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The Senate - and Popular Assemblies

                The sovereign will of Rome was determined in various assemblies and carried out by popularly elected officials.  The constitution of the Republic of 509 B.C. developed during the years, and by 300 B.C. a system was worked out which remained in force until the first century before Christ. The government was a highly aristocratic republic in which power supposedly rested with the senate and the people - the senatus populusque romanus, whose initial letters, S.P.Q.R., formed the symbol of the Roman state.

                The senate was the most important political body at Rome throughout Republican times. It had originated in the days of the monarchy, when the kings sometimes summoned important persons for advice on public matters, and Republican Rome carefully preserved it. After the Revolution of 509 B.C., when consuls replaced the kings as chief magistrates, the senate became a body in which members of the great patrician families debated and determined state policy. It contained about two hundred members appointed for life.  Meetings of the senate were called by one of the consuls, and discussion was limited to questions raised by the official who called the meeting.  However, any senator could probably find some official who would ask his advice on whatever subject he wished to discuss. In addition to advising the consuls, the senate drew up laws of general purport (leges), debated them at length, and voted on them, and settled matters of - immediate policy by decree.  Except for actual declarations of war and the ratification of treaties-- which were done by popular assemblies-- it directed foreign policy. It appointed lesser officials, and in general it exercised close supervision over the whole government.

                In praise of its sobriety and patriotism, later writers sometimes referred to it as "an assembly of kings."

                The people of Rome, or the populus, met and expressed their views. in various assemblies or comitia.  All important measures were laid before one or another of these assemblies for approval and here the higher magistrates were elected.  Every citizen might attend the assemblies in person, but voting was indirect since all voters were divided into groups, and the question at issue was decided by the majority of the groups.  An early assembly called the comitia curiata was superseded by two others during the greater part of Republican history: the comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa.

                The comitia centuriata was organized along the same lines as the army and it continued long after the legion had rendered the century obsolete for military purposes.  Since the two upper divisions of the centuries were made up of the wealthier citizens, and these two groups constituted a clear majority of the 193 centuries, the comitia centuriata was an aristocratic assembly, and such it remained even after the centuries had lost their former military significance, because the financial requirements for admission to the upper groups were put so high that only the wealthy could qualify.  This aristocratic comitia centuriata elected the consuls and other high magistrates, declared war and ratified treaties, passed laws (leges) concurrently with the senate, and served as a court of appeal for citizens condemned to death.  Roman politicians also showed their skill by their arrangement of groups in the comitia tributa.  The grouping in this assembly was territorial: citizens were divided into tribus, or "tribes", of which the four "urban" tribes were for the citizens of Rome and the thirty-one "rural" ones were for the country people.  The relative voting strength of the moderately well-to-do rural voters was increased by the fact that votes must be cast personally in Rome, and the poorer men entitled to vote often could not afford a long trip to Rome and the loss of time from work.  The comitia tributa elected the "tribunes of the people" (tribuni plebis), and passed resolutions (scita or plebiscita, whence our word "plebiscite")which after 287 B.C. had the same force as the laws (leges) passed by the senate and the comitia centuriata.  This assembly came to represent the independent small landholders who were opposed to the aristocratic large landholders on the one hand and to the urban workers on the other.

       Though the comitia tributa could hardly be called "democratic" in our sense of the term. It was likely to be more anti-patrician than the comitia centuriata.