Agnes Muriel Clay

“ The division attributed to Theseus is always spoken of by ancient authorities as a division of the entire population; but Busolt has recently maintained the view that the three classes represent three elements in the Attic nobility, namely, the city nobility, the landed nobility and the commercial nobility, and exclude altogether the mass of the population. At any rate it seems certain from the little we know of the early constitutional history of Athens, that the Eupatridae represent the only nobility that had any political recognition in early times. ”

“ A regular system was soon established by which the censor, who held office every fifth year, placed all the sources of public revenue in the hands of certain individuals or companies, who on payment of a fixed sum into the treasury, or on giving adequate security for such payment, received the right to make what profit they could out of the revenues during the five years that should elapse before the next censorship. ”

“ The right of summoning and presiding over an assembly of that body of citizens with whose powers the magistrate was invested lay with the higher magistrates only in each class, with the consuls and praetors, and with the tribunes of the plebs. Civil jurisdiction was always a magisterial prerogative at Rome, and criminal jurisdiction also, except in capital cases, the decision of which was vested in the people at least as early as the first year of the Republic, was wielded by magistrates until the establishment of the various quaestiones perpetuae during the last century of the Republic. ”

“ The appointment of senators depended entirely upon the king. They were not appointed for life, but at the pleasure of the king who summoned them. It is possible that a king might change his advisers during his reign, and a new king could certainly abstain from summoning some of those convened by his predecessors. [2] The powers of the senate at this time were very indefinite. Tradition ascribes to it the control of the interregnum and a power of sanctioning acts of state (patrum auctoritas) , to which it is difficult to give any significance for this early period. ”

“ Cicero (l.c.) speaks of the senate in the Sicilian towns as appointed by a vote of the township. But in most towns it was the duty of the chief magistrate to draw up a list (album) of the senators every five years. The decuriones held office for life. They were convened by the magistrate, who presided as in the Roman senate. Their powers were extensive. In all matters the magistrates were obliged to act according to their direction, and in some towns they heard cases of appeal against judicial sentences passed by the magistrate. ”

“ In the last two centuries of the republic we find thata great change has taken place in the position of the senate. It is now a self-existent, automatically constituted body, independent of the magistrates, a recognized factor in the constitution and the wielder of extensive powers. Its self-existence could only be secured by a transference of the selection of the senate from the magistrate to some other authority, and was actually effected by entrusting the selection to the recently instituted college of censors. ”

“ Ex-curule magistrates were now admitted as a matter of course, together with any other persons who had done conspicuous public service in the lower grades of the magistracy or the higher ranks of the army; and for some time before Sulla’s dictatorship little power of choice can really have rested with the censors. L. Cornelius Sulla, while abolishing the censorship (immediately revived) , also secured an entirely automatic composition for the senate by increasing the number of quaestors, and enacting that all ex-quaestors should pass at once into the senate. ”

“ PUBLICANI, literally men employed " in connexion with the revenue, " (publicum, from populus, people) , or possibly " in the public service," the name given in ancient Rome to a body of men who either hired state property or monopolies for a certain period, during which they could farm such property to their own profit, or bought of the state for a fixed sum the right to farm for a term of years the taxes due to the treasury from the public land in Italy (see Agrarian Laws) or the land held by Roman subjects in the provinces. ”

“ Continued agitation to this effect resulted in an agreement in 452 B.C. between patricians and plebeians that decemvirs should be appointed to draw up a code, that during their tenure of office all other magistracies should be in abeyance, that they should not be subject to appeal, but that they should be bound to maintain the laws which guaranteed by religious sanctions the rights of the plebs. The first board of decemvirs (apparently consisting wholly of patricians) was appointed to hold office during 451 B.C.; and the chief man among them was Appius Claudius. ”

“ Some had no doubt immigrated to Attica when the rest had long been settled there. Traces of this union of immigrants with older inhabitants have been detected in the combination of Zeus Herkeios with Apollo Patroös as the ancient gods of the phratry. ”

“ Of the two standing powers which the senate inherited from the monarchy, the interregnum and the patrum auctoritas, the first had become even rarer of exercise than before; for if either consul existed to nominate a successor, interregnum could not be resorted to. ”

“ The former class is again divided into two sections: (α) curule and (β) non-curule, a distinction which rests mainly on dignity rather than on actual power, for it cuts across the division of magistrates according to their tenure or non-tenure of imperium.
a. The magistrates of the people—also known as patrician magistrates, probably because the older and more important of these magistracies could originally be held only by patricians (q.v.) —were: (α) Dictator, master of the horse (see Dictator) , consuls, praetors, curule, aediles and censors (curule) ”

“ Livy (iii. 32) says that only patricians were eligible. Mommsen, however, held that plebeians were legally eligible, though none were actually appointed for 451. The decemvirs ruled with singular moderation, and submitted to the Comitia Centuriata a code of laws in ten headings, which was passed. So popular were the decemvirs that another board of ten was appointed for the following year, some of whom, if the extant list of names is correct, were certainly plebeians. ”

“ Sulla’s enactments in 81 B.C., which aimed at restoring its ascendancy, show clearly how much power it had already lost; and his attempts to reinstate it were short-lived (see Rome: History II. “The Republic ”) . The Gracchi and Caesar alike found themselves obliged to override senatorial prerogative in the interests of progressive legislation, and though the senate, owing to its strong hold over the magistracy, succeeded repeatedly in dealing death to its opponents, it never regained the popular confidence ”

“ Seats in the theatre were reserved for senators; and even the sons of senators adopted the lotus claims as early as the reign of Augustus, and probably at an earlier time. Certain disqualifications were attached to senators in republican times, chief of which was their exclusion from trade; and these were increased under the principate. Failure to observe these disqualifications, or any public disgrace or gross misconduct, was punished by removal from the senate by the censors, until that office fell into abeyance after the time of Sulla. ”

“ Latinae, No. 3721 (Album of Canusium) ; Godefroy, Paratitl. ad cod. Theodosianam, xii. 1 (vol. iv. pp. 352 et seq., ed. Ritter) ; J. Marquardt, Römische Staatsverwaltung, i. pp. 183 et seq. (Leipzig, 1881) ; P. Willems, Droit public romain, pp. 535 et seq. (Paris, 1884) ; Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie, IV. ii. ”

“ In very early times the publicani may have been men closely connected with the government. But since wealth was a necessary qualification for the post, and wealth at Rome became more and more confined to the commercial class. ”

“ Moreover, with one exception they agree in asserting that throughout the monarchical period the senate consisted entirely of patricians. There is undoubtedly some connexion between the increase in the numbers of the senate by the admission of new members and the distinction between two classes of patres. The most probable view seems to be that the rise in the number of the senators was due to the gradual incorporation of fresh elements into the patrician community, with a consequent increase of gentes ”

“ In very 'early times the senate entrusted to officials appointed for the purpose the control of the sale of salt (Livy ii. 9) ; and it was a natural development from this that the state, instead of appointing officials to manage its monopolies, should let out those monopolies to individuals. ”

“ By analogy the title is used for the governing bodies of various educational institutions, e.g. in the universities of Cambridge and London, and also in certain American colleges and universities, where it denotes an advisory body composed of representatives of the students as well as members of the faculty. So in the Scottish colleges the governing body is the Senatus Academicus. ”

“ If the judices here mentioned are the centumviri, it is clear that they formed a tribunal which represented the interests of the plebs. This is in accordance with Cicero’s account (de Orat. i. 38. 173) of the sphere of their jurisdiction. He says this was mainly concerned with the property of which account was taken at the census; it was therefore in their power to make or unmake a citizen. They also decided questions concerning debt. ”