Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

AUCTOR.

19

AUGUR.

viewed as the chief actor or doer, the word
motor is also used in the sense of one who
iriginates or proposes a thing; but this can-
riot be viewed as its primary meaning. Ac-
cordingly, the word auctor, when used in
connection with lex or senatus consultum,
often means him who originates and pro-
poses.—The expressions pat res auctorcs fiunt,
pat res auctores facti, have given rise to much
discussion. In the earlier periods of the Ro-
man state, the word patres was equivalent to
patricii i in the later period, when the pa-
tricians had lost all importance as a political
body, the term patres signilied the senate.
Hence some ambiguity has arisen. The ex-
pression patres auctores fiunt, when used of
the early period of Rome, means that the
determinations of the populus in the comitia
centuriata were confirmed by the patricians
in the comitia euriata. Till the time of Ser-
vius Tullius there were only the comitia eu-
riata, and this king first established the
comitia centuriata, in which the plebs also
voted, and consequently it was not till after
this time that the phrase patres auctores fiunt
could be properly applied. Livy, however,
uses it of an earlier period. The comitia
euriata first elected the king, and then by
another vote conferred upon him the impc-
rium. The latter was called lex euriata de
imperio, an expression not used by Livy,
who employs instead the phrase patres auc-
tores fiunt (Liv. i. 17, 22, 32).—After the
exile of the last Tarquin, the patres, that is
the patricians, had still the privilege of con-
finning at the comitia euriata the vote of the
comitia centuriata, that is, they gave to it
the patrum auctoritas; or, in other words,
the patres were auctores facti. In the
fifth century of the city a change was made.
By one of the laws of the plebeian dictator Q.
Publilius Philo, it was enacted that in the
case of leges to be enacted at the comitia cen-
turiata, the patres should be auctores, that is,
the curiae should give their assent before the
vote of the comitia centuriata. By a lex
Maenia of uncertain date the same change
was made as to elections.—But both during
the earlier period and afterwards no business
could be brought before the comitia without
first receiving the sanction of the senate; and
accordingly the phrase patres auctores fiunt
came now to be applied to the approval of
a measure by the senate before it was con-
firmed by the votes of the people. This pre-
liminary approval was also termed senatus
auctoritas. — When the word auctor is ap-
plied to him who recommends but does not
originate a legislative measure, it is equiva-
lent to suasor. Sometimes both auctor and
cuasor are used in the same sentence, and the

meaning of each is kept distinct. With re-
ference to dealings between individuals,
auctor has the sense of owner. In this sense
auctor is the seller [venditor), as opposed to
the buyer [emtor] : and hence we have the
phrase a malo auctore emere. Auctor is also
used generally to express any person under
whose authority any legal act is done. In
this sense, it means a tutor who is appointed
to aid or advise a woman on account of the
infirmity of her sex.

AUCTORAMEXTUM, the pay of gladia

tOrS. [Gl.ADIATORES.]

AUCTORITAS. The technical meanings
of this word correlate with those of auctor.
The auctoritas senatus was not a senatus-
consultum ; it was a measure, incomplete in
itself, which received its completion by some
other authority. Auctoritas, as applied to
property, is equivalent to legal ownership,
being a correlation of auctor.

AUDITORIUM, as the name implies, is
any place for hearing. It was the practice
among the Romans for poets and others to
read their compositions to their friends, who
were sometimes called the auditorium ; but
the word was also used to express any place
in which any thing was heard, and under the
empire it was applied to a court of justice.
Under the republic the place for all judicial
proceedings was the comitium and the forum.
But for the sake of shelter and convenience
it became the practice to hold courts in the
Basilicae, which contained halls, which were
also called auditoria. It is first under M.
Aurelius that the auditorium principis is
mentioned, by which we must understand a
hall or room in the imperial residence ; and
in such a hall Septimius Severus and the
later emperors held their regular sittings
when they presided as judges. The latest
jurists use the word generally for any place
in which justice was administered.

AUGUR, AUGURIUM; AUSPEX, AUS-
PICIUM. Augur or auspex meant a diviner
by birds, but came in course of time, like
the Greek oiww, to be applied in a more ex-
tended sense : his art was called augurium
or auspicium. Plutarch relates that the au-
gures were originally termed auspices. The
word auspex was supplanted by augur, but
the scientific term for the observation con-
tinued on the contrary to be auspicium and
not augurium. By Greek writers on Roman
affairs, the augurs are called oicui/on-oAoi,

OLOjyOfXKOTTOL, OCWClOTai, ot ctt' OLCUI/015 tepei?.

The belief, that the flight of birds gave some
intimation of the will of the gods seems to
have been prevalent among many nations of
antiquity, and was common to the Greeks, as
| well as the Romans ; but it was only sjnong