The History of Rome, Book II: From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of ItalyMommsen, Theodor
History
The History of Rome, Book II: From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy
Mommsen, Theodor
Rome -- History
A concession of still greater consequence was that which allowed the
tribunes to share in the discussions of the senate. To admit the
tribunes to the hall where the senate sat, appeared to that body
beneath its dignity; so a bench was placed for them at the door that
they might from that spot follow its proceedings. The tribunician
right of intercession had extended also to the decrees of the senate
as a collective body, after the latter had become not merely a
deliberative but a decretory board, which probably occurred at first
in the case of a -plebiscitum- that was meant to be binding for the
whole community;(12) it was natural that there should thenceforth be
conceded to the tribunes a certain participation in the discussions
of the senate-house. In order also to secure the decrees of the
senate-- with the validity of which indeed that of the most important
-plebiscita- was bound up--from being tampered with or forged, it
was enacted that in future they should be deposited not merely under
charge of the patrician -quaestores urbani- in the temple of Saturn,
but also under that of the plebian aediles in the temple of Ceres.
Thus this struggle, which was begun in order to get rid of the
tribunician power, terminated in the renewed and now definitive
sanctioning of its right to annul not only particular acts of
administration on the appeal of the person aggrieved, but also any
resolution of the constituent powers of the state at pleasure.
The persons of the tribunes, and the uninterrupted maintenance of
the college at its full number, were once more secured by the most
sacred oaths and by every element of reverence that religion could
present, and not less by the most formal laws. No attempt to abolish
this magistracy was ever from this time forward made in Rome.
Notes for Book II Chapter II
1. II. I. Right of Appeal
2. I. XIII. Landed proprietors
3. I. VI. Character of the Roman Law
4. II. I. Collegiate Arrangement
5. I. XI. Property
6. I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order
7. That the plebeian aediles were formed after the model of the
patrician quaestors in the same way as the plebeian tribunes after
the model of the patrician consuls, is evident both as regards their
criminal functions (in which the distinction between the two
magistracies seems to have lain in their tendencies only, not in their
powers) and as regards their charge of the archives. The temple of
Ceres was to the aediles what the temple of Saturn was to the
quaestors, and from the former they derived their name. Significant
in this respect is the enactment of the law of 305 (Liv. iii. 55),
that the decrees of the senate should be delivered over to the aediles
there (p. 369), whereas, as is well known, according to the ancient
--and subsequently after the settlement of the struggles between the
orders, again preponderant--practice those decrees were committed to
the quaestors for preservation in the temple of Saturn.
8. I. VI. Levy Districts
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