ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

eligious practices, and authority structure, i.e. appoint magistrates and priests. If we can,for the sake of argument, posit that the communal organization of Rome was used as amodel in mid-Republican colonies, then completing these tasks required closecooperation between the magistrates and priests present at the foundation. The followingsection explores this hypothetical foundation scenario before examining how many ofthese tasks the colonial commissioners themselves were actually qualified to perform byRoman custom.In general, a colonial foundation would begin with auspices taken at the colonialsite, then the ritual plowing of a furrow to define the pomerium, and finally dividing theland into sacred and secular space, with plots allotted to the colonists according to rank.In the Roman system, the duty and privilege of defining and dividing the landscape fell toseveral groups of magistrates and priests. The highest magistracies, i.e. the censorship,consulship, and praetorship, were accompanied by the ius publicorum privatorumlocorum, which was the power to define the limits of public and private land. 69Generalswere responsible for most of the vows to build temples in the middle Republic. 70Censorscontracted the building of temples and other civic structures. Priests, too, were involvedin the definition of religious space and the consecration of a temple. Augurs, throughdefining the templum, were concerned with the delineation of sacred space. 71Pontiffs68 MacKendrick (1952), p. 141; Salmon (1970), pp. 19-26; Laffi (2007), pp. 16-19. For a detaileddescription of the theoretical foundation of a colony, see especially Gargola (1995), pp. 72-75 {pomerium),75-80 {lustrum), 80-83 (colonial charter and magistrates appointed), 83-87 (marking boundaries anddefining the sacred areas), 87-95 (dividing territory), and 95-98 (allotting land to settlers).69 Livy 4.8.2 (on the duties of the censors) and 42.1.6 (where the consul was sent to Campania to markboundaries in 173 BCE). Cf. Gargola (1995), p. 120.70 Orlin (1997), pp. 18-19.71 Beard, North, and Price (1998), p. 22.119