easily assembled and regularly summoned by the consuls to discuss all
matters of public concern, it was natural that the foreign policy of the
state should be entirely in its hands--subject, of course, to the right of
the Assembly of the Centuries to sanction the making of war or peace--and
hence the organization and government of Rome's foreign possessions became
a senatorial prerogative. And, likewise, it fell to the Senate to deal
with all sudden crises which constituted a menace to the welfare of the
state, like the spread of the Bacchanalian associations which was ended by
the _Senatus Consultum_ of 186 B. C. And, finally, the Senate claimed the
right to proclaim a state of martial law by passing the so-called _Senatus
Consultum ultimum_, a decree which authorized the magistrates to use any
means whatsoever to preserve the state.

*Polybius and the Roman Constitution.* Thus in spite of the fact that the
Greek historian and statesman, Polybius, who was an intimate of the
governing circles in Rome about the middle of the second century B. C., in
looking at the form of the Roman constitution could call it a nice balance
between monarchy, represented by the consuls, aristocracy, represented by
the Senate, and democracy, represented by the tribunate and assemblies, in
actual practice the state was governed by the Senate. It is true that the
Senate was not always absolute master of the situation. Between 233 and
217 B. C., the popular leader Caius Flaminius, as tribune, consul and
censor, was able to carry out a democratic policy at variance with the
Senate's wishes, but with his death the control of the Senate became
firmer than ever. From what has been said it will readily be seen that the
Senate's power rested mainly upon custom and precedent and upon the
prestige and influence of itself as a whole and its individual members,
not upon powers guaranteed by law. The Roman republic never was a true
democracy, but was strongly aristocratic in character.

*The aristocracy of office.* The Senate was representative of a narrow
circle of wealthy patrician and plebeian families, which constituted the
new nobility that came into being with the cessation of the
patricio-plebeian struggle and which was in truth an office-holding
aristocracy. For, after the initial widening of the circle of families
enobled by admission to the Senate, the third century saw these create for
themselves a real, if not legal, monopoly of the magistrac