United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And if an heathen wise man call the adversities of the world but "tributa vivendi," "the tributes of living;" a wise Christian man ought to know them, and bear them, but as the tributes of offending. He ought to bear them manlike, and resolvedly; and not as those whining soldiers do, "qui gementes sequuntur imperatorem."
The new consuls were not, or did not consider themselves, so bound, and Lentulus having brought the subject forward, the senate early passed a resolution that Cicero's recall was to take precedence of all other business. In accordance with the resolution of the senate, a law was proposed by the consul Lentulus in the comitia centuriata, and probably one by Milo to the tributa.
THE PLEBEIAN ASSEMBLY. Not far from this time, there was instituted a new assembly, the Comitia of Tribes, or Comitia Tributa. There was a new division of the people into tribes or wards, first twenty, then twenty-one, and, later, thirty-five. In this comitia, the plebeians were at the outset, if not always, the exclusive voters. The patricians had their assembly, the Comitia Curiata.
In reality this probably amounted to the concession to the Latins of one vote in the Roman -comitia tributa-. As a place in some tribe was a preliminary condition of the ordinary centuriate suffrage, if the metoeci shared in the voting in the assembly of the centuries-which we do not know-a similar allotment must have been fixed for the latter.
"They had acquired the right," we are told in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, "of proposing to the comitia tributa, or to the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the State;" and as matters stood at this time, no one Tribune could "veto" or put an arbitrary stop to a proposition from another.
We will make it a most glorious affair. For in the Campus Martius we are about to erect voting places for the comitia tributa, of marble and covered, and to surround them with a lofty colonnade a mile in circumference: at the same time the Villa Publica will also be connected with these erections. You will say: "What good will this monument do me?" But why should I trouble myself about that?
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.
As, moreover, both the extraordinarily admitted senators and the quaestors were nominated by the -comitia tributa-, the senate, hitherto resting indirectly on the election of the people, was now based throughout on direct popular election; and thus made as close an approach to a representative government as was compatible with the nature of the oligarchy and the notions of antiquity generally.
'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.
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.
Word Of The Day