A Smaller Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities

by William Smith

PRĪVĬLĒGĬUM. [[Lex].]

PRŎBŎLĒ (προβολή), an accusation of a criminal nature, preferred before the people of Athens in assembly, with a view to obtain their sanction for bringing the charge before a judicial tribunal. The probolé was reserved for those cases where the public had sustained an injury, or where, from the station, power, or influence of the delinquent, the prosecutor might deem it hazardous to proceed in the ordinary way without being authorised by a vote of the sovereign assembly. In this point it differed from the eisangelia, that in the latter the people were called upon either to pronounce final judgment, or to direct some peculiar method of trial; whereas, in the probolé after the judgment of the assembly, the parties proceeded to trial in the usual manner. The cases to which the probolé was applied were, complaints against magistrates for official misconduct of oppression; against those public informers and mischief-makers who were called sycophantae (συκοφάνται); against those who outraged public decency at the religious festivals; and against all such as by evil practices exhibited disaffection to the state.

PRŎBOULEUMA. [[Boule].]

PRŎBOULI (πρόβουλοι), a name applicable to any persons who are appointed to consult or take measures for the benefit of the people. Ten probouli were appointed at Athens, after the end of the Sicilian war, to act as a committee of public safety. Their authority did not last much longer than a year; for a year and a half afterwards Pisander and his colleagues established the council of Four Hundred, by which the democracy was overthrown.

PRŌCONSUL (ἀνθύπατος), an officer who acted in the place of a consul, without holding the office of consul itself. The proconsul, however, was generally one who had held the office of consul, so that the proconsulship was a continuation, though a modified one, of the consulship. The first time when the imperium of a consul was prolonged, was in B.C. 327, in the case of Q. Publilius Philo, whose return to Rome would have been followed by the loss of most of the advantages that had been gained in his campaign. The power of proconsul was conferred by a senatusconsultum and plebiscitum, and was nearly equal to that of a regular consul, for he had the imperium and jurisdictio, but it differed inasmuch as it did not extend over the city and its immediate vicinity, and was conferred, without the auspicia, by a mere decree of the senate and people, and not in the comitia for elections. When the number of Roman provinces had become great, it was customary for the consuls, who during the latter period of the republic spent the year of their consulship at Rome, to undertake at its close the conduct of a war in a province, or its peaceful administration, with the title of proconsuls. There are some extraordinary cases on record in which a man obtained a province with the title of proconsul without having held the consulship before. The first case of this kind occurred in B.C. 211, when young P. Cornelius Scipio was created proconsul of Spain in the comitia centuriata.

PRŌCŪRĀTOR, a person who has the management of any business committed to him by another. Thus it is applied to a person who maintains or defends an action on behalf of another, or, as we should say, an attorney [[Actio]]: to a steward in a family [[Calculator]]: to an officer in the provinces belonging to the Caesar, who attended to the duties discharged by the quaestor in the other provinces [[Provincia]]: to an officer engaged in the administration of the fiscus [[Fiscus]]: and to various other officers under the empire.

PRŌDĬGĬUM, in its widest acceptation, denotes any sign by which the gods indicated to men a future event, whether good or evil, and thus includes omens and auguries of every description. It is, however, generally employed in a more restricted sense, to signify some strange incident or wonderful appearance which was supposed to herald the approach of misfortune, and happened under such circumstances as to announce that the calamity was impending over a whole community or nation rather than over private individuals. The word may be considered synonymous with ostentum, monstrum, portentum. Since prodigies were viewed as direct manifestations of the wrath of heaven, it was believed that this wrath might be appeased by prayers and sacrifices duly offered to the offended powers. This being a matter which deeply concerned the public welfare, the necessary rites were in ancient times regularly performed, under the direction of the pontifices, by the consuls before they left the city, the solemnities being called procuratio prodigiorum.

PRODŎSĬA (προδοσία) included not only every species of treason, but also every such crime as (in the opinion of the Greeks) would amount to a betraying or desertion of the interest of a man’s country. The highest sort of treason was the attempt to establish a despotism (τυραννίς), or to subvert the constitution (καταλύειν τὴν πολιτείαν), and in democracies καταλύειν τὸν δῆμον or τὸ πλῆθος. Other kinds of treason were a secret correspondence with a foreign enemy; a betraying of an important trust, such, as a fleet, army, or fortress, a desertion of post, a disobedience of orders, or any other act of treachery, or breach of duty in the public service. But not only would overt acts of disobedience or treachery amount to the crime of προδοσία, but also the neglect to perform those active duties which the Greeks in general expected of every good citizen. Cowardice in battle (δειλία) would be an instance of this kind; so would any breach of the oath taken by the ἔφηβοι at Athens; or any line of conduct for which a charge of disaffection to the people (μισοδημία) might be successfully maintained. The regular punishment appointed by the law for most kinds of treason appears to have been death, which, no doubt, might be mitigated by decree of the people, as in the case of Miltiades and many others. The goods of traitors, who suffered death, were confiscated, and their houses razed to the ground; nor were they permitted to be buried in the country, but had their bodies cast out in some place on the confines of Attica and Megara. Therefore it was that the bones of Themistocles, who had been condemned for treason, were brought over and buried secretly by his friends. The posterity of a traitor became ἄτιμοι, and those of a tyrant were liable to share the fate of their ancestor.

PRŎĔDRI. [[Boule].]

PRŌFESTI DĬES. [[Dies].]