Roman Senate

The Roman Senate was the highest and constituting assembly of ancient Rome and its aristocracy. With different powers over time, it lasted from the first days of the city, traditionally founded in 753 BC, as the Senate of the Roman Kingdom, through the Senate of the Roman Republic and the Senate of the Roman Empire, and eventually the Byzantine Senate of the Eastern Roman Empire, surviving well into the post-classical era. Under the kings it was little more than an advisory council, though it also elected new kings. In the early Republic it was politically weak beside the magistrates who appointed senators for life, reached the apex of its republican power in the middle Republic, declined in the late Republic after the reforms of the Gracchi, and lost much power and prestige with the Principate. After the reforms of Diocletian it became politically irrelevant, and the Western Senate disappeared after 603, the date of its last recorded public act, while the Eastern Senate in Constantinople survived into the early thirteenth century. It can be considered a distant ancestor of parliamentarism and modern legislatures.