Senate of the Roman Republic

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was a time in the history of the Republic when this fusion seemed to be approaching completion, and when the Senate moved in the direction of becoming a representative body; but the Roman conquests threw such preponderating influence into the hands of the Senate, that the constitutional position which had been slowly won for the “people” became nominal rather than real. The oligarchy of Rome was never in the Republican period disestablished as the oligarchies of many Greek cities were disestablished. ”

“ The sentiment of the Roman Senate, who, upon their general's return with the shattered remains of a great army from an almost annihilating defeat, thanked and applauded him for not despairing of the Republic, has, in later times, been moulded into an apothegm of political morality; and few sayings, of equal dignity, are now more hackneyed, than that "A good citizen will never despair of the commonwealth." ”

“ For five hundred years there was neither anarchy nor military despotism. If every citizen knew how to fight, every citizen also knew how to govern, to submit. No consul dared to exceed his trust; no general, till Caesar, ventured to cross the Rubicon. The Roman Senate never lost its dignity— a supreme body which controlled all public interests. The Romans were sufficiently wise to bend to circumstances. Though proud, the patricians made concessions to plebeians whenever it was necessary. The right of citizenship was gradually extended throughout the Empire. ”

“ From the facts here stated it will immediately appear that after the people had acquired an unconditioned right to extend the Roman franchise, they made little use of the opportunity. The senate could well afford to concede to them a power which they cherished a growing disinclination to use. The expansion of the empire had at length so enhanced the value of citizenship that the masses were unwilling except on the rarest occasions to share its advantages with others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tradition of the city-state had been violated and the prestige of the senate had been lowered when Julius Caesar admitted provincials to the senate. This revolutionary precedent was freely followed by emperors during the second half of the first century. This transformation of the Roman senate into a body made up of representatives drawn from all parts of the empire was part of the larger change of the Roman imperium into an international world-state. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ When Spurius Carvilius, after having lamented in a long speech not only the scantiness of the senate, but the fewness of citizens who were eligible into that body, with the design of making up the numbers of the senate and uniting more closely the Romans and the Latin confederacy, declared that he strongly advised that the freedom of the state should be conferred upon two senators from each of the Latin states, if the Roman fathers thought proper, who might be chosen into the senate to supply the places of the deceased senators. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the ruling community deserves a censure more severe than that directed against the ruled. It is no easy task for a man—any more than for a state—to own to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation. The Roman senate did neither. Invoked and importuned on all hands, the senate interfered incessantly in the course of African, Hellenic, Asiatic, and Egyptian affairs ”

“ As a statesman he displayed little imagination or constructive ability. He could think of nothing better than to restore the Senate to a position which it had shown itself unable to maintain; and his persecutions of his political opponents had not crushed out opposition to the Senate, but left a legacy of hatred endangering the permanence of his reforms.
The epoch between the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus and the death of Sulla revealed the incapacity of either the Senate or the tribunes and the Assembly to give a peaceful and stable government to the Roman state. ”

“ Hence it was, and from this original precedent of Augustus, aided by the constitution which he had given to the office of imperator, that up to the era of Dioclesian, no prince had dared utterly to neglect the senate, or the people of Rome. He might hate the senate, like Severus, or Aurelian; he might even meditate their extermination, like the brutal Maximin. ”

“ We cannot trace the widening of the other powers of the Senate; but we must assume that it took up a more independent position in face of the consuls than it had done in that of the king. Perhaps the establishment of a treasury and of financial quaestors, who may have been selected from the council, led to its first connexion with finance. The new importance that foreign affairs assumed, in the constant wars in which Rome was engaged with the nations of Italy, must certainly have strengthened its control of this department. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Therefore, Rome is for us; they are against her. Do you imagine that the stability of this beautiful city consists in houses and edifices built of stone upon stone? Nay, they are dumb inanimate things that may fall to pieces and be rebuilt at pleasure. The eternity of our empire, the peace of the world, your welfare and mine, all depend upon the safety of the senate. Instituted with solemn ceremony by the father and founder of Rome, the senate has come down in undying continuity from the kings to the emperors ”

“ America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant. Now that the republic,—the res-publica,—has been settled, it is time to look after the res-privata,—the private state,—to see, as the Roman senate charged its consuls, "ne quid res-privata detrimenti caperet," that the private state receive no detriment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the Senate was the creation of the emperor, who as censor made up the list of its members, he was now of course the source and fountain of all patronage.' During the first years of his reign, Tiberius used his practically unrestrained authority with moderation and justice, but soon yielding to the promptings of a naturally cruel, suspicious, and jealous nature, he entered upon a course of the most high-handed tyranny. ”