people. The only body known to us as electing the consuls during the republican period was the comitia centuriata (see Comitia). The consulate was originally confined to patricians. During the struggle for higher office that was waged between the orders the office was suspended on fifty-one occasions between the years 444 and 367 B.C. and replaced by the military tribunate with consular power, to which plebeians were eligible. The struggle was brought to an end by the Licinio-Sextian laws of 367 B.C., which enacted that one consul must be a plebeian (see Patricians).
Most of the internal history of Rome down to the beginning of the third century B.C. consists in a series of attacks, whether intentional or accidental, on the power of the executive. As the consuls are the sole representatives of higher executive authority in early times, this history is one of a progressive decline in the originally wide and arbitrary powers of the office. Their right of summary criminal jurisdiction was weakened by the successive laws of appeal (provocatio); their capacity for interpreting the civil law at their pleasure by the publication of the Twelve Tables and the Forms of Action. The growth of the tribunate of the plebs hampered their activity both as legislators and as judges. They surrendered the duties of registration to the censors in 443 B.C., and the rights of civil jurisdiction and control over the market and police to the praetor and the curule aediles in 367 B.C.
The result of these limitations and of this specialization of functions in the community was to leave the consuls with less specific duties at home than any magistrates in the state. But the absence of specific functions may be of itself a sign of a general duty of supervision. The consuls were in a very real sense the heads of the state. Polybius describes them as controlling the whole administration (Polyb. vi. 12 πασῶν εἰσι κύριοι τῶν δημοσίων πράξεων). This control they exercised in concert with the senate, whose chief servants they were. It was they who were the most regular consultants of this council, who formulated its decrees as edicts, and who brought before the people legislative measures which the senate had approved. It was they also who represented the state to the outer world and introduced foreign envoys to the senate. The symbols of their presidency were manifold. It was marked by the twelve lictors (q.v.), a number permitted to no other ordinary magistrate, by the fact that the first act of newly-admitted consuls was to take the auspices, their second to summon the senate, and by the use of their names for dating the year. The consulate was, indeed, as Cicero expresses it, the culminating point in an official career (“Honorum populi finis est consulatus,” Cic. Pro Planco, 25. 60).
In the domestic sphere the consuls retained certain powers of jurisdiction. This jurisdiction was either (i.) administrative or (ii.) criminal. (i.) Their administrative jurisdiction was sometimes concerned with financial matters such as pecuniary claims made by the state and individuals against one another. They acted in these matters in the periods during which the censors were not in office. We also find them adjudicating in disputes about property between the cities of Italy, (ii.) Their criminal jurisdiction was of three kinds. In the first place it was their duty, before the development of the standing commissions which originated in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., to set in motion the criminal law against offenders for the cognizance of ordinary, as opposed to political, crimes. The reference of such cases to the assembly of the people was effected through their quaestors (see Quaestor). Secondly, when the people and senate, or the senate alone, appointed a special commission (see Senate), the commissioner named was often a consul. Thirdly, we find the consul conducting a criminal inquiry raised by a point of international law. It is possible that in this case his advising body (consilium) was composed of the fetiales (see Herald, ad fin.). (Cicero, De republica, iii. 18. 28; Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. p. 112, n. 3).
During the greater part of the republic the consuls were recognized as the heads of the administration abroad as well as at home. It thus became necessary that departments of administration (provinciae) should be determined and assigned. The method of assignment varied. The least usual device was for one consul to take the field at the head of an army, while the other remained at home to transact the civil business of state. More often foreign wars demanded the attention of both consuls. In this case the regular army of four legions was usually divided between them. When it was necessary that both armies should co-operate, the principle of rotation was adopted, each consul having the command for a single day—a practice which may be illustrated by the events preceding the battle of Cannae (Polybius iii. 110; Livy xxii. 41). During the great period of conquest from 264 to 146 B.C. Italy was generally one of the consular “provinces,” some foreign country the other; and when at the close of this period Italy was at peace, this distinction approximated to one between civil and military command. The consuls settled their departments amongst themselves by agreement or by lot (comparatio, sortitio), the power of declaring what should be the consular provinciae was usurped by the senate, (see Senate), and a lex Sempronia passed by C. Gracchus, probably in 122 B.C., ordained that the two consular provinces should be declared before the election of the consuls. At this time the consuls entered office on the 1st of January (a practice which commenced in 153 B.C.), and their military command began on the 1st of March. They could hold this military command until they were superseded in the following March, and thus their tenure of power was practically raised to fourteen months. But meanwhile the home officials invested with the imperium had proved insufficient for the military needs of the empire, and the system of prolonging the command (prorogatio imperii) had been growing up (see Province). The consul whose command had been prolonged now served abroad as proconsul. It is probable that Sulla in his legislation of 81 B.C. did something to stereotype this system. Certainly the government by pro-magistrates becomes the rule after this period (cf. Cicero, De natura deorum, ii. 3. 9; De divinatione, ii. 36. 76, 77), although there are several instances of consuls assuming the active command of provinces between the years 74 and 55 B.C. (Mommsen, Rechtsfrage, p. 30), and Cicero declares that the consul has a right to approach every province (“consules, quibus more majorum concessum est vel omnes adire provincias,” Cicero, Ad Atticum, viii. 15. 3). Certainly in theory the provinces were still regarded as “consular,” not “proconsular,” and were technically, although not practically, held from the 1st of March of the consul’s tenure of office at Rome (cf. Cicero, De provinciis consularibus, 15. 37; Mommsen, Rechtsfrage, passim). It was not until the lex Pompeia of 52 B.C. (Dio Cassius xl. 56) had established a five years’ interval between home and foreign command that the theory of the prorogatio imperii vanished and the proconsulate became a separate office.
Since the theory of the persistence of the republican constitution was of the essence of the Principate, the consuls necessarily lost little of their outward position and dignity under the rule of the Caesars. The consulship was the only office in which a citizen, other than a member of the imperial house, might have the princeps as a colleague, and in the interval between the death or deposition of one princeps and the appointment of another the consuls resumed their normal position as the heads of the state (cf. Herodian ii. 12). As the presidents of the senate, who after A.D. 14 elected them to their office, they were the chief personal representatives of those elements of sovereignty that were supposed to attach to that body, and they directed that high criminal jurisdiction which the senate of this period assumed (see Senate). A restored power of jurisdiction is indeed one of the features of their position during this time, and it is probable that the civil appeals which came to the senate were delegated to the consuls. They also acted for a time as delegates to the princeps in matters of Chancery jurisdiction such as trusts and guardianship (Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii. p. 103). The consulship was also a preparation for certain high commands, such as the government of certain public and imperial provinces (see Province) and the praefecture of the city. It was probably due to the fact that the consulship was such a prize, and perhaps also to the expense imposed on the office by its association with the
