Through the complex processes of generating mutual expectations and demands, senatorial consensus resulted in a wider consensus held by all. Only on four occasions did the popular assemblies ever vote in a way that went against the senate’s expectations, in 209, 200, 167, and 149 BCE. Discussion of each of these instances demonstrates that the people were not accustomed to, or interested in, following their own preferences: when rogationes were brought before the popular assemblies, they were certain to be agreed. What united the very few cases of rejection was that the people’s response was highly personalized, that is, the initial rogatio pertained to a specific individual; the response aimed at inconveniencing that person; and the senatorial elite was itself divided on the person. Egon Flaig performs a threefold analysis: he measures the strength of preferences in the peoples’ assemblies; he explores the limitations to what is labelled the institutional automatism behind the acceptance of motions; and he teases out the tactical and ritualized manoeuvres of withdrawing precarious proposals. The results are merged into a checklist that gauges the semantic and situational variety of action before the contio.

Martin Jehne looks at the Roman comitia through the lens of their rich symbolism. Set in a demarcated space and sanctioned by the auspices of the gods, the popular assemblies were, in general, integrative: they symbolized the belonging of the citizens to the community as a whole. But the assemblies (comitia centuriata, comitia tributa, and comitia curiata) were far from uniform. Each one, argues Jehne, wielded a different type of integrative force upon its participants. The centuriate assembly emphasized hierarchy and vertical integration; the tribal assemblies had an essentially egalitarian structure. In light of a rapidly expanding body of citizens, the integrating capacities of the popular assemblies ought to have shrunk. Creating a climate of consensus and communality, those capacities were preserved in the assemblies’ roles as referential quantities that embodied ideas of hierarchy and equality vital to the libera res publica.