User:Iazyges/Calate Assembly

The Calate Assembly (Comitia Calata) was an assembly of the Roman Kingdom and Roman Republic.

History
The Calate Assembly was a curiae assembly, based upon the ancient divisions of Romans into thirty curia, represented by 30 lictors. Expand on Curiae meaning It functioned for religious reasons. It inaugurated priests and selected Vestal virgins.

The Calate Assembly was the earliest form of citizen's assembly in Ancient Rome. The assembly takes its name from the word calare, meaning "to call", which was recurrent in priestly language, and associated with the announcement of dies fasti, the days when public business may be performed.

The Calate Assembly met regularly twice a year, on the 24th of March and the 24th of May, a day after the Tubilustrium ceremony. During the Roman Kingdom period of Ancient Rome, the Roman King could also assemble them at will. The author of the A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890, ), William Smith states that the purpose of these twice-yearly scheduled meetings was for the Calate Assembly to witness the making of wills, which later fell into disuse; in Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World (online, f.p. 2006) the historian Christa Frateantonio states that these meetings took place c. 6th–4th centuries BC. The legal historian Alan Watson comments that by the time of the Twelve Tables, the foundation of Roman law enacted in 449 BC, this was one of three methods of establishing a will, with the others being in procintu, a declaration made in preparation for or during a battle, with no formal requirements, and per aes et librum, a more formal system based upon a mancipatio procedure. He comments also that the wills promulgated before the Calate Assembly were legislative acts in nature, and that both the custom of declaring wills before the Calate Assembly and the in procintu method "died out early", whereas the practice of the more formal per aes et librum was confirmed as legal by the Twelve Tables.

The assembly originally served as witnesses for the inauguration the King of Rome (rex Romae) as well as the three major priests (flamines maiores), who oversaw the cults of Jupiter (the ruler of the gods), Mars (the god of war), and Quirinus (the god of the Roman state. By traditional Roman chronology, after the Overthrow of the Roman monarchy and foundation of the Roman Republic, the powers of the Roman King were split: legislative power was given to the Roman Senate, the role of consuls was created, with executive and judicial power given to the two elected yearly by the Senate, and certain religious powers were granted to the newly-created rex sacrorum (lit. 'king of the sacred things'), who was selected by the chief priest (pontifex maximus) from among the patrician class, and served for life. Following the downfall of the Roman Monarchy, the Calate Assembly instead bore witness to the inauguration of the rex sacrorum, in the same manner as they once did the king, and continued to do so for the flamines maiores. The Calate Assembly also convened at the announcing the feriae statae sollemnes (lit. 'solemn days'), the fixed holidays.

The Calate Assembly also had responsibilities relating to the patrician families (gens) of Ancient Rome, who had their own private sacred rites (sacra gentilicia), which they were expected to perform. These duties could be relieved by several means. Men of a patrician gens, if legally independent (sui iuris), could choose to be adopted by a man of another gens who had no heirs and was incapable of acquiring them, under a form of adoption was called arrogatio, in order to prevent the extinction of their gens and associated sacra gentilicia, becoming their son and heir under the law. A legally independent patrician could also renounce his patrician status and gens and join the lower plebian class, by means of transitio ad plebem. In either of these cases, the high priests (pontifices) would investigate the matter to ensure that the patrician's change of status would not render their own gens and sacra gentilicia extinct. After the pontifices approved of the adoption, the patrician petitioned the Calate Assembly, who confirmed the consent of both parties, and decided on whether they would allow the adoption. If confirmed, the patrician would stand before the pontifices and Calate Assembly and renounce the sacra gentilicia of his previous gens, a ritual called detestatio sacrorum. Frateantonio notes that for many of the roles of the Calate Assembly, their involvement is "rather passive", such that the assembly has been described as "information-meetings", which she states is "characteristic of most political assemblies of the Romans of the monarchic and early Republican periods", but does note that the process of detestatio sacrorum included a formal process of appeal and approval, whereas in their role relating to inaugurations and wills, they merely served as witnesses, and probably only noted the events related to calendars.

The role of the high priests (pontifices) of the College of Pontiffs in the workings of the Calate Assembly is debated. The second edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1970, 2nd ed.), edited by the historians N. G. L. Hammond and Howard Hayes Scullard, states that the pontifices played an important part in the proceedings of the assembly, but comments that whether or not they summoned the assembly is a matter of dispute. William Smith argued that although the pontifices were present at meetings of the Calate Assembly, they did not actually preside over them. The classicist Andrew Lintott in his The Constitution of the Roman Republic (1999) and the religious scholar Jörg Rüpke in his Religion of the Romans (2007) state that the assembly was presided over by the chief priest, the Pontifex maximus. Christa Frateantonio states that the pontifices convened the meetings of the Calate Assembly, as does Alan Watson in his The Spirit of Roman Law (2008).

It continued into the late Roman Republic, in the same manner as the Curiate Assembly, in what Classicist Andrew Lintott calls a "symbolic and ritualized form". Christa Frateantonio states that "other legal forms took the place of the Calate Assembly"