[hyhatqtv]

The current consensus is that Livy only had a very vague understanding of the early republic let alone the royal period since his narrative frequently conflicts with archeological evidence and other sources. Basically he was constantly projecting the late republican system onto much older periods and implying it barely developed or changed over the years while there is strong evidence to the contrary.

> Patrician was a factor

We don’t really understand the patrician vs plebeian split and how it functioned before or during the founding of the republic. Again there is evidence it was only fully established decades later.

[defrost]

In context, the thrust of my annotation above was that comparisons of the US and Roman Senate is apples and hedgehogs.

There were some 700+ years of Rome before they occupied Britain and lasted for longer than the current age of the US senate system after that occupation.

During that long arc Roman senate ages, prerequisites and duties changed multiple times.

As for Livy, sure, like many historians attempting to cover several hundred years of events there are biases and myths laid as fact, etc. Even the events of the last twelve ears aren't agreed upon by all despite petabytes of live video and digitised records drilling down to the sale of individual shoelaces.