But the very fact that the consulship was such a prize, as well as the fact that its occupation led to the filling of other high offices—the government of certain senatorial and imperial provinces and the praefecture of the city—induced a shortening of its tenure and a consequent multiplication of the individuals who might enjoy its privileges and become qualified for other duties. The expensiveness of the office may also have contributed to this end; for the increase in the number of occupants would lessen the pecuniary burden imposed by the celebration of games.[1720] Even the half-yearly consulships of the early Principate become in course of time very infrequent, and we subsequently find a tenure of but four or two months.[1721] Those appointed for 1st January were ordinarii, the others suffecti,[1722] and the whole year was dated by the names of the former.
The number of the praetors varied under Augustus and his successors from ten to eighteen. Twelve, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen are found at various times, and the final limit of eighteen was still maintaining itself in the time of Hadrian.[1723] The reason for this expansion of their numbers was their utility for the enlarged jurisdiction of the period. The Republican functions of the praetor urbanus and the praetor peregrinus continued, until those of the latter became extinct, perhaps soon after the conferment of citizenship on the whole Roman world by Caracalla (212 A.D.);[1724] while other praetors, were guides of the quaestiones perpetuae, until the disappearance of these commissions towards the close of the second century.[1725] But new spheres of extraordinary jurisdiction claimed the attention of others. Thus Claudius instituted two praetors for adjudication on trusts (fidei commissarii),[1726] Nerva one for the decision of cases arising between the fiscus and private individuals (fiscalis),[1727] and Marcus Aurelius another for the granting, and perhaps for the control, of guardians (tutelaris).[1728] For a short time the administration of the aerarium was also in the hands of praetors.[1729]
Most of the specific functions, which the aediles had exercised during the Republic, now passed to other hands or were shorn of their importance. The history of the later Republic had shown how incompetent these officials were to exercise an adequate control of the market, and the cura annonae passed to the Princeps and to the praefecture established by him. Their police functions were to a large extent absorbed by the praefecture of the city, but they still destroyed books condemned by the Senate,[1730] and attempted to carry out the sumptuary laws.[1731] The cura urbis still entailed on them the duty of keeping clean the streets of Rome[1732] and a supervision over places of public resort.[1733] Much of their criminal jurisdiction must have lapsed with the disappearance of trials before the comitia, but they still retain a power of inflicting fines and seizing pledges—one which was limited and regulated during the reign of Nero[1734]—and the special civil jurisdiction of the curule aediles still continues.[1735]
The quaestors still maintained their functions as financial officials and general assistants to the magistrates. Their number had been raised by Caesar to forty, but was again reduced to twenty by Augustus.[1736] For a time two quaestors had the guardianship of the aerarium,[1737] and others were in the public provinces the financial and judicial assistants of the proconsuls.[1738] Four more were assigned to the consuls, two to each, as their agents and assistants;[1739] while the Princeps himself employed two, commended by himself (quaestores Augusti, quaestores candidati principis), chiefly for the purpose of reading his despatches to the Senate.[1740] During the reign of Claudius a step was taken which “put up the quaestorship for sale,”[1741] and associated it with a function that clung to it longer than any other. This was the exhibition of gladiatorial games at the cost of the exhibitor,[1742] a pecuniary burden which henceforth fell on every aspirant for higher office, until Severus Alexander ordained that only the quaestores candidati should themselves defray the expenses of these spectacles, the cost of the games given by the others being defrayed from the fiscus.[1743]
The tribunes of the Plebs were not colleagues of the Princeps, for the tribunica potestas was not the tribunate, and the actions in virtue of it were not even theoretically subject to the tribunes’ veto. But their great negative powers were still occasionally exercised in some departments of state during the first century of the Principate. Like the office itself, however, they were but a shadow of those of the Republic.[1744] The intercessio against decrees of the Senate might be attempted when unimportant matters, such as the right to scourge actors, were under discussion,[1745] or might be employed as a warning to the Senate that the Princeps should be consulted on the business in hand.[1746] In higher matters of state its exercise might mean danger or death to the tribune who mistook the fictitious for the real Republic, or who, recognising the tyranny, chose to brave the anger of the Emperor.[1747] The right of auxilium was still exercised against a praetor in 56 A.D.,[1748] and appealed to by an Emperor in 69.[1749] But this, too, soon disappeared to leave no trace. In the early Principate the tribunes seem to have possessed some right of summoning civil cases from the Italian towns to Rome,[1750] probably through an exercise of the veto; and, although their criminal jurisdiction had disappeared with the comitia, they retained some power of inflicting fines (multae), which was limited during the reign of Nero.[1751] There is also evidence that they still possessed the right of veto in civil jurisdiction.[1752] Amongst positive powers their presidency of the Senate still survives, as we shall see in dealing with that body.
The office of tribune, since it conferred little distinction, was by no means an object of ambition; and the difficulty of getting the ten places filled led to the inclusion of this magistracy, as one of the necessary steps, in the cursus honorum,[1753] and sometimes to more drastic measures such as the selection of ex-quaestors by lot under Augustus,[1754] or the reception of members of the equestrian order under Claudius.[1755] Yet, with all its disadvantages, the tribunate survived the Principate, and tribunes are named in imperial despatches of the fourth century.[1756]
(2) The Comitia
An element in the restoration of the Republic by Augustus, after the provisional government of the Triumvirate was over, was a renewal of the life of the popular assemblies.[1757] But it was impossible that their purely local character could be reconciled with the imperial interests of the day, or that their popular character should be consistent with the rule of the Princeps and his nobility. For a moment they remained to a certain extent a reality, and throughout the Principate they exercised the shadow of power which was sufficient to express the still surviving theory of popular sovereignty.
From the first a considerable portion of the powers of the comitia had been transferred wholly to the Princeps; for to him belonged the rights of declaring war, of making peace, and of forming alliances;[1758] while the criminal jurisdiction which the people exercised at the end of the Republic was no longer necessary, for while the more definite portion of it was handed over to the quaestiones,[1759] the more indefinite now fell under the extraordinary cognisance of the Senate. Legislative power tended to centre more and more in the Princeps and Senate, and it is only during the first century that enactments are mentioned which have the true forms of leges and plebiscita.[1760] The right of election was the most permanent of the popular prerogatives. Under Augustus the people still chose its magistrates, although the choice was considerably influenced by the Princeps;[1761] and after Tiberius in the first year of his reign had caused all the real elements of election—the profession, the nomination, the vote—to be transferred to the Senate,[1762] the formal renuntiatio of the successful candidates (an integral part of the election)[1763] still continued to be made to the people down to the third century.[1764] It is only in respect to the consulship that there is a doubt whether, during the first century A.D., more than the mere announcement of the result was not effected in the comitia. The evidence is conflicting, but the indications of a formal popular control of these appointments are on the whole outweighed by those which refer to the Senate the real elements of election—rendered nugatory at times by the way in which the Princeps exercised his powers of nomination.[1765] There can be little question, however, that in the later Principate the consular, like all other, elections were vested in the Senate. The survival of the comitia into the third century, whether for the purpose of the renuntiatio or for that of ratifying the powers of the Princeps, was no mere mass-meeting informally assembled. The stately forms of the Republic were preserved, and when the centuries were assembled the red flag still flew from the Janiculum.[1766]