Pompeii - Politics

Office	Description
Aedile	Junior Magistrate in charge of public temples, buildings and markets
Decurion	Local town councillor
Duumvir	The senior magistrate (one of two)
Patron	Man selected by town council to represent town's interests at Rome
Prefect	A magistrate selected for special purposes
Quaestor	Junior magistrate in charge of finances
Quintennial Duumvir	Magistrate elected every five years to conduct census

In 80BC Pompeii was given a charter from Rome which established many of its political institutions. There were three political institutions at Pompeii

• The Comitium - or peoples assembly. It was made up of adult men and freedmen. Its job was to elect magistrates and vote honours

• The ordo decurionum. The legislative body. They made decisions made up decurions concerned the colony itself. These decisions were implemented by the magistrates. New members were admitted every five years and remained there until death. There were about 100 members although could vary by town

• The magistracy. Two were simultaneously elected by the comitium and were known as Duumvirs. Two juniour magistrates called aediles supervised the building and upkeep of public buildings, cults and games giving. Occasionally a Roman Emperor would be nominated as Duumvir.

What do we know about how politics worked in Pompeii

Unsurprisingly, politics worked in much the same way as it does in the 21st C. Donations of public buildings or rooms, statues within public buildings was a passport to political influence. The six year old child of a wealthy patron who rebuilt the Temple of Isis was rewarded with election to the town council.

However, there were no political parties as such only influential people and families. We can see this through inscriptions on walls or monuments, called Programmata and Momental inscriptions

The programmata seems to be unique to Pompeii insofar as these were red painted entreaties to vole for this person or that. At each elections, old slogans would be over written with new ones. We can learn for the process the following insights

• The advertisements were often requests for people to vote for a particular candidate because their good character from anonymous or known people or families

I beg you to elect Cn Helvius Sabinus aedile and Ceius Secundus duumvir, Recepta and also Thalmus

• Many of the endorsements came from women although they could not vote
• There were no political parties.
• Endorsements could also come from guilds and other trades such as bee-keeping, millers, etc
• Black propaganda - There was no dirty tricks as such comparing one candidates virtues with another's supposed lack of them but you may see that a candidate is endorsed by prostitutes or gamblers
• There is no indication of a manefesto as part of the endorsement unless obliquely implied in the endorsement itself.

Almost three thousand inscriptions survive - most from the election preceding the eruption and can be seen on the main thoroughfares such as Via dell' Abbondanza.

Monumental inscriptions were made in bronze, stone and marble. Bronze ones tend not to survive because it was reused. They were meant to be more permanent and some Oscan inscriptions can be seen. Where they do survive the inscriptions commend the work of some building work such as

Maras Atinius, son of Maras, quaestor, with the money raised from fines, by degree of the assembly, saw to this being set up'

Women and Politics and Pompeii

It is not a well studied area but there is limited research http://eres.lndproxy.org/edoc/HIS303Savunen-09.pdf

It seems that it is still unclear what impact women's endorsements had on the success of the candidate. Although women routinely canvassed on behalf of candidates it is also possible that a woman's endorsement might work against a candidate but it is unlikely these were fake endorsements to cast a cloud over the candidate's character like Helvius Sabinus, who was endorsed by 'dice thowers'

Of 2,500 programmata studied about 30% included the supporter's name. Of which, about 50 had endorsements that included a woman's name. About 30 of these were endorsements solely by a woman and did not include a man. It struck me as a relatively small sample. It may be that the endorsement came from a woman from an influential family or it could be from a female relative of the candidate or some other reason

At the very least, support from women seems to be tolerated otherwise these endorsements would have been painted over. The study concludes that no magisterial list survives so there is no way to way to analyze men's let alone women's influence on the campaign but nonetheless it is still an interesting phenomena and it would be interesting to compare with other comparable cities albeit according to Berry p131, programmata are unique to Pompeii..