A Correct notion of the constitution of 311 will lead us to acquit the patricians of the charge of setting a great value on the show of excluding the plebeians from the consulship, while they granted them the substance. Dion tells us that no consular military tribune, though several of them gained brilliant victories, ever celebrated a triumph. Hence it follows that they cannot have had the curule honours: for a triumph, properly so called, is termed triumphus curulis: and this epithet assuredly refers to the privilege of the supreme magistrates to go to the senate in a chariot: an honour not allowed to the consular tribunes, because they were not of curule rank. In like manner no master of the horse ever triumpht: nobody ever supposed that his was one of the curule offices; and the consular tribunes were not above him in rank. One may easily conceive that the office, when thrown open to the plebeians, was shorn of its dignity: if its power however had continued the same, the advantage that the consulship had over it would merely have been matter of vanity.

The most remarkable feature of this tribuneship is the variableness in the number of its members: for this in all the other offices of the ancient states was permanently fixt, and did not alter with the shifting of circumstances, as in modern monarchies.