usurped by the Senate in later times, of arming the consul with military jurisdiction. But, although the nomination of a dictator could not be regarded as a violation of, or even as a break in, the constitution, it was rightly held to be a powerful party weapon in the hands of the patrician magistracy; and the attempts of the Plebs were directed, however unsuccessfully, to limit this mighty power which over-rode all privilege and law. But the appointment of a dictator was supposed to be due to exceptional circumstances. It is only when we look to the peaceful life of the state, to the administration of law by the magistrate or the expression of popular will in the _comitia_, that we can estimate the strength of the position held by the patrician families. The criminal law, which was doubtless during this period becoming more and more secularised and divorced from the direct control of religion, was the monopoly of the official class. A criminal case was an inquiry undertaken solely on the initiative of the magistrate; no question could come before the people until he had investigated it, and was then only submitted in a _form prepared by him_. In the early popular courts at Rome there was no power of amendment; the people could answer only “Yes” or “No” to the question put before them. We are ignorant of the extent of popular jurisdiction; it is possible that only sentences affecting the _caput_ of a citizen were submitted to the assembly.[342] But there was no real guarantee that even such questions could be forced from the magistrate’s court. The _lex Valeria_ which admitted the _provocatio_ imposed no penalty on the magistrate who violated its provisions; the only hope lay in the veto of his colleague, and, if two consuls were in agreement, they might ride roughshod over the law. The consuls were ostensibly the only guardians of the criminal code; as it is inconceivable that, in an age which made little use of writing, two men selected on very varied grounds could have been regarded as fit expounders of this form of _jus_, we must, even in the domain of criminal law, go behind them and seek its true source in that formidable body, the college of pontiffs. The learning and activity of this body is known to us, however, chiefly in connexion with the divine or family or, as it would have been called in later times, the civil law. The change from monarchy to aristocracy introduced, in Rome as in Greece, an epoch of religious tyranny. A king, who is the head of the religious as well as of the secular life of the state, may hold the balance between the classes. He is more likely to repress than to encourage his advisers; he may find in popular rights a useful check to religious insolence. But remove the king and substitute an aristocracy like the Patriciate whose members hold supreme office in turn; let there be no distinction between clergy and laity in this body, so that there can be no conflict between the secular