La convocazione dei comizi centuriati: diritto costituzionale e diritto augurale

The summoning of the comitia centuriata involves questions and issues of constitutional and augural law. Mommsen claimed that the magistrate assembled the comitia on the basis of a ‘hybrid’ imperium (formally militiae and substantially domi) and of a single auspicatio performed militiae, in the campus Martius. On the contrary, Magdelain remarked that the sources speak of two different auspicationes, and suggested that the first aimed at bestowing the ‘hybrid’ imperium militiae on the magistrate and the second at obtaining divine approval for the assembly. This article argues that (i) the imperium militiae did not require a specific investiture, being just an expression of the unitary imperium; it was not divided into a ‘civil’ and a ‘military’ power, since the borders of the pomerium and of the primum miliarium mattered at different levels – the first augural, the second constitutional; (ii) the first auspicatio, performed in a stationary templum (auguraculum), was meant to accomplish the inauguratio of the second templum, the location of which varied; (iii) the distinction between the lines of the pomerium and of the primum miliarium had the purpose of guaranteeing to the citizens the provocatio ad populum and the intercessio tribunicia, thus enabling the populus-exercitus to freely express their will when voting on a lex publica.