A memorial sent from London By the Late Earl Stanhope, to the Abbot Vertot at Paris. Containing the following questions, relating to the constitution of the Roman Senate, (viz.) I. What was the ordinary regular method of admission into the senate, in the Four or Five first Ages of the Commonwealth? II. Why the Senate consisting then of none but Patricians, we read of some Patricians that were Senators, while others were only Private Men, and did not partake of that Dignity? And whether this Distinction came by Succession and Primogeniture: Or whether the Choice of the Candidates lay wholly in the Consuls, and afterwards in the Censors? III. For what Reason, after the Second Punic War, a Director was named on Purpose to fill up the Vacancies in the Senate; from whence one might infer, that the Romans had no common and regular Way of supplying those Vacancies, since they had recourse to the extradinary Power of a Dictator? With the Abbot Vertot's answer.

Date:

MDCCXXI. [1721]