It is good when a work on the Roman constitution appears in English; it is perhaps indicative that the author comes from abroad. After a helpful introduction to the subject, the work has two main sections. Roughly, the first two thirds are devoted to the period between the Licinian-Sextian laws and Sulla's dictatorship (367–80 b.c.), the remaining third to the late Republic. Within the sections the chapters are organized generically: in the first, religion, diplomacy, edicts and contiones, legislation, jurisdiction, public works, colonization and land-distribution, and elections, followed by a resumptive chapter. The second section begins with a discussion in which Mommsen's supposed lex Cornelia de provinciis ordinandis is rejected as a fiction. Then a long chapter reviews the topics of the first section in the context of the late Republic — Caesar's colonization coming under the heading of legislation. A further chapter looks at the shape of the post-Sullan consular year, when many consuls spent much of the year at home, and a brief conclusion summarizes the work as a whole.
The author, unlike T. C. Brennan in his massive work, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic (2000), has chosen to leave aside what was for most of the Republic the consuls' chief function, that of military commander. It is useful to focus on their non-military functions. Yet there is a danger that a close relationship between the two may be obscured. Diplomacy is often connected to subsequent campaigns, wars to subsequent land-distribution. The reader may lose the sense of consular authority which arose from the exercise of imperium at the head of troops. Further, one may question two aspects of Pina Polo's method. First, there is his rejection of theory. In his introduction he quotes the reviewer's observation (from The Constitution of the Roman Republic (1999), 8) that Mommsen's Staatsrecht was a theoretical analysis and states that by contrast he will study the consuls in their actual activities — one is reminded of Fergus Millar's ‘The emperor is what the emperor does’. Just before the remark that P.P. quotes, I wrote about Polybius' analysis, ‘Without such a (conceptual) framework we are likely to lose our way in a mass of data; with the aid of one we may make fruitful comparisons with other constitutions’. This comment is apt for the book now under review. One aspect of its refusal to conceptualize is the failure to discuss the status of the consul vis-à-vis the senate. The author presents this body (in the middle Republic at least) as taking the initiative (202; not really borne out by the analysis), treating the consul as subordinate (209), and deciding on all land-distribution (186; no mention of C. Flaminius or Curius Dentatus). Only in the section on the late Republic is this clarified when we are told that the consul was ‘morally obliged to obey, at least formally, an order from the senate, even when … he disapproved of it’ (306). Translation may be at fault here, but it is surely better to visualize the Republican senate giving authoritative advice to the magistrate who consulted it, rather than orders. A second problem arises from the generic division of the material. For example, Cicero's law about electoral bribery is discussed as an example of consular legislation (297), but it is also highly relevant to Cicero's conduct of the elections in 63 b.c. and their chronology (287) where it is not taken into account.
The book will be most valued for its treatment of particular issues — above all the rehearsing of the arguments of Balsdon, Valgiglio and Giovannini that Sulla did not pass a law separating the consul's provincial administration from his year of office at home, a belief unfortunately still widespread (225–48). If it is to be a reference book, some points of detail should be noted. First, topography. Should we regard the Graecostasis in the comitium, where foreign legates waited, as a tribunal (75)? Surely tribunals were on the one hand high to enable a seated magistrate to look down on those at ground level, on the other hand very restricted in space? The praetor performing jurisdiction originally had a tribunal in the comitium: why should the consuls not have used that or something similar? To say that the temple of Bellona and the Villa Publica were ‘very close to each other’ (79) may mislead, if, as on the usual reconstruction, they were some 500 m apart. Second, epigraphy. The author (140) ignores the strong arguments advanced by Wiseman (in PBSR (1965), 21–35 and (1969), 82–91) that the Polla inscription commemorated T. Annius: he is attested at the southern end of the road from Rhegium to Capua and Forum Anni is close to Forum Popili. A further consul should be added to the roadbuilders — M. Aemilius Scaurus cos. 115 b.c. — from a milestone near Cosa (Fentress, PBSR (1984), 72–6). Third, interpretation of texts. A question-mark should at least be put against the identification (283) of Cicero's Post Reditum ad Quirites with the speech Cicero actually delivered on 7 September 57 b.c. about the corn crisis, see the reviewer's Cicero as Evidence (2008), 8–9. An old error is also repeated (302). The ‘lex’ of Cotta and Octavius about the letting of taxes in Sicily was not a statute passed (rogata) in an assembly, but dicta: it was a regulation imposed by the consuls exercising censorial functions, like those in the lex agraria of 111 b.c. (RS I.2, lines 88–9) and in The Customs Law of Asia (ed. Cottier, 2008), lines 74–8. On constitutional matters, the author is right to reject De Martino's view that the consuls did not have civil jurisdiction in the city in the late Republic (122), cf. lex agraria lines 33–4, where some disputes at least would have come to magistrates in Rome. It is also perhaps relevant that Pompey as proconsul ad urbem in 52 b.c. was asked to act in two actiones ad exhibendum to secure the production of Milo's slaves (Asc. 34C). Later, the discussion of professio (205) would have benefited from reference to Levick, Athenaeum (1981), 378–88.
There is much valuable material in this work. As suggested earlier, there are problems with its presentation, but we should be grateful for what we have.
