Lex Villia annalis

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lex Villia annalis was a Roman law that standardized the official career path, in particular the chronological order of the occupation of the senatorial state offices.

The course honorum

In the Roman Republic , rules had been developed over the centuries according to customary law, in which order Roman politicians could hold senatorial offices without there being any legally binding rules (→ cursus honorum ). So it happened that the order ( quaestor , aedil / tribune , praetor , consul ) was repeatedly broken by individual prominent personalities, be it that individual offices were skipped (e.g. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus , who without first was one of the having held lower offices, became consul), be it that individual office holders occupied their office for more than a year by iteration (e.g. Marcus Claudius Marcellus , suffect consul 215 BC and ordinary consul 214 BC).

Legislative initiatives

In order to create fixed rules for the cursus honorum , there were already 199 BC. A legislative initiative to create a fixed sequence for the offices to be held, according to which the lower office had to be held before one could apply for the next higher office. After this initiative had failed, the tribune Lucius Villius (later named with the Cognomen Annalis for himself and his descendants) laid down in 180 BC. BC presented a new legislative proposal to the people's assembly, which was accepted and went down in Roman legal history as the lex Villia annalis .

Contents of the lex Villia annalis

  1. First, the order of the offices was determined. After that, the entrance office, the Quaestur, had to be filled for the senatorial career. Then the former quaestor had the right to apply for the next higher office, aedility or the people's tribunate , after completing one of these two offices he could become praetor and then attain the highest office of state, the consulate.
  2. When applying for a senatorial office, two years had to pass after an office had expired before someone was allowed to apply for the next higher office.
  3. Before a Roman was allowed to apply for an office for the first time, he had to prove 10 years of military service.
  4. The Lex also stipulated the minimum age from which a curular office could be assumed. He had to be 37 for the Kuruliche Aedility, 40 for the Praetur and 43 for the Consulate.
  5. A previous consul could only reapply for the consulate after 10 years.

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literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingemar König : The Roman State , Volume I, Consular List, page 220.
  2. ↑ Ingemar König, The Roman State , Vol. 1, p. 219.
  3. ^ Titus Livius , Ab urbe condita 40, 44, 1.
  4. ^ Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton , The Magistrates of the Roman Republic , Volumes I and II.