Chapter 10 - When the Senators Became ‘The Best’

Summary

The plebiscitum Ovinium, passed at the end of the fourth century BC, gave the censors the power to select the senators, previously chosen freely by the highest magistrates; the censors thus added the selection of senators to their existing cura morum, the responsibility to include or exclude citizens from the citizenry and to place them in correct units (centuries or tribes). The observance of the mores maiorum became the requisite for a senator to be selected, while inappropriate behaviour could result in a note of reproach and the expulsion from the senate. The behaviour of the ruling class became a model for the whole community. The censors were concerned with the behaviour of the senators as citizens, not as office holders. This meant that the senators were scrutinized according to the observance of the mores of the common people, and not as members of the ruling class. With time, popular pressure succeeded in establishing that behaviour in office could be a cause for the loss of senatorial status. Cicero, in the Laws, described this development establishing the end of the censorial selection, while introducing the scrutiny of the acts of the senators as office holders at the end of their term. The cura morum lost its original function.