The Nature of Auctoritas
Auctoritas was not command in the simple sense. It was weight, prestige, acknowledged authority. The Senate depended on it more than on written coercive power.
The Late Republican Crisis
When the Senate’s auctoritas was no longer accepted by commanders, tribunes, crowds, or rival aristocratic factions, its formal position could not save it.
Cicero’s World
Cicero understood the power of language and prestige, but he lived to see a world in which armies increasingly answered arguments.