Staying Relevant in the Roman Republic Old Age, Retirement and Magistrates in the Early to Middle Republic

Sammanfattning: This essay explores the magistratal lists (fasti etcetera) covering the period of 509 to 219 BC by looking at an accumulation of political capital and the length of magistratal careers. This essay attempts to give evidence to several theories for the early and middle Republic, primarily the fact that retirement of consulars occurs around the age of 60-65 and that one started one's consular career around the age of 40-45. Secondarily this essay looks on what the author has coined as pseudo-retirements, where one’s active career ends after about 15-20 years of imperium-holding but the aforementioned career is restarted after retirement by a return to politics after a hiatus of several years, usually to handle a crisis in the Republic. This essay’s theoretical basis lies in Hölkeskamp and Hammars use of political culture in the Roman republic and this essay attempts to draw a correlation between accumulated political capital and length of career. This focus lies on how different prestigious posts (dictator or censor) or awards (triumphs) affected career length, and if being part of a gentes maiores had an effect on career length. The results are as previously mentioned further evidence towards extending the concept of retirement towards the early and middle Republic and that Sulla’s reforms regarding a minimum age for becoming consul was more or less a consolidation of an established praxis. Further this essay shows that certain posts, especially that of dictator and interrex had a large political capital attached to them and effected the length of one’s career to a larger extent than other factors such as that of triumph, being censor or belonging to one of the gentes maiores.