Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
When the early Roman gentes were aggregating to form a common community, the patres from the leading clans were selected [6] for the confederated board of elders that would become the Roman senate. [5] Over time, the patres came to recognize the need for a single leader, and so they elected a king (rex), [5] and vested in him their sovereign ...
The Senate was the governing and advisory assembly of the aristocracy in the ancient Roman Republic.It was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors, which were appointed by the aristocratic Centuriate Assembly.
The Roman people were theoretically sovereign, but all of its sovereign power had to be exercised through the magistrates which it elected. The Latin vocabulary for elections and voting implies early voting was largely done by acclamation, where the purpose of elections was to affirm popular consent for elite leadership choices. [9]
Its only remaining function was, after the senate had 'elected' the magistrates, to hear the renuntiatio, [19] which had no legal purpose, but instead was a ceremony in which the results of the election were read to the electors. This allowed the emperor to claim that the magistrates had been "elected" by a sovereign people.
Modern representation of a sitting of the Roman Senate. Since most senators were former magistrates, the Senate became bound together by a strong sense of collegiality. At any given point in time, many of the Senate's most senior members were ex-consuls, which facilitated the creation of a bond between the presiding consul and those senior ...
In 48 BC, the senate bestowed the tribunicia potestas (tribunician power) on the dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, who, as a patrician, was ineligible to be elected one of the tribunes. When two of the elected tribunes attempted to obstruct his actions, Caesar had them impeached, and taken before the senate, where they were deprived of their powers.
The Senate of the Roman Empire was a political institution in the ancient Roman Empire. After the fall of the Roman Republic, the constitutional balance of power shifted from the Roman Senate to the Roman Emperor. Beginning with the first emperor, Augustus, the Emperor and the Senate were technically two co-equal branches of government. In ...
After the nominee received the approval of the Roman Senate, the interrex held the formal election before the Curiate Assembly. After the Curiate Assembly elected the new king, and the Senate ratified that election, the interrex then presided over the assembly as it voted on the law that granted the king his legal powers (the lex curiata de ...