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 of passing the lex curiata, which was necessary for the ratification originally of the imperium and, with the creation of fresh patrician magistracies, of the potestas which these involved. Yet although in theory no magistracy was properly constituted (justus) until its holder had received the ratification of the curiae, we know that in the case of those with imperium, and we may conclude that in that of others, most of the ordinary functions could be exercised without this sanction. It was only the full exercise of the imperium, whether in jurisdiction, in military command, or in the transmission of office, that was in suspense until the lex had been elicited. Without it the praetor could not give justice from his tribunal, the consul could not hold an assembly for the creation of his successor, and whether as magistrate or pro-magistrate could not exercise the full imperium in the field, until the ambiguous wording of the ''lex Cornelia de provinciis ordinandis'' made the requirement in this last particular a doubtful point.

For the purpose of this conferment the comitia curiata was in Cicero's day often represented by but thirty lictors, and the same scanty attendance may have sufficed for the other formal acts which it retained from antiquity. These are the acts of the comitia calata. The public will and testament made at this assembly was extinct at the close of the Republic; but the comitia still met, under the presidency of the pontifex maximus, for the inauguration of the rex sacrorum and the flamines, and under the same guidance for the detestatio sacrorum made by one who passed from his gens either by an act of adrogation or by transition from the patrician to the plebeian order. *