Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/101

Rh king convoked them for the purpose of making a communication (conventio, contio), or formally cited them (calare, comitia calata) for the third week (in trinum noundinum), to consult them by curies. He appointed such formal assemblies of the community to be held regularly twice a year, on the 24th of March and the 24th of May, and as often besides as seemed to him necessary. The burgesses, however, were always summoned, not to speak, but to hear; not to ask. but to answer. No one spoke in the assembly but the king, or he to whom the king saw lit to grant liberty of speech; and the speaking of the burgesses consisted of a simple answer to the question of the king, without discussion, without reasons, without conditions, without breaking up the question even into parts. Nevertheless the Roman burgess community like the Germanic and, not improbably, the primitive Indo-Germanic communities generally, formed the real and ultimate basis of the political idea of sovereignty. But in the ordinary course of things this sovereignty was dormant, or only had its expression in the fact that the burgess-body voluntarily bound itself to render allegiance to its president. For that purpose the king, after he had entered on his office, simultaneously with his receiving inauguration from the priests, addressed to the assembled curies the question whether they would be to him true and loyal subjects, and would in the wonted way acknowledge himself as well as his servants, the inquisitors (quæstores) and messengers (lictores); a question which undoubtedly might no more be answered in the negative than the parallel homage in the case of a hereditary monarchy might be refused.

It was in thorough consistency with constitutional principles that the burgesses, being the sovereign power, should not on ordinary occasions take part in the course of public business. So long as public action was confined to the carrying into execution of the existing constitutional regulations, that which was, properly speaking, the sovereign power in the state could not, and might not, interfere: the laws governed, not the lawgiver. But it was different where a change of the existing constitutional regulations, or, it might be merely, a deviation from them in a particular case, was necessary. In every such case the Roman constitution exhibits the burgesses as exercising their power. If the king died without nominating his successor, the command (imperium) and the divine protection (auspicia) of the or-