With the dictatorship of Caesar begins the last stage in the life of the republican comitia. For them it was from the beginning of his supremacy essentially a time of decline. Although Caesar continued to submit his plans to the assemblies for legalization, he rapidly concentrated in his own person powers and functions hitherto exercised by the people; and the triumviri, his successors, after a sham-republican interregnum, constituted in law as well as in fact a three-headed despot. Mention will first be made of the comitial acts which conferred powers and honors on Caesar during his life. In 49 when news of his success in Spain reached Rome, M. Aemilius Lepidus, a partisan who was then urban praetor, persuaded the tribes to adopt a resolution empowering the author to name Caesar dictator.[2860] Entering upon this office after his return to Rome, about the end of November, Caesar used it to secure the ratification of laws—to be considered hereafter—and to hold the electoral comitia. After eleven days he resigned. At this election he was chosen consul with P. Servilius Vatia as colleague.[2861] About the middle of October, 48, when the senate and people heard of the death of Pompey, they conferred on him by law (1) absolute judicial authority over the partisans of Pompey,[2862] (2) the right to make peace and war at his own pleasure, the pretext being the development of opposition to him in Africa, (3) the right to be candidate for the consulship five years in succession,[2863] (4) the dictatorship for an indefinite period, to which he was appointed by his colleague in the consulship,[2864] (5) the tribunician authority for life, with the privilege of sitting with the tribunes, (6) the right to preside at the election of all patrician magistrates, for which reason the comitia were postponed till his return to the city, (7) the right to assign the pretorian provinces according to his own judgment, (8) the right to triumph over Juba, king of Mauretania, though at that time he did not know there was to be a war with that state.[2865] Near the end of April, 46, when news came of the victory at Thapsus, the Romans granted him (1) the censoria potestas with the title of praefectus morum for three years, (2) the annual dictatorship for ten years, (3) the right to nominate candidates for both ordinary and extraordinary offices. These powers were doubtless conferred by comitial action. At the same time great honors were heaped upon him, probably through senatus consulta.[2866] Again in April, 45, after the battle of Munda honors were showered on him in still greater profusion.[2867] Politically the most important were the lifelong, hereditary title of imperator, which he bore as a second cognomen,[2868] the sole right to command soldiers and to manage the public funds, the privilege of being consul ten years in succession (which he did not use), the prefecture of morals and the dictatorship for life, and finally deification under the title of the “Invincible God.”[2869] In fact for the remainder of his life there was no cessation in the bestowal of divine and human honors. Among those of his last year were the tribunician sanctity[2870] and the right to have as many wives as he pleased—the latter granted by a plebiscite of C. Helvius Cinna.[2871] The theocratic monarchy which the Romans were erecting for him on the ruins of the republic left no independence to the senate or the assemblies. The functions of the latter were especially abridged by the large power of nominating and appointing officials possessed by the monarch.[2872] His important legislative plans, however, he brought before the people, preferably in their tribal comitia.
In December, 49, after returning from Spain, Caesar sought to relieve somewhat the distress of debtors and at the same time to quiet the general fear that he might decree a cancellation of all debts.[2873] This object he accomplished through a law, (1) that interest already paid should be deducted from the principal, (2) that the property of the debtor should be taken in payment of the balance—not at the low values then existing, but on the basis of ante-bellum prices, (3) that no one should hoard more than fifteen thousand denarii in cash.[2874] The third article was a renewal of an old law.[2875] Another statute,[2876] 47, released from a year’s rent tenants of houses in Rome which brought the owner more than 2000 sesterces or of houses outside the city which earned more than 500.[2877] These houses were private property, and the law was therefore a partial abolition of private debts.[2878] Such prosperity came that in another year, 46, Caesar found it possible to cut down the number who received free grain from 320,000 to 150,000.[2879] He provided for the surplus population as well as for his veterans by colonies in Gaul, Spain, Africa, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia.[2880] Eighty thousand citizens found homes in these provincial settlements.[2881]
Among Caesar’s most admirable traits was his liberality in restoring to their civil rights those who were under disfranchisement and in granting the citizenship to aliens. At his suggestion M. Antonius, tribune of the plebs in 49, secured the enactment of a plebiscite for restoring the ius honorum to the children of those whom Sulla had proscribed.[2882] Near the end of the same year, also at his request, the praetors and tribunes brought before the people and carried proposals for the recall of certain persons who had been exiled, unjustly as he believed, under the Pompeian law on ambitus.[2883] It was further at his suggestion that L. Roscius, probably praetor, enacted a comitial law for granting the citizenship to the Transpadani who at this time possessed simply the ius Latii.[2884] Another law of unknown authorship confirmed the grant of the franchise already made on his own responsibility to the people of Gades.[2885]
Among his administrative improvements was the increase in the number of praetors from eight to ten[2886] in 47, for which a comitial statute may be assumed.[2887] The people surrendered to him a large part of their electoral right through the plebiscite of L. Antonius,[2888] December, 45, which granted him the privilege of nominating and presenting to the comitia a half of the candidates below the consulship.[2889] The degradation into which the ordinary magistracies had been brought by the supremacy of Caesar is indicated by the deposition of two tribunes of the plebs, C. Epidius Marullus and L. Caesetius Flavus, because of their opposition to monarchy, 44, through a plebiscite of their colleague, C. Helvius Cinna.[2890]
To the year 46 belongs Caesar’s legislation on judicial matters. First disqualifying the tribuni aerarii for jury service,[2891] he ordered through the comitia that the courts be composed exclusively of the senators and knights.[2892] The man who had been carried to supreme power on the shoulders of the common people now spurned even the most respectable of their number from association with himself in the administration.[2893] It is known that he enacted laws on individual crimes.[2894] A lex de vi and a lex de maiestate are mentioned,[2895] but it is not known in what they differed from those of earlier or later date.[2896] His sumptuary statute of the same year[2897] restricted the expense of the table,[2898] sepulchral monuments, dwellings,[2899] furniture, clothing, jewels, and other luxuries, covering the ground in great detail.[2900] A Cassian plebiscite empowered him to recruit the patrician rank[2901]—a means of creating a nobility devoted to himself, while supplying a religious need. A law proposed by himself (de provinciis) limited proconsuls to two years of command and propraetors to one,[2902] that in future they might not acquire such strength as to overthrow the civil authority, after the pattern set by the author of the regulation. It was by a vote of the people, too, that the famous lex Iulia municipalis was adopted, probably in the autumn of 46.[2903] Although there has been much controversy regarding the nature of the document,[2904] it is most probably a general municipal statute. Far from exhaustive, it had to be supplemented by special laws for the several cities.[2905] The extant fragment, which seems to begin with the second table, regulates (1) applications of citizens resident at Rome for free grain,[2906] (2) the aedilician supervision of the streets, buildings, and games of the capital,[2907] (3) the qualifications for the magistracies and the decurionate in the municipia,[2908] (4) the introduction of the Roman census in the municipia,[2909] and (5) of individual Roman statutes in those municipia which enjoyed the laws of Rome.[2910] The inclusion of the capital with the cities of Roman rights throughout the empire in one general law marks the first step in the monarchical process of reducing Rome to the level of the municipia.[2911]
In comparison with the amount of reform work undertaken by Caesar the legislative activity of the people was remarkably slight. The growth of the monarchy wrought the decline of the comitia as well as of the senate; and the assassination of the monarch brought equally to the republic and to the assemblies but a short interval of pretended liberty.[2912] A lex proposed by the consul M. Antonius confirmed the acts of Caesar and established as law the plans which he left in writing at his death.[2913] It was arbitrarily used by the consul for legalizing every whim of his own. His colonial law, passed shortly after Caesar’s assassination,[2914] seems to have been used by him for establishing in Italy a permanent support for himself.[2915] The last known agrarian law of the republic is that of his brother, L. Antonius, tribune of the plebs in the same year, 44. It ordered the distribution of the Pomptine marshes—which the author asserted were then ready for cultivation[2916]—and other extensive tracts.[2917] The execution of the measure was in the hands of septemviri,[2918] including the author[2919] and his two brothers.[2920] It was annulled in the following year by the senate on the ground that it had been violently passed.[2921]
Meantime the consul Antonius continued his legislation. An arbitrary act restored to the pontifical college its ancient right to appoint its chief in place of the long-used election by seventeen tribes.[2922] Next to colonization, however, his chief legislative interest was in the reform of the courts. He repealed the Julian statute concerning the qualifications of jurors;[2923] and instead of restoring the eligibility of the tribuni aerarii, he made up a third decury of retired centurions and other veterans.[2924] His law for granting an appeal to the people from the quaestiones de vi and de maiestate,[2925] had it remained in force, would as Cicero asserts have abolished these courts and have given free rein to mob violence, such as comitial trials for these crimes must necessarily be under conditions as they then existed.[2926] Popularity was the aim of this measure as well as of his lex which forever abolished the dictatorship. Along with all his other laws they were annulled by the senate in February 43.[2927]
The establishment of the triumviri rei publicae constituendae in 43 practically abolished the functions of the comitia, as these three potentates usurped the right of filling all offices by appointment and of managing affairs according to their pleasure without consulting either the senate or the people.[2928] The power they had seized was legalized for a period of five years by the plebiscite of P. Titius, November 43, passed without regard to the trinundinum.[2929] The reference of business to the people was thereafter a rare indulgence. It may have been through a comitial act that the triumviri resolved upon building a temple to Serapis and Isis in the first year of their rule.[2930] We are less certain that the measure of Octavianus in 41 for a partial remission of rents was offered to the people.[2931] To the year 40 belongs the lex Falcidia, of P. Falcidius, tribune of the plebs, which permitted a man to bequeath no more than three-fourths of his estate, leaving one-fourth to his natural heirs.[2932] We need not be surprised to find that the rulers gladly allowed the people to vote them honors. In their first year they were awarded civic crowns by a comitial act, doubtless of the tribes;[2933] and in 35 the honors bestowed upon Octavia and Livia probably came through a plebiscite, as did certainly the triumph voted to Octavianus.[2934] Last may be mentioned the law of L. Saenius, consul in 30, supported by a senatus consultum, which empowered Octavianus to create new patricians.[2935]
Schulze, C. F., Volksversammlungen der Römer, 124-39; Peter, C., Epochen der Verfassungsgeschichte der röm. Republik, 165 ff.; Gesch. Roms, bk. VII. ch. v; bks. VIII-X; Ihne, Hist. of Rome, bk. VII. chs. xxi-xxiii; Lange, Röm. Alt. iii. 146-597; cf. ii, see index s. the various laws; Commentationes de legibus Antoniis a Cicerone Phil. v. 4. 10 commemoratis particula prior et posterior, in Kl. Schr. ii. 126-49; Die lex Pupia, etc., ibid. ii. 175-94; Die promulgatio trinum nundinum, etc., ibid. ii. 214-70; Long, G., Decline of the Roman Republic, 5 vols.; Herzog, E., Gesch. und System der röm. Staatsverf. i. 509-65; ii. 1-130; Mommsen, History of Rome, bk. IV. ch. x; bk. V; Röm. Staatsr. and Röm. Strafr. see indices s. the various laws, courts, etc.; Ein zweites Bruchstück des rubrischen Gesetzes vom Jahre 705 Roms, in Hermes, xvi (1881). 24-41; Lex coloniae Iuliae Genetivae Urbanorum, etc., in Ephem. Ep. ii (1875). 105-51; Lex municipii Tarentini, ibid. ix. (1903). 1-11; Ueber die lex Mamilia Roscia Peducaea Alliena Fabia, in Röm. Feldmess. ii. 221-6; Neumann, C., Gesch. Roms, i. 602-23; ii. entire; Ferrero, G., Greatness and Decline of Rome; Schiller, H., Geschichte der röm. Kaiserzeit, I. bk. i; Lengle, Sullanische Verfassung; Sunden, J. M., De tribunicia potestate a L. Sulla imminuta quaestiones; Freeman, E. A., Lucius Cornelius Sulla, in Hist. Essays, ii. 271-306; Wilmanns, Ueber die Gerichtshöfe während des Bestehens der lex Cornelia iudiciaria, in Rhein. Mus. N. F. xix (1864). 528-41; Voigt, M., Ueber die lex Cornelia sumptuaria, in Ber. sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. xlii (1890). 244-79; Nipperdey, K., Die leges annales der röm. Republik, in Abhdl. sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. v. (1870). 1-88; Keil, J., Zur lex Cornelia de viginti quaestoribus, in Wiener Studien, xxiv (1902). 548-51; Ritschl, F., In leges Viselliam Antoniam Corneliam observationes epigraphicae, in Opuscula Philologica, iv (1878). 427-45; Oman, C., Seven Roman Statesmen, v-ix; Strachan-Davidson, Cicero; Forsyth, W., Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, 2 vols.; White, H., Cicero, Clodius, and Milo; Sternkopf, W., Ueber die “Verbesserung” des clodianischen Gesetzwurfes de exilio Ciceronis, in Philol. N. F. xiii (1900). 272-304; Noch einmal die correctio der lex Clodia de exilio, ibid. xv. 42-70; Gurlitt, Lex Clodia de exilio Ciceronis, ibid. xiii. 578-83; Greenidge, A. H. J., The lex Sempronia and the Banishment of Cicero, in Cl. Rev. vii (1893). 347 f.; Schmidt, O. E., Der Briefwechsel des M. Tullius Cicero von seinem Prokonsulat in Cicilien bis zu Cäsars Ermordung; John, C., Die Entstehungsgeschichte der catilinarischen Verschwörung, in Jahrb. f. cl. Philol. Supplb. viii (1875, 1876). 701-819; Abbott, F. F., The Constitutional Argument in the Fourth Catilinarian Oration, in Cl. Journ. ii (1907). 123-5; Napoleon III, Jules César, 2 vols.; Fowler, W., Julius Caesar; Nissen, H., Der Ausbruch des Bürgerkrieges 49 vor Chr., in Hist. Zeitschr. xliv (1880). 409-45; xlvi (1881). 48-105; Hirschfeld, O., Der Endtermin der gallischen Staatshalterschaft Caesars, in Klio, iv (1904). 76-87. Wiegandt, L., Studien zur staatsrechtlichen Stellung des Diktators Cäsar: das Recht über Krieg und Frieden; Caesar und die tribunizische Gewalt; Hackel, H., Die Hypothesen über die lex Iulia municipalis, in Wiener Studien, xxiv (1902). 552-62; Cuq, E., Juges plébéiens de colonie de Narbonne, in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire (1881). 297-311; Kornemann, Die cäsarische Kolonie Karthago und die Einführung röm. Gemeindeordnung in Africa, in Philol. N. F. xiv (1901). 402-26; Liebenam, W., Gesch. und Organisation d. röm. Vereinswesens; Waltzing, J. P., Corporations professionelles chez les Romains, i. 78 ff.; Babelon, E., Monnaies de la république Romaine, i. 79-88; Dreyfus, R., Lois agraires, pt. iii; Toutain, J., Municipium, in Daremberg et Saglio, Dict. iii. 2022-34; Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. i. 256 f.: M’. Acilius Glabrio (Klebs); 554-6; M. Aemilius Lepidus (idem); 1800-3: Ambitus (Hartmann); ii. 191-4: Apparitores (Habel); 2482-4: C. Aurelius Cotta (Klebs); 2485-7: L. Aurelius Cotta (idem); iii. 1376 f.: C. Calpurnius Piso (Münzer); iv. 82-8: P. Clodius Pulcher (Fröhlich); 1252-5: C. Cornelius (Münzer); iv. 1287 f.: L. Cornelius Cinna—son of the famous democratic consul (idem); 1380 f.: Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus (idem); 1522-66: L. Cornelius Sulla Felix (Fröhlich); 2401-4: Deiotarus (Niese).