Tribal Assembly

The Roman Republic ( Res Publica Romana ) distributed the governance formally on three separate meetings, the Comitia Centuriata, the Comitia Populi tributa or Tributkomitien and the Concilium Plebis. Unlike in modern parliaments bodies for a legislature, jurisdiction and choice of law has been in these combined, on the other hand they had the ability to change laws retroactively (ex post facto). The Roman Senate, however, was a consultative chamber, and had no legislative or judicial power.

The Comitia Populi tributa included patricians and plebeians, distributed to the 35 tribes ( tribus ), were classified in all Roman citizens to administrative and electoral purposes. The overwhelming majority of the urban population of Rome was one of the four urban tribes, and since here the individual votes were not decisive (as in the Comitia Centuriata the vote was indirectly, within the tribe, who in turn had only one vote in the Comitia Populi tributa ), so that election results were mainly on the behavior of the 31 rural tribes dependent. The Comitia Populi tributa met in comitium the Roman Forum. They chose the curule Aedile ( aediles curules ), the quaestors, and the military tribunes ( tribuni militum ). Before them Trials were held until the dictator Sulla established the permanent courts.

During his consulship in 88 BC Sulla issued a series of additional gear Corneliae that changed the political structure of the Republic radically. His third law forbade the Concilium Plebis and the Comitia Populi tributa to discuss laws that had not been introduced by senatus consultum. His fourth law structured the Comitia Centuriata so that the first class, the senators and the most powerful knight, had almost half of the votes. His fifth law undressed both tribal gatherings, Concilium Plebis and Comitia Populi tributa, their legislative functions, so that all the legislation in the Comitia Centuriata was. The tribal meetings were thus limited to the election of certain magistrates and the direction of negotiations - but which could not be taken without authorization by a senatus consultum.

These reforms were made by the populares, led by Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Cinna reversed, introduced by Sulla during his dictatorship rei publicae constituendae again, and again exposed after his death. They represent one of the most far-reaching interventions in the constitution of the Roman state, both in the Republic and the Principate dar.

• Roman policy
• Political Institution ( Antiquity)
• Roman society