Roman Senate

“ In one of the chapters of his book on Society and Politics in Ancient Rome the present writer has attempted a comparison between the Roman Senate and the Senate of the United States. [16] The Roman Senate was, and our Senate is, engaged in a struggle with the executive and with another legislative body more popular than itself for the control of the state. The life terms of Roman senators and the comparatively long terms of our own senators put them largely beyond the reach of popular sentiment, and give them a feeling of security in their positions. ”

“ The Roman Senate was henceforth recognized by the whole civilized world as the source and fountain of supreme political wisdom and power. We shall have yet to record many campaigns of the Roman legions; but these were efforts to suppress revolt among dependent or semi-vassal states, or were struggles with barbarian tribes that skirted the Roman dominions. ”

“ Had the Roman Senate, in the height of its power, been composed of ignorant, inexperienced, selfish, unpatriotic members, then it would have been easy for a great intellect among them, whether accompanied by virtue or not, by appealing perpetually to their pride, to their rank, to their privileges, to their peculiar passions, to have led them, as Pitt led the House of Commons. The real rulers of our world are few, in any community, or under any form of government. They are always dangerous, when there is a low degree of virtue or intelligence among those whom they represent. ”

“ For Caius Marius, the only man of consular dignity in the memory of man who was ever driven from the city in times of civil discord before me, was not only not restored by the senate, but by his return almost destroyed the senate. There was no unanimity of magistrates in their cases,—no summoning of the Roman people to come to the defence of the republic,—no commotion throughout Italy,—no decrees of municipalities and colonies in their favour. ”

“ A senator held office for life unless ejected by the Censor for immorality, while all the magistrates were elected for a year only. In the Senate there sat for life every man who had held high office and done the State good service, and as there were some three hundred of these, it was almost impossible for the yearly holders of imperium to resist their deliberate judgments. And for those judgments the Senate was responsible to no man.
Probably no assembly has ever comprised so much practical wisdom and experience as the Roman Senate of this period ”

“ The real government of Rome was in the hands of the Senate, an assembly of nobles and capitalists, who shared between themselves the profits of the Roman conquests. Like all such assemblies, the senators had their good times and their bad; between the second and the third wars with Carthage they so conducted themselves as to impress the imagination of the civilized world; the successes of their armies, their fidelity to engagements, their comparative moderation in conquest, were the wonder of men ”

“ Rome is preserved from cleaving in the midst by the virtues of the state, the reverence for the political majority which pervades both contending parties. The senate averts the last evil by the timely concession of the tribunitian power first, and then by sacrifice of a favourite champion of their own order, rather than civil war shall break out and all go to ruin in quarrel for the privilege and supremacy of a part. ”

“ All the acts of the Roman Republic ran in the name of the Senate and People, as if the Senate were half the state, though its number seems still to have been limited to Three Hundred members. The Senate of Rome was perhaps the most remarkable assembly that the world has ever seen. Its members held their seats for life; once Senators always Senators, unless they were degraded for some dishonourable cause. ”

“ The narrowness of interest, the selfishness and the corruption, which are the besetting sins of a corporation with an assured tenure of rule, were also weakened in the case of the Roman Senate by the fact that, through the elective principle, it was always in constant touch with the people. It is true that the Senate was a parliament, the members of which were elected for life—a parliament, therefore, that might easily cease to represent the wishes of the electorate ”

“ And, conjointly with the rest of the senators, it formed the greater council. Thus classic traditions were identified with new republican usages, and the commonwealth of Rome resembled those in other parts of Italy. But, of course, every republic had special local customs of its own. So the Roman senate had judicial as well as political attributes, and there was a curia senatus composed of senators and legal experts.
As was easily to be foreseen, the agreement with the pope was of short duration. The revolution could not be checked ”

“ At the very outset of Roman history we see the Senate existing as an aristocratic body, embodying in itself both the oligarchical principles upon which the Roman government was based, and also the patriarchal basis upon which the Roman family organization and later the organization of the Roman state itself had been built. ”

“ There is much less of combination than of momentary inspiration, derived from circumstances, in the resolutions and conduct of political chiefs, kings, senators, or great men. From the time that discord and corruption had turned the Roman Republic into a bloody and tyrannical anarchy, the Roman Senate no longer meditated grand designs, and its members were preoccupied only with the question of escaping or avenging proscriptions. ”

“ We have already seen how this right was limited in practice; [1793] but its nominal exercise was an expression of the view that the sovereignty of the Roman people now found its chief exponent in the ancient council. The same idea is expressed in the senatorial power of dispensation from laws—whether in favour of the Princeps and members of his house, [1794] or in administrative matters such as the right of forming associations. [1795] The elective power which the Senate enjoyed from the beginning of the reign of Tiberius [1796] is also a sign of its perpetuating the powers of the people. ”

“ The Roman Senate, which so lately sat to devise means by which Rome might be saved from the grasp of Hannibal, now sits as a Court of International Justice for the whole civilized world, ready to hear the causes of every king or commonwealth that has any plaint against any other king or commonwealth, ready even [Pg 58] to bend its ear to the voice of every party, of every man, that has any plaint against any other party or any other man within the smallest commonwealth. The Roman Fathers judge the causes of powers which are in theory the equal allies of Rome ”

“ The bad faith of the Roman Senate, its desperate expedients to maintain its position alike against the rising power of the Army, the organization of the Equestrians, the body of Roman citizens, or the reformers within its ranks, become in a measure respectable when we reflect that the Senate believed itself to rule by divine right. ”

“ Each has its own government and administers its own law, but places all its military resources at the disposal of the Roman government. The fighting power of the future was to be Italy under Roman leadership, and all questions of foreign policy were decided by Rome alone. There was no general council of the whole confederacy. The Roman Senate controlled an ever-increasing mass of detailed and varied business, having to deal with Latins, Italians of the old stocks, Etruscans, Greeks and Gauls. ”

“ The school of writers which is interested in representing all forms of government, which have been successful as democratic, has done its best both in ancient and modern times to minimise the aristocratic character of the Roman Senate no less than its legislative supremacy; but the whole tone of Roman history is against them. A Roman Senator was distinctly a nobleman. Inside the Senate rank went by office; those Senators who had held the higher offices took precedence of others according to dignity of office ”

“ The election of consuls, of generals, and of magistrates, however it had been recently usurped by the senate, was the ancient and undoubted right of the Roman people. But where was the Roman people to be found? Not surely amongst the mixed multitude of slaves and strangers that filled the streets of Rome; a servile populace, as devoid of spirit as destitute of property. ”

“ Rome is governed by an oligarchy of military chieftains, and has become more aristocratic and more democratic at the same time. The people gain rights, only to yield to the supremacy of demagogues. The Senate is humbled, but remains the ascendant power, for generals compose it, and those who have held great offices. Meanwhile the great generals struggle for supremacy. Civil wars follow in the train of foreign conquests. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Julius, Antony, Augustus, sacrifice the state to their ambition. Good men lament, and protest, and hide themselves. Cato, Cicero, Brutus, speak in vain. ”

“ A modern historian finds in the unlicensed discretion reposed by the Roman Senate in the general, the most efficient aid to the extent of Rome’s early conquests, and he points by way of contrast, to the modern republics of Italy, as denying themselves scope for larger conquests by their extreme jealousy of their commanders. ”

“ I abandoned my own safety, in order to save the republic from being (for my sake) stained with the blood of the citizens; they thought fit to hinder my return, not by the votes of the Roman people, but by a river of blood. Therefore, after those events, you gave no answers to the citizens, or the allies, or to kings; the judges gave no decisions; the people came to no vote on any matter; this body issued no declarations by its authority; you saw the forum silent the senate-house mute, the city dumb and dispirited. ”

“ Circular epistles were sent, without delay, to all the principal cities of the empire, Treves, Milan, Aquileia, Thessalonica, Corinth, Athens, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage, to claim their obedience, and to inform them of the happy revolution, which had restored the Roman senate to its ancient dignity. Two of these epistles are still extant. We likewise possess two very singular fragments of the private correspondence of the senators on this occasion. They discover the most excessive joy, and the most unbounded hopes. ”

“ It is a fundamental principle of an aristocracy that no individual should attain undue prominence above others of his class, and perhaps no governing body has devised so many safeguards against Caesarism, and entrenched itself so firmly behind tradition, as the Roman senate did. ”

“ It was on the dignity of the senate that Augustus and his successors founded their new empire; and they affected, on every occasion, to adopt the language and principles of Patricians. In the administration of their own powers, they frequently consulted the great national council, and seemed to refer to its decision the most important concerns of peace and war. Rome, Italy, and the internal provinces were subject to the immediate jurisdiction of the senate. ”

“ As Mr Froude says, the Senate was "in theory" a real aristocracy. But we must remember that it had not always been so "in theory" alone. During the most brilliant period of Roman history it had been a real aristocracy in fact. Government by the Senate was the result of the struggle between patricians and plebeians; and it was the Senate that ruled Rome from the end of the Samnite wars to the conquest of Macedonia—that is, during the earlier and more arduous part of her progress from Italian supremacy to universal empire. ”

“ The consul frankly says that if the Roman senators were mad enough to obey a man of Setia, he would come, sword in hand, into the senate, and that he would kill every Latin he saw in the curia with his own hand. Then turning towards Jupiter’s statue, he cries: “Listen to these crimes, Jupiter, hear them, Right and Justice! Foreign consuls, a foreign senate, inaugurated in Jupiter’s temple, thyself captive and oppressed, that is what thou wouldst see.”
This sublime insolence proves that these men had souls worthy of kings. A government like a man has its own personality. ”

“ He courted power by nobler, or, at least, by more specious arts. On a premature report of the death of the emperor, he assembled his troops; and, in an eloquent discourse, deplored the inevitable mischiefs of despotism, described the happiness and glory which their ancestors had enjoyed under the consular government, and declared his firm resolution to reinstate the senate and people in their legal authority. This popular harangue was answered by the loud acclamations of the British legions, and received at Rome with a secret murmur of applause. ”

“ Let the patricians serve as soldiers; let the patricians take up arms, so that those who reaped the advantages of war should also undergo its dangers. But the senate, dejected and confounded by the double alarm they felt, inspired both by their own countryman and by the enemy, entreated the consul Servilius, whose disposition was more inclined to favour the people, that he would extricate the commonwealth, beset as it was with so great terrors. ”

“ But the more logical idea of absolute nullity, which required no repeal, subsequently prevailed, and we shall find that it is the Senate which, as the guide of the executive power, pronounces enactments to be invalid in consequence of formal flaws.
When we turn from the “people” in general to its manifestations in the separate comitia and in the concilium of the Plebs, we find that, although historically we are dealing with different parliaments, practically we are treating the Roman community engaged with different orders of the day under different formal rules. ”