Abstract

The Roman dictators regularily had to accomplish three legally regulated public acts. They closed the courts, declare, if necessary, a levy in mass, and personally supervised recruitment and training of the troops. Their orders were published in the form of an edictum which, most probably, contained all these regulations. Regardless of the purpose of its declaration, the dictatorship transferred the civil life of the city in the state of militiae. The newly formed army swore fidelity to the commander and – from the time of the Second Punic war – made a formal declaration of loyalty, ius iurandum. Contrary to a widespread scholarly opinion the author argues that it is the applicable legal rules, rather then the sphere of their applicability that distinguishes the imperium of an ordinary magistrate from this of an extraordinary one. Therefore, talking about “military imperium” of an extraordinary magistrate, the historians of Roman law are in reality dealing with an application of his imperium in military sphere.