Acronyms that contain the term roman emergency decrees 

Roman emergency decrees

The ancient Roman state encountered various kinds of external and internal emergencies. They had various responses to those issues. When faced with an emergency, the early Republic appointed dictators who would take charge of the emergency with relatively loose bounds of action and resolve that crisis before resigning. Through the Republic, various decrees allowed dictators and magistrates to conduct emergency levies of troops and suspend public business. During the late Republic, the senatus consultum ultimum emerged, where the Senate would urge the magistrates to break the laws to ensure the safety of the state, usually with the promise of political and legal cover if the magistrates were later brought to account. A further decree was introduced where the Senate stripped targets of their citizenship rights, allowing magistrates to treat them as foreign enemies. The emergence of the Imperial period and autocratic rule made most the republican decrees obsolete. The problems of public order they were meant to resolve were themselves resolved by the introduction of police forces. Various people, usually deposed emperors or provincial rebels, continued to be declared public enemies (hostis), but as the use of force became a normal part of imperial rule, various decrees authorising that use of force became unnecessary.

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