The Senate

The modes of choosing both the president and senate, coincide also with the opinion, that the constitution considered the union as the act of bodies politick called states;

It would be exactly the case, as if the senate or house of representatives, between whom powers are divided and clashings arise, as in all such divisions, should either of them usurp a supremacy over the other, to remove the obstacles to its action, produced by these clashings.

Senate of the United States.

After this the generals made a statement before the Senate in regard to the battle and the violence of the storm;

Then they called an Assembly, at which the Senate brought in its proposal, which Callixeinus had drafted in the following terms:

and Theramenes rose and said:

and the senate spoke out, when last year he was a member of the senate.

If the senate sustains the charge against this man and expels him, and then hands him over to the courts, give the senate the usual testimonial;

I must tell you, however unpleasant it is to mention it, that for their failure to hand him over to the courts, or even to expel him from the senate chamber, they failed to receive the usual testimonial.

Or could the senate, when it decreed a triumph to Africanus, speak of 'his virtue' or 'his good fortune,' if neither virtue can be said to be in any but the wise man, nor good fortune truly?

So, as in the senate there is always someone who demands an interpreter, so those men must be heard by us with an interpreter.

This dual sovereignty, which is one of the most curious of the theoretical features of the Roman Constitution, was rendered possible and harmless by the fact that the mass of the voters in all the different assemblies were composed of the same individuals, and by the central control exercised by the Senate over all magistrates, and therefore over all assemblies before which these magistrates intro …

Idem senatus censuit et in persona pupilli patroni filii.

The name and date of this senatusconsultum cannot be ascertained.

Fabianus, when he was brought in as a witness before the Senate, blushed, I remember, and this modesty wonderfully became him.

What is wont to be done in the Senate I think should be done in philosophy too:

for he stole the senate-house of the city and the democracy outright and carried them off to Thebes, to the Cadmeia, by his agreement with the Boeotarchs for joint control.

But when Philip was dead and Alexander had come to the throne, Demosthenes again put on prodigious airs and caused a shrine to he dedicated to Pausanias and involved the senate in the charge of having offered sacrifice of thanksgiving as for good news.

And not even this will he allow to be done carelessly, but only after careful examination by the Senate, to determine who of them actually stood siege at Phyle when the Lacedaemonians and the Thirty made their attack, not those who deserted their post—as at Chaeroneia—in the face of the advancing enemy.

That counsel being then passed over, a cause arose for the people, two tribunes of the plebs being created through sedition, that the power and authority of the senate might be lessened;

The senate, then, held the commonwealth in this condition in those times, so that in a free people few things were done through the people, most by the authority and institution and custom of the senate;

that unless there be in a state this balanced compensation of right and of duty and of office—so that there be enough of power in the magistrates, of authority in the council of the leading men, and of liberty in the people—this unchangeable condition of the commonwealth cannot be preserved.

Being a member of the senate, men of the jury, with power to administer the oath and being custodian of the documents on the basis of which he convened the demesmen, what does he do?

For I see, men of Athens, that the decisions of your courts are more valid not only than those of the Halimusians who have expelled me, but more valid even than those of the senate and the popular assembly;

and when it was taken from me, I gave it up and betook myself to the senate, the proper authority, and when I had preferred my impeachment and had convicted him in the senate, I thought it enough merely to recover the ship’s equipment, and to leave the matter of the assault to a referee, and to make a concession in the matter of the fine.

If any man enter into a conspiracy, or join in seeking to bribe the Heliaea or any of the courts in Athens, or the Senate, by giving or receiving money for corrupt ends, or shall organize a clique for the overthrow of the democracy, or, while serving as public advocate, shall accept money in any suit, private or public, criminal suits shall be entered for these acts before the Thesmothetae.

but, if publicly, we should have kept quiet, and the officers or those chosen by the senate would have carried on the torture as far as they saw fit.

I thought that the Eleven, or persons chosen by the senate, should have everything written down, and then, having sealed up the evidence extorted by the torture—the answers, that is, given by the men—should produce it in court, that you might hear it, and in the light of this reach whatever verdict you might think right.

I answered, however, in the presence of witnesses, that I was ready to go with them to the senate, and in conjunction with the senate or the Eleven to receive the slaves for the torture, telling them that, if my suit against them had been a private one, I should have accepted the slaves for the torture, if they had offered them, but that, as it was, both the slaves and the information belonged to the state;

And all of you who stayed at home, listen to me in silence, while I set forth before you all the facts, and produce in support of every statement that I make the laws and decrees both of the senate and the people, and the testimony of witnesses.

For when you had voted that the members of the senate on behalf of the demesmen should report the names of those who were to pay taxes in advance, both of those who were members of the demes and those who owned property in them, my name was reported from three demes, as my property was in land.

seeing also that the price of grain was advancing in the Peiraeus, and that there was not very much to be bought, you voted that the trierarchs should launch their ships and bring them up to the pier, and that the members of the senate and the demarchs should make out lists of the demesmen and reports of available seamen, and that the armament should be despatched at once, and aid sent to the various regions.

The Emperors did not immediately abolish the Quæstiones, and at first they committed an extensive criminal jurisdiction to the Senate, in which, however servile it might show itself in fact, the Emperor was no more nominally than a Senator like the rest.

for, while they placed the trial of the greatest crimes in the hands of a single one of the courts, against the sycophants they instituted indictments before the Thesmothetae, impeachments before the Senate, and plaints before the General Assembly, believing that those who plied this trade exceeded all other forms of villainy;

Though he may have stepped down from his dictatorship and given himself back to the toga, yet what tyrant ever drank human blood so greedily as that man who ordered seven thousand Roman citizens to be butchered, and, when, sitting nearby at the temple of Bellona, he had heard the cry of so many thousands groaning beneath the sword, said to the terrified senate:

Moreover, Varro records that Serapis and Isis and Harpocrates and Anubis were forbidden the Capitol, and that their altars, cast down by the senate, were restored only by the violence of the populace.

This the decrees of the senate define, this the mandates of the emperors.

there was an old decree that no god should be consecrated by an emperor unless approved by the senate.

Father Liber with his mysteries the consuls, by the senate's authority, drove out not only from the city but from all Italy.