All through their story, down to a later date than that to which we have followed it, they paid very much reverence to old age. The power of the father was very great over his children, and the authority of the mother was looked up to only a little less than his. The children were thus brought up in the habit of obedience to their parents, and there is not the least doubt that this habit must have helped them to be obedient to military discipline when they had to go out and fight. Even after their fathers had died they had a great reverence for their memory, and this reverence made them try to be worthy sons of their fathers and to rival them in fine actions, in showing courage and so on. And this same feeling made them very respectful of all the customs that their fathers had followed. The custom of their ancestors was the custom that they thought they ought to follow. Religion, in the sense of expecting a reward or punishment from the gods, whether for good or for bad deeds, does not seem {179} to have counted for much in their lives, but this idea, of living in a manner of which their ancestors would have approved, to some extent took the place of religion. It made fine men and women of them, ready to fight their best for the state and to die for it. I do not mean that the Senate was chosen by Romulus really of the hundred oldest men in his city--a hundred is said to have been its number at first, but it increased to many times a hundred as time went on--but it would have been made up of men of age and experience chosen from the most important citizens. Thus it continued right on to the time when the Tarquins, the Etruscan kings, were driven out; and after they were driven out the Senators chose, each year, two of their own number to be the rulers of the state for that year. As these rulers, called consuls, ruled for a year only, it is probable that the Senate knew pretty well what they were likely to do during that year. The Senate would not elect consuls who would go against the will of the Senate. So probably it was the Senate that really had the power. The Senate was thus an aristocratic body, as we might call it. The men who composed it were called "patricians"; and there again you see the idea of reverence for the father's authority, because "patrician" comes from "pater," meaning a father.