Suo anno

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In ancient Rome, suo anno ( Latin : in his year ; nom. Annus suus ) denoted the earliest possible occupation of an office after reaching the minimum age required for the office. The basis was the lex Villia annalis from 180 BC. BC, in which - following a plebiscite by the tribune Lucius Villius - the minimum age of the individual offices was set down. Sulla renewed the stipulations of the cursus honorum in the lex Cornelia de magistratibus and redefined the breaks between the individual offices, for example the 10-year interval between two consular offices. Based on the life data of Cicero , who boasted that he had reached all offices suo anno , the data for the individual offices can be determined. Nevertheless, the information is not always strictly related to the age as such, rather, Cicero is primarily concerned with the correct intervals between two successive offices, even if one should have been taken up late.

For members of the nobility , attaining office of the minimum age was usually the rule, for example with Caesar . If a cursus honorum deviated from this, as in the case of the Sulla consulate, more or less weighty reasons usually played a role, even if they are not easy to identify, as in Sulla's case. Cicero's special emphasis on having achieved all offices suo anno stems from the awareness that, as homo novus, he had no claim to this smooth official path. To have committed it required appropriate protection.

During the imperial era , the emperors often made sure that the fastest possible career within the framework of the law was adhered to. For the reign of Tiberius , for example, it can be shown that only homines novi regularly did not reach the offices suo anno , while for the others, attention was paid to compliance with the cursus honorum under this aspect.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ General compare Wolfgang Kunkel , Roland Wittmann : Staatsordnung und Staatspraxis der Römischen Republik . Volume 2. The magistrate . Beck, Munich 1995, pp. 45-49.
  2. ^ Theodora Hantos : Res publica constituta. The constitution of the dictator Sulla . Steiner, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-515-04617-8 , p. 39 f .; Johannes M. Rainer: Introduction to Roman constitutional law. The beginnings and the republic . Darmstadt 1997, ISBN 3-534-11543-0 , pp. 47-48 with note 146; Livy 40,99,1; Cicero , Philippicae orationes 5.47.
  3. ↑ Appian , bellum civile 1, 100, 465 f.
  4. ↑ Cicero, In L. Calpurnium Pisonem 2; De officiis 2.59; Brutus 321 and 323; Ulrich Gotter : The dictator is dead! Politics in Rome between the Ides of March and the establishment of the Second Triumvirate . Steiner, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-515-06815-5 , p. 107.
  5. ^ Theodor Mommsen : Roman State Law . Volume I. Leipzig 1887, p. 569 with note 2.
  6. ↑ General: Theodor Mommsen: Römisches Staatsrecht . Volume I. Leipzig 1887, p. 569, A. 2, for Caesar especially Andreas Glados: C. Iulius Caesar - Destroyer or Last Chance of the Republic . Grin Verlag, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 978-3-638-70989-7 , pp. VII – XVII.
  7. ^ Wolfram Letzner : Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Attempt a biography . Münster 2000, ISBN 3-8258-5041-2 , p. 127, note 89.
  8. ↑ Werner Eck : Marcus Hortalius, nobilis iuvenus, and his sons . In: Journal of Papyrology and Epigraphy . Volume 95, 1993, pp. 257-258.