Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/135

Rh less than one-fourth of the three hundred and seventy-three centuries, and at least the second and third classes were always called on to vote. As a consequence, unanimity was not likely to be attained, and even the fifth class might take part in the voting. Moreover, one of the organs of the nobility, the equestrian centuries, lost its prior vote, which seems to have been important as an omen. Still, this omen was probably manipulated, like so many others; and the equestrian vote might agree with the final result, because, like a Maine election, it represented the public opinion without molding it. The reform restricted the arbitrary powers of the censors; since, outside of certain classes of citizens, they could not exercise the same freedom in assigning the citizens to the different districts which they had enjoyed in assigning them to different centuries. Finally, the new organization limited the influence and diminished the value of the suffrage of the freedmen, the natural support of a degenerating nobility, and also of those who owned personal property but not real estate. In general, it favored the middle classes of farmers at the expense of the highest classes, as well as of the lowest; and in so far it tended to prevent the two greatest dangers of the republic — oligarchy and the rule of the rabble.

Importance of the Centuriate Assembly. — But constitutional development, which is largely independent of constitutional forms, had greatly diminished the importance of the centuriate assembly — once the only political assembly. The centuries were henceforward of practical importance chiefly as an assembly for electing censors, consuls, and praetors, and in certain cases for declaring war. Even in these matters, however, they were too dependent upon, and too subservient to, the presiding magistrate and the nobility, and did not exercise the powers and rights which they possessed.