Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

But the people had at all times merely the final ratifying authority in these matters. The diplomatic negotiations that preceded the conclusion of an agreement with a foreign nation had ever been in the hands of the Senate. When envoys approached an imperator in the field, his duty was to send them on to the consuls and their council; how far he himself entered into preliminary negotiations with them depended on his own discretion, but in the best days of the Republic he could make no definite agreement. The mode in which the Senate received the envoys from a state differed according as the community had already treaty relations with Rome, or was in a state of natural war. The permanent representation of a friendly nation—except through the vague relationship with a noble Roman house—was a device as yet unknown; but the concession was made to the envoys of such a state of receiving them within the town.[1360] The representatives of the enemy, on the other hand, had no claim to reception within the walls.[1361] The embarrassment inspired by the approach of the suspected Eumenes of Pergamus in 166 B.C. caused a passing regulation to be framed that no kings (the “carnivorous animals” of Cato) should be received at Rome in person.[1362] Towards the close of the Republican period (67 B.C.) a demand for the better ordering of business, as well as the suspicion created by the dealings of envoys lingering in Rome with the political coteries, caused a law to be passed that the month of February should be devoted to the reception of legations.[1363] As most of the envoys at this time came from states within the Roman sphere of influence, it was an advantage to the provincials to have a definite season set apart in which they could air their grievances.

The most pressing demand for entering into new relations with states naturally accompanied the organisation of a province. For the immediate attention to this demand the conquering general was competent, although he was sometimes assisted by ten commissioners (legati) appointed by the Senate.[1364] The whole work of organisation, known as the law of the province (lex provinciae), bore the name of the imperator, and the lex Rupilia of Sicily, the lex Pompeia of Bithynia, and the law of Metellus in Crete preserved the memory of individual victors and organisers. The lex in this case is a charter (lex data), not a comitial act (lex rogata), and when we remember that the organisation of the provinces took place during the period of senatorial ascendency, we are not surprised at the omission of the formality of the consultation of the people.

The assignment of external spheres of rule (provinciae) to magistrates was one of the most important powers connected with the senatorial administration of the provinces. We have already seen how the original theory that a magistrate chose his department gave way to senatorial selection. In spite of the fact that the provinces were not assigned to specified individuals, but to holders of certain offices, this right of bestowal put great patronage in the hands of the Senate; it might reward or punish consuls or proconsuls by the assignment of more or less important districts,[1365] and the lot (sortitio) by which the individual holders were determined was often tampered with.[1366]

The final organisation of Italy and the provinces also gave fresh spheres of influence to the Senate. The free cities, which extended over the whole of Italy, and were found as privileged units in the provinces, were subject to its controlling power. These had given up all claim to the exercise of external authority, and it was the Senate that adjusted the conflicting claims of states both within and without the bounds of Italy.[1367] When the rights of a free city were held, not by treaty, but by a precarious charter, the Senate might cancel certain grants, which, by the terms of the charter, were revocable at pleasure.[1368] In the details of provincial government and the relations of the subject cities to the governor the Senate seems seldom to have interfered directly. But we must remember that in every province the governor was accompanied by a senatorial committee in the form of a consilium composed of his legates and of any senator who happened to be in the province.[1369] It was his duty to refer every important matter to this council, and the most important questions it bade him reserve for the judgment of the Senate at home.[1370]

The power of the purse, which has been the guarantee of so many popular liberties, was not possessed by the people at Rome. By escaping so early the incidence of direct taxation they lost a formidable weapon with which they might have fought the Senate. For this reason the admitted incapacity of the latter body to impose a new tax on the community was no great limitation to its powers after the year 167 B.C., when the Italian tributum disappeared.[1371] The control of the details of finance, which had never belonged to the people but always to the executive, was the mainstay of its power in this department. The circumstance that the control of estimates had been given to occasional officials, the censors, and that the details of expenditure had been taken from the hands of the consuls and placed in those of the most subordinate of all magistrates, the quaestors, sufficiently explains the growth of a central directing authority, which may be considered in its three relations to the property of the state, the estimates, and the expenditure.

The chief property of the state in the later Republic was the income derived from the provinces, and it is obvious that the Senate determined its amount when it ratified the terms of the lex provinciae. But the older source of revenue—the public domains of the state—was also subject to its control. It granted the occupation or the use of public lands and decreed their alienation by sale or gift.[1372] It also accepted or rejected gifts and bequests to the state, and the proposal of Ti. Gracchus that the people should deal with the movable property left by Attalus III., king of Pergamus,[1373] struck at one of the most undisputed of senatorial prerogatives.

The most important estimates of those items of revenue and expenditure which varied from time to time were, as we have seen,[1374] made every five years by the censors. But the Senate exercised the right of directing, even of reversing, the arrangements made by these officials; the appeal against an oppressive contract was made to them,[1375] and during the vacancy in the censorship they designated the magistrates who were to preside over new financial assignments.[1376]

The control over the treasury, both in the voting of large supplies or in detailed expenditure for definite purposes, was complete. The provincial budget, comprising the allowances for the different governors, was voted by the Senate, and this senatus consultum de provinciis ornandis[1377] was one of its most effective means of controlling the magistracy. The special sums voted for military or any other purposes were either directly paid[1378] or credited by the quaestors to the commanders abroad or to the home officials.[1379] We have already seen that it was only the consul who could order the quaestors to pay without a permit from the Senate;[1380] but, as the consul after the time of Sulla rarely took the field, the Senate’s control of expenditure was finally uninterrupted even by this survival.

If we pass from the most material to the most spiritual element in human life, we find this also directed to a certain extent by the Senate. Although religion in its various departments was under the control of special guilds, yet these colleges possessed little power of initiative, and an executive authority was necessary to carry out their will. The announcement of prodigies was met by the Senate with forms of expiation suggested by the priestly colleges. In the Sibylline books above all answers might be discovered whose political was even greater than their religious import. When the dangerous annexation of Egypt could be staved off by a few lines on these mysterious leaves,[1381] it is no wonder that their own guardians, the decemviri, scarcely dared to unfold them without the authorisation of the Senate. The activity of the comitia was sometimes hampered by the Senate’s habit of decreeing extraordinary festivals (feriae),[1382] while the successful general was dependent on its will for the duration of the thanksgivings (supplicationes) which followed his victory.[1383] The reception of a new god into the Roman Pantheon was probably in strict law a popular right,[1384] but it is one that seems to have been tacitly conceded to the Senate.[1385]