- acta
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/ak"teuh/, n.pl. (often cap.)official records, as of acts, deeds, proceedings, transactions, or the like.[ < L, neut. pl. of ACTUS, ptp. of agere to do; cf. ACT]
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IIn ancient Rome, the daily minutes of public business and a record of political and social events.Julius Caesar in 59 BC ordered that the Senate's daily doings (acta diurna, commentaria Senatus) be made public; Caesar Augustus later prohibited publication, though the Senate's acts continued to be recorded and could be read with special permission. There were also public registers (acta diurna urbis, "daily minutes of the city") of the acts of the popular assemblies and the courts as well as births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. These constituted a daily gazette, a prototype of the modern newspaper.II(as used in expressions)Coercive Acts* * *
▪ ancient Roman publication(Latin: “Acts”), in ancient Rome, minutes of public business and gazette of political and social events. They were in two forms: Acta Senatus and Acta diurna.The Acta Senatus, or Commentarii Senatus, were the minutes of the proceedings of the Senate. The emperor Augustus continued to keep them but forbade their publication. From the reign of his successor, Tiberius, in the 1st century AD, a young senator drew up the Acta, which were kept in the imperial archives and public libraries. Special permission was necessary in order to examine them.The Acta diurna (Acta populi, or Acta publica) grew out of Julius Caesar's (Caesar, Julius) arrangements for the publishing of official business and matters of public interest. Under the empire (after 27 BC) the Acta diurna constituted a type of daily gazette, and thus it was, in a sense, the prototype of the modern newspaper.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
