Roman emergency decrees

Through the Republic, various decrees allowed dictators and magistrates to conduct emergency levies of troops and suspend public business.

A further decree was introduced where the senate stripped targets of their citizenship rights, allowing magistrates to treat them as foreign enemies.

Second, the use of force to maintain public order was illegal inasmuch as all citizens had provocatio rights allowing them to appeal to the people against magisterial coercion.

[1] Starting in 121 BC with the repression of Gaius Gracchus and his supporters, the senate could urge magistrates to break the laws and employ force to suppress unspecified public enemies.

In the later Republic, the declaration remained a means to admit volunteers and quickly raise an army for the duration of the emergency.

[4][11] For the declaration's duration, plebeian tribunes also were sometimes asked to turn a blind eye to the enforcement of laws exempting certain classes of people, such as the elderly, from military service.

Stripping citizenship meant that a citizen could not raise provocatio (the right to appeal to the people against death penalties or physical punishment) and could be killed without trial.

Because of the formation of the Praetorian Guard and a regular police force with the cohortes urbanae and vigiles, large-scale urban riots became more rare.