(M490) The married slave, even in the city, usually lived in his own house. His children were born to slavery, but were usually not separated in early life from their parents. They entered their master’s service, and might be sold when grown up. They might learn a trade and so earn a living, paying a fixed sum to their master. They might become agricultural laborers, and so attain a fixity of tenure as serfs. But on all these subject classes, slaves, whether domestic or living out, serfs, and artisans, there lay the obligation to do forced work for the king. After a certain number of terms of service, they were exempt. (M491) The obligations to public institutions which existed in Babylonia in later times have not yet been made the subject of a thorough study. Kohler and Peiser have noted several of the more important indications, and to them we owe what has been done up to the present. (M492) The most noteworthy obligation was what they call the _ḳablu_. This has the same sign as so commonly used in the phrase, _ḳablu u taḫâzu_, for “war and fighting.” But it is also the ideogram for _šisîtu_, the call of the _nâgiru_ to war or the corvée. There is no doubt that it indicates the levy for war. The _rikis ḳabli_ was the money due from certain persons to furnish a soldier for the war. Thus we have seventy shekels paid to a certain man, in the fifth year of Darius, to go to the city Shiladu.(525) Again, a certain Bêl-iddin had to find twenty-five shekels to pay a substitute to go for him to the presence of the king.(526) Another man paid the wages of a soldier for two years.(527) This was an _æs militare_. In another case we find the _rikis ḳabli_ for a horseman for a certain troop, for three years. It consisted of an ass worth fifty shekels, thirty-six shekels for its keep, twelve coats, twelve breastplates (?), twelve _mušapallatum_, twelve leather _mîṭu_, twenty-four shoes, thirty _ḲA_ of oil, sixty _ḲA_ of bdellium sixty _ḲA_ of some aromatic, all as equipment, _ṣiditum_, to go to the camp (?). This may be described as _æs equestre_.(528) So(529) the burgomaster of Babylon paid _rikis ḳabli_ for three years for a certain soldier, receiving the amount from single citizens. How this arose, what dues it was a composition for, and whether it antedates Persian times, are details not yet clear.