occasion on which legal knowledge was indispensable in an adviser. The help of the jurist had to be sought in the framing of the imperial constitutiones,[1] and we are told that for this purpose Severus Alexander was assisted by twenty jurisperiti out of a consilium numbering seventy in all.[2] A difference of personnel for different branches of administration is easily comprehensible, for it is improbable that the Emperor needed to summon all his councillors on every occasion on which he took advice.[3] The mode of consultation was wholly informal and depended on the discretion of the Princeps. Augustus in the exercise of his jurisdiction distributed voting tablets (tabellae) to his councillors, on which they could inscribe acquittal or condemnation or a modified verdict.[4] We cannot imagine that the votes were reckoned as in the jury system. The tabellae were for the enlightenment of the Princeps, and he may have decided according to the weight of the names of those who handed them in. Nero, we are told, took opinions on paper, and, after reading them, gave his own judgment as though it were that of the majority of his advisers.[5] Under Severus Alexander opinions were given verbally and taken down in short-hand.[6]
We have already shown that it is probable that the imperial consilium in its developed form was employed by the praefect of the praetorian guard when he gave judgment vice the Princeps.[7](Dio Cass. lii. 33).]
- ↑ p. 380.
- ↑ Vita Alex. 16 "neque ullam constitutionem sacravit sine viginti jurisperitis et doctissimis ac sapientibus viris isdemque disertissimis non minus quinquaginta."
- ↑ In Maecenas' supposed advice to Augustus, which in this, as in other respects, probably reflects the practice of the time of Dio Cassius, it is said of the consilium [Greek: alloi allote diaginôsketôsan
- ↑ Suet. Aug. 33.
- ↑ Suet. Nero 15.
- ↑ Vita Alex. 16 "ut iretur per sententias singulorum ac scriberetur quid quisque dixisset."
- ↑ p. 410.
