THE MEANING OF POPULUS ROMANUS
Successes by the plebeians created a dual organization in the city. Consuls and military tribunes were seen as leaders of the Roman people as a whole, the populus Romanus, and they were expected to provide political, military, and religious leadership in matters of general concern. Meantime, the plebeians created a parallel organization of officials and cults that addressed only matters specific to the plebs and, at least in theory, did not affect the rest of the populus Romanus.
The plebeians’ first major gain was the right to choose their own leaders, the tribunes of the plebs (tribuni plebis); their title may have been intended to provide a clear contrast with the military tribunes (tribuni militum, literally “tribunes of the soldiers”) who were, in many of these years, the Republic’s chief officials. At the same time, plebeian tribunes, and the plebeian aediles who assisted them, estab-lished their own cult site at the temple of Ceres, the goddess of grain, on the Aventine hill; the close relationship between the chief officials of the city itself and the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol may have served as a model. In later periods, the Roman plebs met in tribes to elect tribunes, and this may well have been the case in the fifth century too. Much of the early history of the tribunate is obscure. Roman historians later believed that the powers of the office all began with the elections of the first tribunes, but this almost certainly would not have been the case.