Book IV, Chapter 4

On the Roman Comitia.

We have no reliable records of Rome’s earliest times; indeed, most of what is told about them seems likely to be fable. And in general, the most instructive part of a people’s annals—the history of its founding—is precisely what we most lack. Experience teaches us every day what causes the revolutions of empires; but since peoples are no longer being formed, we have little more than conjectures to explain how they were formed.

Established customs at least attest that those customs had an origin. Among traditions reaching back to those origins, those supported by the greatest authorities and confirmed by the strongest reasons must pass for the most certain. These are the principles I have tried to follow in investigating how the freest and most powerful people on earth exercised its supreme power.

After the founding of Rome, the nascent republic—that is, the founder’s army, composed of Albans, Sabines, and foreigners—was divided into three classes, which from this division took the name of tribes. Each of these tribes was subdivided into ten curiae, and each curia into decuries, headed by chiefs called curions and decurions.

Besides this, a body of a hundred horsemen or knights, called a century, was drawn from each tribe. From this we see that these divisions, scarcely necessary in a village, were at first purely military. But it seems that an instinct for greatness led the little city of Rome to give itself in advance an organization suited to the capital of the world.

This first partition soon produced a difficulty. The Alban and Sabine tribes remained always at the same strength, while the tribe of foreigners grew constantly through the continual arrival of new members; thus the last soon surpassed the other two. Servius’s remedy for this dangerous abuse was to change the division: he abolished the one based on descent and substituted another based on the parts of the city occupied by each tribe. Instead of three tribes he made four, each occupying one of the hills of Rome and bearing its name. Thus, in remedying the present inequality, he also forestalled it for the future; and so that the division should be one of people and not merely of places, he forbade the inhabitants of one district to move into another, thereby preventing the different peoples from becoming intermixed.

He also doubled the three old cavalry centuries and added twelve more to them, but always under the old names: a simple and judicious means by which he completed the distinction between the body of knights and that of the people, without provoking the latter’s resentment.

To these four urban tribes Servius added fifteen more, called rural tribes because they were formed from the inhabitants of the countryside, divided into as many districts. Later an equal number of new ones were made, and the Roman people found itself divided at last into thirty-five tribes, a number at which they remained fixed until the end of the republic.

This distinction between the city tribes and the country tribes had an effect worth observing, for it has no other example, and Rome owed to it both the preservation of its morals and the growth of its empire. One might think that the urban tribes soon arrogated power and honors to themselves and promptly debased the rural tribes; precisely the opposite occurred. The early Romans’ taste for country life is well known. They owed this taste to their wise founder, who joined rural and military labor to freedom, and relegated to the city, so to speak, the arts, trades, intrigue, wealth, and slavery.

Thus, since all that was illustrious in Rome lived in the countryside and cultivated the land, people grew accustomed to looking there alone for the republic’s mainstays. Since this was the condition of the worthiest patricians, it was honored by everyone: the simple, laborious life of the villagers was preferred to the idle, indolent life of Rome’s townspeople, and a man who would have been no more than a wretched proletarian in the city became, as a farmer in the countryside, a respected citizen. Not without reason, said Varro, did our magnanimous ancestors establish in the villages a nursery for the hardy and valiant men who defended them in time of war and fed them in time of peace. Pliny says plainly that the country tribes were honored because of the men who made them up, whereas cowards whom people wished to degrade were transferred in disgrace to the city tribes. When the Sabine Appius Claudius came to settle in Rome, he was showered with honors and enrolled in a rural tribe that later took his family’s name. Finally, freedmen all entered the urban tribes, never the rural ones; and throughout the whole republic there is not a single instance of any of these freedmen attaining a magistracy, though they had become citizens.

This principle was excellent; but it was carried so far that it ultimately produced a change and certainly an abuse in the constitution.

First, after long arrogating to themselves the right to transfer citizens arbitrarily from one tribe to another, the censors allowed most people to enroll in whichever tribe pleased them. This permission certainly did no good and deprived the censorship of one of its chief levers. Furthermore, as the great and powerful all enrolled in the country tribes, and freedmen who had become citizens remained with the common people in the city tribes, the tribes in general no longer had any locality or territory. All became so intermingled that their members could no longer be distinguished except by the registers, so that the idea conveyed by the word tribe passed from a real to a personal distinction—or rather, became almost a fiction.

It also came about that the city tribes, being nearer at hand, were often the stronger at the comitia, and sold the state to those who deigned to buy the votes of the rabble that composed them.

As for the curiae, the founder had established ten in each tribe; thus the whole Roman people, then contained within the city walls, comprised thirty curiae, each with its temples, gods, officers, priests, and festivals called compitalia, similar to the paganalia that the rural tribes had later.

When Servius made his new partition, these thirty could not be distributed equally among his four tribes, so he chose not to disturb them, and the curiae, independent of the tribes, became another division of Rome’s inhabitants. But there was no question of curiae either in the rural tribes or among the people who composed them, because the tribes had become a purely civil institution, and another arrangement had been introduced for levying troops, making the military divisions of Romulus superfluous. Thus, although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, far from every citizen was enrolled in a curia.

Servius made a third division as well, unrelated to the preceding two, which in its effects became the most important of all. He distributed the whole Roman people into six classes, distinguishing them neither by location nor by persons but by property: the first classes were filled with the rich, the last with the poor, and the middle classes with those of moderate means. These six classes were subdivided into 193 other bodies called centuries, and these bodies were so distributed that the first class alone contained more than half of them, while the last formed only a single one. Thus the class with the fewest people had the most centuries, and the whole last class counted for only one subdivision, although it alone contained more than half the inhabitants of Rome.

To make the people less aware of the consequences of this last arrangement, Servius took pains to give it a military appearance: he inserted two centuries of armorers in the second class and two of makers of instruments of war in the fourth. In each class except the last, he distinguished the young from the old—that is, those obliged to bear arms from those whose age exempted them under the laws. This distinction, more than the distinction by property, made it necessary to repeat the census, or enumeration, often. Finally, he required that the assembly meet on the Field of Mars, and that all those of an age to serve come there bearing their arms.

The reason he did not follow the same division into young and old in the last class is that the common people who composed it were not granted the honor of bearing arms for their country. One had to have a hearth in order to gain the right to defend it; and of the innumerable bands of paupers who adorn the armies of kings today, perhaps not one would have escaped disdainful expulsion from a Roman cohort when soldiers were the defenders of freedom.

Yet a further distinction was made in the last class between the proletarians and those called capite censi. The former, not reduced to utter nothingness, at least furnished the state with citizens, sometimes even with soldiers in urgent need. Those who possessed nothing at all and could be counted only by their heads were regarded as complete nonentities, and Marius was the first to deign to enlist them.

Without deciding here whether this third enumeration was good or bad in itself, I believe I may affirm that only the simple morals of the early Romans, their disinterestedness, their taste for agriculture, and their contempt for commerce and the fever of gain could have made it practicable. Among what modern people could devouring greed, restless ambition, intrigue, constant shifts of residence, and perpetual reversals of fortune allow such an institution to endure twenty years without overturning the whole state? We should indeed note that morals and the censorship, stronger than this institution, corrected its flaw at Rome, and that more than one rich man found himself relegated to the class of the poor for displaying his wealth too ostentatiously.

From all this one can readily understand why almost all mention is of only five classes, though there were actually six. The sixth, supplying neither soldiers to the army nor voters on the Field of Mars, and being of almost no use in the republic, was seldom counted for anything.

Such were the different divisions of the Roman people. Let us now see what effect they produced in the assemblies. Assemblies lawfully convoked were called comitia; they were ordinarily held in Rome’s public square or on the Field of Mars, and were distinguished as comitia by curiae, comitia by centuries, and comitia by tribes, according to which of these three forms governed their organization: the comitia by curiae were established by Romulus, those by centuries by Servius, and those by tribes by the tribunes of the people. No law received sanction and no magistrate was elected except in the comitia; and since there was no citizen who was not enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, it follows that no citizen was excluded from the right to vote, and that the Roman people were truly sovereign both in right and in fact.

For the comitia to be lawfully assembled and their proceedings to have the force of law, three conditions had to be met: first, the body or magistrate convoking them had to possess the requisite authority; second, the assembly had to take place on a day permitted by law; third, the auguries had to be favorable.

The reason for the first rule needs no explanation. The second was a matter of public order: it was not permitted to hold the comitia on holidays or market days, when country people coming to Rome on business had no time to spend the day in the public square. By the third, the senate kept a proud and restless people in check and opportunely tempered the ardor of seditious tribunes; but the latter found more than one way to escape this restraint.

Laws and the election of leaders were not the only matters submitted to the judgment of the comitia. Since the Roman people had usurped the most important functions of government, one may say that the fate of Europe was settled in their assemblies. This variety of business gave rise to the different forms these assemblies took according to the matters on which they had to pronounce.

To judge these different forms it is enough to compare them. When Romulus established the curiae, his aim was to restrain the senate by the people and the people by the senate, while holding sway equally over all. By this form, therefore, he gave the people all the authority of numbers to counterbalance the power and wealth he left to the patricians. But in keeping with the spirit of monarchy he nonetheless gave the patricians a further advantage, through their clients’ influence over the majority of votes. This admirable institution of patrons and clients was a masterpiece of politics and humanity, without which the patriciate, so contrary to the spirit of the republic, could not have survived. Rome alone has had the honor of giving the world this fine example, from which no abuse ever arose, and which has nevertheless never been followed.

Since this same form of the curiae survived under the kings until Servius, and the reign of the last Tarquin was not counted as legitimate, royal laws were generally distinguished by the name leges curiatæ.

Under the republic the curiae, still confined to the four urban tribes and now containing only the common people of Rome, could suit neither the senate, which headed the patricians, nor the tribunes, who, though plebeians, headed the well-to-do citizens. They therefore fell into disrepute, and their degradation went so far that their thirty assembled lictors performed the functions that the comitia by curiae ought to have performed.

The division by centuries was so favorable to aristocracy that at first one cannot see why the senate did not always prevail in the comitia bearing that name, which elected the consuls, the censors, and the other curule magistrates. Indeed, of the one hundred and ninety-three centuries making up the six classes of the entire Roman people, the first class contained ninety-eight; and since votes were counted only by centuries, this first class alone outnumbered all the others in votes. When all its centuries agreed, the collection of votes did not even continue: what the smallest number had decided passed for a decision of the multitude, and one may say that in the comitia by centuries affairs were settled by a majority of money far more than by a majority of voices.

But this extreme authority was tempered by two means. First, the tribunes were ordinarily in the class of the rich, as were always a great many plebeians; they counterbalanced the influence of the patricians in this first class.

The second means was this: instead of immediately having the centuries vote in their order, which would always have meant beginning with the first, one century was chosen by lot, and this one alone proceeded to the election. Afterward all the centuries, summoned on another day in order of rank, repeated the same election and ordinarily confirmed it. Thus the authority of example was taken away from rank and given to chance, in accordance with the principle of democracy.

A further advantage followed from this custom: country citizens had time between the two elections to learn the merits of the provisionally named candidate, so that they might vote with knowledge of the facts. But on the pretext of speed the custom was ultimately abolished, and both elections were held on the same day.

The comitia by tribes were properly the council of the Roman people. They were convoked only by the tribunes; the tribunes were elected there and passed their plebiscites there. Not only did the senate have no place in them, it did not even have the right to attend. Forced to obey laws on which they had been unable to vote, the senators were in this respect less free than the lowest citizens. This injustice was altogether ill-conceived and would alone have sufficed to invalidate the decrees of a body to which not all its members were admitted. Even if all the patricians had attended these comitia by the right they possessed as citizens, they would then have become mere private individuals and had little influence on a form of voting in which votes were counted by head, and the humblest proletarian had as much weight as the foremost man in the senate.

We see, then, that besides the order these different divisions brought to the collection of the votes of so great a people, the divisions were not merely forms indifferent in themselves: each had effects corresponding to the aims for which it was preferred.

Without going into further detail, it follows from the preceding explanations that the comitia by tribes were most favorable to popular government, and the comitia by centuries to aristocracy. As for the comitia by curiae, in which the common people of Rome alone formed the majority, since they could only favor tyranny and evil designs, they were bound to fall into discredit; even the seditious refrained from using a means that exposed their projects too openly. It is certain that the full majesty of the Roman people was found only in the comitia by centuries, which alone were complete, since the rural tribes were absent from the comitia by curiae, and the senate and the patricians from the comitia by tribes.

As for the manner of collecting votes, among the early Romans it was as simple as their morals, though still less simple than at Sparta. Each man gave his vote aloud, and a clerk wrote the votes down as they came in; a majority of voices within each tribe determined the tribe’s vote, a majority of votes among the tribes determined the people’s vote, and so likewise with the curiae and centuries. This practice was good as long as honesty prevailed among citizens and each man was ashamed to vote publicly for an unjust proposal or an unworthy candidate. But when the people grew corrupt and votes were bought, it became fitting to cast them in secret, so as to restrain the buyers through distrust and give the rascals a way not to become traitors.

I know that Cicero condemns this change and attributes to it, in part, the ruin of the republic. But though I feel how much weight Cicero’s authority must have here, I cannot agree with him. On the contrary, I think the state’s downfall was hastened because too few such changes were made. Just as the regimen of healthy people does not suit the sick, one must not try to govern a corrupt people by the same laws that suit a good people. Nothing proves this principle better than the duration of the republic of Venice, whose semblance still exists, solely because its laws suit only wicked men.

Citizens, then, were given tablets by which each could vote without his opinion being known. New formalities were also established for collecting the tablets, counting the votes, comparing the totals, and so on. Yet this did not prevent frequent suspicion of the fidelity of the officers charged with these duties. Finally edicts were issued to prevent canvassing and the trafficking in votes; their very multitude shows their futility.

Toward the end, extraordinary expedients were often needed to make up for the insufficiency of the laws. Sometimes prodigies were invented; but this means, which could impose upon the people, could not impose upon those who governed them. Sometimes an assembly was suddenly called before candidates had time to conduct their canvassing; sometimes an entire session was spent in speaking when the people were seen to have been won over and were ready to take a bad course. But in the end ambition evaded everything; and what is incredible is that, amid so many abuses, this immense people, thanks to its ancient institutions, still managed to elect magistrates, pass laws, judge cases, and dispatch private and public business almost as easily as the senate itself could have done.

On the Roman Assemblies.

We have no reliable records of Rome's earliest days. Indeed, most of what is said about them is probably fiction. In general, the most instructive part of a people's history—the story of how they were founded—is the part we know least. Every day, experience teaches us what causes empires to undergo revolutions. But since new peoples are no longer forming, we have little more than guesses about how they came into being.

Established customs at least show that those customs had a beginning. Of the traditions that reach back to those beginnings, we should accept as most certain the ones supported by the greatest authorities and confirmed by the strongest reasons. These are the principles I have tried to follow in investigating how the freest and most powerful people on earth exercised its supreme power.

After Rome was founded, the young republic—that is, its founder's army, made up of Albans, Sabines, and foreigners—was divided into three groups. From this division they took the name tribes. Each tribe was divided into ten curiae, and each curia into decuries. Leaders called curions and decurions were placed at their heads.

In addition, a body of one hundred horsemen, or knights, called a century, was drawn from each tribe. These divisions, hardly needed in a small town, were thus military at first. But the little city of Rome seems to have been driven by an instinct for greatness to equip itself in advance with an organization suited to the capital of the world.

This first division soon caused a problem. The Alban and Sabine tribes stayed the same size, while the tribe of foreigners grew constantly as more foreigners arrived. Before long the third tribe surpassed the other two. Servius dealt with this dangerous imbalance by changing the division. He abolished the division by ancestry and replaced it with one based on the parts of the city occupied by each tribe. Instead of three tribes he made four, each occupying and named after one of Rome's hills. In this way he corrected the existing inequality and prevented it from returning. And so that the division would apply to people, not just places, he forbade the residents of one district to move into another. This kept the different ancestries from mixing.

He also doubled the three old centuries of cavalry and added twelve more, but kept the old names. By this simple and sensible means he finished separating the knights as a body from the people without provoking complaints from the latter.

To these four urban tribes Servius added fifteen more, called rural tribes. They were made up of country residents divided among the same number of districts. Later as many new tribes were created, until the Roman people were divided into thirty-five tribes. That number remained fixed until the end of the republic.

The distinction between city and country tribes had an effect worth noting. Nothing like it happened elsewhere, and Rome owed to it both the preservation of its customs and the growth of its empire. One might think the urban tribes would soon have claimed power and honors for themselves and reduced the rural tribes to a lower status. The opposite happened. We know the early Romans' taste for country life. They got this taste from the wise founder who joined farming and military work to freedom, and, so to speak, relegated crafts, trades, scheming, wealth, and slavery to the city.

Thus, since all of Rome's prominent people lived in the country and worked the land, people grew used to looking there alone for the republic's defenders. Everyone honored this way of life because the most worthy patricians followed it. The villagers' simple, hardworking life was preferred to the idle, weak life of Rome's city dwellers. A man who would have been a miserable proletarian in the city became a respected citizen as a farmer in the countryside. Our great-hearted ancestors had good reason, Varro said, to establish in the village the nursery of the strong and brave men who defended them in wartime and fed them in peacetime. Pliny says explicitly that the country tribes were honored because of the people in them. Cowards whom people wanted to disgrace were instead transferred to the city tribes. When the Sabine Appius Claudius came to settle in Rome, he was showered with honors and enrolled in a rural tribe, which later took his family's name. Finally, freedmen all entered the urban tribes, never the rural ones. Throughout the entire republic, not a single one of these freedmen ever reached a magistracy, even though they had become citizens.

This principle was excellent, but it was taken so far that it eventually brought about a change, and certainly an abuse, in public administration.

First, after long claiming the right to move citizens at will from one tribe to another, the censors allowed most citizens to enroll in whichever tribe they liked. This permission did no good at all and took away one of the main tools of the censorship. Moreover, the great and powerful all enrolled in the country tribes, while freedmen who had become citizens remained with the common crowd in the city tribes. The tribes in general no longer had a place or territory of their own. All became so mixed that only the records could identify each tribe's members. The idea conveyed by the word tribe thus shifted from a real place to a set of persons, or rather became almost imaginary.

Another result was that the city tribes, being closer at hand, were often the strongest in the assemblies. They sold the state to anyone willing to buy the votes of the rabble that made them up.

As for the curiae, the founder had established ten in each tribe. All the Roman people, then living within the city walls, thus made up thirty curiae. Each had its temples, gods, officials, priests, and festivals called compitalia, like the paganalia that the rural tribes later had.

When Servius made his new division, the number thirty could not be divided equally among his four tribes. He chose not to change it. The curiae became independent of the tribes and formed another division of Rome's inhabitants. But there were no curiae in the rural tribes or among the people who made them up. By then the tribes had become a purely civil institution, and a different system had been introduced for raising troops. Romulus's military divisions had therefore become unnecessary. So although every citizen was enrolled in a tribe, far from every citizen was enrolled in a curia.

Servius made a third division, unrelated to the first two, that became the most important of all because of its effects. He divided the entire Roman people into six classes. He distinguished these not by place or ancestry but by property. The rich filled the first classes, the poor the last, and people of moderate means the middle ones. These six classes were divided into 193 other bodies called centuries. They were distributed so that the first class alone contained more than half the centuries, while the last contained only one. The class with the fewest people thus had the most centuries. The entire last class counted as just one subdivision, although it alone contained more than half of Rome's inhabitants.

To make the people less aware of what this last arrangement meant, Servius tried to give it a military appearance. He placed two centuries of armorers in the second class and two of makers of military equipment in the fourth. In every class except the last, he distinguished the young from the old: those required to bear arms and those exempted by law because of their age. This distinction, even more than the distinction by property, made it necessary to repeat the census, or count of the people, often. Finally, he required that the assembly meet on the Field of Mars and that everyone old enough to serve come armed.

He did not make the same division between young and old in the last class because the common people who made it up were not granted the honor of bearing arms for their country. One had to have a home to earn the right to defend it. Of the countless hordes of beggars who fill the armies of kings today, perhaps not one would have escaped being scornfully driven from a Roman unit when soldiers were defenders of freedom.

Even in the last class, however, a distinction was made between the proletarians and those called capite censi. The former had not been reduced to having nothing at all: they at least supplied the state with citizens, and sometimes even soldiers in urgent need. Those who had nothing whatsoever, and could only be counted by their heads, were considered of no account at all. Marius was the first to deign to enlist them.

Without deciding here whether this third way of counting the people was good or bad in itself, I think I can say that only the early Romans' simple customs, their lack of self-interest, their love of farming, and their contempt for commerce and the drive for profit could make it workable. What modern people could let such a system last twenty years without turning the whole state upside down? Their consuming greed, restless spirit, schemes, constant movements, and endless changes of fortune would prevent it. We should also note that custom and the censorship were stronger than this institution and corrected its flaw in Rome: a rich man could find himself relegated to the class of the poor for showing off his wealth too much.

All this makes it easy to understand why only five classes are almost ever mentioned, though there were actually six. The sixth provided neither soldiers for the army nor voters on the Field of Mars. Since it had almost no role in the republic, it was seldom counted as anything.

These were the different divisions of the Roman people. Let us now see how they affected the assemblies. Assemblies properly called together were called comitia. They were usually held in Rome's public square or on the Field of Mars. They were distinguished as assemblies by curiae, by centuries, or by tribes, depending on which of those three divisions governed them. Romulus established the assemblies by curiae, Servius those by centuries, and the tribunes of the people those by tribes. No law was ratified and no magistrate elected except in the assemblies. And since every citizen was enrolled in a curia, a century, or a tribe, no citizen was excluded from the right to vote. The Roman people were truly sovereign, both in law and in fact.

Three conditions had to be met for an assembly to be properly convened and for its acts to have the force of law. First, the body or magistrate calling it had to have the necessary authority. Second, it had to meet on a day permitted by law. Third, the omens had to be favorable.

The reason for the first rule needs no explanation. The second concerned public administration: assemblies could not be held on holidays or market days, when country people came to Rome on business and did not have time to spend the whole day in the public square. The third let the Senate keep a proud and restless people in check and curb the zeal of rebellious tribunes when necessary. But the tribunes found more than one way around this restriction.

Laws and the election of leaders were not the only matters submitted to the assemblies for judgment. The Roman people had taken over the most important functions of government, so one could say that Europe's fate was decided in these meetings. This range of matters explains the different forms the assemblies took according to what they had to decide.

To judge these forms, we need only compare them. In establishing the curiae, Romulus intended to restrain the Senate by means of the people and the people by means of the Senate, while ruling over both. He therefore gave the people the full strength of their numbers under this arrangement, to offset the power and wealth he left to the patricians. Yet, in keeping with monarchy, he still gave the patricians an advantage through the influence of their clients over the majority of votes. The remarkable institution of patrons and clients was a masterpiece of politics and humanity. Without it, the patriciate, so opposed to the spirit of a republic, could not have survived. Rome alone has the honor of giving the world this fine example. It never resulted in abuses, yet it has never been followed.

The arrangement by curiae continued under the kings until Servius. Since the reign of the last Tarquin was not considered legitimate, royal laws came to be known in general as leges curiatae.

Under the republic, the curiae remained confined to the four urban tribes and contained only Rome's common crowd. They suited neither the Senate, which led the patricians, nor the tribunes, who, though plebeians, led the well-off citizens. The curiae therefore fell into disrepute. They sank so low that their thirty lictors, assembled together, did what the assemblies by curiae should have done.

Division by centuries favored the aristocracy so strongly that it is not immediately clear why the Senate did not always prevail in the assemblies of that name. Those assemblies elected the consuls, censors, and other curule magistrates. Of the one hundred and ninety-three centuries forming the six classes of the entire Roman people, the first class contained ninety-eight. Votes were counted only by century, so this first class alone outvoted all the rest. When all its centuries agreed, the remaining votes were not even collected. The decision of the smaller number of people passed as the decision of the multitude. One might say that the assemblies by centuries decided matters by the majority of coins, far more than by the majority of votes.

But two things moderated this enormous power. First, the tribunes were generally in the class of the rich, as were many plebeians. They offset the influence of the patricians within that first class.

The second was this: instead of having the centuries vote immediately in their assigned order, which would always have put the first class first, a century was chosen by lot. That century alone made a preliminary election. Then, on another day, all the centuries were called in their order, repeated the same election, and usually confirmed it. The influence of setting an example was thus taken away from rank and given to chance, in keeping with the principle of democracy.

This custom had another advantage. Country citizens had time between the two elections to learn about the merits of the provisionally chosen candidate, so they could vote on an informed basis. But the custom was eventually abolished on the pretext of saving time, and both elections took place on the same day.

The assemblies by tribes were, properly speaking, the council of the Roman people. Only the tribunes called them together. The tribunes were elected there and passed their plebiscites there. Not only did the Senate have no standing in them; it did not even have the right to attend. Forced to obey laws on which they could not vote, the senators were in this respect less free than the lowest citizens. This injustice made no sense at all and was enough by itself to invalidate the decisions of a body that did not admit all its members. Even if all the patricians had attended these assemblies, as they were entitled to do as citizens, they would then have been mere individuals. They could have had little influence under a voting system in which votes were taken by head and the poorest proletarian counted as much as the Senate's leading member.

We can therefore see that these ways of dividing up such a large people did more than bring order to the collection of votes. They were not merely different arrangements with no significance of their own. Each had effects suited to the aims behind the choice of that arrangement.

Without going into further detail, the preceding explanation shows that the assemblies by tribes most favored popular government, while the assemblies by centuries favored aristocracy. In the assemblies by curiae, Rome's common crowd alone made up the majority. Since these assemblies served only to help tyranny and bad schemes, they had to fall into disrepute. Even troublemakers avoided a tool that exposed their plans too clearly. The Roman people appeared in their full dignity only in the assemblies by centuries, which alone included everyone. The rural tribes were absent from the assemblies by curiae, and the Senate and patricians were absent from those by tribes.

As for the method of collecting votes, it was as simple among the early Romans as their customs, though less simple than at Sparta. Each person gave his vote aloud, and a clerk wrote the votes down as they came in. A majority of votes in each tribe determined that tribe's vote; a majority of votes among the tribes determined the people's vote. The same was true of the curiae and centuries. This practice worked while the citizens were honest and each was ashamed to vote publicly for an unjust proposal or an unworthy candidate. But when the people became corrupt and votes were bought, it became advisable to vote in secret. That made buyers unsure of what they would get and let the cheats avoid becoming traitors.

I know that Cicero criticizes this change and partly blames it for the republic's downfall. Although I recognize the weight Cicero's authority should carry here, I cannot agree with him. On the contrary, I think the state fell more quickly because too few such changes were made. A regimen fit for healthy people is not fit for the sick. We should not try to govern a corrupt people by the same laws that suit a good one. Nothing proves this principle better than the endurance of the republic of Venice. Its outward form still exists, solely because its laws suit only bad people.

So citizens were given tablets on which they could vote without anyone knowing their choice. New procedures were also introduced for collecting the tablets, counting the votes, comparing the totals, and so on. Even so, the honesty of the officials in charge of these tasks was often suspected. Finally, edicts were issued to stop electioneering and the buying and selling of votes. Their sheer number shows how little good they did.

Toward the end, extraordinary measures were often needed because the laws were not enough. Sometimes prodigies were alleged. This could deceive the people, but not those who governed them. Sometimes an assembly was called suddenly, before candidates had time to campaign. Sometimes an entire meeting was spent on speeches when it was clear the people had been won over and were about to make a bad choice. But ambition eventually found ways around everything. What seems incredible is that amid so many abuses, this huge people still managed, thanks to its old rules, to elect magistrates, pass laws, judge cases, and handle private and public business almost as easily as the Senate itself could have done.