What it was
Romans voted in several distinct assemblies with different compositions and competences. The comitia centuriata elected consuls and praetors and declared war; the comitia tributa elected lesser magistrates; the concilium plebis, open only to plebeians, elected tribunes and passed plebiscites.
In every one of them the unit of voting was the group, not the individual. A citizen voted within his century or tribe, the group's majority determined the group's single vote, and the groups were counted.
How it worked
The comitia centuriata was organised by property into 193 centuries, distributed so that the wealthiest classes together held a majority. Voting proceeded from the top down and stopped once a majority of centuries was reached, which meant the lowest class was frequently never called.
There was no debate in the assembly itself. A preliminary meeting, the contio, was where speeches were made; the voting assembly then voted yes or no on the magistrate's proposal without amendment.
Powers and limits
The assemblies were formally sovereign: they elected magistrates, passed laws and, in the centuriate assembly, declared war. From 287 BCE plebiscites bound the whole people.
Their limits were structural. Only a magistrate could convene them and put a proposal; no amendment was possible; and the weighting of the centuriate assembly meant formal sovereignty and effective influence were very different things.
How it changed
The centuriate assembly was reformed at some point in the third century BCE to link centuries to tribes, which reduced but did not remove the property weighting.
Under Tiberius the election of magistrates was transferred from the assemblies to the Senate. The assemblies continued to meet formally for a time and then ceased to matter.
What the evidence supports
Voting was by group, and the centuriate assembly was weighted by property.
Attested in the constitutional sources, including the distribution of centuries across the property classes.
Voting could stop before the lowest classes were reached.
It follows from counting downward until a majority was reached, and Cicero states the effect approvingly in a surviving passage of the Republic: the arrangement left the greatest number without a decisive voice.
The details of the third-century reform are not recoverable.
That a reform linking centuries to tribes occurred is agreed; its exact mechanism is reconstructed differently by different scholars.
Terms
- contio
- The preliminary meeting for speeches; the voting assembly itself did not debate.
- comitia centuriata
- The property-weighted assembly that elected the senior magistrates.
- plebiscitum
- A resolution of the plebeian assembly, binding on all citizens from 287 BCE.
Primary sources
Polybius, Histories 6.14
The people's share of power: elections, legislation and capital jurisdiction.
Livy, History of Rome 1.43
The centuriate organisation attributed to Servius Tullius, in a late reconstruction.
Covered elsewhere
- Recruitment and terms of military service is treated in the warfare encyclopedia: Recruitment. The property qualification, professionalisation, and the citizenship granted on auxiliary discharge are covered as military institutions.
How to read the evidence labels
- Evidence level: Documented
- Supported by a named primary text or by excavated material evidence.
- Evidence level: Probable
- Supported by strong inference that most specialists accept.
- Evidence level: Disputed
- Substantial specialist disagreement exists; competing readings are stated.
- Evidence level: Literary
- Belongs to poetic or mythological construction rather than to history.
- Evidence level: Mythological
- Belongs to shared religious or mythic tradition rather than to any single text.
- Evidence level: Unknown
- The available evidence is insufficient to decide.
These labels describe the status of the evidence, not our confidence in a conclusion. A claim marked Literary is not a claim we doubt; it is a claim about what kind of thing a poem is.