Roman Senate

Sed posterioribus temporibus Trebellio Maximo et Annaeo Seneca consulibus senatusconsultum factum est, quo cautum est, ut si cui hereditas ex fideicommissi causa restituta sit, actiones quae iure ciuili heredi et in heredem conpeterent 〈ei〉 et in eum darentur cui ex fideicommisso restituta esset hereditas per quod senatusconsultum desierunt illae cautiones in usu haberi.

Sed rursus quia heredes scripti, cum aut totam hereditatem aut paene totam plerumque restituere rogabantur, adire hereditatem ob nullum aut minimum lucrum recusabant, atque ob id extinguebantur fideicommissa, postea Pegaso et Pusione 〈consulibus〉 senatus censuit, ut ei qui rogatus esset hereditatem restituere proinde liceret quartam partem retinere, atque e lege Falcidia in legatis retinere conceditur.

Item orbi, qui per legem Papiam [ob id quod liberos non habebant] dimidias partes hereditatum legatorumque perdunt, olim solida fideicommissa uidebantur capere posse.

Why were these things disregarded by the senate?

Doubtless the Roman senate held the supreme God in as great veneration as we;

It hath often been remarked that the senate permitted the chorus in the Troad to sing, There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing.

He returned to Italy in the end of the following year, and he was publicly thanked by the senate for his services, but disappointed in his hopes for a triumph.

the senate decreed that the consuls should abdicate;

but, perceiving that the matter had caused religious scruple among the people, he referred it to the senate.

and when he reported this to the senate, he was at first thrown into prison, as having spoken too rashly of public affairs, but afterwards, when letters arrived from Paulus and the same day was found to agree, he was rewarded by the senate with land and exemption from service.

There was, then, no state at that time, when the laws had no force in it, when the courts lay prostrate, when the custom of the fathers had perished, when, the magistrates having been driven out by the sword, the very name of the Senate had no place in the commonwealth;

I was summoned into a state, when there was in the commonwealth a consul — who then was none — when there was a senate — which then had perished — when there was a free consent of the people, and the memory of law and equity, which are the bonds of a state, had been recovered.

27. PARADOX IV — That every fool is mad.

Such hostilities between the people and senate of Rome, and among the king, lords and commons of England, had produced consequences which inculcated two truths;

the public council of the senate, without waiting for levies and without naming a commander, has chosen sudden captains for its anger, and, hunting noble men through the houses of the city, has taken vengeance with its own hands;

Lately Gaius Caesar, in one day, scourged and tortured Sextus Papinius, whose father was of consular rank, Betilienus Bassus his own quaestor, the son of his procurator, and others, both senators and Roman knights—not for the sake of inquiry but for the pleasure of it;

then he was so impatient of postponing the gratification which his cruelty demanded, vast and without delay, that, walking in the colonnade of his mother's gardens that separates the portico from the riverbank, he beheaded some of them by lamplight, along with married women and other senators.

The senate is often in session the whole day long, while at that very time the meanest fellow is amusing his leisure on the Campus, or skulking in a tavern, or wasting his time in some idle knot of loafers.