Senate (Ancient Rome)

“ 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 Senate, however, continued nominally to act until the time of Diocletian (284 A. D.) .
As Augustus had exclusive command of the armies, he chose to govern as Proconsul those provinces which required military forces. He himself resided at the capital, and sent deputies (legati) to oversee them. The other provinces, called Senatorial, were governed by Proconsuls appointed by the Senate. These were at this time Sicily, Africa, Achaia (Greece) , Macedonia, Asia (Minor) , Hispania Ulterior, and Gallia Narbonensis.
The city government now included all Italy. ”

“ The senate in both nations was composed out of the most respectable and greatest men in each republick. At Rome the consuls chose the senators with the approbation of the people, but at last the censors arrogated that power to themselves. At Carthage, as Aristotle informs us, the senators were elected; but as he has no where told us who were the electors, it is most probable, that the right of election was the inherent privilege of the people, since he censures that republick as too much leaning towards democracy. ”

“ The murder of Aurelian, in 275, was followed by an interregnum of seven months, during which the army seemed to repent of having slain its general and paid to the Senate a deference which effectually turned the head—never strong—of that assembly. Vopiscus quotes a letter written by one senator to another at this period, begging him to return to Rome and tear himself away from the amusements of Baiæ and Puteoli. “The Senate,” he says, [3] “has returned to its ancient status. It is we who make Emperors; it is our order which has the distribution of offices. ”

“ The Senate was jealous of the power of the people, and the people distrusted the Senate.
Among the patricians who were aspiring to the consulship was LUCIUS SERGIUS CATILÍNA, a villain steeped in every crime, but adroit, bold, and withal captivating. In 68 he had been Praetor, the next year Governor in Africa, where by his extortions he had obtained enough money, as he hoped, to purchase his election to the consulship. On his return home he was impeached for his misgovernment, but acquitted through Cicero's defence and the careful selection of a jury. ”

“ The Imperator, when he returned from a successful campaign, was sometimes allowed to enjoy a triumphal procession, provided he had been Dictator, Consul, or Praetor. No one desiring a triumph ever entered the city until the Senate decided whether or not he deserved one. When a favorable decision was reached, the temples were all thrown open, garlands of flowers decorated every shrine and image, and incense smoked on every altar. The Imperator ascended the triumphal car and entered a city gate, where he was met by the whole body of the Senate, headed by the magistrates. ”

“ The Senators, three hundred in number (later their number was increased to six hundred) , held their office for life. When vacancies occurred from death, or occasionally from removal, they were filled by the Censor, (Footnote: See the duties of Censor) who appointed a person that had held one of the following offices: Dictator, Consul, Praetor, Curule Aedile, or, after the time of Sulla, Quaestor. All persons who had held these offices, or that of Tribune, were allowed to join in debate in the Senate, but not to vote. No Senator could engage in business. Hence he must be wealthy. ”

“ The wealthy classes and the Senate at once took sides against Tiberius, and the struggle began. One of the other Tribunes, OCTAVIUS CAECÍNA, who was himself a large land-owner, taking advantage of his authority as Tribune, interposed his veto to prevent a vote upon the question.
Gracchus, full of enthusiasm over the justice of his cause, obtained, contrary to all precedent, the removal of his colleague from office, and passed his Agrarian Law. Three commissioners were appointed, himself, his brother, and his father-in-law, APPIUS CLAUDIUS, to carry it into effect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such a crowd of enemies is not only within the walls, but in the citadel, commanding the forum and senate-house: in the mean while meetings are being held in the forum; the senate is in the senate-house, just as when perfect tranquillity prevails; the senator gives his opinion, the other Romans give their votes. Would it not behove all the patricians and commons, consuls, tribunes, citizens, and all classes of persons, to bring aid with arms in their hands, to run into the Capitol, to liberate and restore to peace that most august residence of Jupiter, the best and greatest? ”

“ The senate, who were to act as counsellors to the king, was composed of a hundred of the principal citizens of Rome, consisting of men whose age, wisdom, or valour, gave them a natural authority over their fellow-subjects. The king named the first senator, who was called prince of the senate, and appointed him to the government of the city, whenever war required his own absence. ”

“ On the one hand the senate appears as a representative council of chiefs, with inalienable prerogatives of its own, and claiming to be the ultimate depositary of the supreme authority and of the sacra connected with it. The senators are the patres; they are taken from the leading gentes; they hold their seats for life; to them the auspicia revert on the death of a king; they appoint the interrex from their own body, are consulted in the choice of the new king, [26] and their sanction is necessary to ratify the vote of the assembled freemen. ”

“ 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 senate, though forced year after year to listen to the mutual recriminations and complaints of rival communities and factions, contented itself as a rule with intervening just enough to remind the Greeks that their freedom was limited by its own paramount authority, and to prevent any single state or confederacy from raising itself too far above the level of general weakness which it was the interest of Rome to maintain. ”

“ The state of things at Rome is this: the senate is a perfect Areopagus. You cannot conceive anything firmer, more grave, or more high-spirited. For when the day came for proposing the bill in accordance with the vote of the senate, a crowd of our dandies with their chin-tufts assembled, all the Catiline set, with Curio's girlish son at their head, and implored the people to reject it. Moreover, Piso the consul, who formally introduced the bill, spoke against it. Clodius's hired ruffians had filled up the entrances to the voting boxes. ”

“ The senate, accordingly, as is usual in any perilous emergency, decreed that THE CONSULS SHOULD MAKE IT THEIR CARE THAT THE COMMONWEALTH SHOULD RECEIVE NO INJURY. This is the greatest power which, according to the practice at Rome, is granted by the senate to the magistrate, and which authorizes him to raise troops; to make war; to assume unlimited control over the allies and the citizens; to take the chief command and jurisdiction at home and in the field, rights which, without an order of the people, the consul is not permitted to exercise. ”

“ Originally, each of the three Roman tribes was divided into ten gentes, each gens into ten curiæ, and each curia, besides constituting one of the units in the comitia curiata, furnished one member of the Roman Senate. The Senate continued after the organization by curiæ had become obsolete. Membership in the Senate was at all periods for life, but did not descend from father to son. Vacancies in the Senate were filled by appointment, these appointments being made first by the kings, later by the consuls, and finally by the censors. ”

“ Either legislative organization may initiate legislation, and in practice most proposals originate in the elected body, from which important or controversial matters are referred to the people. Popular action overrides that of the chosen body. The people may not amend a proposal, but must vote “Yes” or “No” upon it. This is an exact description of the relation of the Roman senate to the popular assembly under the Republic. The ancient system had the merits and defects which we see in its modern counterpart. ”

“ At Rome I find politics in a shaky condition; everything is unsatisfactory and foreboding change. For I have no doubt you have been told that our friends, the equites, are all but alienated from the senate. Their first grievance was the promulgation of a bill on the authority of the senate for the trial of such as had taken bribes for giving a verdict. ”

“ It is incredible that the Roman senate should have left to accident an election of such importance in this meeting of the Comitia which it had itself suggested, and equally incredible that ambition and patriotism should have so died out in Rome that no tried officer presented himself for the important post. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Senate formed the real governing body of the republic.
"AN ASSEMBLY OF KINGS" The Senate proved not unworthy of its high position. For two centuries, while Rome was winning dominion over Italy and the Mediterranean, that body held the wisest and noblest Romans of the time. To these men office meant a public trust—an opportunity to serve their country with distinction and honor. The Senate, in its best days, was a splendid example of the foresight, energy, and wisdom of republican Rome. An admiring foreigner called it "an assembly of kings." ”

“ Throughout this period the actually sovereign authority in Rome was that of the senate, and behind the senate stood an order of nobles (nobiles) , who claimed and enjoyed privileges as wide as those which immemorial custom had formerly conceded to the patriciate. The ascendency of the senate, which thus arrested the march of democracy in Rome, was not, to any appreciable extent, the result of legislation. ”

“ I am persuaded, that any decision of the senate concerning the Christians, would be indulgent and paternal, and that it would, in opinion and feeling, be opposed to any violence whatever on the part of Aurelian. But then, alas! it is little that they can do with even the best purposes. The Emperor is absolute—the only power, in truth, in the state. The senate exists but in name and form. It has even less independent power than that of Palmyra had under Zenobia. Yours, indeed, was dependent through affection and trust, reposing in a higher wisdom than its own. ”

“ Thus, after the 7th century, the optimates at the head of the army were also at the head of the citizens, and “formed a communal council in the same manner in which it was afterwards formed by the banderesi.” [88] Now, if the nobles were called senatores and the nobility senatus, and if this body of nobles met in council to administer the affairs of the republic, there is no matter for dispute, inasmuch as all are agreed that the original senate must have had a different character from the senate of the middle ages. ”

“ 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 ”