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 which contained his plot of ground, the non-possessor in that wherein he dwelt. But, by the year 312, the landless citizens had already been confined to the four urban tribes; the radical censor of that year distributed them even over the country tribes, to increase the voting power of this ''forensis factio''; but in 304 the landless proletariate was again confined to the tribus urbanae, and hence arose the permanent distinction between the more honourable country and the less distinguished city tribe. As a matter of fact, this distinction between the landed and the landless citizen could not continue when all property, personal as well as real, became of equal value at the census, and membership of the tribe became practically hereditary. But it was a heredity which might be broken by the censor at every period of registration. He might, as we shall see, arbitrarily transfer an individual from his paternal country tribe to one of the four urban divisions, which, partly from historical reasons, partly because they contained the freedmen, were accounted less distinguished.

The distribution into centuries naturally followed the distinctions of property and age which qualified for those bodies. The list which set forth this distribution was still pre-eminently an army list, but the table of seniors (tabulae seniorum) undoubtedly contained the names of those who were past the age of compulsory service. The sexagenarii, although the young bloods might object to their voting for a war in which they were not to share,. Mommsen imagines that it was in this year that the landless citizens first found a place in the tribes (Staatsr. ii. 392 sq., 402 sq.).]