1 Introduction
The election of magistrates has an obvious role to play when it comes to establishing structures of power in Roman towns. During the late Republic, this practice took hold, with many local variations, as Roman towns to a varying degree followed the model of the mother city Rome.
There is undoubtedly a general notion that participation in political events decreased overall after the Principate was introduced. In Rome, what mattered was the wish of the princeps, not the vote in the comitia, and no one could have a political career who was not aligned with the emperor. In the local context, we have positive evidence for electioneering almost only from Pompeii, and this only until 79 CE,1 and it is often said that municipal elections in the West ceased to be held more or less at that time or soon after. The change is explained by pointing to the example represented by Rome, and by arguing that the local elites closed ranks and/or it became ever more difficult to find candidates, as the economic conditions of the upper classes deteriorated during the second century CE.
In reality, however, the hold that tradition had over this aspect of local political life was strong. The sources at our disposal show that as far as local elections are concerned, there was less of a transformation and change than is often assumed during the period from Caesar’s murder to the end of the Severan dynasty. This is of course not to deny that the social and political structures of Roman towns were impacted in many other respects during this centuries-long period. One may consider, for instance, the rise of the Augustales, the effects of private benefactions, and the increasing oversight of the imperial government through the curatores rei publicae; all matters which lie outside the scope of the present study.
When discussing municipal elections in the Roman world during the Principate, there are, in the western part, five important contexts and sources/ groups of sources that deserve attention, and they will be discussed in the order given below.
The election posters (programmata) from Pompeii, which all have a terminus ante quem of 79 CE.
The Album from Canusium, a colonia civium Romanorum in southern Italy, dating to 223 CE.
The passages about local elections in the so-called Flavian municipal charter, of which incomplete copies have been found in Spain in several Roman towns with Latin rights. Most famous is the Lex Irnitana, which was published in 1986.
The exceptionally rich evidence from Ostia, Rome’s harbour town, which sheds light on the processes which were in place for the appointment of local political leaders.
The newly discovered chapters concerning elections in the Lex Troesmensium, the municipal charter of a small colonia civium Romanorum close to the Black Sea in Moesia Inferior, modern Romania. The official first edition appeared only in 2016.
2 The Engagement of the People in Elections at Pompeii
As is well-known, the election posters from Pompeii, painted on the external walls of buildings, are very lively and there are many of them, and for people living in countries which are counted as democracies and where elections are regularly held, it is easy to relate to these messages. It certainly appears as if the whole town was engaged in these annual elections of aediles and duoviri. We find not only individuals (rogatores) promoting certain candidates, but also professional and cultural associations and “neighbours” (vicini), as they call themselves, taking part in the election campaigns.2 Here there are many similarities with the practice in modern democracies. A particularly rich example is provided by the programmata which in the period 77–79 CE supported Cn. Helvius Sabinus for aedile. Over one hundred have been identified, two of which have the following wording:3
Helvium Sabinum / aed(ilem) Parth(en)ope rog(at) cum Rufino.
(Elect) Helvius Sabinus aedilis, Parthenope supports him with Rufinus.4
Cn. Helvium Sabinum aed(ilem) / pist(ores) rog(ant) et cupiunt cum vicinis
(Elect) Cn. Helvius Sabinus aedilis, the bakers support him and desire it together with (his) neighbours.5
Throughout the twentieth century, scholars studied these posters, aiming above all at deciphering what they could tell us about the ruling class in Pompeii. A crucial skill here was the ability to read these posters accurately, which also meant being able to discern which layer each poster belonged to. For the chronology – which candidates are earlier and which are later, and which of them were campaigning against each other – is important when trying to figure out how the socio-political elite developed.
There would be much to say about the debate concerning elections at Pompeii, but for the sake of brevity I will leave unmentioned a series of worthy earlier contributions and focus on the work of H. Mouritsen, an eminent epigrapher who better than anyone else has deciphered the election posters, as his doctoral dissertation from 1988 made clear.6
However, the interpretation which H. Mouritsen gave his material fails to convince. In his view, there was no real influence or true participation from the Pompeian population in the election campaigns. The many posters are deceptive, H. Mouritsen argued: they were painted by professional painters and the location of the posters, along the main roads and in the most frequented parts of town – and not in the quiet residential quarters where people actually lived – showed that the whole election campaign was run by the candidates instead of by the people. One must doubt that there was any real popular interest in the elections at Pompeii, according to H. Mouritsen and those who support his argument.7
When investigating the extent to which local municipal elections took place in the Roman world during the second century CE, it is important to be aware of the debate about elections in Pompeii. If H. Mouritsen is right in his claim that there was no real interest from the side of the Pompeian population even during the early Flavian years, it makes it much more difficult to make a case for the continuation of this tradition during the following decades in other Roman towns.
There are two separate questions to consider when approaching the sources about Pompeian elections, but regardless of which of them is of interest, it is difficult to agree with H. Mouritsen’s interpretation of the sources. On the one hand, one may ponder whether at Pompeii we find a political system that has similarities with what occurs in modern democracies at the time of elections, and on the other hand, one may evaluate the extent to which the Pompeian population at large had an interest in said elections. While the latter issue is of interest here, a few words also need to be said about the first question, i.e., the extent to which the Pompeian election campaigns resemble the processes which precede elections in “modern democracies”.
First, it is unavoidable that the accusation of ‘anachronistic thinking’ will be lodged at those who attempt to find Pompeian features that appear similar to certain aspects of modern election campaigns,8 because when analyzing the Pompeian election procedure we only have modern models with which to operate. There is no ancient “ideal of political participation by the citizens” against which one could compare what we are able to deduce about election campaigns at Pompeii. The only possible comparanda are modern.
Second, there is a vast range of different systems to choose between when one ponders what a “true democratic election campaign” should look like and in what respect the Pompeian system might fall short. We are talking about a tradition well over a century old, about elections now regularly held in a multitude of countries on six continents.9 What modern scholars can do is to relate the Pompeian evidence to their modern experiences of democratic elections. In this light, H. Mouritsen’s interpretation is arguably fundamentally at odds with what is known about how election campaigns are run, or used to be run, in many western democracies.10
While a candidate usually has a team of close advisers and assistants, and much money is spent on advertising and professional firms are hired for this purpose, volunteers still in many or most situations play a role, volunteers who obviously are engaged and consider the elections important. This is the case also in the USA, where the sums spent on election campaigns have reached obscene levels. But even so, election campaigns highly value the often unpaid enthusiasm of volunteers, and most volunteers are happy to coordinate their actions with the central campaign office; anything else would be stupid. The same elements seem to be in place also in the political life of Pompeii.
Where does this leave the question of whether there was a genuine interest among the population of Pompeii for the annual elections? We lack every kind of data in this regard and can only base our argument on the activity which the programmata reveal. The conclusion must be that what we see at Pompeii is perfectly commensurable with a pattern that can be or has been observed in connection with elections in modern democracies, in which there normally is a robust participation by the electorate.11
Indeed, H. Mouritsen’s view on the lack of popular interest in the elections at Pompeii has been convincingly rebutted by scholars such as R. Biundo and C. Chiavia, albeit usually in publications in Italian, which may have dulled their impact in the anglophone world.12
3 Central Elections in Rome during the Principate
H. Mouritsen’s pessimistic view on the lack of popular enthusiasm for elections in Pompeii would seem to tie in well with what went on in Rome on the national scene during the early Principate. There, change had certainly taken place since the fierce election campaigns for senatorial offices during the Late Republic. Well-known to all is the inflamed situation in the years 65–63 BCE, when two ambitious men, L. Sergius Catilina and M. Tullius Cicero, both sought the consulship, and the former twice failed to prevail in the comitia. The pamphlet known as the Commentariolum petitionis, allegedly written for Cicero’s benefit by his brother Quintus, explains well how an election campaign was to be conducted among the voting public.13
But the situation changed once Augustus was firmly in power. The first emperor held the consulship whenever he wished, in total thirteen times, and he clearly used his influence when it came to the election of Roman magistrates. It used to be said that the traditional election of magistrates in Rome disappeared during the early Julio-Claudian emperors. The emperor made most of the choices and the senate ratified, but the popular voting assembly no longer met.14
This view of how the role of the assembly in Rome had been reduced or had altogether disappeared made an impact also on the study of municipal affairs. A prime example is represented by R. Meiggs’s classic monograph Roman Ostia, still the standard work on Rome’s harbour town. In the first edition of Roman Ostia, published in 1960, and again in the second edition from 1973, R. Meiggs stated that at Rome, elections in the comitia were abolished at the beginning of Tiberius’ reign, as scholars in those days indeed widely believed. He continued: “Ostia, always closely influenced by the capital, probably followed her example soon afterwards”.15
Of course, Ostia continued to have a functioning local government after the mid-first century CE. That is evident from a welter of inscriptions which give us the names and careers of local dignitaries. But the appointments, in R. Meiggs’s view, were always made by the town council itself, by the curia, i.e., the ordo decurionum. The council members, the decuriones, co-opted new members, and every year they chose some among themselves to hold the local magistracies, without any input from the population at large; no elections by the people took place.16
But then, in his 1977 monograph The Emperor in the Roman World, the British historian F. Millar drew attention to previously neglected sources concerning the late second and early third century CE, especially the work of the early-third-century senator and historian Cassius Dio. Dio was a contemporary observer, and his text allowed F. Millar to re-assess the matter of elections in the comitia and to write: “voting by tribus and centuriae continued in Rome at least until the 3rd c.”17 This view is now generally thought to be correct, while scholars acknowledge that the senate, influenced by the emperors, carried out a pre-selection among the candidates for Roman magistracies.18 Thus, R. Talbert, in his authoritative study of the senate of the Principate, could state: “As late as the early third century the assemblies still continued to meet for the purpose of ratifying the choice of candidates”.19
If previously the alleged disappearance of elections by the people in the comitia at Rome had provided the rationale for assuming that they were abolished on the local level as well, the result of F. Millar’s research created a wholly new context into which to situate the evidence from coloniae and municipia.
4 What the Album of Canusium Shows about the Tradition of Elections
From the Roman town of Canusium in southern Italy (modern Canosa in Puglia; not a large centre) comes the extraordinary inscription known as the Album of Canusium. It uses four columns to list the names of all one hundred members of the town council in 223 CE, and of an additional group of men waiting to be admitted. The reason for dedicating attention to this document in the present context is not that the town provides undeniable evidence for local elections. Canusium receives its own section because the album sheds light on two questions of importance for understanding the municipal context in Roman Italy during the second and early third century CE: adlectiones (co-optations) of members of the ordo decurionum, and the alleged decline of local elites and their reluctance to take on duties in local government.
Of interest when discussing municipal elections is the hierarchy that the album reveals to us. The members of the curia were divided according to what level they had reached on the political career ladder, in the following way:
The members were categorized according to the highest office they had held, i.e., the quinquennalicii were former quinquennales, the duoviralicii were former duoviri, and so on. Close readings and analyses of this document were presented by F. Jacques in 1984 and B. Salway in 2000. In basic agreement with Jacques, the latter provided a sensible explanation for the presence of the pedani, a category of decuriones one does not hear much about in other sources; men who had not (yet) held any magistracies. As far as their place in the municipal hierarchy was concerned, they were surely similar to the low-ranking pedarii who had a seat in the Roman senate.20
Setting out from the annual magistrates that scholars think were elected every year – two quaestors, two aediles, and two duoviri – B. Salway presented a demographic argument for why a town council could not maintain its numbers if the only way in which it was replenished was by the entry, every year, of the annual junior magistrates, the two quaestors. Because of the average life expectation in the Roman world, in such a situation the number of one hundred decuriones could not be maintained. Therefore, co-optation or, in Latin, adlectio of new men was required, co-optation of men who had not held any office (yet), and who may never hold one; they might remain undistinguished decuriones while being members of the ordo decurionum for life.
It was also necessary to have a larger number of men of acceptable age to choose from when electing magistrates. We know from Roman legal sources that an age of 25 years was required for a local elected office. One pool of possible new magistrates consisted of the praetextati, who are thought to have been in the age range of 17 to 24 years and who are also thought to have been well-connected young men; in some years, and perhaps every year, some of them would reach the required minimum age so they could become candidates for the quaestorship. And additional candidates could be found among the pedani, the lowest ranking members of the curia.
Important for the current investigation is that the picture which emanates from the Album of Canusium is one in which there was competition for municipal offices. The competition played out in a situation where there was a two-pronged procedure for maintaining the size of the town council, namely, through the introduction into the curia of men who had served as junior magistrates, and through the co-optation or adlectio of additional members, the pedani, from the population of the town. The latter probably had a varied background, although they shared the characteristic of being successful and sufficiently wealthy; some may have been more advanced in age and when they were younger were never registered as praetextati. There are no signs of a withdrawal of the elite from municipal politics or, if there was some, even in a town of a not overly large size like Canusium this does not seem to have impacted the functioning and replenishing of the ordo decurionum.
5 A Few Significant Chapters on Elections in the Flavian Municipal Code
The Flavian municipal code, often called the lex Flavia municipalis, dates to the late 80s CE.21 Several surviving chapters concern the elections of quaestores, aediles, and duoviri. Some of the central chapters were known already before the publication of the Lex Irnitana in 1986, thanks to partially preserved copies of the law discovered in other Spanish towns. Of particular importance for the issue of elections are chapters 51 to 60, which are preserved in the so-called Lex Malacitana and have been known since the late nineteenth century.22
This being the case, one might have thought that the paragraphs about municipal elections should have made scholars such as R. Meiggs hesitant to declare that elections at Ostia were abolished more or less at the same time as the Flavian municipal code was approved. But evidently R. Meiggs and with him other scholars were strongly influenced by what they thought was happening in Rome in regard to the role played by the election assembly.
In addition, I have a suspicion that passages such as chapter 51 of the Flavian lex may have influenced the thinking of some modern scholars:23
If the situation was as described in this passage, the law further established that the duovir in charge of the elections must find additional candidates. One might hold that this chapter bodes ill for local democracy, that “names of fewer persons than it is necessary to appoint” is a warning sign and forebodes a situation when no one is willing to take on communal duties. But it is important to remember that the Flavian municipal code was composed centrally and built on the experience from numerous communities, and above all, in the typical Roman legalistic manner, the law wanted to take into account every possible future scenario. One must obviously also prepare for exceptional years in which there may not initially be enough nominations, for whatever reason. This chapter cannot be taken to mean that the legislators suspected that in general the interest in public office among the town’s elite had disappeared.
In any case, chapter 52 of the Flavian law establishes that one of the duumviri currently in office shall organize elections to determine who the next duumviri, aediles, and questores will be:24
tum alter ex his comitia IIuir(is), item aedilibus, item quaestoribus rogandis subrogandis h(ac) l(ege) habeto; utique ea distributione curiarum, de qua supra conprehensum est, suffragia ferri debebunt, ita per tabellam ferantur facito. Quique ita creati erunt, ii annum unum aut, si in alterius locum creati erunt, reliqua parte eiius anni in eo honore sunto, quem suffragis erunt consecuti.
then the other of them, is to hold the election under this statute for choosing or choosing in replacement duumviri, likewise aediles, likewise quaestores; and as the votes must be cast according to that distribution of curiae which has been laid down above, so he is to see that they are cast by ballot. And those who are thus appointed are to hold that office which they have achieved in the voting for one year, (but) if they are appointed in replacement of someone else, for the remaining part of that year.
The following chapters 53–58 provide detailed instructions about how residents were able to vote (53), who was eligible to be a candidate (54), the casting of votes (55), the mechanism for deciding in the case of an equal number of votes (56), on the order in which the curiae report their results (57), and sternly warns that no one may prevent the holding of elections (58).25
Probably the main reason for believing that Roman towns cancelled their elections from the second half of the first century CE onwards has to do with the widespread belief that municipal magistracies had by that time become a heavy burden for members of the elite. Instead of counting a magistracy as an honos, which Romans, by nature very competitive, were eager to hold, at least some of these offices were perceived to be munera, i.e., burdens. A local magistrate always needed to pay something for the distinction, at least the so-called summa honoraria, and sometimes further expenses were expected during his tenure. Therefore there were ever fewer candidates, according to this line of argument. Town councils had to work hard to find the minimum number of willing candidates, and in this situation elections became obsolete. The town councils were happy to appoint whomever they could find from among their own social group, according to a certain modern reading of the evidence.26
However, the idea that burdensome munera caused local members of the elite to avoid holding public office is anachronistic in the context of the second and early third centuries. The legal sources in which we find complaints and problems concerning munera are usually later, from the late third century and from Late Antiquity. This question was convincingly and exhaustively treated by F. Jacques in his substantial 1984 monograph.27
6 Elections at Ostia during the Principate: Tradition Abides
The following section is wholly dedicated to Rome’s harbour town, the colonia Ostiensium. When dealing with such a vast topic as the present one, little would be gained by using examples drawn from all over the Roman world; the evidence would be much too scattered. If some kind of coherent picture is to result, it is important that the study be focused. Next to Pompeii, it is Ostia which provides us with the most and best information about the composition of the socio-political elite and about local political career patterns.
At Ostia, we find no album of the ordo decurionum like at Canusium but instead a vast number of individual inscriptions of interest. Based on the evidence for both magistrates and simple decuriones during the period c.50 BCE to c.250 CE that I have collected in the context of another study, I estimate that we know by name some 26 per cent of the duoviri and possibly some 15 per cent of the decuriones.28 These are modest numbers compared with the information that is usually available to modern historians in archival sources, but in the Roman world only Pompeian society is better known.
When focusing on Ostian elections during the Principate, some evidence is admittedly missing. Not surprisingly, no election posters can be seen on the walls of Ostian buildings, since any plaster on the outer brick walls disappeared long ago. Moreover, Ostia was inhabited into the sixth century, for several centuries past the time when even the most optimistic estimates would suggest that local elections took place, and it is not clear that traces of any election posters from the first or second centuries could have survived so long. Furthermore, we lack epigraphic evidence for curiae or voting units at Ostia. The Flavian municipal code refers to elections taking place in curiae,29 but Ostian inscriptions are silent about this feature. This is not surprising, since in the epigraphic sources from Roman Italy, curiae are mentioned only at Lanuvium and in a graffito from Pompeii. In the provinces, this institution is known primarily in North Africa.30
Instead we can observe the offices which were held by the local leaders, in some cases cited in epigraphic texts which clearly register the full cursus honorum, and in other cases found in inscriptions which mention only a selection of offices. There are some sixty inscriptions in total which register more than one local magistracy or office.31 For a Roman town (other than Pompeii), this is rich evidence.
These inscriptions, whether they cite a complete cursus or only a selection of offices, are obviously in themselves not proof one way or another when discussing municipal elections. However, one particular subgroup among the inscriptions which provide information about Ostian office-holding is crucial for the argument that elections by the people continued. Incidentally, these are the very inscriptions which R. Meiggs took aim at when he claimed that elections had been abolished.
R. Meiggs singled out three inscriptions in which an adlectio (that is, a co-optation) of a magistrate was mentioned, and he took the fact that these three men declared that they had been co-opted by the decuriones (instead of being elected by the people) as proof that elections had been abolished at Ostia. The three cases are seen here:
M. Acilius [M. f.] Priscus, quaest(or) aer(arii) suffra[gio de]curionum (AE 1955, 169); Flavian.
L. Calpurnius L. f. Vot(uria tribu) Saturus, d(ecurionum) decreto aedilis allectus (CIL XIV 415); last third first century/first third second century.
Cn. Sergius Cn. f. Vot(uria tribu) Priscus, ex d(ecurionum) d(ecreto) aedilis allectus (CIL XIV 412 = ILS 6142); last third first century/first third second century.32
There is also a fourth case which R. Meiggs did not mention, but which is the most significant, since it adds considerably to our understanding of the practice of adlectio:
Cn. Sentius Cn. f. Cn. n. Ter(etina tribu) Felix, dec(urionum) decr(eto) aedilicius adl(ectus) d(ecurionum) d(ecreto) d(ecurio) adl(ectus) (CIL XIV 409 = ILS 6146 = IPO B 339); first quarter second century.
Cn. Sentius Felix was one of the most prominent Ostians of his day, as shown by his above-mentioned extensive epitaph, which runs over twenty lines and presents him as patronus of close to a score of Ostian associations, most of them of professional nature. It is important to note that he was co-optated as aedilicius, as a “former aedile”, which means that he entered the curia with seniority. The mention that he was also a decurio adlectus seems redundant, unless the inscription deviates from the chronological order and lists the more important but later adlectio first; the following offices are q(uaestor) a(erarii) Ostiens(ium) and IIvir in proper ascending order.
In Sentius Felix’s case we can identify a very clear rationale for the adlectiones: the desire to involve a powerful local inhabitant in municipal affairs, someone who perhaps was a newcomer in Ostia, since his tribe, the Teretina, reveals a non-local origin of the family. Once he had been given the rank of former aedile, he could be a candidate for the duovirate, and indeed he eventually became duovir after first having been quaestor. After the bare list of offices, the unusual progress of his municipal career is emphasized in a separate clause: hic primus omnium quo anno dec(urio) adl(ectus) est et / q(uaestor) a(erarii) fact(us) est et in proxim(um) annum IIvir designat(us) est (“he was the first among all, in the year when he was co-optated as a member of the curia, to be made quaestor aerarii and IIvir designatus for the following year”).
The situation in Ostia at the turn of the first century CE – likely the period when Sentius Felix entered municipal politics – certainly seems to have been unusual. Be that as it may, if we focus on his personal career, it is noteworthy that the inscription says nothing about an adlectio to either the quaestorship or to the highest magistracy. This must mean that here we are talking about regular elections, and factus est for the quaestorship can certainly cover this meaning.33 To be sure, for the duovirate Sentius Felix probably had the recommendation of the ordo as support at the election meeting, as indicated by the term designatus.
It is important to consider the full picture when interpreting what it means when an adlectio is mentioned in an epigraphic source; this R. Meiggs never did. For something to be added to the simple mention of a magistracy, like the adlectio decreto decurionum, it has to be a noteworthy and uncommon feature. But if there are no elections in the assembly of Ostian citizens, as R. Meiggs postulated, then the choice of magistrates is wholly based on a decision by the decuriones. In this case, everyone is chosen in the same way. There is no difference: an adlectio is also based on a decision made by the decuriones, as seen here:
Thus, if there were no elections and each and every magistrate was chosen by the decuriones, why would an Ostian magistrate use an expression such as d(ecurionum) decreto aedilis allectus? That same situation would apply to all other magistrates and would not be worth mentioning.
But it is clear that being co-opted to an Ostian magistracy was seen as a particular honour, as shown by the case of Sentius Felix and of the three men whom Meiggs cited. Quite in agreement with such a scenario is the fact that most Ostian quaestors and aediles who mention their office do not mention an adlectio. This goes for 16 of 17 known quaestors and 13 of 16 explicit holders of the aedileship. Moreover, none of the almost forty duoviri known from individual inscriptions mention an adlectio, nor is the term used in connection with the yearly entries in the so-called Fasti Ostienses chronicle.34 The reason why these inscriptions never mention an adlectio must be that these magistrates were elected in an assembly of the Ostian people.
While it is obvious why the leadership of Ostia had an interest in ‘recruiting’ someone as influential as Sentius Felix, some thought may also be dedicated to why the other three co-opted magistrates received this preferred treatment. The profile of M. Acilius Priscus, as revealed by his inscription, is similar: he had extensive previous experience as an officer in the Roman army and with his authority must have appeared as an attractive addition to the local elite. C. Calpurnius Saturus had close contacts with several Gaii Silii, as his inscription reveals, among whom can also be found the Ostian IIvir C. Silius Nerva and another member of the ordo. These connections explain well why the adlectio took place. As for Cn. Sergius Priscus, his father was a wealthy freedman, an Augustalis (CIL XIV 412), and it would not be a surprise if singling out the son for rapid advancement was in reality an acknowledgement of the father’s influence.
At this point, some comments on what a devil’s advocate might want to argue may be warranted. It is noticeable that the four adlectiones to magistracies all took place before the mid-second century CE. Perhaps that is when the Ostians abolished meetings of the comitia? After that, it is clear that no magistrate would claim to have benefited from an adlectio because all magistrates were chosen by the decuriones. But this argument is refuted by the fact that some, but not all, Ostain plain decuriones continue to refer to their adlectio to the curia long after the mid-second century.35 This means that the traditional mechanism for entering the curia was still in place: every year the elected holders of the junior magistracies would enter. And, as we saw above in connection with the Album of Canusium, at irregular intervals additional men would be co-opted, in order to keep the number of decuriones stable. If the decuriones of Ostia elected the junior magistrates because elections had been abolished, then it does not confer any distinction on a common decurio to claim that he had benefited from an adlectio. What it means is, he was not deemed worthy of a magistracy by the ordo decurionum, but they decided to allow him entry into the ordo anyway, by co-opting him. Clearly, the continuing occurrence of decuriones adlecti means that elections in the comitia continued to take place.
Finally, there is one undeniable piece of evidence that Roman citizens at Ostia convened and held elections during the third quarter of the second century CE, in the form of the expression curator pecuniae publicae exigendae et attribuendae in comitiis factus, which appears in the elogium of P. Lucilius Gamala “the Younger”.36 Albeit the reference to the comitia in the elogium shows clear echoes of the elogium of the Elder P. Lucilius Gamala, an Ostian political leader who lived some two centuries earlier, it is not credible that the author of the elogium would have invented a meeting of the Ostian comitia.37
R. Meiggs’s view that elections by the people were abolished at Ostia already by the late first century is based on too narrow a view of the epigraphic evidence. The British historian included only part of the adlectiones in his argument, and he omitted the most significant case, that of Sentius Felix. Nor did he consider what the Album of Canusium can tell us in this regard. Furthermore, the elogium of the younger P. Lucilius Gamala clearly did not receive sufficient attention. It would seem that he set out from a preconceived notion, very common in the late 1950s, that Roman elections overall became obsolete during the first century CE, and he only needed three cases of adlectiones to conclude that this method had replaced elections by the people at Ostia. But it was the other way around, the adlectio to a magistracy found mention in a few inscriptions because it was so rare.
7 The New Evidence from Troesmis for Municipal Elections
When scrutinized closely, the Ostian evidence in no way lends itself to arguing that the tradition of holding local municipal elections had disappeared in the second century CE or even during the first half of the third. But even Ostia provides no explicit references to electioneering.
Then, quite recently, the belief in the continuation of Roman local elections received a mighty boost through the publication of two bronze tables containing parts of three chapters of the municipal charter of the town of Troesmis in the province Moesia Inferior, the Lex Troesmensium, which is dated to the end of the 170s CE (between mid-177 and March 180). The text was published by W. Eck in 2016, although passages had been presented in a preliminary fashion and discussed by the editor already for some years previously.38 In Chapter 27 the magistracies and priesthoods are listed which will be filled by elections in the comitia: IIvir, quinquennalis, aedilis, quaestor, and sacerdos.39 The beginning of chapter 28 is of particular relevance for the present topic, while the rest of what is preserved of the chapter gives further details about the election procedure, namely about voting curiatim, by curia:40
kaput XXVIII. De municipibus ad suffragium vocandis custodibusque ternis ponendis ad singulas cistas, quae suffragiorum causa positae erunt; item si quis in alia curia quam sua inter custodes suffragium tulerit, uti valeat, et de poena eius, qui duas pluresve tabellas in cistam deiecerit; item eius qui falsam rationem rettulerit.
Chapter 28. About the procedure for how citizens will be called to vote and about how three supervisors will be placed at each ballot box, which are set up for receiving the votes. Moreover: if one of the supervisors votes in a curia which is not his own, then it shall be valid, and about the punishment for someone who drops two or more votes into a ballot box. Moreover: about the punishment for someone who announces a false election result.
Any comments are almost superfluous. It is quite clear that when the charter for the town of Troesmis was drafted, the expectation was that contentious election campaigns might sometimes occur, in which the supporters of the various candidates might resort to illegal tricks in order for their champion to gain the majority of the votes. Here, it does not matter if the inspiration for this formulation was local, or if the text was based on experiences from other towns. The main thing is: elections at the local level in the Roman world demonstrably took place still at the end of the second century CE.
8 Conclusion: the Strength of Tradition
The new municipal code from Troesmis, dating to the late 170s CE, has undoubtedly changed the landscape in which the existence (or not) of municipal elections in the western part of the Roman empire is discussed. It makes little sense to claim that the law code represented an antiquated template that routinely was sent out to local communities. What has survived is enough to show that there are clear differences with the Flavian law found in several towns in Roman Spain, and thus if the text from Troesmis was inspired by a central template the latter must date to the early second century CE or later. Overall, it is difficult to believe that the law had contained such detailed prescriptions for how local elections should be conducted, if they were in fact not held. The tradition of holding municipal elections appears to be alive and well.
Even without the discovery of the inscription from Troesmis, a valid case can be made for the continued existence of municipal elections into the first half of the third century. Rome itself stands as a certain model in this regard, and when the rich epigraphic and prosopographical evidence from Roman Ostia is taken into account, it is evident that the election meeting must have survived, even though we only have a single reference to a meeting of the local comitia, in the case of the younger P. Lucilius Gamala, around 150 CE. Roman historians have been able to show that a number of everyday procedures are poorly reflected in the epigraphic medium, and the annual elections would seem to belong in this category.
It would therefore seem that when it comes to the political scene in Roman towns from the period from the reign of Augustus to the early third century, the tradition of holding elections lived on and communities experienced less change in this regard than is often assumed. In this period, it is too early to talk about a drastic withdrawal of the elite from communal matters; there was still competition for elected office. And the citizenry was able to exercise some influence over the election of magistrates.
Acknowledgements
For helpful comments I wish to express my gratitude to Olivier Hekster, as well as to Elsemieke Daalder and Francisco Pina Polo.
I am not sure what to make of the report in the Guida d’Italia: Emilia e Romagna (ed. Touring Club Italiano), Milan 1957, 101, of a “grande blocco con resti d’iscrizione dipinta (programma elettorale)” from Bononia (Bologna). For one election poster from Herculaneum, see AE 1987, 262. A. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Monumental Centre of Herculaneum: In Search of the Identities of Public Buildings’, JRA 24 (2011), 137–138 showed that the inscription AE 1989, 181b from Herculaneum does not belong to an election context.
For the evidence, see H. Mouritsen, Elections, Magistrates and Municipal Elite. Studies in Pompeian Epigraphy (ARID Suppl. 15) (Rome 1988), 83–84 (list of candidates supported in the most ancient surviving programmata, including epigraphic references), 104–106 (the material from c.30 BCE to 40 CE), 125–159 (the most recent material, the programmata recentiora). For a list of all individual and collective rogatores, see Mouritsen 1988, 160–178.
On the programmata for Helvius Sabinus, see Mouritsen 1988, op. cit. (n. 2), 136–137.
CIL IV 3403.
CIL IV 7273.
Mouritsen 1988, op. cit. (n. 2). For a fuller account of both earlier scholarship and studies after Mouritsen, see L.E. Tacoma, Roman Political Culture. Seven Studies of the Senate and City Councils of Italy from the First to the Sixth Century AD (Oxford 2020), 63–65.
Mouritsen 1988, op. cit. (n. 2), 56–60; H. Mouritsen, ‘Electoral Campaigning in Pompeii: A Reconsideration’, Athenaeum 87 (1999), 515–523. Strong support in Tacoma 2020, op. cit. (n. 6), 64, exemplified by the verdict “more rigorous study of the programmata has done much to undermine confidence in the democratic model of the elections”.
Tacoma 2020, op. cit. (n. 6), 63: “In retrospect, the approach was rather anachronistic, if not naive”, on scholars who took the Pompeian programmata as a sign that political leaders attempted to reach out to larger parts of the population. The criticism is unfounded, see below.
If one were engaged in writing an essay in Political science, one would obviously have to deal with the question of when an election campaign can truly be called “free and democratic”, but that is not the issue here.
This judgement is based on seven years of political activism in Finland, from the age of fifteen to twenty-two, and on observations made while living in a number of other western democracies.
The issue here is obviously not with the question of what effect the elections at Pompeii had on the power structures in the town or on the entry of “new families” into the local elite.
R. Biundo, ‘La propaganda elettorale a Pompei: la funzione e il valore dei programmata nell’organizzazione della campagna’, Athenaeum 91 (2003), 53–116.; C. Chiavia, Programmata. Manifesti elettorali nella colonia romana di Pompei (Turin 2002); Biundo was cited by Tacoma 2020, op. cit. (n. 6), 65. The issue of popular participation was not mentioned by J. Franklin, ‘Epigraphy and Society’, in: J.J. Dobbins and P.W. Foss, eds., The World of Pompeii (London/New York 2007), 518–525.
On electioneering during the Roman Republic, see A. Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering in Rome: A Study in the Political System of the Late Republic (Historia Einzelschriften 128) (Stuttgart 1999). On the Commentariolum petitionis, see W.J. Tatum, ‘Canvassing the Elite: Communicating Sound Values in the Commentariolum petitionis’, in: C. Rosillo Lopez, ed., Communicating Public Opinion in the Roman Republic (Historia Einzelschriften 256) (Stuttgart 2019), 257–272; M.C. Alexander, ‘The Commentariolum Petitionis as an Attack on Election Campaigns’, Athenaeum 97 (2009), 31–57, 369–395; Alexander, Roman Amoralism Reconsidered: The Political Culture of the Roman Republic and Historians in an Age of Disillusionment, self-published online (tinyurl.com/RomanAmoralism); Ph. Freeman, Quintus Tullius Cicero. How to Win an Election: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians (Princeton, N.J./Oxford 2012) with L. Spina, ‘Quintus Tullius Cicero. How To Win an Election: an Ancient Guide for Modern Politicians’, BMCR 2012.08.12 (2012).
See, for instance, M. Cary and H. Scullard, A History of Rome (London 1935, 1st ed.), 360. Perhaps surprisingly, a very similar view is found in M.T Boatwright et al., A Brief History of the Romans (New York/Oxford 2006, 1st ed.), 252–253.
R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford 1973, 2nd ed.), 183.
Support for Meiggs’s view is not difficult to find; see, e.g., H. Mouritsen, ‘The Album from Canusium and the Town Councils of Roman Italy’, Chiron 28 (1998), 250.
F.G.B. Millar, ‘Nicolet’s L’inventaire du monde’, JRA 1 (1988), 140; F.G.B. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC–AD 337) (London 1992, 1st ed. 1977), 302. Dio 37.28; 58.20.
For a detailed discussion about the impact of the emperor, see B. Levick, ‘Imperial Control of Elections under the Early Principate: Commendatio, Suffragatio, and “Nominatio”’, Historia 16 (1967), 207–230.
See R.J.A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton, NJ 1984), 341–345 with p. 342 for the quote. In agreement K. Kröss, Die politische Rolle der stadtrömischen Plebs in der Kaiserzeit (Leiden 2017), 94 (n. 106); Tacoma 2020, op. cit. (n. 6), 114 (although the overall emphasis is the opposite; cf. p. 61, p. 114: “from AD 14 onwards elections had become an internal affair in which senators voted about each other”).
On the pedanii, see F. Jacques, Le privilège de liberté. Politique impériale et autonomie municipale dans les cités de l’Occident romain (161–244) (Coll. ÉFR 76) (Rome 1984), 478–486 and passim; B. Salway, ‘Prefects, patroni, and Decurions: A New Perspective on the Album of Canusium’, in: A. Cooley, ed., The Epigraphic Landscape of Roman Italy (BICS Suppl. 71) (London 2000), 127–133 for what follows. Talbert 1984, op. cit. (n. 19), 249–250 on the pedarii in the Roman senate.
On the Flavian municipal law and the somewhat unclear approval procedure it underwent in Rome, see G. Rowe, ‘The Roman State: Laws, Lawmaking, and Legal Document’, in: C. Bruun and J. Edmondson, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Roman Epigraphy (New York 2015), 302–304, who preferred the term “code” instead of “charter”. Now also see J.F. Rodríguez Neila, Política y elecciones municipales en el Imperio Romano. Una visión desde la provincia Hispania Vlterior Baetica (Seville 2021) (non vidi; not yet processed in the University of Toronto library system).
CIL II 1964 = ILS 6089 = FIRA I 24.
J. González, ‘The Lex Irnitana: A New Copy of the Flavian Municipal Law’, JRS 76 (2018), 162 (Latin text), 188 (English translation, by M. Crawford).
See González 1986, op. cit. (n. 23), 163 (Latin text), 188 (English translation by M. Crawford).
González 1986, op. cit. (n. 23), 163–165 (Latin text), 188–189 (English translation by M. Crawford).
Among scholars who subscribe to this scenario, there may be some who instead emphasize, as the main reason for abolishing elections, a wish to reduce influence from the population at large. In this context it is not possible to analyze in any detail these two different explanations for the alleged disappearance of municipal elections.
Jacques 1984, op. cit. (n. 20), 351–376, 501–503, and passim.
See C. Bruun, Ostia-by-the-Sea: A Roman History. Population, Society, and Identities in Rome’s Port (Oxford/New York, forthcoming), Table 7.1 in Chapter VII.
González 1986, op. cit. (n. 23), 171–174 (chapters 52, 53, 55, 57, and 59).
For the evidence of curiae (occasionally found in provinces other than Africa, such as in Sardinia at Turris Libisonis; CIL X 7953 with A. Ibba, ‘Gli statuti municipali’, in: S. Angiolillo et al., eds., La Sardegna romana e altmedievale. Storia e materiali (Cagliari 2017), 187), see M. Cébeillac-Gervasoni, M.L. Caldelli, and F. Zevi, Epigrafia latina. Ostia: cento iscrizioni in contesto (Rome 2010) 1394–1395; A. Caballos Rufino, El nuevo bronce de Osuna y la política civilizadora romana (Sevilla 2006), 230–231, with 231–258 for the twenty-four curiae mentioned in the municipal statutes of the Lex Coloniae Genetivae Iuliae (Urso) (AE 2006, 645).
See Bruun forthcoming, op. cit. (n. 28), Table 7.2 in Chapter VII.
See Cébeillac-Gervasoni, Caldelli, and Zevi 2010, op. cit. (n. 30), 195.
Cf. that in CIL XIV 376 it as said of P. Lucilus Gamala “the Younger” in comitiis factus when referring to his election as curator pecuniae publicae exigendae et attribuendae.
The data can be found in Chapter VII of Bruun, forthcoming, op. cit. (n. 28).
There are in total twenty-three decuriones who make this claim; see Bruun, forthcoming, op. cit. (n. 28), Appendix 7c.
CIL XIV 376.
For a more extensive discussion and previous bibliography (extensive), see Chapter IV in Bruun, forthcoming, op. cit. (n. 28). CIL XIV 375 = CIL I2 3031a = ILS 6147 = IPO B 335.
See W. Eck, ‘Die lex Troesmensium: ein Stadtgesetz für ein municipium civium Romanorum. Publikation der erhaltenen Kapitel und Kommentar’, ZPE 200 (2016), 565–606, for the editio princeps, and J. Platschek, ‘Zur Lesung von Kap. 27 der lex Troesmensium’, Tyche 32 (2017), 151–165, for some relevant comments.
Eck 2016, op. cit. (n. 38), 580–581 (text and translation) = AE 2015, 1252.
Eck 2016, op. cit. (n. 38), 580 for the Latin text. AE 2015, 1252.