Talk:Curia
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[edit] Copied from WP:RD/H
Under the jus Latii (which was granted to many foreign colonies, especially in Gaul), the main unit of local self-government was the municipality. Each of these was governed by the local senate, properly known as Curia. At first their members were elected by the popular assembly. As the civic life was extinguished following the reign of Constantine the Great, the curia came to be dominated by rich landowners (usually those who possessed twenty five jugera or more). The local senate, or curia, concerned itself with the matters of municipal finances, police, roads, bridges, and public buildings. If the municipium was large enough, the curia had the charge of "heavy, and sometimes ruinous, expenses for the amusement of the populace, prescribed by opinion and custom, if not by law". During the late empire, the curial class was largerly hereditary and shared a lot of responsibilities. You will find their outline in Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire By, by Samuel Dill. The classical treatments of the subject include Theodore Mommsen's The Provinces of the Roman Empire, and A History and Description of Roman Political Institutions, by Frank Frost Abbott. They are available on Google Books. --Ghirla-трёп- 21:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Senatorial Elections
The article claimed: "Senators themselves were not elected since the early Republic, having been transformed into a hereditary nobility." This is really misleading. In the early Republic Senators weren't elected at all, instead becoming enrolled by a Censor. In general the same families dominated the Senate, but it was not a rule. Toward the later Republic it also became common for anyone elected to a magistracy to become a Senator. Again, most of these were the aristocrats, but not all of them. However, in the Sullan reforms it became law that anyone achieving election to a Quaestorship become a Senator. Thus, as time went on, Senators were increasingly elected by the people as opposed to being appointed by heredity (and, in a technical sense, it was never, ever, actually hereditary, it just may have seemed that way sometimes). Finally, there are famous cases of people without family history in the Senate, novus homo, becoming elected to the Senate. See Cicero for the most famous example. Trainik (talk) 15:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
