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When the plebeians began to be recognized as an essential element in the state, it was found inconvenient to have the first class, which included the equites, so greatly preponderant in the comitia of the centuries; and it was designed to blend the Comitia Centuriata and the Tributa in such a manner as to make only one assembly.
The leaders of the plebeians demanded: First, that the tribuneship should be restored, and the Comitia Tributa recognized; secondly, that a right of appeal to the people against the power of the supreme magistrate should be secured; thirdly, that full indemnity should be granted to the movers and promoters of the late secession; fourthly, that the decemvirs should be burnt alive.
Their power grew to such a height that they acquired the right of proposing to the Comitia tributa, or the Senate, measures on nearly all the important affairs of the state, and finally were elected from among the Senators themselves. These rights were only secured by bitter and fierce contests.
In legislative measures, a senatus consultum was brought before the people by the consul, or the senator who originated the measure, after it had previously been exhibited in public for seventeen days. The inferior magistrates, whose office it was to superintend affairs of local interest, were elected by the Comitia Tributa.
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.
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.
The result of this insurrection was the creation of ten tribunes instead of the old number, and ten continued to be the regular number of tribunes till the fall of the republic. It was further decreed that the votes of the plebs, passed in the Comitia Tributa, should be binding on the whole people, provided they were confirmed by the Senate and the assemblies of the curias and centuries.
Wherefore the people, after the expulsion of the kings, growing impatient of this inequality, rested not till they had reduced the suffrage as it had been in the Comitia curiato to the whole people again; but in another way, that is to say, by the Comitia tributa, which thereupon were instituted, being a council where the people in exigencies made laws without the Senate, which laws were called plebiscita.
Sometimes in difficult cases the government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued for peace, after the people had declared war against it but before war had actually begun ; and at a subsequent period, when the senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreaty of the Samnites for peace . It is not till towards the close of this epoch that we find a considerably extended intervention of the -comitia tributa- in affairs of administration, particularly through the practice of consulting it as to the conclusion of peace and of alliances: this extension probably dates from the Hortensian law of 467.
"To hold you no longer, the Senate having done this upon necessity, made frequent attempts to retract it again, while the tribunes, on the other side, to defend what they had got, instituted their Tributa Comitia, or council of the people; where they came in time, and, as disputes increased, to make laws without the authority of the Senate, called plebiscita.
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