ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

amount of influence over the type of colony, its location, and its structure. In this way,they had the ability to pursue the individual interests that prompted them to colonize.The common factor on each of the commissions was that at least one of thecommissioners had significant military experience. Former consuls and military praetorshad the skills to enroll the colonists where necessary, lead them to their new home, keepthem fed along the way, and divide and distribute the land in the new colony. Inparticular, these magistrates as a group were familiar with constructing camps,demarcating sacred and secular land, and vowing temples to the deities of their choice.There is some evidence that a few colonial commissioners influenced the construction oftemples to their tutelary deities in the colonies that they founded. Once these tasks wereaccomplished, and the colonial charter was instituted, the role of the commissioners, andhence the primary Roman influence, was concluded.The rest of the religious and civic structure of the colony was left to the firstcolonial magistrates and priests, especially in the Latin colonies, which had their owngoverning bodies. Indeed, the commissioners' prior military, political, and/or priestlyexperience rarely prepared them, as a group, for the tasks of instituting a new calendar,training priests, or establishing religious tenets. These tasks most likely fell to the newcolonial magistrates and priests, who may have been invested with their offices in Romeso that they could study the Roman ritual system in order to assist the commissioners infounding the colony with the correct rituals and prayers.Whether or not the first priests of the colony were officially trained in the Romanreligious system, they formed their own colleges in their new community. There, they