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

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raonosiA.

PRiVILKGIUM. [Lex.]

PROBOLE (7rpo0oA7)), an accusation of a
criminal nature, preferred before the people
of Athens in assembly, with a view to obtain
their sanction for bringing the charge before
a j udicial tribunal. The probnle was reserved
for those cases where the public had sustained
an injury, or where, from the station, power,
or influence of the delinquent, the prosecutor
might deem it hazardous to proceed in the
ordinary way without being authorised by a
vote of the sovereign assembly. In this point
it differed from the eisangelia, that in the
latter the people were called upon either to
pronounce final judgment, or to direct some
peculiar method of trial ; whereas, in the
proboli after the judgment of the assembly,
the parties proceeded to trial in the usual
manner. The cases to which the probolc was
applied were, complaints against magistrates
for official misconduct or oppression ; against
those public informers and mischief-makers
who were called sycophemtat (<TVKo<pavTai) ;
against those who outraged public decency at
the religious festivals ; and against all such
as by evil practices exhibited disaffection to
the state.

PROBOULEUMA. [Boule.]

PROBOULI (jrpo/3ovAoi), a name applicable
to any persons who are appointed to consult
or take measures for the benefit of the people.
Ten probonU were appointed at Athens, after
the end of the Sicilian war, to act as a
committee of public safety. Their authority
did not last much longer than a year ; for a
year and a half afterwards Pisander and his
colleagues established the council of Four
Hundred, by which the democracy was over-
thrown.

PROCOXSUL (ii/WTraTos), an officer who
acted in the place of a consul, without holding
the office of consul itself. The proconsul,
however, was generally one who had held
the office of consul, so that the proeonsulship
was a continuation, though a modified one,
of the consulship. The first time when the
imperium of a consul was prolonged, was in
d. c. 327, in the case of Q. Publilius Philo,
whose return to Rome would have been
followed by the loss of most of the advantages
that had been gained in his campaign. The
power of proconsul was conferred by a sena-
tusconsultum and plebiscitum, and was nearly
equal to that of a regular consul, for he had
the imperium and jurisdictio, but it differed
inasmuch as it did not extend over the city
and its immediate vicinity, and was conferred,
without the auspicia, by a mere decree of the
senate and people, and not in the comitia for
electing. When the number of Roman
provinces had become great, it was customary

for the consuls, who during the latter period
of the republic spent the year of their consul-
ship at Rome, to undertake at its close the
conduct of a war in a province, or its peaceful
administration, with the title of proconsuls.
There are some extraordinary cases on record
in which a man obtained a province with the
title of proconsul without having held the
consulship before. The first case of this kind
occurred in b.c. 211, when young P. Corne-
lius Scipio was created proconsul of Spain in
the comitia centuriata.

PROCURATOR, a person who has the
management of any business committed to
him by another. Thus it is applied to a
person who maintains or defends an action
on behalf of another, or, as we should say,
an attorney [Actio] : to a steward in a family
[Calculator] : to an officer in the provinces
belonging to the Caesar, who attended to the
duties discharged by the quaestor in the
other provinces [Pkovincia] : to an officer
engaged in the administration of the fiscus
[Fiscus] : and to various other officers under
the empire.

PRODIGIUM, in its widest acceptation,
denotes any sign by which the gods indicated
to men a future event, whether good or evil,
and thus includes omens and auguries of
every description. It is, however, generally
employed in a more restricted sense, to sig-
nify some strange incident or wonderful
| appearance which was supposed to herald the
I approacn of misfortune, and happened under
such circumstances as to announce that the
calamity was impending over a whole com-
munity or nation rather than over private
individuals. The word may be considered
synonymous with ostentum, monstricm, por-
tcntum. Since prodigies were viewed as
direct manifestations of the wrath of heaven,
it was believed that this wrath might be ap-
peased by prayers and sacrifices duly offered
to the offended powers. This being a matter
which deeply concerned the public welfare,
the necessary rites were in ancient times
regularly performed, under the direction of
the pontifices, by the consuls before they left
the city, the solemnities being called procu-
raiio prodigiorwn.

PRODOSIA (TrpoSocria) included not only
every species of treason, hut also every such
crime as (in the opinion of the Greeks) would
amount to a betraying or desertion of the
interest of a man's country. The highest
sort of treason was the attempt to establish a
despotism (Tvpawi's), or to subvert the consti-
tution (xaTakv^Lv t7]i> nokiTeCav), and in demo-
cracies KaraAveiv rhv hr^jxov or to 77At?#os. Other
kinds of treason were a secret correspondence
with a foreign enemy; a betraying of an