Auctoritas Italiae

This paper aims to investigate the political meaning of the expression auctoritas populi by Cicero (Man. 63-64) and of the expression auctoritas Italiae by Cicero (Sest. 35) and by Caesar (BC 1.35.1) : they are alternative and polemic against the auctoritas senatus and the potestas of the consuls and praetors, which Sulla had enhanced. Caesar’s choice was mostly fundamental: as his letters written in 49 BC to the Italian cities (D.C. 41.10.2) demonstrate, Italy as the whole of Roman citizens having right to vote becomes in his opinion a politically active subject, whose auctoritas can legitimate his acts and deeds. The recent publication of the Fasti Privernates has revealed that Caesar’s perpetual dictatorship has to be meant not as “everlasting”, but as “undetermined”: probably Caesar purposed to give it up after his return from the Parthian campaign and to replace with his own auctoritas: Augustus (RGDA 34.3) was his conscious heir.