Res romanae Author:Edward Philip Coleridge Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE THREE COMITIA. I. Comitia Ccriata consisted of the members of the thirty' curies' or parishes, that is, the patricians, who formed exclusively the 'populu... more »s' in early times. The votes were given by ' curiee,' each ' curia' having one collective vote. It was called together by the king in the ' comitium,' when he chose, and could only determine such matters as he chose to submit to them, e.g., the conferring of ' imperium' on the king, the passing of laws, the declaration of peace and war, the capital punishment of Roman citizens. Most of these duties passed afterwards to the ' comitia centuriata,' and in Republican times the ' comitia curiata' was only held to confer ' imperium' on consuls and praetors, and to carry out certain formalities, e.g., in cases of adoption. II. Comitia Centuriata was an assembly held in the ' Campus Martius,' to which the people were summoned by ' classes' and ' centuriae,' based on property qualifications. Wealth here had the preponderance of votes. Each century counted as one vote, so that a class had as many votes as it contained centuries ; but the richest class had as many centuries as all the rest put together, and so could always outvote them. The ' comitia centuriata' elected the consuls, praetors, and censors, and for a long time decided on peace and war, a function afterwards assumed by the Senate. It had also rights of legislation, subject to the approval of the Senate. Further, a right of appeal to the ' comitia centuriata' from the sentence of the consul was established by several laws. Lastly, this assembly tried all cases of 'perduellio' and 'majestas,' i.e., all offences against the State ; and no case involving the life of a Roman citizen could be decided by any other court. III. Comitia Tributa grew out of the informal 'con...« less