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Almost adjoining the Villa Publica was the Septa, where the Comitia Centuriata of the plebs assembled for the election of their tribunes.

Owing to its being the "hill of the people," the commons henceforth held their comitia and elected their tribunes here; and here, after the murder of Virginia, to whom the tribune Icilius had been betrothed, the army assembled against Appius Claudius.

The Romans spoke of it as the malum comitiale, the comitial disease, because if an attack of it occurred during the meeting of the Roman people known as the comitia, in which municipal officers were elected and other city business transacted, an adjournment was at once moved, and no further proceedings were considered valid.

The decemvirs ruled with singular moderation, and submitted to the Comitia Centuriata a code of laws in ten headings, which was passed.

It is unlikely, for instance, that plebeians voted in the Comitia Curiata at the early date implied by the authorities; but it is probable that they acquired the right early in the republican period, and certain that they enjoyed it in Cicero’s time.