision of the list of the Senate and elevated from a lower to a higher grade within that order. But the adlectio also had the effect of qualifying for the magistracy immediately above the rank thus artificially assigned. One who was adlectus inter quaestorios was qualified for the tribunate, one adlectus inter tribunicios for the praetorship, and one adlectus inter praetorios for the consulship. The consulship was amongst civic magistracies still the crown of a political career; hence the rarity of adlection inter consulares.[1703]

A smaller honour was the conferment by the Senate, generally on the proposal of the Princeps, of the ornamenta of a magistracy (quaestoria, praetoria, consularia) on one who had not held the magistracy itself. This honour gave no right of entry into the Senate, and none of holding the magistracy next in rank to that whose ornaments were conferred,[1704] but merely the privilege of wearing the insignia of an office at festivals and on other public occasions;[1705] it may, however, have given the right of voting with the class of senators whose ornamenta were conferred, if the person honoured was already provided with a seat at the Senate.[1706] This distinction was by no means reserved for persons legally qualified for the magistracy; it might be granted to knights high up in the imperial service, such as the praefects of the guard[1707] and of the watch,[1708] or to provincial procurators.[1709] Claudius granted it to imperial freedmen,[1710] and we find that even senators excluded from the curia were sometimes left the ornamenta of their rank.[1711]

The permission to use the ornaments of a triumph (ornamenta triumphalia) was the result of the limitation of the right to the actual triumph. The application of the principle that this right was inconsistent with a subordinate imperium,[1712] had, when applied to the Principate, the effect of legally confining triumphs to the Princeps alone; for the governors of his own provinces were merely his delegates, while those of senatorial provinces, though nominally in independent authority, had as a rule no armies at their command.[1713] The triumphal insignia might, however, be granted by the Senate on the proposal of the Princeps.[1714]

The election to the magistracies will be more fitly treated in connexion with the comitia and the Senate. The obligations to which their holders bound themselves on their appointment were those of the Republic, with the exception that the jus jurandum in leges was amplified by the inclusion of the valid acta of the Princeps—those, that is, of a living or a previous emperor whose binding character had been recognised by oath.[1715]

If we turn now to the individual offices, we find that the consuls are still the officially recognised heads of the Republic and of the Senate. On the suspension of the Principate they are the representatives of the state,[1716] and we find them acting in accordance with this character. It was the consuls who, on the deposition of Nero, sent despatches to Galba with the news of his selection,[1717] and it was by the surrender of his dagger to a consul that the abdication of Vitellius was effected.[1718] The dignity of the office is shown by the fact that it was the only one in which a citizen might have the Princeps as a colleague, and still more by the view of a gracious emperor that, when he was performing the functions of that office, the vast dignity of the Principate was for a moment lost in that of the consulship.[1719] As presidents of the Senate the consuls were partners in its nominal sovereignty. They guided its jurisdiction, both in civil and in criminal matters, and in the former may have acted as its commissioners. They also possessed in their own right high judicial functions—in matters of trust (fidei commissa), for instance—which were originally delegated to them by the Princeps, and of which we shall treat elsewhere.