Under the Republic According to Roman tradition, after the
expulsion of the last king,
Tarquin Superbus, the powers and authority of the king were given to the newly instituted consulship. Originally, consuls were called
praetors ("leaders"), referring to their duties as the chief military commanders. By at least 300 BC the title of
consul became commonly used. Ancient writers usually derive the title
consul from the
Latin verb
consulere, "to take counsel", but this is most likely a later gloss of the term, which probably derives—in view of the joint nature of the office—from
con- and
sal-, "get together" or from
con- and
sell-/sedl-, "sit down together with" or "next to". In
Greek, the title was originally rendered as ,
strategos hypatos ("the supreme general"), and later simply as ὕπατος (
hypatos). These remained in place until the office was
abolished in 367 BC and the consulship was reintroduced. Consuls had extensive powers in peacetime (administrative, legislative, and judicial), and in wartime often held the highest military command. Additional religious duties included certain rites which, as a sign of their formal importance, could only be carried out by the highest state officials. Consuls also read
auguries, an essential religious ritual, before leading armies into the field. Two consuls were elected each year, serving together, each with veto power over the other's actions, a normal principle for magistracies. They were elected by the
comitia centuriata, which also elected
praetors and
censors. However, they formally assumed powers only after the ratification of their election in the older
comitia curiata, which granted the consuls their
imperium by enacting a law, the
lex curiata de imperio. If a consul died during his term (not uncommon when consuls were in the forefront of battle) or was removed from office, another would be elected by the
comitia centuriata to serve the remainder of the term as
consul suffectus (suffect consul). A consul elected to start the year, called a
consul ordinarius (ordinary consul), held more prestige than a suffect consul, partly because the year would be named for ordinary consuls (see
consular dating). According to tradition, the consulship was initially reserved for
patricians and only in 367 BC did
plebeians win the right to stand for this supreme office, when the
Licinio-Sextian rogations provided that at least one consul each year should be plebeian. The first plebeian consul,
Lucius Sextius, was elected the following year. Nevertheless, the office remained largely in the hands of a few families, as only about fifteen
novi homines ("new men" with no consular background) were elected to the consulship until the election of
Cicero in 63 BC. Modern historians have questioned the traditional account of plebeian emancipation during the early Republic (see
Conflict of the Orders), noting for instance that about thirty percent of the consuls prior to Sextius had plebeian, not patrician, names. It is possible that only the chronology has been distorted, but it seems that one of the first consuls,
Lucius Junius Brutus, came from a plebeian family. Another possible explanation is that during the 5th-century social struggles, the office of consul was gradually monopolized by a patrician elite. During times of war, the primary qualification for consul was military skill and reputation, but at all times the selection was politically charged. With the passage of time, the consulship became the normal endpoint of the
cursus honorum, the sequence of offices pursued by the Roman who chose to pursue a political career. When
Lucius Cornelius Sulla regulated the
cursus by law, the minimum age of election to consul became 43 or 42 years old. This age requirement was later changed to 32 during the Empire.
Under the Empire Although throughout the early years of the Principate the consuls were still formally elected by the
comitia centuriata, they were de facto nominated by the
princeps. As the years progressed, the distinction between the
comitia centuriata and the
comitia populi tributa (which elected the lower magisterial positions) appears to have disappeared, and so for the purposes of the consular elections, there came to be just a single "assembly of the people" which elected all the magisterial positions of the state, while the consuls continued to be nominated by the princeps. The imperial consulate during the Principate (until the 3rd century) was an important position, albeit as the method through which the Roman aristocracy could progress through to the higher levels of imperial administration—only former consuls could become consular legates, the proconsuls of Africa and Asia, or the urban prefect of Rome. It was a post that would be occupied by a man halfway through his career, in his early thirties for a patrician, or in his early forties for most others. Emperors frequently appointed themselves, or their protégés or relatives, as consuls, even without regard to the age requirements.
Caligula once said that he would appoint his horse
Incitatus consul, which was probably a joke intended to belittle the Senate's authority. The need for a pool of men to fill the consular positions forced
Augustus to remodel the suffect consulate, allowing more than the two elected for the ordinary consulate. During the reigns of the Julio-Claudians, the ordinary consuls who began the year usually relinquished their office mid-year, with the election for the suffect consuls occurring at the same time as that for the ordinary consuls. During reigns of the
Flavian and
Antonine emperors, the ordinary consuls tended to resign after a period of four months, and the elections were moved to 12 January of the year in which they were to hold office. Election of the consuls were transferred to the Senate during the Flavian or Antonine periods, although through to the 3rd century, the people were still called on to ratify the Senate's selections. The emperor did not assume the consulship of every year of his reign, but did nominate himself multiple times; Augustus was consul 13 times,
Domitian 17, and
Theodosius II 18. The proliferation of suffect consuls through this process, and the allocation of this office to
homines novi tended, over time, to devalue the office. However, the high regard placed upon the ordinary consulate remained intact; it was one of the few offices that one could share with the emperor, and during this period it was filled mostly by patricians or by individuals who had consular ancestors. If they were especially skilled or valued, they may even have achieved a second (or rarely, a third) consulate. Prior to achieving the consulate, these individuals already had a significant career behind them and would expect to continue serving the state, filling in the post upon which the state functioned. Consequently, holding the ordinary consulship was a great honor, and the office was the major symbol of the still relatively republican constitution. Probably as part of seeking formal legitimacy, the break-away
Gallic Empire had its own pairs of consuls during its existence (260–274). The list of consuls for this state is incomplete, drawn from inscriptions and coins. By the end of the 3rd century, much had changed. The loss of many pre-consular functions, and the gradual encroachment of the
equites into the traditional senatorial administrative and military functions, meant that senatorial careers virtually vanished prior to their appointment as consuls. This saw a suffect consulship granted at an earlier age, to the point that by the 4th century, it was being held by men in their early twenties, and possibly younger, without the significant political careers behind them that was normal previously. As time progressed, second consulates, usually ordinary, became far more common than during the first two centuries, whereas the first consulship was usually a suffect consulate. The consulate during this period was no longer just the province of senators—the automatic awarding of a suffect consulship to the equestrian
praetorian prefects (who were given the
ornamenta consularia upon achieving their office) allowed them to style themselves
cos. II when they were later granted an ordinary consulship by the emperor. All this had the effect of further devaluing the office of consul to the point that by the final years of the 3rd century, holding an ordinary consulate was occasionally left out of the cursus inscriptions, whereas by the first decades of the 4th century, suffect consulships were hardly ever recorded. (consul of the
Eastern Roman Empire for AD 517) in consular garb, holding a sceptre and the
mappa, a piece of cloth used to signal the start of
chariot races at the
Hippodrome. Ivory panel
diptych. One of the reforms of
Constantine I (r. 306–337) was to assign one of the consuls to the city of
Rome and the other to
Constantinople. Therefore, when the Empire was divided into two on the death of
Theodosius I (r. 379–395), the emperor of each half acquired the right of appointing one of the consuls—although on occasion an emperor did allow his colleague to appoint both consuls for various reasons. In the
Western Empire, some Eastern consuls were never recognized by the emperor, who became a puppet of powerful generals such as
Stilicho. The consulship, bereft of any real power, continued to be a great honor, but the celebrations attending it—above all the
chariot races—had come to involve considerable expense; part of the expense had to be covered by the state. At times the consulship was given to teenagers or even children, as in the cases of
Varronianus,
Valentinianus Galates,
Olybrius Junior and the children of the emperor. In the 6th century, the consulship was increasingly sparsely given, until it was allowed to lapse under
Justinian I (r. 527–565): the western consulship lapsed in 534, with
Decius Paulinus the last holder, and the consulship of the East in 541, with
Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius.
Consular dating had already been abolished in 537, when Justinian introduced
dating by the emperor's regnal year and the
indiction. In the eastern court, the appointment to consulship became a part of the rite of proclamation of a new emperor from
Justin II (r. 565–578) on, and is last attested in the proclamation of the future
Constans II (r. 641–668) as consul in 632. In the late 9th century, Emperor
Leo the Wise (r. 886–912) finally abolished the office in Novel 94 of his
Basilika. By that time, the Greek titles for consul and ex-consul, "
hypatos" and "
apo hypaton", had been transformed to relatively lowly honorary dignities. In the west, the rank of consul was occasionally bestowed upon individuals by the Papacy. In 719, the title of Roman consul was offered by the Pope to
Charles Martel, although Martel refused it. About 853,
Alfred the Great, then a child aged four or five, was made a Roman consul by the Pope. ==Powers and responsibilities==