Lex Antonia de dictatura in perpetuum tollenda

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The Lex Antonia de dictatura in perpetuum tollenda was one of several legislative initiatives by Marcus Antonius , which he passed in April 44 BC. In the Roman Senate . The law of the “leges Antoniae” law referred to here called for the formal abolition of the dictatorship .

The measure goes back to a direct experience of the consul Marcus Antonius with his co-consul Gaius Iulius Caesar , who had been murdered the previous month. The elimination of Caesar is attributed not least to the fact that the Senate had recently given him the power of dictator perpetuus (dictator for life) and that opponents considered the permanent leadership of a dictatorial office to be incompatible with the tried and tested republican principles of controllable distribution of power . The experiences with dictatorships, already during the Punic Wars , later under Sulla and finally in the years 49 to 45 BC BC under Caesar, Marcus Antonius had moved the Senate to change its mind and give up the dictatorial office.

Despite the legal enforcement of the abolition, the Senate offered the office to a single person in 22 BC. Chr. Again to Augustus , who however refused. Augustus, with whom the Roman state was reorganized with the coming imperial era , considered the dictatorship to be unsuitable for legitimizing the Princeps .

literature

  • Karl-Ludwig Elvers : Roman consuls, dictators, censors and special colleges up to 30 BC Chr. , In: W. Eder / J. Renger (Ed.): DNP Suppl. 1: Herrscherchronorien, Stuttgart 2004, pp. 191–263.
  • Ulrich Wilcken : On the development of the Roman dictatorship (= treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Philosophical-Historical Class. 1940, 1, ZDB -ID 210015-0 ). Academy of Sciences, de Gruyter in commission, Berlin 1940.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Callie Williamson: The Laws of the Roman People: Public Law in the Expansion and Decline of the Roman Republic , The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2005, p. 471.
  2. ↑ Cassius Dio 54, 1, 1-4; Wolfgang Kunkel , Roland Wittmann : State order and state practice of the Roman Republic: 2nd section. Die Magistratur , Verlag CH Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-33827-5 , p. 717.