disposal of the booty taken in war and of the conquered lands was one of these,[1] and the statements which record this right find support in Republican survivals. The control of the spoils of war (at least of the movable portions) belongs to the Republican general, subject to the advice of his council of war and sometimes to subsequent ratification by the Senate. The first condition may have been necessary in the time of the monarchy, but hardly the second.
The council of war was a type of the smaller special consilia, which the king doubtless employed to advise him in different branches of the administration; and such special councils must have been chosen from the great consilium publicum, the Senate. One of the most important of these was that which furnished his assessors in jurisdiction. That it became the custom, in the more important cases judged by the king in person, to employ a consilium of some sort, is stated in the charge brought by tradition against Tarquinius Superbus that he neglected this essential guarantee of even justice.[2] In the secular criminal jurisdiction of the king such a council would doubtless have been taken from the Senate. In the religious jurisdiction, which we have considered, the pontiffs would have been the advising board.
Senators also must have been chiefly chosen as delegates of the king, except, perhaps, those appointed for subordinate command in war;[3] there military fitness would be chiefly looked to.
The chief of these delegates was the prefect of the city (praefectus urbi), an alter ego left behind in the capital by the king when he himself was absent in the field.[4] To him must have been delegated the whole of the executive power, and with it the right and duty of consulting the Senate. It is not probable that the right of questioning the people was or could be delegated.[5] In criminal jurisdiction a distinction was believed
- ↑ Cic. de Rep. ii. 9, 15 "Cum ipse (Romulus) nihil ex praeda domum suam reportaret, locupletare cives non destitit"; ii. 14, 26 "ac primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, divisit viritim civibus." Cf. Dionys. ii. 28 and 62.
- ↑ Liv. i. 49 "cognitiones capitalium rerum sine consiliis per se solus exercebat."
- ↑ ib. 59; see p. 41.
- ↑ Tac. Ann. vi. 11 "namque antea, profectis domo regibus ac mox magistratibus, ne urbs sine imperio foret, in tempus deligebatur qui jus redderet ac subitis mederetur . . . duratque simulacrum, quotiens ob ferias Latinas praeficitur qui consulare munus usurpet." Cf. Liv. i. 59; Dionys. ii. 12.
- ↑ Yet Livy and Dionysius represent the tribunus celerum as summoning the assembly (Liv. i. 59; Dionys. iv. 71).
