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For at this very time all foreigners give senators the style of lords; but the Romans, making use of a more honorable and less invidious name, call them Patres Conscripti; at first indeed simply Patres, but afterwards, more being added, Patres Conscripti.
The Romans, one might beforehand have assumed, must have known very well why they called themselves 'Quirites, but it is manifest that this knowledge was not theirs. Why they were addressed as Patres Conscripti is a matter unsettled still.
It is not to the Judices, or Patres Conscripti, or to the Quirites that he now addresses himself, determined by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn minds, but to Cæsar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise.
I propose to the Patres Conscripti, as the learned Cicero would say if he were in my place, I propose, in view of the short time left, and time is money as Solomon said, that concerning this important matter each one set forth his opinion clearly, briefly, and simply."
This did not at all put them on a footing of equality; the plebeians in the senate did not become senators, but remained members of the equestrian order, were not designated -patres- but were even now -conscripti-, and had no right to the badge of senatorial dignity, the red shoe.
They called those who were elected, conscripti, enrolled, that is, as a new senate. It is surprising how much that contributed to the harmony of the state, and toward uniting the patricians and commons in friendship.
Pedants found a pleasure in addressing municipal counsellors as 'Patres Conscripti, nuns as 'Virgines Vestales, and entitling every saint 'Divus' or 'Deus'; but men of better taste, such as Paolo Giovio, only did so when and because they could not help it.
To their ears Jupiter optimus maximus sounds more pleasant than Jesus Christus redemptor mundi, and patres conscripti more agreeable than sancti apostoli.... They account it a greater dishonour to be no Ciceronian than no Christian, as if Cicero, if he should now come to life again, would not speak of Christian things in other words than in his time he spoke of his own religion!... What is the sense of this hateful swaggering with the name Ciceronian?
The whole number of the senators remained as before, and in this the -conscripti- were also included; from which fact we are probably entitled to infer the numerical falling off of the patriciate. Conservative Character of the Revolution We thus see that in the Roman commonwealth, even on the conversion of the monarchy into a republic, the old was as far as possible retained.
Next, that a full house might give additional strength to the senate, he filled up the number of senators, which had been diminished by the assassinations of Tarquinius, to the full number of three hundred, by electing the principal men of equestrian rank to fill their places: from this is said to have been derived the custom of summoning into the senate both the patres and those who were conscripti.
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