The Roman consul was like Rome's chief
executive. He was kind of like a king and kind of like a president, and even a
prime minister in a way, but all rolled into one. They were unquestionably at the top of
Rome's political hierarchy. The Senate was basically run by a group
of ex-consuls. Roman consuls had, broadly speaking, six areas of responsibility. I will outline each of these in turn. The
first, and I would say the most important, was their legislative agenda. Consular
elections were held a full six months before the person ever took office. This meant that incoming consuls
arrived well prepared, and had a clear mandate with a full legislative agenda ready to go. Remember that consuls could
call the Senate to meet and set the agenda for that meeting. This meant that they had the ability to
proposed laws and open debate even if the Senate was dragging its heels. Also, they have the power to call the
public assembly to meet, which was the rubber stamp necessary to pass bills of
law. But of course there are two consuls elected every year. In practice, in order
for the state to function, the two consuls alternated on a monthly
basis which one of them was in charge. This just meant that one consul would
kind of step out of the way and the other one would be allowed to pursue
their agenda. They held a veto over each other, which
meant that they could hold any action that they found offensive, but they both
knew that this was kind of a mutually assured destruction situation. They were just better off to let the
other one have their way and wait for their month in power to roll around
again. They called being in power "holding fasces".
Fasces were the ceremonial sticks held by Roman honor guards, which were
called lictors. I haven't really talked about lictors
before, but most elected Roman officials had some. Councils had the most, at 12
each. Holding fasces meant that you held power. The other consul would not get in
your way unless you did something ideologically offensive. The consul that
got the most votes when they were elected held fasces first, and then they
alternated for every month after that. It was kind of a prestigious thing to hold
facses first. People knew what it meant. Julius Caesar provides us with a pretty
colorful example of why it's so important the hold facses. He was elected consul alongside his old
pal Bibulus, with whom he had served as aedile. Cesar and Bibulus hated each other.
Bibulus was a conservative backed by Cato, who thought that Caesar was a
rabble-rouser, a dandy and a showboat. Cesar, well, he was those things. He really didn't appreciate somebody
saying so. Cesar got the most votes, so he held fasces in January. He was
hell-bent on getting his signature land reform bill into the Senate on the
first or second of the month, because bills apparently needed 24 days of
debate before they could be voted into law. Cesar needed his bill to sail through
the Senate. The bill called for the election of some people to oversee a
massive land transfer scheme, which would give public lands to military veterans. It was popular, and of course Bibulus hated it. But Caesar held fasces during these
elections, that meant that he got to oversee them and he could put his
lieutenants on that Commission. If it happened in February, Bibulus would
oversee it. He would get his men elected, and he
could potentially kill the law from the inside. This was, by the way, the second area of
responsibility for consuls. He oversaw elections. For small-scale stuff like the election
of land commissioners, or for big stuff like the election of next year's
consuls, the sitting consuls ran the show. If there was any intimidation or
bribery or mob protests or political deal trading going on during the voting, it was under the noses of the sitting
consuls. If they wanted to, they could do a lot to make sure that their supporters
were elected for next year. It could even be the part of backroom
deals. "You support me on this bill and I'll make sure you win your election for
praetor". Now, the third area where the consuls wielded a lot of power, which I've already touched on, was the veto. Only the other
consul, or a tribune of the plebs, could veto a sitting consul. However, don't forget that the consul could
veto any position. He could also veto someone else's decision to call the
Senate to meet. This was an immense power. He could single-handedly shut down
debate. Probably speaking, like I said, both consuls realized that this was a
mutually assured destruction kind of situation, so they would resist to just vetoing
each other willingly. They had the alternating monthly system
of fasces developed, which gave each other a little bit of breathing room.
During Caesars consulship, though, Bibulus kind of ignored this practice.
Caesars land reform bill sailed through the Senate as anticipated, but Bibulus
vetoed it, as it was going before the public assembly for a final vote. This was pretty rude. It was widely
popular, and Caesar still held fasces. Apparently, as Bibulus vetoed it from a speaking platform, before the bill was to be read before the public assembly, the crowd went crazy. They screamed
wildly drowning out what Bibulus had to say. They surged forward, reaching the
speaking platform, and the consul, and pushing him off of it. We're told that the angry mob dumped
manure on Bibulus' head, Biff Tanen style. Many people were injured
during this incident, but nobody seriously. Even though Bibulus had vetoed the bill,
Cesar got up and claimed that the crowd was too loud, and that he hadn't heard him. Cesar then put forward the bill, and it
was approved by the public assembly. After this incident, Bibulus retreated
to his home, and did not speak publicly again for the remainder of his
consulship. To be clear, this was illegal on Caesars
part. Bibulus did have the right to veto him,
and he did, and Caesar just ignore him. That wasn't the last time that happened,
though. These next two areas of responsibility both factored into this.
Consuls were responsible for reading omens and assigning public holidays. This may seem minor, but it plays
significantly into the Bibulus story. Consuls were given the authority to set
the date for public festivals and holidays that did not necessarily have
to be on a certain day every year. Sometimes the Senate voted in favor of
honoring a certain individual and just let the consul set a day, for example. Bibulus took all of his festival days, and schedule them for days when Caesar
had big votes in the Senate. Obviously this was extremely annoying,
because Bibulus still wasn't leaving his house. Just like when Bibulus tried to veto
him, Caesar just ignored him and people generally went along with this. Consuls
were kind of, like, part-time augers as well. See, the Romans were highly
superstitious, and they forbade the Senate from meeting on unlucky days,
which I won't really get into now. A consul could unilaterally read the
signs and decided that the omens looked bad for this date, and cancel public
business, but the Pontifex Maximus was responsible for determining which days
were lucky and unlucky. Julius Caesar was the Pontifex Maximus,
so when Bibulus issued edicts from his house saying that he saw the parts
flying in a certain direction, Julius Caesar just said "I'm the Pontifex
Maximus, it's my job to know these things, and I say it's fine". Cesar basically outranked Bibulus
religiously. Again, in a strict sense, this was illegal
because Bibulus had the right to assign his days, but the public went
along with it. And, finally, the consuls were
responsible for Rome's military. Although the Senate declared war and
assigned them an army, they held ultimate command. The consuls decided how wars
would be fought and, oftentimes assumed direct control over the armies. The
consuls had a similar system to holding fasces, but instead of alternating on a monthly
basis, they would alternate on a daily basis. In other words, if there were two
consuls commanding one army, they would swap back and forth on a daily basis who
held ultimate command. It was pretty rare for two consuls to be in
the field at the same time, but this system didn't serve them that well. The
most famous example is the most famous battle in Roman history, the battle of Cannae. To
over simplify things, one consul wanted to wait and one
wanted to attack, so the one who wanted to attack just waited until the next day
and attacked. This turned out to be the worst defeat in Roman history. Consuls
had kind of a looser, pseudo military role within the city. When
they weren't commanding armies, they were still responsible for public safety. The Senate had the power to grant
consoles something called "senatus consultum ultimum", which you can translate
as "the final act" or "the final decree", or something like that. This was basically martial law. This said
that the consuls could take any action necessary to protect the Republic. During
Cicero´s consulship he had this power bestowed on him. A fellow senator, who had lost two
successive elections to be consul, planned to have Cicero, his consular
colleague, and the entire Senate assassinated on the same night. The plot
was uncovered, and some of the would-be assassins were arrested. One of this
senators subordinates left the city to raise troops in Italy, and the Senate,
seeing what was happening, gave Cicero the authority to do whatever was
necessary to protect the Republic. Cicero sensed a wider conspiracy within the city. He didn't think that they had captured
all the assassins. Plus, there was a potential rebel army out there, somewhere. So Cicero decided to publicly execute
all of the prisoners without trial. If they had gone to trial they would have
lost, but Cicero didn't think he had any time. After, this support for the
conspiracy kind of went away and Cicero was declared a hero. Unfortunately, this kind of haunted
Cicero for the rest of his life. People came after him years later, saying
that he had murdered fellow citizens. Of course, he had the authority to do
whatever he must to protect the Republic, but it didn't stop people from
questioning his actions afterwards. So, generally speaking, those are the six
areas where a console could wield power. To be elected consul was the highest honor
a Roman citizen could aspire for. Every consul knew that they would be
celebrated by unborn generations. Oftentimes, young Romans could easily win
lower level elections by simply saying my father was a consul. Now, this is not the end of the Cursus
Honorum, this is merely the most simplified
version. For now, though, this is enough to get a handle on Rome´s
political life. If you are interested in helping decide
what my videos are going to be about in the future, go to my Patreon page. The link is in
the description. For just a dollar you can vote on future topics. The first
round of voting is going to happen on june first, so there's plenty of time if you want to
sign up. If not, I don't care, I'm just glad that people are watching. Thanks!
I am loving these illustrative videos!
nice video but sadly biased towards the side of the optimates