[715] Röm. Forsch. i. 170, n. 8; Röm. Staatsr. iii. 149, n. 3.
[716] Mil. 3. 7; cf. p. 122, n. 3 below.
[717] “Cum se in mediam contionem intulissent, abstinere suetus ante talibus conciliis.”
[718] His last citation on this point, Livy v. 47. 7 (“Vocatis ad concilium militibus”) has reference to the soldiers only—to a part of the people—and is therefore altogether unlike the others. For an explanation of it, see p. 135 f.
[719] A closely related question is whether concilium is ever restricted to the deliberative stage of a session preliminary to the division into voting units, with comitia limited in a corresponding manner to the final, voting stage of the session. A few passages, as examples (2) and (4), might be explained by such a conjecture, but others, as Livy iii. 13. 9 (“Virginio comitia habente conlegae appellati dimisere concilium”) prove the supposition impossible. Concilium denotes the assembly in its final as well as in its initial stage, voting as well as deliberating, whereas in ordinary political language contio is used to denote the merely listening or witnessing assembly, whether organized or unorganized, whether called to prepare the citizens for voting or for any other purpose.
[720] Röm. Forsch. i. 170, n. 8.
[721] Ibid. i. 195 f. It is true that the plebeian assembly came to be subject to the obnuntiatio (p. 117), but it would be absurd on this ground to suppose that Livy’s statement refers especially to gatherings of the kind.
[722] This statement admits that concilium here designates an assembly of the whole people; but Mommsen does not tell us why the word applies with greater propriety to the “patricio-plebeian” tribal assembly than to the centuriate assembly. For the true reason, see p. 137, n. 5.
[723] Röm. Staatsr. iii. 149, n. 3.
[724] Undoubtedly the Caesar who was consul in 64 B.C.; Teuffel and Schwabe, Rom. Lit. i. 348. § 3; Drumann-Gröbe, Gesch. Roms, iii. 120, n. 6.