Lex curiata de imperio in the context of "Roman adoption"

Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned from 578 to 535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC. The constitutional basis for his accession is unclear; he is variously described as the first Roman king to accede without election by the Senate, having gained the throne by popular and royal support; and as the first to be elected by the Senate alone, with support of the reigning queen but without recourse to a popular vote.

Several traditions describe Servius's father as divine. Livy depicts Servius's mother as a captured Latin princess enslaved by the Romans; her child is chosen as Rome's future king after a ring of fire is seen around his head. The Emperor Claudius discounted such origins and described him as an originally Etruscan mercenary, named Mastarna, who fought for Caelius Vibenna.

The curiate assembly (Latin: comitia curiata) was the oldest of the popular assemblies of Rome. It was organised on the basis of curiae and is said to have been the main legislative and electoral assembly of the regal and early republican periods. Little concrete is known of its origins and early operation.

By the late republic, the curiae only met for limited pro forma purposes related to public religion; the historical thirty curiae were each represented by a single lictor rather than actual groups of citizens. The foremost of these purposes was the lex curiata de imperio, passed as a matter of course in the presence of three augurs, which related to the quality of a curule magistrate's auspices. When it met under the presidency of the pontifex maximus, the assembly was instead called the comitia calata to deal with matters relating to wills and selection of priests.