ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

The duoviri who hold their office after the establishment of the colonia shall,within the first ten days of their office, bring for decision to the town councilors,in the presence of not fewer than two thirds of them, the question of which daysand how many days shall be festal, which sacrifices shall be publicly performed,and who shall perform them. [Trans. Beard, North, and Price]This source is from a period in which colonial foundation was conducted under differentcircumstances than that of the middle Republic, thus this charter does not prove that thesame situation occurred in earlier colonies. It is plausible, however, that even in earliercolonization the first colonial magistrates of Latin colonies might have had more controlover the calendar than either the colonial commissioners or the first priests.This wouldhave been the case for the Latin colonies and possibly the large citizen colonies, whichhad their own civic government. The smaller maritime colonies did not have as high alevel of administrative infrastructure, and so the commissioners may have had to arrangemore for the colony. These citizen colonies may also have functioned on the Romancalendar, since they were composed of Roman citizens.When the colony had been planned and settled, the commissioners gave thecolonists a lex data, a formal community charter. 79This applied to both citizen coloniesand Latin colonies, although the only evidence we have to suggest that this practice wasused as early as the third century is a passage in Livy wherein the maritime colonistscalled for military duty in 207 BCE produced documentation that they should have beenexempt.itaque colonos etiam maritimos, qui sacrosanctam uacationem dicebanturhabere, dare milites cogebant. quibus recusantibus edixere in diem certam utquo quisque iure uacationem haberet ad senatum deferret. ea die ad senatum hipopuli uenerunt, Ostiensis Alsiensis Antias Anxurnas Minturnensis Sinuessanus,78 It is also possible that the first priests of the colony served on the town council.79 Gargola(1995),p. 80.