Note 1584 — Chapter XII · THE COMITIA TRIBUTA AND THE RISE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY To the Year 449
Reading edition
Cic. Frag. A. vii. 48: “Tanta igitur in illis virtus fuit, ut anno XVI post reges exactos propter nimiam dominationem potentium secederent ... duos tribunos crearent, ... Itaque auspicato postero anno tr. pl. comitiis curiatis sunt”; Dion. Hal. vi. 89. 1; cf. ix. 41. 4 f. (included clients and patricians); Livy ii. 56, especially § 3, 10. These authors represent the tribunes as trying vainly to force the patricians from the assembly while the voting was under way. The question of excluding the patricians, however, is connected with the statute of Publilius Philo (339) rather than with the so-called plebiscite of Publilius Volero (471); p. 300 f.
Dion. Hal. vii. 59. 2, places the first tribal meeting in 491, twenty years before the date to which its institution is otherwise assigned. If his account is not an anticipation of later usage, it is exceptional.