Lex curiata de imperio
Encyclopedia
In the constitution of ancient Rome
Roman Constitution
The Roman Constitution was an uncodified set of guidelines and principles passed down mainly through precedent. The Roman constitution was not formal or even official, largely unwritten and constantly evolving. Concepts that originated in the Roman constitution live on in constitutions to this day...

, the lex curiata de imperio (plural leges curiatae) was the law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...

 confirming the rights of higher magistrates
Roman Magistrates
The Roman Magistrates were elected officials in Ancient Rome. During the period of the Roman Kingdom, the King of Rome was the principal executive magistrate. His power, in practice, was absolute. He was the chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and the sole commander of the army...

 to hold power, or imperium
Imperium
Imperium is a Latin word which, in a broad sense, translates roughly as 'power to command'. In ancient Rome, different kinds of power or authority were distinguished by different terms. Imperium, referred to the sovereignty of the state over the individual...

. In theory, it was passed by the comitia curiata, which was also the source for leges curiatae pertaining to Roman adoption.

In the late Republic
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

, historians and political theorists thought that the necessity of such a law dated to the Regal period
Roman Kingdom
The Roman Kingdom was the period of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a monarchical form of government of the city of Rome and its territories....

, when kings
King of Rome
The King of Rome was the chief magistrate of the Roman Kingdom. According to legend, the first king of Rome was Romulus, who founded the city in 753 BC upon the Palatine Hill. Seven legendary kings are said to have ruled Rome until 509 BC, when the last king was overthrown. These kings ruled for...

 after Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...

 had to submit to ratification by the Roman people
SPQR
SPQR is an initialism from a Latin phrase, Senatus Populusque Romanus , referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and used as an official emblem of the modern day comune of Rome...

. Like many other aspects of Roman religion
Religion in ancient Rome
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs and cult practices regarded by the Romans as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities...

 and law, the lex curiata was attributed to Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus. What tales are descended to us about him come from Valerius Antias, an author from the early part of the 1st century BC known through limited mentions of later authors , Dionysius of Halicarnassus circa 60BC-...

, Rome's second king. This origin seems to have been reconstructed after the fact to explain why the law was required, at a time when the original intent of the ceremony conferring imperium was no longer understood. The last two kings, however, were said to have ruled without such ratification, which at any rate may have been more loosely acclamation.

The law was passed in an assembly that during the late Republic existed in name only, the comitia curiata
Curiate Assembly
The Curiate Assembly was the principal assembly during the first two decades of the Roman Republic. During these first decades, the People of Rome were organized into thirty units called "Curia"...

, based on the curia
Curia
A curia in early Roman times was a subdivision of the people, i.e. more or less a tribe, and with a metonymy it came to mean also the meeting place where the tribe discussed its affairs...

e
. The curiae were supposed to have been the thirty political divisions created by Romulus and named after the Sabine women
The Rape of the Sabine Women
The Rape of the Sabine Women is an episode in the legendary history of Rome in which the first generation of Roman men acquired wives for themselves from the neighboring Sabine families. The English word "rape" is a conventional translation of Latin raptio, which in this context means "abduction"...

, who were from Cures
Cures
Cures, a Sabine town between the left bank of the Tiber and the Via Salaria, about 26 km. from Rome. According to legend, it was from Cures that Titus Tatius led to the Quirinal the Sabine settlers, from whom, after their union with the settlers on the Palatine, the whole Roman people took the...

 in Sabine
Sabine
The Sabines were an Italic tribe that lived in the central Appennines of ancient Italy, also inhabiting Latium north of the Anio before the founding of Rome...

 territory. These political units were replaced as early as 218 BC by lictor
Lictor
The lictor was a member of a special class of Roman civil servant, with special tasks of attending and guarding magistrates of the Roman Republic and Empire who held imperium, the right and power to command; essentially, a bodyguard...

s; the people no longer assembled, as each curia was represented by a lictor, and confirmation was virtually automatic, unless a tribune
Tribune
Tribune was a title shared by elected officials in the Roman Republic. Tribunes had the power to convene the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them the right to propose legislation before it. They were sacrosanct, in the sense that any assault on their person was...

 chose to obstruct. Even then, an unconfirmed magistrate might forge ahead with the functions of his office regardless. By the late Republic, a magistrate could simply dispense with this ratification in claiming his imperium, or a legislator could include a provision in a bill that rendered a curiate law redundant. The censors, by contrast, were confirmed by the comitia centuriata. It therefore becomes unclear what purpose the lex curiata continued to serve: "The origin, nature, and importance of the lex curiata de imperio have been extensively and inconclusively debated."

It has sometimes been supposed that the lex curiata is what conferred the right to take auspices, though scholars are not unanimous on this point. H.S. Versnel, in his study of the Roman triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...

, argued that the lex curiata de imperio was a prerequisite for a commander before he could be awarded a triumph. Imperium, Versnel maintained, was not granted to a commander within a political framework, but was rather a quality within the man that manifests itself and is acknowledged ceremonially by a lex curiata de imperio. The lex was not fundamental to the holding of imperium or auspicium, but was rather the act through which the people expressed their recognition of that authority.

Even if the lex curiata became largely ceremonial, it retained enough force to be useful for political tactics when evoked. Tribune
Tribune
Tribune was a title shared by elected officials in the Roman Republic. Tribunes had the power to convene the Plebeian Council and to act as its president, which also gave them the right to propose legislation before it. They were sacrosanct, in the sense that any assault on their person was...

s could obstruct its passage; the consuls
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

 of 54 BC lacked the lex, and their legitimacy to govern
Roman governor
A Roman governor was an official either elected or appointed to be the chief administrator of Roman law throughout one or more of the many provinces constituting the Roman Empire...

 as proconsul
Proconsul
A proconsul was a governor of a province in the Roman Republic appointed for one year by the senate. In modern usage, the title has been used for a person from one country ruling another country or bluntly interfering in another country's internal affairs.-Ancient Rome:In the Roman Republic, a...

s was questioned; during the civil war
Caesar's civil war
The Great Roman Civil War , also known as Caesar's Civil War, was one of the last politico-military conflicts in the Roman Republic before the establishment of the Roman Empire...

, the consuls of 49 used their own lack of a lex as an excuse for not holding elections for their successors.

Selected bibliography

  • Lintott, Andrew
    Andrew Lintott
    Andrew William Lintott is a classical scholar who specializes in the political and administrative history of ancient Rome, Roman law, and epigraphy. He is an emeritus fellow of Worcester College, University of Oxford....

    . The Constitution of the Roman Republic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.
  • Oakley, S.P. A Commentary
    Commentary (philology)
    In philology, a commentary is a line-by-line or even word-by-word explication usually attached to an edition of a text in the same or an accompanying volume. It may draw on methodologies of close reading and literary criticism, but its primary purpose is to elucidate the language of the text and...

    on Livy, Books VI-X
    . Oxford University Press, 2005, vol. 3.
  • Versnel, H.S. Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph. Brill, 1970.
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