Roman Public Life

by A. H. J. Greenidge

It was through the Senate of the Principate that the idea of popular sovereignty was most practically and even most formally expressed; and, as the Principate claimed and even tried to be nothing more than the extraordinary magistracy of a Republic, the most infinite pains was taken with this body to give it dignity, stability, and weight. We shall speak elsewhere of the senatorial “order” which was created during the Principate; it was from this order that the Senate was recruited, and the will of the Princeps could be very distinctly asserted in the selection of members of the great council. Entrance was, as in the Republic, chiefly through the magistracy, the tenure of the quaestorship qualifying for a seat at the board. When, therefore, the Senate became itself the electing body, the principle of entrance was one of cooptation; and as the Princeps did not, to any great extent, influence the selection of quaestors by his commendatio,[1767] the principle was something more than a mere theory. But we shall see that he often gave the latus clavus which admitted to the senatorial order; we have seen that he advanced to the military tribunate, which became one of the qualifications for the quaestorship;[1768] he might also have exercised an influence in the formal nomination of candidates for this office; while his right of adlectio,[1769] when exercised with reference to persons who had not been magistrates, gave him the power of actually creating senators.

The qualifications for the Senate had reference to age, wealth, and birth. As twenty-five was the minimum age for the quaestorship, a man might be a senator at twenty-six.[1770] The census required, though it varied from time to time during the reign of Augustus, was finally fixed at a million sesterces.[1771] Ingenuitas was required—Claudius even demanded free birth through three generations[1772]—and it was counted one of the abuses of tyrannical rule when the favour of Emperors admitted freedmen into the Senate.[1773] For a time the council maintained its mainly Roman character, but “new men” from Italy and the provinces crept in with the censorships of Claudius and Vespasian,[1774] and the former Emperor even granted admission to the Gallic Aedui, perhaps by an employment of his right of adlectio.[1775] The reception of provincials finally became so frequent that, to give them an Italian interest, it was decreed by Trajan that one-third of their property must be invested in land in Italy,[1776] a quota that was changed by Marcus Aurelius to one-fourth.[1777]

Removal from the Senate belonged to the Emperor either as censor, when he exercised the discretionary moral judgment which had been associated with the Republican lectio,[1778] or in virtue of that power of revision which, as we have seen, became associated with the Principate.[1779] The chief grounds of exclusion were lack of the requisite census, refusal to take the oath in acta Caesaris which was demanded of senators as of magistrates,[1780] or condemnation for crime. The Senate itself, in the exercise of its judicial power, could add to the sentence which it inflicted on a senator the penalty of expulsion from the house;[1781] it might even make this expulsion a punishment for calumnious accusation.[1782] The revised list of the Senate (album senatorium) was posted up publicly every year,[1783] and the Emperor appeared at the head of this list as princeps senatus.[1784] The number of the Senate was fixed by Augustus at 600,[1785] and, as there seems to have been little or no alteration in the number of the quaestors, the size of the body into which they passed may have been fairly constant. Augustus also instituted fixed days for meeting. These regular meetings (senatus legitimi) took place twice a month, on the Kalends and the Ides, except during the autumn months of September and October, and attendance on these days was compulsory.[1786] Even to these meetings, however, there was a summons through an edict.[1787] Extraordinary sittings (senatus indicti) could also be held whenever the magistrate deemed them necessary.[1788] The presidency and summons belonged chiefly to the consuls, but, as in the Republic, were possessed also by the praetors and tribunes.[1789] When the Senate had been summoned, the Princeps shared in the presidency as a magistrate, and it is very questionable whether he ever appeared at the board in the character of a simple senator.[1790] As a magistrate he might address the house at any moment, and, during the early Principate at least, custom dictated that there should be a pause at the opening and at the close of a debate which the Princeps might fill up with an expression of opinion if he pleased.[1791] We have already noticed the singular privileges which he possessed in the matter of bringing business before the house.[1792]

Amongst the powers of the Senate, that which was formally the greatest was the creation and deposition of the Princeps. 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.

Over foreign administration, once the great bulwark of its power, the Senate has now but little control. Although it still receives messages of the victories of the Princeps, and grants him a triumph,[1797] it has lost all independent rights of war, peace, and alliance. But it receives envoys from the provinces which are under its control,[1798] and from the towns of Italy,[1799] and, at least in the first century of the Principate, it may act as the advising body of the Princeps in spheres which pertain wholly to him. Tiberius consulted the Senate on military questions;[1800] Vespasian waived an embarrassing offer of help from the Parthians by urging them to send an embassy to the Senate; and Decebalus, after his conquest by Trajan, obtained his final terms of peace by the same means.[1801] Such concessions were doubtless acts of grace on the part of the Princeps, but they also represent a constitutional principle which finally disappeared—the principle of consulting the representatives of the people on questions that were of paramount interest to the state.

The other powers of the Senate, which express its sovereignty or its partnership of administration with the Princeps, we must reserve for the next section, in which we shall attempt to illustrate the theory of a dual control which pervades the constitution of the Principate.

§ 5. The Chief Departments of the State; the Dual Control of Senate and Princeps

We have already seen that, in the most essential fact of sovereignty—the creation of the Principate—the Senate and people, or rather the Senate as representing the people, was theoretically supreme.[1802] The attribute of sovereignty that comes nearest to this is the power of legislation, for it is one that the “determinate human superior” generally retains in his own hands. The other functions that are usually associated with the highest authority in a community, such as the control of general administration, jurisdiction, finance, cultus and coinage, may more easily be delegated. If the delegation is temporary, there is no division of sovereign power; if perpetual, there is such a division unless the legislative power be thought of as capable of recalling the mandate. We have already seen to what a large extent the people had delegated its powers to the Princeps, and we have also seen that this delegation was, in fact though not in theory, perpetual.[1803] But, in the spheres of authority which we are now about to examine, there is neither the theory of complete retention, nor that of complete delegation, of sovereign power. The sovereign has partly retained and has partly delegated in perpetuity every one of the functions of government which we have enumerated, and this singular dualism affects, not only the administrative, but even the legislative activity of the state.

(i.) Legislation.—With respect to legislation it has already been shown how the comitia still uttered their general mandates until a period at least as late as the reign of Nerva.[1804] But, even before the legislative power of the people became extinct, this power had been passing to the Senate; and in the strict theory of the constitution, true legislative authority is to be finally found only in the great council which represents the people.