When the comitia acted as a court of justice, the president stated the crime, proposed the punishment to be inflicted upon the offender, and then allowed others to speak either in defence of the accused or against him. When the subject brought before the assembly was sufficiently discussed, the president called upon the people to prepare for voting by the words, _ite in suffragium, bene juvantibus diis_. He then passed the stream Petronia, and went to the _septa_.--Respecting the mode of voting, it is commonly supposed that the people were always polled by word of mouth, till the passing of the leges tabellariae about the middle of the second century before Christ, when the ballot by means of tabellae was introduced. [LEGES TABELLARIAE.] It appears, however, that the popular assemblies voted by ballot, as well as by word of mouth, long before the passing of the leges tabellariae, but that instead of using tabellae, they employed stones or pebbles (the Greek ψῆφοι), and that each voter received two stones, one white and the other black, the former to be used in the approval and the latter in the condemnation of a measure. The voting by word of mouth seems to have been adopted in elections and trials, and the use of pebbles to have been confined to the enactment and repeal of laws. Previous to the leges tabellariae, the rogatores, who subsequently collected the written votes, stood at the entrance of the septa, and asked every citizen for his vote, which was taken down, and used to determine the vote of each century. After the introduction of the ballot, if the business was the passing of a law, each citizen was provided with two tabellae, one inscribed V. R. _i.e._ _Uti Rogas_, “I vote for the law,” the other inscribed A. _i.e._ _Antiquo_, “I am for the old law.” If the business was the election of a magistrate, each citizen was supplied with only one tablet, on which the names of the candidates were written, or the initials of their names; the voter then placed a mark (_punctum_) against the one for whom he voted, whence _puncta_ are spoken of in the sense of votes. For further particulars respecting the voting in the comitia, see DIRIBITORES and SITULA. In judicial assemblies every citizen was provided with three tabellae, one of which was marked with A. _i.e._ _Absolvo_, “I acquit;” the second with C. _i.e._ _Condemno_, “I condemn;” and the third with N. L. _i.e._ _Non Liquet_, “It is not clear to me.” The first of these was called _Tabella absolutoria_ and the second _Tabella damnatoria_, and hence Cicero calls the former _litera salutaris_, and the latter _litera tristis_.--There were in the Campus Martius septa or inclosures (whether they existed from the earliest times is unknown), into which one class of citizens was admitted after another for the purpose of voting. The first that entered were the eighteen centuries of the equites, then followed the first class and so on. It very rarely happened that the lowest