The Assemblies of the People
During the early Principate the people's assemblies continued to operate, but their political role was greatly diminished and their acts came to amount to little more than mere ratifications of the emperor's wishes.
As a result of the transference of the magisterial elections to the senate and the replacement of popular legislation by senatorial decrees, by the end of the first century AD the popular assemblies had become dead institutions and ceased to play any part in political life.The comitia curiata
The comitia curiata, Rome's oldest assembly, continued to function in a shadowy form as a gathering of thirty lictors (lictores} representing the thirty curiae into which the populus Romanus was in early times divided. Before them, and under the supervision of the pontifex maximus, took place the adrogatio per populum, the formal procedure through which a person sui iuris and his descendants passed by adoption into another family. This procedure was later on superseded by the adrogatio per rescriptum principis, by which adoption was effected by a rescript of the emperor without further formalities.[835] [836] [837] Finally, it seems more likely that, during the Principate, the lex de imperio, the special law by which the emperors were granted their imperium, was enacted by the comitia centuriata and not by the comitia curiata.
The comitia centuriata and the comitia tributa
After the fall of the Republic the comitia continued to exercise their legislative functions probably until the close of the first century AD. Augustus submitted several legislative proposals to them in accordance with ancient forms, and his example was followed by some of his successors. Among the most important statutes enacted by the comitia during this period were the lex Tulia de maritandis ordinibusi] and the leges luliae iudiciorum publicorum et privatorum''1 of Augustus, and the
The Principate 251 lex Claudia of Emperor Claudius.[838] Gradually, however, popular legislation was superseded by the decrees of the emperor and the resolutions of the senate. The last law passed by the comitia was a lex agraria enacted under Emperor Nerva (96-98 AD), a law mentioned in the Digest in an extract of the jurist Callistratus.[839] Moreover, the comitia were still summoned to elect magistrates as late as the second century AD, but now the choice of the candidates rested largely with the emperor.
In the time of Augustus the emperor proposed the persons whom he desired to be elected to the consulship and half of the number of candidates for the other magistracies, whilst the remaining places were, in principle, open to free competition.[840] There were two ways in which the emperor could nominate a candidate: by simply expressing his support for a person (such an informal recommendation was termed suffragatio and was not regarded as binding), and by commendatio, a binding recommendation of a candidate. Under Augustus and his successor, Tiberius, a further system was introduced, the destinatio, applying to the election of the consuls and praetors. Under this system, a body composed of senators and equites proposed to the assembly the candidates for these two offices.[841] This system does not appear to have lasted for a long period, however. Finally, from the time of Tiberius it became customary for the emperor to nominate the consuls and a number of the lower magistrates, while the rest were chosen by the senate. The role of the comitia was limited to the mere confirmation of the candidates selected following the formal announcement of their names (renuntiatio) by the senate.[842] In the course of the second century AD the role of the comitia in the election of magistrates continued to decline and, by the end of the third century AD, they had ceased to exist as political institutions.[843]
More on the topic The Assemblies of the People:
- Popular assemblies
- The Popular Assemblies
- At the end of the republican era, the jurisdictionof the assemblies in capital crimes had entirely disappeared.
- Why do people do acts that are agreeable or useful to other people and why do evaluators approve of such acts, and even approve of acts agreeable or useful to the actor herself?
- Types of people present
- Seeds and people
- Disciplining the people
- People desire wealth.
- Adjudication of public crimes by the people may have been efficacious in the context of a small city-state composed of conservative farmers and middle-class citizens.
- The assembly of the people {comitia curiata)