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He contemplated building an edifice, for the assembly of the Comitia Tributa, of marble, with a portico inclosing a space of a mile square, and also the erection of a temple to Mars of unparalleled size and magnificence. He commenced the Basilica Julia and the Curia Julia vast buildings, which were completed under the emperors. Such were the principal edifices of Rome until the imperial sway.
Positively, therefore, by making the Senate's previous consent to a law necessary, and negatively by these limitations of the prerogative of the tribunes, legislative power was placed wholly in the Senate's hands. Some explanation of what this means may be given here. We do not know the origin of the Comitia Tributa.
Quidam artem abesse legentibus arbitrantur: nam in Rubro mari viva ac spirantia saxis avelli, in Britannia, prout expulsa sint, colligi: ego facilius crediderim naturam margaritis deesse, quam nobis avaritiam. XIII. Ipsi Britanni delectum ac tributa et injuncta imperii munera impigre obeunt, si injuriae absint: has aegre tolerant, jam domiti ut pareant, nondum ut serviant.
Besides they retained, in the right to award fines without limitation and to submit this sentence to the -comitia tributa-, a sufficient means of putting an end to the civic existence of a patrician opponent.
Overcome, however, by the unanimous feeling of the senators, he desisted: the law was carried without opposition. Then for the first time the tribunes were elected in the comita tributa. Piso is the authority for the statement that three were added to the number, as if there had been only two before.
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.
But, in the year 367 B.C., the tribunes Licinius and L. Sextius secured the passage of three memorable laws in the Curiata Tributa—the abolition of the military tribunate, which had increased the power of the patricians, and the restoration of the consulate, on the condition that one of the consuls should be a plebeian; the second, that no citizen should possess more than five hundred jugera of the public lands; and the third, that all interest thus paid on loans should be deducted from the principal.
Not so, however, the Comitia Curiata or Comitia Tributa. They were fettered on this point by the sacredness with which the person of a Roman citizen, inside the walls of the city, was invested by religion and law; and, with respect to the last of them, the Comitia Tributa, we know for certain that it became a fixed principle that the Assembly of the Tribes could at most impose a fine.
The Comitia of the Tribes, which was then controlled by the plebeians, chose the tribunes. By degrees, both the other assemblies lost their importance. The plebeian body more and more extended its prerogatives. Besides the tribunes, the Aediles, two in number, who were assistants of the tribunes, and superintended the business of the markets, were chosen by the Comitia Tributa.
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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