Since the loyalty of the population and the popularity of the imperial régime often depends on this very influential class of decurions, the government makes much of them; allows them high-sounding titles and tinsel honors, and any who visit Rome are given social precedence directly behind the actual equites. Furthermore, many high Roman nobles themselves are proud to be enrolled as patrons and _honorary_ decurions of the Italian towns, looking after the interest of their client communities in the capital, and, if they visit the smaller cities, being received as particular guests of honor. The number of decurions, however, in Rome itself is always small, although their importance everywhere else in the Empire is vast, and they virtually form a third order of nobility. =131. The Equites: the Nobles of the Second Class.=--Everywhere around the metropolis you meet the second-class nobles--the Equites.[73] This “Splendid Order” dates, of course, from the oldest days when to keep a cavalry horse implied having considerable property. The equites sank to unimportance in the prosperous era of the Republic, but were revived to great power by Gaius Gracchus; they were later reorganized and made an effective part of the new imperial régime by Augustus. The dividing line between Senators and Equites is not always sharp. Young men of senatorial family who renounce a political career have to “make narrow their purple stripe,” as did Ovid, and without disgrace appear henceforth as second-class nobles. Supposedly no persons but the sons of free-born men are eligible for enrollment as equites, but the members of the old-line families fume vainly at the way the Emperors (who have complete dispensing power) will grant “the right of the gold ring,” not merely to the sons of freedmen, but sometimes even to downright ex-slaves. There are in truth very few equites in Rome who do not reckon a slave among their not remote grandparents. The equites are all carefully enrolled in a public bureau under imperial control, and one of the surest holds which the Emperor possesses upon the government lies in the fact that he can refuse enrollment arbitrarily to any young man and thereby practically exclude him from any kind of high public office except in the municipal towns, or from any military rank above that of centurion. The senators, all the more important officials, and all the commissioned officers of the army are equites, although their greater honors cause them to ignore the lesser, while if the Emperor has an eligible son or heir, he is often proclaimed the _princeps juventutis_ (“Chief of the Roman Youth”) and is nominally the first member of the Equestrian Order.