bribery, Roman
bribery, Roman,Latin ambitus, a ‘going round’, is related to ambitio, the pursuit of public office, but always, unlike ambitio, denotes reprehensible activity which has been declared illegal.
Specifically it refers to obtaining electoral support (see elections and voting (Roman)) through gifts, favours, or the promise of these. According to Polybius, the Romans had made the manifest use of money to buy votes a capital offence, but we have no other evidence for this in the last two centuries of the republic (the early books of Livy refer to laws in 432, 358, and 314 BC, the last two of which at least may have some historical substance). In 181 BC a lex Cornelia Baebia instituted a system of non-capital trials, which was developed in the late republic by further laws about ambitus and related matters—the use of bribery agents, associations, and...
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