Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/249

VIII whom the State cannot be governed; no kind of public business can be transacted without him, or without the magistrates below him in rank; yet it is not his hand that is on the helm. Nothing can be done without his initiation, yet he is not the guiding spirit of the State. It is the great Council over which he presides, and whose advice an almost unbroken tradition enjoins him not only to ask, but to take, in whose hands are really the destinies of Rome, her empire, and the world. What, then, was this Council? in what manner selected, and entrusted with what duties? Do we find here, as in the executive, the characteristic marks of an oligarchy?

Let us see in the first place how the Senate was filled up, and who were the persons who sat in it. Every five years the list of its members, three hundred in number, was revised; and the revision, once the duty of the consul, as of the king before him, was now entrusted to two censors. These censors must have previously held the consulship; they were therefore men of experience, advanced in life, and members of the hereditary nobility. The principles on which they were to select the senators were clearly understood, and even defined by statute