hing to them
and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced,
at least more precisely defined,(22) and in this way the foundations
were laid of that peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high
repute of the censors was chiefly based.(23) But censures of that
sort--especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter
--might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not
contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit
prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence
on the magistracy.

But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according
to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which
was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the
Licinian laws. That law at once conferred a seat and vote in the
senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor,
or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe
these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude
them from the roll only for such reasons as sufficed for the rejection
of an actual senator. The number of those, however, who had been
magistrates was far from sufficing to keep the senate up to the normal
number of three hundred; and below that point it could not be allowed
to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the same time that
of jurymen. Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise
of the censorial right of election; but those senators who were chosen
not in consequence of having held office, but by selection on the part
of the censor--frequently burgesses who had filled a non-curule public
office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed
an enemy in battle or saved the life of a burgess--took part in
voting, but not in debate.(24) The main body of the senate, and
that portion of it into whose hands government and administration
were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially
based no longer on the arbitrary will of a magistrate, but indirectly
on election by the people. The Roman state in this way made some
approach to, although it did not reach, the great institution of
modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate
of the non-debating senators furnished--what it is so necessary and
yet so difficult to get in governing corporations--a compact mass
of members capable of forming and