whether it was indispensable to the holding of comitia centuriata for elections. The same Appius Claudius maintained that though a curiate law was appropriate to the consul, it was not a necessity,[1145] implying that without the law he was competent to perform all the functions of that office. He and his colleague, therefore, who was equally without the law,[1146] were ready to hold comitia for the election of successors; and although party complications opposed the election, no one objected to it on the ground that the consuls were incompetent; for postponing the election they resorted to auspical obnuntiations[1147] and to prosecutions of the candidates for bribery.[1148] Their competence to hold the elective comitia is further established by the senate’s desire that they should hold them at the earliest possible moment.[1149] The ultimate failure of these consuls to elect successors was not owing to any one’s objecting to their competence.[1150] Scholars have attached great weight to the case of the magistrates of 49, who with the Pompeian party, as has been stated,[1151] left the city before carrying a lex curiata. Though desiring, in the Pompeian camp at Thessalonica, to hold comitia for the election of successors, it was decided that the want of the law rendered the consuls incompetent for the function.[1152] But the case requires careful examination. The Pompeians had with them two hundred senators, enough in their opinion to constitute a quorum, and their augurs had consecrated a place for taking auspices; so that it was assumed that the populus Romanus and the entire city were now located in the camp.[1153] All these circumstances clearly imply an intention to assume a temporary transfer of the city of Rome to the camp and to conduct the government in that place on the basis of this constitutional fiction. But suddenly the execution of the plan was stopped by the plea that the consuls had no curiate law! The difficulty, however, was not so serious as Dio Cassius and the moderns have supposed. The assumption of the Pompeians that the city of Rome temporarily existed in the camp implied as well the existence of a pomerium, within which the consuls could legally have held a meeting of the curiae.[1154] Or in case they felt any scruple about the matter, the senate could have decreed the consuls a dispensation from the law for the purpose of holding the elections. That they allowed a mere formality to baulk them is out of the question. The whole situation is made clear by the understanding that the consuls themselves, or more probably Pompey, did not wish elections to be held or a civil government established in the camp; such a proceeding would have disturbed still further the discipline of the army and would have roused jealousies inimical to the cause. On this interpretation the want of a law, especially as it has the appearance of an afterthought, was a mere pretext.