Although the revolution of 494 B.C. gave the tribunes a foothold in the constitution, it left them with no very definite resources against breaches of compact by the patricians. The traditional history of the tribunate from 494 to 451 B.C. is obscure ; but there is a thread running through it which may well be truth. We hear of attacks by patricians on the newly won privileges, even of the assassination of a tribune, and of attempts on the part of the plebeians to bring patrician offenders to justice. The plebeians attempted to set up a criminal jurisdiction for their own assembly parallel to that practised by the older centuriate assembly. Furthermore, the plebs attempted something like legislation; it passed resolutions which it hoped to force the patrician body to accept as valid. As to details, only a few are worth notice. In the first place, the number of tribunes was raised to ten ; how we do not know, but apparently some con stitutional recognition of the increase was obtained. Then an alteration is made in the mode of election. As to the original mode, the authorities are hopelessly at variance. It was in accord ance with the Roman spirit of order that the tribunes, in summon ing their assemblies, should ask the plebeians to organize their supporters in bands. The curia was certainly a territorial district, and the tribunes may have originally used it as the basis of their organization. If tribunes were elected by plebeians massed curi atim, such a meeting would easily be mistaken in later times for the comitia curiata. A change was introduced in 471 B.C. by the Publilian Law of Volero, which directed that the tribunes should be chosen in an assembly organized on the basis of the Servian tribe, instead of the curia. This assembly was the germ of the comitia tributa. The question by what authority the Law of Vol ero was ganctioned is difficult to answer. Possibly the law was a mere resolution of the plebeians with which the patricians did not interfere, because they did not consider that the mode of election was any concern of theirs. Whatever view may be taken of the movement which led to the decemvirate, an important element in it was the agitation carried on by the tribunes for the reduction of the law of Rome to a written code. Until they obtained this, it was impossible for them to protect those who appealed against harsh treatment by the consuls in their capacity of judges.
During the decemvirate the tribunate was in abeyance. It was called into life again by the revolution of 449 B.c., which gave the tribunes a considerably stronger position. Their personal privi leges and those of the aediles were renewed. The road was opened up to legislation by the tribunes through an assembly summoned by them on the tribe-basis (concilium plebis), but subject to the control of the senate. The growth of the influence of this assembly over legislation belongs rather to the history of the comitia (q.v.) than to that of the tribunate. After the Hortensian Law of 287 B.C., down to the end of the republic, the legislation of Rome was mainly in the hands of the tribunes. The details of the history of the tribunate in its second period, from 449 to 367 B.C., are hardly less obscure than those which belong to the earlier time. There was, however, on the whole, undoubtedly an advance in dignity and importance. Gradually a right was acquired of watching and interfering with the proceedings of the senate, and even with legis lation. Whether the absolute right of veto had been achieved be fore 367 B.C. may well be doubted. But the original auxiliurn, or
right of protecting individuals, was, during this period, undergoing a very remarkable expansion. From forbidding a single act of a magistrate in relation to a single person, the tribunes advanced to forbidding by anticipation all acts of a certain class, whoever the persons affected by these restrictions might prove to be. It therefore became useless for the senate or the comitia to pass ordinances if a tribune was ready to forbid the magistrates to carry them out. Ultimately, the mere announcement of such intention by a tribune was sufficient to cause the obnoxious proj ect to drop; that is, the tribunes acquired a right to stop all busi ness alike in the deliberative assembly, the senate, and in the legislative assemblies, or comitia. The technical name for this right of veto is intercessio. The two main objects of the tribunes were the opening of the consulate to plebeians, and the regulation of the state domain in the interests of the whole community. Both were attained by the Licinio-Sextian laws of 367 B.C.
Then a considerable change came over the tribunate. From being an opposition weapon it became an important wheel in the regular machine of state. As the senate became more and more plebeian, the old friction between senate and tribunes disappeared. It was found that the tribunate served to fill some gaps in the constitution, and its power was placed by common consent on a solid constitutional basis. From 367 to 134 B.C. (when Tiberius Gracchus became tribune) the tribunate was for the most part a mere organ of senatorial government.
Even after the difference be tween patrician and plebeian birth had ceased to be of much consequence, the plebeian character was a necessity for the trib une. When the patricians P. Sulpicius Rufus and, later, P. Clo dius (the antagonist of Cicero) desired to enter on a dema gogic course, they were compelled to divest themselves of their patrician quality by a peculiar legal process. The other necessary qualifications were such as attached to the other Roman magis tracies : complete citizenship, absence of certain conditions re garded as disgraceful, and fulfilment of military duties. The elec tion took place in a purely plebeian assembly, ranged by tribes, under the presidency of a tribune selected by lot. The tribune was bound by law to see a complete set of ten tribunes appointed. Technically, the tribunes were reckoned, not as magistrates of the Roman people, but as magistrates of the Roman plebs; they therefore had no special robe of office, no lictors, but only mes sengers (viatores), no official chair, like the curule seat, but only benches (subsellia). Their right to summon the plebs together, whether for the purpose of listening to a speech or for passing ordinances, was rendered absolute by the "laws under sacred sanction" (leges sacratae), which had been incorporated with the constitution on the abolition of the decemvirate. The right to summon the senate and to lay business before it was acquired soon after 367 B.C., but was seldom exercised, as the tribunes had abundant means of securing what they wanted by pressure applied to the ordinary presidents, the consuls or the praetor. When an interregnum came about and there were no "magistrates of the Roman people," the plebeian tribunes became the presidents of the senate and conductors of state business. At the end of the republic there were interregna of several months' duration, when the tribunes held a position of more than usual importance.