well be prevented from
taking a vote on other proposals than the choice of his successor and
the confirmation of his sentences. Such "resolves of the multitude"
(-plebi scita-) were not indeed strictly valid decrees of the
people; on the contrary, they were at first little more than are
the resolutions of our modern public meetings; but, as the distinction
between the comitia of the people and the councils of the multitude
was of a formal nature rather than aught else, the validity of these
resolves as autonomous determinations of the community was at once
claimed at least on the part of the plebeians, and the Icilian law for
instance was immediately carried in this way. Thus was the tribune of
the people appointed as a shield and protection for the individual,
and as leader and manager for all, provided with unlimited judicial
power in criminal proceedings, that in this way he might give emphasis
to his command, and lastly even pronounced to be in his person
inviolable (-sacrosanctus-), inasmuch as whoever laid hands upon
him or his servant was not merely regarded as incurring the vengeance
of the gods, but was also among men accounted as if, after legally
proven crime, deserving of death.

Relation of the Tribune to the Consul

The tribunes of the multitude (-tribuni plebis-) arose out
of the military tribunes and derived from them their name; but
constitutionally they had no further relation to them. On the
contrary, in respect of powers the tribunes of the plebs stood on a
level with the consuls. The appeal from the consul to the tribune,
and the tribune's right of intercession in opposition to the consul,
were, as has been already said, precisely of the same nature with the
appeal from consul to consul and the intercession of the one consul in
opposition to the other; and both cases were simply applications of
the general principle of law that, where two equal authorities differ,
the veto prevails over the command. Moreover the original number
(which indeed was soon augmented), and the annual duration of the
magistracy, which in the case of the tribunes changed its occupants
on the 10th of December, were common to the tribunes and the consuls.
They shared also the peculiar collegiate arrangement, which placed the
full powers of the office in the hands of each individual consul and
of each individual tribune, and, when collisions occurred within the
college, did not count the votes, but gave the Nay precedenc