SENACULUM
a place where the senators assembled before entering the
curia on formal summons, according to the testimony of writers of the
Augustan age (Varro,
LL v. 156:
senaculum supra Graecostasim ubi
aedes Concordiae et basilica Opimia.- Senaculum vocatum ubi senatus
aut ubi seniores consisterent; Val.
Max. ii. 2. 6). It was probably
only an open area in the first place and afterwards a hall. The site of
the senaculum referred to in the passages cited is further determined
by later writers as close to the Volcanal, at the edge of the Comitium
and in front of the basilica Opimia and area Concordiae (
Macrob. i. 8. 2:
habet (i.e. templum Saturni) aram et ante senaculum; Fest. 347:
unum
(senaculum) ubi nunc est acdes Concordiae inter Capitolium ct Forum).
The original building
1 must have been removed when the temple of
Concord was enlarged by Opimius in 121 B.C. (HC 6; Thedenat 104;
Mitt. 1893, 87, 91) or by Tiberius in 7 B.C. (TF 49).
In the passage from Festus just quoted, it is stated, on the authority
of a certain Nicostratus of the second century, that there were two
other senacula in Rome where the senate was wont to assemble, one ad
portam Capenam, the other citra aedem Bellonae. Of these senacula
there is no further mention, but the senate met during the year after the
battle of Cannae ad portam Capenam (
Liv. xxiii. 32), and many such
meetings took place in the temple of Bellona whenever foreign ambassadors, generals desiring a triumph, or any person who could not
lawfully be admitted within the pomerium, were to appear before the
senate (see
BELLONA, AEDES). It is not certain whether this statement
of Nicostratus is based on a confusion of senaculum and the regular hall
of assembly, or on the fact that such buildings had been erected at these
points (HJ 204, 553; Mommsen,
Staatsrecht iii. 913-914; Becker, Top.
286, 516-517, 607;
Jord. i. 2. 337; BC1908, 138-139).
A fourth senaculum seems to be mentioned in Livy (xli. 27. 7:
at
clivum Capitolinum silice sternendum curaverunt et porticum ab aede
Saturni in Capitolium ad senaculum ac super id curiam). If the text is
not corrupt here-as it is in the lines immediately preceding-there must
have been a senaculum on the Capitoline bearing the same relation to
the curia Calabra and the temple of Jupiter that the senaculum below
did to the curia Hostilia. In view of Nicostratus' statement, and the
apparent needlessness of another senaculum immediately above the
other, the existence of one on the Capitol is very doubtful (
Jord. i. 2. 19,338;
Becker, Top. 286; RE ii. A. 1454).
