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It has been proved beyond a doubt that at some period during the first three centuries of the Republic Plebeians came to be included in the comitia curiata.[347] The change was the result of two circumstances; firstly, the perfect equality of private rights between the members of the two orders—adrogation and adoption, both of which followed the possession of a familia, and in many cases gentilitas, being common to both—which rendered it impossible to draw distinctions amongst the curiales; and secondly, the reactionary influence of the centuriate assembly, which emphasised the idea that Patricians and Plebeians together made up the Populus.

Such a change must have been gradual; but, when it had occurred, the admission of the Plebeians made this assembly thoroughly democratic in form, for a vote in this comitia depended neither on land or wealth, but simply on personal membership of a curia, which was common to all the citizens. But it is the very comparison of such a body with the thoroughly timocratic organisation of the comitia centuriata which leads us to believe that, at the time when the Plebeians were admitted, the curiae had ceased to be a power. The condition reached by the comitia curiata in historical times will be described elsewhere. Its most distinctive right—the lex curiata—had perhaps been a real power in the hands of the Patricians, as long as they were its sole members, although their preponderance in the comitia centuriata would have made a conflict between these two bodies unlikely; but there probably never was a time when the masses of the Plebs gathered curiatim upset the verdict of the Patricians and wealthy Plebeians assembled centuriatim.