THE TRIBUNES OF PLEBS
By the second century, the tribunes of the plebs held a wide range of functions protecting individuals, blocking official actions they considered improper, convening the senate, proposing leg islation but they did not acquire them all at once. At first, their responsibilities may have been limited to providing leadership, and to protecting individuals threatened with severe treatment by magistrates.
Roman historians later agreed that a key complaint by plebeians concerned their vulnerability to arbitrary actions by magistrates. There are numerous tales of consuls executing or punishing individuals because of personal enmity, political differences, or the desire to seize their possessions. Many of the details may well be inventions, but the basic claim is prob¬ably accurate. Auxilium, the giving of aid, was central to the tribunes’ office. They even had the right to intervene physically between an official and the targets of his wrath, freeing the victims or preventing the official and his attendants from seizing them. The authority of their physical presence was reinforced by their “sacrosanctity.” Plebeians took an oath to regard anyone who laid hands on a tribune as an outlaw liable to be killed without penalty; the phrase used to indicate the nature of the penalty “let him be accursed” (sacer esto) shows that the culprit was in some way regarded as condemned to pay a penalty to the gods.
At the end of the fifth century, then, some of the characteristic political and reli-gious institutions of republican Rome were already in place, although they would be greatly modified and expanded in succeeding centuries. At the same time, because of the constant warfare during the fifth century, the Romans preserved much of their leading role in northern Latium. Here, too, this base for their power would be much expanded in the following centuries.