Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/280

260 command of the army, virtually ceased upon the introduction of annual kings; for the appointment of a warden of the city, which still was made for the few hours during which the consuls had to absent themselves from the city in order to take part in the Latin festival, was a mere form, and was treated in that light. It was in fact one of the objects attained by putting the supreme magistracy into the collegiate form, that a magistrate-depute for the administration of justice was only required in rare exceptional cases; and although in war the commander-in-chief could not be prohibited from intrusting the command even of the whole army to another, such a deputy now took his place as simply the adjutant (legatus) of the general. The new republic tolerated neither king, nor lieutenant giving himself forth as the king's alter ego; but the consul was at liberty, if the circumstances appeared to require such a step, temporarily to restore the regal office under the title of a dictatorship, and to nominate a person invested with plenary authority, who suspended at once the powers of the nominating consul and those of his colleague, and, as an extraordinary measure, once more wielded for the time being the old royal powers in all their compass.

The second restriction imposed on the consuls as to the delegation of their powers was perhaps still more important in its effects. While in his sphere as commander-in-chief the consul retained undiminished the right of freely delegating all or any of his functions, in the province of his civic functions delegation was prescribed in certain cases and was prohibited with reference to all others. The former class of cases, in which the president of the community had in theory competent jurisdiction, but in which he was at the same time obliged to act only through the medium of deputies appointed by him, included not only civil processes, but those criminal causes which the king had been accustomed to dispose of through the two "trackers of murder" (quæstores, P. 68, 159), and also the important charge of the state-chest and of the state-archives, which these two quæstors undertook in addition to their previous functions. Thus the quæstors now became in law, what they had for long perhaps been practically, standing magistrates; and as they were now nominated by the consul just as formerly by the king, it followed that they abdicated office along with him after the expiry of a year.