other against the Volsci--but it had in no wise
binding force, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to
interfere at any time in the province of the other. When, therefore,
supreme power confronted supreme power and the one colleague forbade
what the other enjoined, the consular commands neutralized each other.
This peculiarly Latin, if not peculiarly Roman, institution of
co-ordinate supreme authorities--which in the Roman commonwealth on
the whole approved itself as practicable, but to which it will be
difficult to find a parallel in any other considerable state
--manifestly sprang out of the endeavour to retain the regal power
in legally undiminished fulness. They were thus led not to break
up the royal office into parts or to transfer it from an individual
to a college, but simply to double it and thereby, if necessary,
to neutralize it through its own action.

Term of Office

As regards the termination of their tenure of office, the earlier
-interregnum- of five days furnished a legal precedent. The ordinary
presidents of the community were bound not to remain in office
longer than a year reckoned from the day of their entering on their
functions;(4) and they ceased -de jure- to be magistrates upon the
expiry of the year, just as the interrex on the expiry of the five
days. Through this set termination of the supreme office the
practical irresponsibility of the king was lost in the case of the
consul. It is true that the king was always in the Roman commonwealth
subject, and not superior, to the law; but, as according to the Roman
view the supreme judge could not be prosecuted at his own bar, the
king might doubtless have committed a crime, but there was for him no
tribunal and no punishment. The consul, again, if he had committed
murder or treason, was protected by his office, but only so long as
it lasted; on his retirement he was liable to the ordinary penal
jurisdiction like any other burgess.

To these leading changes, affecting the principles of the
constitution, other restrictions were added of a subordinate and more
external character, some of which nevertheless produced a deep effect
The privilege of the king to have his fields tilled by task-work
of the burgesses, and the special relation of clientship in which
the --metoeci-- as a body must have stood to the king, ceased of
themselves with the life tenure of the office.

Right of Appeal

Hitherto in criminal processes as well as