ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

Appendix 2: Magistracies Held by CommissionersSeveral scholars have tallied the correspondence between the colonial commissioners andthe offices they had held, in more or less detail. MacKendrick counts 88 commissionersmentioned by Livy down to the year 168 BCE: 21 of these were consuls, 26 werepraetors, and 20 were just starting their political career. 1Gargola offers a more thoroughanalysis of the consuls and praetors between 219 and 169 BCE: 57 names are known forthis period, 11 of whom were consuls, and 19 were praetors. Gargola notes that collegesthat founded citizen colonies had fewer consuls than those of Latin colonies, but not by avery large margin. While these statistics are interesting in terms of number of highrankingofficers available to found colonies, they do not tell us much about thecomposition of individual colleges. Thus, what follows is an analysis of the number ofcommissions with former consuls or praetors, pro-magistrates, military legates, tribunesof the plebs, aediles, and priests. These are the best attested magistracies in the literarysources.Out of the twenty two colonial commissions between 338 and 169 where some orall of the commissioners are named, only three colonization efforts did not have at leastone former consul or provincial praetor: Copia (194), Tempsa (194), and the supplementof Aquileia (169). 4Tempsa should be discounted due to a corruption in the sources for1 MacKendrick (1952), p. 141.2 Gargola (1995), p. 60 and nn. 45-6 p. 210.3 ibid, p. 61. Of the 27 commissioners to found citizens colonies, four were consuls and nine praetors. Ofthe 27 commissioners to found Latin colonies, there were seven of both consuls and praetors. Because thereis not a very large difference between the composition of the colleges to found Latin colonies and those tofound citizen colonies, the distinction is ignored here. For the purposes of this study, it is enough to showthat the tresviri were chosen for their qualifications.4 See Appendix 3 for references and magistrate names.269