(see the instances in Botsford, distinction between _Comitia_ and
_Concilium_, p. 23). The distinction between _comitia_ and _contio_ was
more clearly marked. Both were formal assemblies convened by a
magistrate; but while, in the case of the _comitia_, the magistrate's
purpose was to ask a question of the people and to elicit their binding
response, his object in summoning a _contio_ was merely to bring the
people together either for their instruction or for a declaration of his
will as expressed in an edict ("contionem habere est verba facere ad
populum sine ulla rogatione," Gell. op. cit. xiii. 6). The word comitia
merely means "meetings."

The earliest _comitia_ was one organized on the basis of parishes
(_curiae_) and known in later times as the _comitia curiata_. The
_curia_ voted as a single unit and thus furnished the type for that
system of group-voting which runs through all the later organization of
the popular assemblies. This _comitia_ must originally have been
composed exclusively of patricians (q.v.); but there is reason to
believe that, at an early period of the Republic, it had, in imitation
of the centuriate organization, come to include plebeians (see CURIA).
The organization which gave rise to the _comitia centuriata_ was the
result of the earliest steps in the political emancipation of the plebs.
Three stages in this process may be conjectured. In the first place the
plebeians gained full rights of ownership and transfer, and could thus
become freeholders of the land which they occupied and of the
appurtenances of this land (_res mancipi_). This legal capacity rendered
them liable to military service as heavy-armed fighting men, and as such
they were enrolled in the military units called _centuriae_. When the
enrolment was completed the whole host (_exercitus_) was the best
organized and most representative gathering that Rome could show. It
therefore either usurped, or became gradually invested with voting
powers, and gained a range of power which for two centuries (508-287
B.C.) made it the dominant assembly in the state. But its aristocratic
organization, based as this was on property qualifications which gave
the greatest voting power to the richest men, prevented it from being a
fitting channel for the expression of plebeian claims. Hence the plebs
adopted a new political organization of their own. The tribunate called
into existence a purely plebeian assembly, firstly, for the election of
ple