Adlecti

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In classical antiquity, adlecti, or allecti were those who were chosen to fill up a vacancy in any office or collegium, and especially those who were chosen to fill up the proper number of the senate. As these would be generally equites, Festus defines the adlecti to be equites added to the senate: and he appears in this passage to make a difference between the adlecti and the conscripti. But they were probably the same; for in another passage, he gives the same definition of the conscripti as he had done of the adlecti, and Livy (ii.1) says conscriptos in novum senatum appellabant lectos.

The adelecti were also those persons under the empire who were admitted to the privileges and honours of the praetorship, quaestorship, aedileship, and other public offices, without having any duties to perform (Historia Augusta, "Helvius Pertinax", 6). In inscriptions we constantly find, adlectus inter tribunos, inter quaestores, inter praetores, etc.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by William Smith (1870).