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3

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found in every part of Italy, and beyond it in Sardinia, Narbonensis, Spain, Dacia, and even Egypt. On the death of the first Princeps his complete deification was accorded by the Senate, and the recognition was followed by the permission to erect temples in the provinces, while private as well as public initiative fostered the cult of divus Augustus. The precedent set in the cases of the first two emperors had firmly established the practice of posthumous deification, and its denial to a Princeps was almost equivalent to the condemnation of his reign. Although the merits of Claudius as a divinity might be questioned, and Vespasian, with sceptical tolerance, regarded his own deification as an inevitable consequence of his position,5 yet by the close of the second century the virtues of the Antonines had made the worship of the deified Emperor a more genuine cult than ever, and a man was regarded as impious who had not some image of Marcus Aurelius in his house. This worship of the Caesars had two lasting effects on the social and political life of the Roman, Italian, and provincial worlds.

(1) It established a priestly aristocracy. On the death and deification of Augustus a college of Sodales Augustales was created for Rome, consisting of twenty-one nobles, and containing in its list members of the imperial house.7 Flamines Augustales held. the same dignified position in their provinces or in their native towns, and were drawn from the aristocracies of the states. The Flamen of the worship of Roma and Augustus, that had its centre at Narbo, wore the praetexta, was attended by a lictor, had a front seat at games, and the right of taking part in the deliberations of the local Senate. His wife, the Flaminica, was clothed on festal days in white or purple, and, like the Flaminica Dialis at Rome, might not be compelled to take an oath.8 The lower and middle classes were not forgotten in the distribution of these religious honours. From the magistri Augustales, whom we have

1 Mourlot Histoire de l'Augustalité dans l'Empire Romain pp. 29-33. 2 Tac. Ann. i. 73.

3 Thus in 15 A.D. a temple was erected at Tarraco (Tac. Ann. i. 78). p. 363.

4

5 Suet. Vesp. 23 "Prima quoque morbi accessione, 'Vae,' inquit, 'puto, Deus fio.'

6 Vita Marci 18.

7 Tac. Ann. i. 54.

8 See the inscription of Narbonne in Rushforth Latin Historical Inscriptions n. 35. In this case the Flaminica was the wife of the Flamen, as at Rome; but this was usually not the case in the municipal towns. See Marquardt Staatsverw. p. 174.

already mentioned, developed an ordo Augustalium, which existed before the death of Augustus both in Italy and the provinces, and the cult with which it was associated was partly of spontaneous origin, partly cultivated by the imperial government, and may in some cases have been founded by the municipal towns themselves. The Augustales were not priests, like the Flamines and Sacerdotes, but merely an order with certain insignia -the praetexta, the fasces, the tribunal-which they displayed in the performance of their official duties, and they have been compared to magistrates without secular magisterial functions. The form which the organisation assumed was the appointment of sexviri or seviri, probably by the senate of the municipal town; after the year of service they pass into the order of Augustales." The order was composed mainly of freedmen-of a class, that is, whose birth excluded them from the public offices of their states, but who, forming as they did a large portion of the trading population, contributed, perhaps more than any other, to the economic vitality of the towns. The worship of Augustus, by giving them insignia and certain proud moments in which they appeared to dazzling effect before the public eye, compensated to some extent for the loss of privileges which the law withheld.

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(2) Caesar-worship was the only force that gave a kind of representative life to the provinces. Great provincial diets (concilia, communia, Ková) made their appearance both in the Eastern and Western world. Asia had already dedicated temples to kings, proconsuls, and to the city of Rome; and in the Hellenic world the national assemblies which survived the Roman conquest may have suggested, or may even at times have been continued in, these new amphictyonic gatherings. The favour shown by the imperial government to this proof of loyalty soon led the West to follow the example of the East, and the establishment of the worship of Roma and Augustus at Lugdunum, by creating a concilium for the three Gauls, was the prototype of a similar organisation in other European provinces.

1 Mommsen Staatsr. iii. p. 455.

2 This was the usual type, but there were local variations, and the relation of sevir to Augustalis was not always the same. In Cisalpine Gaul we have seviri et Augustales, where the ex-sevir retains his title. In southern Italy Augustalis is used for sevir. See Mourlot op. cit. pp. 69-72; Rushforth op. cit. p. 64.

3 For a "templum et monumentum in honour of the governor see Cic. ad Q. fr. 1, 1, 9, 26. A temple to Roma was erected by Smyrna as early as 195 B.C. (Tac. Ann. iv. 56).

Eventually every province of the Empire seems to have evolved a diet of some kind, and even Britain, the least organised of Roman dependencies, possessed at Colchester a temple to the deified Claudius.1 The high-priests of the cult (sacerdotes provinciae, apxiepeîs) were chosen annually from the most distinguished families, and delegates (legati, ovvedpoɩ) from the various districts or states, which made up the province, were despatched to the yearly meetings (concilia, Kowá). These delegates elected the high-priests and voted the sums required for the purposes of the cult. But they felt themselves to be representatives of the province; they voiced its nationality and represented its collective interests as no other power did, and it would have been impossible except by force to limit their utterances to purely religious questions. This compulsion the government did not attempt. It permitted, perhaps encouraged, these delegates to make representations about the condition of the province,2 and even to utter complaints about the conduct of Roman officials. It is a pity that the imperial government did not do even more to preserve the fast-waning sense of nationality; but the value of what it did is proved by the fact that these assemblies and the dignified orders which they created survived into the Christian Empire. Titles such as Asiarch, Syriarch, Phoenicarch, derived from the high-priesthood of Caesar's cult, were respected by Constantine's legislation, and survived like ghosts of the pagan past to haunt for a time the life of a new œcumenical church which, through a fuller faith and a higher allegiance, had effected its triumph over the old.

1 Tac. Ann. xiv. 31 "templum divo Claudio constitutum quasi arx aeternae dominationis aspiciebatur."

2 Imperial rescripts to concilia or кowá are frequent. See Dig. 47, 14, 1; 49, 1, 1; 48, 6, 5, 1. Cf. 1, 16, 4, 5.

3 Plin. Ep. iii. 4, 2. Where, as in this passage, the legati of a province are represented as making a complaint, they doubtless represent the concilium. In A.D. 62 a senatus consultum was passed "ne quis ad concilium sociorum referret agendas apud senatum pro praetoribus prove consulibus grates" (Tac. Ann. xv. 22).

4 Cod. 5, 27, 1 (A.D. 336).

APPENDIX I

THE TWO ASSEMBLIES OF THE TRIBES

THE existence of a comitia tributa populi, as distinct from the concilium plebis tributim, was first demonstrated by Mommsen (Römische Forschungen, Die patricisch-plebejischen Tributcomitien der Republik). The chief lines of evidence on which the proof of the existence of this parliament rests are as follows:

(i.) We have a series of passages which prove the continued distinction of the Populus and the Plebs and of patrician and plebeian magistrates, and which show that these magistrates could only summon the bodies of which they were respectively the representatives. These passages are:

Festus p. 293 "Scita plebei appellantur ea, quae plebs suo suffragio sine patribus jussit, plebeio magistratu rogante."

ib. p. 330 "Scitum populi (est, quod eum magistra)tus patricius (rogavit populusque suis suffragis jussit. . . . Plebes autem est (populus universus) praeter patricios."

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ib. p. 233 cum plebes sine patri(bus a suo magistratu rogatur) quod plebes scivit, plebi(scitum est: plebs enim cum) appellatur, patrum com(munio excluditur)."

(ii.) There are abundant evidences of the early existence of a comitia of the tribes :

(a) The law of the Twelve Tables (451 B.C.) ordained, with respect to jurisdiction, "de capite civis nisi per maximum comitiatum . . ne ferunto" (Cic. de Leg. iii. 4, 11). The mention of the " greatest comitia" clearly implies the existence of a lesser one with judicial powers; and as this is not likely to have been the comitia curiata of the period, it can hardly be any other assembly than the comitia of the tribes.

(b) The quaestors were first elected by the people in 447 B.C. (Tac. Ann. xi. 22), and in later times their appointment was made by a comitia of the tribes (Cic. ad Fam. vii. 30).

(c) The first legislative act of the people gathered tributim is

attributed to the year 357 B.C. (Liv. vii. 16 (consul) "legem novo exemplo ad Sutrium in castris tributim de vicensima eorum, qui manu mitterentur, tulit").

The comitia tributa populi was probably created between 471 B.C., the date at which the Plebs began to meet tributim, and 451, the date at which the existence of such an assembly is hinted at in the Twelve Tables.

(iii) In the developed Republic we find an assembly meeting by tribes

(a) which is presided over by magistrates of the people, e.g. by the consuls Manlius (Liv. vii. 16) and T. Quinctius Crispinus (Frontinus de Aquaed. 129), by the dictator Caesar (Cic. ad Fam. vii. 30), and by P. Clodius as curule aedile (Cic. pro Sest. 44, 95; ad Q. fr. 2, 3);

(b) which elects magistrates of the people, e.g. the quaestors (Cic. ad Fam. vii. 30 "comitiis quaestoriis institutis. . . ille (Caesar) qui comitiis tributis esset auspicatus") and the curule aediles (Gell. vii. 9 “[Cn. Flavium] pro tribu aedilem curulem renuntiaverunt ");

(c) which legislates. This legislative power is shown by the lex Quinctia de aquaeductibus of 9 B.C. (Frontinus de Aquaed. 129);

(d) and exercises judicial power. This judicial power is shown in the trial of Milo for vis in 56 B.C. (Cic. pro Sest. 44, 95; ad Q. fr. 2, 3). The prosecutor was a curule aedile, and the trial took place in the Forum ("ejectus de rostris Clodius," 1.c. § 2).

Perhaps the most striking demonstration of the existence of this assembly is contained in the prescription to the lex Quinctia de aquaeductibus (Frontinus l.c.), which runs as follows:

"T. Quinctius Crispinus consul populum jure rogavit populusque jure scivit in foro pro rostris aedis divi Julii pr(idie) [k.] Julias. Tribus Sergia principium fuit, pro tribu Sex. . . L. f. Virro [primus scivit]."

Here we find an assembly of the Populus, presided over by a magistrate of the people, meeting in the Forum and voting by tribes. It can, therefore, be none other than a comitia tributa populi.

Although the formal difference between this assembly and the concilium plebis tributim was great-the one being summoned by magistrates of the people, the other by plebeian magistrates; the one electing to popular, the other to plebeian offices; the one passing leges, the other plebiscita-the material difference between the two bodies was small. This consisted in the exclusion of Patricians from plebeian gatherings. When the consul or praetor summoned the tribes, the members of the few patrician families could attend; when the tribune summoned the tribes, these members were bound to keep away.