The question as to the meaning of this wide divergence between constitutional theory and actual practice can find an answer only in the history of the curiate assembly. For a time after the founding of the republic it remained politically important. From the institution of the plebeian tribunate (494) to the enactment of the so-called law of Publilius Volero (471) the curiate assembly elected tribunes of the plebs.[1158] In 390, according to Livy,[1159] it voted the restoration of a citizen from exile. Rubino[1160] maintained that this assembly continued to be a real gathering of the people to the year after the battle of Cannae, 215, when the exigencies of the war with Hannibal brought into being a statute whereby the curiate act was passed by a vote of thirty lictors as the representatives of their respective curiae; in consequence the sanction was reduced to a formality.[1161] The passage in Festus on which his theory depends is seriously mutilated; and his attempted restoration is objectionable chiefly (1) because it required no statute to keep the people from attending the comitia curiata,[1162] (2) because without a statute a resolution of the assembly was valid, if each voting division was represented by a single person,[1163] (3) because the measure, accordingly, to be a relief to existing conditions, must have freed the commander rather than the men from the necessity of going to Rome to enact the curiate law. Whatever may be the true reading,[1164] we have a right to infer from the extant fragment (1) that in the year mentioned, owing to the nearness of Hannibal, something was done to relieve officers in the field from the necessity of coming to Rome to propose the law for themselves, (2) that the regulation was permanent.[1165] It is known that the consul Q. Fabius Maximus presided at the consular elections for 214.[1166] He and M. Claudius Marcellus, who as proconsul was at the time in command of an army, were elected.[1167] Down to this time the custom had probably been for men who were reëlected to an office or who passed from a promagistracy to the corresponding magistracy, or the reverse, to reënact the lex curiata. But we may suppose that after the election of 215 Fabius, fearing that both he and Marcellus might be absent on military duty at the opening of their official year, secured the passage of a measure, most likely a senatus consultum,[1168] which exempted from the need of repeating the curiate law holders of the imperium who were making the transition above described. In consenting to the arrangement the senate was making a great sacrifice to the exigencies of the situation. For to maintain control over the commanders it had insisted that they should begin their terms with all due formality at Rome.[1169] The lex curiata had proved a material help to this end. But now the person already in command might continue from year to year at his post, relieved of the need of coming