valid without the authorization of the senate (patrum auctoritas).[1015] With reference to the specific rights of the assembly, Dionysius[1016] states that Romulus granted the commons three prerogatives, (1) to elect magistrates, (2) to ratify laws, (3) to decide concerning war, whenever the king should refer the matter to them. Livy’s[1017] stricture on the absolutism of Tarquin the Proud implies, too, that constitutionally the assembly should have had power to decide on peace and war. But stress should be laid on the admission of Dionysius that probably all the questions above enumerated, or at least those of peace and war, were referred to the assembly at the pleasure only of the king—that the decision of them was not a right of the people, but a concession on the part of the sovereign.[1018] Still more important, these generalizations are in great part invalidated, as Rubino[1019] has shown, by the testimony of their authors. When either refers to individual cases of treaty-making under the kings, he never connects the assembly with the proceedings.[1020] It is significant, too, that the formula of treaty makes the king the only actor, taking no account of the people.[1021] Usually peace continued merely through the lifetime of the king who contracted it,[1022] but a truce for a definite period was binding to the end, even after his death.[1023] Under the republic to the time of the decemvirs the treaty-making power resided in the consuls and senate.[1024] Ordinarily either a senatus consultum empowered the magistrates to use their discretion[1025] or sanctioned the agreement when made.[1026] More rarely the senate treated directly with ambassadors from the enemy.[1027] The clamor of the plebeians sometimes prevailed upon the senate to negotiate for peace;[1028] and at other times it was merely by accident that the people heard of the conclusion of a treaty.[1029] After the decemviral legislation the plebeian assembly of tribes slowly acquired the right of ratification;[1030] in fact it was not till the Second Samnite war that their vote came to be essential.[1031] Among the archives devoted to treaties and alliances, accordingly, senatus consulta and plebiscites alone are mentioned.[1032] The very fact that in the later republic the ratification of treaties belonged exclusively to the tribal assembly[1033] proves that it was an acquired right of the people; for we may set it down as a fixed principle that the curiae and the centuries yielded none of their prerogatives to the tribes.[1034]