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
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