ABSTRACT
On a summer day in the year 60, the Roman Senate met to discuss and decide what would normally have been a routine matter. The election of consuls for the year 59 was approaching, and under a law of C. Sempronius Gracchus from 123, the Senate was obliged to determine in advance the commands to be allotted to the future consuls after their year in office. The aim of Gracchus’s law was to prevent favouritism and other forms of manipulation in the assignment of pro-consular commands, since in theory the identities of the future consuls were not yet known. The decision taken on the day in question, however, was anything but routine. It was decided that after their year in office at Rome, the future consuls of 59 would spend the year 58 overseeing the silvae callesque (forests and footpaths), presumably those of Italy since no other location is specified.1 The assigning of such an insignificant ‘province’, to not just one but both future consuls, was a unique act in the history of the Republic.
