NOMINATIO
NOMINATIO and NOMINO are the technical words used to denote
the first stage in the appointment to the augurship and other priestly
colleges, under the law of Labienus, B.C. 63. On a vacancy in their college,
each of the augurs “nominated” a candidate for the post, and
the choice between those so nominated was decided by a popular vote of
seventeen tribes chosen by lot. In order that the assembly might exercise an
effective choice, a sufficient number of candidates was secured by a rule
that not more than two augurs might give their nomination to any one
candidate. (
Cic. Phil. 2.2,
4.)
The term
nominare is likewise used of a function
of the emperors in the election of magistrates from the time that these
elections were transferred (
Tac. Ann. 1.15）
to the senate. This “nomination” is different from the right of
recommending candidates which the emperor possessed; for Tacitus (
l.c.) tells of Tiberius that he limited himself
“ne plures quam quattuor candidatos commendaret, sine repulsa et
ambitu designandos;” while in the previous chapter he says,
“candidates praeturae duodecim nominavit, numerum ab Augusto
traditum, et hortante senatu ut augeret, jure jurando obstrinxit se non
excessurum.” In the same way when Asinius Gallus proposed (
Tac. Ann. 2.36)
[p. 2.236]that
appointments for five years on should be made at once, he added,
“princeps duodecim candidates in annos singulos nominaret.”
This passage however, as it merely repeats the words of
Ann.
1.14, and extends the system there described to suit a quinquennial
arrangement, may be left out of account. The description
(
Ann. 1.81) of the consular elections, on the other hand,
cannot be passed over: “plerumque eos tantum apud se professos
disseruit, quorum nomina consulibus edidisset: posse et alios profiteri,
si gratiae aut meritis confiderent.” Lastly, we have an
electioneering letter of the younger Pliny (
2.9): “Anxium me et inquietum habet petitio Sexti Eruci mei .
. . ego Sexto latum clavum a Caesare nostro, ego quaesturam impetravi,
meo suffragio pervenit ad jus tribunatum petendi, quem nisi obtinet in
senatu vereor ne decepisse Caesarem videar.”
The last passage would naturally be taken to mean (see Nipperdey
ad
Tac. Ann. 1.81) that the emperor's leave was
necessary before a candidate could offer himself for election, and it would
be further natural to identify such leave with the “nomination”
mentioned by Tacitus. In that case we should expect to find the emperor
“nominating” a long list of candidates (beside those
specially recommended) and the senate choosing out of this list. When,
however, we find that the senate begs Tiberius to increase the number of his
nominees, it becomes clear that “nomination” can have no such
meaning as has been suggested. Twelve was the ordinary number of annual
vacancies for the praetorship; so that if the emperor gave leave only to
twelve candidates, these twelve persons must necessarily be elected; the
distinction between those of them who were and those who were not
recommended would vanish;
nominatio and
commendatio (which are always contrasted by
our authorities) would have precisely the same effect. The value of such a
nomination would manifestly be diminished by every addition to the number
nominated. It is quite impossible, considering the relations between
Tiberius and the senators, that they should at the beginning of his reign
have urged him to lessen his own powers by giving them greater freedom of
choice, and that he should have positively refused to do so. We have indeed
a somewhat similar question of appointment, in
Ann. 3.32 and
35, but there the senate wish the emperor to give them one name, and he
insists on giving two for them to choose from.
It is clear from Pliny's letter that there were contested elections in the
senate to the office of tribune. As regards the praetorship, we may draw the
same conclusion from the account in Tacitus (
Tac.
Ann. 2.51) of the election of a “praetor suffectus,”
and still more clearly from an incident in Nero's time (
Ann.
14.28): “Comitia praetorum arbitrio senatus haberi solita, quoniam
acriore ambitu exarserant, princeps composuit, tres, qui supra numerum
petebant, legioni praeficiendo.” On the other hand, we never hear
of contested elections to the consulship.
Mommsen (
Staatsrecht, ii.3 pp. 917 ff.)
has an explanation which lessens though it does not remove the difficulty of
reconciling these passages. He first gets rid of Pliny's canvassing letter
by the supposition that “meo suffragio pervenit ad jus tribunatum
petendi” does not refer to any fresh privilege obtained by him
for Erucius, but merely sums up what he had got for him before, namely the
latus clavus and the quaestorship, these being the qualifications which now
enabled him to be a candidate for the office of tribune. This interpretation
would seem very forced if we were dealing with a simple and straightforward
letter-writer, but it is not inadmissible in the case of the artificial
epistles of the younger Pliny. Mommsen proceeds to point out that under the
Republic the msgistrate conducting an election had the duty of examining the
legal qualifications of the candidate, and was bound to accept only those
votes which were given to persons legally eligible ( “rationem
alicujus in comitiis habere” ). Under the principate this
ministerial duty would belong jointly to the emperor and to the consuls.
Either of the two co-ordinate powers might examine the qualifications of a
candidate, and declare him capable or incapable of standing. Manifestly the
emperor's certificate would be the more prized; all candidates would press
to have their claims vouched for by him, and (if this tendency were not
checked) on the emperor alone would fall the responsibility of deciding who
was, and who was not, to be on the list of candidates. This responsibility
the senate press Tiberius to assume, but he insists on the consuls taking
some part of it, and will only certify in a limited number of cases. Such is
Mommsen's explanation of “candidatos praeturae duodecim
nominavit.”
It may be objected to this that we should expect that the candidates who were
sent to the consuls would be at a disadvantage compared with the eight
candidates who, though not “commended,” were selected by the
emperor for the honour of his certificate. The senators, we might suppose,
would be as unlikely to vote against the eight “nominated” as
against the four avowedly “commended.” The system seems to have
led to precisely this result in the elections to the consulship. Tiberius
(
Ann. 1.81) does not commend anyone for this office; he
merely announces that two qualified candidates have sent in their names to
him; any others may send in their names to the consuls. The effect naturally
is that no one does so; the emperor's certificate to the consular candidate,
by driving all others from the field, has the same result as commendation.
Mommsen (
op. cit. p. 923) quotes an inscription
where such a one actually describes himself as commended by Tiberius for the
consulship.
How then are we to account for the practical difference between the consular
and the praetorian elections? There must have been some understanding, by
which candidates more numerous than the vacancies were encouraged to stand
in the one case and discouraged from standing in the other. We may suppose
that all candidates laid their names, formally or informally, before the
emperor. If he announced (as Tacitus says he did in the case of the
consulship) that only two properly qualified candidates had come to his
official knowledge, this would be a sufficient hint to the rest of the
competitors that they were to efface themselves. If, on the other hand, he
brought forward the names of all, and ordered the consuls to examine the
[p. 2.237]qualifications of some of them while he himself
undertook that duty in the case of others, this may have been done in such a
way as to imply that he wished them all to be voted for indifferently. This
would be especially the case, if we may conjecture that the emperor did not
arbitrarily pick and choose the candidates he was to
“nominate,” as he undoubtedly did those whom he was to
“commend.” A passage of Dio Cassius (58.20), relating to
Tiberius, may perhaps throw some light on this. After saying that Tiberius
commended certain candidates, who were elected at once by all voices, he
proceeds to describe his practice in the case of those not
commended--
τοὺς δὲ ἐπί τε τοῖς δικαιώμασι
καὶ ἐπὶ τῇ ὁμολογίᾳ τῷ τε κλήρῳ ποιούμενος. It
may perhaps be allowable to interpret this as meaning that certain ancestry
or certain services (
δικαιώματα) gave a man
a claim by custom to have his certificate from the emperor, and that in some
other cases persons were marked out for the honour by general acclamation of
the senate or by consent of their competitors (
ὁμολογίᾳ); but that for the rest Tiberius in the case of
the praetorship decided by lot which names he should examine for himself and
which he should refer for examination to the consuls. In the latter case, as
chance alone would decide, it can have been no indication of disfavour that
a man should not come armed with the imperial certificate.
[
J.L.S.D]
