class which is not already filled by the accensi and velati. At a later period the accensi became a more definite body, acting as assistants to the magistrates and forming a corporation with certain immunities,[1] and at this period the proletarii may have been recognised as the class liable to taxation, which fell below the minimum census. But they probably do not belong to the original Servian organisation.
The citizens included in the census list were collectively described as classici, and were spoken of as locupletes and assidui, the latter word probably meaning people "settled on land," "landholders," as most of those originally enrolled in the classes were.[2] The others were the children-begetting citizens (proletarii cives). The use of the census for purposes of taxation gave other names to this class. In contrast to the assidui, who were registered on their property, they were called capite censi as being registered on their caput or mere headship of a family; and further, when the incidence of taxation extended below the minimum census, they were spoken of as aerarii, because their participation in the burdens of the state was shown only by the payment of taxes (aes). The word aerarii seems always to have denoted those outside the census list.[3]
The cavalry was an adaptation of the old patrician corps of equites[4] to the new conditions. The six original centuries were preserved and consisted as before of Patricians;[5] they still bore the names of the ancient tribes, and were called respectively Titienses, Ramnes, Luceres, priores and posteriores.[6] They continuedesset civis, tantummodo ut pro capite suo tributi nomine aera praeberet."]
- ↑ Ulpian in Fragm. Vat. 138 "ii qui in centuria accensorum velatorum sunt, habent immunitatem a tutelis et curis."
- ↑ The word is not technical enough to be used as an argument that the classes included only landholders. The favourite ancient derivation was from ab asse dando (Cic. de Rep. ii. 22, 40, see p. 72), whether for the payment of taxation or for the furnishing of military equipment.
- ↑ Capite censi, if we trust Cicero (de Rep. ii. 22, 40, see p. 72), came to mean those below 1500 asses (the subsequent limit to the incidence of taxation). The limit of census for military service was also reduced to 4000 asses (Polyb. vi. 19), and finally to 375 (Gell. xvi. 10, 10), and those below this census continued to be called capite censi (Gell. l.c.; Sall. Jug. 86). Aerarius, on the other hand, seems to have preserved its old meaning of those excluded from the centuries—Ps. Asc. in Divin. p. 103 "(Censores) prorsus cives sic notabant . . . ut, qui plebeius (esset) . . . aerarius fieret, ac per hoc non esset in albo centuriae suae, sed ad hoc [non
- ↑ p. 41.
- ↑ It is not known when they ceased to be patrician; Mommsen (Staatsr. iii. p. 254) thinks on the reform of the Servian constitution, circa 220 B.C.
- ↑ Liv. i. 36.
