magistrates nearly regained the place which they and the senate had held during the century following the overthrow of kingship.[1384] The nature of our sources does not allow a precise judgment regarding the importance of the comitia curiata in the early republic. To the time of the Gallic invasion it may occasionally have passed resolutions affecting the status of citizens.[1385] But as legislation never became an acknowledged function of the curiae, we are in a position to assert that through the comitia centuriata the people were first introduced into this sphere of public life.[1386] The earliest legislation of this assembly, in fact the earliest recorded legislative act of the Roman people, was the lex de provocatione attributed to Valerius Publicola, consul in the first year of the republic, 509.[1387] It was also through the centuriate assembly that the consuls Valerius and Horatius in 449 passed a law which forbade the election of a magistrate without appeal, and affixed as a penalty the outlawing of the trespasser.[1388] The third Valerian law of appeal in 300[1389] was an act of the same assembly, whereas all three Porcian laws on the same subject seem to have been tribal.[1390] The legislative function of the centuriate assembly, resting in the pre-decemviral period simply on precedent, brought into being the statute of 471 to establish a tribal assembly for the transaction of plebeian business, improperly known as the Publilian law,[1391] the lex sacrata for the division of the Aventine among the plebeians, erroneously termed Icilian, 456,[1392] the lex Aternia Tarpeia de multae dictione, 454,[1393] the lex Menenia Sextia on the same subjects in 452,[1394] the laws ratifying the Twelve Tables in 451, 449[1395]—all excepting the second having reference to the limitation of the magisterial power. Regarding the creation of offices, no mention is made of a law for the institution of the consulate itself; but the centuries passed a law for the creation of the dictatorship, 501,[1396] and of the decemviri legibus scribundis, which should be named Sestian after the consul who undoubtedly proposed it, 452.[1397] Thus far popular legislation had no basis excepting precedent, but a law of the Twelve Tables now provided that there should be resolutions and votes of the people, and whatever the people voted last should be law and valid—the first clear enunciation of the principle that the will of the people, whenever expressed, prevailed over every other authority.[1398] It was far from establishing popular sovereignty, however, for the initiative remained with the magistrates.