Page:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.djvu/159

153 and to have been killed from ambush. Only one boy was left behind to propagate the gens.

Ten gentes, we said, formed a phratry, named curia. It was endowed with more important functions than the Grecian phratry. Every curia had its own religious rites, sacred possessions and priests. The priests of one curia in a body formed one of the Roman clerical collegiums. Ten curiae formed a tribe which probably had originally its own elected chief—leader in war and high priest—like the rest of the Latin tribes. The three tribes together formed the populus Romanus, the Roman people.

Hence nobody could belong to the Roman people, unless he was a member of a Roman gens, and thus a member of a curia and tribe. The first constitution of the Roman people was as follows. Public affairs were conducted by the Senate composed, as Niebuhr was the first to state correctly, of the chiefs of the three hundred gentes. Because they were the elders of the gentes they were called patres, fathers, and as a body senatus, council of elders, from senex, old. Here also the customary choice of men from the same family of the gens brought to life the first hereditary nobility. These families were called patricians and claimed the exclusive right to the seats in the senate and to all other offices. The fact that in the course of time the people admitted this claim so that it became an actual privilege is confirmed by the legendary report that Romulus bestowed the rank of patrician and its privileges on the first senators. The senate, like the Athenian boulê, had to make the final decision in many affairs and to undertake the preliminary discussion of more important matters, especially of new laws. These were settled by the public meeting, the so-called comitia curiata (assembly of curiae.) The people met in curiae, probably grouped by gentes, and every one of the thirty curiae had one vote. The