The Political Institutions of the Republic III: The Senate

Abstract

The political system of the Roman republic was operated by an ingeniously interlocking multiplicity of elected magistrates - all equipped with mutually countervailing jurisdictions. Yet the republican order could never have been maintained, without revolutionary breaks, over half a millennium had it not provided for a unifying and integrating force. This was the Senate, the most enduring institution the Roman political genius invented. In its entirety based on constitutional conventions without normative formalization, the Senate developed into the motor of, as well as the brake on, the political process, the center from which all other constituted organs took their impulses. Without impeding progress where needed, the Senate was generally distinguished by conservatism. By virtue of the techniques controlling its composition, it was a collective body of civilian-military professionals. In time it evolved into a meritocracy with a unique esprit de corps, imbued, during the classical period, with a deep sense of patriotic responsibility and national mission. Only in the later republican period did it degenerate into an instrument of class rule, an oligarchy in the true Aristotelian sense. The Senate combined, to the best advantages of the state, the capacity of providing cooperation between the various organs with the supreme policy-making function. It transmitted its name to many similar institutions, none equalling, let alone surpassing, the Roman model in political usefulness. No other collective group in the history of government did acquire, through the ages, and deserve, greater prestige and fame.