Its main principles were, a complete separation between the political authority which governed in the burgess-districts and the military authority which governed in the non-burgess-districts, and an uniform extension of the duration of the supreme magistracy from one year to two, the first of which was devoted to civil, and the second to military affairs. Locally the civil and the military authority had certainly been long separated by the constitution, and the former ended at the -pomerium-, where the latter began; but still the same man held the supreme political and the supreme military power united in his hand. In future the consul and praetor were to deal with the senate and burgesses, the proconsul and propraetor were to command the army; but all military power was cut off by law from the former, and all political action from the latter. This primarily led to the political separation of the region of Northern Italy from Italy proper. Hitherto they had stood doubtless in a national antagonism, inasmuch as Northern Italy was inhabited chiefly by Ligurians and Celts, Central and Southern Italy by Italians; but, in a political and administrative point of view, the whole continental territory of the Roman state from the Straits to the Alps including the Illyrian possessions--burgess, Latin, and non-Italian communities without exception--was in the ordinary course of things under the administration of the supreme magistrates who were acting in Rome, as in fact her colonial foundations extended through all this territory. According to Sulla's arrangement Italy proper, the northern boundary of which was at the same time changed from the Aesis to the Rubico, was--as a region now inhabited without exception by Roman citizens--made subject to the ordinary Roman authorities; and it became one of the fundamental principles of Roman state-law, that no troops and no commandant should ordinarily be stationed in this district. The Celtic country south of the Alps on the other hand, in which a military command could not be dispensed with on account of the continued incursions of the Alpine tribes, was constituted a distinct governorship after the model of the older transmarine commands.(27)
Lastly, as the number of praetors to be nominated yearly was raised from six to eight, the new arrangement of the duties was such, that the ten chief magistrates to be nominated yearly devoted themselves, during their first year of office, as consuls or praetors to the business of the capital--the two consuls to government and administration, two of the praetors to the administration of civil law, the remaining six to the reorganized administration of criminal justice--and, during their second year of office, were as proconsuls or propraetors invested with the command in one of the ten governorships: Sicily, Sardinia, the two Spains, Macedonia, Asia, Africa, Narbo, Cilicia, and Italian Gaul. The already-mentioned augmentation of the number of quaestors by Sulla to twenty was likewise connected with this arrangement.(28)
Better Arrangement Of Business Increase Of The Power Of The Senate
By this plan, in the first instance, a clear and fixed rule was substituted for the irregular mode of distributing offices hitherto adopted, a mode which invited all manner of vile manoeuvres and intrigues; and, secondly, the excesses of magisterial authority were as far as possible obviated and the influence of the supreme governing board was materially increased. According to the previous arrangement the only legal distinction in the empire was that drawn between the city which was surrounded by the ring-wall, and the country beyond the -pomerium-; the new arrangement substituted for the city the new Italy henceforth, as in perpetual peace, withdrawn from the regular -imperium-,(29) and placed in contrast to it the continental and transmarine territories, which were, on the other hand, necessarily placed under military commandants--the provinces as they were henceforth called. According to the former arrangement the same man had very frequently remained two, and often more years in the same office. The new arrangement restricted the magistracies of the capital as well as the governorships throughout to one year; and the special enactment that every governor should without fail leave his province within thirty days after his successor's arrival there, shows very clearly--particularly if we take along with it the formerly-mentioned prohibition of the immediate re-election of the late magistrate to the same or another public office--what the tendency of these arrangements was. It was the time-honoured maxim by which the senate had at one time made the monarchy subject to it, that the limitation of the magistracy in point of function was favourable to democracy, and its limitation in point of time favourable to oligarchy. According to the previous arrangement Gaius Marius had acted at once as head of the senate and as commander-in-chief of the state; if he had his own unskilfulness alone to blame for his failure to overthrow the oligarchy by means of this double official power, care seemed now taken to prevent some possibly wiser successor from making a better use of the same lever. According to the previous arrangement the magistrate immediately nominated by the people might have had a military position; the Sullan arrangement, on the other hand, reserved such a position exclusively for those magistrates whom the senate confirmed in their official authority by prolonging their term of office. No doubt this prolongation of office had now become a standing usage; but it still--so far as respects the auspices and the name, and constitutional form in general--continued to be treated as an extraordinary extension of their term. This was no matter of indifference. The burgesses alone could depose the consul or praetor from his office; the proconsul and propraetor were nominated and dismissed by the senate, so that by this enactment the whole military power, on which withal everything ultimately depended, became formally at least dependent on the senate.