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Updated: June 24, 2025
For greater security as regards the latter, moreover, the order of voting still subsisting in the -comitia centuriata-, according to which the five property-classes in each tribe gave their votes one after another, was done away; instead of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot.
About fifty-four years after the first consulate, Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius very much gratified the people by proposing, in the Comitia Centuriata, the substitution of fines instead of corporal punishments.
It sanctioned a barbarous retaliation an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. They were approved by the comitia centuriata, which was the supreme authority, and in the time of Appius Claudius was composed of patricians alone.
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.
But they ruled with restricted powers, and were shorn of the trappings of royalty. They could not nominate priests, and they were amenable to the laws after their term of office expired. They were elected by the Comitia Centuriata, in which the patrician power predominated. They convened the Senate, introduced ambassadors, and commanded the armies.
This gave to the assembly the initiative of measures, which was sanctioned by a law of L. Valerius Publicola, B.C. 449. This law gave to the decrees passed by the tribes the power of a real lex, binding upon the whole people, provided it had the sanction of the Senate and the populus in the Comitia Centuriata.
Gracchus proposed that the votes of all the classes should be taken in an order determined solely by the lot. His interest in the Comitia Centuriata was probably due to the fact that it controlled the consular elections, and a democratic consulship, which he had vainly tried to secure by his support of Fannius, might be rendered more attainable by the adoption of the change which he advocated.
Of the three forms which the Roman legislature successively assumed, one, it is well known the Comitia Centuriata was exclusively taken to represent the State as embodied for military operations.
Suffrage was almost universal among freemen, but down almost to the Empire, the people voted by orders, and were counted, not numerically, but by the rank of the order, and the comitia curiata could always carry the election over the comitia centuriata, and thus power remained always in the hands of the rich and noble few.
Besides these functions the Comitia Tributa decided on war or peace, elected the tribunes, aediles, and lesser magistrates, and also usurped judicial power, arraigning magistrates for their conduct in office, &c. The functions of the Comitia Centuriata were, as we have, seen, also legislative.
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