<i>Imperium </i>and <i>Pomerium </i>in the Early Roman Republic
The aim of the article is to clarify the origins of the curiate law of imperium carried through by the highest officers of the Roman Republic. The first half of the work deals with the concept of pomerium and its relation to the city walls and the Roman territory. Following P. Catalano and J. Linderski the author treats the pomerium as a projection of the heavenly templum designed by the augural discipline. From the religious point of view Rome inside the pomerium was considered as a sacred space (templum) for serving to gods and recognizing their will with the help of auspicia. This concept creates certain preconditions for understanding the law which every Roman consul must to provide in the curiate assembly (lex curiata de imperio). The author treats the notion imperium as the military power according to the conception of A. Heuss. The military institutes of early Rome were separated from the sacred space surrounded by the pomerium. The author assumes that in the most ancient Rome, military functions had been carried out by young warriors during their initiation to the adult citizens, and only the so-called Servian reform transformed all mature men-citizens into soldiers in the sixth century BC. The distinction between the original curiate and centuriate assemblies was also reflected in their meeting places in the Comitium and the Field of Mars. The curiate assembly, gathering inside the pomerium, provided the military leader (praetor-consul), who was elected by the centuriate assembly outside the pomerium, with the power to wage war on behalf of the Roman community (imperium militiae). Therefore the magistrate operated with the imperium, given by the curiae, only outside of the pomerium. The conditions for the appearance of the extraordinary imperium domi have been formed under the late Republic only.