APPENDIX
THE ACTA PUBLICA
RECORDS of the proceedings of the senate, the
comitia, and the
courts had always been kept by the magistrates or
officials concerned, just as those of the sacred
colleges. These records no doubt could be
consulted, but the duty of the officials concerned
was limited to the depositing and safe keeping of
them: they were not charged with making them known
to the public. A change in this respect was one of
the first acts of Caesar in his consulship of B.C.
59. He ordered that all official acts of the
people, as well as those of the senate, should be
collected and made public (
ut
tam senatus quam populi diurna acta confierent et
publicarentur, Suet.
Iul.
20). It is only after that year, therefore, that
mention of them occurs in the correspondence.
There does not seem any proof that these
acta were officially
promulgated in the provinces. Rather, it seems
that the magistrates, as well as others who were
abroad, made their arrangements with certain
scribes in Rome to copy the official announcements
and forward them, and Cicero constantly assumes
that such persons receive them (see
Fam. 12, 8; 12, 22, §
I;12, 23, § 2;12, 28, § 3). When
Cicero refers to them simply as
acta he seems always to mean the
acta of the senate
(see vol. i., pp. 146, 163, 207). When he means
other
acta such as
elections, laws, or trials--he speaks of them as
acta urbana, or
rerum urbanarum acta
(vol. ii., p. 151; cp.
Fam. 12, 23,
p. 187). Besides this, Cicero had had a private
arrangement with Caelius to cause a budget of news
to be made up for him periodically. This contained
all kinds of gossip, social as well as political
(see vol. ii., pp. 15, 33, 177). Caesar appears to
have had also a special report made to him of the
acta diurna (see
Letter CCCCLXX,
Fam. 9, 16,
§ 4), a practice continued by Augustus,
who, however, stopped the publication of the
acta senatus (Suet.
Aug. 36 and 64). During the empire
the
acta urbana
contained notice of births and other events in the
imperial family (see Suet.
Tib. 8,
Cal. 8), as well as a great variety
of other facts (see Tac.
Ann. 12,
24; 13, 31). Tiberius not only reintroduced the
practice of publishing the
acta
senatus, but appointed a senator
specially to edit them (Tac.
Ann.
5, 4). For the inclusion of judicial
proceedings in the
acta
urbana, see Asconius,
Miloniana, 19 and 47; cp. Pliny,
Ep. 7, 33; and of those in a
popular assembly, Ascon. 49.
[Other allusions to the
acta
senatus and
acta
diurna will be found in Asconius, 44;
Pliny,
Ep. 9, 15; Seneca,
Benef. 2, 10; 3, 16; Quintil. 9, 3;
Juvenal 2, 136; 7, 104; Ammianus, 22, 3, 4.]
