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The centuriate assembly () was a popular assembly of ancient Rome. In the Roman Republic, its main function was electing the Roman consul, , and Roman censor. It was made up of 193 centuria () which were apportioned to Roman citizens by wealth and age, hugely overweighting the old and wealthy.
The assembly, according to the ancient sources, dates to the Roman kingdom and initially closely resembled the Roman army of the period in form, with the equestrians serving as cavalry, the upper census classes serving as heavy infantry, and the lower classes serving as light infantry. Whether this was ever the case is unclear; regardless, by the third century BC the assembly did not closely resemble the Roman people under arms and it served a largely electoral purpose, as it was rarely called to vote on legislation or to decide – as was its theoretical legal right as place of final appeal – capital cases.
Assembly procedure was weighted towards the upper classes. Both before and after reforms some time between 241 and 216 BC, the first class and equestrians voted first. Their votes would be tallied and announced. Then the classes would vote in descending order of wealth. Once the requisite number of candidates received a majority of voting units, voting would end. Because the equestrians, first class, and second class made a clear majority of voting units, the lower census classes would never be called on if they were in agreement. There is scholarly disagreement as to the extent to which the comitia centuriata facilitated competitive elections, even within its de facto restrictive electorate. The traditional view is that Roman elections were largely unrepresentative of the population as a whole and dominated by the wealthy through social connections.
While the assembly continued to exist during the Roman Empire, it served largely to approve decisions made by the emperor and senate. It is last recorded in the third century AD.
The highest class were the equites with the public horse (), who served as cavalry and received a horse subsidy from the state. The other classes were expected to outfit themselves with military equipment at their own expense. These classes were ordered by wealth, with the first class being the richest. They were expected to have the best equipment, with its quality falling along with the classes' property requirements. The specific description of equipment in Livy and Dionysius, however, are likely conjectures from the annalists who were presented with bare property qualification figures. The top three classes were likely Rome's original hoplite infantry; the fourth and fifth classes were lightly armed troops; and the proletarii were exempt from military service. These divisions were based on the assessed value of the wealth of a family in the census.
One conjecture initially given by Plinio Fraccaro is that the original Servian organisation did not contain seniores, making an actual assembly of men entirely of military age since the number of junior centuries in the top three classes is the same as that which made up a Roman legion. In this telling, only later, when the assembly took on a political character, were the seniores added and given equal representation to the existing actual centuries. The term infra classem ("below the class") applied then to those who were below the class to serve in the heavy infantry.; ; Cornell cites
The establishment of the republic, in traditional narrative, would have transformed the comitia into a vehicle for electing consuls with expanded judicial powers, deferred to by the mere fact that it was the army. However, many parts of this narrative are unclear: it is not clear that there even was a centralised state which elected magistrates in this early period; nor is it certain that Rome was governed by consuls to be elected in such an assembly. For Fred Drogula, in the 2015 book Commanders and command, the decisive break is in 367 BC, when he believes that the Romans centralised their political system around three magistrates that would over time would become the dual consuls and the sole praetor. However, it is also not too far-fetched to believe that an assembly like the comitia centuriata, similar to hoplite democracies depicted in ancient Greece during the same period, would have existed.
It is also possible that this division between classis and infra classem also marked an end to the comitia centuriatas military role, instead taking on the timocratic and gerontocratic character of the later comitia where the old and rich controlled the state. Replacing the centuries as the basis for the Roman levy were the tribes, which received Tribal assembly. Tim Cornell in the 1995 book Beginnings of Rome, suggests that the 406 BC introduction of wages for soldiers was the transition point, since it necessitated the raising of tax revenue which he suggests was apportioned flatly to each century, therefore correlating political privilege with tax paid.
The assembly was also the place to where citizens could had the right of appeal against arbitrary magisterial action. Because legislation by 300 BC made execution of a Roman citizen who had asked for appeal illegal, mere appeal – provocatio – was all that was necessary to trigger this right. Actually calling the assembly to decide on trials was rare, and the expansion of the permanent jury courts by Sulla in the 80s BC caused trials in the assemblies to fall into obsolescence. Whether capital trials were required to be held in the comitia centuriata is debated: Mommsen believed so, following Cicero's interpretation of the Latin maximus comitiatus ("very great assembly"); however others have argued instead that this was merely a requirement that turnout be large.
In matters of foreign policy, the centuries also were responsible for formal declarations of war. The most famous example is that of 200 BC at the start of the Second Macedonian War, where the centuries unexpectedly rejected war with Macedon. The vote was repeated after haranguing by the senate and promises not to draft veterans of the Second Punic War, whereupon it passed. However, evidence for this dispository power over war in the late republic is scant. The senate may have assumed such responsibilities, though this may relate to sources simply not mentioning centuriate declarations of war.
The comitia centuriata also had collateral responsibilities related to public religion with the ordination of Flamen to Mars, the god of war. Beyond the actual election of censors, the centuriate assembly confirmed their election with a lex centuriata.
All meetings of the centuriate assembly took place on the campus Martius, outside the pomerium, the ritual boundary of the city, since the centuriate assembly was theoretically an army and such a military force was illegal within the city's boundaries. Meetings took place in the saepta, also called the ovile, which was named for the subdivisions for centuries that looked like rectangular pens. During the republic, the saepta was a temporary wooden structure; it was eventually turned into the saepta Julia – an elections complex with a plaza measuring some – during the reign of Augustus. Such a space would have held at most some 70,000 voters with estimates ranging down to 30,000., provides three maximum attendance estimates:
By tradition, a red flag would be raised on the Janiculum to warn of possible enemy attack during meetings. On the day of the election, the presiding magistrate would within an inaugurated area () take auspices. If the auspices were favourable, he would then call the people to assemble and conduct a prayer. The assembly would then deliver their votes by crossing the templum and registering them into an urn (or delivering them orally prior to the lex Gabinia tabellaria of 139 BC).
The order in which the centuries changed in the second century BC due to a reform in the comitias organisation. Prior to the reform, the equestrian centuries voted first, followed by the classes in rank order. After the reform, a century was selected by lot from the juniores of the first class to vote first (the centuria praerogativa). Within the century the members would vote by head; the winners of this first century's votes would then be announced. Afterwards, the rest of the first class voted, followed by the equestrian centuries and then the (possibly senatorial) sex suffragia. The results in all cases were periodically announced. When a candidate secured a majority, he was declared victorious and no more votes could be given to him; once all posts were filled or a decision reached, voting ended and all those who had not yet voted were dismissed.
If the comitia centuriata were assembled instead of vote on a law, which was comparatively rare, a similar process was observed where after the prayer, a speech was given by the presiding magistrate. Afterwards, the centuries divided to vote for or against the motion.
The highest rank in the system were those of the equestrians. They received eighteen centuries of 193 total centuries (9.33 per cent). However, these were reserved only for those who were equites equo publico (cavalry on public horse), which made up only 1,800 men (around 0.20 per cent of the population). This persisted through to the late republic, where the electorate numbered around 910,000.Those who met higher property qualifications that made them serve as cavalry, the equites equo suo, were members of the first class. They numbered around 15,000. . Among the equites were also six centuries called the sex suffragia. They received names, divided into priores and posteriores, according to the three Roman tribe (Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres). While modern scholarship has long suggested that these six centuries were reserved for patricians, there is "no firm evidence" of this. Others have also conjectured that the 300 senators were allotted to these prestigious centuries.
Both organisations also retained the five class system, which ranked citizens into these five classes by their property as declared in the census. Beyond the classes were five supernumerary centuries: they were two centuries of artisans (smiths and carpenters) who voted with the first class, two centuries of musicians (trumpeters and horn-players) who voted with the fifth, and a single century for the proletarii who voted last. The proletarii, from which English gets the word "proletariat", were in Rome those without sufficient property to qualify for the fifth class and were seen as valuable to the state only in the children they would produce.
The structure of the assembly was recognised at the time as unequal. Cicero, for example, defends its inequality in De re publica, saying that "the suffragia vote should be in control not of the multitude but of the rich" and that the structure of the comitia was purposeful so that the principle that "the greatest number should not have the greatest influence", be observed. This was justified with the belief that the rich better understood the welfare of the state. The effect of this structure also meant that many times, the poorer citizens were never called to vote, since majorities would already have been reached; poorer citizens were only called when the elite was divided, an occurrence without substantial certainty.
| Equites equo publico | 100,000+ | 12 | ||
| First class | 100,000+ | 80 | ||
| Sex suffragia (also equites) | 100,000+ | 6 | ||
| Engineers | 100,000+ | 2 | ||
| Second class | 75–100 thousand | 20 | ||
| Third class | 50–75 thousand | 20 | ||
| Fourth class | 25–50 thousand | 20 | ||
| Fifth class | 12.5–25 thousand | 30 | ||
| Musicians (or horn blowers) | 12.5–25 thousand | 2 | ||
| Proletarii | Less than 12,500 | 1 |
In this organisation, it is likely that selection as one of the equestrians was dependent not on a higher level of wealth – it was the same as for the first class – but on a social standing and reputation. All senators were, according to Cicero, equites equo publico and therefore placed within the eighteen centuries reserved for them, meaning that there were only some remaining 1,500 spots, largely reserved for sons and relations of senators or influential and wealthy citizens. However, a higher property qualification – by the late republic this as 400,000 sesterces – for the equestrians had likely been established by the Second Punic War.
Under this framework, the equites voted first. Following them were the first class. The two of them together made a majority of the 193 centuries. Because voting ended when a majority was reached, if the richest Romans agreed, the poorer classes were never called to vote. Sources differ as to where the engineers and musicians voted. Livy has the engineers and musicians vote with the first and fifth classes, respectively. Dionysius instead has the engineers and musicians vote with the second and fourth classes respectively.
The details about the change in voting order are not entirely clear, but it is likely that the equites now voted after or at the same time as the first class. The sex suffragia also were moved from voting with the cavalry to voting after the first class. Moreover, after 129 BC, legislation was passed depriving senators of their public horses. This moved them out of the equites equo publico and likely into the first class. Cicero implies that the engineers remained voting with the first class, as had been the case prior to the reform.
The rationale for the reform has been variously explained. Some have suggested that it was intended to more equitably distribute the centuries among the people., citing and Others have denied its impacts,, citing arguing for example that the reapportionment was insufficient to change Roman electoral results in any significant way given that elections were by this point already contested into the second class of centuries. The least democratic explanation, however, would be an increase in voting power for the rich or the rural by taking its control of the tribes – where rural magnates enjoyed a substantial advantage – and mapping it directly onto the centuries as well., citing
One solution is to deny that the second through fifth classes received tribal separations at all.Eg . The removed ten centuries from the first class was would then be redistributed to the other classes but it is not known how this occurred. Lucy Grieve, in a 1985 article in Historia suggests that the lower classes had equal representation with twenty-five centuries each.
Mommsen attempted to force the evidence to accord by positing that the second through fifth classes were also divided tribally, creating the situation with seventy centuries for each class. Then, each class had its number of centuries reduced by lottery or rule such that two or three centuriae were combined into one, leading to the tribal centuries reassembling as a fewer number of artificial centuries. The tabula Hebana, discovered in 1947, gives a possible way that the centuries may have been redivided, namely by lot combining randomly selected tribal centuries into artificial voting centuries that would then be counted together.
Even within the portions of the population which definitely voted, the effect of the prerogative century's selection by lot made it more difficult for candidates to target their campaigns. These barriers made it more likely that the winner would be selected semi-randomly. This was beneficial to the aristocracy which had a class interest in reducing competition between its members.
Whatever reforms Sulla conducted in 88 BC must have been discarded after Lucius Cornelius Cinna and Gaius Marius emerged victorious from the short Bellum Octavianum the following year. By the time Sulla returned and won his civil war, establishing his dictatorship, legislation was again being moved in the other assemblies.Frederik Juliaan Vervaet (2025). 9788413407074, Universida de Sevilla Universidad de Zaragoza. ISBN 9788413407074
While the Social War saw the enrolment of the Italians, they were not immediately able to vote in the comitia centuriata because they had not been assigned to a century. Attempts during and immediately after the Social War were unable to resolve this issue: the census of 89 was found religiously invalid and that of 86 was both disputed and failed to enrol much of the peninsula. This may have been put off purposefully so that the new citizens' suffrage rights would be delayed as long as possible, but regardless the census in 70 BC registered 900,000 citizens, almost double the 453,000 enrolled in 86.
In accordance with the lex Valeria Cornelia, the comitia took on ten (later increased to twenty) centuries of equites and senators in AD 5.The originator of the proposal is not clear. believes it was taken up by the comitia, preferring ; believes it was at Augustus' initiative, preferring . These centuries acted essentially as extremely influential prerogative centuries, as they selected a preferred list of candidates – termed destinati – prior to elections which was then announced to the public at the electoral assembly.
The purpose of these prerogative centuries was to reduce the need for electoral canvassing, bribery, and riots. It also helped hide the emperor's role in the state behind influential men more aligned with him, allowing him to present the choices as the result of a concordia ordinum ("an agreement of the orders") rather than imperial fiat.
The election of destinati evidently by AD 14 was deemed insufficient; that year, early in the reign of the emperor Tiberius, the number of candidates brought before the people for the more junior posts, including the praetorship, was reduced to equal the number of places to be filled. Tiberius nominated some of the candidates, with the rest to be filled by decision of the senators themselves. Caligula temporary reintroduced free elections for praetor, but by this point the comitia was unaccustomed to any kind of free choice, especially in the face of the senate's selection of destinati. Regardless, this was soon reversed. However, by Nero's reign, the entire slate of candidates was named by the emperor and then presented to the people for ratification.
The shift from somewhat-open elections under Augustus, where the emperor made the effort to campaign for his allies before the centuries and legislation was still necessary to rein in corrupt electoral practices, to the closed-slate voting of AD 14 marked the end of the comitia centuriatas role in elections, transforming it into a rubber stamp for decisions made by the senate and the emperor. It, however, continued to meet – records a speech given where someone apologises for supporting Sejanus in the consular elections for AD 31See, for image of inscription, – even as the forum for electoral competition largely moved into the senate and thence into the imperial court.
The comitia centuriata still met to ratify the election of magistrates into the third century AD.
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