Senatus consultum ultimum
Senatus consultum ultimum (
"Ultimate decree of the Senate"), or more properly,
senatus consultum de re publica defendenda (
"Decree of the Senate on defending the Republic") is the modern term (based on
Caesar's wording at
Bel. Civ. 1.5) given to a decree of the
Roman Senate during the late
Roman Republic passed in times of emergency. The form was usually
consules darent operam ne quid detrimenti respublica caperet (
"let the consuls see to it that the state suffer no harm"). It was first passed during the rise to power of
Gaius Gracchus in
121 BC, and subsequently at several other points, including during
Lepidus' march on Rome in
77 BC, the
Conspiracy of Catiline in
63, and finally when
Julius Caesar crossed the
Rubicon in
49. The SCU effectively replaced the disused
dictatorship, by giving the magistrates semi-dictatorial powers to preserve the State. After the rise of the
Principate, there was little need for the Senate to issue the decree again.
Implicit controversy, however, lay inherent in the brevity of the decree: it did not enumerate just how far-reaching those powers would be for consuls, and whether they overrode normal protections and liberties citizens enjoyed. This came to a head in
63, when
Marcus Tullius Cicero used the
senatus consultum ultimum as a means to carry out extra-judicial executions of men charged with complicity in the
Conspiracy of Catiline, including the former
consul Publius Cornelius Lentulus Sura. In normal times, only a vote of the Assembly of Citizens could condemn a man to death inside the City of Rome. Cicero believed and argued that, given the extraordinary danger of the crisis, the
consultum afforded him the power in that limited circumstance.
Gaius Julius Caesar and others argued that the
consultum could not override the basic laws of the Roman state, that it meant merely that the Consuls should do their utmost
within the framework of the Roman Constitution to resolve the emergency. The matter of law would never be settled, although Cicero would be exiled in
58 because of the executions (the exile was ordered by one of his political enemies,
Publius Clodius Pulcher, and therefore should probably not be seen as a completely valid response).
*
The Roman Law Library, incl. Senatus consulta
