A question which formerly much engaged my attention is this: How could Brutus, a plebeian, be _Tribunus Celerum_, although the _Celeres_ were the patrician knights? I think I have found the key to it. Writers speak of him as if he had been the only tribune of the Celeres, whereas there were several of them, as Dionysius already mentions in the enumeration of the priestly offices in his account of Numa. The Celeres were the horsemen; yet the plebeians also had their knights, and these formed a fourth order. Now as each of the patrician tribes had its tribune, is it not according to analogy that among the thirty tribunes of the plebeians there was one who represented the plebeian Celeres as opposed to the patricians? The _Magister Equitum_, whose office is looked upon as a continuation of the dignity of the _Tribunus Celerum_, was not necessarily a patrician: P. Licinius Crassus was elected to it. This magistrate stood at the head of all the eighteen centuries of the knights, in which the plebeians had the preponderance. As a fourth estate the plebeians likewise appear in the remarkable adjustment of the estates, in the year of the city 388, when to the three holidays, which were kept at Rome corresponding to the three tribes, a fourth day was added; certainly because the plebeians now as a body were placed on an equal footing with the patricians, although not of such importance in the eyes of the latter, that three days should also be set apart for them. To give the revolution the necessary sanction, it is said that Collatinus brought Brutus with him, and Sp. Lucretius Valerius. Now, we may positively assert, that Sp. Lucretius belonged to the Ramnes; Valerius, to the Tities;[86] Collatinus, to the Luceres; and as to Brutus, from what we have just seen, we may class him among the plebeians. That Valerius belonged to the Tities was generally acknowledged by the ancients: it is stated of him in Cicero, that he was consul together with Lucretius, to whom he yielded the Fasces, _quia minor natu erat_. Yet Cicero here confounds _gentes minores_ with _minor natu_, the less privileged tribe being called _minor_. We know from Dionysius, that when the two first tribes were placed on an equal footing, the third was called νεώτεροι (_minor_). Collatinus was of the Gens of the Tarquinii, consequently a Lucer. Brutus is a plebeian; Cicero’s belief in the descent of the Junii Bruti from our L. Junius Brutus is beyond a doubt; and this is of greater weight than the denial of those who wrote after the battle of Philippi. M. Brutus was to be considered as a _homo insitivus_, as an outlaw. We already perceive from Posidonius that the question of the descent of the Bruti was mooted. Much may be said in support of the opinion of those who take him to be a patrician; certainly many patrician clans have survived in some plebeian families; a _transitio ad plebem_ was made most frequently by unequal marriages, and although the cognomen was