Bleicken Jochen. Das Volkstribunat der klassischen Republik: Studien zu seiner Entwicklung zwischen 287 und 133 v. Chr

München: C. H. Beck, 1955.-XIV, 166 S.- (Zetemata Bd. 13).THE tribunate, a 'potestas in seditione et ad seditionem nata', was in two
periods of its history a revolutionary organ (during the Struggle of the Orders
and again in the last century of the Republic), but for the intervening 150
years it existed as a legalized office of the State and its holders did not necessarily
diverge from or clash with State policy. It is with this central period,
which started when the lex Hortensia made resolutions of the plebeians binding
on the whole community, that Bleicken is primarily concerned. In the first
chapter he develops his views on the early growth of the powers of the tribunes.
He follows H. Siber and others in believing that the Licinian-Sextian rogations did not establish for the plebeians a legal right to
one consulship every year, but only an expectation which became mos during
the last third of the fourth century and law in 287 when tribunician rogatio
first bound the whole community...Thus by the end of the revolutionary period in 287 tribunes could take
positive action in the interests of Rome as a whole, by virtue of their rogatio
(together with the ius senatus habendi). They were in consequence approximating
to ordinary magistrates but they lacked magisterial insignia {fasces, sella, and
toga praetexta) and, more important, they lacked imperium and auspicium and
had no clearly defined field of competence, no real provincia of the Populus
Romanus. Thus they came to depend on others, and their initiative in both
positive and negative actions might derive from the Senate, or magistrates,
or even a coterie of nobles: as a result they helped to build up the predominance
of the nobility. How this dependence developed is the main theme of
Bleicken's study (From H. H. Scullard's Review)