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 except conceivably by the addition to the existing number of a precise number of added clans—a most improbable procedure; and that, as being a natural and not an artificial creation, it was a union which was not likely to be of primary importance politically, and the rights of whose members were in all probability those of private rather than of public law. These expectations are verified, but the attempts to point out certain purely political characteristics of these associations deserve examination.

(i.) It has been held that the clans were the unit of voting in the original popular assembly at Rome, the comitia curiata. But the passage on which this conclusion is based only implies that, originally, membership of this comitia depended on possession of a gens; eventually, at a time when the curia included Plebeians, on possession of a familia, and therefore presumably of a stirps or genus. (ii.) A distinction is presented by ancient authorities between the gentes majores and minores—a distinction within the patrician gentes that survived into the Republic. Of the gentes minores we know but one name, that of the patrician Papirii; a list of some of the gentes majores has been reconstructed with some plausibility from those clans which furnished principes senatus; they are the Aemilii, Claudii, Cornelii, Fabii, Manlii, and Valerii. Tradition is inclined to represent this distinction as having originated politically, but it is a tradition working on the impossible hypothesis that the Patriciate derived its origin from membership of the Senate. This political distinction doubtless existed within the Senate; but it was probably derived merely from the respective antiquity, and therefore dignity, of the gentes