19

mon league," that, far from being disturbed by the death of Tatius, was corroborated under the rule of the Roman monarch. Many of the Latin towns in the neighbourhood were also united after being overcome; 18 and there are vestiges of an Etruscan settlement or immigration, which made another part of the fast-increasing state. The foundations were no sooner laid than the wall and the tower, so to speak, were erected by the very hands which might have been expected to be raised with deadliest force against them.

The two great classes into which the Roman world was divided, almost from its first existence, were those of the conquered and the conquerors, between whom there will only too often be occasions, in this history, of noting the separation and the contrast. In the times of the earliest kings, the Patricians were in one class, the other being composed of their clients and their slaves; but as victories multiplied, the lower class included the Plebeians within and the strangers without the state. It will be, by and by, in season to describe the various members of the inferior division with the attention due them in a history of Roman liberty; but for the present, we may be content to become acquainted with the original people of Rome.

17"Regnum consociant, imperium omne conferunt Romam. Ita geminata urbe," etc. Liv., I. 13. See Cic., Pro Balbo, 13, and Tac., Ann., XI. 24, for the excellence of the policy which Romulus adopted towards strangers.

18 Liv., I. 11. Dion. Hal., II. 35, 36.

19 Under a Lucumo, who gave aid to Romulus against the Sabines. Festus, s. v. Cœlius Mons. Varro, De Ling. Lat., V. 9, ed. Spengel. Cic., De Rep., II. 8.

Strictly speaking, the Patricians were not all conquerors; for the first associations contracted between the settlers on the Palatine and the various people whom they not only admitted, but doubtless, in many instances, solicited to share their fortunes, were such, in great part, as to place the new-comers on equal terms with the old. The names of the three original Tribes, the Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres, constituted, as the legends inform us, within brief periods of one another, bear witness to apparently equal relations amongst the Romans or the Latins, the Sabines, and the Etruscans, who were combined together in the extension, if not in the establishment, of the city.20 The Ramnes, that is to say, the followers of Romulus, may have had some pretensions above the rest on account of their priority; 21 and it is quite evident that the third Tribe of Etruscans was not admitted to all the privileges of the other two, until some time after their union. But, in a general point of view, either of the three was on the same footing with the others, as Patricians, that is, in the early times, as freemen. Amongst the individual members of each Tribe the territory of the state was divided in small but equal shares; 22 and to them be

20 The origin of the word Ramnes is plainly enough connected with that of Romulus or Rome. Tities is from Tatius, the Sabine king; and Luceres from Lucumo, Lucus, or Lucerus, all susceptible of some sort of explanation connecting them with an Etruscan derivation. "Nominatæ [tribus], ut ait Ennius, Ta

tienses a Tatio, Ramnenses a Romulo, Luceres, ut Junius, a Lucumone," etc. Varro, De Ling. Lat., V. 9.

21 Celsi Ramnes." Hor., Art. Poet., 342. Cf. Dion. Hal., II. 62.

22 Ager Romanus primum divisus in partes tres, a quo tribus appellatæ," etc. Varro, De Ling. Lat.,

longed, at any rate, eventually, the disposition of the newly conquered lands. The king, or rather the state, relied upon them, in return, for military service. with horse 23 and foot; 24 and it was as the army of Rome that the Patricians became the conquerors of other nations and the masters of their own. The only distinctions amongst them of any importance, besides those above mentioned, arose from the institutions of the early period.

These were of the two common classes, religious and secular; but as the first were mostly referred to the following reign, we may here confine our attention to the civil institutions, of which Romulus was supposed to have been the author. It is but fair, however, to premise, that there are evident indications of his having established several of the priesthoods, and especially of his having provided for the support of their members by the same means which were ever afterward employed, namely, the assignment of lands to each temple and to every sacred college.25

The whole body of Patricians was united in the Comitia Curiata, the assembly of the Curies. Each Tribe was divided into ten Curies; each of the Curies into ten Gentes, or Names, as they may be styled,

V. 9. "Bina jugera a Romulo divisa viritim." Ibid., De Re Rust., I. 10.

23Turma terima est (E in U abiit) quod terdeni equites ex tribus tribubus, etc., fiebant." Varro, De Ling. Lat., V. 16.

24"Milites quod trium millium prima legio fiebat ac singulæ tribus millia singula militum mitte

bant." Ibid.

25 Dion. Hal., II. 7.

because they were formed of kindred names rather than of kindred families.26 The Name was, therefore, the first element in the constitution of the Roman state. It may be called a corporation, partly religious and partly civil, but much inferior in the extent of either attribute to the Curia, which, under the presidency of a Curio, a chief, perhaps, at first, but afterwards a priest, exercised the more public charges for which it was created. So long as it met alone, it was generally a body of citizens assembled to observe the ceremonies and sacrifices 27 incumbent upon faithful worshippers; but as soon as the Curies were joined together in their assembly, their religious functions disappeared in the civil and the political rights they then assumed, each Curia counting as one vote of the thirty in elections and legislation.23 From out the assembly two other bodies appear to have been formed, from the beginning of the constitution: one, of the Senators, the other, of the Celeres, or, as their successors were afterwards called, the Knights. It does not appear that there was primarily any incongruity between the two to prevent the same individual from holding a place in both; although it is

26 Ex multis familiis." Festus, s. v. Gens Æl. Dionysius (II. 7) calls the Gens a Aekás, or Decade, in Latin, Decuria; though Decuria was, in later times, a military, not a civil, division.

27 Ut in sua quisque Curia sacra publica faceret feriasque observaret." Festus, s. v. Curia. Hullmann (Röm. Grundverfassung, p. 3) calls

the Curia a Landschaft, from xwpa or xwpiov; and it may have been that the Curies, in their meetings apart, had something to do with the secular concerns of their members.

28 The laws passed in the Curies were called Scita Populi, "decrees of the people." Festus, s. v. Scit. Pop.

indubitable that the offices of either were totally dissimilar. One hundred Celeres from each of the three Tribes formed a company of cavalry, which may have been partly intended to serve the king for a guard or a suite, but which was more probably raised to do the state such service as swift moving horsemen could alone perform in forays and campaigns.29 It is something better than a conjecture, therefore, that these were the younger Romans.30 Their Tribune, or leader, was the second personage in the city, ranking next after the king, by whom he was named. On the other hand, the Senate was composed of the elder men, of whom one hundred were appointed, as we will say, by Romulus, from the Ramnes, and another hundred by Tatius, from the Sabine Tities; 34 the third Tribe having no representation for several reigns. The Prince or Chief Senator, receiving his appointment, also, from the king, was, in his absence, invested with the government of the city; 35 yet it must be remembered, that, when the king was absent, the Tribune of the Celeres, who would otherwise have taken his place, most com

33

32

29 Hence their name : κέλης, Eol. Kéλnp, Lat. celer, Eng. swift. I give the etymology in full, because Niebuhr will have it that Celeres is a name for the whole body of Patricians. See, besides, Plin., Nat. Hist., XXXIII. 9. The number is from Liv., I. 13.

30 Dion. Hal., II. 13.

31 See Ruperti, Röm. Alt., Tom. II. pp. 111, 116.

32 The Senes. Plut., Rom., 13. 33 Liv., I. 8. Dion. Hal., II. 12. 34 Dion. Hal., II. 47, 57. The second hundred were not immediately of equal dignity with the first, according to the same historian. II. 58, 62. The Decem Primi, or First Ten, belonged, it here appears, to the Ramnes.

35 Dion. Hal., II. 12. Tacit., Ann., VI. 11.