ORIGINAL ROMAN CONSTITUTION――EARLY HISTORY UNDER THE KINGS――ORIGIN OF THE PLEBEIANS. With the enlargement of the population of Rome by the addition of these new masses of citizens, a change of the constitution became of course necessary. The following seems to have been the form ultimately assumed:――Governed by a common sovereign, eligible by the whole community from one of the superior tribes――the Ramnes and the Tities――the three tribes intrusted the conduct of their affairs to a senate composed of 200 members, 100 of whom represented the gentes of the Ramnes, and 100 the gentes of the Tities. The Luceres as an inferior tribe, were not represented in the senate; and their political influence was limited to the right to vote with the other two tribes in the general assemblies of the whole people. In these general assemblies, or _Comitia_, as they were called, the people voted; not individually, nor in families, nor in gentes, but in divisions called _Curix_ or _Curies_; the _Curia_ being the tenth part of a tribe, and including, according to the ancient system of round numbers, ten gentes. Thus the entire Populus Romanus, or Roman people, of this primitive time, consisted of thirty curies――ten curies of Ramnes, ten of Tities, and ten of Luceres: the ten curies of each tribe corresponding to 100 gentes, and the thirty curies together making up 300 gentes. As the Luceres were an inferior tribe, their gentes were called _Gentes Minores_, or Lesser Houses; while those of the Ramnes and Tities were called _Gentes Majores_ or Greater Houses. The assembly of the whole people was called the _Comitia Curiatia_, or meeting of curies. After a measure had been matured by the king and senate, it was submitted to the whole people in their curies, who might accept or reject, but could not alter, what was thus proposed to them. An appeal was also open to the curies against any sentence of the king, or of the judges nominated by him in his capacity of supreme justiciary. The king, moreover, was the high priest of the nation in peace, as well as the commander-in-chief during war. The 300 gentes furnished each a horseman, so as to constitute a body of cavalry; the mass of the people forming the infantry. The right of assembling the senate lay with the king, who usually convened it three times a month.