Besides the heavy infantry and the cavalry, there may have been a corps of light-armed troops (_velites_ and _arquites_), and these would doubtless have been composed mainly of clients. We do not know whether the free Plebeians were forced to serve; but, if they did, it would only have been in this inferior capacity, which required no time for training and no cost of maintaining a panoply. It is evident that the whole burden of the regular levy, and of such war-taxation as then existed, fell upon the Patricians, and before the close of the monarchy an effort was made to remedy this unequal distribution of burdens—an effort which had as its result the abolition of the patrician tribes as the leading divisions of the state and a serious infringement of patrician rights. The thirty _curiae_, originally local units, as is proved by their names,[147] were divided, ten into each of the three tribes. The members of the clans belonging to the same _curia_ were called _curiales_. But, although the _curiae_ had local centres, membership of these bodies did not depend on residence in a given locality. It was hereditary; and if the members of a _gens_ migrated from its _curia_, the _gentiles_ were still members of that state-division. The _curiae_ were religious as well as political associations, which had from the first, or finally developed, a close corporate life. Each had its peculiar _sacra_[148] and a place of worship, containing an altar and chapel, which itself bore the name _curia_;[149] and the religious affairs of each were conducted by a priest called _curio_, assisted by a _flamen curialis_.[150] The thirty _curiones_ formed a college, of which the _curio maximus_ was the president.[151] It is difficult to say how far the religious organisation of the _curiae_ was a natural or artificial development. But artifice was certainly at work in determining their important political character. The primitive popular assembly at Rome is the _comitia curiata_, composed wholly of Patricians. Here each member of a patrician clan above the legal age—probably the age of eighteen, at which military service commenced—had the right of giving a single vote; a majority of the _curiales_ decided the vote of the particular _curia_, and the decision of the assembly was determined by the majority of the groups. They also had, in a secondary degree, an importance of a military kind; for the supply of knights to the corps of _celeres_ is said to have been effected through the _curiae_.[152] § 5. _The Monarchical Constitution_