[109] Titus Livius, III. 9.
[110] Lectorius, the most aged of the tribunes of the people, spoke of laws which had not been long made. “By the first, which concerned the translation of judgments, the Senate granted to the people the power of judging any one of the patricians.” (Year of Rome 283.) (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IX. 46.)
[111] “The laws voted by the people in the comitia by tribes were to be obligatory on all Romans, and have the same force as those which were made in the comitia by centuries. The pain of death and confiscation was even pronounced against any one who should be convicted of having in anything abrogated or violated this regulation. This new ordinance cut short the old quarrels between the plebeians and the patricians, who refused to obey the laws made by the people, under the pretext that what was decided in the assemblies by tribes was not obligatory on all the town, but only on the plebeians; and that, on the contrary, what was decided in the comitia by centuries became law as well for themselves as for the other citizens.” (Year of Rome 305.) (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, XI. 45.)—“One point always contested between the two orders was to know if the patricians were subjected to the plebiscita. The first care of the consuls was to propose to the comitia assembled by centuries a law to the effect that the decrees of the people assembled by tribes should be laws of the State.” (Year of Rome 305.) (Titus Livius, III. 55.)—“The patricians pretended that they alone had the power of giving laws.” (Titus Livius, III. 31.)
[112] “The comitia by curiæ for everything which concerns military affairs; the comitia by centuries for the election of your consuls and of your military tribunes, &c.” (Titus Livius, V. 52.)
[113] Aulus Gellius, XV. 27.—Festus, under the words Scitum populi.
[114] Titus Livius, IV. 3.
[115] “The indignation of the people was extreme, on account of the refusal to take the auspices, as if it had been an object for the reprobation of the immortal gods.”—“The tribune demanded for what reason a plebeian could not be consul, and was told in reply that the plebeians had not the auspices, and that the decemvirs had interdicted marriage between the two orders only to hinder the auspices from being troubled by men of equivocal birth.” (Titus Livius, IV. 6.)—“Now in what hands are the auspices according to the custom of our ancestors? In the hands of the patricians, I think; for the auspices are never taken for the nomination of a plebeian magistrate.”—“Is it not then the same thing as to annihilate the auspices in this city, to take them, in electing plebeian consuls, from the patricians, who alone can observe them?” (Year of Rome 386.) (Titus Livius, VI. 41.)
To the consul, the prætor, and the censor was reserved the right of taking the great auspices; to the less elevated magistracies that of taking the lesser ones. The great auspices appear, in fact, to have been those of which the exercise was of most importance to the rights of the aristocracy. The ancients have not left us a precise definition of the two classes of auspices; but it appears to result from what Cicero says of them (De Legibus, II. 12), that by the great auspices were understood those for which the intervention of the augurs was indispensable; the little auspices, on the contrary, were those which were taken without them. (See Aulus Gellius, XIII. 15.)
As to the auspices taken in the comitia where the consular tribunes were elected, passages of Titus Livius (V. 14, 52; VI. 11) prove that they were the same as for the election of the consuls, and consequently that they were the great auspices; for we know from Cicero (De Divinatione, I. 17; II. 35—compare Titus Livius, IV. 7) that it was the duty of the magistrate who held the comitia to bring there an augur, of whom he demanded what the presages announced. The privileges of the nobility were maintained by causing the comitia for the election of the consular tribunes to be held by an interrex chosen by the aristocracy.
[116] Titus Livius, VI. 5.