3. The defence, that the aristocracy clung to the exclusion of the plebeians from religious prejudice, mistakes the fundamental character of the Roman religion, and imports into antiquity the modern distinction between church and state. The admittance of a non-burgess to a religious ceremony of the citizens could not indeed but appear sinful to the orthodox Roman; but even the most rigid orthodoxy never doubted that admittance to civic communion, which absolutely and solely depended on the state, involved also full religious equality. All such scruples of conscience, the honesty of which in themselves we do not mean to doubt, were precluded, when once they granted to the plebeians -en masse- at the right time the patriciate. This only may perhaps be alleged by way of excuse for the nobility, that after it had neglected the right moment for this purpose at the abolition of the monarchy, it was no longer in a position subsequently of itself to retrieve the neglect (II. I. The New Community). 4. Whether this distinction between these "curule houses" and the other families embraced within the patriciate was ever of serious political importance, cannot with certainty be either affirmed or denied; and as little do we know whether at this epoch there really was any considerable number of patrician families that were not yet curule. 5. II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws 6. I. XII. Foreign Worships 7. II. I. Senate, 8. II. I. Senate, II. III. Opposition of the Patriciate 9. II. II. Legislation of the Twelve Tables 10. II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum 11. The statements as to the poverty of the consulars of this period, which play so great a part in the moral anecdote-books of a later age, mainly rest on a misunderstanding on the one hand of the old frugal economy--which might very well consist with considerable prosperity --and on the other hand of the beautiful old custom of burying men who had deserved well of the state from the proceeds of penny collections --which was far from being a pauper burial. The method also of explaining surnames by etymological guess-work, which has imported so many absurdities into Roman history, has furnished its quota to this belief (-Serranus-). 12. II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws 13. II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum 14. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers 15. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses