ORDO
ORDO
“properly ‘the row,’ appears most clearly in
its original concrete signification in the banks of oars in a ship, in
the tiers of tiles on a roof, or in the benches of a theatre”
(Mommsen,
Staatsrecht, iii. p. 459).
In a military sense the word
ordo (or its Greek
equivalent
τάγμα,
Plb. 6.24,
5) is used
of the manipulus of two centuries (see
Liv. 8.8);
ordinem ducere means “to be a
centurion,” two of whom held joint command in each maniple (
Cic. Phil. 1.8,
20; cf.
Liv. 42.34,
5), and
ordinarius is said (Festus,
s. v.) to be equivalent to
manipularis in the
sense of “a man in the ranks.” From this military usage is
doubtless derived the phrase
in ordinem cogere,
which must originally have meant “to reduce a man to the
ranks,” but which is generally used of one who treats with contempt
the person or office of a magistrate (
Liv. 25.3,
19;
43.16,
9). It is doubtful whether the word
ordo in Cicero's descriptions of the Servian Comitia
Centuriata ( “pecunias aevitates ordines partiunto equitum peditumque,”
“descriptis ordinibus classibus aetatibus,”
“omnium aetatum ordinumque suffragiis” ) is to be explained
with Mommsen (
Staatsr. iii. p. 253, n. 1) as meaning
“century,” or whether it is to be taken (as seems more
probable) merely to indicate the two great categories of horse and foot.
In a less technical sense the word is used of any distinct class of persons,
as by Cicero (
Cic. Ver. 2.6, 17), “si
cuiquam ordini sive aratorum sive pecuariorum sive mercatorum probatus
sit,” especially when, as in these cases (ib. 55, 137), the class
has a common interest and habits of common action. But it seems to have been
felt that it was an improper use of the word, when the category so
designated had nothing else in common save the single characteristic
indicated in its appellation. Cicero, for instance (in the passage last
referred to), seems to deny that the term can be correctly applied to the
collective censors of the Sicilian states, or again (
Phil.
6.5, 14) to all the persons who have ever served as military tribunes. It is
possibly on this ground that the word does not appear to signify the Roman
magistrates taken collectively, nor the various grades in the
senate,--consulares, praetorii, &c.; though, in a more general
sense, Livy (
23.23,
4) can use it of the categories of persons chosen into the
senate--“ut ordo ordini, non homo homini praelatus
videretur.” It seems improbable that we can speak of the Roman
priests collectively as
ordo sacerdotum; if
these words had habitually borne any such meaning, Festus (s. v.) would
hardly have used them in an entirely different sense ( “.the table of
precedence among the priests” ). The inscription
[p. 2.296]（
C. I. L. 6.2010) in which
ordo
sacerdotumn occurs merely shows that certain
officials of the imperial household formed themselves into a religious guild
which they thought fit to call by this name. It is very rare again to find
ordo designating either of the great
classes of “patrician” and “plebeian,” though
there are exceptions, as where Capito (in Aul.
Gel.
10.20) implies it of the patriciate, “quoniam in populo
omnis pars civitatis omnesque ejus ordines contineantur, plebs vero ea
dicitur in qua gentes civium patriciae non insunt,” or where
Pliny (
Plin. Nat. 33.29) says,
“anuli plane tertium ordinem mediumque plebi et patribus
inseruere.”
On the other hand, the word is constantly applied to the two great dominant
classes in the Roman state, the Senate and the Equites, and likewise to the
corresponding classes in the municipia, the
ordo
decurionum and the
ordo
Augustalium. At Rome the senate and equites are
not unfrequently called
uterque ordo, just as
if no other portion of the state had a claim to this designation. The senate
having no fixed meeting-place, a Roman senator did not refer to a speech
made therein as being delivered “in this house,” but
in hoc ordine (
Sall. Cat. 52, 13).
While the word
ordo, as applied to the Roman
senate, requires a qualifying pronoun, as
hic
or
noster, or a qualifying adjective, as
amplissimus, in the municipia
ordo written alone indicates the town-council, and
is its distinctive appellation as contrasted with the
senatus of Rome, just as the local
decurio is distinguished from the Roman “senator”
(Mommsen,
Staatsr. iii. p. 842).
It is more difficult to decide what, exactly, is meant in each passage by the
equester ordo. It is undoubtedly used in some
places of the eighteen centuries of Knights, as by Cicero in
Phil. 6.5, 13, “altera ab equitibus Romanis equo
publico, qui item adscribunt ‘patrono.’ Quem
unquam iste ordo patronum adoptavit?” Under the Principate this
is its common meaning; it is the only sense which will serve in any passage
where we find the
ordo taking action as a
formal and legally constituted corporation (e. g.
Tac. Ann. 2.83,
5). If Mommsen be
correct in his supposition that the right of sitting on juries was confined
to these
equites
equo publico [see
EQUITES], then the phrase is very frequently applied
to them in republican times, for the jury-courts are repeatedly said to have
been in the possession of the
equester ordo. This
interpretation is, however, more than doubtful. In very many cases, on the
other hand,
ordo is used of the
equites Romani in the wider sense; of all, that is,
who not being senators possessed the qualifying property of 400,000 H. S.,
and were therefore eligible for the eighteen centuries. We know from Horace
(
Hor. Ep. 1.1,
62) and from Juvenal (3.159) that it was a pecuniary qualification
which gave a man the right, under Roscius Otho‘s law, to sit in
the front rows of the theatre: but Cicero says of Roscius (Mur. 19, 40),
“equestri ordini restituit non solum dignitatem sed etiam
voluptatem.” The wider sense is also far more probable in
passages where Cicero speaks of the policy or temper of the order, as
(
Verr. 3.41, 94) “quum aliquid contra utilitatem
ejus ordinis fecisset,” and again, “qui unum equitem
Romanum contumelia dignum putasset, ab universo ordine malo dignus
judicaretur.” Quintus Cicero (
de Pet. Cons. 8),
speaking of the young men who composed the equestrian centuries,
distinguishes them from the
ordo in its wider
sense--“quod equester ordo tuus est, sequentur illi auctoritatem
ordinis.” (See against this Mommsen,
Staatsrecht,
iii. pp. 484 and 497.)
The other classes to which the term is applicable can be ascertained only by
observing the practice in books and in inscriptions. The expression is very
frequently used of the
tribuni aerarii, of the
libertini (e.g. in
Cic. Ver. 1.47, 124, and
repeatedly in Livy) and of the
publicani (e.g.
Liv. 25.3,
12).
We have likewise occasionally mentioned an
ordo
lictorum and an
ordo scribarum in
Rome (see ref. in Mommsen,
Staatsr. i. p. 342, n. 4), and in
the municipia an
ordo Seviralium (Orelli,
Inscr, 2229). In later times men of any calling who choose to
unite themselves into a guild seem to adopt this appellation. Two such
guilds are described (
C. I. L. 14.251 and 252) with different
adjectives of uncertain meaning (
tabu lariorum and
pleromariorum), but both as “ordo
corporatorum lenunculariorum auxiliarium (lighter-men)
Ostiensium.” In
C. I. L. 14.2408 we have an
ordo adlectorum at Bovillae, referring apparently to
the
adlecti scaenae, who seem to have been
“licensed” or “certificated” actors. An
ordo haruspicum is mentioned in
C.
I. L. 6.2161 and 2162: from the first of these we should infer
that the order was not strictly localised; for while the donees appear to be
at Rome (where the tablet was found), the donor is not only
haruspex Augustorum and
magister
publicus haruspicum, but likewise Pontifex and Dictator of
Alba.
It remains to notice some peculiar uses of the words
extra
ordinem.
“Praeturae extra ordinem” are said by Tacitus (
Tac. Ann. 2.32,
1) to have been granted to certain informers. This may mean that
extra praetorships were specially invented to suit them, or more probably
(as. Nipperdy supposes) that these persons were allowed to anticipate their
regular turn for holding that office. In the Lex de Imperio Vespasiani we
find that the recommendation of candidates by the emperor is made effective,
by the privilege granted them that “eorum extra ordinem ratio
habeatur;” that is to say, they are not to take their chance
among the general list of candidates, but to have their case considered
specially and first of all [see
NOMINATIO]. In criminal procedure, a trial which was to have
precedence of all others is said to be taken
extra
ordinem, and the accused in such a case is
extraordinarius reus (Cic.
ad
Fan. 8.8, 1). In civil procedure,
judicia
ordinaria are those tried under the formulary system, where
the points at issue are referred to a single juror subject to instructions
given him by the praetor. When the praetor himself decides without this;
reference to a judex, we have a
cognitio extra
ordinem (
Tac. Ann.
13.51); and when (as frequently happened under the principate)
such suits became too numerous for the personal attention of the magistrate,
the substitute to whom he delegated the task without binding him down by a
formula was called
judex extra ordinem datus.
(See Mommsen,
Staatsrecht, ii.3 p. 980,
n. 1.)
[
J.L.S.D]
