CHAPTER XII

THE COMITIA TRIBUTA AND THE RISE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY TO THE YEAR 449

In the belief of the Romans the tribunes of the plebs, originally two, were instituted in 494 as a concession to the seceding commons to win them back to the state.[1583] The historical truth of the first secession need not be discussed here; but there is no good ground for rejecting the view of the ancients either that the tribunate of the plebs owed its existence to a revolution or that it began at as early a date. According to our sources the plebeian tribunes, hence we may infer also the aediles, were for a time elected, and other business affecting the interests of the common people was transacted, in comitia curiata composed potentially of all the citizens.[1584] The change in the form of organization in 471, from curiate to tribal, will be considered below. The president of the comitia which elected the first plebeian tribunes was necessarily a patrician magistrate,[1585] probably the pontifex maximus;[1586] thereafter, with the exception of the comitia for the election of the first plebeian officials after the overthrow of the decemvirs, tribunes of the plebs presided not only for elections but also for judicial business and for the enactment of plebiscites (plebi scita).

The object of the office of tribune was the protection of individual citizens, plebeian and patrician alike,[1587] from oppression; and the means was the auxilium (official aid),[1588] which could be rendered in no other way than by personal contact; hence the law prohibiting a tribune from being absent over night from the city[1589] and requiring him to leave the door of his house open during the night.[1590] In the further interest of the citizens the tribunes had the unrestricted right to call the plebs to a contio and address them at any time and on any subject, to form them when so assembled into voting groups, at first curiae and after 471, tribes, and to take their votes on proposals affecting plebeian interests, plebiscites being from the beginning binding on the plebeian body in so far as they harmonized with the laws of the state.[1591]

These were the two original functions from which the vast powers of the later tribunes gradually developed. As strictly plebeian officials they had no authority to summon patricians, to exclude them from the place of assembly,[1592] or to condemn them judicially.[1593] It follows that their alleged prosecutions of past consuls for maladministration[1594] are fictions[1595]—an anticipation of their jurisdiction at a later age. Directly they possessed no power of judgment or of coercion;[1596] but for the enforcement of the auxilium and of the ius agendi cum plebe their persons were made sacred—sacro sancti—by an oath which the plebs swore at the time they instituted the office,[1597] namely that any one who killed a tribune or aedile of the plebs or did him bodily harm, or who commanded another to inflict harm or death upon him might as a person devoted to Jupiter be killed with impunity, and his property be confiscated.[1598] The avenger was necessarily either a private plebeian or an official of the plebs.[1599] The formal act which rendered the tribunes sacred was termed a lex sacrata. The essence of such a law is (1) that it was sworn to by the community—in this instance by the community of plebs, (2) that the offender against it became a homo sacer and could be put to death with impunity.[1600] This idea of sanctity the plebeians may have derived

## partly from the Greek asylum;[1601] but it seems also to have been

influenced by the condition of ambassadors, hence the later, ill-founded conception of the plebs as a state, and of the plebeian officials and other institutions as based on a treaty ratified with fetial ceremonies between the patrician government and the seceding plebs.[1602] Though termed lex sacrata because it was passed and sworn to in the community, as it were, of the plebs, like any plebiscite of this period the resolution had no legal validity for the state or for the patricians. Under compulsion, however, the government yielded to the demands of the plebeians without formally acknowledging the sanctity of their officials; so that the patricians, by asserting that Roman law did not recognize an inviolability founded purely on religion,[1603] could afterward deny that the tribunes were really sacrosanct. Till the enactment of the Valerian-Horatian laws of 449,[1604] accordingly, the inviolability of the tribunes existed in so far only as the plebeians were in a position to maintain it by holding over their opponents and over the government the threat of violence and revolution. That under the circumstances domestic peace was on the whole preserved should be credited to the orderly character of the great mass of citizens.

Applied to the holding of contiones and comitia, this inviolability protected the presiding tribune from interruption, contradiction, and every disturbance. The principle was afterward extended to verbal abuse anywhere publicly indulged in.[1605] Even if a man showed disrespect by not stepping out of the way of a tribune who was passing along the street, he was liable to the death penalty.[1606] Under normal conditions, however, the rigorous execution of this lex sacrata could not be thought of; in place of outlawing the offender against his person the tribune was ordinarily willing to impose a fine upon him, from which an appeal might be made to the plebeian assembly; or in cases of violence to his person, he might resort to capital prosecution, which was likewise appealable. These principles were formulated in an alleged Icilian plebiscite of the year 492.[1607] From what has just been said it is clear that the tribune’s coercive[1608] and judicial functions resulted, not from usurpation as has often been asserted,[1609] but from a mitigation of the harsh lex sacrata. In a word, the ultimate basis of tribunician authority was the revolutionary power of the plebs, upon which rested the sanctity of the tribunes, and thereon their jurisdiction. Of the judicial activity attributed by the annalists to the plebeian officials in the period before the decemvirs we do not know how much is mythical; but it is safe to say that all the capital cases, probably all the cases without qualification, which they actually settled as judges were submitted to by the patrician government for the sake of peace, without being accepted as legal.

To the third year of the tribunate, 491, is assigned the first mentioned exercise of tribunician jurisdiction. C. Marcius Coriolanus, the accused, had advocated in the senate the abolition of the tribunician office,[1610] and had done personal violence to the aediles, in this way rendering himself liable to the penalty of the lex sacrata on which rested the sanctity of the plebeian officials. Instead of declaring him a homo sacer, a tribune brought him to trial before the tribes, which condemned him by a narrow majority.[1611] The story is now regarded by all scholars as a myth. The vote by tribes at this early time is either exceptional or more likely an anticipation of later usage.[1612]

In accordance with the Icilian plebiscite a capital charge is said to have been brought by a tribune of the plebs against Kaeso Quinctius on the ground that he had repeatedly driven the tribunes from the Forum and had dispersed their assembly.[1613] After providing sureties the accused went into exile,[1614] and the sentence of banishment was passed—in Cicero’s opinion by the comitia centuriata, in Livy’s by the tribal comitia of plebs, 461.[1615] Another case prior to the decemvirate is recorded for the year 455. Representatives of three illustrious patrician families were charged with having disturbed an assembly under tribunician presidency. Their estates were forfeited to Ceres.[1616] Naturally under this arrangement between the plebs and the government there was room for much misunderstanding: the leaders of the plebs stretched their claims to the uttermost; and the patricians, after granting the radical concession, endeavored to recall as much of it as possible. They plausibly urged that while the sacrosanctitas, so far as it existed,[1617] might protect the person of the tribune, it gave him no authority over a patrician;[1618] and their position as the sole holders of political power and the sole repositories of law and usage enabled them before the decemviral legislation by stubborn, skilful perseverance in the details of political warfare almost to throw the tribunician sanctity into oblivion.[1619] Livy tells us that in the assembly appointed for the trial of the past consuls L. Furius and C. Manlius, the accusing tribune failed to appear, and was found murdered in his home; and the historian gives us to understand that the crime was the result of a private conference among the patricians.[1620] Dio Cassius[1621] states that they secretly slew a number of the boldest spirits among the plebeians. Though these stories are mythical, they reflect at least the opinion of the historians that in this early period the sanctity of the tribune counted for little. If it failed to protect his person, it could have given him no great degree of recognized judicial competence. Under these circumstances we should not expect to find the tribunes often bringing the power of their questioned sanctity into actual use in the early years of their existence; but that before the decemvirate they exercised jurisdiction to some extent even in capital cases, which were appealed to the assembly under their presidency, is proved by a law of the Twelve Tables, which, to remedy what the legislators must have considered an abuse, provided that accusations affecting the caput of a citizen should be brought only before the comitiatus maximus—evidently the comitia centuriata.[1622]

If the tribunes presumed to condemn men to death, they certainly would not hesitate to fine them for lighter offences. For checking the power of the magistrates to levy unlimited fines the consuls of 454, A. Aternius and Sp. Tarpeius, passed through the comitia centuriata a law which set the maximum fine to be levied by a magistrate on an individual in any one day at thirty cattle and two sheep, the minimum being a single sheep. In case he exceeded the former amount, an appeal could be made to the assembly.[1623] In the opinion of Dionysius[1624] this law was interpreted to apply to all magistrates, including those of the plebs, and was made accordingly the basis of the tribunician jurisdiction in finable offences. These consequences seem to have been drawn from the statute, although the proposers may not have so intended it.[1625]

Sufficient evidence has now been offered that before the decemviral legislation the plebeian tribunes exercised, on the basis of their sanctity, a vague jurisdiction in both finable and capital cases, occasionally submitted to by the patrician government though probably not recognized by it as just or constitutional. For the same period their method of agitation by the obstruction of the levy,[1626] by haranguing the people in contiones,[1627] and occasionally by sedition, proves clearly the lack of legislative power through the assembly over which they presided, as well as their lack of veto on the acts of the government. With reference to legislation the course of the discussion in the present and following chapters will make it evident that only by a provision of the Hortensian statute did plebiscites become unconditionally binding on the whole people. Although from the beginning a tribune, as a member of a collegial office, could intercede against the act of a colleague, he had in this period no legal right of the kind against the government; for had he now possessed it, as he did at a later age, he would have felt no need of obstructing the levy—a relatively slow, clumsy method of political warfare. It is to be noticed further that the power of veto of the tribunes, after it had been acquired, rested upon their jurisdiction. If a magistrate persisted in ignoring their prohibition, his act remained valid but he rendered himself liable to tribunician prosecution.[1628] Necessarily, then, as long as the tribunes lacked judicial competence (till the Valerian-Horatian legislation, 449) they lacked the veto against governmental action; as long as their judicial competence depended upon the will of the government (probably till the Hortensian legislation, 287), their veto on the government must have been correspondingly limited. Finally it was not till tribunician obstruction of the levy, sedition, and secession disappear (that is, with the enactment of the Hortensian statute) that we have a right to assume the existence of an unrestricted tribunician veto.[1629] The method of the tribunes in the pre-decemviral period was, by the means above indicated, to force a proposed measure upon the patrician magistrates, and to compel them to bring it before the centuriate assembly in regular form.[1630]

In view of the circumstances that passed bills alone were recorded and hence could be known to posterity, we may reject as unauthentic all the alleged proposals of agrarian laws of this period,[1631] which however may not have been free from agitation of the kind.

A law of the year 471 gave the tribunician assembly a tribal organization. This measure, brought about by the agitation of Publilius Volero, tribune of the plebs of that year,[1632] must, for the reason above mentioned, have been an act of the comitia centuriata.[1633] The motive given by Livy was the desire of the tribunes to free themselves from the influence which the patricians through the votes of their clients exercised on the assembly.[1634] The curiae contained all the citizens,[1635] the tribes none but the landowners. The tribal organization, therefore, excluded not all the clients but those only, together with any other citizens, who were landless.[1636] Probably in other ways the patricians had greater control of the curiate than of the tribal assemblies, although it is impossible to believe with Dionysius[1637] that the essence of the change from the curiate to the tribal comitia consisted in the elimination of auspical influence. That the law forbade the patricians to take part in tribunician assemblies, as Zonaras[1638] imagines, is not probable, for it gave the tribune no new authority over the patricians; he had power neither to summon them to his assembly nor to expel them from it.[1639] In fact we have evidence of the presence of patricians in tribunician assemblies after this date.[1640] The so-called law of Publilius Volero, now under discussion, was confused by the sources with the Publilian law of 339, some of the provisions of the later act being uncritically assigned to the earlier.[1641]

The statute of 471 imparted to the tribunician assembly no new function. Although in mentioning the bill Dionysius[1642] includes a proposal to grant the assembly legislative power, when he comes to speak of the statute as actually passed, he refers only to its provisions for the election of plebeian tribunes and aediles by the tribes, herein agreeing with Livy and other authorities.[1643]

In the same year four tribunes of the plebs were elected for the first time.[1644] The increase was probably effected by an article of the statute under discussion.

Till after the decemviral legislation the comitia tributa,[1645] brought into existence by the statute of 471, was restricted, as had been the tribunician comitia curiata, to the transaction of purely plebeian business. In the records of this period we find a continuance of apocryphal agrarian bills[1646] and condemnations of retired magistrates.[1647] In reality the only political weapon of the tribunes, aside from general agitation, continued to be the obstruction of the levy,[1648] as is proved by their increase in number to ten.[1649] The only agrarian law of the period, the so-called lex Icilia for the division of the Aventine among the people, was passed by the comitia centuriata.[1650] The very circumstance that this mild concession to the plebs was couched in a lex sacrata[1651] shows how little faith the commons had in the government.[1652]

During this period the supreme power was the senate. Shortly after the fall of the kings it provided for the purchase of corn among neighboring states in a time of scarcity, made a state monopoly of salt in the interest of the poor, freed the plebs from port dues and tributum, thereby placing the whole burden of these taxes on the wealthy.[1653] These acts imply legislative as well as administrative competence. Foreign affairs,[1654] including the decision of war and peace, were in its hands. It resolved not to restore the property of the Tarquins,[1655] decreed triumphs to victorious generals,[1656] the celebration of games,[1657] the expulsion of the Volscians from the city in the time of a festival,[1658] controlled the magistrates, including the plebeian tribunate, by means of the dictatorship,[1659] or clothed the consuls with absolute authority.[1660] Little room was left for the activity of the assemblies.

Notwithstanding these unfavorable conditions the tribunes of the plebs through obstruction of the levy and through their harangues in contiones[1661] were chiefly instrumental in bringing about the institution of the decemviri legibus scribundis. Actual votes in tribunician comitia on proposals looking to that end[1662] could have had no more than moral weight. Under popular pressure the consul Sestius, 452, referred the question to the senate,[1663] and the bill for their institution was passed by comitia, doubtless of the centuries. The only valid activity, therefore, of the tribal assembly prior to the decemviral legislation, so far as is known, was the enactment of plebiscites, which lacked the force of law, the election of plebeian officials,[1664] and the quasi-judicial decision of cases appealed to it by those who were accused of violating the tribunician sanctity.[1665]

An epoch was made in the history of the tribunate and of the tribal assembly by the consulship of Valerius and Horatius, 449, who proposed and carried a centuriate law[1666] which gave these institutions a legal basis. The article which logically first claims our attention provided that any one who injured the tribunes of the plebs, the aediles, or the decemviral judges should be devoted to Jupiter, and his property should be forfeit to the temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera.[1667] According to Livy,[1668] who here represents the tribunician point of view, the original lex sacrata, passed on the Sacred Mount, was first renewed with appropriate ceremonies, thus reëstablishing the religious inviolability of the plebeian officials, whom then the article of the Valerian-Horatian statute here mentioned rendered legally inviolable. The constitutional relation of these two ideas was difficult even for the Romans to determine. Certain jurists, controverting the tribunician interpretation, asserted that this law made no person sacrosanct, but merely threatened with capital punishment any one who injured the officials concerned, clothing them thus in the same kind of inviolability as that which protected the ordinary magistrates.[1669] The object, according to this view, was not only to eliminate from the government the anomaly of a power sanctioned by religion only,[1670] but also to convert the plebeian officials into state officials. The leaders of the plebs gladly accepted the new position tendered them, without being willing however to withdraw from the old. Henceforth we have to deal, accordingly, with a group of legally recognized public functionaries who effectively claimed a religious inviolability hard to reconcile with the constitution, in which they were in time to make for themselves a disproportionate place.

The second article of the Valerian-Horatian statute was to the effect that “whatever the plebs ordered in their tribal assembly should be valid for the people”;[1671] so that henceforth plebiscites, when passed under the conditions hereafter specified, were the equivalent of leges, as they were often so called. It is so similar to a provision of the later Publilian and of the still later Hortensian statute that we should incline to reject it as an anticipation of the one or the other, were it not for the fact that under it important plebi scita, as the Canuleian, the Licinian-Sextian, and the Genucian, were passed.[1672] We must accept it, then, as historical, and adapt our interpretation to the few known facts in the case.

Notwithstanding the use of the word plebs to designate the tribal gathering under tribunician presidency, there is no valid reason for supposing that the Valerian-Horatian law altered its composition—that the patricians were now excluded.[1673] Dionysius[1674] is clearly of the opinion that they participated in this form of comitia both before and after the enactment of the statute under consideration; and Livy[1675] thinks of them as still present in the tribunician meetings as late as the struggle for the Licinian-Sextian laws. The problem must be considered in connection with the development of the voting function of the assembly. Primitively the leaders (nobles) in council decided upon a measure, which they then submitted to the people to be accepted with clamor and din.[1676] Although the acclamation was essentially an act of the masses, nothing forbade the nobles to join in the shouting. Doubtless in the tribal assemblies the expression of opinion within the tribe continued for a time to be by acclamation.[1677] As long as this primitive condition existed, a distinction could not be drawn between the right to be present and the right to join in the decision of questions brought before the comitia. Undoubtedly the custom of voting by heads within the tribe was an imitation of a usage adopted by the comitia centuriata some time after the institution of the latter;[1678] hence we could not reasonably assume its use by the tribes so early as the pre-decemviral period. The question therefore as to whether the patricians, who were certainly present in meetings of the tribes, enjoyed the right of voting in them could not have arisen till after the decemviral legislation. The plebeians had found it impossible by their own powers to exclude from their assembly the landless clients, who were inferior to themselves.[1679] Much less could they exclude the nobles. If the presiding tribune could not prevent their remaining after the people had been formed into voting groups, he could not prevent their voting. As the patricians, equally with the plebeians, belonged to the tribes, the former, being men of superior privilege, could not lawfully be debarred from meetings of their associations; and if they chose to attend, it was not for the tribunes of the plebs to decide as to the law in the matter. The word plebs in the statute is susceptible of an easy explanation. As the comitia curiata and comitia centuriata, under patrician presidents, had from the beginning been termed populus, nothing could be more natural than that from the time an assembly convened under plebeian presidency for plebeian objects, the latter should by way of distinction be termed plebs, even though the few patricians were included. Ordinarily the plebeians must have welcomed patricians to their assemblies, as the presence of magistrates and senators and their sons added dignity and weight to the proceedings. But when the patricians used all their superior influence in both lawful and unlawful ways to block a popular measure, the tribunes, naturally wishing then to exclude them, attempted to establish the principle that tribunician assemblies were exclusively plebeian. This question was settled by the law of Publilius Philo, 339.[1680]

This article of the Valerian-Horatian statute was a concession extorted from the patrician government by the strongest pressure, perhaps by a plebeian secession. The actual advantage which it brought to the plebs was minimized, however, by the provision that the previous consent of the senate was essential to the validity of bills brought before the tribunician assembly.[1681] The patricians could urge in support of this arrangement that as their magistrates according to long established custom always obtained the previous consent of the senate (senatus consultum) to measures brought before any assembly, and were absolutely required to obtain senatorial sanction (patrum auctoritas) for curiate and centuriate laws and elections,[1682] the tribunes, who were free from the trammels of the sanction, should be legally compelled to consult the senate before bringing a measure into their assemblies, especially as their legislation was in a field hitherto monopolized by the patrician magistrates and the senate. Although the tribunes of the plebs would have preferred to understand by the term plebiscite all that it had meant before—the unconditioned resolution of the tribal assembly under their presidency—they must have felt satisfied for the time being with the great gain they had made, however strenuous they afterward became to relieve themselves of senatorial control. This condition on the validity of the plebiscite is not expressly mentioned by Livy in connection with the Valerian-Horatian legislation, but is assumed by the sources for the following period.[1683] The same thing is clearly implied, too, in the long series of political struggles which came after the enactment of the Valerian-Horatian statute.[1684] Had the tribunes been free to legislate without interference on the part of the senate, they would have been in a position easily to complete the social and political equalization of the orders, and by one sweeping reform law to place themselves and their constituents in the condition reached by an almost uninterrupted conflict of a hundred and sixty years (449-287).[1685]

It was in accordance with this regulation that another article of the Valerian-Horatian statute directed the aediles of the plebs to preserve the senatus consulta in the temple of Ceres.[1686] We cannot look upon these officials as keepers of the senatorial archives of that time,[1687] and hence must conclude that the documents in their charge were those decrees which authorized the presentation of tribunician bills, for with those alone the plebeians were directly concerned.

The patricians expected to find a further safeguard in the tribunician veto, which could be directed against a colleague.[1688] From the fact, however, that the tribunes continued to resort to the clumsy method of obstructing the levy, and afterward also of impeding the collection of the tributum,[1689] we must infer that as yet their intercession did not prevail against a patrician magistrate.[1690] Various popular seditions, too, are mentioned for the same period (449-287).[1691] That one which led to the Hortensian legislation is historical, and it is hardly possible that all the others are fictions.

Another conservative check was the application of oblative auspices to the plebeian assembly.[1692] Livy[1693] reports that in 293 the tribunes resigned because of a faulty election, held probably in violation of oblativa. In general, however, the plebeian gathering was relatively free from religious control till after the enactment of the Aelian and Fufian laws (about 150).[1694] It had the advantage of the comitia centuriata (1) in freedom from the impetrative auspices, (2) in freedom from the patrum auctoritas, (3) in mobility. Immediately after the adoption of the Valerian-Horatian statute it must have become evident that the tribunician assembly, through the character of its presidency, its composition, and its democratic spirit, was to outstrip the centuriate gathering in energy and aggressiveness, and to be in a word the chief factor of progress in legislation.

No enactment affecting the jurisdiction of tribunes is referred to Valerius and Horatius by the ancient writers; and yet the arrangement by which they thereafter brought their capital actions before the centuries could not have been made without the consent of the government. If, on the other hand, the tribunes now possessed an unconditioned power to subject patricians, whether magistrates or private citizens, to capital prosecutions, they would have found it so effective a means of political warfare as no longer to need obstruction and sedition in their struggle for plebeian rights. In capital cases the permission of a higher magistrate, ordinarily after 367 the praetor, was required; and before the enactment of the Hortensian statute, we may well believe, the tribunes had no means of forcing this permission. Some similar restriction must have been placed on their liberty to bring finable

## actions.

The comitia tributa under tribunician presidency had at length become an effective constitutional factor in legislation and in jurisdiction. But its action in the former sphere was dependent upon the favor of the senate, in the latter on that of a patrician magistrate. The range, too, of its legislation was restricted by the wide administrative powers of the senate. We shall find it in the following period winning freedom and enlarging the field of its activity.

The following literature is for the whole period from 449 to 287.

Schulze, C. F., _Volksversammlungen der Römer_, 341-70; Hüllmann, K. D., _Staatsrecht des Altertums_, 354-67; Niebuhr, B. G., _Römische Geschichte_, i. 624 ff., Eng. 283 ff.; see also index, s. Tributcomitien; Schwegler, A., _Röm. Geschichte_, see index, s. Tributcomitien; Mommsen, Th., _Röm. Staatsrecht_, iii. 300 ff.; _Röm. Forschungen_, i. 151-66; _Röm. Strafrecht_, 462-8, 473-8, 1014-6, et passim; Ihne, W., _History of Rome_, bk. VI. chs. i, viii; _Ueber die Entstehung und die ältesten Befugnisse des röm. Tribunats_, in _Rhein. Mus._ N. F. xxi (1866). 161-79; _Entwickelung der Tributcomitien_, in _Rhein. Mus._ N. F. xxviii (1873). 353-79; Peter, C., _Gesch. Roms_, bks. ii, iii; Lange, L., _Röm. Altertümer_, i. 586-681, 821-56; ii. 459-94, 533-42, 565-97, 613-42; _De legibus Porciis libertatis civium vindicibus_, in _Kleine Schriften_, i. 342-429; _De plebiscitis Ovinio et Atinio disputatio_, ibid. ii. 393-446; _Ueber das poetelische Gesetz de ambitu_, ibid. ii. 195-202; Kleineidam, F., _Beitr. z. Kentniss d. lex Poetelia_, in _Festg. f. F. Dahn_, ii. 1-30; Ihm, _Ambitus_, in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ i. 1800-3; Madvig, J. N., _Verfassung und Verwaltung des röm. Staates_, i. 234-46; Voigt, M., _XII Tafeln_, i. 683-90; Karlowa, O., _Röm. Rechtsgeschichte_, i. 409; Girard, P. F., _Histoire de l’organisation judiciaire des Romains_, i. 149-59, 237 ff.; Puchta, G. F., _Cursus der Institutionen_, i. (10th ed. 1893) 166-9 (on lex and plebiscite); Mispoulet, J. B., _Institutions politiques des Romains_, i. 207-30; _Études d’institutions Romaines_, 66-81; Willems, P., _Droit public Romain_, 160 ff., 173 ff.; Greenidge, _Legal Procedure of Cicero’s Time_, 327-49; Herzog, E., _Geschichte und System der röm. Staatsverfassung_, i. 153 ff., 189-96, 216 ff., 248-64, 279-88, 1128-88; _Glaubwürdigkeit der Gesetze bis 387 der Stadt_; _Lex Sacrata und das Sacrosanctum_, in _Jahrb. f. Philol._ xxii (1876). 139-50; Dupond, A., _De la constitution et des magistratures Romaines sous la république Romaine_, 75 ff.; Borgeaud, C., _Histoire du plébiscite_, 57-76, 117-67; Hallays, A., _Comices à Rome_, ch. iii; Morlot, E., _Comices électoraux sous la république Romaine_, ch. iv; Ptaschnik, J., _Die Wahl der Volkstribunen vor der Rogation des Volero Publilius_, in _Zeitschr. f. österreich. Gymn._ xiv (1863). 627-38; _Publilische Rogation_, ibid. xvii (1866). 161-200; _Die Centuriatgesetze von 305 und 415 U. C._, ibid. xxi (1870). 497-525; _Lex Hortensia 473 U. C._ ibid. xxiii (1872). 241-53; _Stimmrecht der Patricier in den Tributcomitien_, ibid. xxxii (1881). 81-102; Ruppel, K. W., _Teilnahme der Patrizier an den Tributkomitien_; Soltau, W., _Gültigkeit der Plebiscite_, in _Berliner Studien_, ii (1885). 1-176; Clason, D. O., _Kritische Erörterungen über den röm. Staat_, 30-9; Schmidt, J., _Die Einsetzung der röm. Volkstribunen_, in _Hermes_, xxi (1886). 460-6; Meyer, E., _Der Ursprung des Tribunats und die Gemeinde der vier Tribus_, in _Hermes_, xxi (1895). 1-24, controverted by Vassis, in _Athena_, ix (1897). 470 ff.; Pais, _Ancient Italy_, chs. xx, xxi; Garofalo, F. P., _L’origine e l’elezione dei tribuni e degli edili della plebe con un indice alfabetico dei loro nomi_; Podestà, G., _Il tribunato della plebe in Roma dalla secessione sul monte sacro all’approvazione della legge di Publilio Volerone_; Eigenbrodt, A., _De magistratuum Romanorum iure intercedendi_; Ackermann, H., _Ueber die raümlichen Schranken der tribunizischen Gewalt_; Tophoff, _De lege Valeria Horatia, Publilia, Hortensia_; Hennes, _Das dritte valerisch-horatische Gesetz und dessen Wiederholungen_; Long, G., _On the Passage in Appian’s Civil Wars_ (i. 8) _which relates to the Licinian Law_, in _Classical Museum_, iii (1846). 78 ff.; Kubitschek, _Aedilis_, in Pauly-Wissowa, _Real-Encycl._ i. 448-64; Humbert, G., _Aedilis_, in Daremberg et Saglio, _Dict._ i. 95-100; Bloch, L., _Die ständischen und sozialen Kämpfe in der römischen Republik_; Willoughby, W. W., _Political Theories of the Ancient World_, ch. xvi; Strachan-Davidson, T. L., _Decrees of the Roman Plebs_, in _Eng. Hist. Rev._ v (1890). 462-74; Dreyfus, R., _Les lois agraires sous la république Romaine_, pt. I. chs. i-iii; De Sanctis, G., _Storia dei Romani_, I. chs. xiii, xiv, xvii; Billeter, G., _Gesch. d. Zinsfusses_, 115 ff.

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