Local political life in Pompeii and Herculaneum, including magistracies, the decurional council, electoral campaigns, and the evidence from electoral programmata

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to describe the institutions of local government, the annual electoral cycle, the social composition of the political class, and the rich epigraphic evidence preserved on the walls of AD 79 Pompeii. The cities preserve the most extensive documentation of municipal politics anywhere in the Roman Empire.

The answer

The framework

Pompeii's political institutions followed the model of Roman municipia and colonies, set out in the Lex Coloniae Genetivae Iuliae (the colonial charter of Caesar's colony at Urso in Spain, c. 44 BC), which served as a template across the empire. Herculaneum had similar institutions on a smaller scale.

Four annual magistrates were elected: two duoviri iure dicundo (judicial duumvirs) and two aediles. Every fifth year, the duoviri served as duoviri quinquennales and revised the membership rolls (similar in form to the duties of the Roman censors).

The ordo decurionum (council of decurions) numbered around 100 free-born adult male citizens of sufficient wealth. Decurions served for life. They confirmed elections, voted on public expenditure, oversaw magistrates, and represented the city in dealings with the wider empire.

Voting was conducted at the comitium (the open public space at the south end of the Forum). All free-born adult male citizens could vote, but the voting blocks (curiae) gave structural weight to wealth.

The cursus honorum at municipal level

The standard career path ran aedile (in one's twenties) to duumvir (in one's thirties or older) to (in exceptional cases) quinquennial duumvir.

Marcus Holconius Rufus held the duumvirate five times. His inscription on the base of his statue in the Theatre describes him as "Augustalis et patronus coloniae" (priest of the imperial cult and patron of the colony). The Holconii family sponsored the reconstruction of the Large Theatre.

Other named magistrates include Marcus Lucretius Decidianus Rufus (with multiple inscriptions), the Eumachii family (Eumachia's father Lucius was duumvir), and the Casellii family.

The AD 79 electoral campaign

Around 2,800 painted electoral notices (programmata) survive on Pompeian walls from the campaign of AD 79. The eruption preserved the campaign mid-stream.

Programmata were professionally painted in red letters by named scribes (the most prolific signed "Aemilius Celer"). They identified the candidate, the office sought, the supporter making the endorsement, and often a brief reason.

Examples:

• "C(aium) Iulium Polybium IIvir(um) i(ure) d(icundo) o(ro) v(os) f(aciatis)" ("Vote for Gaius Julius Polybius as duumvir with judicial power")
• "Saturninum cum discentes rogat" ("Saturninus with his students asks for [the candidate]")
• "Cn(aeum) Helvium Sabinum aed(ilem) dignum rei publicae o(ramus) v(os) f(aciatis)" ("We beg you to elect Gnaeus Helvius Sabinus aedile, worthy of the state")
• "Vatia rogat" ("Vatia asks" - a single supporter making an endorsement)

Named candidates from the AD 79 election include Gaius Julius Polybius, Marcus Casellius Marcellus, Gnaeus Helvius Sabinus, Lucius Popidius Secundus, and Cuspius Pansa.

Occupational and informal supporter groups

Groups of supporters appear in the programmata as informal political constituencies.

The bakers (pistores), muleteers (muliones), fruit sellers (pomarii), goldsmiths (aurifices), dyers (offectores), perfume sellers (unguentarii), barbers (tonsores), and the worshippers of Isis (isiaci) all endorsed candidates. Less serious or satirical endorsements appear: "the late drinkers all support him," "the sleepy folk all support him."

Henrik Mouritsen (Elections, Magistrates and Municipal Elite, 1988) reads these endorsements as evidence of clientage networks rather than mass democratic mobilisation. The narrow elite competed for office among themselves; the programmata reflect the candidates' patronage relations with their workshops and clients.

Public space and political display

The Forum was the political stage. The Comitium (south end) was the voting space. The Curia (council building) housed the decurions. The Basilica (south-west of the Forum) was the law court. Statues of magistrates lined the public spaces.

Public benefaction (sponsoring buildings, games, repairs) was the route to political prestige. The decurional class commissioned the Amphitheatre (Quinctius Valgus and Marcius Porcius, c. 70 BC), the Theatre rebuilding (Holconius Rufus), and the Forum's monumentalisation (multiple sponsors).

Political life at a glance

Historiography

Henrik Mouritsen (Elections, Magistrates and Municipal Elite, 1988; The Freedman in the Roman World, 2011) is the canonical study. He treats Pompeian politics as tightly oligarchic, with the programmata reflecting clientage networks.

Alison Cooley (Pompeii and Herculaneum: A Sourcebook, 2014) provides the standard translation and commentary on the political inscriptions.

Mary Beard (Pompeii, 2008) emphasises the unusual visibility of the political process: the painted campaign preserved by the eruption gives us a Roman municipal election in unmatched detail.

How to read a source on this topic

Section I sources on local politics typically include painted electoral programmata, statue base inscriptions of named magistrates, photographs of the Forum, and extracts from the Lex Coloniae Genetivae Iuliae. Three reading habits.

First, decode the abbreviations. "IIvir i d" means duumvir iure dicundo; "OVF" means oro vos faciatis ("I ask you to elect"). The formulaic shorthand is itself evidence of a stable convention.

Second, identify the supporter. "Vatia rogat" (a single named supporter) reads very differently from "fullones rogant" (an entire occupational guild). Mouritsen uses the variation to argue for clientage; the supporter is part of the message.

Third, weigh the campaign date. The programmata painted in the months before August AD 79 reflect the active campaign; older programmata sometimes survive as palimpsests or are overpainted. Note the layering on the wall surface.

Common exam traps

Confusing the duovir with the consul. Consul is the senior Roman magistracy at Rome. Duovir is the senior municipal magistracy in a colony. Don't elide them.

Treating Pompeii as a democracy. Mouritsen's clientage thesis is now the standard view. Voting was free-born only, with weighted blocks. Cite him.

Forgetting the Augustales. Freedmen could not be magistrates but could be Augustales. The distinction is examinable.

Skipping the AD 79 election context. The campaign was halted mid-stream; many candidates were preserved in the moment of campaigning.

In one sentence

Local political life at Pompeii and Herculaneum, structured around the annual election of two duoviri iure dicundo and two aediles, oversight by the 100-member decurional council, and the active campaigning evidenced by around 2,800 electoral programmata from the AD 79 election preserved on the city's walls, combined a Roman colonial constitutional framework with a tightly oligarchic clientage politics that Mouritsen and Cooley have reconstructed in unprecedented detail.