Topic summary
Senate of the Roman Kingdom
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Roman Senate.
Senate of the Roman Kingdom
The senate was a political institution in the ancient Roman Kingdom. The Latin word senatus, borrowed into English as senate, is derived from senex'old man'; the word thus means 'assembly of elders'. The prehistoric Indo-Europeans who settled Italy in the centuries before the founding of Rome in 753 BC were structured into tribal communities, and these communities often included an aristocratic board of tribal elders.