excluded from the right of voting, and yet the whole power might reside
in the chief men of the state. For the knights were first called, and
then the eighty centuries of the first class; and if they happened to
differ, which was seldom the case, those of the second were called: and
they seldom ever descended so low as to come to the lowest class. Nor
need we be surprised, that the present regulation, which now exists,
since the tribes were increased to thirty-five, should not agree in the
number of centuries of juniors and seniors with the amount instituted by
Servius Tullius, they being now double of what they were at that time.
For the city being divided into four parts, according to the regions and
hills which were then inhabited, he called these divisions tribes, as I
think, from the tribute.[55] For the method of levying taxes rateably
according to the value of estates was also introduced by him; nor had
these tribes any relation to the number and distribution of the
centuries.
[Footnote 55: Varro, de L.L. iv. 36, thinks, on the contrary, that
_tributum_ was so called, as being paid by the _tribes_.]
44. The census being now completed, which he had expedited by the terror
of a law passed on those not rated, with threats of imprisonment and
death, he issued a proclamation that all the Roman citizens, horse and
foot, should attend at the dawn of day in the Campus Martius, each in
his century. There he drew up his army and performed a lustration of it
by the sacrifices called suovetaurilia, and that was called the closing
of the lustrum, because that was the conclusion of the census. Eighty
thousand citizens are said to have been rated in that survey. Fabius
Pictor, the oldest of our historians, adds, that such was the number of
those who were able to bear arms. To accommodate that number the city
seemed to require enlargement. He adds two hills, the Quirinal and
Viminal; then in continuation he enlarges the Esquiliæ, and takes up his
own residence there, in order that respectability might attach to the
place. He surrounds the city with a rampart, a moat, and a wall: thus he
enlarges the pomœrium. They who regard only the etymology of the
word, will have the pomœrium to be a space of ground without the
walls; but it is rather a space on each side the wall, which the
Etrurians in building cities consecrated by augury, reaching to a
certain extent both within and without in the direction they intended to
raise the wall; so that the houses might not be joined to it on the
inside, as they commonly are now, and also that there might be some
space without left free from human occupation. This space, which it was
not lawful to till or inhabit, the Romans called the pomœrium, not
for its being without the wall, more than for the wall's being without
it: and in enlarging the city, as far as the walls were intended to
proceed outwards, so far these consecrated limits were likewise
extended.
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