commentarii

▪ Roman history

(Latin: “commentaries”),singular  Commentarius,  

      in Roman history, memoranda and notes that were later used by historians as source materials. Originally, commentarii were simply informal personal notes written by people to assist their memory in regard to personal, household, or public business. The typical Roman household, for instance, kept a diary and account book, while men in public life kept notebooks for speeches, legal cases, and items of general business. The first official use of commentarii developed in the priestly colleges, which used such notes to list the details of religious ceremonies and rituals. Magistrates too had their regular notes on procedural aspects, which they would hand on to successors in order to maintain the routine of their offices. Provincial governors also kept commentarii, which they consulted when writing their reports to the Senate.

      Under the empire, the Commentarii Principis were a register of the administrative acts of the emperor and included constitutions, rescripts, epistles, and edicts, all set down with official authority. There were also commentarii diurni, a journal of daily events at the emperor's court, which later became a system of records known as ephemerides.

      Personal notes and memoranda could be turned into memoirs when public men of noble family drafted records of their achievements for their family archives. By the 2nd century BC Roman historians had begun consulting such memoirs in their research into earlier Roman history. Sulla and Cicero left their own memoirs as aids to historians, and, when Julius Caesar published his Commentarii for propagandistic purposes, his elegant Latin transformed them into a literary form in their own right.

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