to twenty. [Sidenote:  degrades the censorship.] He also, in all probability, though it is not certain, took away from the censors their right of conferring or taking away senatorial rank.  ’Once a senator, always a senator,’ was therefore now the rule; and as the quaestors, who were the main source of supply, were nominated by the Comitia Tributa, the Senate became a more representative as well as a more permanent body than before, and independent of the magistrates.

[Sidenote:  Legislative initiative given to the Senate.] Secondly, we have seen that Sulla had given to the Senate by law the power which it had previously exercised only by custom, of deliberating on a measure before it was submitted to the vote of the Comitia.  This was one security against any measure being carried against its interests.  Before this the practice had been either for the Senate through the tribunes to submit a measure to the vote, or for the tribunes to submit a measure of their own after obtaining the Senate’s authority to do so.  Saturninus, as we have seen, had overridden this custom, and the only way in which the Senate could maintain its old privileges would have been either by proclaiming a justitium, as it did on that occasion, or by picking out some technical informality in the passing of the plebiscitum, had not Sulla thus made its previous authorisation absolutely indispensable. [Sidenote:  Curtailment of the tribunes’ prerogative.] The tribunes, being deprived of the power of proposing a measure at will to the Comitia Tributa, would also lose the power of prosecuting anyone before it, and probably lost the right of convening meetings in order to address the people.  Sulla, too, provided that those who had been tribunes should be ineligible to other offices, and, though the right of veto seems to have been left to them, it is not clear that it was left without restrictions, while the abuse of it was made a heavily punishable offence.  It is likely also that he made senators the only persons eligible to the tribunate.  Positively, therefore, by making the Senate’s previous consent to a law necessary, and negatively by these limitations of the prerogative of the tribunes, legislative power was placed wholly in the Senate’s hands.

[Sidenote:  Changes in the Comitia.] Thirdly, the balance in the Comitia themselves was so adjusted that the voting would be mostly in the Senate’s interests.  Something has already been said of Sulla’s changes on this head, in reverting to the Servian mode of voting (p. 129).  Some explanation of what this means may be given here.  Sulla did not abolish the Comitia Tributa; but the measures just mentioned, as they left the practical power of legislation with the Senate, left the formal power with the Comitia Centuriata. [Sidenote:  History of the Comitia Tributa and Centuriata.] We know the origin of the Comitia Centuriata.  We do not know the origin of the Comitia Tributa.  But we do know that by degrees the latter obtained legislative power co-ordinate