Prorogatio

During the Punic Wars

At the beginning, there were two distinct forms of prorogation – per T. Corey Brennan's Praetorship in the Roman republic – a prorogatio before the people to determine whether a provincial command should be extended and a propagatio from the senate in other cases. But by the 190s BC, the senate stopped submitting decisions on prorogation of permanent provinciae to the people for ratification and eventually all extensions of imperium were called prorogatio. After this point, the term prorogatio became a misnomer, since no rogatio (consultation of the people) was involved. This likely emerged because the decision of whether to send commanders had been replaced to the question of who should be sent, and therefore became a routine staffing decision.