ABSTRACT
The political and military structures of the Roman Republic were not conducive to the development of any standing intelligence organization. Both City and provincial magistrates were replaced annually, and even the development of promagistracies normally extended office for one or two years at most. Republican magistrates were not assisted by any permanent civil service, and relied on personal friends and relations and on an administrative staff who were drawn by individual magistrates from panels (decuriae) at Rome.1 Armies also were impermanent, legionary and allied troops being levied annually. Individual units did come to remain in existence over a period of several years as Roman armies campaigned further and further afield and men could not easily return to Italy at the end of each season, but no unit achieved true standing status until the reforms of Augustus. Permanence resided only in the popular assem blies (comitia) at Rome, and in the Senate, which laid claim to the realm of foreign policy as its own domain, and directed and was the ultimate recipient of strategic intelligence. But the Senate itself had no permanent officials or standing committees, its executive officers being those same magistrates whose annual election was seen as a principal safeguard of the constitution. Consequentiy, the acquisition and processing of strategic intelligence was usually an ad hoc affair, done as the situation demanded.
