[557] Valerius Maximus, IV. viii. 2.
[558] Valerius Maximus, IV. v. 1.
[559] They had no deliberative voice, because, according to the public Roman law, no acting magistrate could vote. (See Mommsen, i. 187.)
[560] “Now you have still the comitia by centuries, and the comitia by tribes. As for the comitia by curiæ, they are observed only for the auspices.” (Cicero, Second Oration on the Agrarian Law, 9.)
[561] The ancient mode of division by curiæ had lost all significance and ceased to be in use. (Ovid, Fasti, II. 1. 531.) So Cicero says, speaking of them: “The comitia, which are retained only for the sake of form, and because of the auspices, and which, represented by the thirty lictors, are but the appearance of what was before. Ad speciem atque usurpationem vetustatis.” (Oration on the Agrarian Law, II. 12.)—In the latter times of the Republic, the curiæ, in the election of the magistrates, had only the inauguration of the flamens, of the king of the sacrifices (rex sacrificulus), and probably the choice of the grand curion (curio maximus). (Titus Livius, XXVII. 8.—Dionysius of Halicarnassus, V. 1.—Aulus Gellius, XV. 27.—Titus Livius, XXVII. vi. 36.)
[562] “Achaia alone had twelve hundred for her share.” (Titus Livius, XXXIV. 50.)
[563] Titus Livius, XXXIII. 32.
[564] “The allies exclaimed that the war must be continued, and the tyrant exterminated, without which the liberty of Greece would be always in danger. It would have been better not to have taken up arms at all than to lay them down without having attained the end. The consul replied, ‘If the siege of Lacedæmon retained the army a long time, what other troops could Rome oppose to a monarch (Antiochus) so powerful and so formidable?’” (Titus Livius, XXXIV. 33.)
[565] Titus Livius, XXXIII. 12.
[566] Titus Livius, XXXIV. 58.