Roman dictator

A dictator was still controlled and accountable during his term in office: the Senate still exercised some oversight authority, and the rights of plebeian tribunes to veto his actions or of the people to appeal them were retained.

Dictators were frequently appointed from the earliest period of the Republic down to the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), but the magistracy then went into abeyance for over a century.

[3] The abolition of the Roman monarchy c. 509 BC, according to tradition, devolved the royal powers onto two annually elected consuls.

[8][9] However, few modern scholars put much faith in these traditional accounts: by the time Roman history started being written down, the dictatorship as a military commander had already lapsed out of living memory.

[10] The Roman view stresses that the dictatorship is said to have existed from the earliest years of the Republic, created as "an integral part of the republican constitution".

[c] The power to appoint a dictator vested in the consuls, one of whom could nominate a man to serve in the office; he did not need to consult his colleague, and no other magistrates had such authority.

[5][20] Consular nomination occurred in a nocturnal ritual, usually preceded by advice from the Senate asking for a specific person to be appointed,[d] but this was not strictly necessary.

[25] After c. 300 BC most attested dictators were ex-consuls; it does not appear, however, that this emerged from any kind of legislation, as implied in Livy, to that effect.

[32] However, by the middle Republic the historical record clearly shows that dictators were appointed more as temporary extraordinary magistrates to do some very specifically defined action before resigning, acting as proxies or substitutes for the ordinary magistrates of that year; the historicity of the dictators appointed in the early period to quell sedition—who usually took the side of the protestors—is also debated.

[e] A dictator could be compelled to resign his office without accomplishing his task or serving out his term if there were found to be a fault in the auspices under which he had been nominated.

[43] In an extraordinary sign of deference,[citation needed] the lictors of other magistrates could not bear fasces at all when appearing before the dictator.

However, as a rule he could not exceed the mandate for which he was appointed; a dictator nominated to hold the comitia could not then take up a military command against the wishes of the Senate.

However, there are cases where this is asserted in the literary sources and the surviving text of the lex repetundarium implies the dictator and his magister equitum could be prosecuted after their terms ended.

[56] Magistri equitum had a knack of winning elections when held by dictators, which may explain why this limited dictatorship also fell into abeyance.

[57] In this role, the dictators always took the side of the plebs, implying that the later tradition of the dictatorship as a tool of patrician tyranny is a post-Sullan anachronism.

[46] Moreover, the fact that these conflicts occurred far from Rome radically limited the possibility of panicked tumult that could result in a dictatorial appointment.

[59][60] These promagistrates resembled archaic dictators as well, being exempt from normal consular responsibilities while being assigned a limited task—provincia—to complete.

[62] During the various wars of the 140s BC, the ability to have more commanders under praetorian or proconsular leadership meant it was possible to keep at least one consul in Rome while the other fought abroad.

Dictators appointed to appease the gods was highly reactive but, over time, the accumulation of precedent formalised a spiritual process.

[72] This dictatorship aligned with one aspect of the archaic dictatorship—restoring stability—as the state was, in fact, in a shambles after the domination and proscriptions of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Gaius Marius, and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo.

[73] "Sulla never aimed at permanent tyranny";[71] wishing his settlement to succeed, and conceiving of it in quasi-republican terms, he resigned the dictatorship in place of ordinary magistrates.

One version of the supposed First Catilinarian conspiracy c. 65 BC (which itself is now held in modern scholarship to be fictitious[78]) related by Suetonius would have had the creation of a dictatorship led by Marcus Licinius Crassus with Julius Caesar as magister equitum.

[80] The phraseology of how Crassus would supposedly have been elevated to the dictatorship also suggests it was seen as an available instrument for ambitious factional leaders to force through self-serving change.

[81] The later consulship of Pompey in 52 BC also is reported to have been initially intended as a dictatorship; it was, however, aborted by his election as sole consul (without colleague) to restore order.

[83] Caesar also revived the dictatorship during the Civil War, first to hold the elections—in which he was returned as consul for the following year—and on multiple occasions between October 48 BC and his death in 44.