Book contents
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- TO HIS MAJESTY FREDERIC WILLIAM THE THIRD, KING OF PRUSSIA
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- ANCIENT ITALY
- THE PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF ROME
- ROME
- Various Traditions about the Origin of the City
- Romulus and Numa
- Beginning and Nature of the Earliest History
- The Era from the Foundation of the City
- On the Secular Cycle
- The Beginning of Rome and its Earliest Tribes
- The Patrician Houses and the Curies
- The Senate, the Interrexes, and the Kings
- Tullus Hostilius and Ancus
- The Lay of L. Tarquinius Priscus and Servius Tullius
- Examination of the Stories of L. Tarquinius and Servius Tullius
- The Completion of the City of Rome
- The Six Equestrian Centuries
- The Commonalty and the Plebeian Tribes
- The Centuries
- L. Tarquinius the Tyrant and the Banishment of the Tarquins
- Commentary on the Story of the Last Tarquinius
- The Beginning of the Republic and the Treaty with Carthage
- The War with Porsenna
- The Period down to the Death of Tarquinius
- The Dictatorship
- The Commonalty before the Secession, and the Nexi
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.
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- Information
- The History of Rome , pp. 290 - 295Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1828