Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

The circumstances which determined the growth of the power of this great council of state are connected, firstly, with the constitution of the council itself; secondly, with the changes in its presidency; and thirdly, with its absorption of isolated powers, some of which it drew from the incompetent hands of magistrates and people, others of which it created.

(i.) A nominee body, such as the Senate had originally been, may be moulded by the will of the nominator. The personal selection by the consuls of their intimate friends, the habit of omitting, at the annual revision of the list, the names of those who were alien to them in sympathy, while favouring the dignity of the aristocracy by making it appear as though exclusion were based on arbitrary preference and not on censure, yet diminished the independence and lessened the prestige of the councillors thus arbitrarily selected. It is true that the work of selection was performed by two consuls, and the judgment of the one might be balanced by the prejudice of the other; it is also true that public opinion would have been shocked by the choice of unworthy members of the magisterial council, and that the aristocracy itself would have resented the omission of a name distinguished by the great deeds of its possessor while in office; but the self-existence of this council could only be secured by the one great device of taking from the magistrate, whose duty it was to consult, the selection of the men whose duty it was to furnish him with advice. An opportunity for effecting this change was offered by the institution of the censorship. The selection of the Senate (lectio senatus) is indeed no part of the census, nor do we know when this highest of all the privileges of the censors was transferred to the new authority. But by the year 312 not only, as we have seen,[1301] had the transference been effected, but conditions of selection had been imposed which made the Senate partly a body of ex-curule magistrates, partly of nominees who had done good service to the state in the lesser grades of the magistracy or the higher ranks of the army. The vista that lay before the eyes of all aspirants to office was now no longer the annual magistracy, temporary in its nature and hampered by restrictions of every kind, but the seat in the Senate to which it was the stepping-stone. Within the charmed circle the grades of rank were still of importance, and the “servants of the order,”[1302] as the magistrates now tended to become, could find in the magnificent displays of the aedile, the high judicial functions of the praetor, the military leadership of the consul, and the moral control of the censor, the graduated satisfaction of the most diverse ambitions. But, even before the point of transition marked by the curule magistracy had been passed, the Roman noble tended to identify his interests with those of the house to which fate and the inevitable suffrages of the people had destined him. Interest even more than conviction would sanction such a choice; the vast nominal powers of the magistracy he could wield but for a year; of the clique of Three Hundred he was a life-long member. And the depressing influence, which contact with some scores of middle-aged and experienced men must have over youth even when blessed with genius, completed the work which interest and a vague class sympathy had begun. The new member moved in that narrow circle of ideas which through its very narrowness was strong enough to baffle Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and Philip, and to half complete the organisation of the world. The men that rose above it—Scipio, the Gracchi, Caesar—found endless difficulties in their path, and originality of conception, which is conspicuous by its absence in the organisation of the Roman Empire, led its possessors to exile, death, or monarchy. But the restraining influence was felt only in the essential principles of politics; in the control of details a free hand was still given to the administrator, and individuality of a uniform, decorous, and sober kind, combined with a high average level of practical ability, is to be found in the Roman senator of the best period. 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; but each member, until he obtained the coveted prize of the consulship, was ever submitting himself to the suffrages of the people in order to pass from grade to grade of honour. The susceptibilities of the “great tame beast” had to be respected; its eyes must be dazzled by occasional popular measures, by military achievements, at the worst by private bounty or by brilliant shows. The coterie system that worked the elections could do much, but it could not do everything; the race for honours provided stimuli sufficient—even when the public opinion of his own order failed—to keep a counsellor of Rome up to a high level of efficiency.

An order of nobility that is practically hereditary tends to attach to itself titles of nobility and external distinctions of dress. The democratic nomenclature of the Romans prevented the development of the first, and although within the Senate the grades of rank were clearly marked, and the distinctions between consulates, praetorii, aedilicii and the former holders of lesser magistracies were observed in the order of debate, these designations were not employed as constant epithets. But the desire of emphasising difference of functions by external signs, which is such a strongly marked feature in Roman public life, revealed itself fully in the senatorial garb. The present or past holder of curule office wore the purple-striped toga of the magistrate, the ordinary senator bore on his tunic a stripe of the same colour, which during the last century of the Republic was distinguished by its breadth from that worn by the order of the equites. Still more distinctly a part of the senatorial insignia is the senatorial shoe of red leather (calceus mulleus), which, distinct in shape as well as in colour, was worn by no other members of the state. The origin of the distinction is obscure; tradition explained the sandal as the royal footgear,[1303] which continued to be worn by the patrician senators in their character of potential kings (interreges).[1304] The gold ring the senators shared with the members of the equestrian order. Since the nobility of a senator ended with his life, it is needless to remark that the insignia could not be transmitted to descendants. Yet, as some of them—the gold ring and perhaps the latus clavus—had merely a social sanction, it is not improbable that the practically hereditary nature of the nobility had led to their being worn by members of senatorial families destined to follow their fathers’ career. There is, at least, no reason to suppose that the youthful order of laticlavii was an invention of the Emperor Augustus.[1305]

The identification of the magistracy with the Senate, which had been practically complete by the close of the third century of the Republic, was perfected in law by the dictator Sulla. The quaestorship was now made the stepping-stone to the Senate;[1306] the personal selection by the censors—which, in the face of unwritten custom, had been growing weaker year by year—was dispensed with; while their more important right of rejecting unworthy members could be resorted to only when the censorship was occasionally galvanised into new life. An automatic mode of recruiting the order should, if the power and dignity contemplated by the reactionary legislator were to be secured, have been accompanied by an equally automatic method of divesting of their rank those who had proved unworthy of it. But no such system was devised, and the morals of the Senate were for the first time left to chance, or rather to the reasonable hope that after the age of thirty-one (the lowest period of life at which senatorial dignity could be held) the character once formed would not deteriorate.

A more important factor in the change introduced by the Cornelian legislation was the permanent increase in the numbers of the Senate. Doubled by the immediate action of the dictator, the body continued to maintain its complement of about 600 members; for twenty annual additions of ex-magistrates of the usual quaestorian age would enable it to retain this normal level. The large size thus given to the senatorial body is one of its most surprising features, when we consider the business with which it had to deal. Secrets that are uttered with bated breath in a modern cabinet were proclaimed aloud at Rome to an assembly of the size of a modern parliament. But there were no reports of proceedings for the eyes or ears of the outside world, and secrecy about reasons for policy was sometimes only too well kept. Such secrecy was often treated as suspicious by the professed leaders of the people at the close of the Republic, and the consciousness of danger felt in the Senate seemed mere weakness to the mob. The history of the Senate, if it does not show the futility of secret diplomacy, may yet prove it to be unnecessary that this diplomacy to be effective should be entrusted to a few.

(ii.) The freedom and power of a deliberative assembly depends very largely on the unrestricted right of debate and initiative possessed by its individual members. In theory the Roman senator was sorely hampered in the exercise of both of these powers. The body to which he belonged ever retained its formal character of a council of advisers; the magistrate might summon it or not at his discretion, might refuse to lay a particular question before the house, or decline to elicit the opinions (sententiae) of some suspected members, opinions which they had no power to give unasked. So long as these powers were in the hands of two consuls, a conspiracy of silence might easily impede the expression of the Senate’s judgment; but when the right of summoning and of laying business before the house became the property of the praetors in virtue of their imperium, and was subsequently, by an anomalous recognition of a revolutionary power, extended to the tribunate, the number of possible presidents was increased to twenty, and the Senate again drew its strength from the dissensions of the magistrates. Twenty men, even if they all represent a nobility, must also represent different shades of opinion, and will attempt to elicit views corresponding to their own, which may then be submitted to the approval and the votes of the house. The practice having early arisen that it was only a definite expression of opinion coming from some quarter of the house that should be submitted to the approval of its members, the magistrate, eager to put the desired motion (relatio), is now to a large extent dependent on the senator. And the few gaps that still remain in the latter’s power of initiative are filled up by ingenious fictions of debate. The senator would rise, unburden his soul of cherished views on matters alien to the debate,[1307] and then make his speech conform to the rules of the house by concluding with a formal opinion on the direct issue put before it by the magistrate. In one instance at least we find the method reversed; the great political crime of Carthage’s destruction was prepared by the famous sententia of Cato,[1308] often repeated in speeches on unrelated topics, and having no connexion with the issue that was directly before the house.

To understand the facilities for information and the freedom of debate possessed by the Senate, we must have a clear view of the functions of its presidents and of the position of the ordinary magistrates in that assembly. The right of summons and the right of laying business before the body were inseparable; both were possessed by three orders of magistrates—consuls, praetors, and tribunes. But law, in the shape of the power given by the major potestas, made it impossible for the praetor to exercise his right of summons in defiance of the consul; while custom dictated that even the tribune should not exercise this right when the consul was at Rome. But, once the summons has been issued and obeyed, the convoker of the council is not its only president. The three classes of magistrates have each the right of reference, and each in an order prescribed by customary law. The consuls’ motions come first; they are followed by those of the praetors, and then the tribunes have their turn.[1309] This system of priority, although necessary to prevent confusion, was under ordinary circumstances a matter of comparative unimportance. It could only become a serious hindrance to the freedom of debate if the consul abruptly dismissed the meeting before a decision had been reached on some question of pressing importance,[1310] or if a method of systematic obstruction were adopted by some senator, who wasted the hours with prolix oratory until the setting of the sun made a suspension of business legally necessary. But the former device was revolutionary in its character, and on the occasion of its use a fit preparation for a revolution; while the latter seems to have been employed, as by the younger Cato during Caesar’s consulship, as a weapon against an offensive relatio already before the house.[1311] The president himself had ample powers for meeting such designs; in the case in question the consul had the obstructive stoic haled from the room.[1312]

A more serious danger would have been the absence of information from the officials who succeeded the consul in putting motions before the house; but this was obviated by the power which magistrates had of speaking (verba facere) without invitation at any period of the debate. This power was possessed as an admitted right by those magistrates who were themselves presiding; the quaestors, whose financial statements were indispensable, and the aediles may have exercised it only on sufferance. This privilege was the more necessary as the presiding magistrates at least could not be asked their opinion by the official who held the attention of the house; they could not give advice, for they were themselves seeking it of others.

Custom had determined with equal care the method by which opinions should be elicited from the unofficial and advising members of the house. The question “what is your advice?” (quid censes?) was put by the president to each senator in an order corresponding to his official rank. In the days of the activity of the censorship, it was this magistracy which had determined the president’s first selection; the censors had placed at the head of their list the name of some distinguished man (often himself an ex-censor), and it was this “chief of the Senate” (princeps senatus) whose opinion was first sought. But, after Sulla’s reform in the constitution of the order, there is, in spite of the occasional revival of the censorship, no certain evidence of the perpetuation of this dignity. Henceforth a body of consulates holds the first place, and from these the presiding magistrate—at least the consul who opens the business of the house—chooses his first adviser, according to no settled rules, but with due regard to seniority or personal distinction.[1313] The only exception to this practice was to be found in the latter half of the year, when the consuls elect, either in virtue of their quasi-magisterial position or because they might themselves have to carry out the decrees which were being discussed, took precedence of the consulars.[1314] From the latter the question passed down through the praetorii to the men of aedilician or tribunician rank, and so finally to the lowest grade of all—the ex-quaestors; and it is probable that, in every grade, the rule of consulting a designated magistrate before an ex-magistrate was observed. It is obvious that this procedure, when rigidly adhered to, left the non-curule members of the Senate only an infinitesimal chance of a share in the debate. These had always been known as pedarii, in contradistinction to the curules; originally nominees of the censors, they included after the time of Sulla the former tribunes and plebeian aediles, and the members of quaestorian rank. As they were rarely reached in the debate, they seldom had the opportunity of expressing an opinion, and hence arose the erroneous notion of some antiquarians that the pedarii were given the right of voting but not the power of debate.[1315] But restrictions of this kind, arising from practice and not from law, were never pressed by the Romans. The repute of a man who had not reached curule rank might exceed that of all the other senators; the principle that would open the lips of a Bibulus and close those of a Cato was recognised as mischievous in certain emergencies, and it was the latter who as tribune elect—that is, as a pedarius—moved the resolution which condemned the Catilinarian conspirators to death.[1316]