Talk:Senate of the Roman Kingdom

Update on the Roman constitution series
I just wanted to mention my plans for my series on the Roman constitution. There was simply too much information to put on my original page, Constitution of the Roman Republic. There is also a significant amount of information available on the constitutions of the Roman kingdom and empire. Therefore, I am going to give this series somewhat of a matrix structure. Roman Constitution will be the main page of the series. Underneath this page will be Constitution of the Roman Kingdom, Constitution of the Roman Republic and Constitution of the Roman Empire. It surprised me, but apparently there actually was a constitution during the time of the kingdom and then again during the time of the empire.

Underneath the constitution pages, I will have pages on the Senate of the Roman Kingdom, Senate of the Roman Republic, Senate of the Roman Empire, Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Kingdom, Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Republic, Legislative Assemblies of the Roman Empire, Executive Magistrates of the Roman Kingdom, Executive Magistrates of the Roman Republic, and Executive Magistrates of the Roman Empire.

When this is done, I will create a new page called Roman Executive Magistrates, and then populate this page, along with Roman senate and Roman assemblies. All three pages will be condensed versions of their respective sub-pages. Right now, Roman senate and Roman assemblies consist almost exclusively of facts about the republic. Neither page has many citations. They also use a discussion format, and my revisions to these pages will use more of a discussion and analysis format. I am going to be more cautious with my revisions of these pages, because I assume that people will want to restore the original versions for whatever reason.

My hope is to use a discussion and analysis format for the entire series. My overall goal will be to produce a series that doesn't just discuss the facts associated with these offices and institutions. I want the series to tie everything together, and illustrate how everything operated under the overall constitutional system. Right now, the entries on these individual topics (such as roman consul and praetor) simply list facts without providing any deeper analysis or context. It is difficult to truly understand these topics unless you know how they all worked together under the constitutional system.

Also, I am not surprised that there hasn't been more work done on Wikipedia on this topic. It seems as though there are very few books on this subject, and many of those books are quite old. This is unfortunate because this subject is actually quite relevant to modern politics. Many modern governments are designed around a similar constitutional superstructure as was the Roman government. RomanHistorian (talk) 07:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Unfounded statement
On what is the statement: The early Romans, like all Indo-Europeans, were deeply patriarchal based? Could you give a reference ?

Ronbarak (talk) 17:51, 18 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Seems to have been the assumption of Dumézil, though that is unlikely to be the source in this article. The original "Archaic Triad" of all-male deities is supposed to reflect this, and the historical Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva) is supposed to derive from the less-patriarchal Etruscans. Just to mention one small point that underlies the assumption. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:14, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The article has a reference, although it appears to have been carefully concealed. The whole article seems to have been based on Fustel de Coulanges, La Cité antique, but through the adherents of Coulanges. His "ancient city" was a model of the way he thought the ancient city should have been after comparing Greek and Italic cultures on the presumption that they both descended from the Indo-Europeans. Unfortunately the book is nearly all "what ought to have been" rather than "what was". Coulanges is nearly entirely guess work. And so in this article we read all about the Italic tribes that settled the Tiber centuries before the foundation of Rome, and we do not read one word of any Etruscans even though the early kings, such as Romulus, were actually Etruscan, and not Indo-European. There is no evidence of any such settlement of Italic tribes on the Tiber. I note that these broad statements in the intro have no references. Now, you can use Coulanges as a reference, but he is way out of date, having initially published in 1864. The article needs an archaeological approach to early Rome, but there is not even a sniff of one. It's getting to be a big topic but someone has to undertake it sometime. I'm rewriting our polis in my sandbox to refer to more relevant modern studies of the polis. Unfortunately I had to blow up Coulanges, whom I admired as much as anyone, and once taught. We cannot guess at the foundation of cities based on someone's model(s). We need evidence.Botteville (talk) 21:15, 1 June 2023 (UTC)