Note 1827 — Chapter XIII · THE COMITIA TRIBUTA AND THE RISE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY From 449 to 287

This point is established by the circumstances (1) that no writer of the period refers to the principle mentioned; (2) that Cicero regards the thirty-five tribes under tribunician presidency as the universus populus Romanus—a definition which is incompatible with the legal exclusion of the patricians from that form of assembly (p. 129 f.); (3) that on one occasion, 209, after the Hortensian legislation Livy (xxvii. 21. 1-4) represents the voting assembly under tribunician presidency as composed not only of plebs but of all ranks (concursu plebisque et omnium ordinum), and that the patricians were evidently free to take part in the debates of the concilium; cf. Livy xliii. 16. 8; (4) Caesar, B. C. iii. 1, seems to represent the praetors and tribunes as presiding together over the same comitia (“praetoribus tribunisque plebis rogationes ad populum ferentibus”)—which would prove that no difference of composition existed between the pretorian and the tribunician assemblies of tribes.