From the mass of opinions elicited in the course of the debate, the president might choose any that he pleased to submit to the judgment of the house. The safeguard of the individual senator was here found in the number of the presiding magistrates. As a rule the same order was followed in putting _sententiae_ to the vote as had been observed in eliciting them; but out of an aggregate of opinions that, with differences of detail, gave practically the same advice, the president might choose that which he considered most to the point or best worded as the one to be submitted to his council. It was certainly an unusual step when, in the historic debate of December 5 in the year 63 B.C., Cicero put to the vote the _sententia_ of Cato in place of the similar but weaker resolutions of the _consulares_;[1317] but the consul in this exercise of his discretionary choice was acting well within his rights. One is sometimes surprised, considering the rigidity of the procedure and the size of the body, at the amount of business that appears to have been transacted at a single meeting of the Senate. But both the rules of procedure and the Roman temperament account for the rapidity of the debate. As regards the former it must be remembered that no motion could be put unless pressed by a magistrate, that there was no distinction between substantive motions and amendments, that alternative proposals, therefore, had not to be submitted in detail to a division, that the carrying of one motion generally swept all _sententiae_ on the same subject aside, that motions for adjournment did not take precedence of other motions, and that the business of the house was not interrupted by this modern device for wasting time. We must also remember that a division in the modern sense of the word was rare, and that it appears seldom to have been necessary to take the numbers of the members who respectively supported or were adverse to a motion.[1318] The estimate of the voting was in fact going on during the debate; it was the custom of the senator, often without rising, to express a few words of assent to a former speech,[1319] and it was not unusual to leave one’s bench and take up a position near the man whose opinion one supported.[1320] The sense of the house could thus often be taken before the debate had ended; where it was not obvious the consul urged to a division (_discessio_);[1321] even then it is improbable that recourse was had to counting, unless the parties on either side were very evenly balanced. Other reasons for rapidity were to be found in the Roman temperament and in the intellectual atmosphere of the house. The Roman, until his better nature was corrupted by the schools of Athens and Rhodes, was a man of few words; the Senate was the least likely body in the world to be swayed by florid eloquence; clearness and brevity were the qualities most in demand, and even at the close of the Republic, when the Senate