Note 59 — LIFE OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.

The word in Plutarch is water jars, hydriai (ὑδρίαι), the Roman sitellæ, urnæ or orcæ. The sitellæ were a kind of jar with a narrow neck: they were filled with water so that the wooden lots (sortes) would float at the top, and only one could be there at a time. These lots were used for the purpose of determining in what order the tribes or centuries should vote, for the names of the several tribes or centuries were on the several lots. The vessel into which the voters put their votes (tabellæ), when the order of voting had been fixed for the tribes and centuries, was called cista; and it was a basket of wicker-work or something of the kind, of a cylindrical shape. If Plutarch has used the proper word here, the preliminary proceedings were disturbed by the rich seizing or throwing down the vessels, out of which were to be drawn the lots for determining in what order the tribes should vote. The business had not yet got so far as the voting, which consisted in the voters depositing in a cista one of the tablets (tabellæ), which were distributed among them for this purpose, and which were marked with an appropriate letter to express acceptance of a measure or rejection of it. There is a Roman denarius which represents a man going to put a tabella into a cista: the tabella is marked A, which means Absolvo, I acquit. The letter C (Condemno, I condemn) was marked on the tabella of condemnation. (Eckhel, Doctr. Num. Vet. V. 166.) The coin was struck to commemorate the carrying of a law by L. Cassius Longinus B.C. 137, by which the voting in criminal trials (judicia populi) except for perduellio (treason) should be by ballot and not as before by word of mouth.

These remarks are taken from an essay by Wunder (Variæ Lectiones &c. ex Codice Erfurtensi), in which he has established the meaning of sitella and cista respectively to be that which Manutius long ago maintained. He observes that in the Roman comitia one sitella would be sufficient, as it was only used for receiving the names of the tribes or centuries, which were put in for the purpose of determining by drawing them out, in what order the tribes or centuries should vote. And accordingly he says that when comitia are spoken of, we never find urns or sitellæ spoken of in the plural number. But he has not mentioned the passage of Plutarch. It may be difficult to determine if Plutarch considered that the preliminary lot-drawing had been gone through, and the people were voting. If he considered the voting to be going on, he has used the wrong word. With this explanation, I leave the word “voting-urns” in the text, which is not the correct Roman word but may be what Plutarch meant. It seems as if he thought that the voting had commenced.