Lands, Laws, and Gods: Magistrates and Ceremony in the Regulation of Public Lands in Republican Rome
Daniel J. Gargola
Number of quotes: 10
Book ID: 398 Page: 15
Section: 3A4
In practice, the elaborate system of division and definition came together around the figure of the magistrate and the body of the senate. Magistrates, not priests or jurists, were the chief actors of public life. They not only supervised seemingly secular governmental operations and presided over the courts handling private law disputes, but they also took a central role in the practices of the state religion, supervising sacrifices, festivals, games, processions, and rites of divination. The role of experts simply was to advise and assist the magistrate, the organizer and officiant of major religious observances and the implementer of policy, and to coach him in the proper procedure.{11}
Quote ID: 8480
Time Periods: 0345
Book ID: 398 Page: 20
Section: 4B
The ceremonial aspects of an official’s public appearances often extended beyond setting and costume, for formalism in word and deed characterized many of his activities.
Quote ID: 8481
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 398 Page: 22
Section: 4B
The verbal forms of vows were fixed and their construction involved much priestly learning; the same peculiarities of vocabulary and phrasing were also a feature of laws.{31}
Quote ID: 8482
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 398 Page: 23
Section: 4B
In a system that operated in such a manner, members of the elite and citizens at large would regularly have encountered government in the form of ritualized occasions of one kind or another, and this feature of public life would have influenced perceptions about the nature of government and magistracies and clearly identified the proper sort of activity conducted in the appropriate way. On one level, these ceremonial events emphasized the distance between officials and common citizens.
Quote ID: 8483
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 398 Page: 26
Section: 4B
The boundaries of Roman territory also marked the limits of Roman religious practices; according to the younger Pliny (Ep. 10. 50), the emperor Trajan maintained that dedications of temples in accordance with Roman procedures were not valid in the territory of non-Roman cities.
Quote ID: 8484
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 398 Page: 27
Section: 4B
Thus, magistrates crossing the pomerium and leaving the sphere of the urban auspices were expected to auspicate. Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (cos. 163), having returned to the city to consult the senate, forgot to take the auspices again when he crossed the pomerium on the way back to the campus Martius to supervise the election of his successors, and for this reason the augurs recommended to the senate that the elections be held to be invalid.{11}
Quote ID: 8485
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 398 Page: 28
Section: 4B
...Livy (45.12.9-12) reported that a consul of 168 issued an edict setting a day for his soldiers to assemble but failed to enter a templum to auspicate before doing so; the augurs declared the day wrongfully set and the legions remained in Rome.
Quote ID: 8486
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 398 Page: 30
Section: 2A4
Such a connection between a specific body of rules and a defined area was not just a feature of relatively small spaces. Scipio Aemilianus, having performed at Carthage in 146 the rite of evocation, through which a Roman general called on the protecting gods of a besieged city to abandon the place in return for later benefits from the Roman state.
Quote ID: 8487
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 398 Page: 31
Section: 4B
Lands governed by different rules and possessing different characters were often adjacent: urbs and ager, Roman territory and non-Roman, sacred and profane, public and private, and the private property of one owner and that of another. Visible boundaries, therefore, would have been a necessity.
Quote ID: 8488
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 398 Page: 33
Section: 4B
It is no surprise, then, to find that the boundary stones had their own protective deity. In the Roman calendar, February 23 was set aside for the Terminalia, given to the worship of Terminus, the god of boundaries.{40}
Quote ID: 8489
Time Periods: 0
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