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declare war on Rome’s enemies. If a senatus consultum conflicted with a lex which had been passed by an assembly, the law always overrode the advisory, although it could still serve to interpret a law. The Comitia elected men to the highest-ranking Roman magistracies ( magistrati )– the two consuls ( consules ), the sixteen praetors ( praetores ) and the two censors ( censores ).
    Consuls were elected for a period of one year and they were the titular heads of Rome during that time, lending their very names to denote the specific year in which they served. They had ultimate imperium and could personally command the legions in war, usually no more than two each. Each consul sat in a distinctive folding chair ( sella curulis ) before an assembly of the Comitia Centuriata or meeting of the Senate, wore a purple-bordered toga ( toga praetexta ) and was accompanied by an honour guard of twelve men ( lictores ). A lictor carried an axe in a bundle of rods tied tightly together with a crisscrossing strip of leather called the fasces . Former or ex-consuls (proconsuls) formed a group from which provincial governors were chosen, with assignments made by drawing lots.
    Praetors could also command legions in the field, and were traditionally called upon to do so in times of emergency when the consuls were already at war and far from Rome. In peacetime, they oversaw the law courts. Courts dealt with a wide variety of cases, from those involving civil disputes between fellow citizens under the authority of the praetor urbanus to those between Romans and non-Romans ( peregrini ) under the praetor peregrinus . Other praetors appointed judges to preside at criminal cases. Praetors were granted six lictores each, could sit on a curule chair mounted on a tribunal and wear the toga praetexta . A praetor receivedhis imperium by decree and was only outranked by a consul. At the time of Agrippa’s birth there were eight praetors, but Iulius Caesar increased the number to sixteen. Ex-praetors – or propraetors – formed a secondary pool of men from which provincial governors were chosen by lot.
    Senators and praetors were members of the Senate for life, unless they committed crimes or indiscretions. Censors were responsible for ensuring Senators maintained the dignity of the august body and upheld respect for public morals ( mores maiorum , the ‘ways of the elders’). They would conduct checks on members every five years (a period called a lustrum ), expelling those guilty of corruption, abuse of capital punishment, bankruptcy or adultery. A censor could induct into the Senate a Roman who possessed the requisite financial and property qualifications. Censors also conducted the count of the Roman population ( census )at the start of each new lustrum , following it with a formal purification ceremony ( lustratio ).
    The Centuriate Assembly could pass a law – lex de imperio – granting consuls and praetors the proper constitutional command authority ( imperium ) to lead the legions to war, and the Lex de Potestate Censoria granting censorial powers to censors. The curule magistrates could propose new legislation to the Assembly, which then voted on it without debate. Further, the Centuriate Assembly served as the highest court of appeal in certain judicial cases – those cases involving capital crimes – and they also ratified the results of a census, typically held every five years. However by Agrippa’s time the Comitia Centuriata was losing influence to the other voting bodies.
    The Comitia Tributa , or Tribal Assembly, organized citizens on the basis of thirty-five tribes, into which every Roman citizen was assigned. Citizens living inside the pomerium of the city of Rome were assigned to one of four tribes (the so-called ‘urban tribes’ of sucusana , esquilina , collina and palatina ), while out-oftowners made up the other thirty-one tribes (the ‘rural tribes’). The Comitia Tributa met for legislative, electoral and judicial