INTERREX

This office is said to have been instituted on the death of Romulus, when the senate wished to share the sovereign power among themselves, instead of electing a king. For this purpose, according to Livy, the senate, which then consisted of one hundred members, was divided into ten decuries; and from each of these decuries one senator was nominated. These together formed a board of ten, with the title of Interreges , each of whom enjoyed in succe ion the regal power and its badges for five days; and if no king was appointed at the expiration of fifty days, the rotation began anew. The period during which they exercised their power was called an Interregnum . These ten interreges were the Decem Primi , or ten leading senators, of whom the first was chief of the whole senate. The interreges agreed among themselves who should be proposed as king, and if the senate approved of their choice, they summoned the a embly of the curiae, and proposed the person whom they had previously agreed upon; the power of the curiae was confined to accepting or rejecting him. Interreges were appointed under the republic for holding the comitia for the election of the consuls, when the consuls, through civil commotions or other causes, had been unable to do so in their year of office. Each held the office for only five days, as under the kings. The comitia were hardly ever held by the first interrex; more usually by the second or third; but in one instance we read of an eleventh, and in another of a fourteenth interrex. The interreges under the republic, at least from B.C. 482, were elected by the senate from the whole body, and were not confined to the decem primi or ten chief senators, as under the kings. Plebeians, however, were not admi ible to this office; and consequently, when plebeians were admitted into the senate, the patrician senators met without the plebeian members to elect an interrex. For this reason, as well as on account of the influence which the interrex exerted in the election of the magistrates, we find that the tribunes of the plebs were strongly opposed to the appointment of an interrex. The interrex had jurisdictio. Interreges continued to be appointed occasionally till the time of the second Punic war, but after that time we read of no interrex, till the senate, by command of Sulla, created an interrex to hold the comitia for his election as dictator, B.C. 82. In B.C. 55 another interrex was appointed, to hold the comitia in which Pompey and Cra us were elected consuls; and we also read of interreges in B.C. 53 and 52, in the latter of which years an interrex held the comitia in which Pompey was appointed sole consul.