Talk:Executive magistrates of the Roman Republic

Creation of this page

I have put this page together as part of my series on the Constitution of the Roman Republic. I put all of this information here, rather than on the individual pages of the individual magistrates (such as roman consul or tribune) because my focus is on the civil offices of the republic (not, say, the imperial consul or the military tribune). By putting everything here, I can focus on how the offices functioned and interacted with each other, as well as with the Roman Senate and Roman assemblies, under the constitutional system of checks and balances. I can also show the traits shared by all magistrates (such as provincia, omens or the cursus honorum), as well as leave out excessive information that the average reader may not be interested in (such as the census statistics). RomanHistorian (talk) 06:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Update on the Roman constitution series

I just wanted to mention my plans for my series on the Roman constitution. There was simply too much information to put on my original page, Constitution of the Roman Republic. There is also a significant amount of information available on the constitutions of the Roman kingdom and empire. Therefore, I am going to give this series somewhat of a matrix structure. Roman Constitution will be the main page of the series. Underneath this page will be Constitution of the Roman Kingdom, Constitution of the Roman Republic and Constitution of the Roman Empire. It surprised me, but apparently there actually was a constitution during the time of the kingdom and then again during the time of the empire.

Underneath the constitution pages, I will have pages on the Senate of the Roman Kingdom, Senate of the Roman Republic, Senate of the Roman Empire, Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Kingdom, Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Republic, Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Empire, Executive Magistrates of the Roman Kingdom, Executive Magistrates of the Roman Republic, and Executive Magistrates of the Roman Empire.

When this is done, I will create a new page called Roman Executive Magistrates, and then populate this page, along with Roman senate and Roman assemblies. All three pages will be condensed versions of their respective sub-pages. Right now, Roman senate and Roman assemblies consist almost exclusively of facts about the republic. Neither page has many citations. They also use a discussion format, and my revisions to these pages will use more of a discussion and analysis format. I am going to be more cautious with my revisions of these pages, because I assume that people will want to restore the original versions for whatever reason.

My hope is to use a discussion and analysis format for the entire series. My overall goal will be to produce a series that doesn't just discuss the facts associated with these offices and institutions. I want the series to tie everything together, and illustrate how everything operated under the overall constitutional system. Right now, the entries on these individual topics (such as roman consul and praetor) simply list facts without providing any deeper analysis or context. It is difficult to truly understand these topics unless you know how they all worked together under the constitutional system.

Also, I am not surprised that there hasn't been more work done on Wikipedia on this topic. It seems as though there are very few books on this subject, and many of those books are quite old. This is unfortunate because this subject is actually quite relevant to modern politics. Many modern governments are designed around a similar constitutional superstructure as was the Roman government. RomanHistorian (talk) 07:22, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

GA Nomination

Has anyone been able to review this page yet? RomanHistorian (talk) 10:19, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Relevance of surrender of Vercingetorix?

Why does the image illustrating the section on Extraordinary Magistrates depict Vercingetorix surrendering to Caesar? Puzzling. The section discusses the dictator and magister equitum; Caesar was not dictator during his war in Gaul, so his activities there would not illustrate the role of a Roman dictator. I'm missing the connection. Cynwolfe (talk) 05:59, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

• So am I; therefore I commented it out. ... GELongstreet (talk) 21:28, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Move

I object to the move and its rationale. There is not a sole "executive magistrate", as the title now implies, that constitutes a single "job title". This is a set of magistracies that have several different job titles, and the article falls under the provision that plural titles are used for articles that cover Articles on groups or classes of specific things (see WP:PLURAL#Exceptions); specifically, Articles that actually distinguish among multiple distinct instances of related items. See similar move discussion at Talk:Roman roads#Requested move. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:43, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Done. Jojalozzo 18:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

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GA Reassessment

This discussion is transcluded from Talk:Executive magistrates of the Roman Republic/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the reassessment.

This article was written ten years ago, and has significant problems which makes it under GA standards.

The main problem is that the Roman Republican constitution was ever evolving, a bit like the British constitution. Therefore, constitutional changes should be detailed to show what was the situation at any given time. This article fails on this point; the first date mentioned is only in the very last paragraph. Most of the magistracies detailed in the article did not exist at the beginning of the Republic (praetor, censor, etc.), but we don't know when or how they were created. Thus, this article principally deals with the magistrates of the Roman Republic during its last century of existence. There is no mention of important constitutional laws, such as the Lex Villia Annalis, the Lex Ovinia, Lex Genucia, or the Lex Licinia Sextia.

Sources: The article uses outdated sources like Abbott (1901), or written by Robert Byrd, a politician. References to Cicero should be in a book/paragraph format, not by using page number to a modern edition. Lily Ross Taylor is a great source, but although she is mentioned in the sources section, there is not citation related to her works. Among the missing sources, there are: Robert Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic; Francis Ryan, Rank and Participation in the Roman Senate; Corey Brennan, The Praetorship; the three volumes of the Cambridge Ancient History on the Roman Republic, and many others.

Title: "Executive" magistrates is an anachronism, there was no separation of powers during the Roman Republic. Title should be "Magistrates of the Roman Republic"

I will delist the article after a week, unless someone wants to rewrite the article. T8612 (talk) 13:37, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

• Agreed. Other points: Plebians= commoners, Patricians= aristocrats is incorrect, since there were many Plebian aristocrats. Maior potestas is never translated as 'Major powers' (it means 'Greater power', but it's usually left untranslated). The censor did not 'hold little real power'. The link to 'coercion' does not take us anywhere helpful. The imperium / potestas distinction is not explained or even referred to. Collega means 'colleague', not 'collegiality'. Habeas corpus is not a Roman Republican principle. The references to the situation outside Rome and to provincia are unclear. Very little is said about what magistrates did outside of the city of Rome. Consuls' term did not originally run from Jan-Dec (the fact that the term applies to the other magistrates is not mentioned). 'Ordinary magistrates' the term is not explained. consulare is neuter, an ex-consul was generally male and therefore consularis. The ten year limit on re-election as consul clearly didn't exist by the Late Republic, it is debatable whether it was ever a rule. The article ought togive the (changing) number of praetors. The centuriate assembly was not 'the assembly of the soldiers'. The discussion of the censor is confused, presenting the office as simultaneously powerless and 'easily abused'. A random reference to the sacrosanctity of tribunes is incorporated into the paragraph on censors. The cursus honorum is not referenced at all until we get to aediles; it should really appear in the section on 'ranks'. The Latin for 'plebian magistrate' is magistratus plebeius not magistratus plebeii which is plural. Tribunes were not "the only true representatives of the people" - by definition they only represented a sub-set of the people. "Our own habeas corpus" is POV. Magister populi is better translated 'chief of the people' or similar. The pomerium is only mentioned for the first time in the discussion of the dictator. The article leaves it entirely unclear what an 'ordinary dictator' was and gives the incorrect impression that there were no dictators after 202 BC. The inclusion of the Byzantine Senate in the "See Also" selection is bizarre. The "Further Reading" includes several irrelevant or obsolete items, like Cameron 1993, Ihne 1853, Millar 1977, Polybius 1823, Tighe 1886. Von Fritz on the 'mixed constitution' could theoretically be relevant, but the article hasn't made any reference to the term. None of the minor magistrates are mentioned at all. I'm sure there's more; this is not my area of speciality. Furius (talk) 01:45, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
• Delisted. T8612 (talk) 16:45, 1 November 2019 (UTC)