What is common between ancient roman senate and modern british parliament?
Both had/have two houses and were/are run by democratic methods, with motions being debated and put to the vote. The reporting of debates in many parliaments was originally performed by shorthand writers using pens or pencils. (The first shorthand system was devised by Marcus Tullius Tiro for use in the Roman Senate.) Digital recording and voice recognition technologies are now more commonly used. Division of the house is a parliamentary mechanism which calls for a rising vote, wherein the members of the house literally divide into groups indicating a vote in favour of or in opposition to a motion on the floor. This was the method used to decide motions in the Roman Senate (and was occasionally used in democratic Athens), and the appropriate motion for a division of the house under Robert’s Rules of Order is to “call for a division”. The Roman senate, in the critical timesof the republic, was wont to have recourse to a dictator, ne quid respublica detrimenti capiat. This bears a curiou
