Roman Latin Terminology

1. Roman Latin Terms Julio-Claudians Topic Mr Aligiannis Beverly Hills Girls High School HSC 2016

2. The Roman Senate • The Roman system of government might seem a little strange to us, but for them it worked for almost 500 years.  The republic was run by the Senate.  The senate passed all laws and collected all taxes.  All members of the Senate were of the Patrician or wealthy landowner class. • At the head of the senate were two consuls.  The Consuls controlled the legions of Rome.  A senator was selected by the Consuls and remained a senator for life.  The Consuls also selected the new members of the Senate if a senator died.  To become a consul, you had to be elected by a majority of the popular vote from all citizens of Rome. • There was a second part of Roman government, the assembly.  The assembly was elected by Romans from the plebeian class.  The Assembly had no real power per the governmental structure, but if you didn't listen to the assembly they had the power of most of the citizens behind them and could make life very interesting.

3. Structure of the Roman Government

4. Princeps senatus • The princepssenatus (plural principessenatus) was the first member by precedence of the Roman Senate. Although officially out of the cursus honorum and owning no imperium, (imperium means power to command) this office brought enormous prestige to the senator holding it. • The princepssenatus was not a lifetime appointment. He was chosen by every new pair of censors (that is, every 5 years). Censors could, however, confirm a princepssenatus for a period of another 5 years. He was selected from patrician senators with consular rank, usually former censors. The successful candidate had to be a patrician with an impeccable political record, respected by his fellow senators.

5. Roman censor • The censor was an officer in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances. • The censors' regulation of public morality is the origin of the modern meaning of the words "censor" and "censorship".

6. Cursus Honorum • The (Latin: "course of offices") was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in both the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. It was designed for men of senatorial rank. • The cursus honorum comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum age for election. There were minimum intervals between holding successive offices and laws forbade repeating an office

7. Patrician • (from Latin: patricius) is a term that originally referred to a group of ruling class families in ancient Rome.

8. Consul • A consul was the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic, and the consulship was considered the highest level of the cursus honorum (the sequential order of public offices through which aspiring politicians sought to ascend). • Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. The consuls alternated in holding imperium each month, and a consul's imperium extended over Rome, Italy, and the provinces. However, after the establishment of the Empire, the consuls were merely a figurative representative of Rome’s republican heritage and held very little power and authority, with the Emperor acting as the supreme leader.

9. Principate • The principate (27 BC – 284 AD), the first period of the Roman Empire, extended from the beginning of the reign of Augustus Caesar to the Crisis of the Third Century, after which it evolved into the dominate. The principate is characterized by a concerted effort on the part of the emperors to preserve the illusion of the formal continuance of the Roman Republic.

10. Roman Senate • The Roman Senate was a political institution in ancient Rome. It was one of the most enduring institutions in Roman history, being established in the first days of the city (traditionally founded in 753 BC). It survived the overthrow of the kings in 509 BC, the fall of the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC, the division of the Roman Empire in 395 AD, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, and the barbarian rule of Rome in the 5th, 6th, and 7th centuries.

11. Proconsul • A proconsul was a governor of a province in the Roman Republic appointed for one year by the senate. In modern usage, the title has been used (sometimes disparagingly) for a person from one country ruling another country or bluntly interfering in another country's internal affairs.

12. Tribune • Tribunus, in English tribune, was the title of various elected officials in Ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten Tribunes of the Plebs acted as a check on the authority of the senate and the annual magistrates, holding the power of iusintercessionis to intervene on behalf of the plebeians, and veto unfavourable legislation. There were also military tribunes, who commanded portions of the Roman army, subordinate to the higher magistrates, such as the consuls and praetors, promagistrates, and their legates. Various officers within the Roman army were also known as tribunes. The title was also used for several other positions and classes in the course of Roman history.

13. Potestas • The idea of potestas originally referred to the power, through coercion, of a Roman magistrate to promulgate edicts, give action to litigants, etc. This power, in Roman political and legal theory, is considered analogous in kind though lesser in degree to military power. The most important magistrates (such as consuls and praetors) are said to have imperium, which is the ultimate form of potestas, and refers indeed to military power. • Potestas strongly contrasts with the power of the Senate and the prudentes, a common way to refer to Roman jurists. While the magistrates had potestas, the prudentes exercised auctoritas. It is said that auctoritas is a manifestation of socially recognized knowledge, while potestas is a manifestation of socially recognized power. In Roman political theory, both were necessary to guide the res publica and they had to inform each other.

14. Imperium • Imperium is a Latin word which, in a broad sense, translates roughly as 'power to command'. In ancient Rome, different kinds of power or authority were distinguished by different terms. Imperium referred to the ability of an individual to command the military. It is not to be confused with auctoritas or potestas, different and generally inferior types of power in the Roman Republic and Empire. • Primarily used to refer to the power that is wielded, in greater or lesser degree, by an individual to whom it is delegated, the term could also be used with a geographical connotation, designating the territorial limits of that imperium. Individuals given such power were referred to as curulemagistrates or promagistrates. These included the curuleaedile, the praetor, the censor, the consul, the magister equitum, and the dictator.

15. Patrician • Patrician may refer to: Patrician (ancient Rome), the original aristocratic families of Ancient Rome, and a synonym for "aristocratic" in modern English usage

16. Plebian • In ancient Rome, the plebs was the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census. From the 4th century BC or earlier, known as commoners or part of lower social status • Literary references to the 'plebs', however, usually mean the ordinary citizens of Rome as a whole, as distinguished from the elite—a sense retained by "plebeian" in English. In the very earliest days of Rome, plebeians were any tribe without advisers to the King. In time, the word – which is related to the Greek word for crowd, plethos – came to mean the common people.

17. Republic Roman • The Roman Republic (Latin: Res publica Romana; Classical Latin: was the period of ancient Roman civilization beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom, traditionally dated to 509 BC, and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire. It was during this period that Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world.

18. Equites • The Equites (Latin: equesnom. singular; sometimes called "knights" in modern times because of the involvement of horses) constituted the lower of the two aristocratic classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the patricians (patricii), a hereditary caste that monopolized political power during the regal era (753 to 509 BC) and during the early Republic (to 338 BC). A member of the equestrian order was known as an eques (plural: equites).

19. Res Gestae • Res Gestae DiviAugusti (Eng. The Deeds of the Divine Augustus) is the funerary inscription of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, giving a first-person record of his life and accomplishments.The Res Gestae is especially significant because it gives an insight into the image Augustus portrayed to the Roman people. Various inscriptions of the Res Gestae have been found scattered across the former Roman Empire. The inscription itself is a monument to the establishment of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that was to follow Augustus

20. Praetorian Guard • The Praetorian Guard (Latin: Praetoriani) was a force of bodyguards used by RomanEmperors. The title was already used during the Roman Republic for the guards of Roman generals since the rise to prominence of the Scipio family around 275 BC. The Guard was dissolved by Emperor Constantine I in the 4th century. They were distinct from the Imperial Germanic bodyguard which provided close personal protection for the early Roman emperors.