great that it was felt that the citizens' ordinary guarantees of protection should sink into abeyance if they were thought likely to interfere with the safety of the commonwealth. The dictatorship had an internal as well as an external side to its military character; it was even, perhaps, on its earliest institution, meant to control disobedient citizens as well as to oppose the enemy,[1] and was thus to some extent a party weapon in the hands of the Patricians against the refractory Plebs. We shall find that this summary military jurisdiction within the city was subsequently abolished, without much loss to the utility of the institution. Its true merit was the unity of administration which it created, the advantages of which were made more apparent by the clashing powers of the magistrates at a later stage of history. But the experience of the evils of divided authority did not first point out the necessity of the office. The dictatorship was an integral part of the original Republican constitution; the law allowing it was forgotten—perhaps it was the first lex Valeria which secured the appeal against the ordinary magistrates; but the right of the consul to declare martial law, as he did by appointing a dictator, was never questioned as was the parallel right, usurped by the Senate in later times, of arming the consul with military jurisdiction. But, although the nomination of a dictator could not be regarded as a violation of, or even as a break in, the constitution, it was rightly held to be a powerful party weapon in the hands of the patrician magistracy; and the attempts of the Plebs were directed, however unsuccessfully, to limit this mighty power which over-rode all privilege and law.
But the appointment of a dictator was supposed to be due to exceptional circumstances. It is only when we look to the peaceful life of the state, to the administration of law by the magistrate or the expression of popular will in the comitia, that we can estimate the strength of the position held by the patrician families.
The criminal law, which was doubtless during this period becoming more and more secularised and divorced from the direct control of religion, was the monopoly of the official class.
- ↑ Cic. de Leg. iii. 3, 9 "Ast quando duellum gravius, discordiae civium escunt, oenus, ne amplius sex menses, si senatus creverit, idem juris, quod duo consules, teneto"; Imp. Claudius Oratio i. 28 "Quid nunc commemorem dictaturae hoc ipso consulari imperium valentius repertum apud majores nostros quo in asperioribus bellis aut in civili motu difficiliore uterentur?"
