With Schwegler, who grants however reluctantly that the commons were received into the curiae before 208,[195] the theory enters upon its present phase; for the great majority of writers since his time have accepted his view, yet with varying opinions as to the date of the change. Mommsen,[196] who more than any one else has made it clear that, so far back as our sources reach, the populus comprised both patricians and commons, nevertheless assumes that the latter were originally outside the populus but were admitted no later than the beginning of the republic.[197] In his reconstruction of the primitive state he supposes that the citizens were all patres, in so far as they, and they alone, could be fathers; or adjectively patricii, in so far as they, and they alone, had fathers.[198] Added to the citizens and their slaves was a class of persons termed clients, half way between freedom and slavery—a class made up from various origins but chiefly by the conquest of neighbors.[199] These clients belonged, as dependents of the gentes, to the curiae, but had no vote in the assembly.[200] Later the plebs were formed from the clients as the bond which united the latter with their patrons relaxed.[201] The plebs, who were free citizens of inferior rank, came into being at the moment when the patricio-plebeian comitia centuriata acquired the right to express the will of the community.[202] Although Mommsen knows well the weakness of the evidence offered by earlier writers, he adopts the hypothesis of an original patrician state, without attempting a systematic defence. Here and there in his works, however, he mentions some fact or condition which he would like to have considered proof. The following are the chief passages of this kind: (1) The lack of right to the auspicia[203] and to the imperium[204] on the part of the plebeians proves that the patriciate was the original citizenship. But we could as reasonably say, with reference to the auspices, that the two Attic gentes which furnished the sacred exegetes contained the only Athenian citizens.[205] The auspicia, as Soltau[206] has noticed, belonged to the ius honorum, as did also the imperium; hence they were both privileges of the nobility. In brief Mommsen’s reasoning would make a governing nobility everywhere impossible. (2) The cavalry were patrician; therefore the infantry must have been.[207] With the same kind of reasoning we could conclude that because in the Homeric age of Greece chariots were used in war by nobles only, the infantry must also have been exclusively noble; whereas we know that the rank and file were common men.[208] That the Roman army before Servius was similarly composed is supported not only by this and many other analogies, but also by the unanimous testimony of the sources. As in other primitive states the warriors belonged to the assembly and were the citizens.