Senatus
| Please add updates or make corrections to the NumisWiki text version as appropriate. Senatus, Senate, or assembly of senators, the name given (from senes, because, at first, elders alone, on account of their experience and supposed prudence, were alone selected for members) to that council of state, which Romulus instituted to assist him in the government of his infant kingdom, and to regulate its public affairs, during his absence on any warlike expedition. The original number appointed by the founder of Rome was one hundred, and these being chosen from the oldest, as well as the wealthiest and wisest of the citizens, were called patricians, from the word pater. -- Tarquinius Priscus (himself a novus homo and of foreign descent) was the first who, from among the most eminent of the commonalty (plebes), took another hundred men of advanced age, and conferred upon them the senatorial title and dignity. It was the object of Romulus, in creating the senate, to establish a body who should perform a leading part in the administration of government, and occasionally to command in his place. His successors supported it in the exercise of this great authority until Tarquin the Proud began to reign ; and he, according to Livy, abolished their former prerogatives ; had a council of his own, consulting neither senate nor people, but made peace and war, treaties and alliances, with whom he pleased. After the expulsion of that tyrant, and the abolition of the Roman monarchy, the first consuls, in order to supply the places of those whom Tarquin had slain, and at the same time to augment the order, made it to consist of three hundred. It was at this epocha that the senate possessed its highest degree of political power. It then became absolute master of the commonwealth, and a senatus consultum was the sole channel of information about public matters to "the masses." The people, in fact, appeared to have enjoyed infinitely less liberty under the consular government than had been granted by Romulus, and continued to them by the majority of their kings. For the insupportable weight of the Patrician yoke the people revolted in the year 495 B.C., and their retreat to Mons Sacer proved the means of obtaining for them the right of electing Tribunes as the peculiar magistracy of the Plebeians ; and the subsequent law by which, on the occasion of the affair of Coriolanus, every Roman citizen, without respect for order or dignity, should be compelled to answer, when duly summoned to appear, before the people assembled in comitia by tribes ; the patricians having previously acknowledged themselves amenable to no other judges than the senate itself. But, although thus materially shorn of its over predominating power, this aristocratic and justly influential body still remained the sole guardian of the public treasure ; it took cognizance of all political affairs commited in Italy, retained the right of sending ambassadors to, and of receiving envoys from, foreign princes and states ; it continued to exercise the prerogative of decreeing triumphs, of receiving the despatches transmitted by those who commanded the Roman armies ; and in great emergencies of ordering the consuls to raise forces for the preservation of the state. The senate was moreover entrusted with the superintendence of all that concerned the festival rites and the functionaries of religion. In a word, so long as the free republic lasted it was regarded by all as the sacred head, the perpetual council, the support, defender, and preserver of the commonwealth. Three hundred remained the number of the senate up to the age of Sylla. And, although the amount to which he increased it cannot be precisely ascertained, yet probably it then exceeded four hundred, which was the number in Cicero's time, as may be gathered from his letters to Atticus. -- When the empire supplanted the republic a corresponding change took place in the constitution of the senate, which had already been enormously increased by Julius Caesar. (Dion says to nine hundred, and Suetonius carries it to one thousand). But as a great many of the honour (for strangers from Gaul and elsewhere had been introduced into association with the patres conscripti of Rome) Augustus signalised his accession to supreme power, amongst other things, by bringing the senate back again to the numbers, and restoring it ti the outward splendour which it had before the civil war ; or, perhaps, he permitted it to be numerically greater, as, according to Dion, it then consisted barely of six hundred senators ; and, although succeeding emperors sometimes made augmentations, its average number was never afterwards much more. The revolution, still rejecting the name of King, gave a monarchical form to the government, and soon influenced the position of the senate. Augustus's appointment of a distinct council of state was the first blow struck at the pristine authority of that celebrated assembly. Tiberius managed step by step to deprive it of executive power in matters of any leading importance. There was, indeed, a show of re-establishing the senate in its old rights under Nero ; but Tacitus, who alludes to the circumstance, observes that it was a mere disguise of that prince, who, under some such a fair outside, sought to mask his real intentions, which soon betrayed themselves in the most atrocious encroachments. Succeeding Caesars, equally arbitrary, and some of them still more artful, proceeded in the gradual but effectual task of robbing this powerful and once majestic body of all its state privileges, and of erecting imperial despotism on the ruin, humiliation, and disgrace of the senatorial order.
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Senatus
| Please add updates or make corrections to the NumisWiki text version as appropriate. Senatus, Senate, or assembly of senators, the name given (from senes, because, at first, elders alone, on account of their experience and supposed prudence, were alone selected for members) to that council of state, which Romulus instituted to assist him in the government of his infant kingdom, and to regulate its public affairs, during his absence on any warlike expedition. The original number appointed by the founder of Rome was one hundred, and these being chosen from the oldest, as well as the wealthiest and wisest of the citizens, were called patricians, from the word pater. -- Tarquinius Priscus (himself a novus homo and of foreign descent) was the first who, from among the most eminent of the commonalty (plebes), took another hundred men of advanced age, and conferred upon them the senatorial title and dignity. It was the object of Romulus, in creating the senate, to establish a body who should perform a leading part in the administration of government, and occasionally to command in his place. His successors supported it in the exercise of this great authority until Tarquin the Proud began to reign ; and he, according to Livy, abolished their former prerogatives ; had a council of his own, consulting neither senate nor people, but made peace and war, treaties and alliances, with whom he pleased. After the expulsion of that tyrant, and the abolition of the Roman monarchy, the first consuls, in order to supply the places of those whom Tarquin had slain, and at the same time to augment the order, made it to consist of three hundred. It was at this epocha that the senate possessed its highest degree of political power. It then became absolute master of the commonwealth, and a senatus consultum was the sole channel of information about public matters to "the masses." The people, in fact, appeared to have enjoyed infinitely less liberty under the consular government than had been granted by Romulus, and continued to them by the majority of their kings. For the insupportable weight of the Patrician yoke the people revolted in the year 495 B.C., and their retreat to Mons Sacer proved the means of obtaining for them the right of electing Tribunes as the peculiar magistracy of the Plebeians ; and the subsequent law by which, on the occasion of the affair of Coriolanus, every Roman citizen, without respect for order or dignity, should be compelled to answer, when duly summoned to appear, before the people assembled in comitia by tribes ; the patricians having previously acknowledged themselves amenable to no other judges than the senate itself. But, although thus materially shorn of its over predominating power, this aristocratic and justly influential body still remained the sole guardian of the public treasure ; it took cognizance of all political affairs commited in Italy, retained the right of sending ambassadors to, and of receiving envoys from, foreign princes and states ; it continued to exercise the prerogative of decreeing triumphs, of receiving the despatches transmitted by those who commanded the Roman armies ; and in great emergencies of ordering the consuls to raise forces for the preservation of the state. The senate was moreover entrusted with the superintendence of all that concerned the festival rites and the functionaries of religion. In a word, so long as the free republic lasted it was regarded by all as the sacred head, the perpetual council, the support, defender, and preserver of the commonwealth. Three hundred remained the number of the senate up to the age of Sylla. And, although the amount to which he increased it cannot be precisely ascertained, yet probably it then exceeded four hundred, which was the number in Cicero's time, as may be gathered from his letters to Atticus. -- When the empire supplanted the republic a corresponding change took place in the constitution of the senate, which had already been enormously increased by Julius Caesar. (Dion says to nine hundred, and Suetonius carries it to one thousand). But as a great many of the honour (for strangers from Gaul and elsewhere had been introduced into association with the patres conscripti of Rome) Augustus signalised his accession to supreme power, amongst other things, by bringing the senate back again to the numbers, and restoring it ti the outward splendour which it had before the civil war ; or, perhaps, he permitted it to be numerically greater, as, according to Dion, it then consisted barely of six hundred senators ; and, although succeeding emperors sometimes made augmentations, its average number was never afterwards much more. The revolution, still rejecting the name of King, gave a monarchical form to the government, and soon influenced the position of the senate. Augustus's appointment of a distinct council of state was the first blow struck at the pristine authority of that celebrated assembly. Tiberius managed step by step to deprive it of executive power in matters of any leading importance. There was, indeed, a show of re-establishing the senate in its old rights under Nero ; but Tacitus, who alludes to the circumstance, observes that it was a mere disguise of that prince, who, under some such a fair outside, sought to mask his real intentions, which soon betrayed themselves in the most atrocious encroachments. Succeeding Caesars, equally arbitrary, and some of them still more artful, proceeded in the gradual but effectual task of robbing this powerful and once majestic body of all its state privileges, and of erecting imperial despotism on the ruin, humiliation, and disgrace of the senatorial order.
| View whole page from the |Dictionary Of Roman Coins|
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