4-4 Roman Government Officials of the Empire


Explanation: (Charts 4-3, 4-4)

Out of the old Etruscan monarchy, the Roman Republic was founded in 509 B.C. With the Licinian-Sextian reforms of 346 B.C., the familiar structure of the Republic was put into place and continued basically unchanged past the end of the Republic and through the time of Augustus’s principate. The organization of government officials in the Roman Republic is represented in chart 4-3.

Though magistrates were elected by various citizen assemblies, most of these individuals were members of the Senate, a body of elected or hereditarily appointed officials who served for life. In tandem with the Senate, the Republic’s magistrates expanded a city-state to an empire that spanned the known world.

As the instruments and machinery of the Republic became archaic and inadequate for the administration of the far-flung empire, changes were effected that ultimately produced the new governmental structures of the empire. The old magisterial offices were preserved but with different functions and modes of selection. Chart 4-4 represents the role of government officials under the empire during New Testament times.

References:

Richard J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Lily Ross Taylor, Party Politics in the Age of Caesar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949).