of circumstances to set in motion for legislative purposes the cumbrous centuriate assembly than the relatively mobile gathering of the tribes. III. _Judicial_ The jurisdiction of the people in whatever assembly was confined to cases of crime and of serious disobedience to magistrates.[1437] It was not exercised by them in the first instance but only by way of appeal. In the opinion of the Romans Tullus Hostilius was the first to grant an appeal,[1438] necessarily to the comitia curiata, which under the kings remained the only formally voting assembly.[1439] During the regal period, the well attested appellate function of the comitia[1440] was simply precarious, depending wholly on the pleasure of the king.[1441] The Romans represented the advance in liberty brought by the republic as consisting partly in the establishment of the right of appeal for every citizen through the lex de provocatione of Valerius,[1442] a consul of the first year of the republic—according to Cicero the first law carried through the comitia centuriata—providing that no magistrate should scourge or put to death a citizen without granting him an appeal to the people.[1443] Although the historical existence of this Valerius has been questioned, and though his law has the appearance of being an anticipation of the Valerian law of 449, or more closely of that of 300,[1444] we must admit in favor of its reality that the decemvirs were themselves exceptionally above appeal and that their laws guaranteed to the citizens an extensive use of the right.[1445] The appellant, however, had no legal means of enforcing his right against the magistrate; he could do no more than “throw himself on the mercy of the crowd, and trust that their shouts or murmurs would bend the magistrate to respect the law.”[1446] The first lex Valeria, accordingly, brought little real benefit to the citizens.[1447] The right was recognized and its application extended, as intimated above, by the Twelve Tables, in which various laws relating not only to capital crimes but to some of less importance granted an appeal to the people.[1448] It was provided also by a special statute of the code that judgments as well as laws involving life or citizenship could be passed only by the comitiatus maximus, which is evidently the comitia centuriata.[1449]