Caius Curius Saturninus (Election MMDCCLIX)

Salvete omnes,

Vote for me for the Plebeian Aedileship!

I'm C. Curius Saturninus. Many of you know me already and know about the numerous posts I have had in NR. I have been a scriba and an accensus for many magistrates over the years, including 5 Curule Aediles and 2 Plebeian Aediles, so I know how the Aedileship works in NR. I have also been a Questor and Tribunus Plebis and I'm currently the Propraetor of Thule province.

I have studied, and am currently studying, Cultural History, Latin, Ancient Greek, Classical Archaeology, General History and Social Sciences in the universities of Turku and Helsinki. My main subject is Cultural History with specialisation to ancient period. I have also studied visual arts and I own a small advertising agency. I'm also the rector of Academia Thules. I'm married to senator Emilia Curia Finnica and we have a little boy, Marcus Curius Saturninus.

But enough about me. I would like to discuss the office I'm candidating, the Plebeian Aedileship. Even while Plebeian Aediles are not very often in the spotlight of Nova Roman publicity, it was a very important magistracy historically. I have little wish for any drastic polarisation between plebs and patricians in NR, but also as reluctantly would I like to forget the historical significance of this social division in the ancient Rome.

In NR Plebeian Aediles are responsible for two festivals, not too great a burden for anyone to arrange, and also have the same power over the "real public facilities" that the state owns, and festivals and gatherings, as Curule Aediles. The way I see it is that besides arranging festivals, currently the office of Plebeian Aedile is more symbolical in NR nowadays. As such I really don't have any special electorial platform or program I wish to accomplish.

Still I would like to use this opportunity to bring about a couple of thoughts of mine concerning the Plebeian Aediles and Aediles in general. Both concern the following chapter of our constitution: "To issue those edicta (edicts) necessary to see to the conduct of public games and other festivals and gatherings, to ensure order at public religious events, to see to the maintenance of any real public facilities that the state should acquire, and to administer the law (such edicts being binding upon themselves as well as others)."

First thing I would like to discuss is the "conduct of gatherings" as the constitution puts it. For me it seems like the idea has been that the aediles are more or less responsible for organising any gatherings there are, real and virtual. However, to my knowledge, this is not happening in any way currently: the aediles are not arranging any gatherings. I would certainly feel it rather difficult to arrange a gathering across the Atlantic for example (and I certainly wouldn't be able to attend one), so this part of the duties of the Aediles doesn't seem very practical to me. I understand very well the need for real life events and gatherings, but I'm not sure if the Aediles are the right persons to arrange them. Aediles could of course supervise things, but so could e.g. provincial governors do also. What I would like to see discussed is that should Aediles be active in this sort of things, and if so, in what role. I personally see it a possible, but not the only possible, way of trying to get more live and virtual gatherings into NR.

Second thing is about those real public facilities. To my knowledge NR has some real public facilities currently: a piece of land in the middle of nowhere, website and some Yahoo lists. The piece of land has no use and I doubt if it'll ever have. The question of website is a bit more complicated since what NR actually owns there is not very clear. Obviously, we don't own the server and we are only renting the disk space. It could be argued that we own the domain, but it's too in certain ways a rented one. Still, I think there is room for discussion about making the Aediles responsible for the website somehow. I don't know which would be the best way to do it, but what comes first to my mind is to have the Aediles in a similar position as the editors-in-chief are in the magazines, i.e. making sure that there are enough resources to keep things up-to-date and generally be responsible for the contents of the website. The relationship with the webmaster of course is something that needs to be discussed, too, if anything of this sort would be done. For me the most logical solution would be to let the webmaster to be a kind of chief technician responsible for the technical aspects of the website and Aediles to be responsible for the contents. The discussion also could be broadened to give Aediles in NR in general a role for being responsible for content, visual outlook and other of public relations matters in NR. So, for example, the Aediles could be made responsible for producing PR material for NR. As above with gatherings, I think there is room for discussion of this matter, too, and many possible solutions.

I think that, if Aediles would be made responsible for public relations and NR image, it could increase the concentrated efforts of NR to find new citizens and to have more real life activities as well as to sharpen our public image and message. There seems to be a constant lack of this sort of coordination of activities in NR, and I think the current constitution mandates the Aediles actually to be responsible for such things. What do you think?

Valete,

C. Curius Saturninus

Propraetor Provinciae Thules
Rector Academia Thules ad Studia Romana Antiqua et Nova

e-mail: c.curius@...
www.academiathules.org
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