 According to Polybius, each element of the constitution exercised a distinctive form of power. The elected consuls wielded imperium, a form of executive command; the Senate enjoyed the power to deliberate and consent to specific policies; and the popular assemblies served as the source of authoritative law, also electing the magistrates, including the popular tribunes who in turn exercised veto powers over the Senate. An originally republican formula relating the consuls to the people as the source of authoritative law survives in a complete prescript of the Augustan period: “Titus Quinctius Crispinus [consul] lawfully asked the people, and the people lawfully resolved,” as translated in Lintott 1999: 3. The perennial Greek contest between oligarchs and democrats had been tamed in Rome to allow a recognized security of role for the Senate, a group drawn from no lower than the minor ranks of aristocracy and typically rewarding birth as well as the merit that had been gained and expressed in election to high political offices. Yet the tumultuous personal quest for office and influence led many aristocrats to seek support among the people, sometimes with radical measures of land reform which Cicero, among others, would resolutely oppose. The theorizing of the proper role of aristocratic leadership and Senatorial independence, together with Platonic analogies for the requisite concord and harmony in the city, would become central themes of Cicero’s political philosophy, as he wrote: “What the musicians call harmony with respect to song is concord in the state, the tightest and best bond of safety in every republic; and that concord can never exist without justice” (De rep. II.69.)