[8] [In his desire to claim an origin for Roman legends separate from the Greek, Schwegler exaggerates the position of his opponent. In his lecture on _The Influence of the Greeks over the Romans_, Schlegel repeatedly admits that the debt of Rome to Greece for legendary material does not imply a total absence of original Roman matter.] [9] [Myth, or tradition, however, represents the plebeian class as existing from the beginning of the city, though most modern writers have assumed that the plebs rose later as a class of aliens or conquered slaves.] [Illustration: COSTUME OF AN ETRUSCAN WOMAN OF THE UPPER CLASS (Based on Racinet)] [Illustration] CHAPTER V. CIVILISATION OF THE REGAL PERIOD ORGANISATION OF THE STATE [Sidenote: [_ca._ 753-510 B.C.]] The people or citizens of Rome were divided into the three tribes of the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres,[10] to whatever races we may suppose them to belong, or at whatever time and under whatever circumstances they may have become united. Each of these tribes was divided into ten smaller bodies called curiæ; so that the whole people consisted of thirty curiæ: these same divisions were in war represented by the thirty centuries which made up the legion, just as the three tribes were represented by the three centuries of horsemen; but that the soldiers of each century were exactly a hundred, is apparently an unfounded conclusion. We have said that each tribe was divided into ten curiæ; it would be more correct to say that the union of ten curiæ formed the tribe. For the state grew out of the junction of certain original elements; and these were neither the tribes, nor even the curiæ, but the gentes[11] or houses which made up the curiæ. The first element of the whole system was the gens or house, a union of several families who were bound together by the joint performance of certain religious rites. Actually, where a system of houses has existed within historical memory, the several families who composed a house were not necessarily related to one another; they were not really cousins more or less distant, all descended from a common ancestor. But there is no reason to doubt that in the original idea of a house, the bond of union between its several families was truly sameness of blood: such was likely to be the earliest acknowledged tie; although afterwards, as names are apt to outlive their meanings, an artificial bond may have succeeded to the natural one; and a house, instead of consisting of families of real relations, was made up sometimes of families of strangers, in the hope that law, and custom, and religion, might together rival the force of nature.