Roman Assembly

“ All the acts of the Roman Republic ran in the name of the Senate and People, as if the Senate were half the state, though its number seems still to have been limited to Three Hundred members. The Senate of Rome was perhaps the most remarkable assembly that the world has ever seen. Its members held their seats for life; once Senators always Senators, unless they were degraded for some dishonourable cause. ”

“ Those persons who take it into their heads to calumniate the Romans on every occasion, designate this assembly as a democratic club, expressly organized, not merely to uphold the Roman Revolution, but to sow discord and disorder in society, anarchy in the government, and to effect the complete demoralization of the people ”

“ The most trustworthy historians of the Roman constitution assert that owing to these facts they were called patres and their descendants patricians.” According to Plutarch, [92] “Romulus, after forming the army, employed the rest of the people as the citizen body (δῆμος) ; the multitude he called [18] populus, and appointed a hundred nobles to be councillors, whom he called patricians, and their assembly the senate.” ”

“ In the other Germanic tribes which entered the Empire the effect of the migration was to strengthen the king and to weaken in a corresponding degree the power of the people. [1006] In Russia Tartar domination, converting the legitimate princes into tyrants, effected the downfall of [173] the assemblies. [1007] The building up of large states, too, necessarily degrades or destroys popular gatherings. [1008]
The heritage of the Roman assembly from the earlier tribal time must have been slight as well as vague—a heritage diminished further by the growing power of the king and nobles. ”

“ A new constitution was hastily framed by private ambition or popular enthusiasm; nor could Rome, in the twelfth century, produce an antiquary to explain, or a legislator to restore, the harmony and proportions of the ancient model. The assembly of a free, of an armed, people, will ever speak in loud and weighty acclamations. ”

“ One natural result of this growth of a democracy of hundreds of thousands of citizens scattered over the greater part of Italy was the growth in power of the Senate. There had been in the development of the Roman constitution a variety of forms of the popular assembly, the plebeian assembly, the assembly by tribes, the assembly by centuries, and the like, into which variety we cannot enter here with any fullness; but the idea was established that with the popular assembly lay the power of initiating laws. ”

“ We have learned that in the early government of Rome there was a king, and a senate that advised the king. Besides this, there was an assembly composed of all Roman citizens who could bear arms. (Footnote: We must remember that at this time no one was a Roman citizen who did not belong to some family. All other residents were either slaves or had no political rights, i.e. had no voice in the government.) This assembly of Roman citizens met, from time to time, in an enclosed space called the COMITIUM, which means a place of gathering or coming together. ”

“ But these local authorities were carefully subordinated to the higher powers in Rome. The local constitution could be modified or revoked by the Roman senate and assembly, and the local magistrates, no less than the ordinary members of the community, were subject to the paramount authority of the Roman consuls, praetors and censors. In particular, care was taken to keep the administration of justice well under central control. The Roman citizen in a colony or municipium enjoyed, of course, the right of appeal to the Roman people in a capital case. ”

“ As long as the emperors resided at Rome, that assembly might be oppressed, but it could scarcely be neglected. The successors of Augustus exercised the power of dictating whatever laws their wisdom or caprice might suggest; but those laws were ratified by the sanction of the senate. The model of ancient freedom was preserved in its deliberations and decrees; and wise princes, who respected the prejudices of the Roman people, were in some measure obliged to assume the language and behavior suitable to the general and first magistrate of the republic. ”

“ Either legislative organization may initiate legislation, and in practice most proposals originate in the elected body, from which important or controversial matters are referred to the people. Popular action overrides that of the chosen body. The people may not amend a proposal, but must vote “Yes” or “No” upon it. This is an exact description of the relation of the Roman senate to the popular assembly under the Republic. The ancient system had the merits and defects which we see in its modern counterpart. ”

“ The Comitia of the Centuries still retained the election of the higher magistrates, the power of enacting laws, of declaring war [Pg 121] and making peace, and also the highest judicial functions. Accusations for treason were brought before the Centuries, and in all criminal matters every Roman citizen could appeal to them. [46] But, notwithstanding these extensive powers, their influence in the state was gradually superseded by the Assembly of the Tribes.
3. The Comitia Tributa obtained its superior influence and power mainly through its Tribunes. ”

“ In an earlier chapter [1356] it was shown that primitive Rome, like primitive Greece, regarded law as god-given—a conception which left no scope for legislation by a popular assembly. Though under the kings the people may occasionally have been called to vote on a resolution affecting their customs, the comitia curiata never acquired a law-making function. [1357] Even the declaration of war, which historical Rome looked upon as a lex, was issued by the king without the consent of the community, his only need being to secure the hearty support of the warriors. ”

“ The Roman jurists, who believed that the king was elected, credited the people with two distinct acts in the creation of a king—first, his election, and then the formal ratification of this election. [189] A parallel for this seemed to be furnished by Republican usage, where the lex was taken by magistrates already elected as a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the imperium. But at this period the magistrates were not elected by the comitia curiata, and the lex of this assembly is a mere survival, a reminiscence of the formal sovereignty which continued to be vested in the curiae. ”

“ As Caesar has little occasion for employing the terms in relation to the Roman assemblies, his usage on purely Roman grounds cannot be made out. Foreign assemblies—that is, of Gauls—he generally designates as concilia: B. G. i. 30, 31; iii. 18; v. 2, 6, 24, 56 f.; vi. 3, 20; vii. 63, 89; viii. 20 (Hirtius) . In all these cases the concilium is a tribal or national assembly including both nobles and commons; more rarely the word signifies a council of chiefs; B. G. i. 33; vii. 75; and perhaps vii. 1. Once he applies comitia to Gallic assemblies; B. G. vii. ”

“ The Popular Assembly (comitia curiata) comprised all the citizens of Rome, that is, all the members of the patrician families, old enough to bear arms. It was this body that enacted the laws of the state, determined upon peace or war, and also elected the king.
Classes of Society.—The two important classes of the population of Rome under the kingdom and the early republic, were the patricians and the plebeians. The former were the members of the three original tribes that made up the Roman people, and at first alone possessed political rights. ”

“ Thus there was then really no difference between these municipia and the Roman coloniae, except in their historical origin: the members of both were Roman citizens, and the Roman law prevailed in both.—In the colonies, as at Rome, the popular assembly had originally the sovereign power; they chose the magistrates, and could even make laws. When the popular assemblies became a mere form in Rome, and the elections were transferred by Tiberius to the senate, the same thing happened in the colonies, whose senates then possessed whatever power had once belonged to the community. ”

“ With the same kind of reasoning we could conclude that because in the Homeric age of Greece chariots were used in war by nobles only, the infantry must also have been exclusively noble; whereas we know that the rank and file were common men. [208] That the Roman army before Servius was similarly composed is supported not only by this and many other analogies, but also by the unanimous testimony of the sources. As in other primitive states the warriors belonged to the assembly and were the citizens. ”

“ The ancient definition, “an association based on the common acceptance of the same body of laws and [2] on the general participation in public benefits,” [6] is doubtless too abstract for the beginnings of Rome. Citizenship—membership in the populus—with all that it involved is elaborately defined by the Roman jurists; [7] but for the earlier period it will serve the purpose of the present study to mention that the three characteristic public functions of the citizen were military service, participation in worship, and attendance at the assembly. ”

“ Doubtless the writer fairly describes the military system which Rome employed before the introduction of the phalanx, [66] and which corresponds [11] closely with the system prevalent among the early Greeks, [67] Germans, [68] and other European peoples. [69] The military organization was everywhere a parallel of the civil. The Roman army, however, was by no means identical with the curiate assembly, for many belonged to the tribes and the curiae who for various reasons were exempt from military service. ”

“ With reference to the legislative activity of the assembly under the kings, it is necessary to call attention to the fact that among all peoples in the earlier stages of their growth law is chiefly customary. [1043] At the time of her founding Rome inherited from the Latin stock, to which her people mainly belonged, a mass of private and public customs, which, owing their existence to no legislative power, were the result of gradual evolution. ”

“ The consuls called the people together outside the walls by the sound of the war-trumpet to see an execution for treason. On this occasion the citizens were arrayed in centuries on the Campus Martius, in an assembly called at once comitia centuriata and contio. ”

“ The explanation of the difference of opinion seems to be that information as to this point was not contained in the censorial document from which the annalist (Fabius Pictor) drew his knowledge of the earlier comitia centuriata; the Romans knew only by tradition that the industrial centuries were associated in the assembly with one of the higher classes. The weight of authority inclines in favor of the first class, and the reason for the respectable place occupied by the mechanics is the high value placed on their service in early time. ”

“ In the tribunate of Gaius Gracchus the life of the comitia reached the highest point of intensity. The two years of his administration afford evidence of what the assembly could accomplish when directed by the personality of a great statesman. [2371] The sum total of the measures adopted should be estimated not as a completed work, but as a foundation to be strengthened at defective points and to be built upon till the whole structure of the state and empire should be reconstituted and freshly vitalized. ”

“ While the importance of the comitia centuriata as a criminal court was enhanced by the lex Valeria Horatia and the Duillian plebiscite of 449, which prohibited the election of a magistrate with absolute jurisdiction, the number of officials competent to bring capital actions before this assembly was increased as a result of that law of the Twelve Tables which enacted that all resolutions concerning the caput of a Roman citizen should be offered to the centuries only. ”

“ Down to the time of Servius Tullius, the comitia curiata were the only popular assemblies of Rome, and remained of course in the undiminished possession of the rights above described; but the constitution of that king brought about a great change, by transferring the principal rights which had hitherto been enjoyed by the curiae to a new national assembly or the comitia centuriata. But while the patricians were obliged to share their rights with the plebeians, they reserved for themselves the very important right of sanctioning or rejecting any measure which had been passed by the centuries. ”

“ The fundamental ideas of the Roman constitution—a king, a senate, and an assembly entitled simply to ratify or to reject the proposals which the king and senate should submit to it—are scarcely anywhere expressed so distinctly as in Aristotle's account of the earlier constitution of Crete. The germs of larger state-confederacies in the political fraternizing or even amalgamation of several previously independent stocks (symmachy, synoikismos) are in like manner common to both nations. ”

“ The period from the close of the war with Hannibal to the tribunate of Ti. Gracchus is marked by no such display of comitial energy as that which characterized either the pre-Hortensian age or the epoch introduced by Flaminius. In return for a spurious freedom and a pretended share in the administration the assembly became the handmaid of the plutocracy. ”