How long was a senators term of office in the late republic.

[Nathan Ross]

At times like this, I always find Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities provides all the answers...

Here's the section on the Senate, from the excellent Lacus Curtius site:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... natus.html

And here's the paragraph of the above detailing senate numbers in the late republic:

During the civil war between Marius and Sulla many vacancies must have occurred in the senate. Sulla in his dictatorship not only filled up these vacancies, but increased the number of senators. All we know of this increase with certainty is, that he caused about 300 of the most distinguished equites to be elected into the senate (Appian. B. C. i.100), but the real increase which he made to the number of senators is not mentioned anywhere. It appears, however, henceforth to have consisted of between five and six hundred (Cic. ad Att. i.14). Julius Caesar augmented the number to 900, and raised to this dignity even common soldiers, freedmen, and peregrini (Dion Cass. xliii.47; Suet. Caes. 80). This arbitrariness in electing unworthy persons into the senate, and of extending its number at random, was imitated after the death of Caesar, for on one occasion there were more than one thousand senators (Suet. Aug. 35). Augustus cleared the senate of the unworthy members, who were contemptuously called by the people Orcini senatores, reduced its number to 600 (Dion Cass. liv.14), and ordained that a list of the senators should always be exhibited to public inspection (Dion Cass. lv.3). During the first centuries of the empire, this number appears, on the whole, to have remained the same; but as everything depended upon the will of the emperor, we can scarcely expect to find a regular and fixed number of them (Dion Cass. liii.17).

And here, surprisingly enough, is the true cost of becoming a senator!

It has been supposed by Niebuhr (iii. p406), that a senatorial census existed at Rome at the commencement of the second Punic war, but the words of Livy (xxiv.11) on which this supposition is founded seem to be too vague to admit of such an inference. Göttling (p346) infers from Cicero (ad Fam. xiii.5), that Caesar was the first who instituted a senatorial census, but the passage of Cicero is still more inconclusive than that of Livy, and we may safely take it for granted that during the whole of the republican period no such census existed (Plin. H.N. xiv.1), although senators naturally always belonged to the wealthiest classes. The institution of a census for senators belongs altogether to the time of the empire. Augustus first fixed it at 400,000 sesterces, afterwards increased it to double this sum, and at last even to 1,200,000 sesterces. Those senators whose property did not amount to this sum, received grants from the emperor to make it up (Suet. Aug. 41; Dion Cass. liv.17, 26, 30, lv.13). Subsequently it seems to have become customary to remove from the senate those who had lost their property through their own prodigality and vices, if they did not quit it of their own accord (Tacit. Annal. ii.48, xii.52; Suet. Tib. 47). Augustus also, after having cleared the senate of unworthy members, introduced a new and reanimating element into it by admitting men from the municipia, the colonies, and even from the provinces (Tacit. Annal. iii.55, xi.25; Suet. Vesp. 9).

So it seems that the usually-quoted figure of a million is a bit off the mark, and Rob is correct that the qualification did not exist until the imperial period.

- Nathan