hundred might in some years have been thus completed.[1] But if any more names were needed, as might happen after severe loss in war, or if the censors, as they were entitled to do, struck off any names from the list drawn up by their predecessors, the persons nominated in addition would be such as had specially distinguished themselves in the field, or had in some way gained themselves public credit; and these were no doubt usually the sons or relations of men who were or had been senators.[2]
Thus the Senate was at this time almost entirely made up of men who had held office and done the State good service; and no small proportion of these had actually reached the consulship, or at least the prætorship. They had therefore been several times elected to office by the votes of the people, and it may indeed be said, with every appearance of truth, that the Senate represented the popular choice. But we have already seen that the people almost invariably chose for these higher magistracies members of the families of old repute and standing; and thus, though the Senate was in a sense representative of the popular will, it is also true that it was fed by the hereditary nobility.
And we must also notice that in the actual
- ↑ It will be worth the reader's while to examine at this point the hypothetical list of the Senate as revised by the censors of 179 B.C., drawn up at great pains by Willems (Sénat, i, 308 foll.).
- ↑ Read the account, in Livy xxiii. 23, of the lectio senatus of 216 B.C., after the terrible losses at Cannæ. It ends thus: "Tum ex iis qui magistratus non cepissent, qui spolia ex hoste fixa domi haberent, aut civicam coronam accepissent."
