Sodalĭtas
The word properly means an association or club, and was especially applied to the religious
brotherhoods among the Romans. By order of the State, they attended to the cult of some
particular object of worship by jointly celebrating certain sacrifices and feasts, especially
on the anniversary of the foundation of that cult.
The members, called
sodales, stood in a legally recognized position of
mutual obligation, which did not allow any one of them to appear against another as a
prosecutor in a criminal case, or to become
patronus of the prosecutor of
a
sodalis, or to officiate as judge upon a
sodalis.
Such a brotherhood were the Sodales Augustales, appointed A.D. 14 by the Senate for the cult
of the deified Augustus, a college of twenty-one, and afterwards of twenty-eight members of
senatorial rank, which also took upon itself the cult of Claudius after his deification, and
bore, after that, the official title Sodales Augustales Claudiales. Besides these, there were
the Sodales Flaviales Titiales for the cult of Vespasian and Titus, the Hadrianales for that
of Hadrian, Antoniniani for that of Antoninus Pius and of the successively deified emperors
(cp. Collegium).
The secular clubs,
sodalitates or
collegia
sodalicia, were, in the later Republican age, much turned to account for political
objects, and their organization used for purposes of bribery. (See Cicero's speech
Pro
Plancio.)