[348] Centum creat senatores: sive quia is numerus satis erat; sive quia soli centum erant, qui creari Patres possent, Patres certe ab honore, patriciique progenies eorum appellati.—Liv., i, 8. And Cicero: Principes, qui appellati sunt propter caritatem, patres.—De Rep., ii, 8.
[349] Dionysius, ii, 47.
[350] Nec minus regni sui firmandi, quam augendae republicae, memor, centum in Patres legit; qui deinde minorum gentium sunt appellati: factio haud dubia regis, cuius beneficio in curiam venerant.—Liv., i, 35.
[351] Isque [Tarquinius] ut de suo imperio legem tulit, principio duplicavit illum pristinum patrum numerum; et antiquos patres maiorum gentium appellavit, quos priores sententiam rogabat; a se adscitos, minorum.—Cicero, De Rep., ii, 20.
[352] Cicero, De Rep., ii, 20.
[353] This was substantially the opinion of Niebuhr. “We may go further and affirm without hesitation, that originally, when the number of houses [gentes] was complete, they were represented immediately by the senate, the number of which was proportionate to theirs. The three hundred senators answered to the three hundred houses, which was assumed above on good grounds to be the number of them; each gens sent its decurion, who was its alderman and the president of its meetings to represent it in the senate.... That the senate should be appointed by the kings at their discretion, can never have been the original institution. Even Dionysius supposes that there was an election: his notion of it, however, is quite untenable, and the deputies must have been chosen, at least originally, by the houses and not by the curiæ.”—Hist. of Rome, i, 258. An election by the curiæ is, in principle, most probable, if the office did not fall to the chief ex officio, because the gentes in a curia had a direct interest in the representation of each gens. It was for the same reason that a sachem elected by the members of an Iroquois gens must be accepted by the other gentes of the same tribe before his nomination was complete.
[354] Livy, i, 43. Dionys., ii, 14; iv, 20, 84.
[355] Numa Pompilius (Cicero, De Rep., ii, 11; Liv., i, 17), Tullus Hostilius (Cicero, De Rep., ii, 17), and Ancus Martius (Cic., De Rep., ii, 18; Livy, i, 32) were elected by the comitia curiata. In the case of Tarquinius Priscus, Livy observes that the people by a great majority elected him rex (i, 35). It was necessarily by the comitia curiata. Servius Tullius assumed the office which was afterwards confirmed by the comitia (Cicero, De Rep., ii, 21). The right of election thus reserved to the people, shows that the office of rex was a popular one, and that his powers were delegated.
[356] Mr. Leonhard Schmitz, one of the ablest defenders of the theory of kingly government among the Greeks and Romans, with great candor remarks: “It is very difficult to determine the extent of the king’s powers, as the ancient writers naturally judged of the kingly period by their own republican constitution, and frequently assigned to the king, the senate, and the comitia of the curia the respective powers and functions which were only true in reference to the consuls, the senate and the comitia of their own time.”—Smith’s Dic. Gk. & Rom. Antiq., Art. Rex.
[357] Dionys., ii, 12.