This is the system of centuries as established by Servius, with regard to which Livy materially differs from Dionysius, and both of them from Cicero in the second book _de Republica_. This passage is very ill written, but it may be amended. There result from it 195 centuries: 170 in the five classes; two of the _locupletes_, or _assidui_; the _accensi_ and _velati_; two of the proletarians (the _proletarii_ in the stricter acceptation of the word), and the _capite censi_; and the three centuries of the trades; and lastly, eighteen equestrian centuries, consisting of the six patrician and twelve plebeian ones. Several conjectures have been made concerning that passage of Cicero’s, all of which are wrong; as for instance, what Hermann, highly-distinguished scholar as he is, has said about it. Yet if one is familiar with these researches, every thing may be made clear by the Roman combinations of numbers, as I have elucidated them. It was the aim and object of the whole system, that the minority should decide:[78] wealth and birth combined were to turn the scale, and that by means of the eighteen equestrian centuries and the eighty of the first class, which were the earliest called up to vote; if these were unanimous, every question was decided by them, as they formed the majority of the centuries, though far inferior in number to the rest of the citizens. Among those who were equal in rank, it was again the minority which decided; for the centuries of the _seniores_ contained so much fewer voters than those of the _juniores_.