Used as a substantive, the term privatus refers to a citizen who is not a public official or a member of the military.Adolf Berger, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law (American Philological Association, 1953), p. 651. Increasingly throughout the Middle and Late Republic, the privatus was nevertheless sometimes granted imperium during a crisis; the definition of crisis was elastic, and the amassing of power by unelected individuals (privati) contributed to the breakdown of the checks and balances of the republican system.T. Corey Brennan, The Praetorship in the Roman Republic (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 154 online, 610, et passim.
