This book is the result of Florian Rudolf Forster’s Habilitation, which may explain its structure. Each chapter begins with a summary to place the Senate in context. These summaries are often long (around fifteen pages in chapter 5) and cover well-known issues, but they are still useful for non-specialists. It is only after these overviews that Forster embarks on his study of the royal and then the early and middle republican Senate. He draws on the ancient sources for the Senate in the monarchical period as well as in the early and middle Republic, particularly Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy, and does not discuss historiographical debates except for a brief reference in a footnote and a quick overview of previous works (pp. 27-35). This is surprising because the scarcity of sources on the period makes reconstructions fragile and sometimes diametrically opposed. As a result the reader, especially the non-specialist, may find it difficult to distinguish the novelty of Forster’s conclusions. Forster’s main focus is to refute Cornell’s view of the Senate prior to the Ovinian plebiscite and the dating he proposes for it[1]. While historians today tend to follow Cornell, who built on earlier work, and to regard the Ovinian plebiscite as the founding act of the classical Senate and the regimen morum, in connection with the emergence of the nobilitas, his theories about a weak archaic Senate, a simple consilium of the king and later of the magistrate, and his dating of the plebiscite are more controversial. Forster seeks to challenge these latter theories, and in the introductory chapter, he announces his intention to show that the royal and early Republican Senate was already a strong institution.
The second chapter presents the Ovinian plebiscite and its sole source, a passage from Festus[2]. After defending the reading curiatim rather than iurati, Forster examines the text and puts forward his initial arguments against Cornell: the tradition, which describes a powerful Senate from the outset, and the fact that such a fundamental measure for the Senate was brought forward by a tribune of the plebs. Drawing on another rarely cited passage from Festus [470 L.], Forster formulates his central hypothesis: before the Ovinian plebiscite, there was a pool of potential senators, and not being chosen by the magistrate (the praeteriti senatores) was not problematic. The real Senate, bringing together all potential senators, only met for the interregnum or the auctoritas patrum. The king/magistrate’s council, composed of senators, and the Senate would have been difficult to distinguish before the Ovinian plebiscite. The latter would therefore have transformed this situation by imposing criteria for the selection of senators and making exclusion definitive.
The third chapter revisits the origins of the Senate, particularly the role of the curiae, starting with a comparison with the council of Homeric basileis. For his study of the gentes, Forster uses archaeological evidence before examining the literary tradition. He comes to the now widely accepted conclusion that an assembly (“Versammlung”) of the patres pre-existed the city and the monarchy and gave rise to a powerful royal Senate, since it was composed of representatives of the gentes with whom the king had to negotiate.
The fourth chapter deals with the interregnum and the auctoritas patrum, which served primarily to maintain sacred order and, according to Forster, helped to establish the advisory function of the Senate. Following others, he sees these two functions as indications of a strong royal Senate. He then highlights the decline of the Senate under the Etruscan kings and gives a lengthy account of the central role played by the aristocracy in the fall of the monarchy.
Forster then traces the history of the Senate from 509 to the lex Hortensia of 287. His presentation of Republican institutions leads him to tackle the thorny issue of the emergence of the plebs and the conscripti. Forster follows the tradition that sees the latter as senators added at the beginning of the Republic alongside the patricians, but less powerful than them because they were excluded from the interregnum and the auctoritas patrum. In his view, this is another argument in favour of a strong Senate from the beginning of the Republic, even though the canonical number of 300 senators was not reached until the end of the 4th century. The closure of the patriciate had the effect of almost completely closing the Senate to plebeians until the Licinius-Sextian Rogations of 367.
Forster echoes the common view that plebeians entered the Senate as magistracies became available to them, but he puts forward his most innovative hypothesis: while the patricians had “ein traditionelles Anrecht auf einen Senatssitz”, the plebeians conscripti had a more precarious seat and could be ignored by the magistrate who convened the Senate. This is followed by a summary of the end of the patrician-plebeian conflict, which culminates in an assessment of the transformation of the senatorial aristocracy from 509 to 287 and the birth of the nobilitas in line with K.-J. Hölkeskamp. The plebeians’ victories enabled them to increase their numbers in the Senate and thus transform the council of patres into one of former magistrates.
Having thus far mainly followed widely accepted reconstructions of the royal and early Republican Senate, Forster gets to the heart of his argument in the sixth and final chapter, devoted to the objectives and dating of the Ovinian plebiscite. Interestingly, Forster reverses the perspective by assuming that the situation of the praeteriti senatores mentioned by Festus was not a consequence of the Ovinian plebiscite, but rather the problem it sought to resolve: the fact that plebeian senators could be ignored by the magistrate convening the Senate. This practice is said to have created such tensions within the ruling class that a measure regulating the recruitment of senators proved indispensable.
Curiously, at no point does Forster question the album, i.e. the establishment of a written list of senators, even when he talks about the conscripti. Was the precarious nature of the plebeians’ participation in the Senate because no list existed, or because any list lacked binding force?? Forster’s hypothesis leads us to wonder whether Festus is talking about the summoning or selection of senators by magistrates, an interesting line of thought. However, Forster does not give a definitive answer, emphasising the blurred boundary between consilium and the Senate, which he most often refers to as “Versammlung der patres”. Forster even raises the possibility that Festus may have confused the consilium of the king/magistrate with the consilium publicum (the Senate). Whether the seat of senator did not guarantee participation in Senate sessions or whether senior magistrates could draw up a new list each year from a pool of potential senators, Forster’s conclusion is the same: plebeian senators stood in a more precarious position than patrician senators,who enjoyed a birthright to sit. According to Forster, by establishing criteria for selecting senators, the Ovinian plebiscite would have solved this political problem. It would thus have emancipated the plebeian elite from the patres, which would explain why the measure was brought forward by a tribune of the plebs. This is one of the book’s most original and stimulating ideas.
Forster therefore places the Ovinian plebiscite within the process of forming the nobilitas, but as a final consequence rather than a central stage. The principle of choosing the “best” reflected the values of the new patrician-plebeian nobility, as Forster points out with the criterion ex omni ordine, while the criterion curiatim quickly fell into disuse. All this leads Forster to return to an early date for the Ovinian plebiscite, after the lex Hortensia of 287 (which explains why Forster usually refers to it as lex Ovinia) but before the exclusion of P. Cornelius Rufinus from the Senate in 275, whereas it is generally placed around 318. Forster takes up the main arguments of his predecessors, the silence of Livy and the fact that it was a plebiscite.However, both points have been challenged: work on the normativity of plebiscites undermines the latter, and Livy’s silence is not decisive[3]. The early date, on the other hand, raises other difficulties that Forster struggles to dismiss, starting with the first lectio senatus carried out by censors in 312. Forster thus takes up the little-followed idea that the transfer of the lectio to the censors was due to an unknown measure prior to the Ovinian plebiscite rather than to the plebiscite itself. According to him, the tensions caused by the choices of the censors of 312 stemmed from a lack of legal basis, whereas they are generally linked to the turbulent start of the recruitment of the optimi. Similarly, the specification curiatim, if this reading is to be retained, would be better understood if the plebiscite had preceded the reform of the tribes in the late 4th century, which led to its gradual abandonment. Finally, to explain the first known exclusion from the Senate, in 307, Forster believes that the censors could expel unworthy members from the Senate before the Ovinian plebiscite, whereas this is usually considered to be the starting point of the regimen morum. At best, according to Forster, the Ovinian plebiscite would therefore have approved previous practices and provided a legal basis for the lectio senatus, a conclusion we find debateable. Finally, Forster argues that a low date would place the Ovinian plebiscite in a context of change, notably the expansion of the ruling class since the beginning of the 3rd century and the reorganisation of the Senate with the lex Hortensia and the lex Maenia on the auctoritas patrum. However, this would also mean that it took more than three generations after the Licinio-Sextian Rogations to legitimise the entry of plebeians, particularly former magistrates, into the Senate, which is a longer delay than in the case of the colleges of priests.
The selection criteria established by the Ovinian plebiscite led to new practices, as evidenced by two episodes analysed by Forster. Fabius Buteo’s exceptional lectio senatus in 216 is the first evidence of the hierarchy in the Senate, a sign that it had become a council of former magistrates. On the other hand, the controversy surrounding the flamen dialis’ seat in the Senate in 209 suggests that since the beginning of the 3rd century, Rome’s chief priests no longer had automatic access to the Senate. For Forster, this change was contemporary with the Ovinian plebiscite, but it could just as easily have been a more distant consequence of it.
Finally, Forster rejects Cornell’s idea that the Ovinian plebiscite gave rise to a strong Senate by emancipating it from the magistrates. However, it must be acknowledged that the Senate does seem to have become less dependent on the consuls. Although Forster defends the idea of a strong Senate prior to the Ovinian plebiscite, he reiterates that the latter constituted “einen entscheidenden Schritt zur Stärkung des Senats als unabhängigem Ratsgremium der res publica” (p. 194). Should the Ovinian plebiscite therefore be seen as the culmination of the patrician-plebeian conflict rather than a major step in it? This hypothesis is open to debate.
Overall, the title of the book is somewhat misleading, as Forster focuses on the recruitment of senators and never discusses the actions of the Senate or the debates that took place within it. The socio-economic background, particularly relationships of dependency and land ownership, is hardly considered, even though this would have provided a better understanding of who these senators were, whom Forster often refers to as ‘Vertreter der gentes’ without further clarification. The role of the gentes in city politics, which is central to recent historiography[4], appears in the summaries but not in the demonstration of what the archaic Senate might have been like. Finally, it should be noted that Forster draws on an exhaustive and multilingual bibliography that contains a few minor omissions (e.g. U. Coli, J. Martínez-Pinna).
Ultimately, Forster fills a real gap by offering a clear summary of the Senate of royal Rome and the early Republic. In doing so, he reaffirms the already widespread idea of a strong Senate from the outset, except under the Etruscan kings, and offers an original interpretation of the Ovinian plebiscite, which he believes was intended to resolve the problem of integrating the plebeians into the Senate. While we find this idea compelling, we are less convinced by Forster’s low dating of this plebiscite, which, in our opinion, raises more difficulties than it solves. Despite its length and repetitions, this book is therefore essential reading for any specialist in the early centuries of Rome and Roman political and institutional history.
Notes
[1] T. J. Cornell, “The Lex Ovinia and the Emancipation of the Senate”, in C. Bruun (ed.), The Roman Middle Republic. Politics, Religion, and Historiography c. 400-133 B.C. (Papers from a conference at the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, September 11-12, 1998), Rome 2000, 69-89.
[2] Festus p. 290 Lindsay s. v. Praeteriti senatores : Praeteriti senatores quondam in opprobrio non erant, quod, ut reges sibi legebant, sublegebantque, quos in consilio publico haberent, ita post exactos eos consules quoque et tribuni militum consulari potestate coniunctissimos sibi quosque patriciorum, et deinde plebeiorum legebant ; donec Ouinia tribunicia interuenit, qua sanctum est, ut censores ex omni ordine optimum quemque curiatim in senatum legerent. Quo factum est, ut qui praeteriti essent et loco moti, haberentur ignominiosi.
[3] See in particular M. Humbert, « La normativité des plébiscites selon la tradition annalistique », dans M. Humbert et Y. Thomas (éd.), Mélanges de droit romain et d’histoire ancienne. Hommage à la mémoire d’André Magdelain, Paris 1998, 211-238 (reprinted in M. Humbert, Antiquitatis effigies. Recherches sur le droit public et privé de Rome, Pavia 2013, 257-275) and T. Lanfranchi, Les Tribuns de la plèbe et la formation de la République romaine, Rome 2015, 229-240 et 337-362 on the role of plebiscites in the organisation of the magistracies.
[4] See for example N. Terrenato, The early Roman expansion into Italy: elite negotiation and family agendas, Cambridge 2019.