embled for legislative purposes according to their order when on military service, that is, according to their property. This arrangement considered the whole state as forming a regular army, and it consisted of 195 centuries, thence called the Comitia Centuriata, which con- Centuriata. tinued to be the form of the legislative body until its functions were suspended and finally extinguished by the emperors5.
The Comitia Centuriata met in the Campus Martius. The consul presided, and put the question to the people when the moment for voting
1 Colq. I. 287.
2 D. I. 3. I.
5 Colq. 25.
3 D. I. 3. 7.
BOOK came; hence Lex is said to be quam populus Romanus constituit superiore magistratu rogante'.
The institution of the tribunes and the Comitia Tributa date from the year U.c. 260. The plebs then acquired the right of holding their own comitia, Lex Hora- and of passing laws by the Lex Horatia obligatory only upon themselves. This assembly was summoned by the tribune who presided; it did not meet in the Campus Martius, but generally in the Flaminian Circus. The laws passed by the plebs were called Plebiscita, i.e. quæ plebs plebeio magistratu interrogante, veluti tribuno constituebat. So long as a plebiscitum bound only the plebs it dif fered from a lex, but in the year u.c. 468,3 when Lex Hor the Lex Hortensia was passed, the patricians were compelled to acknowledge the obligatory force of the plebiscita, and from this time they were in fact leges. The Lex Aquilia, Falcidia, Voconia, and many others, were plebiscites.
Mode of passing a Lex.
In passing a Lex the proceedings observed were as follows:
First, it was drawn up in writing.
Secondly, permission to lay it before the populus was asked of the senate. If this were granted, Thirdly, it was published by being fixed up in some public place during trinundinum, three market days, that the voters might be made acquainted with its provisions.
Fourthly, due publication being made, a herald ascended the rostrum in the Campus Martius, and Recitatio. made the recitatio, i.e. he read the law to the assembled voters; then followed,
Fifthly, the suasio and dissuasio, the debate. This being over, a pause took place in the proceedSortitio. ings during the sortitio, which was the arranging the order of voting of the centuries by ballot. 195 tallies, the number of the centuries, marked from I to 195, were put into an urn and drawn out.
1 Hein. El. 46.
› Haub. II. 38; Hein. Ant. 1. 2. 18.
2 Haub. II. 32.
Bach. II. I. 17.