The tribunician comitia are the only comitia concerned in Cato’s transaction. Again in _Att._ ii. 23. 3 (“It is of great interest to me that you should be present at Rome, if not at the comitia for his election, at least after he has been declared elected”)[728] Cicero is thinking of the election of Clodius to the tribuneship, and hence the comitia he refers to are the assembly of plebs. In _Fam._ viii. 4. 3, “aedilium plebis comitiis” must refer to the plebeian assembly, in which the plebeian aediles were elected.[729] Another important passage is _Sest._ 51. 109: “I come now to the comitia whether for electing magistrates or for enacting laws. We often see laws passed in great numbers. I say nothing of those which are enacted in such a manner that scarcely five of each tribe, and those not from their own tribe, voted for them. He (Clodius) says that at the time of that ruin of the republic he carried a law concerning me, whom he called a tyrant and the destroyer of liberty. Who is there who will confess that he gave a vote when this law was passed against me? But when in compliance with the same resolution of the senate, a law was passed about me in the comitia centuriata, who is there who does not profess that then he was present, and that he gave a vote in favor of my safety? Which cause, then, is the one which ought to appear popular? That in which everything that is honorable in the city, and every age, and every rank of men agree? Or that to the carrying of which some excited furies fly as if hastening to a banquet on the funeral of the republic?”[730] The law which Cicero dwells on with such bitterness at the beginning of this passage and recurs to at the end is the tribunician law which pronounced on him the sentence of exile; in this connection, therefore, comitia distinctly includes the plebeian assembly in its legislative capacity. Even more telling is _Leg._ iii. 19. 44-45: “They (our ancestors) forbade the enactment of laws regarding particular persons except by the comitia centuriata. For when the people are organized according to wealth, rank, and age, they use more consideration in giving their votes than when summoned promiscuously by tribes. In our case, therefore, a man of great ability and of consummate prudence, Lucius Cotta, truly insisted that no act whatever had been passed regarding us; for in addition to the fact that those comitia had been held wholly under the fear of armed slaves, the comitia tributa could not legally pass capital sentences or privilegia. Consequently there was no need of a law to reinstate us, against whom exile had not been legally pronounced. But it seemed better both to you and to other most illustrious men that all Italy should show what it felt concerning that same person against whom some slaves and robbers declared they had passed a decree.”[731]