Roman dictator

A dictator was a magistrate of the Roman Republic, entrusted with the full authority of the state to deal with a military emergency or to undertake a specific duty. All other magistrates were subordinate to his imperium, and the right of the plebeian tribunes to veto his actions or of the people to appeal from them was extremely limited. However, in order to prevent the dictatorship from threatening the state itself, severe limitations were placed upon its powers: a dictator could only act within his intended sphere of authority; and he was obliged to resign his office once his appointed task had been accomplished, or at the expiration of six months. Dictators were regularly appointed from the earliest period of the Republic down to the Second Punic War, but the magistracy then went into abeyance for over a century, until it was revived in a significantly modified form, first by Sulla, and then by Caesar. The office was formally abolished after the death of Caesar, and not revived under the Empire.

With the abolition of the Roman monarchy in 509 BC, the imperium, or executive power, of the king was divided between two annually-elected magistrates, known as praetors. In time they would come to be known as consuls, although probably not until the creation of a third, junior praetor in 367 BC. Neither consul was superior to the other, and the decisions of one could be appealed to the other (provocatio). Their insignia were the toga praetexta and the sella curulis, and each was attended by an escort of twelve lictors, each of whom bore the fasces, a bundle of rods topped by an axe; but by custom the lictors had to remove the axes from their fasces within the pomerium, the sacred boundary of Rome, to signify that the people, and not the consuls, were sovereign.

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