THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter XI - The Government and the Governed

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Page 14

Election of Officers in the Comitia

Among the innovations originated by the government--which were none the less innovations, that almost uniformly they changed not the letter, but merely the practice of the existing constitution--the most prominent were the measures by which the filling up of officers' posts as well as of civil magistracies was made to depend not, as the letter of the constitution allowed and its spirit required, simply on merit and ability, but more and more on birth and seniority.

As regards the nomination of staff-officers this was done not in form, but all the more in substance. It had already, in the course of the previous period, been in great part transferred from the general to the burgesses;(13) in this period came the further step, that the whole staff-officers of the regular yearly levy--the twenty-four military tribunes of the four ordinary legions--were nominated in the -comitia tributa-.

13. Cf. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

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