The History of Rome, Book I: The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy — John Shaqi
The History of Rome, Book I: The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the MonarchyMommsen, Theodor
History
The History of Rome, Book I: The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy
Mommsen, Theodor
Rome -- History
The division of the body of burgesses was based on the "wardship,"
-curia- (probably related to -curare- = -coerare-, --koiranos--);
ten wardships formed the community; every wardship furnished a
hundred men to the infantry (hence -mil-es-, like -equ-es-, the
thousand-walker), ten horsemen and ten councillors. When communities
combined, each of course appeared as a part (-tribus-) of the
whole community (-tota-in Umbrian and Oscan), and the original unit
became multiplied by the number of such parts. This division had
reference primarily to the personal composition of the burgess-body,
but it was applied also to the domain so far as the latter was
apportioned at all. That the curies had their lands as well as the
tribes, admits of the less doubt, since among the few names of the
Roman curies that have been handed down to us we find along with
some apparently derived from -gentes-, e. g. -Faucia-, others
certainly of local origin, e. g. -Veliensis-; each one of them
embraced, in this primitive period of joint possession of land, a
number of clan-lands, of which we have already spoken.(5)
We find this constitution under its simplest form(6) in the scheme
of the Latin or burgess communities that subsequently sprang up
under the influence of Rome; these had uniformly the number of a
hundred councillors (-centumviri-). But the same normal numbers make
their appearance throughout in the earliest tradition regarding the
tripartite Rome, which assigns to it thirty curies, three hundred
horsemen, three hundred senators, three thousand foot-soldiers.
Nothing is more certain than that this earliest constitutional
scheme did not originate in Rome; it was a primitive institution
common to all the Latins, and perhaps reached back to a period
anterior to the separation of the stocks. The Roman constitutional
tradition quite deserving of credit in such matters, while it
accounts historically for the other divisions of the burgesses,
makes the division into curies alone originate with the origin of
the city; and in entire harmony with that view not only does the
curial constitution present itself in Rome, but in the recently
discovered scheme of the organization of the Latin communities it
appears as an essential part of the Latin municipal system.
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