The History of Rome. Book II

general the whole earlier census-lists, carried back to the four lustres of Servius Tullius and furnished with copious numbers, must belong to the class of those apparently documentary traditions which delight in, and betray themselves by the very fact of, such numerical details.

It was only with the second half of the fourth century that the large extensions of territory, which must have suddenly and considerably augmented the burgess roll, began. It is reported on trustworthy authority and is intrinsically credible, that about 416 the Roman burgesses numbered 165,000; which very well agrees with the statement that ten years previously, when the whole militia was called out against Latium and the Gauls, the first levy amounted to ten legions, that is, to 50,000 men. Subsequently to the great extensions of territory in Etruria, Latium, and Campania, in the fifth century the effective burgesses numbered, on an average, 250,000; immediately before the first Punic war, 280,000 to 290,000. These numbers are certain enough, but they are not quite available historically for another reason, namely, that in them probably the Roman full burgesses and the 'burgesses without vote' not serving, like the Campanians, in legions of their own, - such, e. g., as the Caerites, - are included together in the reckoning, while the latter must at any rate de facto be counted among the subjects (Rom. Forsch. ii. 396).

40. II. VI. Battle of Sentinum.

41. II. VII. Commencement of the Conflict in Lower Italy.

42. II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet.

43. Not merely in every Latin one; for the censorship or so-called quinquennalitas occurs, as is well known, also among communities whose constitution was not formed according to the Latin scheme.

44. This earliest boundary is probably indicated by the two small townships Ad fines, of which one lay north of Arezzo on the road to Florence, the second on the coast not far from Leghorn.  Somewhat further to the south of the latter, the brook and valley of Vada are still called Fiume della fine, Valle della fine (Targioni Tozzetti, Viaggj, iv. 430).

45. In strict official language, indeed, this was not the case. The fullest designation of the Italians occurs in the agrarian law of 643, line 21; [ceivis] Romanus sociumve nominisve Latini, quibus ex formula togatorum [milites in terra Italia imperare solent]; in like manner at the 29th line of the same peregrinus is distinguished from the Latinus, and in the decree of the senate as to the Bacchanalia in 568 the expression is used: ne quis ceivis Romanus neve nominis Latini neve socium quisquam. But in common use very frequently the second or third of these three subdivisions is omitted, and along with the Romans sometimes only those Latini nominis are mentioned, sometimes only the socii (Weissenborn on Liv. xxii. 50, 6), while there is no difference in the meaning.  The designation homines nominis Latini ac socii Italici (Sallust. Jug. 40), correct as it is in itself, is foreign to the official usus loquendi, which knows Italia, but not Italici.

CHAPTER VIII Law, Religion, Military System, Economic Condition, Nationality

1. I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order.

2. II. I. Right of Appeal.

3. II. III. The Senate, Its Composition.

4. II. I. Law and Edict.

5. II. III. Censorship, the Magistrates, Partition and Weakening of the Consular Powers.

6. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes.

7. I. VI. Class of metoeci Subsisting by the Side of the Community.

8. I. V. The Housefather and His Household, note.

9. II. III. Praetorship.

10. II. III. Praetorship, II. V. Revision of the Municipal Constitutions, Police Judges.

11. The view formerly adopted, that these tres viri belonged to the earliest period, is erroneous, for colleges of magistrates with odd numbers are foreign to the oldest state- arrangements (Chronol. p. 15, note 12). Probably the well-accredited account, that they were first nominated in 465  (Liv. Ep. 11), should simply be retained, and the otherwise suspicious inference of the falsifier Licinius Macer (in Liv. vii. 46), which makes mention of them before 450, should be simply rejected. At first undoubtedly the tres viri were nominated by the superior magistrates, as was the case with most of the later magistratus minores; the Papirian plebiscitum, which transferred the nomination of them to the community (Festus, v. sacramentum, p. 344, Niall.), was at any rate not issued till after the institution of the office of -praetor peregrinus-, or at the earliest towards the middle of the sixth century, for it names the praetor qui inter jus cives ius dicit.