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But if the king’s power was legally free from restraint, and we do not believe that there was any large body of leges binding his authority, it could not have been free from the limitations imposed by custom and constitutional usage. Customary law securing rights for the people is said to have been raised to the level of positive law by Servius Tullius.[231] But even the earlier usages must have formed a kind of code—such a code as that which contained the pontifical ordinances known as the leges regiae.[232] It was the belief in the existence of this early customary law which led to the later description of the king’s power as an imperium legitimum.[233] Amongst his constitutional obligations was that of consulting the Senate in any important matter.

There can be little doubt that the original council of elders (senatus) was a body of nominees selected by the king as his permanent advising body (consilium publicum).[234] In consequence the position of senator could not have been a life-office; there could neither have been any definite mode of attaining the dignity, nor any claim on the part of an individual to retain it. A new king might decline to summon some of his predecessor’s councillors; he might even, perhaps, change the personnel of his advisers during the course of his reign. It was in later times believed that the freedom of selection was so great that no stigma attached to members who were “passed over” (praeteriti) by the king.[235]