to be known as the sex centuriae, or (after the centuries acquired voting power) the sex suffragia.1

To these were added twelve new centuries (centuriae equitum), composed, like the classes, of Patricians and Plebeians. But, unlike the classes, they were not enrolled on a property qualification. This is explained by the fact that they are not a list of men qualified for service but actually in service, a standing corps selected by the king and whose expenses were largely defrayed by the state. In later times, each knight was on his entrance into the corps given the means wherewith to furnish himself with a pair of horses 2 (aes equestre), and also a regular sum of money for their support (aes hordearium), the latter money being defrayed by unmarried women and orphans, who were possessed of property but could not by the nature of the case be rated in the census.3

4

Each of these centuries formed a troop of one hundred men under a centurio, and these eighteen centuries of Roman knights with public horses (equites Romani equo publico) continued unaltered in numbers and (with the exception that the sex suffragia ceased to be chosen from the Patricians) in character to the end of the Republic. Although no definite census was required for the class, it was probably chosen from the first from the richest and most distinguished citizens; for its permanent existence implies leisure. The class was not divided by age into seniores and juniores, for an obvious military reason. They were all juniores, and probably young men, whose release from the centuries was granted as soon as age had impaired their efficiency for service.

This centuriate organisation seems to have little or no connexion with the four Servian tribes,5 beyond the accidental

1 Cic. de Rep. ii. 22, 39.

2 Festus p. 221 "paribus equis, id est ut sudante altero transirent in siccum. equitibus duplex pro binis equis dabatur."

duobus, Romani utebantur in proelio, Pararium aes appellabatur id, quod

3 Liv. i. 43 "ita pedestri exercitu ornato distributoque equitum ex primoribus civitatis duodecim scripsit centurias. Sex item alias centurias . . . sub isdem, quibus inauguratae erant, nominibus fecit: ad equos emendos dena millia aeris ex publico data [i.e., as Livy understands it, 10,000 asses sextantarii = 1000 denarii], et, quibus equos alerent, viduae adtributae, quae bina milia aeris in annos singulos penderent" [2000 asses=200 denarii]. Cf. Gaius iv. 27.

* The number of the century was here fixed, and not, as in the case of the classici, expansive.

5 Cf. Liv. i. 43 "neque eae tribus ad centuriarum distributionem numerumque quicquam pertinuere.' There is no evidence, e.g., that each tribe furnished a certain number of centuries.

one that the basis of qualification was mainly land, and that all land which was private property was registered in the tribes. Its primary meaning was the assembly and registration of those liable for military service. It acquired a secondary meaning when (at what period we do not know but perhaps from its first organisation) it was used as a scheme for the collection of taxes on the registered wealth of the citizens in the classes. The act of registration (census) was a solemn religious function conducted by the king. He numbered his fighting force, saw that each warrior was in his due rank, excluded from these ranks men who were stained with sin, and then concluded the examination with a ceremony of purification (lustrum). It is only with reference to the collection of taxes imposed at this levy that the tribe would be of importance. The century was a military unit, dissolved as soon as the army was disbanded; the tribe was permanent, hence the war-tax (tributum) was perhaps collected from the first by the presidents of the tribes.1

A transference of political rights from the patrician body to this new assembly was so far from being the motive of the change that it was probably never contemplated. But such a transference was from the nature of things inevitable. Apart from the general fact that a citizen army must gain the preponderance in political power, there were certain public acts which were inevitably performed from the first by the assembly of the centuries, or were very soon found to be more rapidly, easily, and appropriately performed by that assembly than by the comitia of the curiae.

Firstly, it may have been the custom for the oath of allegiance to the king, first expressed in the lex curiata,2 to have been renewed at every taking of the census. This expression of allegiance, asked for by the magistrate, was now a lex

centuriata.3

Secondly, most of the popular utterances or leges of early Rome must have referred to military matters, and convenience, if not a sense of consistency, must soon have dictated that they

1 Tributum, however, cannot be derived from tribus (as by Varro quoted p. 40). The parallel words attribuere, contribuere, ultro tributa, etc., seem to show that it means something added to, conferred on, or collected for another.

2

p. 48. 3 As such it was in the Republic given for the censors. Cic. de Leg. Agr. ii. 11, 26"majores de singulis magistratibus bis vos sententiam ferre voluerunt; nam cum centuriata lex censoribus ferebatur, cum curiata ceteris patriciis magistratibus, tum iterum de eisdem judicabatur."

2

should be pronounced by the army. The choice of officers rested with the king; but if the appointment of the higher delegates required the ratification of the people,1 this must soon have been given by the centuries. The regal jurisdiction which the people challenge by the provocatio is essentially military jurisdiction; and consequently the exercise of this jurisdiction, when the king allowed the appeal, must soon have been felt to belong to the army. It was to this assembly that the announcement of a proposal to declare war 3 would most appropriately be made; it was above all by this assembly, which represented the taxpayers, that the war-tax (tributum) would most appropriately be assessed.

We cannot trace the successive steps in the acquisition of power by the centuries or its growth from an army into a comitia. They must have been the chief political changes which filled the closing years of the monarchy and the early days of the Republic; for even the abolition of monarchy itself, revolutionary as it was, was less of an alteration in the structure of the constitution than this transference of the attributes of sovereignty from one assembly to another, from a single to a mixed order. The comitia curiata was not suddenly stripped of its powers; but the organising genius of a single supreme magistrate had prepared the way for a change, which was a prototype of the gradual insensible revolutions through which Rome was to pass.

The change which closes the history of this period, although not so radical, was far more sudden and violent. The monarchy itself was overthrown. History has tried to invest this revolution with all the legal grounds and legal forms which it could summon to its assistance. Servius had had it in his mind to complete his democratic work by laying down the full imperium, and Tarquin the Proud, the last of the great Etruscan line, had broken through the constitutional usages of the monarchy and had ruled without challenging the allegiance of the people. That there was some fearful abuse of the kingly power, typified in the associations that gathered round the words rex and regnum and in the oath which

1

p. 43.

2

p. 63.

3

p. 60.

4 Liv. i. 48 "id ipsum tam mite ac tam moderatum imperium tamen, quia unius esset, deponere eum in animo habuisse quidam auctores sunt, ni scelus intestinum liberandae patriae consilia agitanti intervenisset."

5 ib. 49.

6 Cic. de Rep. ii. 22, 44.

made any one who aspired to monarchy an outlaw,1 we may without hesitation allow; for Rome, as shown by the power she continued to entrust to her magistrates, had not outgrown the idea of royalty. But there was no constitutional mode of deposing a king. The auspices had returned to the fathers in unhallowed fashion, and the war waged by Tarquin and Etruria is a war for the maintenance of the principle of divine right. But yet Rome held that the divinity of the magistracy still remained; the auspices again left the fathers' hands and were conferred on two citizens chosen from the patres.2

1 Cic. de Rep. ii. 30, 52; Liv. ii. 1; App. B.C. ii. 119. It is sometimes represented as a law which made any one who aimed at royalty sacer (Liv. ii. 8). For the dual sanction of the oath and the law compare the means by which the sacrosanctitas of the tribunes was secured (p. 100).

2 It is strange that the interregnum, which would have secured a continuity, is not mentioned in this case. The election of the first consuls was supposed to have been conducted by the praefectus urbi, who almost certainly had not the ius rogandi (p. 61). Liv. i. 60 "duo consules inde comitiis centuriatis a praefecto urbis ex commentariis Servii Tullii creati sunt, L. Junius Brutus et L. Tarquinius Collatinus."

CHAPTER II

THE GROWTH OF THE REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION

THE two new magistrates, who were appointed to the headship of the state, were, like the king, armed with the imperium and its united powers of military leadership and jurisdiction. Hence they bore the old titles of praetores and judices,1 while those designations which denoted a single supremacy in the state, such as dictator or magister populi, were necessarily discarded. The new magistrates were to hold office for a year and then to transmit their power to two successors. But their right of nomination was not final. They were, indeed, free to name as their successors whom they pleased, but this nomination had to be ratified immediately by the people assembled in their centuries; and perhaps they were already expected to submit to this comitia the names of all candidates who offered themselves for this post, although they could certainly decline to receive such names,2 and nomination, or, as it was sometimes called, creatio, was an essential part of the early consular elections. A new practice, that of direct election, was thus introduced into the Roman constitution, but it was merely an advance on the previous practice of ratifying a nomination.3 A far newer idea-one which distinguished the consulship from the monarchy, and continued to differentiate

1 For the title praetores see Cic. de Leg. iii. 3, 8" regio imperio duo sunto iique a praeeundo judicando consulendo praetores judices consules appellamino "; for that of judices, Varro L.L. vi. 88, who quotes from the commentarii consulares the formula used in summoning the comitia centuriata, "qui exercitum imperaturus erit, accenso dicito: C. Calpurni, voca in licium omnes Quirites huc ad me.' Accensus dicito sic Omnes Quirites in licium visite huc ad judices.' 'C. Calpurni,' consul dicito, voca ad conventionem omnes Quirites huc ad me.' Accensus dicito sic Omnes Quirites ite ad conventionem huc ad judices.' 2 See the section on the magistracy (p. 187).

This ratification indeed remained. Even though elections were conducted before the centuries, a lex was still passed by the curiae ratifying this election (p. 49); and the patrum auctoritas was still required to sanction each fresh appointment.