Marius and Gracchus

[M. Porcius Cato]

Wasn't there a financial qualification to be in the Senate?

 

Yes. So what? There was also an age qualification, a sex qualification, and a nationality qualification. But if keeping 3-year-old Egyptian girls out of the senate constitutes an oligarchy, the term has no meaning. Oligarchy is "rule by the few"--an inspection of the massive two-volume Magistrates of the Roman Republic should surely convince anyone that Rome was not ruled by "the few" (even if they were overwhelmingly Roman males with enough money to buy a couple horses and old enough to ride one.)

[Primus Pilus]

Wasn't there a financial qualification to be in the Senate?

 

Yes. So what? There was also an age qualification, a sex qualification, and a nationality qualification. But if keeping 3-year-old Egyptian girls out of the senate constitutes an oligarchy, the term has no meaning. Oligarchy is "rule by the few"--an inspection of the massive two-volume Magistrates of the Roman Republic should surely convince anyone that Rome was not ruled by "the few" (even if they were overwhelmingly Roman males with enough money to buy a couple horses and old enough to ride one.)

 

 

Additionally, since there were also such qualifications for the equestrian class, a much larger and extensive group than that of the senate, the restriction for the senators doesn't necessarily set them apart from the entirety of Roman society. While the equestrians may not have been a legislative or governing body, their financial influence and impact on the courts, etc., also provide support for a much wider governing base than a strict oligarchy provides. Unquestionably, the Roman senate were the elite of the elite, but executive magisterial power was dependent upon public election and the influence of the Tribunis Plebis should not be ignored as a potential counter to consolidated elite class power. While the tribune may have been sometimes used to secure that very power, it's mere existence as a direct and powerful representation of the will of the masses disproves the Roman senate as a true oligarchic state.