361 



TRIBROJIAXILINE. 



TRIBUNUS. 



IOSIASS ; and others. Compare, also, Wachsmuth, ' Hellen. Alther- 

 thum.,'ii. 1, p. 15, &c. ; Hermann, ' Political Antiquit. ;' Schb'mann, 

 ' De Jure Publico Graecorum,' p. 165, &c. ; Niebuhr, ' Hist, of Rome,' 

 i., p. 306, &c. 



TRIBROMANILINE. [AMLIXE.] 

 TRIBROMEUXANTHONE. [EUXANTHIC ACID.] 

 TRIBROMOBENZIN. Synonymous with tribrombenzole. [BEXZOLE.] 

 TRIBROMO-PHENIC ACID. [PHEXYLIC GROUP.] 

 TRIBROMO-SALICYLIC ACID. [SALICYLIC GROUP.] 

 TRIBUNUS (<t>v\apx s )i according to the etymology of the word, 

 signifies any officer who is at the head of a tribe [TRIBE], and conducts 

 either the internal administration of a tribe, or represents it in its 

 relations to other powers in the state. This signification applies indeed 

 to some of the officers of this name who occur in the history of Rome, 

 f but in regard to others it must remain doubtful why they bore this 

 name. The following is a list of all the Roman officers bearing the 

 name of tribune. 



1. Tribunes of the Three Romulian Tribes. The existence of a tribune 

 for the three ancient patrician tribes, the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres, 

 is attested by several passages of ancient writers. (Dionys. Hal., ii. 7 ; 

 Servius, ' Ad Aen.,' v. 560 ; Pomponius, ' De Orig. Juris,' ' Digest,' i., 

 2, 2, 20.) As regards their functions we have no definite statements : 

 they may have been intrusted with the management of the civil, 

 religious, and military affairs of their respective tribes. 



2. Tribunal Celerum is an officer who only occurs in the history of 

 Rome during the period when it was governed by kings. He was the 

 commander of the 300 equites (celeres) who formed the king's body- 

 guard, 1 00 being taken from each of the three tribes. He was, next 

 to the king, the first person in the state. (Dionys. HaL, ii., 64; Pom- 

 ppnius, ' De Orig. Juris ; ' ' Digest.,' 1, 2, 2, 15.) In the absence of the 

 king, the tribumis celerum acted as his representative, and convoked 

 the senate, as well as the comitia of the curias, at which he presided. 



3. Tribunei of the Servian Trilxs.- -When Servius Tullius organised 

 the body of plebeians by dividing them into thirty local tribes, 

 each of them was headed by a tribune, who had to keep a register 

 of the inhabitants of his district and of the condition of every 

 household in it. (Dionys. Hal., iv. 14; and Varro, ' De Vit. Pop. 

 Rom.,' i. 240.) The scrutiny into every household appears to have 

 gradually ceased, partly because it was repugnant to the spirit of 

 liberty, which was rapidly developing, and partly because the state 

 obtained sufficient information through the census. When subse- 

 quently the Roman people became exempt from taxes, the main functions 

 of the tribunes ceased, but they themselves continued to exist, nor 

 is it improbable that the tribuni xrarii, who are mentioned from the 

 time that pay began to be given to the soldiers (B.C. 406) down to the 

 end of the republic, are the same as the tribunes of the Servian tribes. 

 (Niebuhr, ' Hist, of Rome,' i. p. 421.) The tribuni scrorii had to levy 

 the tribute in their tribes and to pay the soldiers with it. (Varro, 

 'De Ling. Lat.,' v. 181 ; Gellius, vii. 10.) After the institution of 

 the quaestors, the tribuni xrarii had only to levy the tribute and hand 

 it over to the quicstors, who distributed the pay among the soldiers. 

 The Lex Aureh'a, B.C. 70, gave to these tribunes judicial power along 

 with the senators and equites ; but they were deprived of it by J. 

 Caesar. (Sueton., ' Css.,' 41.) 



4. Tribuni Plcbu. These were the most important among the many 

 officers bearing the name of tribune ; and whenever tribunes are men- 

 tioned without any further qualification, the tribuni plebis are meant. 

 In the year B.C. 494, when the plebeians had been driven by the 

 oppression of the patricians to secede to the Mons Sacer, peace was 

 concluded between the two orders on condition that the plebeians 

 should be allowed to have magistrates of their own, whose province it 

 should be to protect the members of their order against the patrician 

 magistrates, and whose persons should be sacred and inviolable. It 

 was farther agreed, that whoever should maltreat, kill, or compel a 

 tribune to anything by force, should be outlawed and his property 

 .should be forfeited to the temple of Ceres. (Liv., ii. 33 and iii. 55 ; 

 Dionys. Hal. vi., pp. 89, and vii. 17.) These agreements, however, were 

 insufficient to protect the tribunes against various annoyances of the 

 patricians ; hence it was found necessary, soon after the institution 

 of the tribunate, to give still more security to the exercise of their 

 power. A law was accordingly passed forbidding any one to interrupt 

 or disturb the tribunes in their transactions with the plebs, and enact- 

 ing that any one who should act contrary to this law should give bail 

 to the tribunes for any fine inflicted upon him ; those who refused to 

 give bail forfeited their life and property. The inviolability of the 

 tribunes was finally established after the time of the decemvirate by a 

 law of M. Horatius. 



With regard to the conflicting statements as to the number of the 

 tribunes, the probability is in favour of the number five, so that one 

 was taken from each of the five Servian classes. Thus much only is 

 certain, that in the year B.C. 457 the number of tribunes was increased 

 to ten ; so that if they really bore any relation to the classes, each 

 furnished two. This number remained unaltered to the end of the 

 republic. The tribunes were attended by public servants, called 

 viatorea, who carried their commands into effect. 



The accounts about the manner in which the tribunes were originally 

 elected are as contradictory as the statements about their original num- 

 ber. The statement of Di'onysius and Cicero, that they were elected 



by the curise, must either have arisen from a misunderstanding of the 

 nature of the curia:, or from a confusion of the election and the sanction 

 of the election ; for the latter was a right which the curise unquestion- 

 ably possessed for a time. If, as Niebuhr thinks, they were intended 

 to represent the classes, they were elected by the centuries ; but it is 

 much more probable that the college of tribunes, at the expiration of 

 the year of office, appointed their successors, after a previous consulta- 

 tion with the plebs. The sanction of the curia; ceased to be necessary 

 shortly before the time of the Publilian law; and after that time we 

 have express testimonies that the tribunes were elected by the comitia 

 of the tribes, under the presidency of one of the tribunes whose office 

 was expiring. (Livy, ii. 56, &c. ; iii. 64; Dionys. Hal., ix. 2.) As it 

 was necessary that all the tribunes should be elected on one day and 

 before sunset, it often happened that when the business of election 

 could not be completed within the lawful time, those who were elected 

 had to fill up the number by co-optatio. This inconvenience was done 

 away with in 448 by the tribune L. Trebonius, who got a law passed, 

 ordaining that in future the elections should be continued the next day 

 or days in cases where one day should be too short a time to complete 

 them. . 



The field of action for the tribunes were the comitia of the tribes 

 and other meetings of the plebeians ; and they arraigned before the 

 assembly of the plebs any one, whether private individuals or magis- 

 trates, who had violated the rights of the commonalty, and that 

 without any fear of being interrupted in their proceedings. They 

 themselves had no judicial power; they had only the right to drag the 

 offender before the assembly of the people, and to propose a fine to be 

 inflicted on him. In later times they sometimes deviated from this 

 rule, and assumed the right of proposing capital punishment. Their 

 lawful power was originally mere attxilium; that is, to afford protection, 

 without any right directly to interfere in the affairs of the state. Their 

 power, the Tribunicia Potestas, or Tribuuicium Jus, was confined to 

 the city and one mile beyond its walk. They were not allowed to 

 spend a night outside the city, except during the Feria) Latina;, when 

 all the people were assembled on the Alban Mount. The house of a 

 tribune was regarded as a place of refuge for any one who thought 

 himself wronged or oppressed, and the doors were left open by night 

 as well as by day. From the first the plebeians regarded the tribunes 

 not only as their protectors against patrician oppression, but as arbi- 

 trators in matters among themselves. (Walter, ' Geschichte des Rom. 

 Rechts,' p. 85.) The power of the tribunes, after it was once esta- 

 blished, rapidly increased in proportion as the commonalty itself 

 increased in importance ; indeed we may say that the growing import- 

 ance of the commonalty was the work of the tribunes. Not quite 

 forty years after the institution of the tribunate we find the members 

 present at the deliberations of the senate ; and in B.C. 454 the tribunes 

 compelled the senate to meet, in opposition to the consuls, that they 

 might lay before them a rogation and discuss its merits. Henceforth 

 either the tribunes themselves, or the consuls at their request, 

 proposed legislative measures to the senate, as we see in the instance 

 when a new legislation was demanded by the tribunes. This demand 

 of the tribunes, after some struggles on the part of the patricians, was 

 at last complied with, and led to the appointment of the decemvirs, for 

 the purpose of framing a new code of laws. During the second decem- 

 virate the tribunate was suspended, like all other magistrates ; but 

 when the business of legislation was completed tribunes were again 

 appointed, and it was on their proposition that the consulship also was 

 restored. (Liv., iii. 54.) 



The position of the tribunes after the decemviral legislation was very 

 different from what it had been before. Henceforth we find the 

 patricians and the clients contained in the tribes, and the tribunes now 

 stand in the same relation to the whole nation as they had before stood 

 to the commonalty only : they are now the protectors of the whole 

 nation as assembled in the comitia of the tribes, and in opposition to 

 the senate and the magistrates; they are the representatives of the 

 democratical element in the state, in opposition to the aristocratical. 

 This explains how it happened that their protection was sought by 

 patricians as well as plebeians. (Liv., iii. 56; viii. 33, &c.) They 

 henceforth also appear in the possession of the right of being present 

 at all the deliberations of the senate ; but their place was outside the 

 opened doors, where they sat upon benches. They had at all times 

 the right to propose measures to the assembly of the tribes, which 

 might pass them. Such resolutions of the tribes were called plebiscita, 

 and required the sanction of the senate or the curia; before they became 

 laws. But the Lex Valeria ordained that all plebiscita should be 

 binding upon the whole nation without any further sanction. (' Dic- 

 tionary of Greek and Rom. Ant.,' under " Plebiscitum.") This gave to 

 the tribunes an extraordinary influence in all the affairs of the state, 

 and the democratical element had now gained the superiority. But 

 while the power of the tribunate was thus outwardly increasing, a 

 change took place within the body, or collegium, as it was called, 

 which, to some extent, paralysed its power. Down to the year B.C. 394 

 all matters had been decided in the college of the tribunes by a 

 majority of the members, but in this year we meet with the first 

 instance of the intercession (veto) of one tribune rendering the reso- 

 lution of his colleagues void. (Liv., v. 25, 29.) It is uncertain what 

 gave rise to this innovation ; but it weakened the power of the college, 

 inasmuch as the aristocratic party might easily gain over one of its 



