Overview
Auctoritas was authority based on prestige, recognition, experience, and moral weight rather than formal office alone.
Importance
The Senate claimed auctoritas, but in the late Republic military glory and popular support increasingly created rival forms of authority.
In the Livarva Trilogy
Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, and Cato all possess or seek auctoritas in different ways.
Ancient Sources
Cicero, De Re Publica, De Legibus, speeches and correspondence; Sallust, Bellum Catilinae; Livy, surviving books and summaries.
Modern Scholarship
Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic; Fergus Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic; studies of senatorial authority and Roman political culture.