ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

Chapter 3: Commissioners and Founding the ColonyI. IntroductionChapter 2 explored the reasons why the commissioners might want to found colonies incertain places. The next question is how the commissioners were able to realize theirpersonal ambitions through the medium of colonization. Prior studies have asserted thatthe senate appointed the tresviri, who had no influence over the process of initiating acolonial foundation or forming their three-man board. 1In this chapter, I address themechanics of selecting the tresviri in terms of the juridical processes, which assignedcommissions to colonies, as well as in terms of the magistrates' relative competence forthe task of founding a colony. I suggest that the commissioners sometimes formed theirown three-man board and campaigned for the electoral votes to be officially appointed tofound a colony. It is also probable that one or more of the commissioners could influencethe senate's decision on where and what sort of colony to establish, so that themagistrates' impulse to colonize became the de facto (although it is not recorded as the deiure) author of a colonization effort. As with the colonial foundations in general, ofcourse, there was no standardized legal procedure for forming the commission.In the second half of the chapter, I will discuss the skills required to establish acolony of Latin or Roman citizens. This includes enrolling the colonists, arrangingsupplies while on the road to the colony, and arranging the plan of the colony based onthe model for a military camp. Finally, I will explore whether the commissioners werecompetent to establish the sacral landscape of the colony, including the demarcations of1 For example, Cassola (1962), p. 371 n. 20. Gargola (1995), p. 60 suggests that the electioneering for thiscommission was not as strongly contested as that for the annual offices.96