Note 719 — Chapter VI · COMITIA AND CONCILIUM

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.