The second highest office on the Cursus Honorum was the Praetor.
If you were lucky enough to be elected Praetor, you were officially a big shot.
There were 8 Praetors on any given year, which meant that competition was fierce.
Most Quaestors never made it to Praetor, and had to be satisfied with their lifetime membership
to the senate with virtually no legislative power.
Praetors were essentially judges, and were responsible for adjudicating the Republics
laws.
However, we need to shift our perspective slightly if we are to fully understand this.
Ancient societies revered judges much more than we do today.
The power to judge, the power to determine right and wrong, or life and death, was usually
within a King's authority.
I was a big deal at the time that the Romans devolved this immense power to their elected
representatives.
If we traveled back in time and observed a Roman trial, we would actually find it pretty
easy to follow.
Our modern legal system was heavily influenced by the Roman one.
The Praetor, or judge, would preside over the trial, which would have a defending advocate
and a prosecuting advocate.
Many trials even juries who would ultimately decide the defendant's fate, which was another
democratizing innovation that would have terrified monarchical societies at the time.
Roman jurists, when it came time to vote, were given three wax tablets.
One with an A, for absolutio, or absolution.
One with a C, for condemnatio, or condemnation.
One with an N.L., for non liquet, for cases where neither side proved their point.
When it came time to decide, each jurist secretly slid one tablet into a voting container, after
which the votes were counted and the defendant's fate was decided.
One of the really important bits for Praetors came at this point.
If condemned, the Praetor got to unilaterally decide the punishment.
They only had a few options.
Fines, physical punishment, banishment from the city, or death.
There was no organized prison system in Ancient Rome, besides for one small jailhouse ran
by 3 civil servants, which was more often used as a holding area for executions.
The one big difference that would make Roman law unrecognizable to us today is that it
was very much a spectator sport.
In a weird way it kind of makes sense since the two advocates and the judge would usually
be famous politicians.
In hyper-political Rome, if you were a fan , or ally, or client of a certain senator,
you might want to go see him argue his big murder case.
Or, you might just want to come and watch for fun.
And according to our sources, people got rowdy.
There are lots of accounts of audience participation during the trials.
There was applauding and hissing, advocates would turn their back to the jury and play
to the crowd, people would make jokes at the expense of the people on trial, and sometimes
the crowds broke into fights.
But we should not gloss over the fact that the Romans were extremely legalistic in their
thinking, and were insanely proud of the legal system they developed.
This was why they held Praetors in such high regard.
The Romans had a special term for the kind of pseudo-royal power the Praetors wielded.
They called it Imperium.
But Imperium was a two sided coin.
Imperium also gave Praetors the authority to command armies.
Let's not get crazy here.
Praetors were still subservient to Consuls, and Consuls were responsible for the defense
of the Republic, but in a pinch a Praetor was seen as capable of commanding a legion
if, for whatever reason, there happened to be more legions than Consuls.
Or and this was more common they were seen as capable of acting as a Consul's second
in command during a military campaign.
The Romans, to whom jingoism was the norm, were highly motivated by this.
One interesting thing to note here is that the Romans saw absolutely no distinction between
political talent and military talent.
In their eyes a good judge would make a good general, and a good general would make a good
legislator.
This may explain their unusual propensity to award military commands to charismatic
public speakers.
Back to Imperium.
Praetors had it, and they were just itching to use it.
The Praetorship was the lowest rank on the Cursus Honorum where, when the one year term
of service was over, the officeholder was eligible for the governorship of a province.
This selection process was entirely in the Senate's hands, so as you can imagine a lot
of the Praetor's time and energy was spent trying to position himself to get a good province.
People used their time as Governors to try to make back some of the money they had spent
to get elected in the first place.
Once in the provinces, away from the Consuls, a Governor exercised supreme military and
judicial power with very little oversight.
Bribes were traded freely, and an unscrupulous Governor could make himself rich overnight
simply by handing out favours.
Also, as the head of the provincial military, there was plenty of money to be made through
conquest and plunder.
Commanders of armies traditionally kept 20% of the spoils of war, which included human
beings.
This is why rich, exotic, and even rebellious provinces were preferred over boring ones.
Now imagine how Caesar felt during his year as Consul when Cato successfully pushed a
bill through the Senate stating that Caesar was to be given the governorship over Italy
so that he could take care of the banditry problem.
How humiliating!
There was no money in this.
No glory.
No towns to be captured.
No political points to be scored.
People started to make jokes behind his back about how he was going to be governing flocks
of sheep.
Caesar eventually was able to secure a different province for himself in time, but it took
a lot of political maneuvering.
It was Hyspania Ulterior, by the way.
I talked about it in another video.
Cato was an interesting fellow.
He was a hard-line, staunch conservative, and a key political opponent of Caesar.
He is also pertinent to this video because he never rose to the level of Consul.
He died a lowly Praetor, but he was still able to throw his weight around in the Senate,
and make enough of a difference that he made it into our history books.
Praetors, unlike the offices under them, were actually able to make a difference in the
Senate.
Remember, speaking order during Senate debates went like this.
The presiding magistrate, usually a Consul, but sometimes not.
Then the Princeps Senatus.
Then the current Consuls.
Then the former Consuls.
Then the current Praetors.
Then the former Praetors.
Then the current Aediles.
Then the former Aediles.
Then the current Quaestors.
Then the former Quaestors.
It was pretty rare that debate got down below the former Praetors, since there were... a
lot of them.
Anthony Everett claims that Cicero didn't even make a speech supporting or opposing
a piece of legislation until after he was elected Praetor.
Cato, as an influential former Praetor, was able to mobilize debate in opposition to Caesar
in a way that no Aedile never could.
In fact, a famous example of this happened, again, during Caesar's year as Consul.
The Roman Senate could only legally meet between sun up and sun down, because...just because.
Caesar's big legislative agenda during his Consulship was this giant land reform bill
that was very generous towards military veterans, (who happened to be Caesar's allies,) and
very expensive for the state.
During the Senate debate, Cato rose to speak, and began filibustering, intending to speak
until the sun went down and the debate had to be suspended.
Cato had done this to Caesar once before, and Caesar was in no mood for games.
He used his Consular authority to have Cato arrested on the spot so that the Senate debate
could continue as normal.
Shocked Senators rose to their feet, declaring that the Senate would be happy to continue
its debate in the jailhouse with Cato.
After several hours of chaos, Caesar was forced to relent and release Cato from his cell.
Again, Cato never became a Consul, but look at what he was able to get away with.
He ran for Consul several times, by the way, but refused to campaign.
He said that if the people really want him, his reputation speaks for itself.
Apparently they never wanted him.
Now, only the highest position in Rome's political system remains.
Consul.
Stay tuned, this next one's going to be a doozy.