Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 25, 2025
"Ye," he said, "to whom Italy is not mother but step-mother, ought to keep silence!" and when their fury grew still louder, "Surely you do not think that I will fear those let loose, whom I have sent in chains to the slave-market?" That the rusty machinery of the comitia should be made use of for the elections and for legislation, was already bad enough.
Such were the listeners before whom such an orator set forth the facts the thanks for the conquest of Gaul which the nobility were preparing for the general and his army; the contemptuous setting aside of the comitia; the overawing of the senate; the sacred duty of protecting with armed hand the tribunate of the people wrested five hundred years ago by their fathers arms in hand from the nobility, and of keeping the ancient oath which these had taken for themselves as for their children's children that they would man by man stand firm even to death for the tribunes of the people.
The choice rested with the fathers, who were accustomed to affiance their sons early, indeed when mere boys. The heads of two friendly families would find themselves daily together in the struggle of the Forum and the Comitia, or in the deliberations of the Senate.
It had already, in the course of the previous period, been in great part transferred from the general to the burgesses; in this period came the further step, that the whole staff-officers of the regular yearly levy the twenty-four military tribunes of the four ordinary legions were nominated in the -comitia tributa-. Thus a line of demarcation more and more insurmountable was drawn between the subalterns, who gained their promotion from the general by punctual and brave service, and the staff, which obtained its privileged position by canvassing the burgesses.
'Once a senator, always a senator, was therefore now the rule; and as the quaestors, who were the main source of supply, were nominated by the Comitia Tributa, the Senate became a more representative as well as a more permanent body than before, and independent of the magistrates. This was one security against any measure being carried against its interests.
He did not spend much money for their amusements, although it was the custom of Ædiles to ruin themselves in seeking popularity after this fashion; and yet when, two years afterward, he solicited the Prætorship from the people, he was three times elected as first Prætor in all the comitia three separate elections having been rendered necessary by certain irregularities and factious difficulties.
The assembly, composed chiefly of the proletarians who had come from the country—the Comitia Tributa—voted according to his proposal, and Octavius was removed by the lictors from the tribune bench, and then the agrarian law was passed by acclamation.
He put some three hundred new members into the senate, and gave that body the power to veto legislative enactments, while at the same time he restricted the authority of the tribunes of the people and of the comitia tributa, the general convention of the tribes.
CENA: so best spelt; some good texts still print caena, but coena is decidedly wrong, being based on the fiction that the Latin borrowed the Greek word κοινη and turned it into coena. SIBI ... SUMPSERAT: Cic. seems to think that Duillius assumed these honors on his own authority. This was probably not the case; they were most likely conferred on him by a vote of the comitia tributa. Cf.
His father, after a distinguished career as a soldier in Spain and Sardinia, had attempted reforms at Rome. He had been censor, and in this capacity he had ejected disreputable senators from the Curia; he had degraded offending equites; he had rearranged and tried to purify the Comitia. But his connections were aristocratic. His wife was the daughter of the most illustrious of the Scipios.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking