Seduction Of Power (4 of 22)

They were the guardians of Rome's traditions.
The Roman Senate and the American Senate are the two greatest senates of all time.
Roman senators got no pay.
They served for the honor of serving their state as a senator.
The Senate was intended to be made up of old men, not the swiftest of the swift or the strongest of the strong, but the wisest of the wise.
Why were they wise? Why were they the wisest to the wise because they were old men? They had experience.
Under their watchful eye, the young Republic fostered a sense of civic pride, the foundation of Rome's Empire.

Her volunteer army carried Roman power to unimaginable places.
By the 2nd Century BC, Rome was mistress of the Mediterranean.
Yet beneath the surface of Rome's success, lurked serious contradictions.
Women had few rights, and it was never one man, one vote.
Elections were always rigged in favor of the wealthy.
Political equality was never a Roman ideal.
They lived in a world of extremes.
While the rich redefined the meaning of decadence, 95 percent of the people struggled below the poverty line.
This social imbalance would fuel the most disruptive tradition in Republican Rome, patronage.
Every morning at dawn the poor gathered in the courtyards of the rich.