disappearance of the municipal comitia, the limitation of local jurisdiction, the loss of an independent system of local finance, and the control ultimately assumed by the central government of the actual administration of many of the Italian states.
Of these changes, the downfall of the comitia is perhaps less remarkable than their continuance for so long a period after the assemblies had ceased to be a reality at Rome. A Latin colony in the time of Domitian still elects its magistrates at a comitia curiata,[1] and the transference of this principle to Spain shows its prevalence at the time in Italy. The paucity of inscriptions of the early Principate which speak of elections by the only alternative body, the local Senate, is remarkable, and there are clear indications of the survival of the principle of popular election until the time of Antoninus Pius.[2] It doubtless retained its hold on Italy as late as it did on the western provinces; its disappearance from the whole municipal sphere was the result of a new system of creating magistrates, the characteristics of which will be traced when we are dealing with the provinces of this period.[3] The elective power of the assemblies no doubt survived all their administrative functions. The tendency even of the early Principate was to confine these to the local Senates, which were accounted more responsible bodies, and were far better instruments of the central controlling power of Rome.
The limitation of the local courts of law cannot be fully illustrated, but it is to some extent connected with the establishment of high individual authorities for jurisdiction in Italy, which begins with Hadrian. That Emperor divided Italy into four great circuits, and placed each of them under a consularis.[4] These magistrates were replaced under Marcus Aurelius by juridici[5] of praetorian rank, whose purely civil jurisdiction was finally concerned with that portion of Italy which was separated from the urbica dioecesis, the sphere of the praetor's competence.[6]
- ↑ Lex Malacitana c. lii. ff.
- ↑ Kuhn Verfassung des römischen Reiches i. pp. 236, 237. In an inscription of Hadrian's time we find in Ostia II. vir . . . in comitiis factus (C.I.L. xiv. 375). For this and other instances see Liebenam Städteverwaltung p. 479.
- ↑ p. 438.
- ↑ Vita Hadr. 22 "quattuor consulares per omnem Italiam judices constituit." Of Antoninus Pius, who was one of these, it is said "cum Italiam regeret" (Vita Anton. 3). Cf. App. B.C. i. 38.
- ↑ Vita M. Anton. 11 "datis juridicis Italiae consuluit ad id exemplum, quo Hadrianus consulares viros reddere jura praeceperat."
- ↑ Ulpian in Fragmenta Vaticana 205, 232, 241.
