Product Code Database
A consul was the highest elected public official of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC). Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the cursus honoruman ascending sequence of public offices to which politicians aspiredafter that of the Roman censor, which was reserved for former consuls. Each year, the Centuriate Assembly elected two consuls to serve jointly for a one-year term. The consuls alternated each month holding fasces (taking turns leading) when both were in Rome. A consul's imperium (military power) extended over Rome and all its Roman provinces.
Having two consuls created a check on the power of any one individual, in accordance with the republican belief that the powers of the former kings of Rome should be spread out into multiple offices. To that end, each consul could veto the actions of the other consul.
After the establishment of the Roman Empire (27 BC), the consuls became mere symbolic representatives of Rome's republican heritage and held very little power and authority, with the Roman emperor acting as the supreme authority.
The practice of dual leaders (diarchy) continues to this day in San Marino and is directly derived from the customs of the Roman Republic. Equivalent to the consuls of ancient Rome, the Captains Regent serve as dual leaders of the country. They are however not heads of government, but only heads of state without executive power.
The consulship was believed by the Romans to date back to the traditional establishment of the Republic in 509 BC, but the succession of consuls was not continuous in the 5th century BC, when the consulship was supposedly replaced with a board of , which was elected whenever the military needs of the state were significant enough to warrant the election of more than the usual two consuls. These remained in place until the office was abolished in 367 BC and the consulship was reintroduced.
Consuls had extensive powers in peacetime (administrative, legislative, and judicial), and in wartime often held the highest military command. Additional religious duties included certain rites which, as a sign of their formal importance, could only be carried out by the highest state officials. Consuls also read auguries, an essential religious ritual, before leading armies into the field.
Two consuls were elected each year, serving together, each with veto power over the other's actions, a normal principle for magistracies. They were elected by the comitia centuriata, which also elected praetors and Roman Censor. However, they formally assumed powers only after the ratification of their election in the older Curiate Assembly, which granted the consuls their imperium by enacting a law, the lex curiata de imperio.
If a consul died during his term (not uncommon when consuls were in the forefront of battle) or was removed from office, another would be elected by the comitia centuriata to serve the remainder of the term as consul suffectus ("suffect consul"). A consul elected to start the yearcalled a consul ordinarius ("ordinary consul")held more prestige than a suffect consul, partly because the year would be named for ordinary consuls (see consular dating).
According to tradition, the consulship was initially reserved for patricians and only in 367 BC did plebeians win the right to stand for this supreme office, when the Licinio-Sextian rogations provided that at least one consul each year should be plebeian. The first plebeian consul, Lucius Sextius, was elected the following year. Nevertheless, the office remained largely in the hands of a few families, as only about fifteen novus homo ("new men" with no consular background) were elected to the consulship until the election of Cicero in 63 BC. Modern historians have questioned the traditional account of plebeian emancipation during the early Republic (see Conflict of the Orders), noting for instance that about thirty percent of the consuls prior to Sextius had plebeian, not patrician, names. It is possible that only the chronology has been distorted, but it seems that one of the first consuls, Lucius Junius Brutus, came from a plebeian family. s.v. Lucius Iunius Brutus Another possible explanation is that during the 5th-century social struggles, the office of consul was gradually monopolized by a patrician elite.T. J. Cornell9780415015967 ISBN 9780415015967
During times of war, the primary qualification for consul was military skill and reputation, but at all times the selection was politically charged. With the passage of time, the consulship became the normal endpoint of the cursus honorum, the sequence of offices pursued by the Roman who chose to pursue a political career. When Sulla regulated the cursus by law, the minimum age of election to consul became 43 or 42 years of age. This age requirement was later changed to 32 during the Empire.Telford, L. (2014). Sulla: A Dictator Reconsidered. United Kingdom: Pen & Sword Military, p. 216
Beginning in the late Republic, after finishing a consular year, a former consul would usually serve a lucrative term as a proconsul, the Roman governor of one of the senatorial provinces.
It would not be uncommon for the patrician consuls of the early Republic to intersperse public office with agricultural labor. in In Cicero's words: in agris erant tum senatores, id est senes:Cic. Sen. 56 'In those days senators—that is, seniors—would live on their farms'. This practice was obsolete by the 2nd century.
The imperial consulate during the Principate (until the 3rd century) was an important position, albeit as the method through which the Roman aristocracy could progress through to the higher levels of imperial administration—only former consuls could become consular legates, the proconsuls of Africa and Asia, or the urban prefect of Rome. It was a post that would be occupied by a man halfway through his career, in his early thirties for a patrician, or in his early forties for most others. Emperors frequently appointed themselves, or their protégés or relatives, as consuls, even without regard to the age requirements. Caligula once said that he would appoint his horse Incitatus consul, which was probably a joke intended to belittle the Senate's authority.Cassius Dio, Roman History, 59.14.
The need for a pool of men to fill the consular positions forced Augustus to remodel the suffect consulate, allowing more than the two elected for the ordinary consulate. During the reigns of the Julio-Claudians, the ordinary consuls who began the year usually relinquished their office mid-year, with the election for the suffect consuls occurring at the same time as that for the ordinary consuls. During reigns of the Flavian dynasty and Antonine emperors, the ordinary consuls tended to resign after a period of four months, and the elections were moved to 12 January of the year in which they were to hold office. Election of the consuls were transferred to the Senate during the Flavian or Antonine periods, although through to the 3rd century, the people were still called on to ratify the Senate's selections. The emperor did not assume the consulship of every year of his reign, but did nominate himself multiple times; Augustus was consul 13 times, Domitian 17, and Theodosius II 18.;
The proliferation of suffect consuls through this process, and the allocation of this office to Novus homo tended, over time, to devalue the office. However, the high regard placed upon the ordinary consulate remained intact; it was one of the few offices that one could share with the emperor, and during this period it was filled mostly by patricians or by individuals who had consular ancestors. If they were especially skilled or valued, they may even have achieved a second (or rarely, a third) consulate. Prior to achieving the consulate, these individuals already had a significant career behind them and would expect to continue serving the state, filling in the post upon which the state functioned. Consequently, holding the ordinary consulship was a great honor, and the office was the major symbol of the still relatively republican constitution. Probably as part of seeking formal legitimacy, the break-away Gallic Empire had its own pairs of consuls during its existence (260–274). The list of consuls for this state is incomplete, drawn from inscriptions and coins.
By the end of the 3rd century, much had changed. The loss of many pre-consular functions, and the gradual encroachment of the equites into the traditional senatorial administrative and military functions, meant that senatorial careers virtually vanished prior to their appointment as consuls. This had the effect of seeing a suffect consulship granted at an earlier age, to the point that by the 4th century, it was being held by men in their early twenties, and possibly younger, without the significant political careers behind them that was normal previously. As time progressed, second consulates, usually ordinary, became far more common than during the first two centuries, whereas the first consulship was usually a suffect consulate. The consulate during this period was no longer just the province of senators—the automatic awarding of a suffect consulship to the equestrian praetorian prefects (who were given the ornamenta consularia upon achieving their office) allowed them to style themselves cos. II when they were later granted an ordinary consulship by the emperor. All this had the effect of further devaluing the office of consul to the point that by the final years of the 3rd century, holding an ordinary consulate was occasionally left out of the cursus inscriptions, whereas by the first decades of the 4th century, suffect consulships were hardly ever recorded.
One of the reforms of Constantine I (r. 306–337) was to assign one of the consuls to the city of Rome and the other to Constantinople. Therefore, when the Empire was divided into two on the death of Theodosius I (r. 379–395), the emperor of each half acquired the right of appointing one of the consuls—although on occasion an emperor did allow his colleague to appoint both consuls for various reasons. In the Western Empire, some Eastern consuls were never recognized by the emperor, who became a puppet of powerful generals such as Stilicho. The consulship, bereft of any real power, continued to be a great honor, but the celebrations attending it—above all the chariot races—had come to involve considerable expense; part of the expense had to be covered by the state. At times the consulship was given to teenagers or even children, as in the cases of Varronianus, Valentinianus Galates, Olybrius Junior and the children of the emperor.
In the 6th century, the consulship was increasingly sparsely given, until it was allowed to lapse under Justinian I (r. 527–565): the western consulship lapsed in 534, with Decius Paulinus the last holder, and the consulship of the East in 541, with Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius. Fasti consulares had already been abolished in 537, when Justinian introduced dating by the emperor's regnal year and the indiction. In the eastern court, the appointment to consulship became a part of the rite of proclamation of a new emperor from Justin II (r. 565–578) on, and is last attested in the proclamation of the future Constans II (r. 641–668) as consul in 632. In the late 9th century, Emperor Leo the Wise (r. 886–912) finally abolished the office in Novel 94 of his Basilika. By that time, the Greek titles for consul and ex-consul, " hypatos" and " apo hypaton", had been transformed to relatively lowly honorary dignities.
In the west, the rank of consul was occasionally bestowed upon individuals by the Papacy. In 719, the title of Roman consul was offered by the Pope to Charles Martel, although Martel refused it. About 853, Alfred the Great, then a child aged four or five, was made a Roman consul by the Pope.
The consuls were invested with the executive power of the state and headed the government of the Republic. Initially, the consuls held vast executive and judicial power. In the gradual development of the Roman legal system, however, some important functions were detached from the consulship and assigned to new officers. Thus, in 443 BC, the responsibility to conduct the Census was taken from the consuls and given to the Roman censor. The second function taken from the consulship was their judicial power. Their position as chief judges was transferred to the in 366 BC. After this time, the consul would only serve as judges in extraordinary criminal cases and only when called upon by decree of the Senate.
As part of their executive functions, the consuls were responsible for carrying into effect the decrees of the Senate and the laws of the Roman assemblies. Sometimes, in great emergencies, they might act on their own authority and responsibility. The consuls also served as the of the Roman state. Before any foreign ambassadors reached the Senate, they met with the consuls. The consul would introduce ambassadors to the Senate, and they alone negotiated between the Senate and foreign states.
The consuls could convene the Senate, and presided over its meetings. The consuls served as president of the Senate, one at a time, alternating every month. They could also summon any of the three Roman assemblies (Curiate, Centuriate, and Tribal) and presided over them. Thus, the consuls conducted the elections and put legislative measures to the vote. When neither consul was within the city, their civic duties were assumed by the praetor urbanus.
Each consul was accompanied in every public appearance by twelve , who displayed the magnificence of the office and served as his bodyguards. Each lictor held a fasces, a bundle of rods that contained an axe. The fasces symbolized the military power, or imperium. When inside the pomerium, the lictors removed the axes from the fasces to show that a citizen could not be executed without a trial. Upon entering the comitia centuriata, the lictors would lower the fasces to show that the powers of the consuls derive from the people.
Within the city a consul could punish and arrest a citizen, but had no power to inflict capital punishment. When on campaign, however, a consul could inflict any punishment he saw fit on any soldier, officer, citizen, or ally.
Each consul commanded an army, usually two legions strong, with the help of military tribunes and a quaestor who had financial duties. In the rare case that both consuls marched together, each one held the command for a day respectively. A typical consular army was about 20,000 men and consisted of two citizen and two allied legions. In the early years of the Republic, Rome's enemies were located in central Italy, so campaigns lasted a few months. As Rome's frontiers expanded, in the 2nd century BC, the campaigns became more lengthy. Rome was a warlike society and very seldom did not wage war. War and society in the Roman World, ed. Rich & Shipley So the consul upon entering office was expected by the Senate and the People to march his army against Rome's enemies, and expand the Roman frontiers. His soldiers expected to return to their homes after the campaign with spoils. If the consul won an overwhelming victory, he was hailed as imperator by his troops, and could request to be granted a Roman triumph.
The consul could conduct the campaign as he saw fit, and had unlimited powers. However, after the campaign, he could be prosecuted for his misdeeds (for example for abusing the provinces, or wasting public money, as Scipio Africanus was accused by Cato in 205 BC).
Another point which acted as a check against consuls was the certainty that after the end of their term they would be called to account for their actions while in office.
There were also three other restrictions on consular power. Their term in office was short (one year); their duties were pre-decided by the Senate; and they could not stand again for election immediately after the end of their office. Usually a period of ten years was expected between consulships.
In Latin, the Latin grammar construction is frequently used to express the date, such as " M. Messalla et M. Pupio Pisone consulibus", translated literally as "With Marcus Messalla and Marcus Pupius Piso (being) the consuls", with 'being' implied, as it appears in Caesar's De Bello Gallico.
Consular Dating Key
|
|
