Ornamenta (award)

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In ancient Rome, ornamenta was a special form of decoration . In addition to the purely external honors, they contained manifest legal consequences that the Roman Senate granted to those honored in this way separately in the form of privileges and benefits. These legal consequences otherwise arose purely on the basis of the respective magistrate obtained without special ornamenta . The ornamenta for victorious generals were a special form and could be awarded by the Senate.

republic

The ornamenta , which was relatively seldom granted in the Roman Republic , i.e. the granting of honorary rights to a higher position that had not yet been held by the beneficiary, only authorized the beneficiary to vote in this higher office. However, it did not exempt the person concerned from applying for the office in order to actually exercise their political rights after a successful candidacy.

Legal consequences

The political legal consequences resulting from an ornamenta thus included the upgraded right to vote.

The special honorary rights of ornamenta allowed the recipient to wear the insignia of the ornate office on special occasions and to take corresponding places of honor at circus and theater plays or at festive banquets. In addition to the magistrate's right to burial, the person concerned was also granted the right to portray, namely the erection of a statue after his death.

Addressees

In principle, only senators who held an office or officials who were at the beginning of a senatorial career were able to enjoy honorary rights . Thus the quaestor Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis was awarded the ornamenta praetoria .

Officials who stood outside the regular course honorum could also be considered. The tribune and later praetor Gaius Papirius Carbo was founded around 67 BC. Because of his successful repeated action against Marcus Aurelius Cotta with the ornamenta consulari .

From Caesar is known to ten senatorial Legionslegaten (probably cohors praetoria) the ornamenta consularia awarded.

Special exceptions were rare and honorary ornamenta given by the Senate to a person entirely outside of rank and position has only been safely passed down by a primus pilus named Gnaeus Petreius Atinas . He received the honorary right to wear the toga praetexta at public celebrations because of his particularly shown bravery in one of the Cimbrian Wars under the command of Quintus Lutatius Catulus .

Imperial times

From the imperial era , the award of ornamenta developed into an extraordinary institution. These could now be awarded independently of a previously required, properly actually managed magistrate. The allocation of honorary rights was based on an assumed (fictitious) exercise of office by the beneficiary. The candidates for extraordinary ornamenta were proposed by the emperor to the senate, which then carried out the award.

Magistrate ornamenta

The grading of the fictitious magistrate ornamenta was based on the ranking of an actual official career. So the followed ornamenta quaestoria the ornamenta aedilicia that ornamenta praetoria and finally the ornamenta consularia.

The group of people who were awarded ornamenta included people who were particularly close or important to the emperor, such as the Praetorian prefect Seianus , who under Tiberius received the extraordinary ornamenta consularia in addition to the ordinary ornamenta praetoria . Under Claudius , imperial freedmen and other members of the imperial family were given extraordinary ornamenta .

In the Roman colonies the ornamenta decurionalia and duumviralia were given.

The extraordinarily received magistrate ornamenta only included special honorary rights. As with the special cases in the republic, political legal consequences were completely excluded. Neither a legal claim to the respective office nor to admission to the Senate could be derived from it.

Ornamenta Triumphalia

In times of the republic the victorious general, after his acclamation as emperor by the troops on the battlefield, was granted a triumphal procession through the city of Rome by the senate . After the triumph that was held, the awardee was left with some outward badges of honor, the ornamenta triumphalia.

Since Augustus , who only allowed the proconsul Lucius Cornelius Balbus Minor, as the victorious emperor, to triumph through the Senate, the right to triumph passed completely to the emperor with the principle of the principle . Subsequent emperors were no longer granted triumphs. Instead, the emperor, who was absent from the campaign, granted them the outward badge of honor of ornamenta triumphalia , if he accepted the pronounced imperator acclamation and claimed it personally as the only authorized addressee. Triumphal marches therefore only took place when the emperor himself had carried out the victorious campaign. Finally, only ornamenta triumphalia granted under Emperor Hadrian , on the occasion of the Bar Kochba uprising , have been safely passed down to victorious subordinates.

literature

  • Werner Eck : Imperial Imperial Acclamation and Ornamenta Triumphalia. In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy. Vol. 124, 1999, pp. 223-227 ( PDF ).
  • Werner Eck: Ornamenta. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 9, Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01479-7 , column 44 f.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Plutarch , Cato 39, 2.
  2. ^ Cassius Dio , Römische Geschichte 36, 40, 3–4; Dieter Medicus : Papirius 14. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, column 489.
  3. ^ Suetonius , Divus Iulius 76, 5.
  4. ↑ Pliny , Naturalis historia 22, 11; Hans Georg Gundel : Petreius 2. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, Col. 671.
  5. ↑ CIL 8, 26519 .