conducted by the Senate composed, as Niebuhr was the first to state
correctly, of the chiefs of the three hundred gentes. Because they were
the elders of the gentes they were called patres, fathers, and as a body
senatus, council of elders, from senex, old. Here also the customary
choice of men from the same family of the gens brought to life the first
hereditary nobility. These families were called patricians and claimed
the exclusive right to the seats in the senate and to all other offices.
The fact that in the course of time the people admitted this claim so
that it became an actual privilege is confirmed by the legendary report
that Romulus bestowed the rank of patrician and its privileges on the
first senators. The senate, like the Athenian boule, had to make the
final decision in many affairs and to undertake the preliminary
discussion of more important matters, especially of new laws. These were
settled by the public meeting, the so-called comitia curiata (assembly
of curiae.) The people met in curiae, probably grouped by gentes, and
every one of the thirty curiae had one vote. The assembly of curiae
adopted or rejected all laws, elected all higher officials including the
rex (so-called king), declared war (but the senate concluded peace), and
decided as a supreme court, on appeal, all cases involving capital
punishment of Roman citizens. By the side of the senate and the public
meeting stood the rex, corresponding to the Grecian basileus, and by no
means, such an almost absolute king as Mommsen would have it.[26] The
rex was also a military leader, a high priest and a chairman of certain
courts. He had no other functions, nor any power over life, liberty and
property of the citizens, except such as resulted from his disciplinary
power as military leader or from his executive power as president of a
court. The office of rex was not hereditary. On the contrary, he was
elected, probably on the suggestion of his predecessor, by the assembly
of curiae and then solemnly invested by a second assembly. That he could
also be deposed is proved by the fate of Tarquinius Superbus.

As the Greeks at the time of the heroes, so the Romans at the time of
the so-called kings lived in a military democracy based on and developed
from a constitution of gentes, phratries and tribes. What though the
curiae and tribes were partly artificial formations, they were moulded
after the genuine and spontaneous models of a society from which