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    "source_title": "Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)",
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    "chunk_id": "1911:comitia:237559573a15",
    "title": "COMITIA",
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    "verified_text": "comitia, the name applied, always in technical and generally in popular phraseology, to the most formal types of gathering of the sovereign people in ancient rome. it is the plural of _comitium_, the old \"meeting-place\" (lat. _cum_, together, _ire_, to go) on the north-west of the forum. the romans had three words for describing gatherings of the people. these were _concilium_, _comitia_ and _contio_. of these concilium had the most general significance. it could be applied to any kind of meeting and is often used to describe assemblies in foreign states. it was, therefore, a word that might be employed to denote an organized gathering of a portion of the roman people such as the plebs, and in this sense is contrasted with _comitia_, which when used strictly should signify an assembly of the whole people. thus the roman draughtsman who wishes to express the idea \"magistrates of any kind as president of assemblies\" writes \"magistratus queiquomque comitia conciliumve habebit\" (_lex latina tabulae bantinae_, l. 5), and formalism required that a magistrate who summoned only a portion of the people to meet him should, in his summons, use the word _concilium_. this view is expressed by laelius felix, a lawyer probably of the age of hadrian, when he writes \"is qui non universum populum, sed partem aliquam adesse jubet, non comitia, sed concilium edicere debet\" (gellius, _noctes atticae_, xv. 27). but popular phraseology did not conform to this canon, and _comitia_, which gained in current latin the sense of \"elections\" was sometimes used of the assemblies of the plebs (see the instances in botsford, distinction between _comitia_ and _concilium_, p. 23). the distinction between _comitia_ and _contio_ was more clearly marked. both were formal assemblies convened by a magistrate; but while, in the case of the _comitia_, the magistrate's purpose was to ask a question of the people and to elicit their binding response, his object in summoning a _contio_ was merely to bring the people together either for their instruction or for a declaration of his will as expressed in an edict (\"contionem habere est verba facere ad populum sine ulla rogatione,\" gell. op. cit. xiii. 6). the word comitia merely means \"meetings.\" the earliest _comitia_ was one organized on the basis of parishes (_curiae_) and known in later times as the _comitia curiata_. the _curia_ voted as a single unit and thus furnished the type for that system of group-voting which runs through all the later organization of the popular assemblies. this _comitia_ must originally have been composed exclusively of patricians (q.v.); but there is reason to believe that, at an early period of the republic, it had, in imitation of the centuriate organization, come to include plebeians (see curia). the organization which gave rise to the _comitia centuriata_ was the result of the earliest steps in the political emancipation of the plebs. three stages in this process may be conjectured. in the first place the plebeians gained full rights of ownership and transfer, and could thus become freeholders of the land which they occupied and of the appurtenances of this land (_res mancipi_). this legal capacity rendered them liable to military service as heavy-armed fighting men, and as such they were enrolled in the military units called _centuriae_. when the enrolment was completed the whole host (_exercitus_) was the best organized and most representative gathering that rome could show. it therefore either usurped, or became gradually invested with voting powers, and gained a range of power which for two centuries (508-287 b.c.) made it the dominant assembly in the state. but its aristocratic organization, based as this was on property qualifications which gave the greatest voting power to the richest men, prevented it from being a fitting channel for the expression of plebeian claims. hence the plebs adopted a new political organization of their own. the tribunate called into existence a purely plebeian assembly, firstly, for the election of plebeian magistrates; secondly, for jurisdiction in cases where these magistrates had been injured; thirdly, for presenting petitions on behalf of the plebs through the consuls to the _comitia centuriata_. this right of petitioning developed into a power of legislation. the stages of the process (marked by the valerio-horatian laws of 449 b.c., the publilian law of 339 b.c., and the hortensian law of 287 b.c.) are unknown; but it is probable that the two first of the laws progressively weakened the discretionary power of senate and consuls in admitting such petitions; and that the hortensian law fully recognized the right of resolutions of the plebs (_plebiscita_) to bind the whole community. the plebeian assembly, which had perhaps originally met by _curiae_, was organized on the basis of the territorial tribes in 471 b.c. this change suggested a renewed organization of the whole people for comitial purposes. the _comitia tributa populi_ was the result. this assembly seems to have been already in existence at the epoch of the twelve tables in 451 b.c., its electoral activity is perhaps attested in 447",
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