comitia

Forms

comitia n pl (genitive comitiōrum); second declension^[1] Inscriptions abbreviate it comit.^[2]

Etymology

It is the plural of comitium (“place of assembly”), from con- (“together”) and eō (“to go”), with the suffix -ium: the place where people “go together”.^[2][3] De Vaan sets it beside comes (“companion”), from Proto-Italic *kom-i-t- (“going together”).^[4] Varro too explained the place as named from the people “coming together” there.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Plautus, Menaechmi: men of standing ought to attend the public meeting and the assemblies (cōntiōnī … atque comitiīs).^[2]

Semantic evolution

The singular comitium was the place in the Forum where the Roman people met; the plural comitia is the assembly itself, called above all to elect magistrates and priests.^[2] The kind of assembly is named by an adjective: comitia centuriāta, tribūta and cūriāta, as Cicero has a man who took the auspices for the tribal assembly and then held the centuriate one.^[2] It also means elections held outside Rome and, as a date, election time (Cicero: whether I must be in Rome for the elections).^[2] Plautus uses it figuratively, of a meeting that decides his fate: “I'll go in, where the assembly is held on my life”.^[2]

Church Latin glosses it “assembly, elections”.^[5] In medieval Latin it was still used of assemblies.^[6]

Timeline

• c. 250–184 BC – Plautus of public assemblies.^[2][6]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero of the tribal and centuriate assemblies and of election time.^[2][6]

Meanings

Noun

1. (plural) An assembly of the Roman people, especially for elections.^[2][1][5]
2. An election held elsewhere than in Rome; election time.^[2]
3. An assembly for lawmaking or judgment.^[2]

Related words

• comitium
• comes
• eō
• comitiālis

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de