Republican Rome

Readers of my books blog will have noticed I've been reading a fair number of novels about Ancient Rome. In case you have been encouraged to read any of the books you might find the following summary of the government of Republican Rome (510 BC to first century BC) helpful. Once Rome changed from a Republic to an Empire (circs 44BC to 476 AD) these offices were altered but the change was a gradual process as Emperors assumed more and more power.

The Dictator
The office of Dictator was an occasional and extraordinary one usually created for war emergencies. Almost all military, executive and judicial powers were placed in the hands of one man for a period not exceeding six months. He was appointed by one of the Consuls on the advice of the Senate. After entering office the Dictator could appoint his own assistant called The Master of Horse. The office was last used in 216 BC.

The Senate
The Senate was a body of around 300 of the most powerful men in the state (600 after Sulla’s reign). The Senate sat in a council of debate. Its ‘advice’ had to be followed by the Magistrates.

The Magistrates
The Magistrates were the Consuls, Praetors, Aediles and Censors...

The Consuls
Two Consuls are elected each year and may not be re-elected again the following year (though some broke this rule). The highest elected office in the Republic the Consuls wielded enormous power and influence. (When Rome became an Empire the office of Consul became appointive rather than elected.)

The Praetors
Praetor was a title granted by the government of Ancient Rome to men acting in one of two official capacities: the commander of an army, either before it was mustered or more typically in the field, or an elected magistrate assigned duties that varied depending on the historical period but mostly connected with the courts and law. The praetors set down a body of legal precedents.

The Aediles
Based in Rome, the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings, markets and regulation of public festivals. They also had powers to enforce public order. Half of the aediles were from the ranks of plebeians and half were patricians. The office was generally held by young men intending to follow the cursus honorum to high political office. However it was not a legal part of the cursus, merely an advantageous starting point which demonstrated the aspiring politician's commitment to public service.

The Censors
A Censor was a magistrate of high rank in the ancient Roman Republic. This position (called censura) was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances. There were two Censors elected each year. Initially both Censors were patricians but later one was a patrician and one a plebeian. Every fifth year the Censors selected from the magistrates to fill vacancies in the Senate..

The Proconsuls
A Proconsul was a promagistrate who, after serving as consul, spent a year as a governor of a province. Certain provinces were reserved for proconsuls; who received which one by senatorial appointment was determined by random choosing or negotiation between the two proconsuls.

Comitia Centuriata
The Comitia Centuriata (literally meaning Army Assmbly but not actually connected to the armed forces) was prsided over by the Consuls and held once a year. All citizens divided into 193 (Later 183) voting units called centuries that voted en bloc – one vote per unit – to elect the magistrates.

Comitia Tributa
The Comitia Tributa, the ‘Popular Assembly’, was presided over by the Tribunes of the Plebs. The Plebeian representatives were elected by the people who voted in 35 bloc units called Tribes. Meeting in the Forum or on the Capitol the people also voted for laws which applied to all citizens.

The Plebeian Representatives
The Plebs were represented by three ranks – the Tribunes, the Plebeian Aediles and the Quaestors.

The Tribunes
There were ten Tribunes elected each year. The Tribunes were surprisingly powerful as they could veto (I forbid) a law proposed to the Comitia or an action of the Senate if the Tribunes felt it to be contrary to the interests of the Plebs. As the chief representative of the Roman plebeians, the tribune's house was required to be open to all at all times, day or night. Under the popular principle of Rotation in office, an incumbent tribune was ineligible for re-election. The tribune also had the power to exercise capital punishment against any person who interfered in the performance of his duties (the favourite threat of the tribune was therefore to have someone thrown from the Tarpeian Rock). The tribune's sacrosanctity was enforced by a solemn pledge of the plebeians to kill any person who harmed a tribune during his term of office. The tribune was the only magistrate that was able to convene the Concilium Plebis and acted as its president, which also gave him the exclusive right to propose legislation before it. Also, the tribune could summon the Senate and lay proposals before it.
When Lucius Cornelius Sulla was dictator he severely curtailed the tribunes of the plebeians by invalidating their power of veto and making it illegal for them to bring laws before the Concilium Plebis without the Senate's consent. Afterwards, the tribune was restored to its former power during the consulship of Crassus and Pompey.


The Quaestors
Quaestors were originally appointed by the consuls to investigate criminal acts and determine if the consul needed to take public action. Later the Quaestors took on additional responsibilities and became elected officials of the Roman Republic who supervised the treasury and financial affairs of the state, its armies and its officers. Initially there were four Quaestors, later there were ten. After Sulla all ex-Quaestors automatically went into the Senate.

The Lictors
The lictor's main task was to attend as bodyguards to magistrates. They carried rods decorated with fasces and, outside the pomerium, with axes that symbolized the power to execute. They followed the magistrate wherever he went, including the Forum, his house, temples and the baths. Lictors were organized in an ordered line before him, with the primus lictor (the principal lictor) right on his front, waiting for orders. If there was a crowd, the lictors opened the way and kept their master safe, pushing all aside. Lictors also had legal and penal duties: they could at their master's command arrest Roman citizens and punish them. A Vestal Virgin was accorded a lictor when her presence was required at a public ceremony.

An article on Grief

IN THE MIRROR
C J Edwards - 10th January 1991

It had been a mistake putting that mirror up in the office. Originally he'd put it there to check his hair when he came in in the morning. In the old days he couldn't have cared less about his hair. If it was a bit out of place people could take it or leave it, as they could take him or leave him. No doubt he'd check it some time during the morning when he went to the gents and until then 'people' could lump it. But this was not the old days. He needed the confidence boost that checking his hair in the mirror gave him each morning as he entered his office.
The problem was that there were occasions, and today had been one on them, when he caught a glimpse of himself in it as he crossed the office from his desk. As he did so there'd be a split second when he failed to recognize himself, when he thought 'who is that chap?' The realisation that it was him with grey in his beard and lines upon his face was always a bit stark, a real downer. OK, so he was now in his early forties but that was no excuse for the tired look in the depths of his eyes or for the extra few pounds of pressure he had to apply to errant face muscles to pull his mouth into a smile.

"You're never fully dressed without a smile" the Disc Jockey had been ramming home to the audience over the radio that morning. Well, hell, he thought -as he listened to the semi-moronic drivel that interspersed the news items -I guess I'm naked most days! It was easy to ascribe most of his fatigue and world-weariness to pain. And so he did on those occasions when the world caught him without his mask. After all, he was in pain from the moment he woke up (or more frequently was woken up by Junior) to when he finally subsided into unconsciousness late at night. Pain from a molar (one of his six surviving teeth) as the upper denture pressed on it; pain from gall stones which occasionally took an agonising stroll; pain from the migraine that made him bang his head against the wall; pain from a broken toe or absent kneecap. There was always something to supplement the over-riding pain from the unidentified neck problem which had made pain-killers his best friends for many years now. No, not pain-killers, he'd long since resolved not to call them that after concluding pain-relievers was more appropriate. "Not to be taken more frequently than every four hours and only eight a day." How he watched the clock. Damn, only two and a half hours since the last lot. Another hour and a half to go. Life was measured in four hour spans and if Junior kept him up at night there was the added problem of choosing whether to overdose that day or have one hell of an evening without them.

Pain could also take the fall for his irritability. "You must have the patience of Saint," said his secretary on hearing of another crashingly disturbed night thanks to his the two year old with an allergy to sleep. Tell that to my wife and son, he thought. They caught the brunt of the morning after's ranting and raving about being unable to tie his sons shoelaces. Numb fingers, a curious by-product of whatever the unidentified neck problem might be.

But if physical pain was an accomplice, an accessory before and after the fact, it wasn't the culprit. Deep down he knew the real pain was nothing muscular or nerve-related. It was what the Victorians would have quaintly described as a broken heart. He'd spent thirty-odd years wondering if he had the capacity to love as others loved, or seemed to. One failed marriage had left him a Saturday parent to two girls under eight and a Sunday son to parents in their seventies. When he found his Grandmother dead his lack of emotion only re-inforced his view that he was, to use a P G Wodehouse phrase, a 'cold sort of fish'.

He got used to the single life and its blessed freedoms whilst feeling guilty if he went for a leisurely drive on his own that he hadn't got the girls chattering in the back of the car or his parents (who liked nothing better than an hour in the country) sitting with him at the water's edge. Typical Libra - always wanting to please too many people too often and always failing to reach this impossible target.

Then, just to shatter the illusion of stability, he fell in love. A son was born. Money was a problem (maintenance being a one way street to a bottomless pit), the flat was a bit small for three... but as a whole God was in his Heaven and all was right with the World. At five weeks his son had an operation, a minor thing to the medical profession but a heart-stopping day or two to adoring parents. At eleven weeks and six days the doctors pronounced him fully recovered - "You've a fine healthy boy there" they told his wife at 11 am. By 2 pm he was on a life-support machine and by 8 pm he was another cot death statistic for the Liverpool Area Health Authority. 'In 1987 this butterfly outlived 1,530 apparently healthy babies' says the cot death poster on the wall. His son was one and gone.

The first year after David had died he kept a diary. A journal of a journey through grief, in grief, around grief, under grief but never over grief. A sort of A to Z of how to suffer.

The second year he'd stopped writing. Things were black but not so wet and sticky black as they had been. The urgency had gone from the search for either an answer or relief. By contrast his wife was drowning more in the second year where previously her head had been kept above the water by some raw instinct for survival. Another son, the sleepless Junior, was born before the first's anniversary. A joy to both his parents but the innocence of parenthood had dissipated long before his arrival. Every sneeze became a life-threatening illness in her eyes while he semi-symipathetically mocked her about it - then lay awake as she tossed and turned in enviable if unsatisfactory sleep. Should he be, or appear, so blase. Perhaps that sneeze, that cry, that cough was different to its predecessor, A baby monitor became best friend and constant bleeping companion.

Then into year three - another milestone along the track where every yard forced forward against the wind is countered by a foot back. The mountain summit, death, still seeming a long way off. Occasional writings satisfied his need to cry from the heart. A need hidden from all but a very few precious friends (and they bereft themselves) since day one when the generally expected and hoped for stiff upper lip of masculinity was applied with instant glue. Befriending newly-bereaved parents had become an ironic or perhaps logical outlet for the need to make something positive from life's experiences.

Into year four, and now he was nearly into year five. Such a long time, such a short time. And his general air and bearing lied to others about the normality of this happily married man with fine son, daughters to be proud of (every other week-end), big house, two cars, good job and a study full of books.

But the mirror doesn't lie

Dates galore

I have a site which lists some of the more interesting things to have happened on a particular day of the year - http://theylivedthisday.blogspot.com/.

Identifying dates on which things happened is difficult. Many events are quoted differently in different sources.

The first complication is that different countries ran different calendars for many years – the Julian and the Gregorian. By 1752 when Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar there were eleven days difference between the two. A source which quotes something as happening in on 20th October 1700 may or may not have corrected the date to our current calendar. Different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar at different times. Spain, France and parts of Italy adopted it as long ago as 1582 when the Papal Bull was first issued. Denmark, Norway and Germany waited until 1700 to adopt it. Alaska made the change in 1862 but it was not until 1918 that Russia adopted the Gregorian Calendar and Greece waited until 1923.

A further complication was the fact that the civil or legal New Year was celebrated on 25th March so, for example, Pepys’ diary entry for 1st January 1660 follows his entry for 31st December 1660.... To reduce misunderstandings on the date, it was not uncommon in parish registers for a new year heading after 24 March, for example 1661, to have another heading at the end of the following December indicating "1661/62". This was to explain to the reader that the year was 1661 Old Style and 1662 New Style.

But adding "Old Style" (OS) and "New Style" (NS) to dates did not end the confusion. In some cases the terms were used to indicate whether a date had been adjusted from the Julian to the Gregorian and in others simply to show that the start of the year had been adjusted.

In the late eighteenth century some people continued to celebrate their birthdays on the date they were born whilst others adjusted it and celebrated it eleven days later.

Since the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, the difference between Gregorian and Julian calendar dates has increased by three days every four centuries. After 1753, the British tax year continued to operate on the Julian calendar and began on 5 April, which was the “Old style” new tax year of 25th March. A 12th skipped Julian leap day in 1800 changed its start to 6 April. But just to confuse matters even further it was not changed when a 13th Julian leap day was skipped in 1900, so the tax year in the UK still begins on 6 April.

Another confusion from a couple of centuries ago was the length of time news took to travel across the world. If someone died in New Zealand the news would take many weeks to get by ship to England and then weeks more to cross the Atlantic on the clippers. The date on which the event happened would be pretty irrelevant six or ten weeks later. (an amusing example of the slowness of communication was the Battle of New Orleans of January 8th 1815. Andrew Jackson led his US troops to victory in the Battle of New Orleans between the US and Great Britain in the War of 1812 but the war had actually ended in 1814 No one in New Orleans knew!

Ah well, even if dates from years gone by are sometimes questionable, at least nowadays there is no such confusion. Modern communications are so fast that anything which happens anywhere in the world may be known about within minutes anywhere else.

At least, I thought there could be no confusion until Sir Edmund Hilary died. He died in the early morning of Friday, 11 January, in Auckland Hospital, New Zealand. Obituaries were coming in thick and fast in Britain on 10th January because we are thirteen hours behind New Zealand. So we had a situation where a man’s obituaries were being published a day before he died! In years to come anyone looking to check what date he died would find most sites showing 11th January and yet checking original sources would show it on the 10th January early evening news programmes in the US.