Page:Roman Constitutional History, 753-44 B.C..djvu/169

Rh arrangement might seem reasonable, as they were liable to military or naval service, and the temporary tax (tributum) was not levied after 167. A more important question referred to their enrollment in the districts (tribus). It seems probable that the censors of 179 assigned some of the poor people to the country districts, taking into consideration their parentage, legal status, and occupation (genus, causa, quaestus). The succeeding censors may have adopted similar measures for relieving the crowded urban districts, but nothing further is known for this epoch (201-133).

Enrollment of the Freedmen. — Gaius Flaminius had relegated all freedmen and their sons to the urban districts (p. 118). About 189 a plebiscite directed that the sons should be enrolled like other citizens; that is, while before they had technically been freedmen (libertini), they were now in this respect to be treated as freeborn citizens (ingenui). Some time afterward the freedmen who had five-year-old sons or were assessed at $1650 or more, were enrolled in the country districts; but the censors of 169 confined all excepting perhaps those who had five-year-old sons to one urban district. This great restriction was not permanent. The method of enrollment varied at different times, because the nobility opposed, and the middle classes favored, restrictions on the suffrage of the freedmen.

The Powers of the Assemblies. — The nobility tried also in other ways to make the assemblies friendly and subservient. In spite of the fact that the Latins were in general excluded from citizenship, the assemblies remained too large and unwieldy to be convened very often, if those present should in any adequate way represent all those entitled to vote. It might have been sufficient to convene them only on important occasions, — to elect magistrates,