A concession of still greater consequence was that which allowed the tribunes to share in the discussions of the senate.  To admit the tribunes to the hall where the senate sat, appeared to that body beneath its dignity; so a bench was placed for them at the door that they might from that spot follow its proceedings.  The tribunician right of intercession had extended also to the decrees of the senate as a collective body, after the latter had become not merely a deliberative but a decretory board, which probably occurred at first in the case of a -plebiscitum- that was meant to be binding for the whole community;(12) it was natural that there should thenceforth be conceded to the tribunes a certain participation in the discussions of the senate-house.  In order also to secure the decrees of the senate—­ with the validity of which indeed that of the most important -plebiscita- was bound up—­from being tampered with or forged, it was enacted that in future they should be deposited not merely under charge of the patrician -quaestores urbani- in the temple of Saturn, but also under that of the plebian aediles in the temple of Ceres.  Thus this struggle, which was begun in order to get rid of the tribunician power, terminated in the renewed and now definitive sanctioning of its right to annul not only particular acts of administration on the appeal of the person aggrieved, but also any resolution of the constituent powers of the state at pleasure.  The persons of the tribunes, and the uninterrupted maintenance of the college at its full number, were once more secured by the most sacred oaths and by every element of reverence that religion could present, and not less by the most formal laws.  No attempt to abolish this magistracy was ever from this time forward made in Rome.

Notes for Book II Chapter II

1.  II.  I. Right of Appeal

2.  I. XIII.  Landed proprietors

3.  I. Vi.  Character of the Roman Law

4.  II.  I. Collegiate Arrangement

5.  I. XI.  Property

6.  I. XI.  Punishment of Offenses against Order

7.  That the plebeian aediles were formed after the model of the patrician quaestors in the same way as the plebeian tribunes after the model of the patrician consuls, is evident both as regards their criminal functions (in which the distinction between the two magistracies seems to have lain in their tendencies only, not in their powers) and as regards their charge of the archives.  The temple of Ceres was to the aediles what the temple of Saturn was to the quaestors, and from the former they derived their name.  Significant in this respect is the enactment of the law of 305 (Liv. iii. 55), that the decrees of the senate should be delivered over to the aediles there (p. 369), whereas, as is well known, according to the ancient —­and subsequently after the settlement of the struggles between the orders, again preponderant—­practice those decrees were committed to the quaestors for preservation in the temple of Saturn.