Much must remain obscure; we cannot get at the details of the procedure. All that we can do is to show that there is evidence for the tribune’s interference with the rights of magistrates in matters of municipal jurisdiction, and to suggest methods of interference. Nor can we determine the precise limitations of his authority introduced by the change of A.D. 56. But it clearly took from the tribune the final decision as to when a civil case should be summoned from a municipal town to Rome. Either his intercessio in this matter of municipal jurisdiction was abolished, or his veto was made purely suspensory. In this very chapter of Tacitus we find that the enforcement of the tribunician multa is subjected to the decision of the consul. Similarly, with reference to the power which we have discussed, the urban praetor or the consul may have been declared absolutely competent to decide, after cognisance, when a case should be tried in the local courts and when it should be reserved for the tribunals at Rome.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Pagus (connected etymologically with πήγνυμι, pago, pango) implies the idea of “foundation” or “settlement.”
[2] Cf. Liv. ii. 62 “Incendiis deinde non villarum modo, sed etiam vicorum, quibus frequenter habitabatur, Sabini exciti.”
[3] So Servius Tullius is said, according to one account, to have divided the territory of Rome into twenty-six pagi. Pagus is δῆμος in Greek (Festus p. 72), but this proves little as to its origin; it is the pagus as part of a state that is thus translated. The δῆμος or δᾶμος in Greece had often been (as in Elis) a self-existent community.
[4] Liv. ii. 16. Yet even here the Claudia gens is represented as expelled from a civitas.
[5] The ancients derived Palatine from the balare or palare of cattle (Festus p. 220) or from the shepherd’s god Pales (Solinus i. 15). It is perhaps derived from the root pa (pasco). See O. Gilbert Geschichte u. Topographie der Stadt Rom in Altertum i. p. 17.
[6] Tac. Ann. xii. 24.
[7] This tendency is best exhibited in Richter’s map showing the extension of Rome (Baumeister Denkmäler art. “Rom” Karte v.).