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Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2011
Summary
Studies both ancient and modern have been written on the Republican institutions as a whole, as well as in-depth analyses of the senate, the popular assemblies, the tribunate of the plebs, the aedileship, the praetorship, and the censorship. However, the consulship has not received the same attention from scholars. In fact, there are no monographs that deal specifically with the functions and activities of the supreme magistracy of the Roman state during the Republican period.
Of course, there are prosopographical studies which have shaped the chronology of the Republican consuls. Amongst these, Broughton's prosopography is absolutely essential, and without it this work would have been almost impossible to undertake. With a more limited scope, Albert Neuendorff completed a prosopography of the consuls from 78 to 49, focusing mainly on the candidates for the annual consular elections, and Adolf Lippold specifically studied the political role of the consuls in the period between 264 and 201. As a basis for consular prosopography, the fasti consulares have also been the subject of studies such as that of Fabio Mora, amongst others.
To the best of my knowledge, the first doctoral thesis on the Roman consulship was written by the Utrecht scholar Heinrich Gabriel Römer. It was published in 1841 with the title Dissertatio historico-antiquaria de consulum romanorum auctoritate libera in Utrecht, as stated on the first page of the copy preserved in the Sackler Library, Oxford. This was deposited in 1950 by Brasenose College in the Ashmolean Museum Library.
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- The Consul at RomeThe Civil Functions of the Consuls in the Roman Republic, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011