Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
In regard to criminal courts among the Romans during the republic, the only body which had absolute power of life and death was the comitia centuriata. The senate had no jurisdiction in criminal cases, so far as Roman citizens were concerned. It was only in extraordinary emergencies that the senate, with the consuls, assumed the responsibility of inflicting summary punishment.
The manner how the Comitia curiata, centuriata or tributa were called, during the time of the commonwealth, to the suffrage, was by lot: the curia, century, or tribe, whereon the first lot fell, being styled principium, or the prerogative; and the other curioe, centuries or tribes, whereon the second, third, and fourth lots, etc., fell, the jure vocatoe.
The function of the two censors, who were to be chosen by the Comitia Centuriata, was to take the census at short intervals, to make out the tax-lists, to appoint senators and knights, to manage the collection of taxes, to superintend public buildings, and, finally, to exercise an indefinite supervision over public manners and morals. These were very great powers.
Their election took place in the Comitia Centuriata. The censors were next in dignity, and like the consuls, there were two, and elected in the same manner under the presidency of a consul; only men of consular rank were chosen to this high office, and hence it was really higher than the consulship.
From the time that the non-freehold burgesses had been enrolled in the tribes, they too came thus into the centuries, and, while they were restricted in the -comitia tributa- to the four urban divisions, they had in the -comitia centuriata- formally the same right with the freehold burgesses, although probably the censorial arbitrary prerogative intervened in the composition of the centuries, and granted to the burgesses enrolled in the rural tribes the preponderance also in the centuriate assembly.
The Comitia Centuriata was left in possession of the nominal power of legislation, but it could only be exercised upon the initiation of a decree of the Senate. The Comitia Tributa was stripped of the powers by which it had so long controlled the Senate and the State. Tribunes of the people were selected from the Senate.
When the plebeians began to be recognized as an essential element in the state, it was found inconvenient to have the first class, which included the equites, so greatly preponderant in the comitia of the centuries; and it was designed to blend the Comitia Centuriata and the Tributa in such a manner as to make only one assembly.
But in the later ages, it became a political dignity, and persons were raised to the equestrian rank by the amount of their possessions. The next great change took place after the expulsion of the kings; annual magistrates, called consuls, were elected in the comitia centuriata, but none but patricians could hold this office. 17.
The people voted in the comitia centuriata by centuries; that is, the vote of each century was taken separately and counted only as one. By this arrangement a just influence was secured to property; and the clients of the patricians in the sixth class prevented from out-numbering the free citizens.
The poor and the freedmen began to be of some importance in the commonwealth from the time when they served it; and chiefly from this cause arose one of the most important constitutional changes of this epoch the remodelling of the -comitia centuriata-, which most probably took place in the same year in which the war concerning Sicily terminated Reform of the Centuries
Word Of The Day
Others Looking