Senatus Populi Romani

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 1.13 §2 I have not been the first asked for my opinion in the senate

  The presiding consul called on senators for their opinions (sententiae) in a fixed order of seniority; to be asked first (rogatus primus) was a mark of standing. Cicero is pleased to have been placed second, freeing him from obligation to the man given first place.

• Ad Atticum 1.14 §5 about fifteen men assented to Curio when he made no senate's decree; on the other side there were easily four hundred

  A senatorial vote was taken by physical division (discessio): senators walked to the side of the proposal they backed. The lopsided 400-to-15 split shows Clodius's faction was crushed in the senate even as he obstructed the popular vote.

• Ad Atticum 1.16 §1 the senate's authority

  The auctoritas senatus: the moral and political weight of the senate's collective will, which Cicero presents himself as defending against Clodius's appeals to the popular assemblies.

• Ad Atticum 1.16 §2 by senate's decree

  Senatus consultum (SC): a formal resolution of the senate. A tribune could veto (intercessio) the legislation it recommended, which is the obstruction Hortensius feared from Fufius.

• Ad Atticum 3.24 §2 the Senate would decree nothing before our case had been moved

  Cicero's partisans had hoped the Senate would transact no other business until his recall was settled; granting the provinces broke that resolve and so weakened the leverage of his cause.

• Ad Atticum 3.26 §1 the senatus consultum which has been passed about me

  A senatus consultum was a formal resolution of the Senate; this one, of 1 January 57 BC, commended Cicero's recall to the people and opened the legislative campaign that would bring him home.

• Ad Atticum 3.26 §1 I shall use the authority of the Senate

  If the bill were blocked, Cicero means to invoke the Senate's auctoritas --- its moral weight rather than binding force --- as warrant for returning even at the risk of his life.

• Ad Atticum 4.1 §3 our authority in the Senate

  Auctoritas in senatu: the weight a senator's opinion carried when his view was asked in debate. Cicero measures his recovery from exile by the return of this standing among his peers.

• Ad Atticum 7.1 §4 Speak, Marcus Tullius.

  Cicero dramatizes being called on by name to give his sententia (opinion) in the senate, where members spoke in order of rank when invited by the presiding magistrate.

• Ad Atticum 7.3 §5 what will be done, when it has been said, `Speak, Marcus Tullius!'

  In senatorial debate the presiding magistrate called on members by rank to give their sententia ("dic, M. Tulli"); Atticus asks how Cicero will vote when his turn comes, and Cicero answers that he will side with Pompey.

• Ad Atticum 9.17 §1 he wants the Senate to attend in numbers on the Kalends

  Caesar summoned the Senate to meet at Rome on the Kalends (1st) of April 49 BC to give a constitutional veneer to his position; Cicero, dreading what he would have to say there, agonizes over whether to obey the proclamation.

• Ad Atticum 10.3 §1 by decree of the Senate concerning peace

  A senatus consultum was the Senate's formal resolution; only such a decree could give an embassy official standing. With most senators dispersed by the war, Cicero questions whether any genuine senatorial authority still operated.

• Ad Atticum 10.8 §7 those whom the Senate, lest the commonwealth take any harm, armed against me

  This echoes the senatus consultum ultimum, the emergency decree "that the consuls see to it that the commonwealth take no harm," by which the Senate armed the magistrates against a public enemy. Cicero turns the formula bitterly against himself: were he to join Pompey, he would be the one declared the enemy.

• Ad Atticum 12.11 §1 what we are to do about the Senate

  Cicero, having largely withdrawn from public life under Caesar's dictatorship, deliberates with Atticus over whether and how often to attend meetings of the Senate. The question of attendance recurs in the morbus-excuse letters of this period.

• Ad Atticum 12.21 §1 All he asks is that you correct the decree of the senate

  A senatus consultum was the senate's formal resolution; Brutus, writing his own work on the affair, wanted only a textual correction to the recorded decree. Cicero finds the request trivial, fit for a copyist.

• Ad Atticum 12.21 §5 without the courts, without the senate-house

  The curia was the senate-house in the Forum; with the courts (iudicia) suspended and the senate dominated by Caesar, Cicero felt the Forum had lost everything that once drew him to it. Returning would only force him to face men he could not bear to see.

• Ad Atticum 14.22 §2 warned by many not to be in the Senate on the Kalends

  Rumours warned Cicero that armed men were being mustered for the Senate meeting of 1 June 44 BC, aimed at the Liberators and their sympathizers, making attendance unsafe.

• Ad Atticum 16.9 §1 the Senate cannot meet before the Kalends of January

  With both consuls (Antony and Dolabella) away or hostile, no regular session of the Senate could be convened until the new consuls Hirtius and Pansa took office on 1 January 43 BC.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.4 §2 the Senate or the Roman people must judge those citizens who have not perished in arms

  Brutus resists Cicero's pressure to execute Gaius Antonius on his own authority, insisting that condemnation of a Roman citizen requires a formal verdict of the Senate or People — a pointed invocation of Republican constitutional principle.

• Ad M. Brutum 2.1 §2 in the rank in which the judgement of the Senate and people has set me

  Cicero means his standing as a former consul (consularis) who speaks among the principes civitatis — the leading men who address the Senate first; he claims not merely the ordinary duties of a senator but the heightened responsibility of one who has taken the role of steering the state.

• Ad Familiares 1.2 §4 a most weighty resolution of the Senate was passed

  When a tribune vetoed (intercessit) a formal decree, the senate's expressed will was recorded instead as a senatus auctoritas. Cato's and Caninius's veto here downgraded the measure but it was still entered on record.

• Ad Familiares 2.7 §3 write up in a single letter to the Senate all the summer's deeds

  A governor was required to report his military and administrative actions to the Senate in an official dispatch (litterae); Cicero's dispatch covering the Amanus and Pindenissum campaigns is largely preserved as Fam. 15.1-2.

• Ad Familiares 3.2 §2 by senatorial decree, the province must be administered

  Under the lex Pompeia of 52 BC and the Senate's enabling decrees, ex-consuls and ex-praetors who had not yet held a province were drafted to govern; this is how Cicero, consul a decade earlier, was now bound to Cilicia.

• Ad Familiares 3.3 §2 the decrees of the Senate that have been passed

  Senatus consulta: formal resolutions of the Senate, here governing the disposition of troops in the eastern provinces.

• Ad Familiares 3.8 §4 the public council of the world, that is, in the Senate

  Cicero's grand formula (publicum orbis terrae consilium) for the Senate as the deliberative body of the whole Roman world, before which the embassies of thanks were to appear.

• Ad Familiares 4.1 §1 to a meeting of senators

  Cicero distinguishes a true sitting of the Senate from a mere "gathering of senators": with the consuls and most magistrates fled abroad with Pompey, any assembly Caesar convened in Rome lacked, in Cicero's eyes, full constitutional authority.

• Ad Familiares 5.9 §1 The dispatch to the Senate on our exploits

  Litterae ad senatum: an official commander's report of victories, sent to the Senate to win a supplicatio (public thanksgiving) and a step toward a triumph. Vatinius encloses a copy for Cicero to lobby on his behalf.

• Ad Familiares 6.17 §1 I want the commonwealth at last to be put on a firm footing

  Written in mid-April 44 BC, a month after Caesar's assassination, this phrase encodes Cicero's hope that the conspirators' act will restore republican government; by 'commonwealth on a firm footing' he means a restored Senate-led res publica, not a new autocracy.

• Ad Familiares 6.18 §1 men who today practise haruspicy are being enrolled into the Senate at Rome

  Haruspices were Etruscan-trained diviners who read omens from entrails; regarded as a lower-grade religious function than augury and socially marginal. Cicero's jest is that Caesar was enrolling such men in the Roman Senate while a far lesser stigma barred respectable municipal men from town councils.

• Ad Familiares 10.13 §1 the senatorial decree itself

  The senatus consultum formally recorded the decree; Cicero says it was written out verbatim from his prepared motion (de scripto dicta sententia), an unusually formal procedure signaling the gravity of the honors.

• Ad Familiares 10.16 §1 What was in the senatorial decree you will learn from itself

  The senatus consultum (s.c.), the formal written record of the Senate's vote, would be sent to Plancus separately; Cicero declines to recopy its terms into the letter.

• Ad Familiares 10.16 §2 be your own senate

  Cicero authorises Plancus to act on his own judgement without referring back to Rome (reicere ad senatum), an extraordinary licence reflecting both the speed of the war and Cicero's trust in him.

• Ad Familiares 10.17 §2 after the terrible loss of the consuls

  Both consuls of 43 BC, A. Hirtius and C. Vibius Pansa, died in the Mutina campaign, leaving Rome without its chief magistrates; Plancus sends his ailing brother home to fill the gap in civic administration.

• Ad Familiares 10.19 §1 Your letter has been wonderfully welcome to the Senate

  Plancus, as governor of Transalpine Gaul, reported officially to the Senate by despatch (litterae); such a despatch from a provincial commander would be read aloud in session and could itself be the trigger for honors voted to its author.

• Ad Familiares 10.21 §4 all the enemy declared public enemies at last and their goods confiscated

  A reference to the Senate's decrees of late April 43 declaring Antony and his followers hostes (public enemies), which entailed confiscation of their property; Lepidus's soldiers cite these very measures as reason not to fight for the Senate's side.

• Ad Familiares 10.22 §1 to make use of that senatus consultum

  A senatus consultum was a formal resolution of the Senate; Cicero explains that, business being too slow to frame a fresh decree at their own discretion, he and Plancus's brother fell back on an existing one.

• Ad Familiares 10.24 §1 a formal vote of thanks

  Plancus alludes to Cicero's senatorial motion (gratiarum actio) on his behalf; in Fam. 10.13 Cicero reports carrying honours for Plancus and his troops through the Senate against opposition.

• Ad Familiares 10.28 §2 when the tribunes of the plebs had called the Senate for 20 December

  Refers to the meeting of 20 December 44 BC at which Cicero delivered the Third Philippic, rousing the Senate against Antony; the tribunes had summoned it for a different agenda item before Cicero broadened the debate.

• Ad Familiares 10.35 §1 I call gods and men to witness, senators

  "Senators" renders patres conscripti, the formal mode of addressing the Senate; this letter is Lepidus's open dispatch to the magistrates, Senate, and people of Rome justifying his conduct.

• Ad Familiares 12.12 §1 I forbade to be delivered until it had first been read to you

  Cassius routed his official dispatch to the Senate through Cicero, instructing his couriers to let Cicero read it first — a mark of how far he relied on Cicero to manage affairs at Rome.

• Ad Familiares 12.15 §3 Stricken with fear at this, senators

  "Senators" renders the formal address patres conscripti (abbreviated p. c. in the Latin), the standard vocative for the assembled Senate in a speech or dispatch.

• Ad Familiares 12.20 §1 This I scribbled while in the Senate.

  A throwaway sign-off: Cicero dashed off the note during a sitting of the Senate, an aside that conveys both haste and the informality of his friendship with Cornificius.

• Ad Familiares 12.28 §2 you should requisition supplies under the senatorial decree

  A governor armed with a senatus consultum could requisition money and supplies from the province itself (the imperatum) or raise loans on credit, instead of waiting for funds from Rome.

• Ad Familiares 12.29 §2 every kind of falsified decree of the Senate was being put about

  After Caesar's death Antony was accused of forging senatus consulta and inserting bogus measures among Caesar's papers; Cicero exploits this to deny that any decree damaging Cornificius was genuinely Lamia's doing.

• Ad Familiares 12.29 §2 that Sempronian decree

  A particular senatorial decree associated with a Sempronius, evidently one Cornificius suspected was aimed at him; Cicero denies any part in it, noting he was not even at Rome when it passed.

• Ad Familiares 13.5 §2 Caesar has enrolled him in the Senate

  After the civil war, Caesar reduced the Senate's numbers lost to death and exile by enrolling new members by personal appointment (lectio senatus), bypassing the traditional censorial process. Curtius was one such new enrollee; stripping him of his land would undercut Caesar's own act of patronage.

• Ad Familiares 13.26 §3 you remit them, since the case is with a senator, to Rome

  Roman law gave senators a privilege of being tried or judged at Rome rather than in the provinces; Cicero invokes Mescinius's senatorial status as grounds for the provincial governor to refer contumacious disputants back to the Roman courts, strengthening Mescinius's hand in the settlement.

• Ad Familiares 15.4 §3 in accordance with a decree of the Senate

  Cicero's levy of recalled veterans (evocati) and allied auxiliaries rested on a senatorial decree authorizing the eastern commanders to raise troops against the Parthian threat of 51 BC.

• Ad Familiares 15.9 §2 what you, with the senate's resolution and by law, have set as my term

  The lex Pompeia and the consequent senatus consultum fixed the proconsular term at one year. Cicero is anxious already, on the road, that nothing be added to it; the same fear runs through the rest of the Cilician correspondence.

• Ad Familiares 15.10 §1 when my letter is read out, a decree of the Senate is made in the most honourable terms

  A victorious commander's dispatch (litterae laureatae) was read aloud in the Senate, which then debated honours; Cicero asks the consul to manage the reading and steer through a flattering senatus consultum.

• Ad Familiares 15.13 §2 the senate's decree on my achievements be made in the most honorific terms

  A senatus consultum praising a commander's res gestae was the formal prelude to a public thanksgiving and ultimately a triumph; Cicero is lobbying the consul to steer the decree on his Cilician campaign through the Senate in flattering terms.

• Ad Familiares 15.14 §5 no extension of time be given me for this province, which both the Senate and the people willed to be annual

  Cicero's command in Cilicia was legally fixed at one year; only a fresh senatorial decree could prolong it, and he repeatedly asks his friends at Rome to block any such extension.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 2.3 §1 the embassies were being put off to the Ides of February

  By custom February was the month the Senate gave over to hearing foreign embassies (legationes). Their crowding the calendar kept squeezing out the urgent business of the riots and the courts.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 2.3 §5 the political clubs and the gangs organized by tribes

  The sodalitates were political clubs and the decuriati were men enrolled by tribe to deliver votes or violence at the assemblies. The Senate ordered them dissolved and a law passed treating refusal as a violence (de vi) offence.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 2.4 §4 And yet there have been thanksgivings

  A supplicatio was a public thanksgiving voted by the Senate, with the temples opened and the gods honoured for a victory or deliverance; such days, like festivals, also blocked the assemblies.

• Brutus §164 the authority of the senate

  Auctoritas senatus: the moral and political weight of the senate's collective judgment. Crassus's speech on the Caepian law defended the senate's prerogative against the equestrian jurors.

• Cato the Elder, On Old Age §19 our ancestors would never have called their highest council the Senate

  Cicero plays on the etymology of senatus from senex (old man): the council of elders. The Spartan gerousia (here 'the Elders') is offered as the Greek parallel.

• Against Catiline, First Speech §1 senators

  patres conscripti, the formal Senate address. The First Catilinarian was delivered in the temple of Jupiter Stator at the foot of the Palatine on 8 November 63 BC, with Catiline himself present in the chamber.

• Second Philippic §1 senators

  patres conscripti, the formal address to the Senate. The Second Philippic is a written invective answering Antony's senatorial attack of 19 September 44 BC; it was circulated as a pamphlet, never actually delivered.

• On His Return: To the Senate §1 Senators

  patres conscripti, the formal Senate address. This is the first of the two thanksgiving speeches Cicero delivered in September 57 BC immediately on his return from exile; this one was given before the Senate, its companion (Post Reditum ad Quirites) before the people.

• For Marcus Marcellus §1 senators

  patres conscripti, the formal Senate address. Pro Marcello was delivered in the Senate in 46 BC, breaking the long public silence Cicero had kept since Pharsalus; it is the first of his three so-called "Caesarian speeches."

• For Titus Annius Milo §70 take no harm

  The senatus consultum ultimum, the emergency decree ("that the consuls see that the commonwealth take no harm") by which the Senate authorized magistrates to use force against public enemies. Cicero invokes it as the precedent justifying Milo's killing of Clodius.