11. II. III. The Senate.

12. The current hypothesis, according to which the six centuries of the nobility alone amounted to 1200, and the whole equestrian force accordingly to 3600 horse, is not tenable. The method of determining the number of the equites by the number of duplications specified by the annalists is mistaken: in fact, each of these statements has originated and is to be explained by itself. But there is no evidence either for the first number, which is only found in the passage of Cicero, De Rep. ii. 20, acknowledged as miswritten even by the champions of this view, or for the second, which does not appear at all in ancient authors. In favour, on the other hand, of the hypothesis set forth in the text, we have, first of all, the number as indicated not by authorities, but by the institutions themselves; for it is certain that the century numbered 100 men, and there were originally three (I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses), then six (I. Vi. Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities), and lastly after the Servian reform eighteen (I. VI. The Five Classes), equestrian centuries. The deviations of the authorities from this view are only apparent. The old self-consistent tradition, which Becker has developed (ii. i, 243), reckons not the eighteen patricio-plebeian, but the six patrician, centuries at 1800 men; and this has been manifestly followed by Livy, i. 36 (according to the reading which alone has manuscript authority, and which ought not to be corrected from Livy's particular estimates), and by Cicero l. c. (according to the only reading grammatically admissible, MDCCC.; see Becker, ii. i, 244). But Cicero at the same time indicates very plainly, that in that statement he intended to describe the then existing amount of the Roman equites in general. The number of the whole body has therefore been transferred to the most prominent portion of it by a prolepsis, such as is common in the case of the old annalists not too much given to reflection: just in the same way 300 equites instead of 100 are assigned to the parent-community, including, by anticipation, the contingents of the Tities and the Luceres (Becker, ii. i, 238). Lastly, the proposition of Cato (p. 66, Jordan), to raise the number of the horses of the equites to 2200, is as distinct a confirmation of the view proposed above, as it is a distinct refutation of the opposite view. The closed number of the equites probably continued to subsist down to Sulla's time, when with the de facto abeyance of the censorship the basis of it fell away, and to all appearance in place of the censorial bestowal of the equestrian horse came its acquisition by hereditary right; thenceforth the senator's son was by birth an eques. Alongside, however, of this closed equestrian body, the equites equo publico, stood from an early period of the republic the burgesses bound to render mounted service on their own horses, who are nothing but the highest class of the census; they do not vote in the equestrian centuries, but are regarded otherwise as equites, and lay claim likewise to the honorary privileges of the equestrian order. In the arrangement of Augustus the senatorial houses retained the hereditary equestrian right; but by its side the censorial bestowal of the equestrian horse is renewed as a prerogative of the emperor and without restriction to a definite time, and thereby the designation of equites for the first class of the census as such falls into abeyance.

13. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses.

14. II. VIII. Officers.

15. II. III. Restrictions As to the Accumulation and Reoccupation of Offices.

16. II. III. New Opposition.

17. The stability of the Roman nobility may be clearly traced, more especially in the case of the patrician gentes, by means of the consular and aedilician Fasti. As is well known, the consulate was held by one patrician and one plebeian in each year from 388 to 581 (with the exception of the years 399, 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, 411, in which both consuls were patricians). Moreover, the colleges of curule aediles were composed exclusively of patricians in the odd years of the Varronian reckoning, at least down to the close of the sixth century, and they are known for the sixteen years 541, 545, 547, 549, 551, 553, 555, 557, 561, 565, 567, 575, 585, 589, 591, 593. These patrician consuls and aediles are, as respects their gentes, distributed as follows:

	Consuls (388-500)	Consuls (501-581)	Curule aediles of those 16 patrician colleges
Cornelii	15	15	15
Valerii	10	8	4
Claudii	4	8	2
Aemilii	9	6	2
Fabii	6	6	1
Manlii	4	6	1
Postumii	2	6	2
Servilii	3	4	2
Quinctii	2	3	1
Furii	2	3	-
Sulpicii	6	4	2
Veturii	-	2	-
Papirii	3	1	-
Nautii	2	-	-
Julii	1	-	1
Foslii	1	-	-
	70	70	32

Thus the fifteen or sixteen houses of the high nobility, that were powerful in the state at the time of the Licinian laws, maintained their ground without material change in their relative numbers - which no doubt were partly kept up by adoption - for the next two centuries, and indeed down to the end of the republic. To the circle of the plebeian nobility new gentes doubtless were from time to time added; but the old plebian houses, such as the Licinii, Fulvii, Atilii, Domitii, Marcii, Junii, predominate very decidedly in the Fasti throughout three centuries.

18. I. V. The Senate.

19. III. IX. Death of Scipio.

20. III. X. Their Lax and Unsuccessful Management of the War f.

21. III. VI. In Italy.

22. III. VI. Conquest of Sicily.

23. The expenses of these were, however, probably thrown in great part on the adjoining inhabitants. The old system of making requisitions of task-work was not abolished: it must not unfrequently have happened that the slaves of the landholders were called away to be employed in the construction of roads. (Cato, de R. R. 2 )

24. III. VI. Pressure of the War.

25. III. VI. In Italy.

26. III. VII. Celtic Wars.

27. III. VI In Italy.

28. III. VII. Latins.

29. II. VII. Non-Latin Allied Communities.