Draft: Please do not cite without author’s permission
Nomi Claire Lazar 8/26/2004
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Quinctius Cincinnatus, Dictator in 439 B.C., who “displayed senatorial backers for his every
movement” when forced to engage in novel dictatorial activities.
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The magistracy was made up of executive officers tasked with carrying out the daily
functions of the state. They ranked from the dictator on high who was appointed only
periodically, to the censors, whose task it was both to take a census every fifth year, and to serve
as governors of public morals by assigning citizens to classes.
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In between were the consuls,
charged with commanding the armies. There were two of these, and each one could veto the
other if he doubted his colleague’s course of action. Under normal conditions, the consuls held
the fort, so to speak. In the mid-5
th
century, the consuls gained administrative assistants, called
quaestors, whose position later became the first rung on the political ladder for the ambitious.
After 367 B.C., two new magistracies were added, the praetors, charged with the administration
of justice, and aediles, tasked with keeping the state archives and maintaining order.
The magistrates wielded two types of power. The lesser kind potestas gave them license
to conduct their duties. Their activities were task limited and then further limited by laws
expressly proscribing certain actions, and yet further by any one of a number of vetos, which
included those of a colleague in office, a higher magistrate, or, once these came into existence, a
tribune of the plebs. The second type of power admitted of degree, and was called imperium,
which essentially means command. Such a power was related to military exercise. When there
was a dictator, he held the highest imperium, meaning that no magistrate, and, for a long time,
not even the people, could check his authority. Consuls and praetors also had imperium, but to a
less and still lesser degree, since each could be checked by the offices above. High imperium
meant that a magistrate had power over the bodies of the people. He could compel citizens to go
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Cincinnatus was tasked with judging the conspirator Maelius. Marianne Hartfield. The Roman Dictatorship. p.
71. Or see the dramatic account in Livy. History of Rome 4.14.
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This strange double duty shows the origin of the relation between our word, ‘census’ for counting people and our
word, ‘censor’ for keeping the modes of expression of those counted ‘clean’.
Convention