Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/70

66 could not be questioned, nor was any attempt to abolish it ever made again in Rome. The inviolability of the tribunes, and of the aediles and the court of ten (judices decemviri, p. 45) as well, was reaffirmed by another Valerio-Horatian law, and sanctioned by the oath of the whole state and the severest penalty. To avoid any further irregularity in the election and succession of tribunes, Marcus Duilius, tribune in 449, is said to have carried a plebiscite decreeing that any tribune who neglected to have successors elected should be punished with death. In 448 the Trebonian plebiscite prohibited the coöptation of tribunes, and directed that an election should be continued until ten tribunes were elected. This step was taken to diminish the influence of the patricians.

Tribunician Powers. — Perhaps the tribunes were now for the first time allowed to attend regularly the sessions of the senate, a bench being placed for them at the door. The first recorded instance of tribunician intercession against a senatorial decree, or rather against the consular actions on which its validity depended, belongs to the year 445. Naturally intercession would be employed only against senatorial decrees which were not mere expressions of opinion, but were constitutionally necessary to make an official act or a bill valid.

By the laws of the Twelve Tables the tribunes were prohibited from prosecuting any one on a capital charge before the plebeian assembly; but they recovered their jurisdiction in such cases, inasmuch as they were soon permitted to prosecute persons on such a charge before the assembly of centuries. They became, so to speak, the attorney generals of the state in the great political trials. Their initiative in legislation also rose in importance, and they approached more and more the position of magistrates of the whole people.