defray the expenses of their retainers. It is probable that in cases of emergency a tax in kind was levied from the landholders of the tribes.
Of the military burdens tradition has preserved some plausible details. The army was known as the legio or "gathering,"[1] and was composed of three "thousands" (milites),[2] one from each of the three tribes. These foot-soldiers were commanded by three or nine tribal officers, the tribuni militum.[3] The cavalry consisted of three hundred celeres, one from each of the three tribes, each commanded by three tribuni celerum. When the Patriciate was enlarged by the addition of the gentes minores,[4] these three hundreds (centuriae) were increased to six.[5]
Besides the heavy infantry and the cavalry, there may have been a corps of light-armed troops (velites and arquites), and these would doubtless have been composed mainly of clients. We do not know whether the free Plebeians were forced to serve; but, if they did, it would only have been in this inferior capacity, which required no time for training and no cost of maintaining a panoply. It is evident that the whole burden of the regular levy, and of such war-taxation as then existed, fell upon the Patricians, and before the close of the monarchy an effort was made to remedy this unequal distribution of burdens—an effort which had as its result the abolition of the patrician tribes as the leading divisions of the state and a serious infringement of patrician rights.
The thirty curiae, originally local units, as is proved by their names,[6] were divided, ten into each of the three tribes. The members of the clans belonging to the same curia were called curiales. But, although the curiae had local centres, membership of these bodies did not depend on residence in a given locality. It was hereditary; and if the members of a gens migrated from its curia, the gentiles were still members of that state-division. The curiae were religious as well as political associations, which
- ↑ From legere, Varro L.L. v. 87.
- ↑ Varro L.L. v. 89 "milites quod trium milium primo legio fiebat, ac singulae tribus Titiensium, Ramnium, Lucerum milia singula militum mittebant."
- ↑ ib. 81 "tribuni militum quod terni tribus tribubus Ramnium, Lucerum, Titium olim ad exercitum mittebantur." On the other hand, Servius (in Aen. v. 560) says that the tribuni were so called because they presided over one-third of the whole force.
- ↑ p. 12.
- ↑ Liv. i. 36.
- ↑ e.g. Calabra, Foriensis, Veliensis. Other names (such as Titia) may be eponymous.
