Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/58

44 not safely be left to the patrician magistrates. The legal conceptions of crime against the state and against the public peace were transferred to offenses against the body of plebeians and their magistrates. The tribunes were entitled to pass judgment on any citizen and especially on the consuls. They allowed persons who were found guilty to appeal to the plebeian assembly (concilium plebis), and then acted as prosecutors.

Elections and Legislation. — The tribunes never had the power to convene the whole people, nor did they have even a seat in the senate at this time. They were not magistrates of the people, but of the plebeians. They made announcements, and secured the passage of resolutions (plebiscita) in the plebeian assembly. A tribune chosen by lot presided at the election of tribunes and plebeian aediles for the next year.

The right of convening the plebeians and having them take informal or formal action (jus cum plebe agendi) was very soon guaranteed to the tribunes by the Icilian plebiscite, which was claimed to be an authoritative interpretation of the sacred law of 494. It threatened with severe punishment any one who interrupted a tribune while addressing the plebeians, or who ordered them to disperse.

Means of Coercion and Protection. — To make the tribunician powers effective, the tribunes were given the right to arrest, to imprison, to impose a fine, or inflict the death penalty on plebeian and patrician, magistrate and private individual — all excepting the dictator. Their persons were inviolable (sacrosancti). To do them bodily harm, to injure them otherwise, and to oppose them in their official duties, were crimes subject to severe punishment, even death. As a consequence, they could not be arrested, imprisoned, accused, or punished while they were in office; and