Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/388

 882 THE REVOLUTIONS. BOOK IV. cians with their clients, and the plebeian class. No other distinction was known than that which religion had established. Servius marked a new division, which had wealth for its foundation. He divided the inhabitants of Rome into two great categories; in the one were those who owned property, in the other those who had nothing. `The first was divided into five classes, in which men were divided off according to the amount of their fortune.₁ By this means Servius in- troduced an entirely new principle into Roman society; wealth began to indicate rank, as religion had done before.

Servius applied this division of the Roman population to the military service. Before him, if the plebeians fought, it was not in the ranks of the legion. But as Servius had made proprietors and citizens of them, he could also make them legionaries. From this time the army was no longer composed of men exclusively from the curies; all free men, all those at least who had property, made a part of it, and the poor alone continued to be excluded. The rank of patrician or client no longer determined the armor of each soldier and his post in battle; the army was divided by classes, exactly like the population, according to wealth. The first class, which had complete armor, and the two following, which had at least the shield, the helmet, and

₁ Modern historians generally reckon six classes. In reality there were but five: Cicero, De Repub., II. 22; Aulus Gellius, X. 28. The knights on the one hand, and the proletarii, poor inhabitants, on the other, were not counted in the classes. We must note, moreover, that the word classis had not, in the ancient language, a sense similar to our word class; it was applied to a military body; and this shows that the division established by Servius was rather military than political.