United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The promise given to the plebs that its sworn liberties should not be touched, may be referred to the rights of the plebeians independent of the tribunate, such as the -provocatio- and the possession of the Aventine.
The sacredness of the walls was thus illustrated in the tale of the death of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of king Tatius , the necessity of the arrangement as to the -pons sublicius- in the legend of Horatius Cocles, the origin of the -provocatio- in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the origin of manumission and of the burgess-rights of freedmen in the tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius.
It was the humorous trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy, that this act of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried out by the most unstable and timid of all Roman statesmen, and that the "first democratic consul" was selected to destroy the palladium of the ancient freedom of the Roman commonwealth, the right of -provocatio-. Suppression of the Etruscan Insurrection
The fact that the provocatio was contemplated as a substitute for citizenship is at once a proof that the old spirit of state life, which viewed absorption as extermination, was known still to be strong in some of the Italian communes, and that many of the individual Italians were believed to value the citizenship mainly as a means of protecting their persons against Roman officialdom.
But the authority of the Imperator was qualitatively superior to the consular-proconsular, in so far as the former was not limited as respected time or space, but was held for life and operative also in the capital; as the Imperator could not, while the consul could, be checked by colleagues of equal power; and as all the restrictions placed in course of time on the original supreme official power especially the obligation to give place to the -provocatio- and to respect the advice of the senate did not apply to the Imperator.
This was the beginning of the -provocatio-, which for that reason was especially permitted not to the transgressor who had refused to plead guilty and had been convicted, but to him who confessed his crime and urged reasons in palliation of it.
The provocatio had always been the challenge to the decision of a magistrate; but in these standing courts the actions of the president and of the judices who sat with him were practically indistinguishable, and the sentence pronounced was in no sense a magisterial decision.
But the authority of the Imperator was qualitatively superior to the consular-proconsular, in so far as the former was not limited as respected time or space, but was held for life and operative also in the capital; as the Imperator could not, while the consul could, be checked by colleagues of equal power; and as all the restrictions placed in course of time on the original supreme official power especially the obligation to give place to the -provocatio- and to respect the advice of the senate did not apply to the Imperator.
It was the humorous trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy, that this act of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried out by the most unstable and timid of all Roman statesmen, and that the "first democratic consul" was selected to destroy the palladium of the ancient freedom of the Roman commonwealth, the right of -provocatio-. Suppression of the Etruscan Insurrection
Word Of The Day