This book offers a thorough and stimulating investigation of one of the least known, and least examined, magistracies of the Roman Republic. It is a sound and useful work (note its annotated list of magistri equitum) that will be fundamental to future engagement with the structure of the republican magistracy.
J. opens (Chapter 1) with ancient views – mostly of Dionysius and Livy – that tie the origins of the office to the establishment of the dictatorship in 501 (or 498) bce; he pays due attention to late imperial sources that see this office’s precursor in the regal tribunus celerum, but notes the crucial distinction between the commander of the king’s mounted guard and the commander of the entire cavalry force. J. wisely refuses to let himself be drawn into a lengthy – and necessarily speculative – reconstruction or to make what little can be divined of the office’s beginnings a basis for understanding its nature.
Chapter 2 explores the precise constitutional status of the magister equitum. J. rightly rejects the notion that potestas and imperium denote two distinct levels of magisterial power (in the sense that consuls and praetors held imperium, while aediles and quaestors had ‘only’ potestas): imperium was simply one of several components of the higher magistrates’ potestas – a component absent from the potestas of the lower ranks. As for the magister equitum, his potestas undoubtedly included imperium, and his auspices were in no way defective or diminished (against T.C. Brennan, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic [2000], vol. 1, pp. 41–9). And that imperium, J. shows convincingly, was not ‘praetorian’ – minus when compared to that of a consul.
Exactly how was the master’s potestas defined? J. argues for consularis potestas, on the basis of two Livy passages: the first one ambiguous, the other cryptic.
Meeting patrician opposition to his choice of magister equitum (a plebeian former military tribune) in 368 bce, the dictator Manlius Capitolinus responded by denying magistri equitum maius quam tribuni militum consularis imperium esse (Livy 6.39.3–4): the master of horse held imperium, but it was not greater than that of a military tribune with consular power. Fair enough; but it does not say that this imperium was defined as consularis. In fact, it might just as correctly be said – by a constitutional lawyer – that the dictator’s imperium was not maius than that of a consul; as Brennan has demonstrated compellingly (2000, vol. 1, pp. 38–43), the dictator’s greater power was not grounded in an imperium defined vis-à-vis the consul’s as maius: it derived from the peculiar nature of the office, which prevented any other magistrate from exercising their powers in the dictator’s presence. Yet nothing survives to suggest that the Romans referred to the dictator’s imperium as consularis. As for the dictator, so for his deputy: his imperium was no greater than that of a consular tribune; but his power surpassed that of the consul.
Next, magistrum equitum, quae consularis potestas sit, fusum fugatum (Livy 23.11.10). Thus Mago at Carthage, recounting his brother’s victories in Italy. J. takes this as synonymous to cui consularis potestas sit; but why should Livy (or Mago) at this moment be concerned with a precise constitutional definition of the master’s powers? The point here, surely, was to convey that besting the magister equitum marked as respectable a victory as beating a consul. It tells us nothing about the definition of the office. The problem, as so often, lies in the temptation to view imperium as existing on different and well-defined levels, when in reality imperium was simply imperium, with qualifiers such as consularis, praetorium or dictatoris merely describing whose would take precedence, on the basis of magisterial rank, in case of collision. For the dictator and his deputy the nature of their office set aside all other magistrates: there was no need to define their power as consular, praetorian or whatever.
Chapter 3 offers a sensible discussion of the master’s role in the field (originally in command of the cavalry, by the late fourth century increasingly found in command of the army during the dictator’s absence) and in the city (with full rights to convene the senate and the people). Chapter 4 attempts to establish the senatorial rank of the magister equitum: a thorny question that, even from J.’s carefully assembled evidence, resists a satisfactory answer. Noting that the majority of magistri were consulars, and arguing – here I disagree – that cumulation of the office with the consulship was permitted, he cautiously proposes that a former magister equitum would outrank a consular – at least one ‘who had not held that honos’ (p. 118).
The final chapter (5) constitutes perhaps the book’s most significant contribution, in providing a careful examination of the office’s revival, along with the dictatorship, in the first century bce by Sulla and Caesar. Especially under the latter, J. shows how the post of magister equitum evolved from being little more than an assistant into one that exercised the full range of tasks and powers that might come with functioning as the dictator’s second-in-command; after all, both Antonius and Lepidus governed Rome and Italy as they saw fit through Caesar’s prolonged absences. Two quibbles cannot be resisted, though.
On 29 December (not 31, as J., p. 127, has it) 48 bce Servilius laid down his consulship without having held elections; neither had Antonius, the magister equitum (the dictator was in Egypt). J. notes that ‘it is unlikely in the extreme that a magister equitum could legally do so under the augural law’ (p. 127). This hardly squares with J.’s belief that the master’s power was formally defined as consularis potestas, which – just as in the case of the military tribunes of old who held that status – must include the ability to hold elections. A few lines down J. affirms that ‘there is no reason to suggest’ that his power to appoint a praefectus urbi (another consular prerogative) was ‘statutorily prohibited’. There exists no evidence that the magister equitum was constitutionally barred from doing anything the dictator could do.
J. insists, correctly, that the office did not terminate automatically with that of the dictator. Indeed, Lepidus in 44 bce remained in office for several days after Caesar’s assassination. In a spirited discussion of Caesar’s final arrangements for his absence in the East, J. invokes the recent evidence of the Fasti Privernates (F. Zevi, ‘I Fasti di Privernum’, ZPE 197 [2016], 287–305) to argue that Lepidus had been supposed to step down as magister equitum upon his departure for Spain, to be succeeded by M. Valerius Messalla Rufus, despite the same document’s revelatory statement that, just as Caesar was now dictator perpet(uo), so Lepidus was magister equitum perpet(uo) – quoad dict(ator) Caesar esset. The pertinent passage on the stone reads: Meṣ[sal(la) … ut, cum Lepidus] paludatus [exisset, iniret] (FPrivern b, 15–16); J. translates ‘Messalla, designated magister equitum so that, when Lepidus, as general, exited [his office], he would enter it’. This is problematic: inire magistratum is standard and common; I can find no example in the TLL of magistratu exire in republican Latin (there are vague approximations later on). The Capitoline Fasti invariably use abdicare or abire. But joined with paludatus, as it must be here, we have another common and standard phrase (e.g. cum paludatus exisset, Cic. Verr. 2.5.34; paludatique votis nuncupatis exeunt, Caes. BCiv 1.6.6; paludatus ab urbe exiret, Livy 41.10.11). What Lepidus exited was not his office, but the city. Which leads to a consequence the exact opposite of the one drawn by J., and unprecedented: Lepidus in Spain was to remain Caesar’s magister equitum in perpetuum, while Messalla was to hold office as a second magister equitum in Rome.
The book is carefully produced, with hardly any typographical errors. It will be essential reading for students of Roman institutions.
