dictator had reference to the patrum auctoritas. We have seen what this power had become, probably from the dawn of the Republic.[1] It was a claim by the patrician members of the Senate to accept or reject any measure of the Populus, when assembled by curies or by centuries. It never affected plebiscita, and we know too little of the comitia tributa to say whether the measures of that body were submitted to it or not;[2] the hampering of the comitia curiata was by this time of no importance, and the lex Publilia confined itself to the application of the auctoritas to the centuries. By this law it was enacted that the consent to laws passed by the comitia centuriata should be given before the voting commenced.[3] This provision was shortly afterwards (perhaps in 338 B.C.) extended by a lex Maenia to elections.[4] It is evident that neither of these provisions could have made the auctoritas nugatory, for it was not more difficult for a section of the Senate to decline to submit a question to the people than to reject it when passed. The provisions may, however, be a sign that the auctoritas was becoming a mere form; but its formal character was due to the rapidly increasing preponderance of Plebeians in the Senate.
But though the popular assemblies were thus free from patrician control, and the magistrates, subject only to the self-imposed limitation of taking advice from the Senate, could elicit any utterance they pleased from the comitia, there was one grave defect in the existing system of legislation which called for remedy. The plebeian magistracy, which circumstances had raised to a pre-eminence above all other powers, had not the freedom of the other magistrates. The rogationes of the tribunes, when accepted by the Plebs, still required some further sanction to become laws. This anomaly might have been remedied in one of two ways; either by giving the tribune the right of summoning and presiding over meetings
- [Footnote: consul to bring the petition of the Plebs at once before the Populus" (Smith
Dict. of Antiq. s.v. plebiscitum, ii. p. 439).]
- ↑ p. 83.
- ↑ The only evidence that they were is furnished by Livy's account of a lex Manlia of 357 B.C. (Willems Droit Public p. 183). See Liv. vii. 16 (Manlius the consul) "legem, novo exemplo ad Sutrium in castris tributim de vicesima eorum, qui manumitterentur, tulit. Patres, quia ea lege haud parvum vectigal inopi aerario additum esset, auctores fuerunt."
- ↑ ib. viii. 12 "ut legum, quae comitiis centuriatis ferrentur, ante initum suffragium patres auctores fierent."
- ↑ Cic. Brut. 14, 55. Cf. Liv. i. 17 "hodie . . . in legibus magistratibusque rogandis usurpatur idem jus (the patrum auctoritas), vi adempta."
