be summoned only by plebeian magistrates and it never included the Patricians.[1] Besides issuing universally valid decrees (plebiscita), it elected the magistrates of the Plebs, and in its judicial capacity was the body which considered the penalties which they had formulated. By the strict letter of the Twelve Tables this jurisdiction should have been limited to the imposition of fines,[2] but, besides instances of its capital jurisdiction at an early period of its history, it continued to possess the unquestioned right of pronouncing outlawry (aquae et ignis interdictio) against any one already in exile,[3] and after the time of Caius Gracchus there are traces of an independent capital jurisdiction which it exercised against magistrates who had violated the provocatio.[4]
The freedom of this plebeian assembly was for a time limited by Sulla's ordinance (88 B.C.) directing that no measure should be brought before it which had not received the previous sanction of the Senate;[5] but the old powers of unimpeded legislation were restored in 70 B.C. If Sulla also took the right of prosecution from the tribune,[6] the higher jurisdiction of the Plebs was restored by the enactment which gave it back its legislative power, for tribunician prosecutions continue to the end of the Republic.
An anomalous use of the popular suffrage was made in the case of elections to the priestly colleges. Formerly they had been kept distinct from the secular life of the state, and even when the reforming spirit dictated that they should be submitted to the voice of the people, a religious scruple forbade the intervention of the comitia. The electoral body was composed of seventeen tribes selected by lot from the thirty-five, and this, this word may include the Plebs. Gracchus at least seems to have banished the ex-consul Popilius by means of a plebiscitum (Cic. pro Domo 31, 82 "ubi enim tuleras ut mihi aqua et igni interdiceretur? quod Gracchus de P. Popilio . . . tulit").]
- ↑ See Appendix on the comitia tributa.
- ↑ p. 107.
- ↑ Liv. xxv. 4 (212 B.C.) "Tribuni plebem rogaverunt plebesque ita scivit, 'Si M. Postumius ante K. Maias non prodisset citatusque eo die non respondisset neque excusatus esset, videri eum in exilio esse, bonaque ejus venire, ipsi aqua et igni placere interdici; ib. xxvi. 3 (211 B.C.) "Cn. Fulvius exulatum Tarquinios abiit. Id ei justum exilium esse scivit plebs."
- ↑ When Plutarch says (C. Gracch. 4) that C. Gracchus gave the right of trying such cases [Greek: tô dêmô
- ↑ App. B.C. i. 59.
- ↑ This conclusion has been drawn from the words of Cicero (in Verr. Act i. 13, 38) "judiciis ad senatorium ordinem translatis sublataque populi Romani in unum quemque vestrum potestate."
