Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/92

and laid before it his questions; no senator might declare his opinion unasked, still less might the senate meet without being summoned. The advice tendered was not a command; the king might omit to comply with it, while the senate had no means at its disposal for giving practical effect to its "authority." "I have chosen you," the king said to his senators, "not that ye may be my guides, but that ye may do my bidding." Yet it was, beyond all doubt, practically regarded as a flagrant abuse of the king's power when he omitted to consult the senate in important affairs. Thence the senate probably took part in imposing task-works and extraordinary services in general, in the disposal of the conquered territory, and other such matters; in all cases, moreover, where it was necessary to consult the community, as on the admission of non-burgesses to citizenship, and in the declaring aggressive war. If the Roman community was injured by a neighbour and redress was refused, the Fetialis invoked the gods to be witnesses of the wrong, and concluded with the words, "But on these matters we shall consult the elders at home how we may obtain our rights;" thereupon the king, after having consulted with the senate, reported the matter to the community: it was only when the senate and community had consented to it that the war was reckoned a righteous one, on which the blessing of the gods might reasonably be expected. On the other hand, no trace is to be found of the consultation of the senate in its collective capacity regarding the management of the army or in the administration of justice. It appears, indeed, that when the king sat in judgment himself and called in assessors, or committed the decision of processes at law to sworn deputies, he took these assessors or deputies from the ranks of the senate; but he seems to have taken them entirely of his own selection, and never to have consulted the senate as a body regarding such matters; and, for this reason no jurisdiction of the senate existed in Home so long as it was free.

The community. The division of the body of burgesses was based on the primitive normal principle that ten houses formed a clan (gens), ten clans or a hundred households formed a wardship (curia, probably related to curare, coerare—κοίρανος), ten wardships or a hundred clans or a thousand households formed the community; and further, that every household furnished a foot-soldier (hence mil-es, like equ-es, thousand-