United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But he may be confusing things, and only mean that Sulla took the voting power from the Comitia Tributa and vested it in the Comitia Centuriata. And this probably is what Sulla did. This, however, was not enough. It was his object to curtail the powers of every magistrate.
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.
This violation of the sacred person of a tribune created great indignation among the commons, and Volero, a tribune, proposed the celebrated “Publilian Law,” that the tribunes henceforth, as well as the plebeian ædiles, should be elected by the plebeians themselves in the Comitia Tributa.
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.
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.
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.
They secured the appointment of tribunes for their protection. Soon after they had the right of summoning before their own Comitia tributa any one who violated their rights. In 449 they had influence sufficient to establish the Connubium, by which they could intermarry with patricians. In 421 the plebeians were admitted to the quaestorship. Then, after a fierce contest, they were made decemvirs.
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.
The first triumph obtained by the people was the right to summon patricians before the comitia tributa, or assemblies of people in tribes; soon after they obtained the privilege of electing their tribunes at these comitia, instead of the centuria'ta; and finally, after a fierce opposition, the patricians were forced to consent that the state should be governed by a written code.
The commons having warmly espoused the cause of Volero, at the next meeting, secured his election as tribune of the people for that year, in which Lucius Pinarius and Publics Furius were consuls: and, contrary to the opinion of all, who thought that he would make free use of his tribuneship to harass the consuls of the preceding year, postponing private resentment to the public interest, without the consuls being attacked even by a single word, he brought a bill before the people that plebeian magistrates should be elected at the comitia tributa.
Word Of The Day