Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/226

202 the imperium, to gain a positive control over the executive which exercised it.

That the battle had been already practically won, even before the last two tables had been completed, is made clear by the annalists. The list of the second Board of Ten comprises some names which are almost beyond doubt plebeian; and this is the first example we meet with of plebeians actually sharing the executive power. And now the victorious side begins rapidly to press its advantage. In 449 the consuls Valerius and Horatius passed a law giving the plebeian assembly over which the tribunes presided a real sovereign power in legislation, binding the whole State under certain conditions which we cannot now recover. Up to this time such resolutions as the plebs had passed (plebiscita) had been binding only on the plebs itself; they were no more laws of the State than the tribunes were magistrates of the State. This Lex Valeria-Horatia marks the beginning of an entirely new status for this plebeian assembly. Step by step it gained a legislative power for the whole State concurrent with that of the patricio-plebeian assembly of centuries. The latter was never done away or dropped, for reasons which can only be thoroughly understood by those who have studied the Roman mind and character in its institutions; but it was gradually to a great extent superseded.

Henceforward we have the strange spectacle of two sovereign assemblies side by side — the populus, or host of the entire people, presided over by