See further article ROME: _History_; also T. Mommsen, _Romisches Staatsrecht_, iii.; J.N. Madvig, _Die Verfassung des romischen Staates_, i.; R. Cagnat in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dictionnaire des antiquites_, where full references to ancient authorities are given in the footnotes; A.S. Wilkins in Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities_ (3rd ed., 1891); E. Belot, _Histoire des chevaliers romains_ (1866-1873); H.O. Hirschfeld, _Untersuchungen auf dem Gebiete der romischen Verwaltungsgeschichte_ (Berlin, 1877); E. Herzog, _Geschichte und System der romischen Staatsverfassung_ (Leipzig, 1884-1891); A.H. Friedlander, _Sittengeschichte Roms_, i. (1901); A.H.J. Greenidge, _History of Rome_, i. (1904); J.B. Bury, _The Student's Roman Empire_ (1893); T.M. Taylor, _Political and Constitutional History of Rome_ (1899). For a concise summary of different views of the _sex suffragia_ see A. Bouche-Leclercq's _Manuel des antiquites romaines_, quoted in Daremberg and Saglio; and on the _equites singulares_, T. Mommsen in _Hermes_, xvi. (1881), p. 458. (J. H. F.) EQUITY (Lat. _aequitas_), a term which in its most general sense means equality or justice; in its most technical sense it means a system of law or a body of connected legal principles, which have superseded or supplemented the common law on the ground of their intrinsic superiority. Aristotle (_Ethics_, bk. v. c. 10) defines equity as a better sort of justice, which corrects legal justice where the latter errs through being expressed in a universal form and not taking account of particular cases. When the law speaks universally, and something happens which is not according to the common course of events, it is right that the law should be modified in its application to that particular case, as the lawgiver himself would have done, if the case had been present to his mind. Accordingly the equitable man ([Greek: epieikes]) is he who does not push the law to its extreme, but, having legal justice on his side, is disposed to make allowances. Equity as thus described would correspond rather to the judicial discretion which modifies the administration of the law than to the antagonistic system which claims to supersede the law.