torship also, although viewed by the
aristocratic regenerator of Rome with a more favourable eye than
the tribunate liable in itself to be regarded with suspicion, by
no means escaped that distrust towards its own instruments which is
throughout characteristic of oligarchy. They were restricted with
more tenderness in point of form, but in a way very sensibly felt.
Sulla here began with the partition of functions. At the beginning
of this period the arrangement in that respect stood as follows.
As formerly there had devolved on the two consuls the collective
functions of the supreme magistracy, so there still devolved on them
all those official duties for which distinct functionaries had not
been by law established. This latter course had been adopted with
the administration of justice in the capital, in which the consuls,
according to a rule inviolably adhered to, might not interfere, and
with the transmarine provinces then existing--Sicily, Sardinia, and
the two Spains--in which, while the consul might no doubt exercise
his -imperium-, he did so only exceptionally. In the ordinary course
of things, accordingly, the six fields of special jurisdiction--
the two judicial appointments in the capital and the four transmarine
provinces--were apportioned among the six praetors, while there devolved
on the two consuls, by virtue of their general powers, the management
of the non-judicial business of the capital and the military command
in the continental possessions. Now as this field of general powers
was thus doubly occupied, the one consul in reality remained at the
disposal of the government; and in ordinary times accordingly those
eight supreme annual magistrates fully, and in fact amply, sufficed.
For extraordinary cases moreover power was reserved on the one
hand to conjoin the non-military functions, and on the other hand
to prolong the military powers beyond the term of their expiry
(-prorogare-). It was not unusual to commit the two judicial offices
to the same praetor, and to have the business of the capital, which
in ordinary circumstances had to be transacted by the consuls,
managed by the -praetor urbanus-; whereas, as far as possible, the
combination of several commands in the same hand was judiciously
avoided. For this case in reality a remedy was provided by the
rule that there was no interregnum in the military -imperium-, so
that, although it had its legal term, it yet continued after the
arrival of