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"The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond Bridge. One place is vacant, fascinating stranger I offer it to you!" "And who is your friend Icarus?" I asked. "The aspiring son of Dædalus!" said he.
De Leg. iii. 4, 10 and more clearly by the -plebiscitum de Thermensibus-, which however in the opening formula also designates itself as issued -de senatus sententia-. That the consuls on the other hand could under the Sullan arrangements submit proposals to the people without a previous resolution of the senate, is shown not only by the silence of the authorities, but also by the course of the revolutions of 667 and 676, whose leaders for this very reason were not tribunes but consuls.
The University, which had never been prosperous, being always starved in its revenues and undermanned, had declined so far that its gates had to be closed for lack of students; so that when he entered on the Principalship he actually constituted the whole Senatus in his own person.
He became princeps senatus. He claimed the prerogatives of the tribunes, which gave to him inviolability, with the right of protection and pardon. He was also invested with the illustrious dignity of the supreme pontificate. As the Senate and the people continued to meet still for the purpose of legislation, he controlled the same by assuming the initiative, of proposing the laws.
The Senate was a judicial and legislative body, and numbered three hundred men. All men who had held curule magistracies became members. Their decisions, called Senatus Consulta, became laws—leges. The Roman government at this time was purely oligarchic. The aristocratical clement prevailed. Nobles virtually controlled the State.
A senatus consultum of August 1st forthwith proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte Consul for Life and ordered the erection of a Statue of Peace, holding in one hand the victor's laurel and in the other the senatorial decree.
It makes all Christianity seem but a vast palimpsest, since the letters which once meant "Senatus Populusque Romanus" stand now only for the feebler modern formula, "Salve populum quem redemisti." All these shabby splendors are interspersed among the rank and file of two hundred, or thereabouts, lay brethren of different orders, ranging in years from six to sixty.
A mother acquired full right as the old Senatus consultum Tertullianum had decreed to the property of a son or daughter who died childless ; but if she married a second time, and her son or daughter died without leaving children or grandchildren, she was expelled from all succession and distant relatives acquired the property. Justinian changed these enactments to a pronounced degree.
Such are the characteristics of men whose 'senatus consultum' bestows an Emperor on France, a King on Italy, makes of principalities departments of a Republic, and transforms Republics into provinces or principalities.
But it was soon seen that the term Emperor was the only one which satisfied Napoleon's ambition and French love of splendour. Accordingly a senatus consultum of May 18th, 1804, formally decreed to him the title of Emperor of the French.
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