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It is difficult to say how far the religious organisation of the curiae was a natural or artificial development. But artifice was certainly at work in determining their important political character. The primitive popular assembly at Rome is the comitia curiata, composed wholly of Patricians. Here each member of a patrician clan above the legal age—probably the age of eighteen, at which military service commenced—had the right of giving a single vote; a majority of the curiales decided the vote of the particular curia, and the decision of the assembly was determined by the majority of the groups.

They also had, in a secondary degree, an importance of a military kind; for the supply of knights to the corps of celeres is said to have been effected through the curiae.[152]

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It is generally agreed that the monarchical constitution of early Rome rested on a limited sovereignty of the people, a power restricted by the extraordinary authority of their sole magistrate. This popular sovereignty was asserted in jurisdiction, in legislation, and in the ratification of magisterial power. The attribution of the right of appeal in criminal cases (provocatio)[153] to the people shows that with them rests either the sovereign attribute of pardon or some right of trying criminal cases in the last resort. Tradition makes the Roman people the sole source of law,[154] that is, of standing ordinances of a general kind which are to bind the community,[155] although the initiative in legislation can come only from the king; and apart from the rulings of the pontifical college, which did not require the sanction of the people, this theory of primitive legislation seems to be correct; for the very early laws passed by the comitia on the downfall of the monarchy do not appear to mark any violent break in the theory of the constitution. We do not know whether the king employed the formula afterwards used by the Republican magistrates, which elicited the “will and command” of the burgesses (velitis, jubeatis, quirites); but law (lex) is from the first something “laid down” by a competent authority, and binding, therefore, in virtue of the power that ordains it.[156] After its ordinance it may or must create a contractual relation between individuals,[157] but there is no hint of its being the result of a contract or co-operation between independent authorities. The source of law is, therefore, simple; it is the people’s will; but, through the bar to utterance created by the magistracy, this will is very limited in its capacity for expression. The people are also affirmed to have been in a certain sense the source of honour, and typical illustrations of this power are presented by the traditional beliefs that the regal insignia of Etruria, adopted by the kings of Rome, were only assumed by them with the consent of Senate and people,[158] and that the appointment of officers for special purposes, although these may have been in theory merely delegates of the king, had to be ratified by laws of the curiae. The quaestors, the earliest prototypes of the later magistrates at Rome, are said to have been so appointed.[159]