body, which was not the Populus,[1] was presided over by a pontiff.[2] This organisation was probably first applied about the middle of the third century B.C. to the creation of the pontifex maximus: it received a great extension at the close of the second century. A Domitian law, a plebiscitum of 104 B.C., applied election in a modified form to the religious collegia—probably to the four great guilds of pontiffs, augurs, quindecemvirs, and epulones. The college in question presented, the people elected and gave to the college again a congé d'élire, whereupon the chosen candidate was solemnly coopted by the members of his guild.[3] Sulla abolished this mode of appointment, and perhaps with it the popular election of the chief pontiff, restoring the aristocratic mode of cooptation; but appointment by the seventeen tribes was restored again in 63 B.C., through a plebiscite of the tribune Labienus.[4]
Our final task in connexion with the people and its powers will be to describe the preliminaries to the meetings of the comitia and the concilium, and the mode in which business was transacted at these gatherings.
The legal days of meeting (comitiales dies) were those which were neither holy (nefasti) nor dedicated to the work of justice (fasti). The 194 days thus left clear were further broken into by the nundinae, the first days of the eight-day week, on which not even a contio could be held,[5] and by the movable festivals (feriae conceptivae) which were fixed by the magistrates. These rules of time were binding on all meetings of Populus and Plebs; those of place differed for the various assemblies. The assembly of the curiae met within the pomerium, usually in the Comitium on the north-west of the Forum.[6] The centuries, on the other hand, must meet without the walls, and their place of assembly was usually the Campus Martius, but meetings are sometimes
- ↑ Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 7, 18 "Quod populus per religionem sacerdotia mandare non poterat, ut minor pars populi vocaretur."
- ↑ For this presidency by the youngest pontifex (the one, i.e., who stood the least chance of election) see Liv. xxv. 5 (212 B.C.). From Cic. ad Brut. i. 5, 4 it follows that the consuls had something to do with arranging the elections, but not that they were ever the presidents.
- ↑ Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 7, 18; Vell. ii. 12, 3.
- ↑ Dio Cass. xxxvii. 37.
- ↑ Macrob. Sat. i. 16, 29 "Julius Caesar XVI auspiciorum libro negat nundinis contionem advocari posse, id est cum populo agi ideoque nundinis Romanorum haberi comitia non posse."
- ↑ Varro L.L. v. 155 "comitium ab eo quod coibant eo comitiis curiatis et litium causa."
