TRIBUNE

Properly, as the name denotes, the chief magistrate of a tribe. There were several kinds of officers in the Roman state that bore the title. 1. The plebeian tribunes, who were first created after the sece ion of the commonalty to the Mons Sacer (260 A.U.) as one of the conditions of its return to the city. They were especially the magistrates and protectors of the commonalty, and no patrician could be elected to the office. At their first ap point ment the power of the tribunes was very small, being confined to the a embling the plebeians, and the protection of any individual from patrician aggre ion; but their per sons were sacred and inviolable, and this privilege consol i dated their other powers, which, in the later ages of the republic, grew to an enormous height, and were finally incorporated with the functions of the other chief magistracies in the person of th§ emperor. The number of the tribunes varied from two to ten, and each of these might annul the proceedings of the rest by putting in his veto. (Hee JV"i« buhr"s Hist, of Rome, 2d edit., I., 624: Lableterie, Mem. dt VAc. des Inscr., vol. xxxvii.) 2. Military tribunes were first elected in the year 310 A.U. in the place of the consuls, in consequence of the demands of the commonalty to bt admitted to a share of the supreme power. This measur* [s. 1280]