The History of Rome. Book III

40. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise.

41. II. VII. Subject Communities.

42. III. VIII. Declaration of War by Rome.

43. II. III. The Burgess-Body.

44. III. XI. Patricio-Plebian Nobility.

45. The laying out of the circus is attested. Respecting the origin of the plebeian games there is no ancient tradition (for what is said by the Pseudo-Asconius, p. 143, Orell. is not such); but seeing that they were celebrated in the Flaminian circus (Val. Max. i, 7, 4), and first certainly occur in 538, four years after it was built (Liv. xxiii. 30), what we have stated above is sufficiently proved.

46. II. II. Political Value of the Tribunate.

47. III. IX. Landing of the Romans.

48. III. IX. Death of Scipio. The first certain instance of such a surname is that of Manius Valerius Maximus, consul in 491, who, as conqueror of Messana, assumed the name Messalla (ii. 170): that the consul of 419 was, in a similar manner, called Calenus, is an error. The presence of Maximus as a surname in the Valerian (i. 348) and Fabian (i. 397) clans is not quite analogous.

49. III. XI. Patricio-Plebian Nobility.

50. II. III. New Opposition.

51. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.

52. III. VI. In Italy.

53. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.

54. III. VII. Liguria.

55. III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Transalpine Gauls.

56. III. VII. Liguria.

57. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries.

58. III. V. Attitude of the Romans, III. VI. Conflicts in the South of Italy.

59. II. III. The Burgess-Body.

60. As to the original rates of the Roman census it is difficult to lay down anything definite. Afterwards, as is well known, 100,000 asses was regarded as the minimum census of the first class; to which the census of the other four classes stood in the (at least approximate) ratio of 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/9. But these rates are understood already by Polybius, as by all later authors, to refer to the light as (1/10th of the denarius), and apparently this view must be adhered to, although in reference to the Voconian law the same sums are reckoned as heavy asses (1/4 of the denarius: Geschichte des Rom. Munzwesens, p. 302). But Appius Claudius, who first in 442 expressed the census-rates in money instead of the possession of land (II. III. The Burgess-Body), cannot in this have made use of the light as, which only emerged in 485 (II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value). Either therefore he expressed the same amounts in heavy asses, and these were at the reduction of the coinage converted into light; or he proposed the later figures, and these remained the same notwithstanding the reduction or the coinage, which in this case would have involved a lowering of the class-rates by more than the half. Grave doubts may be raised in opposition to either hypothesis; but the former appears the more credible, for so exorbitant an advance in democratic development is not probable either for the end of the fifth century or as an incidental consequence of a mere administrative measure, and besides it would scarce have disappeared wholly from tradition. 100,000 light asses, or 40,000 sesterces, may, moreover, be reasonably regarded as the equivalent of the original Roman full hide of perhaps 20 jugera (I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform); so that, according to this view, the rates of the census as a whole have changed merely in expression, and not in value.

61. III. V. Fabius and Minucius.

62. II. I. The Dictator.

63. III. XI. Election of Officers in the Comitia.

64. III. V. Flaminius, New Warlike Preparations in Rome.