Potestas
Potestas (Latin for “power”, “power of attorney”, “possibility”) is an initially indefinite term for any actual control or decision-making option, which the Romans specified as a term for magistrate power in the sense of a constitutionally granted power of disposal or power of attorney.
The concept of potestas was already difficult to grasp in antiquity and it was necessary to distinguish it from the more specific imperium (command, authority). There was, however, a tendency to understand imperium as primarily military , while potestas as primarily with regard to civil authority . In a number of laws (for example in the lex Rubria or the Lex Ursonensis ) it is expressed that potestas was the broader, imperium the narrower term. The authority of the censors ,Popular tribunes , aediles and quaestors were only recorded with potestas ( censoria , tribunicia ).
In a foreign policy context, the phrase in potestatem se dedere ("to go under potestas ") meant that one submitted to Rome's power. Significant in private law was the patria potestas , i.e. the patriarchal power of disposal of the male head of the family over his relatives and slaves, which theoretically even included the right to kill relatives and which remained intact until late antiquity de iure .
According to constitutional law , the potestas was understood to mean the powers associated with a certain office. A Roman magistrate generally had maior potestas (“superior authority”) vis-à-vis holders of offices that were under him in the cursus honorum . From the potestas to distinguish the auctoritas , ie the informal power, which was not tied to an office, but to respect, wealth and patronage. Augustus makes the difference between potestas and auctoritas clear at an important point when he thinks that although not in potestas, he is superior to the other officials in auctoritas.
Since the late Roman Republic it happened that office and authority were separated from one another, that is, that potestas were conferred without being tied to the clothing of a corresponding magistrate. The most important case is that of the official authority of the tribune (tribunicia potestas) , which had already been given to Caesar and then from 22 BC onwards. BC should represent one of the key powers of the Roman emperors.
literature
- Jochen Bleicken : The Constitution of the Roman Republic . 3. Edition. Schöningh, Paderborn 1975, ISBN 3-506-99173-6 , pp. 79-80.
- Elmar Bund : Potestas. In: The Little Pauly (KlP). Volume 4, Stuttgart 1972, Col. 1093 f.
- Ingemar König: The Roman State I. The Republic . Stuttgart 1992.
- Wolfgang Kunkel with Roland Wittmann : State order and state practice of the Roman Republic. Second part. The magistrate . Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-33827-5 (by Wittmann completed edition of the work left unfinished by Kunkel). Pp. 21-28 (22).