parentage was not entitled, by any early law, to participate in the rights of citizenship on equal terms with those by whom he or his fathers had been conquered. Herein, however, lay the germ of his future elevation, that he boasted of ancestry as glorious as, nay, in a multitude of instances, more glorious than, that from which his neighbour Patrician was derived; and in his consciousness of veins as clear and names as worthy, he claimed from year to year a larger share in the citizenship, from which, when first conquered, he had been totally excluded. There were other free, but inferior, classes, besides the Plebeians clients, freedmen, and strangers, who had their homes in Rome. But to these there were few such memories of birth or few such claims to citizenship; and when any of them rose, as many did in after times, to higher places, it was the elevation of the individual rather than the class. The citizen, therefore, as we may conclude, was always free; but the free were not always citizens.

Nor does the constitution of such a body as the Centuries or the Tribes militate against the inadequacy of personal freedom to make a man a citizen in Rome. Many an individual, who had neither been born nor bred in servitude, had no part in these assemblies, because he was either a foreigner by birth, or a menial by occupation. So hundreds, and afterwards thousands, of the men actually admitted to the Tribes or enrolled in the Centuries, were in themselves but inferior, though nominally regarded as full, citizens in the body to which they belonged. The distinctions

of the magistracies and the institutions generally, for the most part previously described, are to be explained on the same common principles. Every separate office of the least importance was, as of right, committed to the full citizens; and none of lower position, though ever so rich, could hope for greater honor or higher authority than was vouchsafed to him as a member of some collective body, the Senate or an assembly. One, even, of the assemblies, that of the Curies, was in complete possession of the Patricians; and of the rest, each was distinguished from the others by certain forms or dignities proportioned to the graft of Plebeian stock it bore. The Tribes, for instance, met in the Forum, -not then the hallowed ground, but the profane, -in the midst of noise and trade; the Centuries gathered, with somewhat more reserve, in the Campus Martius, without the walls; but the Curies met in the Comitium, near the Forum indeed, yet quite separate, where the fig-tree beneath which the twins were suckled, and the spot from which Romulus was translated to the gods, suggested only the most majestic memories. A temple received the Senate within its walls, though the Senate was partly composed, as we have read, of Plebeians; but he whom the Patricians admitted to their Senate in the early times was, if we have any right to judge from analogies, bound, or willing to be bound, unhesitatingly to their behests. Other lines of separation between the Roman orders were drawn through all their public institutions. One treasury, for example, the Ærarium, as it was called, belonged to the state

in common; but there was another, the Publicum, to the profit of the Patricians alone, and often enriched at the expense of the Erarium: both the treasuries being in the Senate's charge. This universal preponderance of one class over another in the offices and the assemblies of the Commonwealth was the natural result of the manner in which its foundation and first increase had been achieved; but the effect of such preponderance was in its season equally natural, and much more favorable to justice and to liberty.

The working of these institutions together, not having yet been stated, may be here described in a few words, in order to complete the sketch attempted of the political liberty of the early Commonwealth. Elections were made sometimes by the Centuries, sometimes by the Curies, with the latter of whom it always rested to confirm its own or the Centuries' choice by the grant of the commission or Imperium. The legislative powers were exercised through the priests, the Consuls, the Centuries, the Curies, and the Senate; though a law, to be binding, needed, as a general rule, the consent of two, and sometimes three, of the assemblies, when brought forward by the civil magistrates: the laws of the priests, or, to speak strictly, of the Pontiffs, being more independent, as exclusively relating to religion or to the observances nearly connected with religion. Administrative and executive functions were exercised by the Consuls and the Senate; the Senate having, furthermore, a general super

3 "Senatus, ut solidum corpus, membra: Senatus, consilium et reimmutabile erat; Consules, velut rum deliberatio, Consules ad consulta VOL. I. 44

intendence over the laws and the institutions, of which it was commonly regarded as itself the highest. Trials were conducted and sentences pronounced, in the first instance, by the popular judges, or, if the causes were too weighty for them, by the Consuls, or, if in appeal, by the Curies or the Tribes. It may easily be observed how large a proportion of authority belonged to the upper class of citizens; and if it be not yet clear, the narrative we must presently resume will make it so, that, simple as these early institutions may have been, the extravagant measure of power with which every higher assembly and each superior magistrate was invested was scarcely consistent with the liberty or the peace of a free commonwealth.

Neither the excess nor the exclusiveness of authority in early Rome is susceptible of any plainer illustration than the power of the father, to which, in one shape or another, much of the political spirit we are describing must be referred. If we could find our way into any of the old, rude households, and see, for one half-hour, the manner in which its members lived, we should have new knowledge of all things in which they and their nation were concerned. The family was concentrated in its father, the single name of the husband, the parent, the guardian, and the master; he alone lived "in his own right," his dependants being "in another's right," according to the

peragenda parati." These words, from a treatise De Augusti Progenie (sect. 30), describe the Commonwealth in its early times.

4 "Patres reprehensores comitio

rum." Cic., Pro Planc., 3. So the Patres Auctores, etc., sometimes applies to the Senate, but sometimes to the Curies.

phrases of the law.5 He was the freeman, the citizen, and, in consequence, the father; they were the wife, the children, the wards, the slaves, over each and all of whom his authority was indisputably supreme: unless the wife be excepted, because it appears that she was sometimes judged by her husband in presence of a certain number of their fellow-Gentiles, members, that is to say, of their Names." But one of the events recorded to have occurred under the reign of Romulus was the murder of a wife, for which, says the ancient story-teller, there was not only none to accuse, but none even to blame, the husband who did the deed; and throughout the ruder age at least, the Patrician, whose marriage-rights were alone protected by the laws, was the owner rather than the spouse of the woman whom he married. He was still more arbitrarily powerful over his offspring, whom he punished, sold, or even murdered, as he pleased; although it would be going too far to deny

5 Sui Juris, and Alieni Juris.

8

6 Over each, however, under a different title the wife being subject to the Manus of her husband; the children and grandchildren (by the father's side) to the Potestas or Potestas Patria of their grandfather and father; the ward, whether a minor, a woman, or a lunatic, to the Curatio or Tutela of their guardian; and the slave to the Dominium or the Potestas Dominica of his master. The emancipated child was held under Mancipium; the emancipated slave, like the client, under Patronatus.

7" Prisco instituto, propinquis coram, de capite famaque conjugis cognovit." Tac., Ann., XIII. 32. See Dion. Hal., III. 25. There is just a trace of a similar exception being sometimes made in favor of the son. Dion. Hal., II. 15.

8 Val. Max., VI. 3. 9. Plin., Nat. Hist., XIV. 14.

9 See Dion. Hal., II. 26, 27, where the old historian gives way to unwonted enthusiasm of expression. The various periods of youth, as defined by the law, are of importance in connection with the subject of the paternal authority. One