Citizens' assemblies of the Roman Republic: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:44, 6 November 2005

Revision as of 07:21, 11 November 2005

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The ''Comitia Centuriata'' included both [[patrician]]s and [[plebeian]]s organized into five economic classes (knights and senators being the First Class) and distributed among internal divisions called Centuries. Membership in the Centuriate Assembly required certain economic status, and power was heavily vested in the First and Second Classes. The Centuriate Assembly met annually to elect the next year's [[consul]]s and [[praetor]]s, and quintannually (every 5 years) to elect the [[censor]]s. It also sat to try cases of high treason (''perduellio''), although this latter function fell into disuse after [[Lucius Appuleius Saturninus]] introduced a more workable format (''maiestas'').

A citizen's vote did not count in the Centuriate Assembly. Rather, the individual's vote was counted within his [[Century]] and determined the outcome of the Century's vote. Because only the first eighteen (and richest) Centuries were kept to the nominal size of 100 members, members of those Centuries exerted a disproportionate influence over the outcome of votes. The Centuriate Assembly, originally a military assembly of knights, had to meet outside the ''[[pomerium]]'' of [[Rome]] on the [[Campus Martius]], and was as a result extremely clumsy to convoke and manage. It was not normally used except to elect the next year's magistrates. The Centuriate Assembly is usually cited, with little contemporary evidence, as the classical precedent for the [[US]] [[Electoral College]].

== Tribal Assembly==