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Yet, though the monarchy was not strictly elective, certain quasi-elective processes were connected by tradition with the appointment of the king, on the part both of Senate and people.

The authority of the Senate (auctoritas patrum) is mentioned in connexion with all the transmissions of the supreme office.[185] It is an authority, however, which did not spring from any theory of the Senate’s possessing elective powers, but was simply a result of the universal principle that no man in authority should act without taking advice of his consilium, and was merely an outcome of the constitutional necessity which the king was under of consulting the Senate on all great measures affecting the popular welfare. The greatest of these would be the appointment of a successor.

Secondly, we are told of a formal ratification of the king’s power by the people assembled in the comitia curiata, one which continued into the Republic under the title of the lex curiata, a formal sanction always required for the ratification of an imperium already assumed.[186] It is said to have had this character even in the time of the monarchy, and this was thought to be shown by the fact that the king himself proposed the lex curiata which was to give the sanction for the exercise of his own power.[187] Such procedure was, indeed, necessary, since no one but the king had the right of putting the question to the people; consequently we must accept the view that the lex curiata was not absolutely necessary for the exercise of power, and might be legally, though not perhaps constitutionally, withheld, as it was by King Servius during the early part of his reign.[188]