For this purpose the governing board had, first of all, to have its ranks filled up and to be itself placed on a footing of independence. The numbers of the senators had been fearfully reduced by the recent crises. Sulla no doubt now gave to those who were exiled by the equestrian courts liberty to return, for instance to the consular Publius Rutilius Rufus[12], who however made no use of the permission, and to Gaius Cotta the friend of Drusus[13]; but this made only slight amends for the gaps which the revolutionary and reactionary reigns of terror had created in the ranks of the senate. Accordingly by Sulla's directions the senate had its complement extraordinarily made up by about 300 new senators, whom the assembly of the tribes had to nominate from among men of equestrian census, and whom they selected, as may be conceived, chiefly from the younger men of the senatorial houses on the one hand, and from Sullan officers and others brought into prominence by the last revolution on the other.
For the future also the mode of admission to the senate was regulated anew and placed on an essentially different basis. As the constitution had hitherto stood, men entered the senate either through the summons of the censors, which was the proper and ordinary way, or through the holding of one of the three curule magistracies - the consulship, the praetorship, or the aedileship - to which since the passing of the Ovinian law a seat and vote in the senate had been de jure attached[14]. The holding of an inferior magistracy, of the tribunate or the quaestorship, gave doubtless a claim de facto to a place in the senate - inasmuch as the censorial selection especially turned towards the men who had held such offices - but by no means a reversion de jure. Of these two modes of admission, Sulla abolished the former by setting aside - at least practically - the censorship, and altered the latter to the effect that the right of admission to the senate was attached to the quaestorship instead of the aedileship, and at the same time the number of quaestors to be annually nominated was raised to twenty[15]. The prerogative hitherto legally pertaining to the censors, although practically no longer exercised in its original serious sense - of deleting any senator from the roll, with a statement of the reasons for doing so, at the revisals which took place every five years[16] - likewise fell into abeyance for the future; the irremoveable character which had hitherto de facto belonged to the senators was thus finally fixed by Sulla.
The total number of senators, which hitherto had presumably not much exceeded the old normal number of 300 and often perhaps had not even reached it, was by these means considerably augmented, perhaps on an average doubled[17] - an augmentation which was rendered necessary by the great increase of the duties of the senate through the transference to it of the functions of jurymen. As, moreover, both the extraordinarily admitted senators and the quaestors were nominated by the comitia tributa, the senate, hitherto resting indirectly on the election of the people[18], was now based throughout on direct popular election; and thus made as close an approach to a representative government as was compatible with the nature of the oligarchy and the notions of antiquity generally. The senate had in course of time been converted from a corporation intended merely to advise the magistrates into a board commanding the magistrates and self-governing; it was only a consistent advance in the same direction, when the right of nominating and cancelling senators originally belonging to the magistrates was withdrawn from them, and the senate was placed on the same legal basis on which the magistrates' power itself rested. The extravagant prerogative of the censors to revise the list of the senate and to erase or add names at pleasure was in reality incompatible with an organized oligarchic constitution. As provision was now made for a sufficient regular recruiting of its ranks by the election of the quaestors, the censorial revisions became superfluous; and by their abeyance the essential principle at the bottom of every oligarchy, the irremoveable character and life-tenure of the members of the ruling order who obtained seat and vote, was definitively consolidated.
In respect to legislation Sulla contented himself with reviving the regulations made in 666, and securing to the senate the legislative initiative, which had long belonged to it practically, by legal enactment at least as against the tribunes. The burgess-body remained formally sovereign; but so far as its primary assemblies were concerned, while it seemed to the regent necessary carefully to preserve the form, he was still more careful to prevent any real activity on their part. Sulla dealt even with the franchise itself in the most contemptuous manner; he made no difficulty either in conceding it to the new burgess-communities, or in bestowing it on Spaniards and Celts en masse; in fact, probably not without design, no steps were taken at all for the adjustment of the burgess-roll, which nevertheless after so violent revolutions stood in urgent need of a revision, if the government was still at all in earnest with the legal privileges attaching to it. The legislative functions of the comitia, however, were not directly restricted; there was no need in fact for doing so, for in consequence of the better-secured initiative of the senate the people could not readily against the will of the government intermeddle with administration, finance, or criminal jurisdiction, and its legislative co-operation was once more reduced in substance to the right of giving assent to alterations of the constitution.
Of greater moment was the participation of the burgesses in the elections - a participation, with which they seemed not to be able to dispense without disturbing more than Sulla's superficial restoration could or would disturb. The interferences of the movement party in the sacerdotal elections were set aside; not only the Domitian law of 650, which transferred the election of the supreme priesthoods generally to the people[19], but also the similar older enactments as to the Pontifex Maximus and the Curio Maximus[20] were cancelled by Sulla, and the colleges of priests received back the right of self-completion in its original absoluteness. In the case of elections to the offices of state, the mode hitherto pursued was on the whole retained; except in so far as the new regulation of the military command to be mentioned immediately certainly involved as its consequence a material restriction of the powers of the burgesses, and indeed in some measure transferred the right of bestowing the appointment of generals from the burgesses to the senate. It does not even appear that Sulla now resumed the previously attempted restoration of the Servian voting-arrangement[21]; whether it was that he regarded the particular composition of the voting-divisions as altogether a matter of indifference, or whether it was that this older arrangement seemed to him to augment the dangerous influence of the capitalists. Only the qualifications were restored and partially raised. The limit of age requisite for the holding of each office was enforced afresh; as was also the enactment that every candidate for the consulship should have previously held the praetorship, and every candidate for the praetorship should have previously held the quaestorship, whereas the aedileship was allowed to be passed over. The various attempts that had been recently made to establish a tyrannis under the form of a consulship continued for several successive years led to special rigour in dealing with this abuse; and it was enacted that at least two years should elapse between the holding of one magistracy and the holding of another, and at least ten years should elapse before the same office could be held a second time. In this latter enactment the earlier ordinance of 412[22] was revived, instead of the absolute prohibition of all re-election to the consulship, which had been the favourite idea of the most recent ultra-oligarchical epoch[23]. On the whole, however, Sulla left the elections to take their course, and sought merely to fetter the power of the magistrates in such a way that - let the incalculable caprice of the comitia call to office whomsoever it might - the person elected should not be in a position to rebel against the oligarchy.
12. IV. VI. Livius Drusus.
13. IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation.
14. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Senate.
15. How many quaestors had been hitherto chosen annually, is not known. In 487 the number stood at eight - two urban, two military, and four naval, quaestors (II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet, II. VII. Intermediate Fuctionaries); to which there fell to be added the quaestors employed in the provinces (III. III. Provincial Praetors). For the naval quaestors at Ostia, Cales, and so forth were by no means discontinued, and the military quaestors could not be employed elsewhere, since in that case the consul, when he appeared as commander-in-chief, would have been without a quaestor. Now, as down to Sulla's time there were nine provinces, and moreover two quaestors were sent to Sicily, he may possibly have found as many as eighteen quaestors in existence. But as the number of the supreme magistrates of this period was considerably less than that of their functions (p. 120), and the difficulty thus arising was constantly remedied by extension of the term of office and other expedients, and as generally the tendency of the Roman government was to limit as much as possible the number of magistrates, there may have been more quaestorial functions than quaestors, and it may be even that at this period no quaestor at all was sent to small provinces such as Cilicia. Certainly however there were, already before Sulla's time, more than eight quaestors.
16. III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility.
17. We cannot strictly speak at all of a fixed number of senators. Though the censors before Sulla prepared on each occasion a list of 300 persons, there always fell to be added to this list those non-senators who filled a curule office between the time when the list was drawn up and the preparation of the next one; and after Sulla there were as many senators as there were surviving quaestorians But it may be probably assumed that Sulla meant to bring the senate up to 500 or 600 members; and this number results, if we assume that 20 new members, at an average age of 30, were admitted annually, and we estimate the average duration of the senatorial dignity at from 25 to 30 years. At a numerously attended sitting of the senate in Cicero's time 417 members were present.
18. II. III. The Senate. Its Composition.
19. IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius.