Campus Martius

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 1.1 §1 on the Field at the tribunician elections

  The Campus Martius outside the city walls, where the comitia met to elect magistrates; the tribunician elections of mid-65 drew a crowd Cicero could begin to work. Formal canvassing for the consulship customarily opened about a year before the vote.

• Ad Atticum 12.8 §1 the Campus Martius

  The Field of Mars outside the city wall, where the centuriate assembly met to elect the consuls and praetors. To "have his thoughts on the Campus Martius" is to be turning toward the elections.

• Ad Familiares 7.30 §1 the Campus

  The Campus Martius, the plain outside the old city walls where the centuriate assembly met to elect the senior magistrates.

• Ad Familiares 8.4 §1 he had gone down to the Campus

  Elections were held on the Campus Martius outside the city; 'to go down to the Campus' is the idiom for standing as a candidate. Lentulus Crus had been confident of winning the priestly vacancy and lost.

• On Duties §1.104 Our own Field of Mars

  The Campus Martius, the open plain by the Tiber where young Romans exercised, rode, and trained for war. Cicero offers it and hunting as honorable forms of recreation.

• On His Return: To the Senate §27 the centuriate assembly

  The comitia centuriata, the assembly organised by property-classes and meeting in the Campus Martius, which had elected Cicero consul and now, on 4 August 57 BC, voted his recall --- a deliberately weighty body for so weighty a restoration.