exercised a great though indirect influence on the constitution of that body.
The vigintivirate was held before the quaestorship. It comprised four distinct boards: the tresviri capitales, on whom it devolved to execute capital sentences; the tresviri monetales, who presided at the mint; the quatuorviri viis in urbe purgandis, officers who looked after the streets of Rome; and thedecemviri iudicandis, who were now appointed to preside in the centumviral courts.
The Republican magistrates formed a civil service and executive for the senate. The Princeps had no such assistance at his disposal. As a magistrate, he was supposed, like a consul or a praetor, to do everything himself. The personal activity, which is presupposed on the part of the Princeps, is one of the features which distinguish the Principate from monarchy. It followed, as a consequence of this theory, that all the officials, who carried out the details of administration for which the Emperor was responsible, were not public officers, but the private servants of the Emperor. A freedman fulfilled duties which in a monarchy would devolve upon a secretary of state. The Emperor had theoretically a perfect rightto have appointed, if he chose, freedmen, or citizens of any rank, as governors in the provinces which he was supposed to govern himself. It was due to the sound policy of Augustus and his self-control that he made it a strict rule, which his successors maintained, only to appoint senators, and in certain cases knights, to those posts. He also voluntarily defined the qualification of equestrian rank for the financial officers, procuratores Augusti, who represented him in the provinces. But the position of the knights must be more fully explained.
SECT. IV — THE EQUITES.
The equestrian order was reorganized by Augustus, and altered both in its constitution and in its political position.
(1) Constitution. In the early Republic the equites were the citizen cavalry, who were provided with horses for their military service at public cost. But in the later Republic there had come to be three classes of equites; those who were provided with public horses (eques Romanus equo publico), those who provided their own horses, and those who by estate or otherwise were qualified for cavalry service but did not serve. The two last classes were not in the strictest speech Roman knights, and they were abolished altogether by Augustus, who thus returned to the system of the early Republic. Henceforward every knight is aneques Romanus equo publico, and the whole ordo equester consists of such.
(2) Admission. The Emperor himself assumed the right of granting the public horse which secured entry into the equestrial order. The chief qualifications were the equestrian census, free birth, soundness of body, good character, but the qualification of free birth was not strictly insisted on under the Empire, and freedmen were often raised to be knights. A senator's son necessarilybecame a knight by virtue of his birth, and thus for men born in senatorial rank, knighthood was a regular stage before entry into the senate. There was a special official department (A.D. census equitum Romanorum) for investigating the qualifications of those who were admitted into either of “the two orders”, (ordo uterque) as the senate and the knights were called.
(3) Life-tenure. Another innovation of Augustus consisted in making the rank of knight tenable for life. Apart from degradation, as a punishment or as a consequence of the reduction of his income below the equestrian rating (400,000 sesterces), a knight does not cease to be a knight, unless he becomes a senator or enters legionary service. Legionary service was so attractive under the Empire that cases often occurred of knights surrendering their rank in order to become centurions.
(4) Equitum probatio. It was an old custom that the equites Romani equo publico should ride annually, on the Ides of July, in full military caparison from the Temple of Mars at the Porta Capena, first to the Forum to offer sacrifice there to their patron gods, Castor and Pollux, and then on to the Capitol. This procession, called the transvectio equitum had fallen into disuse, and Augustus revived it and combined with it an equitum probatio, or “review of the knights”. Sitting on horseback and ordered according to their turmae, the knights passed before the Emperor, and the name of each was called aloud. The names of any whose behavior had given cause for censure were passed over, and they were thus expelled from the order. Here the Emperor discharged duties which before the time of Sulla had been discharged by the censors. He was assisted by three or ten senators appointed for the purpose.
(5) Organization. The equestrian order was divided into turmae, six in number, each of which was commanded by one of the seviri equitum Romanorum. The seviri were nominated by the Emperor, and changed annually like the magistrates. They were obliged to exhibit games (ludi sevirales) every year. It is to be observed that the knights were not organized or treated as a political body, like the senate. They had no machinery for action; no common political initiative; no common purse.
(6) Privileges. In dress the Roman eques was distinguished by the military mantle called trabea, and the narrow purple stripe (angustus clavus) on the tunic. They also wore a gold ring, and this was considered so distinctively a badge of knighthood, that the bestowal of a gold ring by the Emperor became the form of bestowing knighthood. The children of a knight, like those of a senator, were entitled to wear the gold bulla. In the theatre special seats—“the fourteen rows”—were reserved for the knights, and Augustus (5 A.D.) assigned them special seats also at races in the Circus and at gladiatorial spectacles.
(7) Service of the knights as officers. The chief aim of Augustus in reorganizing the knights was military. He desired to procure competent officers in the army, from which posts he excluded senators entirely. Men of senatorial rank, however, who, as has been already mentioned, became knights before they were old enough to enter the senate, regularly served a militia, as it was called. The officer-posts here referred to are the subordinate commands—not the supreme commands of legions—and are of three kinds: (a) praefectura cohortis, or command of an auxiliary cohort, (b) tribunatus militum, in a legion, (c)praefectura alae, command of an auxiliary cavalry squadron. The Emperor, as the supreme military commander, made the appointments to these militiaeequestres. Service as officers seems to have been made obligatory on the knights by Augustus. As knights only could hold these posts, there was no system of regular promotion for soldiers into the officer class. But it often happened that soldiers who had distinguished themselves and had risen to the first rank of centurions—who corresponded somewhat to our “non-commissioned officers”—received the equus publicus from the Emperor, and thus wore able to become tribunes and prefects. As a rule the officers held their posts for several years, and it was considered a privilege to hold the tribunatus semestris, which could be laid down after six months.
(8) Service of knights as Jurymen. In 122 B.C., C. Gracchus had assigned the right of serving as iudices exclusively to the knights; forty years later (81 B.C.). Sulla restored it to the senate; then in 70 B.C., a compromise between the two orders was made by the law of L. Aurelius Cotta, whereby the list of jurymen was composed of three classes, called decuria, the first consisting entirely of senators, the second of knights equo publico, the third of tribuni aerarii. As the last class possessed the equestrian census and belonged to the equestrian order in the wide sense in which the term was then used, although they had not theequus publicus, this law of Cotta really gave the preponderance to the knights. The total number of iudices was 900, each class contributing 300. This arrangement lasted till 46 B.C., when Caesar removed the tribuni aerarii from the third class and filled it with knights in the strict sense. Augustus excluded the senators altogether from service as iudices, and while he preserved the threedecuriae filled them with knights. But he added a fourth decuria for service inunimportant civil trials, consisting of men who possessed more than half the equestrian income (ducenarii). Only men of at least thirty years of age were placed on the list of iudices, and, in the time of Augustus, only citizens of Rome or Italy.
(9) Employment of knights in state offices. By reserving the posts of officers and iudices for the knights to the exclusion of the senators, Augustus was carrying out the design of C. Gracchus and giving the knights an important political position, so that they were in some measure co-ordinated with the senate as a factor in the state. But he went much further than this. He divided the offices of administration and the public posts between the senators and the knights. The general principle of division was that those spheres of administration, which were more closely connected with the Emperor personally, were given to knights. The legateships