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purposes, and, as with the Centuriate Assembly, each comitia had a single vote and a simple majority in any tribe decided the vote on the matter under consideration. After 287 BCE it became the most important law-making authority because the laws of the Tribal Assembly were binding on the entire state. Presiding over the Tribal Assembly was either a consul or a praetor . The assembly’s role was to elect junior magistrates: the twenty (forty under Iulius Caesar) quaestors ( quaestores ) and the two curule aediles ( aediles curules ).
    Quaestors provided Roman society with a means to supervise and audit financial accounts of the institutions drawing upon the fund of public money ( aerarium ) held at the Temple of Saturn, such as the army. Some quaestors worked in Rome, supervising at the mint, which made the gold, silver and bronze coinage at the Temple of Iuno Moneta, while others oversaw the maintenance of roads inside and outside the city, served in urban communities across Italy or in the provinces on the staffs of proconsuls. For a young man eager to have a career in politics, life started as a quaestor . To be eligible for election, a pleb had to be minimum 32-years-old, while a patrician could stand at 30. Having served as quaestor , a man earned the right to sit in the Senate and stand for other magistracies in the ladder ( cursus honorum ), which made up a career in public service.
    Curule aediles were magistrates responsible for maintaining public buildings, such as the market halls in the Forum Romanum , and regulating the public festivals and gladiatorial games. As they funded these projects from their own resources, the aedileship favoured wealthy individuals or those ambitious for advancement who were willing to borrow heavily to pay for them. The aedile also issued edicts ( ius edicendi ) regulating public markets. They sat on a curule chair and wore the toga praetexta and were assigned two lictors each. Aediles stood for election in July, taking office on the first day of the new year.
    The last of the three popular assemblies was the Concilium Plebis , ‘Plebeian Council’. It was based on clan and family ties like the Comitia Tributa but comprised of plebeians only. It elected plebeian magistrates – the tribunes ( tribuni plebis ) and aediles ( aediles plebis ), the latter whose functions matched those of the curule aediles and acted as the tribunes’ assistants. By Agrippa’s time there were ten tribunes. As a representative of the plebs, the tribune’s body was considered sacrosanct and it was a capital offence to harm or violate it, even to interfere with his business or disregard his veto. He did not have the authority of a magistrate ( maior potestas ), as he was not technically one, and he could not inflict punishments, but his tribunician power ( tribunicia potestas ) derived from the use of the veto. Independent of all other magistrates, the tribune was not subject to a magistrate’s veto. His function was that of a public guardian of the interests of the plebs. The Concilium could only be convened by the tribuni plebis . The tribunes could propose new legislation to the Plebeian Council, which then voted on it without debate. At first the assembly could only pass laws ( plebiscita ) which affected the plebs, but after 287 BCE its laws were binding on all social classes. During Agrippa’s youth, the tribunes had become powerful – even tyrannical – figures in their own right, often in opposition to the Senate. Iulius Caesar and Pompeius Magnus each leveraged the tribunes to achieve their ends when the Senate refused to grant their requests.
    The competitive nature of Roman society pitted individuals and families against each other for the prestige and privileges that holding public office brought. It could be an ugly process. When in office as curule aedile in 65 BCE jointly with M. Bibulus, Iulius Caesar decorated the Comitium and basilicas of the Forum Romanum and erected temporary