On this head there has been some gratuitous confusion. Schwegler (i, 621 _sq._) gives convincing reasons for the view that in early times the plebs were not members of the _curiæ_. Cp. Ihne, as cited, pp. 110, 127; and Fustel de Coulanges, p. 278 _sq._ Meyer (ii, 513, 521) asserts, on the contrary, without any specification of periods, that the _curiæ_ included plebeians as well as patricians. The contradiction seems to arise out of inattention to chronology, or a misreading of Mommsen. That historian rightly sets forth in his history (B. ii, ch. i; Eng. trans. ed. 1862, i, 264-65) that the plebs were not admitted into the _comitia curiata_ before the "Servian" period; adding that these bodies were "at the same time" almost totally deprived of their prerogatives. In his _Römisches Forschungen_, 1864, i, 144 _sq._, he shows that they were admitted in the "_historic_ period"--when the _comitia_ in question had ceased to have any legal power, and when, as he elsewhere states, the admission "practically gave little more than the capacity for adrogation" (_Römisches Staatsrecht_, Bd. iii, Abth. i, p. 93). Here again he states that "to equal rights in the curies, especially to the right of vote in the comitia, the plebeians attained only in the later times" (_Id._ p. 72). Yet Professor Pelham, in asserting (p. 21; cp. p. 46) that "the _primitive_ Roman people of the thirty _curiæ_ included all the freemen of the community, _simple as well as gentle_," gives the note: "The view here taken on the vexed question of the purely patrician character of the _curiæ_ is that of Mommsen (_Röm. Forschungen_, vol. i)." When this error is corrected, the question ceases to be vexed. Schwegler has disposed of the blunder of Dionysius, who ascribes to the plebeians a share in the _curiæ_ from the beginning; and it is not disputed that they were allowed to enter when the _comitia curiata_ had been practically superseded by the _comitia centuriata_. It is to be noted that the denial of the inclusion of the plebeians in the original _curiæ_ does not apply to the _clientes_, whose status, though non-patrician, had been different from that of the true plebs. M. Delaunay, who argues that the plebeians were all along admitted to the _curiæ_, adds the qualification: "Doubtless not the entire mass of the plebeians, but only those who were ... attached to the gentes" (Robiou et Delaunay, _Les Institutions de l'ancienne Rome_, 1884, i, 21). But who were these _gentilitia_ if not the _clientes_? (cp. _loc. cit._ p. 26).