reasons, partly because they contained the freedmen, were accounted less distinguished. The distribution into centuries naturally followed the distinctions of property and age which qualified for those bodies. The list which set forth this distribution was still pre-eminently an army list, but the table of seniors (_tabulae seniorum_) undoubtedly contained the names of those who were past the age of compulsory service. The _sexagenarii_, although the young bloods might object to their voting for a war in which they were not to share,[1053] or electing a general by whom they would not be led, still had the right of taking part in the deliberations of the _comitia centuriata_. It is obvious that the complete census of tribes and centuries included every voting unit of Rome, and, in spite of the fact that an individual scrutiny of the _aerarii_ may not have taken place,[1054] we must suppose that there was a tribal list of _all_ the citizens which proved the right to vote at the _comitia tributa_ and the _concilium plebis_. But it is almost certain that, when an historian mentions a census of Republican times, he is reproducing merely the army list,[1055] the vital element in registration for a military state. All under the military age are excluded, and it has even been concluded that in the historical lists the _seniores_ themselves are not entered.[1056] The _proletarii_ are potentially, and in a sense actually, members of the Roman army;[1057] but it is very questionable whether they appear in the Republican lists. It was, perhaps, not until the Principate that the census contained the names of all male Romans above the military age.[1058] III. _The recognitio equitum._—The word _equites_ primarily and properly applied only to the citizen cavalry of 1800 men, serving on horses supplied by the state.[1059] These formed the _centuriae equitum equo publico_, and this class was the _ordo equester_ in the strict sense. It is true that _equites_ had come to have a wider meaning than this. About the close of the fifth century, individuals possessing a certain census and not included in the equestrian centuries were permitted to serve as cavalry with their own horses.[1060] They were no definite body, but were selected for a particular service by the commander, if the censors had admitted their pecuniary qualification.[1061] The consequence was that the terms _eques_ and even _ordo equester_ were transferred to these potential knights, and came to specify all who possessed a certain census, which, in the Principate and probably in the later Republic, was 400,000 sesterces.[1062] The censorship was only concerned with this wider body of knights as the authority which proved the monetary qualification of its individual members. The only body of _equites_ which it recognised and treated as a corporation was that of the eighteen centuries.