Might the plebeians and clients belong in a restricted sense to the populus and curiae, and yet remain so far inferior to the patricians as to be excluded from the political meetings of the curiae—the comitia curiata? There can be no uncertainty as to the answer to this question, for the ancient writers agree that the comitia curiata included plebeians and clients as well as patricians.[135] Not only did the lower classes attend this assembly, but they also voted in it, and constituted the majority.[136] II. THE CONVENTIONAL MODERN VIEW The passages cited above suffice to prove that the ancient writers thought of the populus, and consequently of the comitia curiata, as composed from the earliest times of patricians, clients, and plebeians. Another question, far more difficult, is whether the ancients were right in their view. As none of the authorities on whom we directly depend for our knowledge of Roman affairs lived earlier than the last century of the republic, they could have had no first-hand acquaintance with primitive Roman conditions, but must have drawn their information concerning the remote past from earlier writers—the annalists—now lost. Niebuhr, who in the opening years of the last century introduced the modern method of investigating Roman history, was convinced that writers of the late republic and of the empire, lacking historical perspective and interpreting their sources in the false light of existing or recent conditions, came to wrong conclusions in regard to the primitive Roman state. He believed he could point to instances of such misunderstanding, and he thought it within the power of a well-equipped modern historian to eliminate much of the error so as to come near to the standpoint of the earlier and more trustworthy annalists.[137] The position of Niebuhr has in the main proved untenable. Notwithstanding all the source-sifting of modern times, pursued most zealously by the Germans, we are obliged to admit that it is rarely possible with any fair degree of certainty to discover the view of an annalist on a given subject excepting in the few cases in which the citation is by name. We must also admit that though Cicero and the Augustan writers might misinterpret Fabius Pictor in minor details, it is inconceivable that they should fail to understand his presentation of so fundamental a subject as the character of the original populus or the composition of the earliest assembly. Present scholarship accordingly insists that in such weighty matters there was no essential difference of view between earlier and later writers.[138]