The Roman Senate was made up of higher-class citizens known as patricians were. The popular assembly consisted of plebeians, members of the working class. These two bodies are similar in appearance to today's Canadian Houses of Parliament, but in this case, the popular assembly had less power than the Senate. Two Consuls were elected annually as magistrates. They each had the power to veto a decision made by the other, thereby instigating a system of checks. As the Republic reformed and grew older, the Council of Plebeians gained more and more power. As the general population grew increasingly discontented with the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor, the Republic began to crumble.
According to legend, Romulus, Rome's first king, divided the Romans up into three tribes. The traditional names of these tribes are the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. Romulus is also credited with creating the first Roman army of 3000 men with each tribe contributing 1000 armed men. Little more than the names of the three tribes had survived by Republican times, when they were the names of the three-cavalry units in the Roman army. Most researchers believe that there is some truth behind the Romulan legends and these three early tribal divisions formed the basis for levies into the citizen army of Rome in the earliest times. Each tribe was divided into subgroups called Curiae. The Curiae were composed of smaller regional and family groupings. The number of Curiae increased as new towns in Latium were absorbed into the Roman sphere of influence but by about 495 B. C., their number was fixed at thirty, ten Curiae per tribe.
The original Roman Senate was a council of one hundred elders or citizens of important families whose purpose it was to advise the king. Later, the Senate came to admit only wealthy citizens to its ranks. The king had a great deal of power, including the power of life or death over his subjects.
