Four Latin letters have signed off Rome's official business for two thousand years
SPQR, short for the Senate and People of Rome, was the Roman state's signature on coins, monuments and public inscriptions. The four letters outlived the Republic, the Empire and the medieval commune, and they still appear on Rome's coat of arms, though modern Romans joke they stand for They're crazy, these Romans.
Grammatically the phrase is neat Latin. Senatus means the Senate, populus the People, and the little suffix -que glues them together as and; Romanus then describes the pair as a single whole. So the literal sense is the Roman Senate and People. One Italian Latin dictionary offers an alternative expansion that adds the Quirites, a term for Roman citizens with full civil, political and military rights.
Nobody knows when the formula was adopted. It first turns up in inscriptions from around 80 BC, late in the Republic; before that, coins simply read ROMA. Cicero and Livy used the full phrase, and it survived under the emperors, who were officially treated as representatives of the people even as the Senate's decrees depended on their wishes. Its final showing on coinage came under Constantine the Great in the early fourth century. The emperor Commodus, who taxed senators to fund his lavish handouts and spectacles, saw inscriptions that cheekily flipped the order to put the People first.
Behind the letters lay a real idea. Romans held that all authority flowed from the people, and legal language constantly invoked the dignity, majesty and freedom of the Roman people. In practice power was split between the aristocratic Senate, whose decisions consuls and praetors carried out, and the popular assembly, protected by the tribunes.
The formula kept being revived. The medieval Commune of Rome minted coins in the Senate's name from 1184, and the Roman Senate issued coins bearing an SPQR shield between 1414 and 1517. Other Italian towns borrowed the pattern: Reggio Emilia's arms carry SPQR for its own senate and people. In English-speaking business circles, former Latin students sometimes joke it means small profits, quick returns.
Source: SPQR
