Honōres
1.
A term used of any compliment or honour conferred by the Roman Senate or any public body
(
Pro Planc. 26, 64;
Ad Fam. i. 9, 14).
2.
A commission or rank in the army (
B. C. i. 77).
3.
Technically the name denotes actual magistrates whether of the Populus Romanus, the Plebs,
or of a municipality, excluding, however, the office of
iudex, senator,
and priest (Mommsen,
Staatsrecht, i. p. 8), and possibly the
principatus (q. v.). The
ius honorum was a part of the rights of
one who was a free citizen and might be withheld when all the other rights were granted
(
Tac. Ann. xi. 23). (See
Munus.)
Cursus honorum is an expression of Roman official life which
may be defined as the career of public service through which a citizen must pass before
attaining to the position of the highest rank. In the early Roman Republic there existed in
an informal way a principle of official promotion by which those who had held inferior
magistracies were understood to be eligible for higher positions after the lapse of a certain
interval of time (Callist.
Dig. 50, 4, 14, 5). The order,
certus ordo magistratuum, in which the various magistracies should be held, was,
however, formally defined in B.C. 180 by the Lex Villia Annalis. The
cursus
honorum thus legally determined consisted of the quaestorship, curule aedileship,
praetorship, consulship. A preliminary military service of ten years was required before the
career of magistracies could be begun. Since enrollment by the censors took place at the
census next following the attainment of the age of seventeen years, allowing for the ten
years of military service, we may place the earliest age at which the quaestorship could be
held as twenty-eight years. An interval of at least two years was required between the
holding one office and the following, so that the aedileship could be held at thirty-one
years, the praetorship at thirty-four, and the consulship at thirty-seven. Since the holding
of the curule aedileship was optional, the praetorship might directly follow the
quaestorship, and the consulship might thus be reached at thirty-four years.
The principle of an
ordo honorum found, however, its most important
application in the development of the imperial government under Augustus and his successors.
In the imperial period there were three careers of official service. The republican
magistracies formed the
cursus honorum for those of senatorial
rank—i. e. senators, sons of senators, or those raised to senatorial rank by the
emperor, all possessing the requisite property of one million sesterces.
To a select body of the knights invested by the emperor with membership in the equestrian
troop through the conferring of the knight's horse, were assigned the offices of
administration, the various procuratorships and
praefecturae which
formed the equestrian
cursus honorum.
To the commonalty were assigned the subordinate offices, civil and military.
senatorial cursus honorum
- I. Preliminary service.
（a) Annual tenure of one of a group
of minor offices, known as vigintiviri: triumvir capitalis, triumvir
monetalis, quattuorvir viarum curandarum, decemvir stlitibus iudicandis.
（b) A year's service as tribunus militum
laticlavius.
- II. Quaestorship—at twenty-five years.
Interval of at least one year.
- III. Aedileship or tribunate of the plebs.
Interval of at least one year.
- IV. Praetorship—at thirty years.
Interval of at least two years.
- V. Consulship.
A patrician being ineligible for the tribunate of the plebs or
the plebeian aedileship could pass directly from the quaestorship to the
praetorship.
equestrian cursus honorum
- I. Preliminary service.
（a) Military service. No special
military service appears to have been regularly required, although Claudius determined
upon three positions—
- 1. praefectura cohortis;
- 2. praefectura alae;
- 3. tribunatus legionis; and these tres militiae
equestres became the usual preliminary service in the second century. In the
inscriptions the tribunatus regularly holds the second place.
（b) Civil service. Through the reforms of Hadrian, training
in state affairs was recognized as equivalent to service in the army—e. g.
those who had served as advocati fisci or ab
commentariis praefecti praetorio were eligible for the procuratorships and
praefectures.
- II. Procuratorships of various kinds and grades.
- III. Praefecturae. The highest offices open to those of the equestrian order given in
ascending order were: praefectura classis, praefectura vigilum,
praefectura annonae, praefectura Aegypti, praefectura praetorio.
Officials of the third class
These were of great number and variety, being made up mainly of subordinate officers of
administration in Rome and the provinces, attendants of public officials, officers of the
army and the fleets, magistrates of the coloniae and municipia, and the officers of the
collegia. The inscriptions show that these subordinate offices were arranged in a
cursus honorum on the same principle prevailing in the senatorial and
equestrian
cursus.
Bibliography.
See T. Mommsen,
Römisches Staatsrecht, vol. i. 523-577; and O.
Hirschfeld,
Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der römischen
Verwaltungsgeschichte, vol. i. 240.
