Crossword clues for aedile
The Collaborative International Dictionary
AEdile \[AE]"dile\, n. [L. aedilis, fr. aedes temple, public building. Cf. Edify.] A magistrate in ancient Rome, who had the superintendence of public buildings, highways, shows, etc.; hence, a municipal officer.
Wiktionary
n. (context historical Ancient Rome English) An elected official who was responsible for the maintenance of public buildings and the regulation of festivals; also supervised markets and the supply of grain and water.
Wikipedia
Aedile (, from aedes, "temple building") was an office of the Roman Republic. Based in Rome, the aediles were responsible for maintenance of public buildings (aedēs) and regulation of public festivals. They also had powers to enforce public order.
There were two pairs of aediles: the first were the "plebeian aediles" (Latin aediles plebis) and possession of this office was limited to plebeians; the other two were "curule aediles" (Latin aediles curules), open to both plebeians and patricians, in alternating years. An aedilis curulis was classified as a magister curulis.
The office of the aedilis was generally held by young men intending to follow the cursus honorum to high political office, traditionally after their quaestorship but before their praetorship. It was not a compulsory part of the cursus, and hence a former quaestor could be elected to the praetorship without having held the position of aedile. However, it was an advantageous position to hold because it demonstrated the aspiring politician's commitment to public service, as well as giving him the opportunity to hold public festivals and games, an excellent way to increase his name recognition and popularity.
Usage examples of "aedile".
The excavation was not going well and the Aedile had grown bored with it before it was halfway done.
Dismas had been rowed ashore last night, but the Aedile had chosen to spend the day at his excavation site rather than wait at the peel-house for Dr.
He was said to have substituted glass powder for the expensive suspensions of tiny machines which cured river blindnessand certainly there had been more cases of river blindness the previous summer, although the Aedile attributed this to the greater numbers of biting flies which bred in the algae which choked the mud banks of the former harbor.
The Aedile had dismissed all of these allegations as fantasies, but then a boy had died after bloodletting, and the parents, mid-caste chandlers, had lodged a formal protest.
And then the formal summons had arrived, which the Aedile had had to read out to Dr.
He was a gossip, and like all gossips knew how to pace his revelations, how to string out a story and tease his audiencebut the Aedile knew that like all gossips, Dr.
The Aedile was by nature a patient man, and his training in diplomacy had inured him to waiting on the whims of others.
Palace of the Memory of the People itself, something for which your department, my dear Aedile, must take a considerable part of the blame.
The Aedile had been exiled to this tiny backwater city after the triumph of the Committee for Public Safety because he had spoken against the destruction of the records of past ages.
Only the Aedile was left, still in exile because of a political squabble mostly long forgotten.
Even so, no family in Aeolis would take in the baby, and so he had come to live in the peel-house, son to the Aedile and brother to poor Telmon.
The Aedile thought of this as he tried to fathom the implications of Dr.
For the first time that day, the Aedile remembered his wife, dead more than twenty years now.
While the man was preparing his pens and ink and setting a disc of red wax to soften on a sun-warmed stone, the Aedile composed in his head the letter he needed to write.
Dismas, because of his drug habit, might be involved with the heretics who had recently tried to set fire to the floating docks, but it must be the merest of hints hedged round with equivocation, for the Aedile was certain that if Dr.