Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/285

Rh course in cases of appeal both parties had to be heard. A simple majority of the centuries was decisive.

This plan was evidently chosen, because in the comitia curiata those who were entitled to vote at all were on a footing of entire equality, and therefore after the admission of all the plebeians into the curies the result would have been a complete democracy, if the decision of political questions had remained with that assembly; whereas the comitia centuriata placed the preponderating influence, not in the hands of the nobles, but in those of the propertied classes, and, besides, the gentes retained there the important privilege, that their six equestrian centuries voted always first and by that means often practically decided the election.

Still more important was a second right conceded to the old burgesses. Every decree adopted by the centuries, whether it contained a proposal of election or concerned any other matter, was submitted for confirmation or rejection to the convention of the patricians—now no longer legally identical with the burgesses. It was only in cases of appeal and perhaps of declaration of war that the centuries gave a final decision. According to the earlier law the curies had only co-operated in the exercise of penal jurisdiction when it was the king's pleasure to permit the privilege of appeal (P. 83), and it is probable that they were never consulted regarding the declaring of war (P. 83); both privileges might therefore be devolved upon the centuries, without legally abridging the prerogatives of the old burgesses. The same argument might certainly have been applied in reference to proposals of nomination to the consulship, but the nobility was powerful enough to secure for itself the right of rejecting these.

The direct reform of the constitution proceeded apparently no further. The position of the senate, in particular, underwent legally no change; it continued to be an assembly of men of note uniformly remaining in it for life, without any proper official jurisdiction, who were advisers to the annual