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BIONDO FLAVIO ON THE ROMAN ELECTIONS*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2016

Frances Muecke
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Abstract

Elections and voting were of great importance in the constitution and the politics of the Roman Republic. They also presented challenges to a Renaissance reader who wanted to know where, when and exactly how they took place, challenges that appealed deeply to Biondo Flavio, the mid fifteenth-century historian of Roman institutions. In book III of Roma triumphans, the first on the government of Rome, he devotes considerable attention to them. This paper is an analysis of this first early-modern attempt to understand the Roman voting assemblies (comitia). In it I compare Biondo's approach in Roma triumphans with his earlier statement on the importance of the comitia in his topographical treatise on the city of Rome, Roma instaurata. After surveying Biondo's treatment as a whole I focus on his understanding of the Comitium, the comitia and the century chosen to vote first (centuria praerogativa).

Le elezioni e il voto hanno assunto un ruolo di grande rilevanza nella struttura e nella politica della Roma repubblicana. Hanno altresì rappresentato sfide per il lettore rinascimentale che voleva sapere dove, quando e come esattamente avessero luogo. Queste sfide hanno profondamente interessato Biondo Flavio, lo storico delle istituzioni romane che visse attorno alla metà del XV secolo. Nel III libro della Roma triumphans, il primo sul sistema di governo di Roma, egli dedica una consistente attenzione ad esse. Il presente articolo è un'analisi di questo primo tentativo moderno di comprendere le assemblee elettorali della Roma antica (comitia). In esso viene confrontato l'approccio di Biondo nella Roma triumphans con le sue precedenti asserzioni sull'importanza dei comitia, espresse nel suo trattato topografico sulla città di Roma, la Roma instaurata. Dopo l'esame complessivo delle modalità di trattazione seguite da Biondo, ci si concentra sulla sua comprensione del Comitium, dei comitia e sul voto della centuria scelta per votare per prima (centuria praerogativa).

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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 84 , October 2016 , pp. 275 - 297
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Copyright © British School at Rome 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This article has been written with the support of the Australian Research Council's Discovery Project scheme (DP130102112), held at the University of Sydney, and arises from my work with Dott.ssa M. Agata Pincelli towards an edition and translation of Roma triumphans for the I Tatti Renaissance Library series. I would like to thank PBSR's editor and anonymous referees for their suggestions and Dr Kit Morrell for her valuable contributions. The following bibliographical abbreviations are used: Biondo, Roma triumphans = Blondus Flavius, Opera: De Roma triumphante libri decem, Romae instauratae libri tres, De origine et gestis Venetorum, Italia illustrata (Basle, 1531). References are to page number. Biondo, Roma instaurata = Biondo Flavio, Roma instaurata (Rome restaurée) (Les Classiques de l'Humanisme 24, 38), ed. and trans. A. Raffarin-Dupuis, 2 vols (Paris, 2005–12). References are to book and section number. References to ancient texts use the abbreviations of the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd edition).

References

1 For surveys of Biondo's life and works see Fubini, R., ‘Biondo Flavio’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani X (Rome, 1968), 536–58Google Scholar; Defilippis, D., ‘Biondo (Flavio)’, in Nativel, C. et al. (eds), Centuriae Latinae. II: Cent une figures humanistes de la renaissance aux lumières. A la mémoire de Marie-Madeleine de La Garanderie (Travaux d'humanisme et renaissance 414) (Geneva, 2006), 87–105 Google Scholar; Laureys, M., ‘Biondo Flavio’, in Brill's New Pauly Supplements I VI: History of Classical Scholarship — A Biographical Dictionary (Leiden/Boston, 2014), 53–4Google Scholar; two forthcoming collections will provide a guide to the latest research: Mazzocco, A. and Laureys, M. (eds), A New Sense of the Past: The Scholarship of Biondo Flavio (1392–1463) (Leuven, 2016)Google Scholar and F. Muecke and M. Campanelli (eds), The Invention of Rome: Biondo Flavio's Roma triumphans and its Worlds.

2 See the Proem of Biondo, Roma triumphans book I.

3 Fubini, R., Storiografia dell'umanesimo in Italia da Leonardo Bruni ad Annio da Viterbo (Rome, 2003), xiiGoogle Scholar.

4 This will be remedied by J. Hankins, ‘Biondo and the Roman Republic’, forthcoming in Muecke and Campanelli, The Invention of Rome (see above, n. 1). Lintott, A., The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar in his chapter XIII ‘The Republic Remembered’ does mention Roma triumphans, but simply as a prelude to the antiquarians of the mid-sixteenth century (244–7). Detailed studies of other major topics of Roma triumphans are also sparse, but see Mastrorosa, I.G., ‘Biondo Flavio e le istituzioni di Roma antica: matrimonio e famiglia nella Roma Triumphans ’, in Schnur, R. et al. (eds), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Budapestinensis: Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Budapest, 6–12 August 2006 (Tempe, AZ, 2010), 471–9Google Scholar; Mastrorosa, I.G., ‘Biondo Flavio e i militiae Romanae instituta: una lezione “moderna” su fondamenti e caratteri dell'impero di Roma’, TECHNAI: An International Journal for Ancient Science and Technology 2 (2011), 85–103 Google Scholar.

5 Biondo, Roma triumphans, 73–81. Biondo prefaces his discussion of the comitia with a reminder of the main contents of book III (73): after the catalogue of the most important magistracies he has described the extension of Roman administration and citizenship to the rest of Italy and the provinces before coming, as a natural progression, to the elections.

6 Some of the early history of this task is described in W. McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton, 1989), 183–202. There was little more than half a page on the elections in Andrea Fiocchi's De potestatibus Romanis (c. 1425), under De consulibus (II, 7). See Mercati, G., ‘Andreas de Florentia, segretario Apostolico’, in Ultimi contributi alla storia degli umanisti I: Traversariana (Studi e testi 90) (Vatican City, 1939), 97–131 Google Scholar; Laureys, M., ‘At the threshold of humanist jurisprudence: Andrea Fiocchi's De potestatibus Romanis ’, Bulletin de l'Institut Historique Belge de Rome 65 (1995), 25–42 Google Scholar. After Biondo, the most significant treatments were in Maffei, Raffaele, Commentaria Urbana (Rome, 1506)Google Scholar, book XXIX, fols ccccxxiiiv–ccccxxiiiir; Guillaume Budé, Annotationes in XXIV libros Pandectarum (Paris, 1508)Google Scholar =  Opera omnia (Basle, 1557), III, 328–32Google ScholarPubMed; d'Alessandro, Alessandro, Genialium dierum libri sex (Rome, 1522)Google Scholar, book IV, 3. The first dedicated study was Nicolas de Grouchy [Gruchius], De comitiis Romanorum libri tres (Paris, 1555)Google Scholar. McCuaig (pp. 125–6) explains why Biondo's work had by then become out of date for professional historians. See also Muecke, F., ‘Beatus Rhenanus, the Roman comitia, and Biondo Flavio's Roma triumphans ’, Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 77 (2015), 393–7Google Scholar.

7 See Nogara, B., Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio (Studi e testi 48) (Rome, 1927)Google Scholar, cliv with n. 187: he was dealing alone with a vast and complex subject, and the texts he had at his disposal were limited and corrupt. For an introduction to Roma triumphans, see pp. cxlix–clv. A good general reading, with chapters on Biondo's method and his use of sources, can be found in Tomassini, M., ‘Per una lettura della Roma triumphans di Biondo Flavio’, in Tomassini, M. and Bonavigo, C. (eds), Tra Romagna ed Emilia nell'umanesimo: Biondo e Cornazzano (Bologna, 1985), 9–80 Google Scholar.

8 See Taylor, L.R., Roman Voting Assemblies (Ann Arbor, 1966)Google Scholar; Nicolet, C., The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome, trans. Falla, P.S. (Berkeley/Los Angeles, 1980 [1976])Google Scholar, chapter VII; Vishnia, R. Feig, Roman Elections in the Age of Cicero: Society, Government, and Voting (New York/London, 2012), chapter 4Google Scholar.

9 Biondo does not explain the contio and concilium plebis.

10 This is the only one of these statements to survive into Roma triumphans, in book VI, 131: ‘ut post Tiberium reipublicae et libertatis status a cupienti civitate resumi nequiverit’ (‘so that after Tiberius the condition of republic and freedom could not be regained by the citizens, who desired it’).

11 See Mazzocco, A., ‘Some philological aspects of Biondo Flavio's Roma triumphans ’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 28 (1979), 1–26 Google Scholar, esp. pp. 10–13, on other places in Roma instaurata where Biondo strays into institutional matters connected with the buildings he is discussing. In Borsus, completed just after Roma triumphans, Biondo gives the total number of voters as 300,000: Flavius, Blondus, Borsus (Edizione nazionale delle opere di Biondo Flavio II), ed. Pincelli, M.A. (Rome, 2009), 18Google Scholar.

12 Livy (for example, 2.1.7) stresses the importance to liberty of the fact that the consuls were elected for a year only. See the preamble to Roma triumphans book V (106) on the dignity and equality retained by the three orders that made up the Roman people.

13 In Roma instaurata Biondo saw the comitia tributa as a new entity (cf. Ogilvie's interpretation of Livy 2.58.1, pp. 380–1). The matter is controversial; see Smith, C.J., The Roman Clan: The Gens from Ancient Ideology to Modern Anthropology (Cambridge, 2006), 224–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Libertas was more often connected with the tribunes and their powers. See Wirszubski, C., Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate (Cambridge, 1950), 25–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 26 n. 5 (citing Livy 3.37.5, ‘tribuniciam potestatem munimentum libertati, ‘the tribunician power, their bulwark of liberty’)). Ogilvie ad loc. adds Cic. Leg. agr. 2.15, ‘per tribunum plebis, quem maiores praesidem libertatis custodemque esse voluerunt’ (‘by the tribune of the plebs, whom the forefathers regarded as the defender and guardian of liberty’). On the tribunes see Roma triumphans, 57–8. Biondo declines to recount the origin of the tribunes and cites from the mainly critical discussion of them in Cic. Leg. 3.9.19–22.

15 As McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio (above, n. 6), 127 says in relation to Sigonio, the fact that libertas is a theme of Roman literature is in itself enough to explain a later historian giving it prominence. See Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome (above, n. 14); Cowan, E. ‘ Libertas in the Philippics ’, in Stevenson, T.R. and Wilson, M. (eds), Cicero's Philippics: History, Rhetoric, Ideology (Prudentia 37–8) (Auckland, 2008), 140–52Google Scholar; Arena, V., Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar. Libertas does appear on coins together with emblems of voting, but it is unlikely that Biondo knew them: see Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 39; Marshall, B.A., ‘ Libertas populi: the introduction of secret ballot in Rome and its depiction on coinage’, Antichthon 31 (1997), 54–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 A starting point is Witt, R.G., ‘The rebirth of the concept of Republican liberty in Italy’, in Molho, A. and Tedeschi, J.A. (eds), Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron (Florence, 1971), 173–99Google Scholar. For a more recent evaluation see Hankins, J. (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sallust provided a key text for the connection of libertas with virtus (Cat. 7.1–3), Osmond, P.J., ‘“Princeps historiae Romanae”: Sallust in Renaissance political thought’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 40 (1995), 101–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 108–9. Biondo does not cite this passage.

17 Canfora, D. (ed.), La controversia di Poggio Bracciolini e Guarino Veronese su Cesare e Scipione (Florence, 2001)Google Scholar; McLaughlin, M., ‘Empire, eloquence, and military genius: Julius Caesar in Renaissance Italy’, in Griffin, M. (ed.), A Companion to Julius Caesar (Chichester, 2009), 335–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. J. Hankins, ‘Rhetoric, history and ideology: the civic panegyrics of Leonardo Bruni’, in Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism (above, n. 16), 176.

18 Roma triumphans, VII, 148. See Fubini, ‘Biondo Flavio’ (above, n. 1), 553. Biondo alludes to the severe criticism expressed in Cic. Off. 1.26, a passage well known in this debate, and which he probably recalls precisely for this reason. See Stacey, P., Roman Monarchy and the Renaissance Prince (Cambridge, 2007), 23–30, 188–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See the preamble to Roma triumphans, III, 54. Soon after (p. 55), he makes the magistrates primarily a characteristic of ‘liberae urbis Romae’, echoing Livy 2.1.1.

20 Bruni, Leonardo, History of the Florentine People I: Books I–IV, ed. and trans. Hankins, J. (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 50–1Google Scholar.

21 Hankins, ‘Biondo and the Roman Republic’ (above, n. 4).

22 For voting in the Campus Martius, see Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 47, 85; Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 246–8. In Roma instaurata Biondo puts voting in the Comitium as well (II, 68). The comitia centuriata had to meet outside the pomerium (Gell. NA 15.27.5).

23 See Staveley, E.S., Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (London, 1972), 145–7Google Scholar on the professio: if and when this was required notification of intention to stand was made to the presiding magistrate; see also Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 239–43.

24 Whether the numbers were all that large is debated; see Yakobson, A., Elections and Electioneering in Rome: A Study in the Political System of the Late Republic (Historia Einzelschriften 128) (Stuttgart, 1999), 134–5Google Scholar.

25 Most conveniently read in Tortelli, Giovanni, Roma antica (RR inedita 20), ed. Capoduro, L. (Rome, 1999)Google Scholar. On Tortelli's use of Biondo, see pp. 15–18. See further Pade, M., The Reception of Plutarch's Lives in Fifteenth-Century Italy, 2 vols (Copenhagen, 2007), I, 318–20Google Scholar.

26 Capoduro in Tortelli, Roma antica (see above, n. 25), 101 n. 281.

27 Not only does he follow Biondo in a corrupt reading of Suet. Aug. 46 (the number eighteen for twenty-eight) but he adjusts the number of colonies when borrowing Biondo's introduction to his citation of Asc. Pis. 3C to eighteen to make it conform.

28 Biondo's own references are incomplete and sometimes wrong.

29 It is useful to identify mistakes which are Biondo's own, as they can help trace later uses of his work, see F. Muecke, ‘“Fama superstes”? Soundings in the reception of Biondo Flavio's Roma triumphans', forthcoming in Mazzocco and Laureys, A New Sense of the Past (see above, n. 1).

30 The first quoted source is from Varro, Ling. 5.155. On the covering of the Comitium (cf. Biondo, Roma instaurata, II, 67): Livy 27.36.8, 30.39.5; see Vasaly, A., Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford, 1993), 71–3Google Scholar. On sacrifice in the Comitium, Biondo cites Plutarch's Roman Questions, his favourite Greek source in Roma triumphans, Plut. Quaest. Rom. 63.

31 Gell. NA 15.27.5; Paul. Fest. 54.1M. This will be discussed further below.

32 Livy 3.54.15–55.1; Asc. Mil. 29, 31C; Plut. Pomp. 54.4–5. Biondo's interpretation of the Livy passage is sympathetically discussed by Momigliano, A., Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici (Storia e letteratura. Raccolta di studi e testi 77) (Rome, 1960), 419–20Google Scholar. Biondo may think he is correcting Fiocchi (see above, n. 6) who states that consuls were elected ‘habitis … comitiis' even with an interrex presiding.

33 From Sulla's dictatorship onwards consular elections (which had to be the first) were held in July: Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 63, 68.

34 Placidus, Glossary, in Goetz, G. (ed.), Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum V (Leipzig, 1894)Google Scholar, 11.15: ‘Comitia dicuntur quae fiunt rome ad creandos magistratus Kalendis Ianuarii in campo martio atque omnis populus romanus et universae conveniunt dignitates et de Italia ergo comitia conventus necessarii nimis' (‘They are called assemblies which happen at Rome to appoint magistrates on 1 January in the Campus Martius and all the Roman people and all the men in high office and from Italy come together. Therefore the assemblies are very necessary meetings'). The oldest MS containing Placidus' Glossary (Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 1552, together with Paulus' epitome of Festus) is dated 1453. This suggests it had recently become available to the humanists.

35 Macrob. Sat. 1.12.7. What this means is obscure. Palmer, R.E.A., The Archaic Community of the Romans (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar, 100 thinks it may have been some special religious ceremony of the comitia curiata.

36 Plin. HN 18.13; Cic. Q Fr. 2.16(15).3; Livy 6.35.5, 24.7.11, 25.2.4, 26.3.9.

37 Livy 9.46.14–15; Asc. Mil. 46C on Cic. Mil. 87. On Fabius Maximus Rullianus see Bauman, R.A., Lawyers in Roman Republican Politics (Munich, 1983), 34–6Google Scholar. Rullianus was introducing restraint by corralling the urban mob into the city tribes, Clodius was perhaps doing the opposite by distributing freedmen throughout the tribes. See Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 230. The tribes have been explained earlier in book III of Roma triumphans (59–61); see Forni, G., ‘Tribù romane e problemi connessi dal Biondo Flavio al Mommsen’, in Forni, G.M. (ed.), Le tribù romane IV. Scripta minora (Rome, 2006), 87–160 Google Scholar.

38 Cicero, Comment. pet. 17, 28, 29–31, 50; Cic. Att. 1.1.2; Cicero, Comment. pet. 52–3; Cic. Mur. 1, 35–6, 44–5, 53; Cic. Planc. 9–11; Cic. Fam. 2.6.3; Cic. Att. 1.17.11; Suet. Aug. 56; Cic. Mur. 40, 42; Cic. Planc. 50; Plut. Pomp. 51.4.

39 Plut. Quaest. Rom. 49. See Deniaux, É., ‘La toga candida et les élections à Rome sous la République’, in Chausson, F. and Inglebert, H. (eds), Costume et société dans l'Antiquité et le haut Moyen Age (Paris, 2003), 49–55 Google Scholar. Deniaux stresses that little is known.

40 The law against whitening clothes: Livy 4.25.13. It is discounted by Livy himself, and, Biondo argues, contradicted by Livy 4.56.2–3, 57.6, 11 (here the word candidati appears for the first time after the law, and Biondo argues that the patricians' candidates would not have disclosed themselves until the last minute); white dress worn for longer: Cic. Mur. 68; Livy 37.57.9–13. Different periods are at issue here. Biondo also mentions display of wounds: Plut. Quaest. Rom. 49. Plutarch says the candidate wore only the toga, without a tunic. Biondo follows the translation of Gian Pietro d'Avenza (1453) which has ‘without a toga’ twice; Plut. Aem. 31.4–32.1.

41 Livy 35.10.1–10 (extracts), 39.32.10; Sen. Ep. 118.3; Suet. Iul. 41.2, 76.2; Plin. Ep. 2.9.1, 5.

42 Biondo has dealt with voting in the comitia curiata/tributa briefly above on p. 73 where he says the tribes voted by centuries separately in random order. Modern scholars now accept that the tribes voted simultaneously at the tribal elections in the Campus Martius (Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 40–1; Feig Vishnia, Roman Elections (above, n. 8), 96–7). On tribes and the comitia centuriata see Lintott, Constitution (above, n. 4), 57.

43 Biondo's ‘pro ponte’ is a corruption of ‘per pontem’, the accepted modern text of Nonius Marcellus 523M.

44 This appears to be a plausible inference from Suet. Iul. 80.4 where Caesar is said to sit on the ‘bridge’ to summon the tribes to vote: Roma triumphans, 78. It is not clear whether ‘in ponte’ in Biondo's clause ‘cumque acceptum esset ad consulis caeterorumque magistratuum praesentiam in ponte suffragium’ (‘when the ballot had been accepted in the presence of the consul and the rest of the magistrates on the bridge’) should be taken with ‘acceptum esset’ or ‘praesentiam’. I incline to the latter.

45 See the diagram of the Saepta in Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), plate XI, 53, and her account of the procedure (34–41, 79–80). Exactly where the voting tablets were distributed is unknown (Feig Vishnia, Roman Elections (above, n. 8), 121–2)

46 Cic. Att. 1.14.5; Auct. ad Her. 1.21; cf. Cic. Leg. 3.38. In book IV, 90, however, citing Cic. Att. 1.14.5, Biondo calls them ‘maiora tabulata’ (‘larger platforms’) and says they were set out among the rows of seats of those attending the assembly.

47 Biondo, Roma triumphans, 78, and Roma instaurata, II, 79. Singular pons is not elsewhere associated with the comitia and the relevance of the proverb in Nonius to voting has been doubted from antiquity; see Ryan, F.X., ‘Sexagenarians, the Bridge, and the centuria praerogativa’, Rheinisches Museum 138 (1996), 188–90Google Scholar, esp. p. 189.

48 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 79. In his abbreviated citation from Nonius, Biondo anticipates Mueller's insertion of ‘non’ before ‘mittendos’. ‘Per pontem mittere’ supplements ‘mittere in suffragium’ in Livy 31.7.1 cited immediately before.

49 See Roma triumphans, IV, 89–90: Biondo does not realize that the legislative and voting assemblies used the same methods of voting.

50 See Richardson, L. Jr, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1992), 314Google Scholar.

51 On the Saepta, Biondo cites Cic. Att. 4.16.8 where Cicero specifies that the comitia are tribal; see Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 47. On the Saepta Iulia see Gatti, E., s.v. ‘Saepta Iulia’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae IV (P–S) (Rome, 1999), 228–9Google Scholar.

52 Livy 26.22.11.

53 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 94.

54 None of these terms are classical. Dirimitor (in the MSS) and succenturiator are otherwise unknown but diremptor (in the Basle editions), from dirimere, is found in late Latin, for example August. Doct. christ. 2.20.31. It appears that Biondo derived ‘succenturiator’ from the verb ‘succenturiare’, a military term that he found in Paul. Fest. 307.11M. For some ideas about how a roll-call may have taken place see Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 272. On p. 61 Biondo mentions the album (or register) of each century supervised by the censors (Asc. Verr. 189 Stangl).

55 On the church see Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae III (H–O) (Rome, 1996), 191Google Scholar; Hülsen, C., Le chiese di Roma nel medio evo. Cataloghi ed appunti (Florence, 1927)Google Scholar, no. 48, 306; Barry, F., ‘The late antique “domus” on the Clivus Suburanus, the early history of Santa Lucia in Selci, and the Cerroni altarpiece in Grenoble’, Papers of the British School at Rome 71 (2003), 111–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have not been able to identify the stone.

56 Here the Basle editions correct the MSS reading (a garbled version of Nonius Marcellus’ definition of concenturiare, 11M), which has the concenturiatores collecting ‘dicta a centuriis’. Both concenturiatores (in the MSS) and centuriatores (in the Basle editions) are found in Renaissance Latin: see Hoven, R., Lexique de la prose latine de la renaissance (Leiden, 1994), 116, 86Google Scholar.

57 Livy 31.7.1 (not on electoral comitia); Nonius Marcellus 523M; Suet. Iul. 80.4.

58 Plin. HN 33.31–2. Biondo misunderstands the passage which he has in a very corrupt state. The ‘nongenti’, the nine hundred officials watching over the ballot-vessels, have become ‘non cincti’, men who were without belts, so that they could not accept bribes. See Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 276–7.

59 See Biondo, Roma instaurata, II, 70–1 (the explanation of the etymology is Biondo's own: Marchetti, M., ‘Un manoscritto inedito riguardante la topografia di Roma’, Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma 42 (1915), 40–116, 343–410Google Scholar, esp. p. 379 n. 184). In Roma instaurata, II, 71 the reason Biondo gives for this withdrawal is that it was to separate those who had voted from those yet to vote. This seems to have been effected by their crossing the ‘dictum … pontem’. Tortelli seems to interpret this ‘pons’ as a bridge leading from the Saepta by which the voters made their way to the hill (Roma antica (above, n. 25), 56–7). There was simply not enough evidence in this period to show that voters took their vote across the pons. The votes of the praerogativa were announced outside the Saepta: Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 95.

60 Livy 26.22.2–14. See Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 93–4 and below. Biondo's sources, Livy 24.7.12 and Livy 24.9.3, are also discussed by Taylor (93). Also cited are Cic. Mur. 38; SHA Alex. Sev. 15.2; Cic. Phil. 2.82, Planc. 44, 49; Livy 5.18.1, 10.13.11, 10.22.1.

61 See Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 34–5. Cic. Leg. 3.33–9 (abridged); Cic. Pis. 3; Plin. Ep. 3.20.1, 5–6; Cic. Leg. agr. 2.4 (abridged and corrupt).

62 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 125 n. 2.

63 See Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering (above, n. 24), 126–33; Marshall, ‘Libertas populi’ (above, n. 15); Arena, Libertas and the Practice of Politics (above, n. 15), 56–60. Only the first of these laws, the Lex Gabinia of 139 bc, concerned the electoral assemblies. Cicero argues against secret voting that it does not truly protect liberty.

64 For possible illustrations see Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 38–9. For the cista see Auct. ad Her. 1.12.21; Plin. HN 33.31; Asc. Verr. 108 Stangl. Cf. Roma triumphans, IV, 105.

65 Asc. Corn. 63C; Tac. Hist. 4.7.1.

66 Jer. Ep. 8.1.8; Enn. Ann. 24; Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.2; Plin. Ep. 4.25.1; Cic. Pis. 39 (on laureatae tabellae). See Roma triumphans, IV, 103; Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 70–4, Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 275.

67 Cicero, Comment. pet. 55; Cic. Att. 4.17.2, Planc. 47–9, 55 (see Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 310; in the last passage nummi is misread as mimi); Asc. Mil. 26C; Cic. Verr. 1.25; Suet. Aug. 40.2. On the officials see Nicolet, The World of the Citizen (above, n. 8), 298–9, 306.

68 Plin. HN 7.120 (abbreviated); Val. Max. 7.5.2, 7.5.1, 4.5.4, 4.5.3, 7.5.4, 7.5.5, 7.5.8.

69 Varro, Ling. 5.155: ‘Comitium ab eo quod coibant eo comitiis curiatis et litium causa’ (‘The Comitium is so-called from the fact that they came together there for the Curiate Assembly and for the sake of lawsuits’). See generally Coarelli, F., s.v. ‘Comitium’, in Steinby, E.M. (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae I (A–C) (Rome, 1993), 309–14Google Scholar.

70 See Muecke, F., ‘Humanists in the Roman Forum’, Papers of the British School at Rome 71 (2003), 207–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On humanist access to Varro, Ling. see Raffarin-Dupuis in Biondo, Roma instaurata, I, lxxi–ii; Varro, De Lingua Latina, Book 10, ed. and trans. Taylor, D.J. (Amsterdam, 1996), 30–42 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 4–6. In the late Republic and for the late Republican authors the Forum, not the Comitium, was the centre of political life, see Nicolet (above, n. 8), 247–8. On tribal elections in the Campus Martius, see Taylor (46–7).

72 At least in none of the texts collected in R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti (eds), Codice topografico della città di Roma, 4 vols (Rome, 1940–53), is mention found of the Comitium prior to Poggio and Biondo in vol. IV.

73 Caballinus, Ioannes, Polistoria de virtutibus et dotibus Romanorum, ed. Laureys, M. (Stuttgart/Leipzig, 1995), 280CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The annotation is on Polistoria, I, 3.4.

74 Valentini and Zucchetti, Codice topografico (above, n. 73), IV, 241–2. Ph. Coarelli and J.-Y. Boriaud in their ‘note complementaire’ to p. 38 n. 3 of their text ( Pogge, Le, Les ruines de Rome. De varietate Fortunae Livre I, ed. Coarelli, Ph. and Boriaud, J.-Y. (Paris, 1999)Google Scholar) tentatively suggest the remains of the Forum of Nerva with the statue of Minerva and the frieze of the myth of Arachne (see Steinby, E.M., Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae II (D–G) (Rome, 1995) 307–11)Google Scholar. Statues in the Comitium were known from Plin. HN 34.21.

75 Pseudo-Asconius (ed. Stangl), 238.

76 See Pade, The Reception of Plutarch's Lives (above, n. 25), I, 286.

77 Alberti, L.B., L'Architettura (De re aedificatoria), ed. Orlandi, G. and Portoghesi, P. (Milan, 1966)Google Scholar; Borsi, S., ‘Alberti e le antichità romane: elaborazione di un metodo archeologico’, in Disselkamp, M., Ihring, P. and Wolfzettel, F. (eds), Das alte Rom und die neue Zeit: Varianten des Rom-Mythos zwischen Petrarca und dem Barock (Tübingen, 2006), 45–90 Google Scholar.

78 Biondo returns to this in Roma instaurata, II, 75, 76 and 77.

79 Varro, Ling. 5.155 (the citation differs from the text in modern editions).

80 Cf. Biondo, Roma instaurata, II, 68, where ‘time’ is not included.

81 Tortelli, Roma antica (above, n. 25), 57.

82 Valla, Lorenzo, Raudensiane note, ed. Corrias, G.M. (Florence, 2007)Google Scholar, 253, 446 (I.VI.8–9, γ V.10.7–8). On the circulation of the ‘redazione primitiva’ and Tortelli's possible involvement see pp. 68–9. The revised version of Raudensiane note (1444–9) overlaps with the composition of Tortelli's De orthographia.

83 Pseudo-Asconius (ed. Stangl), 238. Tortelli has ‘prope senatum’ and Valla ‘post senatum’.

84 For Fiocchi see above, n. 6.

85 Gell. NA 15.27.5, but Biondo's text differs at points. He ignores the calata, a kind held for consecrating a priest or king.

86 Paul. Fest. 54.1M. See Smith, The Roman Clan (above, n. 13), 189 n. 18. Smith suggests that the centuries in Festus were originally cavalry centuries provided by the curiae.

87 See Paul. Fest. 54.7M. Biondo has already stated on p. 60: ‘it is clear from other sources that the tribes were the same as what Livy called curiae in book I’ (1.13.6). The error lasted for a century; see McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio (above, n. 6), 183–202, 183 n. 19.

88 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 80.

89 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 88–90.

90 See Lushkov, A.H., Magistracy and the Historiography of the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2015), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 He is not deterred by the word ‘century’ because of Festus' attribution of centuries to the comitia curiata.

92 Biondo summarizes Livy 2.56.1–5, 64.2.

93 Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 47, 95. See Shackleton Bailey ad loc.

94 He could have seen that from, for example, Cic. Leg agr. 2.27: ‘Nunc, Quirites, prima illa comitia tenetis, centuriata et tributa, curiata tantum auspiciorum causa remanserunt’ (‘Now, Quirites, while you are keeping those primary comitia, the centuriata and the tributa, the comitia curiata has survived only for the sake of the auspices’). See Smith, The Roman Clan (above, n. 13), 180, 197, 225, who argues that the comitia tributa replaced the comitia curiata for the elections of the tribunes of the people.

95 Also called concilium plebis: Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 60. Biondo knows nothing of the distinction between the plebeian assembly and the tribal assembly; see Lintott, Constitution (above, n. 4), 53–4.

96 There he refers ahead to book VI, 129 where the Servian system of centuries is outlined (Livy 1.42.5), with a reference back to ‘in comitiis’.

97 See Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 87–91; C. Meier, ‘Praerogativa centuria’, in RE Suppl. VIII (1956), 567–98. Biondo says nothing here of the earlier centuriae praerogativae of the equites (cf. Livy 10.22.1) before the introduction of the lot (Taylor, 86). He does refer to them in Borsus (above, n. 11), 18–19. Biondo did not have access to the explanation of praerogativae centuriae in Festus 249.7M. There is little evidence for the organizational reform that took place between 214 and 218, and its import is debated by modern scholars; see Yakobson, Elections and Electioneering (above, n. 23), 54–9.

98 Carlo Sigonio, Emendationum libri duo (Venice, 1557), 447–8. Sigonio defends the MSS reading ‘praerogativa Veturia iuniorum’, against those who could not accept that the name of a tribe could also indicate a century. See McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio (above, n. 6), 24–5.

99 Roma triumphans, 78: ‘Eratque arbitrii candidatorum, tribuum in quibus magis viderent [fiderent MSS] prerogativarum sortionem fieri, easque quas sorte contigisset exire, et deinde alias centurias a consule vocari’ (‘It was in the say-so of the candidates that the choosing of the praerogativae by lot be carried out in the tribes in which they had more confidence and the ones whose lot had happened to be drawn and then the other centuries be summoned by the consul’).

100 Biondo's reference to military privileges in SHA Alex. Sev. 15 is completely beside the point but see book VI, 138, where he emphasizes the praerogativa as a way citizen-soldiers had of exercising influence ‘for a long time’.

101 Cic. Phil. 2.82, Planc. 44, 49: see Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 96.

102 Livy 5.18.1, 10.13.11, 10.22.1, 24.7.12, 24.9.3.

103 Livy 26.22.2–14 (abridged). See Taylor, Roman Voting Assemblies (above, n. 8), 93–4.

104 On Grouchy's De comitiis Romanorum see McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio (above, n. 6), 126, 183–202.

105 See above, n. 6.

106 See Herklotz, I., ‘Momigliano's “Ancient History and the Antiquarian”’, in Miller, P.N. (ed.), Momigliano and Antiquarianism: Foundations of the Modern Cultural Sciences (Toronto, 2007), 127–53Google Scholar, esp. p. 134 on the strengths and weaknesses of Budé's annotations on the Pandects. Elsewhere Budé records his disagreements with Biondo in Roma triumphans; see W. Stenhouse, ‘Flavio Biondo and later Renaissance antiquarianism’, forthcoming in Muecke and Campanelli, The Invention of Rome (above, n. 1).

107 See McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio (above, n. 6), 183 n. 19.

108 See McCuaig, Carlo Sigonio (above, n. 6), 187 n. 26.

109 On D'Alessandro, see Maffei, D., Alessandro d'Alessandro, giureconsulto umanista, 1461–1523 (Milan, 1956)Google Scholar; De Nichilo, M., ‘Un'enciclopedia umanistica: i Geniales dies di Alessandro d'Alessandro’, in Maraglino, V. (ed.), La Naturalis Historia di Plinio nella tradizione medievale e umanistica (Bari, 2012), 207–35Google Scholar.

110 For example, whereas Biondo acknowledges his use of Plin. Ep. 3.20.1, 5–6 (Roma triumphans, 79), D'Alessandro is silent (Geniales dies (above, n. 6), 892–3).

111 The Comitium and the pons disappear. D'Alessandro, Geniales dies (above, n. 6), 893 merely says that the votes were collected in front of the magistrate's seat (curulem sellam).

112 I do not mean to suggest that early printed texts were free from textual problems. We should also note that the great industry of humanist printed commentaries began in the 1470s.

113 A comment on p. 74 shows that Biondo is well aware of the temporal disparity particularly between Cicero and some of his information from Livy.

114 See Fubini, Storiografia (above, n. 3), 80–1 and Fryde, E.B., Humanism and Renaissance Historiography (London, 1983)Google Scholar, 19: ‘he was indefatigable in his search for correct information’.

115 See Roma triumphans, 54, where he proclaims the superiority of the Romans' practices over political theory.

116 See Nogara, Scritti inediti (above, n. 7), clv n. 188.