Roman forces should act together. Frequently the Roman armies had been simultaneously directed against various points of Italy, and the custom naturally suggested itself that each consul should command half of the regular army of four legions, and thus have an independent sphere of operations (provincia).[1] In a defensive war, such as that against Hannibal, Italy would naturally fall into two consular provinces;[2] but the practice became even more essential when the Roman arms extended beyond the peninsula, and in the period of the acquisition of the empire, from the beginning of the first Punic war to the close of the struggle with Greece (264-146 B.C.), Italia as a whole, and some foreign country such as Greece or Macedon, are the regular provinciae held by the consuls.[3] The arrangements which were made for the permanent government of provinces, first through praetors and afterwards through pro-magistrates, tended to arrest their employment for this purpose; but down to the time of Sulla (81 B.C.) a consul might at any time be appointed to a transmarine province.[4]
The consuls settled the distribution of provinciae by agreement or by lot,[5] the sortitio becoming in time the more usual practice. Occasionally the Senate ventured to suggest that one of the consuls was better qualified for a special department, and in this case the inevitable consent of his colleague enabled him to assume it extra sortem.[6] But, as Rome's activity extended, and the available magistrates with imperium increased, the important question came to be, not who should have one of two departments, but which should be the consular provinces. This power to nominate the provinces (nominare provincias) had, by the close of the Hannibalic war, become the undisputed prerogative of the
- ↑ Liv. xxii. 27 "Ita (Fabius, after the appointment of Minucius as his colleague in 217 B.C.) obtinuit uti legiones, sicut consulibus mos esset, inter se dividerent."
- ↑ ib. xxx. 1 (203 B.C.) "censuerunt patres, ut consules inter se compararent sortirenturve, uter Bruttios adversus Hannibalem, uter Etruriam ac Ligures provinciam haberet."
- ↑ Italy and Macedonia (ib. xxxii. 8, xlii. 31, xliii. 12), Italy and Greece (xxxvii. 1).
- ↑ Italia and some foreign country are still consular provinciae in 112 and 111 B.C. (Sall. Jug. 27, 43). When a consul was appointed to one of the old praetorian provinces, he did not supplant the praetor but commanded with and over him.
- ↑ Liv. xxx. 1 "ut consules inter se compararent sortirenturve." Cf. ib. xxxii. 8, xxxvii. 1, and the other passages cited in note 3.
- ↑ ib. viii. 16; cf. Cic. pro Domo 9, 24. In 205 B.C. Scipio was given Sicilia extra sortem because his colleague was pontifex maximus (Liv. xxviii. 38).
