In ancient Roman law, ambitus was a crime of political corruption, mainly a candidate's attempt to influence the outcome (or direction) of an election through bribery or other forms of soft power.
The passage of Rome's first sumptuary law the previous year suggests that the two forms of legislation are related; both were aimed at curbing wealth-based inequities of power and status within the governing classes.
[2] The temptation to indulge in bribery indicates that the traditional patron-client relationship was insufficient to gather enough votes to win election.
[3] The word ambitus for electoral corruption is a general term for the crime; defendants would have been charged under a specific statute (lex).
[4] The 2nd-century BC Greek historian Polybius, a major source on the workings of the Roman constitution, makes the extravagant assertion that while Carthaginians acquire public office by openly offering gifts, the penalty at Rome for doing so is death.
[6] The rhetorical tactics of Cicero's speeches demonstrate how an initial charge of ambitus, under whatever statute, might devolve into an occasion for impugning or humiliating a public figure.
[8]Bribery of a person already holding office was covered by laws de repetundae; provincial governors were particularly susceptible to such charges.
A candidate (candidatus) was so called from his appearing in the public places, such as the fora and Campus Martius, before his fellow-citizens, in a whitened (candidus) toga.
On such occasions, the candidate was attended by his friends (deductores), or followed by the poorer citizens (sectatores), who could in no other manner show their good will or give their assistance.
[10] The Lex Acilia Calpurnia (67 BC) was intended to suppress treating of the electors and other like matters: the penalties were fine, exclusion from the Roman Senate, and perpetual incapacity to hold office.
This lex, which is entitled De Sodalitiis, did not alter the previous laws against bribery; but it was specially directed against a particular mode of canvassing, which consisted in employing agents (sodales) to mark out the members of the several tribes into smaller portions, and to secure more effectually the votes by this division of labour.
[15] The Lex Julia de Ambitu was passed (18 BC) in the time of Augustus, and it excluded from office for five years those who were convicted of bribery.
[18] While the choice of candidates was thus partly in the hands of the senate, bribery and corruption still influenced the elections, though the name of ambitus was, strictly speaking, no longer applicable.
But in a short time, the appointment to public offices was entirely in the power of the emperors; and the magistrates of Rome, as well as the populus, were merely the shadow of that which had once a substantial form.
A Roman jurist, of the imperial period (Modestinus), in speaking of the Julia Lex de Ambitu, observes, "This law is now obsolete in the city, because the creation of magistrates is the business of the princeps, and does not depend on the pleasure of the populus; but if any one in a municipium should offend against this law in canvassing for a sacerdotium or magistratus, he is punished, according to a senatus consultum, with infamy, and subjected to a penalty of 100 aurei".
When, therefore, Rein, who refers to these two passages under the lex Tullia, says: "Even those who received money from the candidates, or at least those who distributed it in their names, were punished," he couples two things together that are entirely of a different kind.