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There were other manifestations of the king’s power as general over which the people would have no control. The disposal of the booty taken in war and of the conquered lands was one of these,[243] and the statements which record this right find support in Republican survivals. The control of the spoils of war (at least of the movable portions) belongs to the Republican general, subject to the advice of his council of war and sometimes to subsequent ratification by the Senate. The first condition may have been necessary in the time of the monarchy, but hardly the second.

The council of war was a type of the smaller special consilia, which the king doubtless employed to advise him in different branches of the administration; and such special councils must have been chosen from the great consilium publicum, the Senate. One of the most important of these was that which furnished his assessors in jurisdiction. That it became the custom, in the more important cases judged by the king in person, to employ a consilium of some sort, is stated in the charge brought by tradition against Tarquinius Superbus that he neglected this essential guarantee of even justice.[244] In the secular criminal jurisdiction of the king such a council would doubtless have been taken from the Senate. In the religious jurisdiction, which we have considered, the pontiffs would have been the advising board.