Applied to the holding of contiones and comitia, this inviolability protected the presiding tribune from interruption, contradiction, and every disturbance. The principle was afterward extended to verbal abuse anywhere publicly indulged in.[1605] Even if a man showed disrespect by not stepping out of the way of a tribune who was passing along the street, he was liable to the death penalty.[1606] Under normal conditions, however, the rigorous execution of this lex sacrata could not be thought of; in place of outlawing the offender against his person the tribune was ordinarily willing to impose a fine upon him, from which an appeal might be made to the plebeian assembly; or in cases of violence to his person, he might resort to capital prosecution, which was likewise appealable. These principles were formulated in an alleged Icilian plebiscite of the year 492.[1607] From what has just been said it is clear that the tribune’s coercive[1608] and judicial functions resulted, not from usurpation as has often been asserted,[1609] but from a mitigation of the harsh lex sacrata. In a word, the ultimate basis of tribunician authority was the revolutionary power of the plebs, upon which rested the sanctity of the tribunes, and thereon their jurisdiction. Of the judicial activity attributed by the annalists to the plebeian officials in the period before the decemvirs we do not know how much is mythical; but it is safe to say that all the capital cases, probably all the cases without qualification, which they actually settled as judges were submitted to by the patrician government for the sake of peace, without being accepted as legal. To the third year of the tribunate, 491, is assigned the first mentioned exercise of tribunician jurisdiction. C. Marcius Coriolanus, the accused, had advocated in the senate the abolition of the tribunician office,[1610] and had done personal violence to the aediles, in this way rendering himself liable to the penalty of the lex sacrata on which rested the sanctity of the plebeian officials. Instead of declaring him a homo sacer, a tribune brought him to trial before the tribes, which condemned him by a narrow majority.[1611] The story is now regarded by all scholars as a myth. The vote by tribes at this early time is either exceptional or more likely an anticipation of later usage.[1612]