(1) Magisterial or priestly: a board of officials. (2) Private: any private association of fixed membership and constitution (see clubs, roman).The principle of collegiality was a standard feature of republican magistracies at Rome. Although in some cases the common status of colleagues did not exclude seniority (originally one *consul may have been superior to the other and the consuls as a whole were senior colleagues of the *praetors), the principle in general was to avoid arbitrary power by ensuring that every magistracy should be filled by at least two officials, and in any case by an even number. They were to possess equal and co-ordinate authority, but subject to mutual control. Thus a decision taken by one consul was legal only if it did not incur the veto (*intercessio) of the other. This principle led to alternation in the exercise of power by the consuls each month. Under the Principate emperors might take as a colleague in their tribunician power (see tribuni plebis) their intended successors, who in many cases were co-emperors.
The favourite season was June. Usually on the previous day the bride put away her toga praetexta: she had come of age. Her dress and appearance were ritually prescribed: her hair was arranged in six locks (sex crines), with woollen fillets (vittae), her dress was a straight white woven tunic (tunica recta) fastened at the waist with a “knot of Hercules,” her veil was a great flame-coloured headscarf (flammeum). and her shoes were of the same colour. Friends and clients of both families gathered in the bride's father's house. the bridegroom arrived, words of consent were spoken, and the matron of honour (pronuba) performed the ceremony of linking bride's and bridegroom's right hands (dextrarum iunctio). This was followed by a *sacrifice (generally of a pig), and (in imperial times) the marriage contract (involving dowry) was signed. Then the guests raised the cry of Feliciter! (“Good luck!”).
Vicomagistri, officials of a *vicus, which was a miniature body politic, and was entitled to possess property, administer common funds, and appoint officials. These magistri or vicomagistri, who were allowed to wear the *toga praetexta, had a role in representing their community in the res publica. In the late republic the vici offered a chance of finding a sense of community in the chaotic life of the city, and so they and their leaders, like the leaders of the collegia (see collegium), played an important part in the organization of mass politics.Augustus reorganized the vici at the same time as the regiones (see regio). Their centre was a compitum or cross-roads, at which a cult of the *Lares or guardian deities of that locality was maintained, involving in particular a festival of the compitum called ludi compitalicii (see ludi), which had often been a focus for disturbances in the late republic. The cult now came to include Augustan Lares and the *genius of the emperor.
