The Origin of Roman Dictatorship

Abstract

For important reasons, much interest has always been taken in Roman dictatorship by those occupying themselves with the history of the Roman constitution. Ihne, Schwegler1), Lange, Herzog concerned themselves with it ; Mommsen grappled with the problem in his Rom. Staatsrecht, partly also in his Rom. Geschichte and his Rom. Chronologie, and in the last few years quite an amount of literature has been produced in which new courses have been struck out for approaching the problem 2). These authors, as, in fact, others had done before them, refer, for purposes of comparison, to other parts of Italy outside Rome, principally Latium, but also Etruria and the Oscan-Sabellic district. The functions of officials in these regions and in Rome are compared, and the possibility of a conformity between the Latin dictator (or dicator) and the Roman is considered. I do not intend, in the present article, to go into these matters, because in my investigation I want to proceed from the Roman dictator himself. This abstention does not imply any lack of respect, on my part, for the attempt made by others, but it seems to me that their investigations have not carried us any further to our aim. The magistrates who occur elsewhere exactly lack the remarkable feature of the Roman dictator which lies in the fact that this dictator gets appointed for discharging a special and specified function and resigns onice when his task has been completed, whereas elsewhere the dictator or allied official is an ordinary magistrate who is appointed for every year at a time and immediately gives way to his successor after his resignation. This differ-