Tribal assembly

However, the dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla gave this responsibility to special jury courts (quaestiones perpetuae) in 82 BC.

[citation needed] There are disagreements among modern historians regarding the number and nature of the tribal assembly (see below).

The word comitia (coming together), which was the plural of comitium (a purpose-built meeting place), referred to assemblies convened to make decisions on legislative or judicial matters, or to hold elections.

They were convened to hear public announcements and pronouncements, speeches and debates, to witness the interrogation of someone accused of in a trial, and to watch executions.

[4] Citizens always assembled first in a contio to hear debates or to enable canvassing by electoral candidates before voting.

Since the meetings of the plebs excluded the patricians, they were not considered as representing the whole of the Roman people and because of this, according to Laelius Felix, the term concilium applied to them.

Until the lex Hortensia passed by Quintus Hortensius in 287 BC, the patricians refused to accept the plebiscites as being binding on them on the ground that, because of their exclusion, did not apply to the whole of the people.

[7] Andrew Lintott notes that many modern historians follow Theodor Mommsen's view that during the Roman Republic there were two assemblies of the tribes and that the ancient sources used the term Comitia Tributa with reference both of them.

Lintott notes that some modern historians reject the Comitia Tributa/Concilium Plebis distinction and the use of the quote by Gellius as its basis.

References to laws which were submitted to the Comitia Tributa by the consuls in the ancient literature must have pertained to bills they presented to the Comitia Centuriata (the assembly of the soldiers, another voting assembly), a deviation from correct procedure found in the late Republic, or instances in which these officials had the plebeian tribunes propose bills for them.

He notes that there are examples in which laws were proposed to the Comitia Tributa by the consuls, who did not preside over the assembly of the plebeians.

[13] Forsythe presents a more recent account of the argument that the Comitia Tributa/Concilium Plebis distinction is a misplaced convention established by modern historians.

Forsythe argues that the distinctions between two assemblies based on the tribes "has no support in the extensive writings of Cicero and Livy, who must have been far more knowledgeable in these matters than Laelius Felix."

Based on T. P. Wiseman's view that many of Rome's early historical traditions 'were created, propagated, accepted and reshaped' from the middle of the fourth century BC onward, through dramas played on the stage at religious festivals,[15] Forsythe argues that the story of the plebeian secession was invented to explain the origin of the temple of Ceres, and its plebeian associations.

The lex Caecilia Didia of 98 BC required a trinundinum interval between the announcement of a law and the vote.

The augur Marcus Valerius Messalla Rufus (who was consul in 53 BC) wrote a rule book (On Auspices).

Other reasons were the veto of a plebeian tribune, or if one of the assembled citizens suffered an epileptic fit (morbus comitialis).

For legislative matters there was a debate on the rogatio in which private citizens had to ask the presiding magistrate for permission to speak.

[29] After the above, the voters were told to break up the contio and to arrange themselves by the tribes with the formula discedite, quirites (depart to your separate groups, citizens).

The voters assembled in enclosures called saepta[30] and voted by placing a pebble or written ballot into an appropriate jar.

The baskets (cistae) that held the votes were watched by officers (the custodes) who then counted the ballots and reported the results to the presiding magistrate.

This was an introduction of secret ballots, which reduced undue influence or intimidation by the powerful elites, which had until then been a problem.

Crawford postulates that the rustic tribes were enumerated along the major roads leading from Rome (the Viae Ostiensis, Appia, Latina, Praenestina, Valeria, Salaria, Flaminia and Clodia), in a counter-clockwise order: Romilia, Voltinia, Voturia, Aemilia, Horatia, Maecia, Scaptia, Pomptina, Falerina, Lemonia, Papiria, Ufentina, Terentina, Pupinia, Menenia, Publilia, Cornelia, Claudia, Camilia, Aniensis, Fabia, Pollia, Sergia, Clustumina, Quirina, Velina, Stellatina, Tromentina, Galeria, Sabatina, Arniensis.

Up to 145 BC, they were centred on the comitium, a templum (open-air space) built for public meetings at the north end of the Roman Forum.

Once this place became too crowded, the steps of the Temple of Castor and Pollux at the forum's south-east end were used as the tribunal.

Meetings were also sometimes held in the area Capitolina, an open space in front and around the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, on the southern summit of the Capitoline Hill.

In the late Republic, the meetings were held outside the city walls, at the Campus Martius (the Field of Mars) a large flat area that could accommodate the simultaneous voting of all the tribes, thus speeding up the process.

[40] Some actions were still passed using the assemblies, with certain laws providing for the erection of temples, the remission of rents in 41 BC, and the lex Falcidia governing inheritance in 40 BC;[40] similarly, various laws granting the triumvirs the right to wear the civic crown[40] were passed by plebiscite, as it would have been unseemly for them to grant themselves those honours.

[27] The thirty-five tribes were not ethnic or kinship groups, but geographic divisions into which Roman citizens were distributed.

vicus, in an urban context it meant neighbourhood) and in the rural tribes were called pagi (sing.