Proconsul
（
ἀνθύπατος,
pro consule,
“deputy-consul”). A Roman officer to whom the consular power was intrusted
for a specified district outside the city. The regular method of appointing the proconsul was
to prolong the official power of the retiring consul (
prorogatio imperii）
on the conclusion of his year of office. In exceptional cases, however, others were appointed
proconsuls, generally those who had already held the office of consul. This was especially
done to increase the number of generals in command. The proconsuls were appointed for a
definite or indefinite period; as a rule for a year, reckoned from the day on which they
entered their province. This period might be prolonged by a new prorogation. In any case the
proconsul continued in office till the appearance of his successor. With the growth of the
provinces, the consuls as well as the praetors were employed to administer them as proconsuls
on the expiration of their office. After Sulla this became the rule; indeed, the Senate
decided which provinces were to be consular and which praetorian. The regulation, in B.C. 53,
that past consuls should not govern a province till five years after their consulship broke
down the immediate connection between the consulship and succession to a province, and the
proconsuls thereby became in a more distinctive sense governors of provinces. After Augustus
the title was given to governors of senatorial provinces, whether they had held the consulship
before or not. As soon as the proconsul had been invested with his official power (
imperium), he had to leave Rome forthwith, for there his
imperium became extinct. Like the consuls, he had twelve lictors with bundles of rods
and axes, whom he was bound to dismiss on reëntering Rome. In the province he
combined military and judicial power over the subject peoples and the Roman citizens
alike—only that in the case of the latter, on a capital charge, he had to allow them
to appeal to Rome. To administer justice he travelled in the winter from town to town. In the
case of war he might order out the Roman citizens as well as the provincials. His power was
absolutely unlimited, so that he might be guilty of the greatest oppression and extortion, and
was only liable to prosecution for these offences on the expiration of his office. He might
advance a claim for a triumph or an
ovatio (q. v.) for military services.
When the senatorial provinces came generally to have no army under the Empire, the duties of
the proconsuls became limited to administration, political and judicial. See Mommsen,
Röm. Staatsrecht, ii. 90, 233, 238-246, 257; and the article
Provincia.
