SPQR

Professor Bersani explains states: "The expansion of [SPQR] is "Senatus Populusque Romanus", a phrase which may be translated as "the Roman Estate" that is, the whole of the civic body and its institutional system."

In support of this, Aulus Apollonius Cordus has noted "...the inscription on the temple of Saturn: Senatus populusque Romanus incendio consumptum restituit. Here we have a singular verb applied to what one would normally regard as a plural subject: the senate and the people. I wonder whether perhaps the senatus populusque is here regarded as a single entity, effectively the whole of the Roman state." [1]