|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE | LIBRARIES | BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | FREEWARE | BOOKSTORE |
|
|
Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates
From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson
|
Page 16
There is no tradition that the individual tribes had special presiding magistrates or special assemblies of their own; and it is highly probable that in the interest of the unity of the commonwealth the tribes which had joined together to form it were never in reality allowed to have such institutions. Even in the army, it is true, the infantry had as many pairs of leaders as there were tribes; but each of these pairs of military tribunes did not command the contingent of a tribe; on the contrary each individual war-tribune, as well as all in conjunction, exercised command over the whole infantry.
The clans were distributed among the several curies; their limits and those of the household were furnished by nature. That the legislative power interfered in these groups by way of modification, that it subdivided the large clan and counted it as two, or joined several weak ones together, there is no indication at all in Roman tradition; at any rate this took place only in a way so limited that the fundamental character of affinity belonging to the clan was not thereby altered.
We may not therefore conceive the number of the clans, and still less that of the households, as a legally fixed one; if the -curia- had to furnish a hundred men on foot and ten horsemen, it is not affirmed by tradition, nor is it credible, that one horseman was taken from each clan and one foot-soldier from each house. The only member that discharged functions in the oldest constitutional organization was the -curia-.
Of these there were ten, or, where there were several tribes, ten to each tribe. Such a "wardship" was a real corporate unity, the members of which assembled at least for holding common festivals. Each wardship was under the charge of a special warden (-curio-), and had a priest of its own (-flamen curialis-); beyond doubt also levies and valuations took place according to curies, and in judicial matters the burgesses met by curies and voted by curies. This organization, however, cannot have been introduced primarily with a view to voting, for in that case they would certainly have made the number of subdivisions uneven.
Do you see any typos or other mistakes? Please let us know and correct them
|
|
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/rome/1-05-original-constitution-rome.asp?pg=16
