The senate of Caesar was to be--in a quite different way from the later senate of Augustus-- nothing but a supreme council of state, which he made use of for advising with him beforehand as to laws, and for the issuing of the more important administrative ordinances through it, or at least under its name--for cases in fact occurred where decrees of senate were issued, of which none of the senators recited as present at their preparation had any cognizance.

There were no material difficulties of form in reducing the senate to it original deliberative position, which it had overstepped more de facto than de jure; but in this case it was necessary to protect himself from practical resistance, for the Roman senate was as much the headquarters of the opposition to Caesar as the Attic Areopagus was of the opposition to Pericles.

Chiefly for this reason the number of senators, which had hitherto amounted at most to six hundred in its normal condition( 21) and had been greatly reduced by the recent crises, was raised by extraordinary supplement to nine hundred; and at the same time, to keep it at least up to this mark, the number of quaestors to be nominated annually, that is of members annually admitted to the senate, was raised from twenty to forty.( 22) The extraordinary filling up of the senate was undertaken by the monarch alone.

In the case of the ordinary additions he secured to himself a permanent influence through the circumstance, that the electoral colleges were bound by law( 23) to give their votes to the first twenty candidates for the quaestorship who were provided with letters of recommendation from the monarch; besides, the crown was at liberty to confer the honorary rights attaching to the quaestorship or to any office superior to it, and consequently a seat in the senate in particular, by way of exception even on individuals not qualified.

The selection of the extraordinary members who were added naturally fell in the main on adherents of the new order of things, and introduced, along with -equites- of respectable standing, various dubious and plebeian personages into the proud corporation--former senators who had been erased from the roll by the censor or in consequence of a judicial sentence, foreigners from Spain and Gaul who had to some extent to learn their Latin in the senate, men lately subaltern officers who had not previously received even the equestrian ring, sons of freedmen or of such as followed dishonourable trades, and other elements of a like kind.