having six of them, with authority somewhat similar to that of the modern colonel, and without political functions. The plebeian tribune was a political official, without military functions. The consular tribune was elected in place of the consul, and had all his authority. He commanded the army, presided in the senate and popular assembly, and was the chief judge of the state. There might, however, be three, four, or six consular tribunes at one time (each to preside four, three, or two months in the senate), while there could not be more than two consuls. When the patricians found that they could no longer exclude the plebeians from the consular office, they proposed to compromise by consenting to the election of plebeians, under the condition that when one was elected, he and his colleagues should be called consular tribunes. If before the election the majority of the centuriate groups declared themselves in favor of electing consular tribunes, then plebeians were eligible. The office of consular tribune existed from 444 till 366 B. C., and then was finally abolished.

When the office of consular tribune was created and made accessible to the plebeians, some of the functions previously held by the consul were conferred on the new office of censor, which was open only to the patricians. There were two censors, elected once in five years, though their active duties were limited to the first eighteen months of their term. They prepared a list of all citizens, classified according to their rank, as senators, patricians not senators, and plebeians; and this list was presumptive evidence of certain important political rights. The man whose name was stricken from the list of senators by the censors ceased to be admitted to the senate until he had been re-instated by that body; and an order of re

instatement was rarely made, because the censors were usually careful to exclude none save those who had brought disgrace on their rank. The censors could deprive the citizen of citizenship, and it was their duty to designate the centuriate, or tribal group, in which he could vote. These powers, and the custom of selecting censors from men of high reputation who had previously served as consuls, gave great dignity to the office, and made it an object of high ambition for the older senators. The censors could not change the political status of a citizen, unless they agreed, and custom required that they should not make such a change without a careful examination of the case, so that they could offer a plausible justification of their act if it were called in question.

Besides holding authority to fix the political condition of all citizens, the censors had general control over the regular revenues of the state, including rents from its public lands, tribute of all kinds paid by subject provinces to the imperial city, and dues levied on shipping for imports and wharfage. This control of the revenues carried with it a general supervision of all public property from which the state derived an income.

SEC. 443. Licinius.-In 366 B. c. the tribune Licinius Stolo proposed and carried a series of bills, some of which were constitutional amendments. They provided that the office of consular tribune should be abolished; that two consuls should be elected annually, one of whom must be a plebeian, and the other a patrician; that the judicial authority previously held by the consul should be conferred on an official to be called prætor, to be elected annually from the patrician order; that the office of curule ædile with jurisdiction over certain public buildings, roads, streets, markets, and police justice should be

created to be filled by patricians at the annual election for consuls; that no citizen should hold more than three hundred and twenty acres of public land, nor keep more than five hundred sheep or one hundred cows on the common pastures; that on every large estate of public land a certain proportion of the laborers, or tenants, should be freemen; and that all interest on unpaid debts should be remitted.

Under the Licinian laws there was only one prætor, who was next in authority to the consul, and in the absence of the latter presided in the senate and commanded in the army. Custom soon required that the patrician candidate for consul should have been prætor, and that the candidate for prætor should have been curule ædile. Although the office of prætor was created mainly for a better administration of justice, yet knowledge of law was not made a necessary qualification for it, and few of the prætors considered it their duty to devote any time to legal study. They could appoint commissioners to take testimony and they could take the advice of jurisconsults about the law, while they themselves gave their time and their ambition to political and military affairs.

There were four curule ædiles, to each of whom a ward of the city was assigned as his special territory. The plebeian ædiles, who were the subordinates of the tribunes of the people, had charge of the city festival until 355 B. C., in which year they refused to provide such an entertainment as the senate demanded, giving it as an excuse that they were not provided with enough money from public sources, and they could not afford to pay the expense from their own money. Under these circumstances the management of the city festival was trans

ferred to the curule ædiles, with the understanding that, whether fines levied in their courts were sufficient or not, they must provide entertainments that would please the multitude. The acceptance of this rule by the people implied that the ædile who contributed most to the show, should, other things being equal, be preferred at the next election for the prætorship, and afterwards for the consulship. Thus the high offices were reserved for the rich men who would spend their money freely to please the people. This was a great departure from the course of constitutional liberty and indicated the spirit in which the Roman republic was conducted in the historic period of its existence.

The requirement that every large tract of the public land held by any one person should have some free occupants implies that already the multiplication of slaves had become an evil, and that fears were entertained that with the enlargement of the state, its military power, which was made up of freemen, would grow relatively weaker.

The provision in reference to the limitation of estates was not enforced. No commission was organized with instructions and powers to measure and map out the public domain. Such a survey might perhaps have been made by the censors without transgressing the bounds of their authority, but they did not see fit to undertake such labor without explicit orders. Probably most of the consuls and censors themselves, and certainly their friends and near relatives, held possessions which exceeded the limit fixed in the law.

Within a score of years after the adoption of the Licinian bills, all the political offices were thrown open to the plebeians. A commoner might become censor,

consul, prætor, or curule ædile; and by election to either of those offices, besides being entitled to the first vacancy in the senate, he became a noble, with the right of transmitting his nobility to all his descendants in the direct male line. The patricians continued to be nobles, but were compelled to submit to the political and social precedence of the ex-consuls of plebeian descent.

SEC. 444. Plebeian Priests.-By their authority to forbid the accomplishment of official acts proposed in methods condemned by the sacred traditions or at times when the omens were unfavorable, the priests of Rome, who in the first century and a half of the republic were all patricians, had much influence in the government. And this influence was used systematically against the demands of the plebeian party. Three sacerdotal boards were especially powerful. The pontiffs had charge of the calendar, with authority to fix the sacred, the common, and the unlucky days when certain things might and others might not be done; and also to determine the beginning and the end of the year; for the Roman years were not uniform in length, and the board of pontiffs could add a month to, or subtract a month from, the term of a consul. The augurs had charge of a large class of omens, which they alone could properly observe and interpret, and their explanations of the divine will were conclusive. The custodians of the sibylline books were exclusively authorized to examine those writings, to quote their language, and to explain their meaning. When an important enterprise was to be undertaken, one of the first things to be done was to inquire whether these books contained any predictions applicable to the case; and if so, the interpretation of the custodians controlled the conduct of the officers of state.