to keep away from such concilia.”[717] The passage refers to a meeting of the Ardeates for consulting in regard to the sudden approach of the Gauls. Gatherings of the kind were called concilia, but the word contio is also introduced into the passage with reference to a speech made in the assembly. The implication is that such concilia of all the people for deliberation were held also at Rome. The circumstances indicate that it met with a view also to taking action, and that it was therefore not a simple contio. This passage accordingly offers no support to Mommsen’s view that when applied to the whole people concilium is merely a listening, not an acting, assembly.[718] Summing up the evidence for the new definition of concilium, we may say that, were it true, it might apply to Livy i. 8. 1, though it is unessential to the explanation either of this passage or of any other. A single case, too, even if it were clear, is not a sufficient basis for a generalization; and though we must agree with Mommsen that the juristic definition does not cover the cases cited above, it is necessary to reject his amendment as unsatisfactory.[719] In fact Mommsen soon discovers cases which, from his own admission, neither his definition nor that of Laelius will explain, for instance, Livy i. 36. 6, example (3). On this citation Mommsen[720] remarks that concilia in this connection could not mean contiones, with which in his opinion the auspices had nothing to do; it could not refer to the plebeian assemblies, which he also assumes to have been free from the auspices.[721] He concludes, therefore, that it denotes the “patricio-plebeian” tribal assemblies.[722] But why Livy should here be thinking merely of the tribal assemblies, especially in connection with a time before they had come into existence, no one could possibly explain. It is far more reasonable to assume that he intended to include all kinds of assemblies, curiate, centuriate, and tribal, which required the auspices. The next citation which Mommsen finds difficult is Livy iii. 71. 3, example (5)—an assembly of the tribes meeting under the consuls to decide the dispute between Ardea and Aricia over a piece of territory. The assembly voted (ch. 72. 6) that the land in question belonged to the Roman people. Mommsen’s[723] explanation of concilium in this connection is that the resolution adopted by this assembly affected foreign states only, and was not binding on Rome; hence he assumes that comitia are an assembly whose resolutions are binding on the Roman state. Here then we have a third definition of concilium based like the second on a single case. But Mommsen thinks he finds some evidence for his last definition in the fact that assemblies of foreign states are usually termed concilia; and he assumes the reason to be that their resolutions were not binding on Rome. It would be strange, however, if in calling foreign institutions by Latin names (rex, senatus, populus, plebs, praetor,