n. After Sulla’s ordinances, a restored oligarchy of the nobiles held office at Rome. Pompeius fought against it; but Pompeius

ving from the local aristocracies, the holders of property, power and office in the towns of Italy, the proportion was clearly

t elections, to manage bribery, intimidation or rioting, the friendly offices of lowly agents such as influential freedmen were

he sense of ‘personal honour’, ib. 36 ff. 3 Cicero, Pro Sestio 137. Office was accessible to the ‘industria ac virtus’ of al

nt of hereditary estates, content with the petty dignity of municipal office in the towns of Italy. Others, however, grasped a

, giving them a greater power than the nominal holders of dignity and office . 4 Equestrian or senatorial, the possessing cla

thirty men, drawn from a dozen dominant families, hold a monopoly of office and power. From time to time, families rise and f

he principes, he won through bribery and popular favour the paramount office in the religion of the Roman State, that of ponti

n his interest. His name dominated elections and legislation. To gain office from the votes of the sovran people, no surer pas

Pompeius as quaestors or legates and returned to Rome to hold higher office , tribunate, praetorship, or even consulate. The l

ed until 53, when Hirrus was tribune. Cato nearly deprived him of his office (Plutarch, Pompeius 54). But there were strong an

now grew sharper. Ap. Claudius Pulcher, elected to the censorship, an office which was a patent rebuke to his own private cond

nd repress their dangerous ambitions. In name and function Caesar’s office was to set the State in order again (rei publicae

ic and Civil Wars, rewarded already for service or designated to high office . 2 Their coalition with Pompeians and Republicans

, p. 41 4 Caesar, BC 3, 83 (especially the competition for Caesar’s office of pontifex maximus between Scipio, Lentulus Spin

y and the state religion for politics and for domination, winning the office of pontifex maximus: the Julii themselves were an

predominance they had enjoyed in a feudal or tribal order of society. Office conferred nobility; and the friendship and influe

men in the towns of Italy he acquired power and advanced partisans to office at Rome. 1 But the Marian party had been defeat

holds as for his legates in the Gallic campaigns. 5 Nine consuls took office in the years 48–44 B.C., all men with senatorial

e: many senators, many of the Liberators themselves, held preferment, office , or provinces from the Dictator. Vested interests

he provinces. Yet they were nothing new or alarming in the holders of office and power at Rome. In the end it was not debauche

at Rome had learned to expect of the politician in power. His year of office would have to go far in violence and corruption t

cing evidence. From his career and station, from the authority of the office he held, the predominance of Antonius was a given

man, would still have to be watched. To Lepidus Antonius secured the office of pontifex maximus, once held by a glorious and

ys at Rome that Octavianus, though a patrician, had designs upon this office . 1 Nothing came of it for the moment: at need, he

a faction. As many of the most eminent of the Caesarians already held office and preferment, were loyal to Antonius or to sett

his strategy. Then Caesar wooed him assiduously, through the familiar offices of Balbus and Oppius and by personal approach. Bu

approbation. The candidate seldom made promises. Instead, he claimed office as a reward, boasting loudly of ancestors or, fai

rs before in Caesar’s Civil War he had spontaneously offered his good offices to bring a Pompeian general to his senses. 8 The

of them, the patrician Q. Fabius Maximus (cos. 45 B.C.), had died in office . That left six consulars of the years 48-45. 4

now imperiutm and the charge of a war to a man who had held no public office . But there were limits. The Senate did not choose

ke against it. Cicero supported him, with lavish praises for the good offices of those patriotic and high-minded citizens Lepid

consul Octavianus. His indignant colleagues deposed the criminal from office , the mob plundered his house; the Senate, by a vi

when consul had abolished the Dictatorship for all time. The tyrannic office was now revived under another name for a period o

and influence. Antonius constrained the young Caesar to resign the office he had seized. The rest of the year was given to

len in war, and the consul Q. Pedius succumbed early in his tenure of office , stricken by shame and horror, it was alleged, at

ilitary experience. His example showed that the holding of senatorial office was not an indispensable qualification for leadin

hals of the Revolution. Like Balbus, he had held as yet no senatorial office the wars had hardly left time for that. But Octav

ng the marshal Calvisius engrossed two of the more decorative of such offices : Taurus followed his unholy example. 4 Most of th

e of a thousand members a preponderance of Caesarians owed status and office , if not wealth as well, to the Triumvirs; and a m

he son of an owner of property from the town of Mantua. Pollio’s good offices may have preserved or restored the poet’s estate

was confirmed by the renewal of the Triumvirate at Tarentum when that office lapsed, Antonian consuls would be in power at Rom

left Italy after the Pact of Brundisium. Plancus remained, high in office and in favour, perhaps aspiring to primacy in the

e Triumvirate. 2 Antonius had already professed readiness to lay down office and join in restoring the Republic. 3 Octavianu

arbitrary rule of the Triumvirate. Since the time when the entry into office of new consuls last portended a change in politic

s retired from the city. The new consuls summoned the Senate and took office on January 1st. They did not read the dispatch of

ty or invincible stupidity. Octavianus professed to have resigned the office of Triumvir, but retained the power, as was appar

. Pompeius on the Fasti. These consuls might have been designated for office at an earlier date. L. Cornelius Cinna (pr. 44 B.

s stripped of his powers and of the consulate for the next year. That office he allotted to an aristocratic partisan, Valerius

he continued unobtrusively to exercise the dictatorial powers of that office , had the question been of concern to men at the t

e a direct continuation of the Triumvirate, even though that despotic office had expired years before: in law the only power t

ant temper. Hitherto Piso had held aloof from public life, disdaining office . Augustus, in virtue of arbitrary power, offered

1st he resigned the consulate. In his place a certain L. Sestius took office another exercise of auctoritas, it may be presume

ing riots in Rome and popular clamour that Augustus should assume the office of Dictator. 6 He refused, but consented to take

Divus Aug. 79, 2. 2 Tiberius was permitted in 24 B.C. to stand for office five years earlier than the legal term (Dio 53, 2

, Dims Aug. 79, 2. 2 Tiberius was permitted in 24 B.c. to stand for office five years earlier than the legal term (Dio 53, 3

k repentance, joining the company of those renegades who rose to high office , Crassus, Titius and M. Junius Silanus. Others, s

Prefect of the Guard knew what little power resided in the decorative office and title of consul. That was novel and revolutio

ook=>358 and the maternal grandfather of Livia Drusilla held the office of a municipal magistrate at Fundi, so her irreve

s on young men of equestrian stock, encouraging them to stand for the office of the quaestorship and so enter the Senate. Not

itution was less Republican and less ‘democratic’, for eligibility to office was no longer universal, but was determined by th

undred, there supervened again and again a scarcity of candidates for office , calling for various expedients. 2 The Senate had

sovran, the members of a narrow group contended among themselves for office and for glory: behind the façade of the constitut

behind the façade of the constitution the political dynasts dealt out offices and commands to their partisans. The dynasts had

e of reform. The consulate he gave up: converted since Actium into an office of ostensible authority through Augustus’ continu

ear 19 B.C. opened with Augustus still absent, and only one consul in office , C. Sentius Saturninus. There was need of a stron

Barbatus and C. Caninius Rebilus, consul and consul suffect, died in office . 4 Namely Syria, Gaul, Illyricum (probably take

own to minor but efficient intriguers like that Praecia to whose good offices Lucullus owed, it was said, his command in the Ea

administration for private initiative or mere magistracies, like the offices of aedile and censor. Two incidents hardened his

r of Messalla, appointed praefectus urbi in 26 B.C. and resigning the office after a few days, because he did not understand i

unknown length, was the illustrious L. Calpurnius Piso, with whom the office became a standing institution. 2 In these ways,

e decisions of the government; senatorial rank and the tenure of high office were no longer an end in themselves but the quali

tional forces as the auctoritas of senior statesmen holding no public office , the intrigues of ladies at the centre of high so

political prize was the consulate. In 5 B.C. Augustus assumed that office , after a lapse of eighteen years, with L. Corneli

verned by the proconsul L. Nonius Asprenas, who was succeeded in that office by L. Aelius Lamia. 2 On August 19th, A.D. 14,

he declined, professing it inconsistent with the ‘mos maiorum’. That office savoured of regimentation, its title was all too

r it harmonized both with the traditional activities of the censorial office and with the aspirations of conservative reformer

cs. Augustus scorned to emulate his predecessors Caesar gaining the office by flagrant bribery and popularity with the Roman

la gave himself airs of independence. In 26 B.C. he had laid down the office of praefectus urbi almost at once; and it was his

isions of the Princeps in legislation or to accept his candidates for office , it was virtually excluded. Already in the Triumv

enus, C., remarkable novus homo, 81, 93. Birth, a qualification for office , 11, 374 ff.; pride of, 68, 360 f., 377, 442 f.;

cardinal factor in the Principate, 355; as procurators, 356; in high office , 356 f., 409; personal friends and counsellors of