A consular tribune was putatively a type of magistrate in the early Roman Republic. According to Roman tradition, colleges of consular tribunes held office throughout the fifth and fourth centuries BC during the so-called "Conflict of the Orders". The ancient historian Livy offered two explanations: the Roman state could have needed more magistrates to support its military endeavours; alternatively, the consular tribunate was offered in lieu of the ordinary consulship to plebeians so to maintain a patrician lock on the consulship.
Modern views have challenged this account for various reasons. No consular tribune ever celebrated a triumph and appointment of military dictators was unabated through this period. Furthermore, the vast majority of consular tribunes elected were patrician. Some modern scholars believe the consular tribunes were elected to support Rome's expanded military presence in Italy or otherwise to command detachments and armies. More critical views believe the consular tribunate is an invention of later Roman historians meant to explain the appointment of multiple military commanders in the early republic while also trying to reconcile that with a preconceived notion of a permanent two-man consulship.
Name
Roman sources used a variety of names to refer to consular tribunes. Livy called them (tribunes of the soldiers) or (military tribunes) (with consular power), but also as tribunes or , as well as simply (consular tribunes). The emperor Claudius and Aulus Gellius called them tribunes (with consular imperium).
Traditional account
Under Roman tradition, starting in 444 BC, consular tribunes were elected in place of consuls as chief magistrates in fifty-one elections between 444 and 367 BC (seventy per cent of the time) and even more commonly between 408 and 367 BC. Livy offered two explanations: that increased demands for military leadership meant more magistrates were necessary or that it was a political tactic related to the Conflict of the Orders in which patricians prevented plebeians from holding the consulship by substituting this tribunate.
Livy states then that the choice whether a collegium of consular tribunes or consuls were to be elected for a given year was made by a decree of the Senate, producing an annual dispute as to which set of magistrates ought to be elected. The number of consular tribunes varied between three and six, and because they were considered colleagues of the two censors, there is sometimes mention of the "eight tribunes".
Originally patrician office holders, they were referred to as military tribunes and were responsible for leading the armies into battle. It was only much later that they were given the anachronistic addition of "with consular power", in an attempt to distinguish them from the military tribunes who were the legionary officers of the middle and late Republic.
The tribunes, like their consular predecessors, exercised consular potestas, indicating they must have been elected by the comitia centuriata, and that the current needs of the state could not be served by the previous consular system. From their initial number of three, the consular tribunes were increased to four for the first time in 426 BC in response to the military situation which saw the Roman state capture and annex Fidenae.
Then in 405 BC, the number of consular tribunes was increased to six for the first time; following that, various sources report show normal election – when tribunes were elected rather than consuls – of six consular tribunes except in 380 and 376 when nine and four were elected, respectively. The increase was due to the need for the consular tribunes to not only handle the military affairs of Rome, but also the administrative needs of the city as well. The Roman state was led by six consular tribunes for almost every year down to the dissolution of the office and the reintroduction of the consulship and the creation of the praetorship with the Sextian-Licinian Rogations.