[1165] The second inference is from the present tense of the verb “fertur.”
[1166] Livy xxiv. 7-9.
[1167] Ibid. 9. 3.
[1168] Cf. Herzog, Röm. Staatsverf. i. 679. It is not to be assumed, however, that the senatus consultum had to be repeated at every such case of transition. Lange, Röm. Alt. ii. 175, 704 f., who gives the measure a wider constitutional scope, assumes that it was a plebiscite. Mommsen, Röm. Forsch. ii. 413, supposes that the two consuls on entering office in 214 simply omitted the curiate sanction on the ground that they already held the imperium, which was unlimited in duration, and that the jurists accepted this procedure as constitutional. The specific motive for this action, Mommsen asserts, was the fact that they were absent from Rome at the opening of their official year. But the truth is that they were both present (Livy xxiv. 10 f.), and had accordingly no occasion for establishing such precedent on their own responsibility. All they did in the matter, then, was to take advantage of a measure already enacted.
[1169] Cf. Livy xxi. 63; xxii. 1.
[1170] The existence of the measure of 215 proves that the curiate assembly and curiate law were at the time something more than a mere formality.
[1171] Cic. Att. iv. 17. 2; cf. p. 113, 194, n. 2. The Ciceronian passage, our only authority on this point, seems to imply a custom.
[1172] Cic. Leg. Agr. ii. 12. 30.
[1173] On the servility of the lictors, see Cic. Verr. ii. 29. 72; Pis. 22. 53.
[1174] That the comitia curiata were no longer attended by the people in the time of Cicero is attested by Leg. Agr. ii. 11. 27: “Curiatis ... comitiis, quae vos non initis”; cf. n. 6.