The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings

Summary

The contemporaries of Camillus, though they had a firmly rooted belief in the legends about Romulus, would have laughed at any one who, as the most intelligent men did three centuries after, should have represented the institution of the senate as a politic measure issuing from the free-will of the founder of the city. In the cities of all the civilized nations around the Mediterranean, a senate was no less essential and indispensable than a popular assembly; it was a select body of the elder citizens: such a council, says Aristotle, there always is, whether the constitution be aristocratical or democratical: even in the oligarchal, be the number of sharers in the sovranty ever so small, some counsellors are appointed to prepare public measures.

That the Roman senate, like the Athenian of Clisthenes, corresponded to the tribes, has been already explained: but we may go further, and affirm without hesitation, that originally, when the number of houses was complete, the senate represented them immediately, and by a number proportionate to theirs. The three hundred senators at Rome corresponded to the three hundred houses, the number which was assumed above on good grounds: the decurion of each gens, who was its alderman, and the president in its by-meetings, would represent it in the senate.