triumviri epulones, created in 196 B.C. for preparing the epulum Jovis and banquets given in honour of the other gods[1]—seems from its origin to have been composed wholly of Plebeians.[2] The change, however, though indirectly favourable to the Plebeians, was not of a democratic character; the priesthoods were kept within a few distinguished families through the principle of appointment. The method was that of cooptation, which we find existing in 453 B.C.[3] It was not until the last century of the Republic that the lex Domitia (104 B.C.) ventured to give the election, not indeed to the Populus, but to a special assembly composed of seventeen out of the thirty-five tribes chosen by lot, and even then the forms of nomination by the head of the college, and of cooptation by its members, were scrupulously observed.[4]
In sketching the invasion of office and honours by the plebeian nobles we have ventured to anticipate somewhat the chronological sequence of events. The commons, too, had during this period their share of political emancipation. Thirty-nine years before the Ogulnian law something had been done by legislation to increase the independence of the Plebs as a corporation, and to free the assemblies of the Populus from the legal control of the Patricians. In 339 B.C. a plebeian dictator, Q. Publilius Philo, carried a law making plebiscita binding on the people (ut plebiscita omnes Quirites tenerent).[5] The meaning of this law was clearly not understood by our authority. Its pretended wording is almost identical with that of the Valerio-Horatian measures;[6] but what was done on that occasion did not need repetition, and the object of the Publilian law must have been to secure more immediate legal validity to such measures passed by the Plebs as did not refer to that corporation alone—to make, in fact, the stages of transition from plebiscitum to lex a matter of formal and not of real importance.[7] Another law passed by the same*
- ↑ Liv. xxxiii. 42. The number was afterwards increased to seven, from which time the college was known as that of the VIIviri epulones.
- ↑ Marquardt Staatsverw. iii. p. 333.
- ↑ Liv. iii. 32 "augur (mortuus est) C. Horatius Pulvillus; in cujus locum C. Veturium eo cupidius, quia damnatus a plebe erat, augures legere." The pontifex maximus was early an exception to this rule; see the comitia sacerdotum in the section dealing with the people.
- ↑ Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 7, 18; Vell. ii. 12.
- ↑ Liv. viii. 12.
- ↑ p. 109.
- ↑ Mr. Strachan-Davidson conjectures that the law of Publilius Philo "may have struck out the intervening consultation of the Senate, and may have required the
