out (1) from the plebeian tribunate, probably 401. (2) from five places in the college of decemviri sacris faciundis, 368, and from one of the consular places, 367. (3) by agreement from the two curule aedileships on alternate years, (4) from one of the censorial places, 339. (5) from a fixed number of places in the college of augurs and of pontiffs, 300. It was in accord with this tendency to convert the earlier privileges of the patricians into disabilities that a vote of the people excluded them from those comitia tributa which were presided over by tribunes. This state of affairs was formulated in the antiquarian and juristic definitions of populus and plebs, lex and plebi scitum. The condition, however, seems to have been only transient. The dwindling of the patriciate in numbers and strength, with the corresponding growth of a plebeian nobility, which converted the tribunate and assembly of plebs into most potent organs of the senatorial government, obliterated distinctions between patricians and plebeians within the political assemblies, to such a degree that for the period after the Hortensian legislation no reference to an exclusively plebeian assembly is made by any ancient author. Although this article of the Publilian statute was never formally repealed, we may feel certain that the principle involved was no longer remembered in the age of Cicero.[1827] The Publilian statute of 339 is not known to have provided for an extension of the field of competence of the tribal assembly; yet we find the comitia tributa soon afterward attending to business heretofore managed by the senate or in one or two instances by the centuries. Although about a hundred years earlier the centuriate comitia had acquired the right to ratify or reject declarations of offensive war,[1828] we find no record of a ratification of a treaty of peace by the people before the year 321, in which occurred the disaster at Caudium; and in this case it was not only the common opinion in Livy’s time, but also the understanding of Claudius, the historian, that the treaty made by the consuls, without the sanction of the senate or the people, was regular and valid[1829]—a “foedus summae religionis,” as Cicero declares.[1830] Even Livy, who aims to prove the procedure defective, admits that the tribunes of the plebs[1831] and Postumius,[1832] one of the consuls who made it, looked upon it as legitimate. But according to Livy[1833] the senate itself declared the treaty invalid on the ground that it lacked popular confirmation;[1834] and in that body the principle was then enunciated that nothing which was to bind the people could be sanctioned without their order[1835]—the first recorded expression of the doctrine of popular sovereignty among the Romans. In this period, however, the people were never called upon to ratify the acceptance of a submission or of an alliance on unequal terms. Such agreements granting Rome the superior right were